Live Life Team
The golden rule of dog training is reward. When your dog does what you ask of him you need to praise and reward him straightaway to make the association between his action and yours. Training sessions should be short and fun. Ten minutes of enjoyable time will be more effective than twenty minutes of boredom. You can train your dog at any time – in fact making training part of your routine will make it seem much less like hard work for both of you.
Try getting your dog to sit before you throw a stick in the park. Or make him stay while you get his lead before going out. When you are trying to get your dog to do something, you need to make it very clear what it is you want him to do while still keeping it fun. You will need to repeat and reward often and consistently in order for your dog to learn a command and to remember it.
If you use food rewards to help your dog learn a new command, always associate these with a phrase or action so that you can gradually stop the food rewards. When training your dog to a new command, start off at home or in the garden where there are few distractions. Once your dog has learned the command in this environment, you can try it in another place. This way you can be sure that your dog will be able to carry out the command in any situation.
