The Canadian Family

Naturally, every pet owner would like their pet dog to behave and learn obedience so they train their dog either with the help of a handler or just by themselves. Unfortunately, not all pet trainings can be thought of as successful. Most of the time training fails because there are some pointers that may have been overlooked. Let’s talk about dog training and the issues involved with the training.

To train your pet dog, there are methods or techniques involved. Once just doesn’t act like he’s the boss for your pet dog to obey. Common sense dictates that the understanding of pets and owner are very far apart, so don’t expect your dog to obey you especially in the beginning.

So what are the first steps? Simple. For new dog owners, you have to remember these three principles. They are: reinforcement, punishment and extinction. By mastering these three simple principles, you will be on your way to training your dog to be more obedient.

What do I mean by reinforcement? It is the dog’s reaction to the trainer where behavior either becomes better or worst by means of specific actions. Let me explain further. There are two categories of reinforcement. They are: positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement.

Positive reinforcement is about giving rewards or praise. If your dog behaves or obeys you, then you reward or praise your pet. This good behavior remains because the dog understands it will be rewarded for as long as it obeys or behaves.

Negative reinforcement happens when the trainer removes an unpleasant situation to make the dog obey. An example of this is when you want to teach your dog to sit. I am sure your dog will not budge if tell it to sit. What you can do is that you can pressure on the collar and release the pressure once the dog obeys you.

The next principle that we are talking about is the punishment principle. Again, there are positive and negative punishment. A punishment is deemed as a positive punishment when the trainer does something unpleasant and thus it results in the dog’s negative bahaviour to decrease. A negative punishment on the other hand is when a punishment is handed out, the positive behavior is diminished or eliminated.

The last principle we are going to talk about is the extinction principle. Extinction is about total elimination of a behavior. This happens when a certain behavious is not reinforced and thus, resulting it to be wliminated or extinct. For example, your dog keeps whining but you keep your stand and not allow it to have its way. Your dog will learn that whining will do him no good so it stops.

For most people, they believe that positive reinforcement is the best way to train a dog. Yes, it may be for some but this might not work for the others. So before taking on any of the principles discussed, it is still better to have an assessment of your dog’s behavior prior to any training. In this way, you will know which of the principles would give you the best chance of success when it comes to training your dog.