teaching your dog some first simple commands and exercises

In my previous articles on crate training you may have noticed I call this blog "puppys and obedience",which can be kind of confusing.I want to make a couple of points about this.If you are training a working dog or a dog that you are going to use as a protection dog you dont really have to train your puppy much in the form of obedience.What I mean by this is that you should not do much obedience training at first,only imprinting the dog in specific areas.Making the puppy sit at door and wait till you go thru it first is a good example.The reason I train my dogs to do this is they will learn to wait and not go running thru the door.This carries over when the dog is older and you then have control over the dog and he has learned that he must wait for his handler.I have personally experienced a dog that came running out of a house and tried to bite me while I was walking my dog down the sidewalk.These kind of things are not hard to train.The people that owned the dog got defensive and came outside claiming that it was an accident, and their dog came running out of the door when it was opened.Now first let me tell you there is no accidents when handling dogs.These kind of things could be non-existant if people would learn to obedience train their dogs,and not be afraid of correcting their dog.Most people think their dogs respect them,but the truth be told,most of these dogs dont respect their owners.This is a big misconception among dog owners today.This dog and people like this are just waiting for an accident, and probably will have their dog fear bite someone when this behavior could and can be avoided by some simple steps.Most of all paying attention to this behavior at first and then using your head to take the appropriate level of discipline and correcting the dog when it does this.This all goes back to my point of teaching the dog to sit at the door and wait for the handler to go thru first.My dogs sit at door and wont even come out if it is opened,not until commanded to.

Now getting back to some early imprinting(imprinting:basically showing the dog what you expect out of him or her and taking steps in your training to let the dog know what you want and expect),I want to again emphisize that you can take little steps at first to make your dogs behavior controlable.I allready gave you one example of making the puppy sit and wait at door.You can also make your puppy sit when you are going to put his food dish down for the dog to eat.Once the dog understands the sit command,make the puppy sit first with the food setting on floor in front of the dog.Make the puppy sit till you give the command "OK" or some other release command.

I need to explain at this point that there are three steps to training any dog.1.teaching the command 2.the correction 3.the proofing.First you teach the dog the command.This may take up to 30 or more times till the dog knows what you mean when you say that word.Then once the dog knows the command,I go to the distraction and correction part of the training.I take my puppy to as many different places and give him the command under distractions(example-children running,playing,people walking by,kids throwing balls past the dog etc....).Now I must make a very important point here,you are only doing these little exercises a couple of times a day for only a few minutes at a time.Allways let the puppy win in the end by rewarding the dog with a treat or a ball or something showing the puppy that if he or she does what you command they will allways get the reward.Earlier I told you not to do much obedience training when the dog is young.Most service dogs when trained dont strat learning and working on advanced obedience until the dog is 15 months or more old,and some dogs until they are 30 months or more old.The reason we do this is we dont want the dog getting bored with obedience,and it not really the thing were trying to do at first(imprinting certain behaviors),and giving a young dog to much obedience and hard corrections that young is the wrong thing to do.You want your dog to look at you as a leader and not look at you with fear but look at you with respect.This is not accoplished by yelling at a yound dog or giving it hard corrections when it is too young to even understand this.

So lets go over a few things to keep it fresh in yor mind.Dont worry so much about bad behavior,just imprinting some good behaviors at first.Do these exercises a couple of times per day.Making your dog sit at door,sit for food,sit for a ball etc...and allways praise the puppy within 1 to 1 1/2 secounds after the dog does the command,using a calm and relaxed voice,letting him win and saying the command and good dog or thats a good dog(ex.."sit good boy sit").Notice I repeated the command after the praise letting the dog know that he was a good for sitting and ending it on a good note,letting the dog win.Using this method I have trained dogs that I didn't even think were listening and the dogs really know when your being fair.I dont know how many times someone asked me how do they stop there puppy or dog from going potty in house when they are gone.First of all you cant and I repeat cant correct your dog for something that happened an hour ago,and come home yelling at the dog and thinking the dog knows what your mad about.This is like thinking your young son 10 years old knows something you haven't taught him,then getting mad at him because he didn't do what you wanted.Dogs only know what you teach them,and it is not fair to the dog.Puppies are going to have accidents no matter what,you have to expect this.This all ties in to being a good pack leader,and if you want to teach your dog easily,you must learn to be a good pack leader.This takes more work from the handler than the dog.I dont how many times Iv'e heardsomeone say if I just would have took a little more time things may have worked out for the better.

Thanking for reading my blog,come back again as I will be writing new posts almost everyday.