Does your dog greet you and visitors politely?
Does she walk on a loose lead near your side?
Does he listen to what you ask him to do?
Does she come back every time when you call?
You’ll be feeling really proud and smug if this is your dog!
These are the main key things you need to be proud of your perfect pet.
We teach you how to train these things through our Perfect Pet courses.
But if you’re trying to train these things yourself, or want to teach your dog a new trick, or anything else, there are four key stages you should go through.
The first step is to decide what you want. At first glance this seems self-evident, but actually it’s not.
Let’s take a simple exercise, the sit. Well, surely you just want the dog to sit, don’t you?
But what is a sit?
Is it when the dog puts his bottom on the ground? What if he immediately gets up again? Do you want him to stay sitting?
What if she wanders around for 10 seconds before putting her bottom down? Is that acceptable?
What if he sits, but does it across the room from where you are? Is that what you want?
The first step in any training is to be clear about exactly what the end result will look like; to decide exactly what you want the dog’s response to be. This is the planning stage.
Second comes the learning step.
For sit, this might involve you luring the dog a few times to get the sit, then seeing if the dog will do it on his own.
Or it might mean you waiting to see what your dog will do off her own bat.
Alternatively, it might mean you waiting until he sits naturally then adding a cue.
All these work, and you might try more than one of these, but the aim is to get to that agreed end point of the dog having their bottom on the ground. (This step needs to be repeated often and in many different places to get a reliable sit of course.)
The third step is the reward. Rewards can be any, some, or all of the following: vocal praise, physical praise (a pat or stroke), a food treat, toy play, or allowing the dog to do something he wants, such as go out of a door.
The
fourth step is a step that is often missed. This is the checking stage. You
need to measure your dog’s response against the plan you formed in the first
step – see how important that first step is?
If things did not go as you wanted, or the quality of the response didn’t meet
your aim, then your plan may need some revision before you try again. This step
is the most important step in any training – a review of progress that lets you
decide if what you’ve got is good enough or needs more work.
And that, in a nutshell, is what training is all about.
If you want help with training your pet, book on our Perfect Pet courses.
Remember these four steps and keep training!
Carol