Dog Obedience Training

A well trained dog is what every dog owner wants.  A dog who comes when he’s called, sit when he’s told to sit and heel, or not pull on his lead when going for a walk.  Over the years, there has been many an expert and numerous methods to teach a dog obedience.  The only method that most people knew was the old push/pull methods using choke chains or pinch collars.  This was how I was initially taught.

Effective and still to this day, can train a dog.  However, recently, probably more so since the advent of the internet, more gentle ways of teaching a dog have become more common knowledge.  Techniques that use play, food and other forms of positive reinforcement to get a dog to perform obedience or behaviours.

When trying to teach a dog to do something, ie sit, down etc, I prefer the method of using a positive reinforcer over using the old push/pull techniques.  These old techniques were based upon forcing the dog down with your hands and pulling on a chain so the dog would comply.  If the dog didn’t comply, it would receive corrections until it did comply.

Using positive re-inforcers, newer techniques involve the use of guiding the dog into position with, usually food, but can be anything the dog finds re-reinforcing until a body position or behaviour is displayed by the dog.  The dog is then praised with the reward.  This type of training goes a long way in strengthening the behaviour so the dog will repeat it again.  This type of training is very similar to techniques Dolphin Trainers use.

I will go into much more detail about in future posts and the psychology behind the two different styles of training.

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