Having a pet, especially a dog, can be a rewarding experience. Dogs are considered loyal and loving animals. If you live alone, they can become your friends, and if you have a family, they become a part of your family. But to have a good experience with your dog, you need to tame them in a way that ensures they stay on their best behaviour. You can use the following techniques to train your dog effectively.
1. Ensure Short but Regular Sessions
For effective dog training, consistency matters more than long training sessions. Keep your session up to 5 to 10 minutes max, so they can focus without getting overwhelmed. A proper training session might take more of your time than your dogs, as you will be spending time planning the lesson, too. So if you are a busy professional, you can rely on dog training classes. These classes can include everything from basic sit-up and sit-down training to training on difficult things like aggression, separation anxiety and other such things. These classes will help your dog stay tame even if they get separated from you.
2. Encourage Good Behaviour
One of the most effective techniques in dog training is to encourage your dog for their good behaviour instead of punishing them for bad behaviour. You can encourage positive behaviour by providing an appropriate reward in the form of high-value, small chewy treats. With a reward system, you need to be very careful not to encourage bad behaviour disguised as cute or wholesome.
For example, when your dog barks for attention, you might find it cute, but for strangers, it can signal a threat. So you should only reward their behaviour when they are calmer. Because eventually, you are striving for a tamed pet that appears harmless, too.
3. Ignore Bad Behaviour
While encouraging good behaviour is an effective technique, you might be wondering what to do when your dog is showing bad behaviour. If they just started showing some problematic behaviours, your first approach should be to ignore, because most of the time they are craving attention, so make sure not to give it for the wrong reasons. But if this behaviour does not die down with ignorance, you should address the issue properly with professional help.
4. Minimize Distractions
Dogs get distracted easily. For effective training, you need to ensure their full focus and attention towards the task. To achieve that, you should keep distractions at bay. Select a quiet and calm corner in your home that has only the necessary things required to teach a particular behaviour. Clutter can distract them; you might be training them for one thing, but they would be interested in another thing nearby, and this can slow down the whole learning process.
5. Try to Stay Patient
The most important thing to ensure effective dog training is to work with patience. You cannot change a bad behaviour with an angry command; this will only create fear and confusion. Try to focus on one problematic behaviour at a time, address it properly, and then move on to the next part of the training. With consistent effort, you will notice a visible change in overall behaviour.
Conclusion
Training your dog can be a fun and rewarding experience if you follow effective training strategies. First of all, you need to make sure that training sessions are done on a regular basis; for that, you can take professional help too. But if you are training at home, you can encourage good behaviour by rewarding them with the food they love. For bad behaviour, you can ignore and take action according to the severity of the issue. Keep distractions minimal. The most important tip is to stay patient throughout the whole training process so that when the training ends, your bond grows even stronger with your dog.