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Puppy obedience training is something you can do yourself or hire someone to do, depending on your preferences. Remember, training them immediately after obtaining them is vitally important.
If you wait to start and then try to change their actions later, you’re just sending mixed signals and they won’t know what they did wrong. Often people who first get a dog find their behavior problems cute and let them slide.
When they try to crack down on them along the way, the dog gets confused because they were allowed to do such things before, why not know?
So what is the correct way to do puppy obedience training? Should you hire a professional or try to do it yourself? The truth is that it is not that difficult to train your dog when he uses the correct techniques, and doing it yourself can save you a lot of money.
consistency is key
Keep in mind that the most important part of puppy training is consistency. Make sure you use the same commands every time, because if you don’t, your dog won’t understand what to do.
For example, don’t say “come” one time and “heel” the next, as your dog won’t know what to do. Sounds obvious, but an important point nonetheless.
Avoid giving treats
Also remember to use some method to show them that they have done something good. A common method is to give them a treat, but this is not very effective because many times they will only obey you because they want the reward.
If you don’t have a treat, then they won’t obey. For this reason, clicker training is something that many people like to do, because instead of giving them food, you just click the clicker every time they do something good.
This works because the dog will associate the clicker with something good and pretty soon just go for that sound instead of a treat. The reason this is more effective than just praising them is that dogs hear you talking all the time and therefore won’t necessarily associate your praising them with something good.
However, since they’ll only hear the clicker when they’ve done something right, they’ll instantly know it’s a good thing and start listening after they obey; it basically takes the place of a treat. It sounds like a bit of a stretch, but using a clicker is very popular for a reason: it works.
Be positive
Be sure to stay positive with your dog. Never be too harsh because this rarely produces the results you want and they will come to resent you.
Make sure you don’t last too long per session, and a couple of short sessions work more effectively than having 1 long session with puppy obedience training. Younger dogs don’t have a long attention span, and keeping it short helps them focus better.
