Teaching the dog

I think the one thing a lot of owners don't like to hear is that training a dog does take time and I'm not talking weeks, I'm talking months. If you get a puppy at 8 weeks for the first year of their life you are essentially training them and the more time you put in the less you have to do when they mature. However, it is a long process and requires a lot of your time.

All dogs need to be taught boundaries within your home, can they go on the sofa, can they enter the kitchen, where do they sleep, what behaviours are acceptable and what are not. etc

They then need to be taught marker words, such as:

“OK” Release from what they were doing, they can now do what they like (to a degree.)

“YES” Marker, meaning that they got it right and can expect a reward to follow.

“NO” Incorrect, used when the dog makes a mistake.

Finally they need to be taught commands:

• Come
• Heel
• Drop
• Leave it
• and any extras you feel necessary such as down, leave it, paw etc

With puppies there are the extras such as crate training, toilet training, handling nipping and chewing, as well as getting them use to being separated from yourselves.

And that is only a fraction of it as every day you interact with your dog you are training them to do certain behaviours, sometimes without even realising it.

Training your dog for you

Over the years I have been asked multiple times to take an owners dog for residential stay and train them for them. Now for me this could be a very profitable avenue to take my business. However, I don’t do it, why you might ask, well the simple answer is ‘I can’t train your dog for you!’

Now don’t get me wrong, I could most certainly get your dog to understand verbal markers and commands in a matter of days, I could even have your dog behaving really well within my home in a week or two. But the moment I hand your dog back over to you, the likelihood is all that hard work would become undone, why?

Well first of all dogs don’t generalise, so what we teach in the home a dog won’t reliably do it anywhere else. We have to teach them everything everywhere, so what your dog learns at my home does not mean they will do it back in your own home. However, the main reason is when owning a dog we communicate with them on a daily basis through body language and it is this language that can cause a lot of the issues we see in our dogs today. Because training a dog takes time, effort and dedication as it does require you to change your behaviour to some degree too.

Also when training a dog we have to learn to keep our emotions balanced, if you are frustrated, anxious, or nervous your dog will pick up on these emotions and can sometimes become anxious themselves or they will choose not to listen.