It is interesting to observe that many dogs that are surrendered to a shelter or a dog pound are not being relinquished because the dog doesn’t know how to sit or lay down. Often times these dogs brought to the shelter are dogs that don’t know where the bathroom is or how to greet people as they enter the house. In the United States, millions of puppies never survive their first year. Many of them are pups that their owners simply cannot live with any more. The Puppies that knows how to greet people at the door has a much better chance of being around long enough to learn how to sit, lay down and heel on a leash.

According to the National Council on Pet Population Study and Policy some of the most common behavior problems associated with relinquishing a dog are aggression towards humans and then aggression towards other animals along with other environmental issues such as too many pets in one household, the neuter status of the animal, training level and pets acquired from shelters. Depending upon where ones obtains their statistics, there are between 8 and 10 million animals surrendered every year. Of those animals, the vast majority of them are euthanized. These numbers haven’t changed over the last ten years. With all of the educational information about having your dog spayed or neutered, it doesn’t seem to be producing any significant results on the relinquishing of dogs to animal shelters. Perhaps there is more to it than whether or not the dog is “fixed” or not.

Of these various behavior issues, all of them could be avoided as well as corrected if proper steps are taken the moment the Puppies is brought home by establishing some ground rules.

First, the Puppies is taught a training program that can be summed up, “do it now”. Behaviors that are created or inhibited during Puppies hood stand a good chance of being part of the dog’s repertoire for life. For example, if you don’t want your adult dog to jump on guests, it’s far easier to teach that inhibition to a ten-pound Puppies than to teach it to a hundred pound adult. The common misconception that you should wait until the pup is six months old to start training leads to a very risky form of neglect. Keep in mind that every dog can be trained regardless of its age. The Puppies is just going to be easier.

Pleasant and Unpleasant – The tools of the trade: Before you get started with a training program it is important to understand how animals learn and how you can control that learning. Most animals respond to things they like by repeating behaviors that produce “nice things”. The other side of this process is that most animals will naturally avoid things that are unpleasant. These two types of consequences are the primary tolls you will need to use to affect your pups behavior.

Positive reinforcement – Everyone’s favorite: Loosely defined, a positive reinforcer is anything that your dog will work for. It may be food, affection or a toy. By using something that your pup enjoys, you can use it to reinforce various behaviors. For example, if the Puppies really is a food hound, you can ask to dog to sit, the moment his bottom side touches the floor, reward him with a small treat.

The most important thing to know about the positive reinforcer is how to link the reward with the behavior. This is accomplished by rewarding the dog immediately for responding to the request. Timing is everything! By rewarding the dog before he actually sits, he may think that you only want him to sit part way. By waiting to reward him after he sits and then jumps up may communicate to the dog to jump up immediately after sitting. So you can see that rewarding the dog immediately will have a serious impact on how he responds in the future. For a young Puppies, clicker training is a method that helps to communicate to the dog the exact moment he does was you want. This is called marking the behavior. The instant the dog sits, you click the dog (a clicker is a training devise that makes a clicking sound) and then reward the dog with a treat. We will discuss this method of training in future articles.

Safe and Humane Punishment – While we would all like to teach out dogs using positive reinforcement alone, nature has decreed otherwise. Puppies and dogs have some behaviors that cannot be allowed in a family setting. In nature, dogs will fight over food, which sometimes can result in serious injury or death among the dogs. Positive reinforcement doesn’t allow us to gain control over these types of behaviors. In order to stop a behavior in it’s tracks, we are forced to use a different tool. Inhibitions are most powerful when they are a result of punishment.

Needless to say, the most difficult thing for an owner to do is to punish an unacceptable behavior. Our culture tends to consider pleasant things as always “good” and unpleasant things always “bad”. Think of it this way; consider the pinprick (something unpleasant) that your Puppies receives while getting a vaccination. That momentary pain will ultimately protect the Puppies from a potentially fatal disease. If we use something unpleasant to discourage the Puppies from some unwanted behavior, we can teach the Puppies that certain things result in unpleasant consequences. For example, let’s say that we spray the Puppies with a squirt bottle for chewing the leg on the table. The ethically minded dog owner will see the comparison between the pinprick of the needle to the spritz of water with the spray bottle. Both result in a momentary unpleasant experience in exchange for long-term protection against a fatal consequence. If we fail to connect an unpleasant consequence to a harmful behavior, our Puppies may pay the price for our weakness. We need to determine what method is going to actually communicate something unpleasant to the Puppies. Obviously, a retriever may actually enjoy the spritz of water. Every dog is different, and the training methods used need to be flexible enough to tailor a program that will work for the individual dog’s temperament and personality.

A significant part of a Puppies’s discipline includes being hugged, kissed, petted and fussed over by anyone who is willing to do it. Though learning to accept human affection may appear automatic, it is actually a learned skill. A Puppies or a dog learning to accept and give love is as important as learning how to sit or heel. While it is possible for a dog to go through life without ever learning to sit, stay or heel, it is next to impossible for a dog to live happily without a sincere joy for human attention. Owning an adult dog that genuinely loves people is not something that should be left to chance. So we can see that teaching a Puppies or a dog using “balance training techniques” can helpful in preventing your companion being relinquished to a shelter for behavioral problems.

Contact Information

Tom Beitz is the owner of the Academy for Puppies and Dogs and is an authorized dealer for Pet STOP Hidden Dog Fences. Tom can be reached at (716) 628-0651 to answer your questions or he can be found on the web at www.smartdogtrainer.com . E-Mail: Tom@Smartdogtrainer.com

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