How Do You Train A Dog
Published by toby on Tagged dog training obedienceNaturally, every pet owner would like their dogs to behave and learn obedience so they train their dogs either with the help of a handler or just by themselves. Unfortunately, not all pet trainings canbe thought of as successful. Most of the time a training failsbecause there are some things that may have been overlooked Let’s talk about dog training and the things involved with it.
Training a dog involves employing a set of method and techniques. At first your dog will fail to act the way you expect with you as the master. Obviously, there is a big gap on the level of understanding between the pet owner and the pet, thus you expect that the results are not positive in the beginning.
How is your approach in teaching obedience to your pet?First, youmust have an idea on the principles of training your dog. What are these principles? The principles behind dog training involves reinforcement, punishment and extinction.
Reinforcement refers to the dog’s reaction to the trainer. To further discusson what reinforcement is all about, let’s categorize this into 2 types namely: positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement. Positive reinforcement isabout giving rewards or praise. If your dogbehaves or obeys you, then you reward or praise your pet. This good behaviorcreates a pattern that can be remembered because the dog understands it will be rewarded for as long as it obeys or behaves properly. On the other hand negative reinforcement involves a procedure when the trainerremoves an unpleasant situation to make the dog obey. For example if you want to teach the dog to sit, you put pressure on the collar and release the pressure once the dog obeys you.
Punishment is another principle employed in training a dog. The approach can be about positive punishment or the negative punishment. Positive punishmentis where the trainer does something unpleasant and the dog’s negative behavioris eliminated. On the other hand, negative punishment is about taking away something that the dog really likes or enjoys and the behavior is diminished or eliminated.
The third principle is about total elimination of a behavior. This takes placewhen behavior is not reinforced resulting to its extinction or elimination. For example, your dog is a constant whiner so you allow it to gooutside but this time you have altered the pattern so even if the dog continues to whine a lot it is not allowed to go out anymore. Eventually the dog will learn that whining will do him no good so it stops.
For most dog handlers, they believe that positive reinforcement is the best way to train a dog. Yes, it may be for some but this might notwork for the others. So before taking on any of the principles discussed, it is still better to have an assessment of your dog’s behavior prior to any training. In this way, you can determine the right approach that may produce the best result in training your dog.
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