Living with a dog is a most rewarding experience for the vast majority of people who have lived or live with one of these animals. And it is that these faithful companions are always with us, both in good and bad times, to offer us their disproportionate and infinite appreciation. However, to achieve a harmonious coexistence with our furry, it is necessary that our dog obeys us.
For this reason, you may have often wondered how to teach your dog to obey, because it is common for On a day-to-day basis, there are situations in which he does not fully understand us, and even prefers to ignore us. To this end, in this article on our site, we want to give you some tips to get your dog to pay attention to you.
Basic Dog Obedience
Welcome a new canine member into your home is something really satisfying, but it is also a great responsibility. When you adopt a dog, you have to make sure that you will be able to provide it with all the care it needs, in addition to providing it with adequate socialization and education This last point is fundamental, since a dog that does not attend to basic obedience, in the long term usually develops behavior problems that can make coexistence difficult.
We must understand that education is used to create establish a form of communication with our dog, since we are different species and therefore so our language is too. In other words, although our dog is intelligent and can understand us in many aspects (for example, it knows when we are sad or happy), in many situations we fall into the trap of mistakenly believing that our dog understands what we are saying or that he has done something wrong. If, for example, our puppy takes the slipper to play, it could be the case that we chase him to take it off and he understands that we are playing with him, but then once we have reached him, we take it off and scold him.
From our human reasoning, we may see our action as consistent, but in your dog's eyes, you're just a spoilsport to avoid when he's having fun with something. This fact changes drastically if instead of chasing him, we have educated him so that comes when we call him, we have taught him to drop the slipper and we reward him by playing with something with what can be entertained.
As we have seen in the example, the fact that we teach him some previous instructions will allow him to understand us easily, and will not give rise to confusion and contradictions, which generate in our furrystress and detachment towards us.
For more information, you can read this other article on Training Guide - Basic Level.
Tips for a dog to obey
If you wonder why my dog doesn't pay attention to me, here are some tips to keep in mind so that your dog obeys you:
Have a clear goal with your dog
Before taking in a dog, make up your mind about what you are looking for in him Do you just want a dog to keep you company? Or maybe, do you want to be able to teach him various tricks and exercises? Each dog has its own characteristics and predisposition to learning, for this reason, it would be contradictory, for example, to have a dog that needs a lot of physical and mental activity (such as a collie) and not provide it. Or, on the contrary, have an older dog and expect him to learn a lot of different tricks in a short time.
Educa from the first day
If you took in your dog as a puppy, you must understand that everything what he learns at this stage will determine his adult phase Puppies they are in a constant process of learning from everything that surrounds them in their environment and from our interactions with it. For this reason, you should teach him everything you think is necessary for when he is an adult.
For example, don't let him jump on you now that he's little, because when he grows up, if he's a big dog, he might maybe knock someone down and hurt them. In the same way, if you don't want him to get on the sofa, don't let him now that he is a puppy and teach him to stretch out on his bed, otherwise when he is an adult he will have this behavior ingrained and it will be contradictory for him that you don't let him do it.
In this other article on our site we explain how to train a puppy?
Constancy and patience
The learning process can be slow and tiresome many times, but we don't have to get angry for this reason. We must be understanding and interact with our dog in a positive frame of mind to build trust.
In the same way, in this process we must be constant. Our interactions with him should always be routine and repetitive, so that our dog understands that there is a cause-effect in his actionsThat is, going back to the example of whether or not we let him get on the couch: if we are not clear and therefore sometimes we let him get on and sometimes we don't, he simply won't understand if he can do it or not, and finally he will do it when he wants. Now, if we have the habit of letting him go up after saying the word “go up”, he will learn that he can only do it when we give him this instruction.
It also happens that there are several relatives in the home and that each one has different ways of interacting with the dog, which usually causes confusion. For this reason, it is very important to agree on the training methodology of your dog to be consistent.
In this other article we talk about some of the positive habits and routines for the dog.
Propose simple exercises
We should always start learning in a simple way. We cannot pretend that our dog learns complex commands from one day to the next, but we must start with instructions that he can understand and carry out easily, and little by little, go increasing the difficulty
For example, if we want to teach him to stay still while you are away, first ask him to stay still for a few seconds while you are near him. Progressively increase the duration and the distance between you and him, as he understands it and you reward him. On the contrary, you will not achieve anything if you want it to remain completely immobile from the first day when you are 5 meters away.
Make sure your dog is comfortable
Before starting to train our dog, we must make sure that he is well, that is, that his physical and psychological well-being is covered. We cannot pretend to teach him not to pull on the leash, if he does not get enough exercise and is agitated, for example. In the same way, we must make sure that he does not have any ailment or pathologythat prevent him from performing an exercise
Finally, during the sessions in which we want to teach him something, it is important that we do not overwhelm him Especially at the beginning, some10-20 minutes of training will be enough to get him used to the routine and receptive during the activity. We must prevent him from losing interest in us, since he will be more likely to disobey us, and therefore, it will be counterproductive for learning.
For more information, you can consult this other article on Tips for training dogs.
Positive reinforcement in dogs
Positive reinforcement in dogs is a good tool to educate our furry ones. How does it work? If every time our dog understands us and obeys or performs some appropriate behavior (such as doing his business outside the house) you give him a prize, a compliment or a caress, he will internalize that he has done something good and will repeat it more often. In turn, he will see us as someone nice and trustworthy.
Avoid punishment
Many times, we tend to scold our dog disproportionately for behaviors that are understandable, since they are part of his nature. Fact that as a consequence generates discomfort and detachment towards us.
Let's imagine that we go out for a walk in the park and our furry, due to his hunting instinct, starts running after a pigeon. If we scold him in this situation, we will only make him ignore us and not want to come to our call Why is he going to come back to us if chasing the pigeon is more funny than us? Now, if we have taught him through positive reinforcement to ignore moving objects and animals and redirect this behavior into something fun, like playing with us, he will most likely stay by our side or obey more easily when we call him..
To properly educate your dog, we encourage you to read this other article on the 5 common mistakes when scolding a dog.
Training a dog - Easy tricks
If you want to teach your dog some basic commands, here are some links that may interest you:
- Teach the dog to recognize his name
- Teach the dog to come to the call.
- Teaching an adult dog to walk on a leash.
- How to teach the dog to drop objects?
- How to teach a puppy not to bite?
- How to teach a puppy to relieve himself on the street?
- Teaching my dog to sit step by step.
- Teaching my dog to fetch step by step.
