Is your dog’s bad behavior causing you stress? Don’t put it off any longer. It’s time to start some consistent obedience training for your dog. This means you should be persistent and consistent with your training. However, training should always be fun for your dog or it will quickly get bored!

Understand Your Dog Basic Needs

With power comes great responsibility. If you don’t fulfill your dog’s basic needs, you shouldn’t be surprised if your dog behaves badly. What are the basic needs? Here are the main ones:

  • water and food
  • exercise
  • social interaction with dogs and people
  • a stimulating environment.

The main principle in dog training is to utilise positive and negative reinforcement. When your dog does a behavior that is wanted, you should reward him with a treat or affection. The treat or affection must come as soon after the behavior as humanly possible in order for it to be effective.

It’s best to concentrate on positive reinforcement for wanted behaviors rather than negative reinforcement for behaviors you want to stop. This has been found to be a more efficient way of training.

Physical punishment is not productive or humane way to train dogs and will only lead to a  fearful and neurotic dog. You can say a firm “No” in a growling tone of voice to stop him engaging in an unwanted behavior. Perhaps most effective is to ignore your dog when he behaves badly. Dogs want your attention and being ignored is negative reinforcement enough.

At all costs you should avoid humanizing your dog. It will help you to do this if you study dog communication and the dynamics of a dog pack. You read about what their body language means: the position of the tail, the mouth positions, the ear position and the sounds they make.

Being pack leader or alpha dog is vital if you want your dog to behave well. If your dog is the alpha dog, he is never going to be well-behaved for you because he thinks you are one of his pack. Some advice on setting yourself up as alpha dog:
-eat a some food in front of your dog as he waits for his food. The pack leader always eats first.
-don’t let him to get on the sofa or bed. The pack leader sleeps on higher ground.
-make sure you go through doors before your dog.

This is an introduction to some important points in dog obedience training. I recommend you look into the most systematic of training methods: clicker training for dogs.