Home & Family Facts and Notes

A pet dog is indeed a man’s best friend, but only as long as the dog is well-trained. A dog with bad habits can wreck havoc in your home, during meals, sleeping hours and play time. Developing bad habits are easy for dogs, just like a child would. The dog has to be trained to work with you, not against you and cooperate with you on feeding, playing, walking, sleeping and toilet training times and methods.

Having a well-trained dog can be a great pleasure, but getting there is not very easy. It is a journey that you and your dog have to make together - trite as that sounds, it is true. First of all, make sure that everybody in the family has something to do with the dog, and is familiar with it.

Next, make sure that everybody agrees on exactly what the dog’s role is going to be. There are a few questions that need to be settled - where will the dog sleep, what are the places in the house the dog is not allowed in, when will the dog be fed, where will it be fed, who will take it for walks? For the dog to develop an attachment for everybody in the house, and the other way round, it is a good idea to involve everybody in these things.

After everybody agrees on these things, make sure that you stick to the routine. Dogs are creatures of habit, and they feel much more secure and much happier if they have a routine they can get used to and rely on.

Feeding times are very important. Do not feed it outside those times, though the occasional treat is fine. The dog needs a fixed schedule it can depend on, regarding when it will be fed and when it will be let out or taken for walks. If this routine is broken, you cannot really blame the dog for making messes it is not supposed to make.

Once the essentials are taken care of, you can move on to simple commands. Here, nothing works as well as bribery - be lavish with praise, and fairly generous with treats, and you will be amazed at how quickly he learns.

Every time your dog does something right, encourage and pet it, and let it know that it did something right.

A dog will make mistakes during the training period, but don’t lose your temper at that. You can’t train a gentle loving creature like a dog by putting in fear to it, so focus on treating it with love and respect and you’ll have a well-trained dog forever.

Tags: home improvement, home