Fundamentals

Like people dogs learn through practice and repetition.  Behaviors need to be ingrained into their life for it to become habit.  Therefore, training your dog should be a constant process.  You should have set training times where you go over lessons with your pup in short intervals but the lessons can be extended beyond just the set training times. 

It takes a village to train a dog.  Everyone in the family must, know the rules for the dog, actively participate, and keep the consistency of the training.

Once you have delivered a confident and clear message you must remain consistent with your training.  Your dog will not get the lesson on the first try and once he does get it he will need ample reinforcement to get it in his head and make it habit.  Each time you have a training session with your dog you should keep your message consistent with how it was taught last time.  Never change commands on your dog, if you had your dog bark when you said the word "bark" do not change it to "speak."  If you have more than one person training your dog make sur

Imagine living in a world where you didn't speak the language.  Where things were controlled for you buy creatures who you could not verbally communicate with.  You would likely do your best to follow what you thought they wanted but unless they were very clear in showing and demonstrating things to you, it would be a horribly confusing experience.  If there was any confusion on what they wanted you would do your best to comply and often, simply because you were guessing, get it wrong and get in trouble.  Welcome to a dogs world. 

To train a dog you must be clear.  You must be aware of the messages you are sending and make them simple, direct and timely to clearly communicate with your dog.  It is not as easy as it sounds but practicing clear messages will help you and your dog to get on the same wavelength. 

If you find that you are really uncertain about your training abilities and you lack the confidence to know you are correctly communicating with your dog, it is not hopeless.  A few simple steps and you will be quickly on your way to building your conficence and opening the communication lines with your dog.

Asside from a fundamental fear of dogs, which should be dealt with prior to getting a dog, there are four main causes for lack of conficence in dog owners. 

We have all seen it, perhaps in a puppy class or at the dog park, an owner says a command "sit" or "come" trying very hard to sound firm but something about it sounds half hearted and what does the dog do?  Look at the owner and do exactly what it feels like doing.  But suddenly along comes a trainer and they say "sit" and instantly the dog's butt hits the ground.  What happened?  The dog could tell in the inflection of the voice that the trainer was serious and confident and it was in the interest of the dog to trust the trainer and sit.&nb