How to train your dog?

We will explain step by step how to train a dog correctly, how to make the training positive for our pet, and most importantly, how to make it learn correctly. There is probably nothing as simple as training a dog, you just have to know how to do it correctly.

Before we continue, we would like to make it very clear what is NOT to be done during training, because if we make the mistake of training our pet badly, it will cost us double or triple the amount of time to retrain him correctly. Let’s see what mistakes we should never make:

• Never yell, scold or hit your dog. Physical or psychological punishment is not effective, it is more than proven and it is cruel. He would never do it to you.
• Never despair, patience is the mother of all sciences and training a dog takes time, you must have a lot of patience.
• Do not use choke collars or torture, it is unnecessary cruelty. There are a thousand effective ways to train a dog and none of them are done through punishment or torture.
• Never use different ways to address him, always call him by his name and then give him the order.

Now that you know what not to do, it’s time to learn how to train a dog effectively. The first thing to do is to let your dog know who is the owner, the leader or the alpha male of the command, as you prefer to call him. We strongly recommend you to read the article: How to dominate my dog mood. Making our partner understand that you are the alpha male is fundamental both for training him and for having a correct coexistence.

How to train a dog correctly so that he learns

The training of our colleague must be done constantly, that is to say, to do training work three or four times a week, in a continuous and persevering way. We must begin the sessions after having carried out a long walk with our dog, it is fundamental that he has been discharged, that he has run, played and done his necessities before beginning any session of training, especially if he is of an active race as the Doberman or Pitbull race. A dog that has not let off steam will never learn properly because it will simply not concentrate.

To carry out the training sessions we must choose a quiet place, where no other dog distracts us, nor there are intense noises or constant passage of people. We need a certain intimacy so that our pet learns as much as possible and concentrates.

We must take prizes to reward our dog when he does the exercises well, dog biscuits, pieces of sausage or bread, can be perfect prizes. Cuddles and caresses are also good prizes to complement with the prizes in the form of food.

When our dog does good exercise, we’ll enthusiastically congratulate him. That’s it! Very good tobby! etc… we will give him a cookie or a piece of sausage as a prize and we will pet him. He must know that we are happy because he has done well, it is essential.

When our dog does the exercise wrong, we will simply go back to the initial position and start the exercise again. When he gets to the part where he makes the mistake, we’ll simply say in a firm voice, “No! There is no need to shout or punish him, nor will we give him any reward.

Training sessions should not last more than half an hour, if we exceed half an hour, we should play for no less than fifteen minutes before starting the training session again. Never exceed the daily hour of training, we do not want nor must we stress them.

In this article we are not going to teach how to use our dog for personal defense, it is an unnecessary risk that people without experience teach so dangerous exercises to the dogs. If you want to teach your dog self-defense exercises, you should go to a professional handler, yes or yes. There is no excuse for you not to do so, if you mistakenly teach your dog self-defense exercises, it will be a catastrophe.

During the training sessions we must exercise only one order until he learns it correctly, we cannot teach him a thousand things, not even two things in one session, we must go step by step, day by day.

We must always use the same order for each exercise if one day we teach him to sit with the order of “Sit”, we cannot change it the next day or the next week to “Sit”, we must always keep the same orders.

Training sessions must be given in a suitable climate, without being too hot or too cold.

How to teach our dog to sit simply

Once we have followed all the guidelines mentioned above and are located in a quiet place to start the training session, we will see how to teach our dog to sit.

We will not place in front of our dog, with the left hand we will hold him by the collar softly, with the only intention that he does not go away and remains next to us. With the right hand, we will press on his back, at the height of the ass, so that he folds his back paws and sits down. While we make pressure with the right hand and he sits, we will tell him with a firm voice just once the order we want for that exercise, for example, “Sit” or “Sit”.

When he sits down, we will release him and congratulate him, give him a prize (cookie or piece of sausage) and caress him a little. We must repeat this exercise constantly until our dog sits down just listening to the command when we say “Sit” he must do it alone, without the need to press on his back with the right hand.

It is not an easy job, we may need some days to get him to do it effectively. It is important that on days when there is no training, we repeat this order at home, for example, before giving him dinner or stroking him. This is a positive and indirect way to remind him of what we have done in the training session.

As the days go by, he will only do the exercise, it is then time to do the next step: Keep them sitting until we give you the order to get up.

We will perform the sitting exercise with the command “Sit” and when the dog has sat down, we will move away from him little by little, without turning our backs. When he gets up to go to us, we will joke with him with the order of “No!” and we will indicate him that he feels again.

We must repeat this step until he sits down and we can move away from him a couple of meters, without him getting up. We will do it in a progressive way, we will ask him to feel and we will move away half a meter, we will ask him to come with the order of “Come” or “Here” to approach us and we will reward, congratulate and caress him. When he learns to do this well, we will repeat moving a little further away, about a meter. When he does it well, we will move a meter and a half away and so on until he learns to sit still even if we move five or ten meters away. You may also need to brain train your dog for it.

The correct accomplishment of this exercise can take us several weeks, especially in breeds a little bit stubborn like the Pitbull dogs, we have to be patient and persevering. Carry out the exercises calmly and if our dog doesn’t learn to do it well, it’s not because of him, but because we are probably not giving him the instructions correctly.

How to teach our dog to lie down in a few steps

To teach our dog to lie down, we must first have taught him to sit down, as this is a fundamental step in the performance of this exercise.

We will give our dog the order to sit down and when he has sat down, we will take a prize with the hand and we will put it near his mouth but without he can take it. Without the stands up, we will remove the prize so that he leans forward, at the same time we will lower him, so that he also leans down. On the other hand we will give him very very softly, some small touches in the front legs so that he stretches them forward and lies down.

While he is lying down we will give him the order to lie down, just one look: “Lie down” or “Lie down” will be enough. When he has laid down we will give him the award and congratulate him for having done his job well. Before repeating the exercise we must ask him to stand up completely and start from the beginning, give him the order to sit down, and repeat the process.

We will repeat the exercise as many times and weeks as necessary until he lies down alone with the corresponding order of “Lie down”. When he does it correctly, we will do the same process that we did with the order to sit down, we will move away progressively without letting him stand up until we tell him to do so.

The correct performance of this exercise will also take several weeks, we must be patient and constant. We must never pressure our dog or stress him, we must not force him to do what he does not want to do. If one day he decides that he doesn’t want to learn, the best thing is to continue with the training another day.

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