Teaching Your Dog Step By Step

Now that you have a bit of background on your dog's abilities and social abilities, it's time to look at the steps that work the best in teaching your pet to be intelligent. The rate at which your pet will respond to each of these steps will be determined by each animal's natural learning ability. While all dogs can learn, just as children, some are naturally brighter than others and will catch on faster.

If your pet does not catch on right away, do not get frustrated with them. Patience is a key factor in teaching your companion. He can smell frustration and it will upset him and increase any learning difficulties he may be encountering. Stay calm, and make teaching your dog fun for both of you and
you will soon find you have a very loyal friend with you.

IMPORTANT NOTE:
DO NOT give your dog treats as a reward for correctly obeying a command. Giving treats as an incentive gives your dog the idea he is obeying for food. This idea will make it almost impossible to train your dog well. You do not want a dog who only responds to hunger. You also don't want a fat pet. Your dog will obey because dogs follow the lead dog in the pack - and to this dog, that is YOU. Being part of a social species, he will want to be able to communicate with you beyond commands, too.

There are good times to give a dog a treat, but never after obeying an individual command. After a training class is a great time to give a snack. He will associate snacks with generally good behavior or just as something nice you do for him, instead of with obeying specific commands. Give him snacks for no reason at all sometimes, too, just because treats are neat to get. You don't want your dog to learn to manipulate you into rewards or to see you as a meal ticket. You want to build loyalty and a good companionship.

PUTTING LEARNING INTO CONTEXT

Putting learning into context is the most important factor in training. Your pet must learn to associate the words you say with specific items or actions. It is repeating words when you give him an item or when an action is executed that allows him to form the proper associations and to remember the words linked to the item or activity. The more fun they have doing something, of course, the faster they learn the word for it. Go figure.

It is important to NEVER tease your dog. It will confuse him about what he is learning. If you say "go" just to watch him get excited, then don't "go" anywhere, he might start to assume he doesn't know what you are talking about. He may unlearn the word or just become unruly because your words don't mean so much. A truly intelligent dog is one who isn't teased. Never lie to your dog.

When you teach your dog a word for a thing, either have the thing in your hand to show to him, or take him to the item immediately when you say the word. If that word doesn't come with the thing itself, there will be no association built. The same is true with actions. You must be engaging in the action at the time you say the word or there will be no association built. Once your dog has the association built, you can say the word at times you are not already engaged in the action or when you don't have an item in your hand and he will know what you are saying.

Dogs have memories, too, despite what you have been told. They could not learn anything if they didn't. Where the idea came from that animals don't remember events is anyone's guess. I would assume that ideas about the limits of animal intelligence arose from people who need to feel guilt free about abusing or eating animals, or maybe just didn't know how to train them correctly. Once the animal has learned a word, they have the means to think of this concept whenever they please, just as humans do.

There is a progression to teaching your dog and the steps you take in teaching him are very important to their learning process. Once the first steps are completed, other steps can take a more random nature as your dog will have learned the basic foundation upon which all of the rest of his learning will depend. Once the pet knows the basics, don't be surprised when he starts picking things up on his own.