Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Other Dog Training Suggestions

1. Get the whole family involved. In any training situation, always try to involve all members of the family. An all-too-common scenario is one in which a pet virtually ignores the commands of anyone but the one person who trained it. To avoid this, get the whole family
involved. Just be sure to remain consistent within the family with regard to the training methods and commands used.

2. Use short commands. All verbal commands you employ need to be kept short and sweet. Using slightly different voice tones for each command will help prevent confusion. If verbal punishment is to be used, make certain that it is totally different in tone and in presentation
than the other commands.

3. Start young. Always start your pet’s training at an early age. While it is true that certain advanced training techniques can be best taught at around 6 months of age, basic training, including housetraining for dogs, should be started as early as 8 weeks of age. If basic command
training is not taught this early in life, bad habits arise later on, some of which can put a damper on future training efforts.

4. Keep training sessions short. Try to keep the training sessions short and to the point. For puppies and kittens 8 to 12 weeks of age, devoting 10 minutes two to three times daily will yield excellent results. As your pet matures, the length of each of these sessions can increase. Let your pet’s attitude be your judge. If it seems bored or indifferent, or has become totally unruly, you have probably exceeded its attention span.

5. End on a good note. Always end your training session on a good note. Doing so is very constructive in terms of your pet’s mental development, and effectively sets the tone for the next session.

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