As we head into another year we take time to reflect on the past year and our accomplishments and failures and think on how we can turn those failures into triumphs and build on previous accomplishments to garner even more success. Let’s have a look at five (5) training philosophies that we can adopt to become not only better trainers, but better people in general.

Patient

• “Dogs aren’t mind readers and they need repetition to learn.”

  Just because they can down stay for 15 seconds today with no distractions doesn’t mean that they’ll be able to repeat that behavior tomorrow under the same circumstances. These behaviors and obediences need to be done over and over again before they become reliable. We would do well to keep this in mind with our friends, family and co-workers as well. Wouldn’t the world be a much better place if we all had a little more patience.

Persistent

• “Don’t give up and don’t give in! Be a good leader; set a good example.”

  This all about a battle of the wills. If your dog barks and barks and barks and you let her out of the crate, she won and now knows that you will let her out if she keeps barking. This is also why it is so important to never let the dog get a gentle leader off. If they can do it once they will figure that they can do it again. Set the example and remain…

Consistent

• “Be fair; you can’t sometimes correct and other times reward.”

  “No Jumping” means “No Jumping Ever Unless I Tell You Otherwise,” not “No Jumping Except When I Come Through The Door Or When I Have A Treat In My Hand Or When I Pick You Up From Daycare Or When I Pick You Up From Boarding Or When…” It doesn’t work like that. If you want the dog to jump sometimes, have a jump command and vary when you do it so it doesn’t become routine.

  The point being that you must be consistent in your corrections and rewards. If hopping up on the couch is wrong now, it is wrong always. It is too often that we teach our dogs that there are ways around our rules and then punish them for pushing them for merely being confused.

Realistic

• “Set goals that are reasonable. Don’t expect too much too soon.”

  “Hi. I have a 9 week old puppy and I want her to be a Therapy Dog, but she is just running all over the house, she chews my slippers and is still having accidents in the house. Plus she’s play-biting really hard.” Congratulations, you have a puppy! Seriously though, we get calls like that all the time.

  Let’s be realistic for a minute. A dogs maturity is equivalent to one human year per month old…approximately. This means that your 9 week old puppy is equivalent to a 2 year old toddler. Can a 2 year old be expected to behave at all times and be a perfectly obedient angel? Of course not. What a silly question. Why then are we looking for these animals to out perform humans? Let’s keep our expectations grounded and we’ll all be fine.
  

Considerate

• “Your dog loves you no matter what; try to reciprocate. Consider how much your dog does for you that goes un-noticed”

  This is perhaps that hardest behavior for humans to exhibit. To accomplish this we must look at the situation from all angles, then remove ourselves from the situation and look at it yet again. When we have as good of a grip on the situation that we can get, we still must check again to be sure that we haven’t forgotten anything.

  So before you punish your dog for eating poop, try to remember that it’s your fault the dog ate poop in the first place. That’s right. You could’ve take the dog out on a leash instead of waiting inside the house cause “it’s too cold to go out there.” And you know what else? The dog did one little thing that you didn’t like, but it probably spent the rest of the day making you happy. It’s crazy the level of obedience that we require from our dogs when we could never maintain that level of obedience ourselves. If someone came along and put all the restrictions on us that we put on our dogs and then told us that if we didn’t sit when they said sit or lie down when they told us to that we would be punished, we would probably call it slavery.

  Show your dog some consideration. Give them a little extra freedom tonight. And give them a dang hot dog. They probably earned it!