Your Checklist For Training The West Highland Terrier

Obedience training with your West Highland Terrier can be a fun activity for you both. It gives them mental stimulation, which they enjoy, and it also helps you bond with your best friend and help shape their behavior into what it should be for them to fit into your society. For the most part, training a Westie is not difficult if you do it correctly. Below are a checklist of things to remember when training your West Highland Terrier.

1. You should always try to remain positive - Westies respond badly to harsh techniques such as hitting or tugging them on a chain. Always reward your Westie's good behavior and avoid the temptation to punish them for anything. If you do, they might become stubborn and hard to train.

2. Keep your training sessions short. Generally, a Westie will not do well being trained for long periods at a time. Instead, try to limit each session to about 10 minutes and keep it fun and interesting.

3. Make sure you have the right supplies. Typically, if you're going to be positively reinforcing them you need some sort of reward. This is often food treats at first. Also, you should keep your Westie on a leash, particularly in public. As they are a terrier breed, if they see something to chase they will generally chase it due to their prey instincts.

4. Don't move too quickly - a Westie is a fairly smart breed, but don't expect the same results as training a Border Collie or German Shepherd. Start with the basics and progress at their pace. Soon enough you'll find that with enough patience you will get the results you're looking for.

5. Try using a clicker - since your Westie will respond well to positive reinforcement, making use of a clicker will help speed things along that little bit more. When clicker training, you use a device to make a click whenever your Westie does something correctly and reward them. The result is they more quickly associate their behavior as being a positive action.

6. You should always start training a dog early - and this is especially true of a West Highland Terrier. If you allow them to develop behavior problems and set no ground rules then they may become next to impossible to train later on. At the very least it will be much more difficult to correct a Westie's behavior problems once they become set in their ways.

7. Socialize your Westie well. This means letting them meet as many people and other dogs as possible - while they're still a puppy. They are a generally friendly breed and should enjoy this process. Doing so will make them much more pleasant once they reach adulthood.

8. Keep training your Westie - even once you've mastered the basics with them, keep teaching them new things so they have new mental challenges. This keeps them from getting bored and developing any destructive behavior.

If you want to learn more about facts about the West Highland Terrier and other related topics take a look at this page.