It's a dog's lifeSavvy Chocolate Labrador's dogblog

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Basics of Dog Training

It’s essential for Dog parents like you to know certain basic factors that determine your relationship with your Dog and can go a long way in training him effectively.

Before you begin training your Dog, it is absolutely essential that you build a loving bond with him. This is important as it helps you to understand his needs and instincts and also allows your Dog to have complete trust in you.

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How To Bond With Your Dog

Building a bond with your Dog is the first and the most crucial step involved in training him successfully. As soon as you bring your Dog home, you must first try to develop a caring and loving relationship with him in order to win his trust and confidence.

When Dogs are secure in the knowledge that they belong to the family, they are more likely to respond better to their owners’ training commands. Just like with any relationship, there must be mutual trust and respect between you and your Dog.

Trust takes time to develop and respect comes from defining boundaries and treating any breach of those boundaries with firmness and fairness.

Without enforceable limitations, respect can’t be developed. And when there is no respect, building a bond with your Dog is almost impossible.

4 Golden Rules To Building A Relationship With Your Dog :

Love Your Dog and He Will Love You back

Once you’re succesful in building a bond with your Dog, you can rest assured that training him and teaching him new and clever tricks will be a cakewalk.

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How Your Dog Learns…

Your Dog’s learning period can be divided into five phases:

The Teaching Phase – This is the phase where you must physically demonstrate to your Dog exactly what you want him to do.

The Practicing Phase – Practice makes Perfect. Once a lesson is learnt, practice with your Dog what you have just taught him.

The Generalizing Phase – Here you must continue practicing with your Dog in different locations and in an environment with a few distractions. You can take your Dog out for a walk, or to a nearby park and command him to practice whatever you’ve taught him.

Practicing the learned lessons in multiple locations and in the presence of small distractions will help him learn and retain lessons better .

The Testing Phase – Once you’re sure that your Dog has achieved almost 90% success….he responds correctly almost every time you give a command, you must start testing his accuracy in newer locations with a lot of distractions.

Example: Take him to the local shopping mall and ask him to obey your command. He may not come up with the correct response the very first time you do this, but you must not lose hope.

The idea is to test your Dog to see how he responds in an environment which is new to him. Set-up a situation where you are in control of the environment and your Dog.

There are only 2 possibilities:

Keep on testing until he succeeds. Follow the rule of the 3 Ps – patience, persistence, praise.

Internalizing Phase – Finally, comes the extremely rewarding phase where your Dog does everything he is taught to do even without your commands.

Remember:

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Copyright (c) 2009 TrainPetDog.com

I love Christmas. Its not just because everyone is at home, nor that I get more walks after they have eaten rather large dinners, but because I get presents; sometimes it is something special to eat like a large chewie, a new collar or lead, a new bed, or best of all a new squeekie toy – why is that best? – because it drives them mad as I run all over the house squeeking it. Needless to say, it does not take long before my new squeekie toy is put away!

A great online store for a super range of pet-related goodies is Pets at Home; they offer the ultimate pet shop experience. They have all the pet supplies, pet food, toys and accessories you and your pet need at great value prices. Their online pet shop has a great range of over 2000 pet supplies including dog food, cat litter, rabbit hutches and much more!

As you probably know, I love swimming. I prefer the sea but any water will do, even a muddy puddle! The sea here is lovely and warm; it is clear and turquiose. I can see my feet – which was a bit of a shock when I first saw them as when I swam in the UK before we moved here, the water was, well, not that clear.

What I didn’t tell you is that they are not happy when I shake water all over the car. So they bought me a dry dog bag.

They zip me in it and the towelling interior helps me dry, also if I shake, the water is contained – it’s great. I wear it in the car, and then again when I get in the house, as it is not easy to walk in – in fact its like doing the sack race.

It is also useful in the winter when I have to go out in the rain (yes I said I liked water, but that doesn’t mean rain water).

I do look funny trying to walk in it on the slippery kitchen floor and at first kept falling over. Now I have the hang of it I just have a little nap till they decide I am done!