Simple yet Powerful Principles for Dog Obedience Training2

By: Moses Wright
Once you've establish some house rules such as - keeping the cooking area or sofa out of bounds to your dog, enforce them constantly. If the dog learns that he can get away with breaking these rules now and then, your previous efforts will go down the drain.

Simple rules and regulations set earlier on should be followed religiously. It is critical to teach the dog exactly what he is allowed to do and be consistent about it. Confusion will only make matters worse. Last but not least, you have to communicate and make sure the whole family knows and enforce the house rules on your dog consistently.

3. Timing - Timing is critical to successful training. Praise your dog whenever he is doing something right. Giving him a small treat he likes will work wonders for most dogs.

Do take him to task immediately whenever he does not respond to your command or behaves inappropriately. Delayed reprimands and praises will have no effect after the teachable moment has passed.

There are 2 main approaches when it comes to correcting your dog's undesirable behaviors. The first approach is the "Direct Approach". It simply requires you to reprimand your dog on the spot whenever he misbehaves – chewing, barking, digging and biting. This is a more tangible and straight forward approach to training your dog and is easy to understand for most trainers.

The second one is the "Endurance Approach" as it'll require you to ignore your dog when he misbehaves. Using the cause and effect to your advantage, this approach requires you to ignore the dog, especially when he behaves in a certain manner to seek attention.

This approach requires you to pay attention to your dog only when he's a good boy. The rationale for this is that dogs desire attention and will be encouraged by attention. Dogs do not differentiate between positive and negative reinforcement. They see things in a simple way. If a certain action gets reaction and attention, you'll bet they repeat it over and over again - cause and effect.

Sorry to say, most dog owners tend to give negative attention to our dogs. For example: Do you let him out of his crate when he groans or do you give him more attention when he jumps onto you excitedly whenever you comes home? These are considered to be giving him negative attention, and only seek to motivate your dog to continue with his bad behavior.

Fortunately, the opposite is true if you pay enough attention to your dog when he behaves himself. The moment your dog sees that good behavior brings about attention, he will want to continue repeating the positive actions.

What you should do is to focus your attention on your dog only when he is behaving; praise him or give him a treat, let him know that he's getting the attention. If this technique is used correctly, he'll be a well-behaved dog for a long time to come.

4. Training Session - You should be in a calm and correct frame of mind when training your dog. Don't train your dog when you are under the influence of alcohol or drugs or if you've had a bad day and not in the best of moods.