Dog Training - Start Training Your Puppy by Winning His Respect
The basis of training your puppy is winning his trust,respect,
and confidence. Real training can’t begin until
your puppy has accepted you as his leader, respects you,and has
confidence in you.
A mistake many puppy owners make is confusing love and
affection for respect and confidence. It is important to
love your puppy. It is equally important for your puppy to
respect you, have confidence in you, and see you as the
pack leader. Dogs are naturally pack animals and every pack
member looks to the pack leader for direction. Making
yourself the pack leader is vital to the success of training
any dog. If you don’t, your dog will assume the role. If that
happens, neither of you will be happy.
Failure to gain the confidence and respect of your puppy can
create a dog who is out of control, disobedient, and even
dangerous. It is important to train your puppy correctly from
the start since retraining a problem dog is possible but more
difficult than training a puppy correctly the first time.
It is critical for any new dog owner, whether working with a 12
week old puppy or a 12 year old dog, to get his respect. That
does not mean using rough or dangerous handling methods, but it
does mean letting him know that you are in control of the
situation. Dogs need structure in their lives and they will not
resent you for taking control. As a matter of fact, your dog
will appreciate your taking the role of trainer and coach as you
begin your training sessions.
When you start working with your dog it is important to keep
the training sessions short at first. This is particularly
important when working with a young puppy. Puppies tend to have
much shorter attention spans than older dogs so keeping the
sessions short is fun and essential for proper training.
Beginning training sessions should focus on the most basic
commands. The heel command is one of the most basic as well as
one of the easiest to teach. Start by putting the puppy in a
properly fitted training collar. Be sure to follow the
instructions for fitting and sizing the collar to insure that it
works as intended. There are other articles in this series
about proper training collars. You can also check with your
pet store or breeder.
Begin to walk and allow your dog to walk beside you. If he
begins to pull, gently pull on the leash. This, in turn, will
tighten the training collar and give your dog a gentle
correction. If the gentle pressure is ineffective, it may be
necessary to slowly increase the pressure. Always be careful not
to over-correct your dog. Using too much pressure could
frighten him and cause him to strain more. If the opposite
problem occurs and the dog lags behind, you should gently
encourage him until he is walking beside you.
Most dogs figure out the heeling concept fairly rapidly and
they soon realize that they should walk beside you, neither
lagging behind nor pulling ahead. You should also pick up the
pace and allow him to speed up as well. Finally, walking along,
changing pace, and changing direction often will reinforce the
lesson the he should always walk at your heel.
From heeling, the next step is for him to halt when you stop
walking. The halt works well as an adjunct to heel. As you are
walking, stop and watch your dog. Many dogs immediately
understand that they are expected to stop when their human does.
Others may need the reminder of the leash and the training collar.
After the halt has been mastered, encourage your dog to sit on
halt. Once your dog has stopped, gently push on his
hindquarters to encourage the sit. Usually after this walk,
halt and sit procedure has been done a few times, he will begin
to sit on his own each time he stops. Of course, it is
important to provide lots of praise and maybe even a treat every
time he does as he is expected.
These three commands should be taught without voice. Get your
dog used to your body language. We will cover halt and sit off
leash in later articles. For now, get your dog to walk beside
you, halt when you stop and sit immediately. You will be so
proud of him and he will be proud of himself.
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Cathy Perkins is a dog lover who is allowed to live with her two dogs, Tillie and Pierrot, in the beautiful foothills of North Carolina. Sign up for the Dogs Rule newsletter at:
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