Basic guidelines for training a pup

The dog is a pack animal, the pack has an Alpha member whom all the other members of the pack follow. When a pup is brought in a family he/she sees the members of the family as his pack & with his animal instincts tries to become the Alpha Animal (leader of the pack). Below are some guidelines to induct the new member.

• Establish yourself as the leader?: To ensure that your pup listens to you, establish yourself as Alpha member. A balance in the praise & corrections methodology needs to the maintained.
• Avoid punishment?: Training should be accompanied with applause, petting and treats. Punishment of any sort should be avoided to make training fun for your pet. Focus on positive correction as negative correction will make your dog stubborn.
• Emphasise on timing and consistency?: Your action should be a direct result of the pup’s behaviour. Your action should also be immediate. As a pup has a short memory span, any delayed action of yours, would only confuse the pup. Your immediate response to his behaviour would enable him to correlate the two and when you follow a consistent pattern in teaching, the pup would realise what is the expected behaviour and will respond correspondingly.
• Give lots of rewards?: Whenever your puppy responds properly to your command, give him praise or a treat. This will help him correlate that every right action of his will be awarded, and the treats help keeping the enthusiasm and willingness to perform to the peak. One important point to be noted is that the motivational aspect of each pup is different. For some, it would be praise, a treat or a particular toy.
• Keep it short and simple?: Like humans, pups too have an attention span. They can be attentive for up to 10 minutes. So keep your training short. But you can repeat it 2-3 times a day, making it interesting and fun time for your pet so that it is always excited for the next reward and lesson.
• Repeat until perfect?: This implies that you should do an exercise until the pup does it right. Once he does it right, Stop and give him a treat.
• Have patience?: Be patient all the time. It will take a while until a pup learns all your commands.

A well-behaved, obedient and trained dog is a pleasure to own because he can go virtually anywhere without being a risk of nuisance to others. And don’t we all want a dog who exhibits appropriate behaviour in a crowd, good manners when we have guests in our home, is reliable around children, and who doesn’t threaten other dogs or passersby.
The bottom line is that dog training truly benefits everyone. Always remember to make training fun, so that the pup looks forward to it and enjoys every moment of it. A pup will always respond to fun, a pup will always try to make the owner happy and lastly there is never a bad dog but a bad owner.