Begin house training your puppy as soon as it between 8 and 12 weeks old. This helps to teach it more dependency on others and obedience to you. That little cute puppy of yours will also soon become a full grown dog with a mind of its own and whatever you have failed to teach it will become a full blown problem.
Adult dogs
It has been said many times that you can't teach an old dog new tricks. But thankfully this is far from the truth. While it is true that mature dogs will almost inevitably have bad habits ingrained in them, with patience and skill almost any dog of any age can be coaxed into learning what you want to teach it.
Punishment
No matter how frustrated you may become with your dog while trying to train or re-train it you must never, no matter what the conditions, become angry or upset and begin yelling, scolding or hitting your dog. To scream at or strike at your dog will only teach it to have a fear of you and that you are someone unpredictable.
This will cause the dog to become nervous and untrusting with the result that training, which is built on trust, will become only more difficult.
Reinforcement
Repetition is the key to learning and this is true not only for humans but dogs as well. Consistency and frequency are what will help your dog to learn even complex behaviors. Repeat, repeat, repeat… we just can't repeat it often enough. Even after your dog has learnt something, keeping up with the reinforcement through repetition is crucial to your dog not forgetting what you taught it. |
