Dog Behavior Questions - How Your Attitude Affects Training

One of the biggest dog behavior questions centers around training style. Your training style and attitude greatly affects your success of training your dog. Sometimes more so than your dogs attitude does!.

You must have patience when trying to develop good behavior in your dog just about as much as raising a child. For the most part we as humans don't have that much patients. So when trying to train your dog to behave you may need to train yourself.

You will need to have training sessions daily in order for your dog to learn a new skill. The minimum amount of time you dedicate per day should be a half hour, but an hour would be optimal. However, if you are finding yourself losing your patience, you should end the session, regardless of how long this session has been.

You'll need to find the right length of a training session for your pet and perhaps work on expanding it. You have to remember you are dealing with a dog which has the attention span of about a two year old. Different breeds and individual dogs differ in their attention span as well.

In nature, dogs live in a hierarchical social structure, and many dog behavior questions can be answered by this. In their society, there is typically 1 leader in the "pack" - the alpha dog. In your house, you are the leader of the back. You must remember this when training and not let the dog take a leadership role.

When training your dog remember you are working with your companion. Be firm and assertive not angry or abusive. You are teaching you dog how to act towards others, including children and your neighbors. If you get upset and fail to be persistent you and your dog will fail.

There are dogs who are naturally easy to train, but not all of them will be this way. You need to have patience and remember that your dog wants to please you. Keep up on it consistently and your dog will eventually follow your instructions.

You must remember that when training a dog you must be patient and take your time. If you expect them to learn quickly you will be greatly disappointed. They cannot remember things as you and I can even a small child can remember more then they can. So remember to take your time and learn your dogs limits and eventually they will get the hang of what you are trying to teach them.

Breeds vary in their ability to be trained as do individual dogs. There are dogs more energetic and spirited by nature such as terriers, retrievers and Dalmatians. Some are more calm like basset hounds and collies. Age plays an important role too. A ten-week old puppy will not pay attention the same way a three-year old dog will.

The best way to train your dog is by working with their unique personality traits. Do not yell at your dog needlessly or use strong physical punishment whenever they don't immediately obey. This will not help train your dog. In the end, training is about building trust with your dog so that he will obey you by choice rather than through fear.