Sunday, May 10, 2009

Discover Basic Training Tips For Your Puppy Today!

By Mike Jones

It's an exciting experience when a puppy joins your family. Puppies are so cute and playful and fun that it is sometimes difficult to imagine that they will grow up to be adult dogs. If you want your puppy to grow up to be a well-behaved and responsible adult dog you need to begin their training right away while they are still small.

Of course, when we think about the basics of puppy training we all think about housetraining and that may be the most important training we have to do. But what about leash training and training to come, sit, lie down and stay? These are also very important things for your puppy to learn if he is going to become a well-mannered adult.

When you are training your dog there are some things that are consistent and work every time. All dogs and other animals, including people, react better to love and positive reinforcement than to negative reinforcement. Dogs inherently want to please their masters but if you respond in a negative manner he may create a fear and he will be less likely to respond to what you want.

As you are training your dog make sure that you enforce the good behaviors with treats, affections, verbal praise and more. Your most oft-used reinforcement mode should be verbal praise. Praise your dog almost every time but give him treats only occasionally. If he gets a treat every time he will come to expect it and too many treats can be bad for his health and your pocketbook.

Also if you recall anything about classical conditioning and Pavlov's dogs from your high school science classes you will remember that intermittent reinforcement was a better method of creating a behavior than consistent reinforcements. If your dog gets a treat every time he loses interest and will get to a point where he may not respond as well. But if he gets a treat only occasionally he will respond every time in anticipation of the possible reward.

When you train your dog use hand signals in addition to voice commands. After awhile train him to respond to just one or the other. This can come in very helpful in different situations.

The least you will want to teach your dog would be to sit, lie down, come, and stay along with leash training. You may also +want to include some behavior training if you have your dog out in public frequently or if he is especially rambunctious and hyperactive. Well-behaved dogs are fun to own and in order to be a well-behaved adult he needs to be well-trained.

Training your dog will strengthen the bond between the two of you and both you and your dog will enjoy that advantage for a long time to come.

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