Canine Advice on Dog Obedience Training

With a new puppy, dog obedience training is likely at the forefront of your worries. Cute little Gracie who three short days ago looked like she couldn’t harm a fly has suddenly turned into a holy terror. If she gets her paws on it, it’s all hers:  shoes, cushions, electrical wires, plants, all bear the marks of her little teeth. Nothing is safe from her.

Dog Obedience Problem, or Poor Communication?

No amount of scolding will do any good.  Gracie seems oblivious to any and all dog obedience commands: sit, stay, and come are words she clearly does not hear. And therein lies your problem. But whether she chooses not to hear those training commands or simply does not understand them, the results are the same. Your home is in shambles, and you’re at the end of your tether.

Or maybe you thought you could play it safe and adopt an older dog. But to your dismay, dog obedience is not Brutus' forte either. His puzzled or, worse, guilty looks are leaving you feeling defeated and somehow guilty. You suspect that you might have landed with a dog that was never trained in the first place, or one that has forgotten every bit of good behavior it might have displayed a long time ago.

Either way, you’ve lost control of the situation, and I hate to break it to you, but things are about to get worse - a whole lot worse. Your puppy is quickly getting older, and unless you find a way to instill good behavior in him before he reaches adolescence (between six months and two years of age on the canine growth chart), you’ll both end up in deeper trouble than you could ever imagine.

Your older dog, on the other hand, is just getting more dispirited and troublesome with each passing day. The question is - what are you going to do about all this? Here's a pointer for you: the easiest way for you to make ‘dog’ and ‘obedience’ fit together requires you first to understand obedience training from a dog’s perspective. So let's give it a wag of the tail, shall we?

Obedience Training for Puppy

The first five months of a puppy’s life are the best time to teach her the basics of good behavior and get her used to obeying commands. At such a young age, even the most minute distraction is like a cablegram invitation to explore or, best of all, to party. Puppies either sleep, or they party. That’s a fact of life.

Their attention span … well, let’s just say it doesn’t span much. So if you’re going to have any success at all obedience training your puppy, you need to pick a location with as few distractions as possible.

The other thing to remember is that you must make the training session as enjoyable and fun as possible. Start with just a few minutes at a time and build up from there. If you’re doing a good job, she won’t even notice she's being trained.

Only when your puppy reaches six months of age will she really begin to understand proper training. At that stage in her life, dog training will provide her with much needed mental stimulus as well as help the two of you bond. However, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’ll quickly flounder and you’ll never make a good canine citizen out of her. Chances are you’ll give up on your puppy and break her heart. At that point, a trip to the nearest pound or rescue center is but a short distance away …

Dog Training for Obedience

Obedience training an older dog, specially an abused one, will require more time and patience on your part. But I promise you, it will be well worth it. I know because I was rescued myself when I was nine months old. It took me a while to understand what was expected of me, but once I did, nothing could stop me, and I’ve never looked back. Go ahead, give it your all, and you’ll wonder how you ever lived without a dog before. It might even be the best relationship of your life. It sure is for me!

Allowing your rooster to be run by a three-month old puppy or a three-year old bully is totally unacceptable as far as I’m concerned. So let me and my professional trainer help you unravel the mysteries of making a fully obedient dog out of your pooch. Together we’ll have him eating out of your paw in no time. Bliss will return to your life.

Find out how a true professional uses dog body language to understand what a dog is saying and to communicate with him. Learn how to start with basic commands and the proper use of obedience tools, whether a gentle leader, check chain, or food incentives. Clicker training gives some canines a welcome opportunity to stretch their limits and really prove themselves, so you might want to give it a try before graduating to advanced commands. Just watch your puppy bloom through it all.

Pssst! Our dog obedience training program even has a chart which you can use for both pup and mature dog that even spells out how long each session should last - now that’s almost like cheating!!! We also show you how to teach your dog all sorts of tricks so you can have fun together and show off to your friends.

Learn all about dog obedience training, and you'll both feel smart and make each other look good … now that’s real team work!