The Principles In Training A Dog
Naturally, every dog owner would like their dog to behave and learn obedience so they train their dog either with the help of a handler or just by themselves. Unfortunately, not all pet trainings can be thought of as successful. Most of the time training fails because there are some issues that may have been overlooked. Let’s talk about dog training and the issues involved with the training.
I am sure you have tried and tested a lot of methods and techniques to train you dog. However, you have to remember one thing. You cannot expect your pet dog to obey you the first time you command it. Why? well, you need to understand and know your pet dog. In other words, you need to have an understanding with your dog. That way, you can train it properly.
So what do you do to make your pet obey? First, you need to have an understanding of the principles of training your dog. What are these principles? Basically, there are three simple principles behind dog training and these are reinforcement, punishment and extinction.
What exaclty is reinforcement? Reinforcement is the dog’s behavior towards the trainer. There are only two outcomes: the dog either behaves better or worse. Let us break reinforcement into 2 categories. They are: positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement.
What is positive reinforcement? Positive reinforcement is about giving rewards or praise. If your dog behaves or obeys you, then you reward or praise your pet. By doing this, your dog will understand that it will be rewarded as long as it listens to you or behaves.
Negative reinforcement is where the trainer removes an unpleasant situation to make the dog obey. Let’s take teaching a dog how to sit for example. If you want to teach a dog how to sit, you put pressure on the collar and release the pressure once the dog obeys you.
We shall move on to the next principle; punishment. Again, we can categorize it into two categories; positive punishment or the negative punishment. A punishment is considered positive when the trainer punishes the dog and the outcome of it is a dog’s behavior turns out to be better. However, a negative punishment is when the trainer takes away something that the dog really likes or enjoys and the behavior is diminished or eliminated.
The third principle is about total elimination of a behavior. This is when behavior is not reinforced resulting to its extinction or elimination. For example, your dog is a constant whiner so you allow it to go outside but this time you have changed, your technique so even if the dog continues to whine a lot it is not allowed to go out anymore. Eventually the dog will learn that whining will do him no good so it stops.
So, there you have it. All you need to know about training a dog. Many dog lovers believe that positive reinforcement is the best way to train a dog but let me remind you that you should assess the behavior of your dog before training. Most of the time, a combination of principles have to to be put together in order for your dog to learn. Good luck!
Filed under: Training