Are You Training Your Dog Bad Habits?

It is not difficult to teach your dog the habits that drive you crazy. This is done by something called reinforcement. Good dog trainers have learned how to channel this reinforcement in a positive way to urge repeat behaviour. By brooding about how you react when your dog is doing something unhelpful you could be amazed to find out you are in fact keeping up the habit that you would like to see stop.

To gain a knowledge of re-strengthening you must first understand that your dog interprets reward differently to the way us homo sapiens do. Attention is one of the main rewarding factors to your dog. This attention can be, in your eyes, negative or positive, it gives a reward.

An example of this is the uncontrollable family dog. All dogs need attention from their owners. They adore us and wish to know that we feel the same way. Wretchedly a dog that is ignored most of the time and only spoken to when he is being a bother is, in his eyes rewarded for doing something unhelpful. So he'll repeat the behaviour so as to repeat the reward. It doesn’t matter if he is roared at or punished, because in his eyes, negative attention is far better than none at all.

A typical issue with pet dogs is jumping up at people. This behavior virtually guarantees the reward of attention. Folk automatically touch a dog that jumps up, and regularly speak to him. Right away the attention has been reinforced. Jumping up works, next time he needs attention the dog will jump up again.

To shape a nicely behaved dog you need to reward good behaviour, show your dog that it's worth repeating. Give him the attention that he wants by carrying out some relaxed and fun sessions. You can learn to reinforce behaviour by teaching your dog to do tricks. Research how to teach a dog to play dead. It'll be a great learning experience for both of you. You may learn timing and positive reinforcement from teaching this trick.

This article is written to introduce you to positive dog training. Becoming more knowledgeable about beefing up both positive and unhelpful will bring you nearer to your dog and certainly improve his behavior. Learn more on how to teach a dog to play dead by going to The Dog Trick Academy.



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