Dogs just want to be dogs
If you want a happy, respectful relationship with your dog, there are a few simple guidelines to follow:
Don’ts
- Don’t allow your dog to free roam in your house.
- Don’t allow them to jump on furniture unless invited
- Don’t free feed eg: leave food out for your dog to graze on when it wants
- Don’t allow your dog to demand your affection/attention, undeserved affection undermines you.
- Don’t allow free access to toys, you initiate the start and finish of play
- Don’t reward unwanted behavior eg: jumping up, pawing or nudging, whining, by patting.
- Don’t encourage excessive excitement, this state of mind is unhealthy for dogs and leads to anxiety related behaviours.
- Don’t allow your dog to rush past you or through thresholds.
- Don’t ask a dog to do something if you don’t want to enforce the command.
- Don’t hug and kiss your dog, they don’t understand it and it makes them uncomfortable.
- Don’t allow your dog to behave in a way you wouldn’t allow your children too.
Do’s
- Provide structure for your dog; lack of structure/leadership leads to lack of inhibition/impulse control.
- Your dog needs rewards, boundaries, play, consequences, exercise, and mental stimulation to be happy and balanced, training helps by providing structure.
- Be CONSISTANT, commit to your dogs training and conditioning and the building and strengthening of your relationship.
- Leave a leash attached to your dog while it’s inside the house; this makes it easier to control/handle the dog, you will need to supervise your dog during this time.
- Work with your dog every day, even watching the TV can be a training opportunity.
- Ask your dog to sit or down before you give him affection or a treat, make him earn it
- Teach your dog to engage his nose by hiding pieces of food around and then inviting him to search. Scatter feeding works the same way, if feeding kibble, scatter it onto the grass and allow your dog to work for his food, this is good mentally for your dog.
- If feeding in a bowl, have your dog wait to be invited to eat, then only allow 5 minutes for him/her to finish, if it doesn’t finish in the allotted time remove the food and without adding more, feed it to the dog for its next meal.
- Read your dog; watch what it does, what behavior are you rewarding?
Reward the correct behavior with your dogs biggest motivator, if using food, take it from your dogs daily food allowance, don’t add it on top. - Make your dog accountable for its behavior.
- Use leash corrections, bonker towel or popcorn bottle where necessary.
- Crate train your dog, it won’t see it as jail, it will see it as home.