Mistakes When Training A Dog

Often, when people adopt a dog, they tend to rely on the advice of other dog owners in regard to training. However, this doesn’t mean what they say is accurate. In order to prevent you from training your dog wrong, you can look at the advice below that will hopefully be useful for you.

What are the most common mistakes when training a dog?

Scolding them

Patience is a difficult virtue but a necessary one when it comes training a dog. When your dog frustrates you (which is common for most people) you might want to shout or use force to train them.

With both animals and humans, it’s been shown that positive reinforcement really works, whereas scolding can have serious emotional consequences on your pet.

According to professional dog trainers, scolding should not be used when training a dog. You’ll be better off using rewards instead, they are the key to positive reinforcement. This way you can train your dog with affection and reward any sign of obedience. These rewards can be biscuits, treats, or simply an extra dose of affection.

Trying to suddenly stop certain behaviors

Training a dog is a gradual process and your dog’s learning requires patience, just like humans do. This is why trying to suddenly stop a certain behavior, without going through a gradual learning process, could just traumatize your dog. If you do so, your dog won’t learn the correct behavior pattern.

Harsh commands without prior training can cause anxiety and other problems in your dog and even result in aggressive behavior.

Using force

A dog won’t understand all the words you say or every command at first time. So patience is really important when it comes to training a dog. Using force to train your dog will not help you at all, in fact, it will just make things worse.

Likewise, the same thing can be said if this force is accompanied by physical punishment, such as spanking them. It will not be an easy process, but affection and tolerance will always give you the best results.

Not giving clear commands

Animals need to be taught in a simple manner, with short words and simple steps. This is why, before teaching your dog complex commands like shaking hands or spinning around, you should teach more simple commands like sit or stay.

Remember that dogs are only capable of connecting single-syllable words. So, if you want to teach your dog to sit down, you should simply say “sit”.

Blaming your dog

Your dog will very often not carry out your commands to perfection. There may be times where he doesn’t do what you want or, at least, doesn’t do what you’ve taught them. You might be tempted to blame your dog for this and even shout or scold him.

Instead of getting angry or put down, failure should simply be motivation to do better next time. Your dog’s training all depends on your effort. When something doesn’t go as planned, it’s not your dog’s fault, it’s yours. There is no dog that isn’t capable of learning, only owners that don’t know how to train them.

Therefore, if your dog doesn’t understand because you’ve made mistakes when training a dog, it’s your responsibility to correct them. Therefore, you should never take your frustration out on your dog.

These are some of the most common mistakes when training a dog. Be careful not to make them yourself if you want to train your dog successfully. Patience, affection, and determination play an important role when it comes to training a pet.