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Closer to Home (part 2)

Fear Regret more than Failure

Anyone who wants their dog to be a part of their life will spend time with them in the house and run through those routinary things with them instead of just keeping them in the kennel. But other than that, the need to aspire to develop in them special skills that they can perform extensively to make them become more reputable to you and to others is subsequently better than just granting them to be with you. Codify what goes into your mind every time you watch an accomplished dog perform, and instead of simply being overwhelmed, start to make up a notion of the likelihood that who you are watching is now your own dog. Hard to admit but it’s possible if you have the right resources. Remember, time is not a deterrent since you already have that with your dog and you can take that as your advantage. However, the thing you need to learn first is to use two words to keep your dog from being confused once you start to train it. The first is Standards; this means the level of excellence that you are going to accept. The second is Consistency; in order to achieve those standards one must always maintain them. This is often the failure of most so-called professional trainers in requiring a high level of performance when they are seasoning the dog, but when the dog comes home and is in the house, the standard deteriorates to the point where they erode all their field standards, hence the dog ends up puzzled. You cannot afford to do that either. By standards, I do not mean immediate compliance, for our problem is we often envisions the final result at the outset. No, you cannot teach a dog to retrieve by telling the dog to fetch, but you can eventually make it fetch by breaking down the entire process into smaller segments so it can in the course of time, retrieve; more about this is the succeeding discourse. This however is fundamentally what training a dog is all about. Additionally, training should never involve reacting to what the dog is precisely doing or correcting them when they are doing the opposite of what you want them to do. This mistaken notion is again very common because of our tendency to hasten an outcome, instead of reacting to correct that way, you should be asking yourself what am I doing wrong here, what can I break down further to help my dog figure it out for himself or herself? Moreover, in the early stage of teaching your dog something new to them, never use fret to get the dog to do it, you simply need to contrive a way to catch them doing the very thing you want them to do then work it over by assuring your dog for the good behavior. The way to break down the sequence if let us say you want your dog to hold an object in its mouth, is not to force it to its mouth and verbalize a command. But on leash, you can make it play; say a ball, then after a pause start to move and wait until the dog picks up the object to bring with him/her, repeat the pausing until you get the result you want. Some use treats, except that the trouble of giving it over instantaneously takes some time interval, and the dog might have a hard time connecting the treat as its award. You can use an applause as a conduit to the giving out of the final reward, but never to do it all together, one must come first before the other. This is what I mean by breaking down and contriving a way to catch them doing what you want. This also requires repetition to make sure your dog got it under any circumstances, including all types of distractions. Then a periodic repetition to rehearse or recall what it has already learned. That in a nutshell is training and teaching, correcting however must be indirect instead of the usual affront, which means repeating the entire process over and over again to correct the mistake. Once your dog has been taught well and still refuses, then another uncommon scheme is applied, but this has already been dealt in the article about conditioning.  

  

If you get this type of training principle, then you do not need countless hours to train your dog, you only need a few minute to exercise those dissected duties of a task, one-step at a time.