An Introduction To Training Dog Tricks With Food, Praise Or Toys
Training a dog to do tricks can be a superb way for dog owners to spend special time with their dog, and at the same time building a top notch relationship with him. Training a do to do tricks is extremely simple when you understand the elemental concepts of dog training. In this article, I will talk about them in details in hope to assist other people who could be looking for this knowledge.
1. Dogs learn in the instant.
Humans contemplate and think on past experiences to do things better and more effectively. Unfortunately dogs do not learn this way; they find out everything in the moment. This means that if you're going to reward or punish a dog for anything, it has to be while he is doing it.
Let's take coaching a dog to roll over for instance. You can wish and hope that your dog thinks about rolling over for days, but your dog isn’t intending to do it unless there's something in it for him. The way to teach a dog to roll over is by giving him something that he likes right after rolling over. So if you were to give your dog a treat every time he roll over, he will be able to learn that rolling over is what earns him the treats!
2. Dogs are inspired by 3 things.
As much as your dog loves you, he can only do things for three different things, praise, food or toys. Praising your dog can be physically touching and petting your dog together with great vocal encouragement on your side. I do not believe that I need to tell you about treats, but most dogs are highly inspired by food and treats due to highly survival instincts. Some dogs also love toys very much! Some breeds are more active than others so a tug toy or a squeaky toy can be very rewarding for some dogs.
Which one of these three motivators is the strongest with your dog? Customarily dogs will value one of each of the three motivators more than the other 2. There's little messed up with your dog valuing one over the others; it just means this is what you need to use to train your dog to do tricks.
3. Tricks are limitless.
The one secret about tricks is that there are endless amounts of tricks you can train. There is almost always a harder and more exhilarating trick to coach your dog. When you are only starting out training your dog to give you a high 5 is a great learning experience and can be quite challenging! But when you have mastered these tricks, you can move on to much more intricate tricks like jumping over obstacles, announcing requests or even jumping rope. Training a dog new tricks can be an exciting time for trainers.
Jean Cote is a Pro Dog Trainer who enjoys coaching his dog tricks and also to promote the advantages of daily training on his dog blog.
