Bounding with your dog

Ok, this site is about dog training so let me start with what I do for the first few days to week with a new dog. A lot of the old traditional trainers say you have to let the dog know who is boss, obtain dominance or the alpha roll. I’m going to let you know this is bull! Through working with your dog and showing that all good things come through you and by you they will know you are the boss. By this I mean food, toys, getting to go outside and basically anything your dog wants. You are the keeper of all that matters in your dog’s life.

If you have just gotten the dog you should take time to bond with them. Give lots of free treats and lots of time with you and your dog in a low distraction level area. If you want to start training a dog that you have had for a while you can skip the bonding because hopefully you and your dog are bounded already.

During the bonding period observe your dog and see what they really like. I don’t mean just food but games and toys. I’ve found with Roo, whom I have only had for about 4 days is she likes walking and exploring the yard. She likes to play chase because she is a herding breed (Australian Cattle Dog), she also likes food rewards but I have had dogs under my training care that were not food motivated. This is why you really need to find what it is that gets your dog excited. Another reason is that when training with positive reinforcement (clicker training) the excitement of the expected reward will transfer over to the behavior, so if you have a dog that go nuts to chase a ball and you are using this as a reward for sits, when you give the cue for a sit the excitement of the ball will transfer to the sit and you should have a great, quick sit from your dog.

Now the next step to training is charging the clicker and I will try and have that info up soon

Mark