New Dog Training Tips
Getting a new dog is really exciting, but you also need to make sure you teach them discipline early on so they don’t learn bad behavior. For instance, one of the first things you should teach them is the command ‘come’. You should always praise him when he does what you ask. Keep your voice excited and tap your knees when you say ‘come’ to encourage him over. Working on it for a few minutes twice a day should do the trick.
Another command you should teach him is ‘drop it’ as this will be important for his safety. It normally only takes a few minutes, but be patient if your dog takes longer. Give him a toy and then say ‘drop it’ while offering him a treat. He should drop the toy for the treat. If he does, then you should repeat it several times, each time moving the treat further away until you no longer need it and he drops the toy automatically.
Teaching your dog to ‘leave it’ is important as you need to make them realize that what they pick up might be harmful. Take a treat and get the dog interested in it. Then tell him to ‘leave it’ after covering it over. Don’t let him get the treat even if he begs, but give him a different treat when he gives up trying. If he gets the covered treat, he’ll be harder to train so make sure it doesn’t happen. 5 minute sessions should be enough here.
Early on, you should also teach the dog to ‘lie down’. This should be quite easy to do if you train for about 10 minutes twice a day. Show the dog a treat, then say ‘down’ and slowly lower the treat to the ground. He should follow the treat – if he does, praise him as soon as he’s lying down and give him the treat. If he’s reluctant to lie down, don’t physically push him – just keep your patience and try the training with him again later.
Another command to teach the dog is to go to his place, which you should do after teaching ‘lie down’. Get the dog a bed or rug and put it in a specific place. You should use treats to bribe him over to the bed, using a command word such as ‘bed’ or ‘place’. He should master this fairly quickly. When he has, you need to teach him to lie down on the bed, so withhold the treat until he’s lying down on the bed in accordance with your command.
