Best Dog Answers

Archive for August, 2010

Many people get a little nervous and even fearful when they see or hear the word correction in dog training. The thing you must understand about corrections is that they are not designed nor should they EVER be used as punishment. A correction is merely a tool used to let the dog know that they did not execute a learned command properly or that the behavior they are exhibiting is unacceptable.

Rewards (food, ball, toy) are typically used in training to teach a dog a new exercise. A command is given to a dog and then the reward is used to lure the dog into the desired position. Once the dog knows the exercise, rewards can then be used periodically to let the dog know they executed the exercise properly. Not everybody will be carrying food, a ball or a toy with them everywhere they go so you need to put your dog on a reward variable. This is when a dog may only receive a reward once out of every two, three, four or even more times they execute a command correctly. This is something that takes a little bit of time in the beginning of training for your dog to get used to, but once they do, it will just be another part of training to them.

So you just bought an adorable St. Bernard puppy.  When you come home from a long day of work, he is going to be happy to see you.  As a puppy, he is small.  You may be inclined to pat your leg to encourage him to jump on you so you can pet him.  You may even allow his face in your face and exchange kisses.  No harm in all of this fun for now, right?  Wrong!!  What you just taught him is that all good things (petting, kisses, greetings) come from jumping up on people to say hello.  He is small and manageable now, but that is all going to change as he grows.  If this behavior doesn’t stop, you could have a hundred pound animal greeting your guests in such a maner.  And it wouldn’t be much fun for either of you.

A command is nothing more than a selected word you use to associate a response from your dog.  You tell your dog the “SIT” command and the desired response is for him to sit.  Dogs are not born knowing commands or the English language. This is all something you have to teach them.  The words you choose to use for your commands can be anything you like.  The key to success is to ensure you and everyone else training your dog is using the same commands for the same exercises.  You can’t have one person telling your dog “DOWN” and another person telling them “LAY” for the same exercise.  It is too much for your dog to understand this early in training.  When you decide what commands you want to use for training, you need to keep them to one word commands as much as possible.  When you have too many variables in training, it can get frustrating and confusing to your dog.  The basic rule in dog training is Keep It Simple.