In training your dog there are a few major downfalls that you are sure to encounter. Knowing them before you reach this point is very helpful to avoiding stressful situations later. The biggest mistake most people make is also the easiest for new trainers to fall victim to. This is the danger of expecting too much.
Dogs are very intelligent creatures and, by and large, very trainable. Thus when you visit the park with your untrained dog and the person next to you is playing Frisbee with their German Shepherd and the Poodle down the way is sitting patiently rather than attacking picnic goers, it is easy to think your dog should know these behaviors from birth. We often times forget the many hours of training that have been put into these wonderful dogs. Your dog can learn these very same antics but it will take time for these lessons to be instilled. Do not expect your dog to learn all of these routines over night. This would merely set you up for downfall number two.
The second problem people encounter is losing their temper. This usually results in an out of breath owner who is yelling at the top of the vocal capacity, a frightened dog and possibly a visit from the local animal welfare department depending on how the individual vents their frustrations. To avoid this downfall, make a conscious effort never to yell at your pet and hitting is always wrong. Raising your voice to your pet will do little to correct their errant behavior and do much harm to your relationship with the animal. It will result in a nervous animal that cowers from you rather than obeys your commands.
The third thing to avoid falls at the other end of the spectrum. These people let the dog become the master. This is equally detrimental to your relationship with the animal as the animal has no control to its behaviors and can quickly become a danger to itself and others. Dogs are pack animals and quickly decide who the leader is and who follows. If you do not take the leadership role from the beginning, you can rest assured that your pet will. A dog without a master will run amok and will quickly get into trouble chasing cars and people, destroying property and making a nuisance of itself. This mistake is tantamount to animal abuse and is very nearly as bad as the previous one.
Fourth in line of things to avoid is the mistake of giving up. Many a dog owner has a pet that has never reached its full potential due to the owner losing interest in their training. Dogs love to learn, especially when the owner rewards well learned behavior traits. Many owners, lacking the time or perhaps the patience, will be quite happy to have a pet that merely answers to its name and stops barking when repeatedly shouted at. Please do not let yourself fall into this trap. Your pet is a highly intelligent animal and is capable of learning so much more. Occasionally, dogs have even been known to develop neuroses due to boredom from not being challenged enough. This results in an unhealthy animal that can be poorly socialized and destructive of furnishings or even its own body. Your dog can and will respond to your training efforts if given the time to do so.
A fifth point that we keep reiterating (and well we should) is people’s failure to be consistent. If you tell the dog to sit and your pet doesn’t do it, stick with it until they do. Always use the same command words and enforce the same action each and every time. Manually enforce the command if it is necessary to get the desired reaction and reward the animal with some play time or some verbal praise for properly performing the routine. Consistency is the major key to training your pet. Repetitive lessons taught on a regular basis with consistent rewards are necessary to the effective training of your pet.
Knowing these five downfalls ahead of time will save you many frustrations while training your pet and will result in a much a healthier and happier relationship with your pet.
Dog Article courtesy of I-Love-Dogs.com
Good article. These are excellent points and dog owners would be much more successful if they kept them firmly in mind!
I have to say I disagree with a few of the points made in this article as a dog trainer:
Dogs do not organize themselves in a pack structure like wolves do. You can read about this in the study “The Social Organization of the Domestic Dog;
A Longitudinal Study of Domestic Canine Behavior and the Ontogeny of Canine Social Systems”
http://www.nonlineardogs.com/SocOrgDomDog.html
The second is to manually enforce a command if the dog doesn’t do it or “be consistant” to the point of sticking with it until they do. The first problem of doing this is giving the dog a million chances to do a command creates a problem of them remembering they got rewarded no matter the amount of time it took to do a command.
This problem can be avoided by practicing using “one cue” and if the dog doesn’t do it the first time (assuming they completely understand what the cue means and the behavior you are asking for), you remove the reward or give the reward to someone or something else. Dogs realize when the reward is taken away or given to another animal/human and will remember that next time. We use this type of reinforcement constantly in our training to motivate our dogs and help them realize they don’t have a million chances to do something.
Manually forcing the dog to do a behavior creates a new type of cue which can become a problem later in training. If the dog learns to wait for a manual or molding cue from the human instead of doing it on their own, you just lost the effectiveness of your verbal or visual cue. You may also create negative associations with that cue if the dog is continually forced into position. Doing the exercise described above by removing positive reinforcement works best and creates a new motivation with the dog.
Just my two cents
I tend to disagree w/your first statement on dogs do not organize themselves in a pack like wolves do. The reason I am disagreeing w/you on that is out of my 7 Corgis I can tell you the ranking on each one and the head honcho here is Rhiannon. They will follow her lead, no one picks on her and she will be the one that jumps in to discipline any of the others who get out of line. When I say jump in, she doesn’t attack, but then again she doesn’t need to since they all bow down to her. She is the one w/one single bark gets all the other ones to join in and alarm us of something even if there is nothing but because Rhiannon said there was or she thought there was the rest follow suite.
As far as your explanation on the training and how to handle commands whether obedient or not is good. There are many views on training practices and though one practice works for one it may not with another. I have worked w/horses for many years and there are many techniques out there even amongst trainers. Not every trainer can use the same techniques entirely as someone else. The main point is to have a general guidance on the right way and the wrong way. I am not one who likes to reward for non compliance to a command but part of learning is to get them to understand that command. In all training practices there are different guidelines depending on the age of a dog and the time spent on it or the acceptance of doing the command. I also feel that consistency is very important and must be done regularly not randomly w/many days off.