Fundamentals of Training Your Dog

My family, friends, and co-workers know I'm a CPDT-KA dog trainer which means I get asked a lot of questions about their dogs. The question is never, "Why is my dog so adorable?" but is usually something along the lines of, "Why is my dog __________?!?!?!?!" Fill in the blank: Chewing my shoes, peeing on the carpet, nipping me, digging, barking, jumping, humping, the list goes on and on! By the time my friends ask me this questions, the "F" word is usually involved...and I don't mean "Fun"! They usually look something like this:

 

I have one piece of advice that will explain the "Why is he doing this?" question:
Everything a dog does is normal dog behavior. It's just how and when they decide to display that behavior that makes it okay to humans or not.

Digging? Totally normal.
Barking? Totally normal.
Chewing? Totally normal.

You get the point.

So where do we go from here? There is one fundamental to remember. This applies to dogs, cats, birds, kids, co-workers, spouses, bosses, siblings....anything that has the ability to learn. (Insert joke about siblings not being able to learn here.)

Anything that gets rewarded will happen more often. Period.

Your dog (and co-worker and parent and kid and spouse) is doing things because something happened that made them think it was worthwhile to do again. For example, you go to work and on Friday, you get a paycheck. You think to yourself, "Hm. That worked out well in my favor. I think I'll do that again!" And you return to work on Monday.

Your dog digs in the garden, finds a delicious, juicy worm and thinks, "Hm. that worked out well in my favor. I think I'll do it again!"

If you can remember that one fundamental, then you can pretty much solve any problem you're having. Don't worry, in future posts, I'll go into more details on specific problems, but remember this:
"Anything that gets rewarded will happen more often" will help you understand what's going on. You just need to harness the power for good!

For example, when you ask your dog to sit and they do it, reward them. Then they will think, "Hm. That worked out well in my favor. I think I'll do that again!" See? And THAT'S the dog you want!

Until next time... Have a great day!