Basic dog training

Basic dog training (come, sit, down, look), teach your dog to walk on a leash, walking without leash.

PUPPY TRAINING (dogs up to one year of age) – proper elimination, walking on a leash, basic commands (come, sit, down, look), crate training

ADULT DOG TRAINING (dogs from two to seven years of age) – (come, sit, down, look), teach your dog to walk on a leash, walking without leash

TRAINING DOGS OLDER THAN 7 YEARS – basic commands, modification of minor behavior disorders (jumping on people, dog-2-dog aggression, excessive barking, fear related problems.

On this page you will see some basic tips how to make your dog polite, non-aggressive and obedient.

We will start with following tips:

1. MAKE YOUR DOG SAY PLEASE BEFORE YOU GIVE HIM ANY ATTENTION. If he approaches you sitting, and tries to play with your hands, in an effort to demand attention, make him sit before you give him any attention. Demanding attention is just as rude for a dog as for a kid. Don’t reward them for rudeness by giving them the attention they want.

2. MAKE YOUR DOG SIT BEFORE YOU THROW HIS BALL OR OTHER FAVORITE TOY
Same reasoning as above. Don’t reward rude behaviour by giving him what he wants for being rude. It only teaches him to be pushy and demanding.

3. DON’T LET YOUR DOG SLEEP WITH YOU (below your legs or on the sofa-same level as bed)
Sleeping with you makes him feel like your equal. If you apply these rules as I suggest, you will be spending roughly an hour a day reducing Your dogs rank. If you get eight hours of sleep nightly, that is a net gain, for Your dog, of seven hours of equal status daily. You can roll him over all you want, and the rolls will not convince a dog sleeping with an owner that the owner is dominant.

4. NO FREE PATTING.
Make Your dog earn any praise. Make him sit, at least. Keep your praise proportional to what the dog has done. If you tell him to sit for attention, he sits, and then you give him twenty minutes of god body massage for sitting, our praise is way out of balance. How will you make it worth the dogs while to sit to get company in the house, if he gets twenty minutes of attention for free?

5. DON’T ALLOW YOUR DOG ON THE FURNITURE WHILE YOU ARE ON THE FLOOR.
Your dog is in to vertical height as status. When they are elevated and you are not, Your dog is higher ranking than you are. Remember this is a sort of rank reduction program.

6. YOUR DOG WILL DO AT LEAST ONE LONG, DOWN-STAY DAILY.
The down is a submissive position for Your dog. Every time you tell him to lie down
and he does it, they are as much as snapping a salute to you. Every time you tell him down and he walks the other way, he is quite literally flipping you off. The idea is to maximize salutes and minimize flip offs.

7. USE BODY BLOCKS TO REINFORCE YOUR STAY COMMANDS.
High ranking dogs control the space around them. If Your dog tries to get up from a stay,
step in and block their forward progress with your body, while you reissue the command.

8. SHUN YOUR DOG IF THEY IGNORE A COMMAND.
If you are sitting doing something, Your dog comes in and demands attention, you tell him to sit, he doesn’t do it. Stand up, fold your arms, turn your back on him. Make it clear with your body language that you have no intention of touching him. Most dogs will come to the front of your body, and continue to demand attention. Turn your back again, and tell him to sit again. It won’t take more than a couple of repetitions to get him to sit.

9. MAKE YOUR DOG SIT AND WAIT TO GO IN AND OUT OF DOORS.
The leader is the first one in and out of a given territory. Every time you let Your dog out, and either don’t go out with him, or follow him out, the message to Your dog is that he’s the leader. Most of us let our dogs out six or seven times a day, times seven days a week, times how many years old Your dog is, that’s a lot of subtle messages that he’s the boss. Make him sit, tell him to stay or wait, and then you precede him through the doorway. It is not about doorways in the house, ( from one to another room). It is about the doorways out of the house, or coming back into the house from the outside. You can either use body blocks ( step in front of him and tell him to sit again), or close the door in the dogs face when he breaks his stay. If he bounces his head off the door a couple of times he will learn to wait at the door.

10. TEACH TAKE IT AND OFF (include these commands when you reward him)
TAKE it means Your dog may have a toy or a treat. OFF means don’t touch. When you can give permission to have something or deny permission to have something you are automatically a leader. Take a few pieces of special treats, sausage, chicken whit meat, dried liver. Something that will make him sell you in a minute. Give him five or six pieces in a row, telling him „take it“, prior to giving him the treat. Now take a piece and put it down in front of his face exactly like you did with „take it“. Tell Your dog „off“. He will come forward for the treat anyway, when he does, give him a little bop in the nose. Just enough to sting. When he pulls back from the sting, give him the treat and tell him „take it“. He will soon learn that if he gets off of something when he’s told to, he just might get it later.

11. USE REAL LIFE REWARDS, REAL LIFE REPRIMANDS, AND INSTRUCTIVE
REPRIMANDS.
A real life reward is anything that you give to your dog, that you know he wants. A real life reprimand is when you withhold something that you know that Your dog wants. An instructive reprimand uses a basic obedience command to cancel an otherwise negative behavior. Let’s say you are going to take Your dog for a walk. You pick up the leash, Your dog comes running, he spends the next couple of minutes turning excited circles, barking and jumping around. You are trying to hook the leash to the collar. You finally get it, and take the dog out for his walk. You just rewarded all of the obnoxious behaviors that immediately preceded the walk, thereby guaranteeing that it will happen the same way when you go for your next walk. If when you pick up the leash, he comes running, you tell him to sit, and he sits, then you take him out, you’ve just rewarded the sit behavior, guaranteeing that he will sit when you tell him, in that context next time. The reprimand comes about when you pick up the leash, he comes running, you say sit, he doesn’t sit, you say „Too bad! You blew it!“, hang the leash back up, walk out of the room. Come back a minute or two later, pick up the leash, he comes running, you tell him to sit and he does! You withheld something that you knew that he wanted. That’s a reprimand. An instructive reprimand tells Your dog what you would rather have him do. Let’s say that jumping up is a problem. Teach a good, solid, sit command. Tell him to sit prior to the jump, he can’t physically sit and jump at the same time. The sit cancels the jump. Now you can praise him for sitting, and the jumping extinguishes because it’s not being reinforced.