Teaching your dog “good” behavior

If you find yourself reprimanding your dog for being a bad dog most times, you should look at dog training to solve dog behavior problem. Dogs don’t understand good or bad behavior. They need to be conditioned to behave well. This requires constant vigil to remind the dog of what’s “good” behavior.

Bad behavior in dogs can crop up in multiple forms. It could be excessive barking, frequent biting, chewing, leaping, etc. You have to understand what bad behavior you want to tackle and train it accordingly. A dog is never going to learn to speak and read, it will only understand stimulus as give appropriate response. Hence, you have to condition the dog’s behavior to avoid unsuitable actions.

The basic caveat of any dog training is to understand the cause of the behavior and either avoid that cause or modify the behavior to suit you. For example, incessant barking is a dog problem that most people can associate with. Typically, a dog that barks too much is seeking attention. It probably wants more than its share of attention, so you need to make it understand that it is wrong.

So, do the exact opposite when it barks – neglect it. Sometimes spraying water on its snout also helps. This would stop the dog barks immediately. This is not just a temporary solution. If you are consistent in your behavior, the dog would eventually understand that its constant barking elicits this response from you, which is not pleasant. Thus, with perseverance you can prevent incessant barking.

Similarly, problems like gnawing and biting cannot be solved by scolding or rebuking the dog. The success of your dog training to solve dog behavior problem lies in the action that you take when the dog misbehaves. If you make right moves at that instant and do it consistently, you can reap good rewards.

The problem of chewing can be sorted out by giving the dog a toy or something to chew. Even a distraction of some other kind may get the dog excited and end its chewing. Doing this repeatedly would make the dog realize that chewing and biting are inappropriate behavior. You could also step away from the dog if it starts to chew on you.

Leaping on furniture and people is another problem with dogs. This is common with dog that desperately wants to get noticed. This jumping behavior of your dog can be corrected by simple techniques like commanding it to “stop”, if it has been trained to respond favorably to that command. Sometimes moving the dog aside with your feet or knee also works well. If you keep at this constantly, the dog would stop leaping around to seek your attention.

Finally, a good training regimen is a good way to tame you dog and make it adapt to the home environment where it resides. The most important aspect of training a dog is the consistency in the manner you react to its behavior As long as you are constant you can expect a similar response from the dog too.