How to Teach Your Dog Anything is a comprehensive guide to training your dog and addressing any behavioral issues they may have. I wrote this book to provide you with step-by-step instructions on how to effectively communicate with your dog and teach them new behaviors. I wanted to cover a wide range of topics, from becoming clear on what you want from your dog and setting up rewards, to avoiding common hesitations and obstacles to help you get started with training easier. I will highlight and show you the importance of thinking in terms of what you want your dog to do, rather than what you don’t want them to do, and provide practical advice on how to achieve this. You will also find tips on how to make training easy for your dog and how to prepare for potential challenges that always come up in training. With the help of The Dog Training Booklet: How to Teach Your Dog Anything, you can learn how to train your dog effectively and build a strong, positive relationship with them.
Since my nature is one of science and deep canine theory I also delve into the science behind dog learning and psychology to help you understand where behavior comes from and what influences your dog. You will learn the five key influences on behavior – genetics, chemistry, health, early experiences, and adult learning – and how they can impact your dog’s training. We will also discuss the importance of using the right reinforcement for each situation and how to control important variables like distance, duration, and distractions to set your dog up for success. With a focus on making training easy for your dog and avoiding common pit-falls, this book is a valuable resource for anyone looking to improve their dog’s behavior and build a stronger relationship with them. Whether you are a first-time dog owner or an experienced trainer, The Dog Training Booklet will provide you with the knowledge and tools you need to successfully train your dog and create a happy, healthy relationship with them. My goal is for you to utilize this book in the beginning stage of writing your training plan and for into your training journey. If you are just starting out you should keep this in your training bag, treat pouch, or in our pocket at all times.
Constantly refer back to the material we are going to cover until it becomes a part of your everyday life. When I first heard these skills and techniques from other trainers or when I discovered their patterns after working with so many dogs, I drilled them into my brain so that I would never lose them. This is what I want for you. This way of training can change you and your dog’s life if you learn how to implement it properly and take the right amount of action in training. I cannot guarantee that you will have overwhelming success and amazing results in an instant but I can tell you this. Every single one of my clients has been successful through my career as long as they followed what I am going to share with you in this book and they put in the work. If you do not put in the work, no amount of learning will help you. Vice versa if you take a lot of action but know knowledge of why, what, or how to do it then you are just wasting time, energy and money. Take what you learn in this book and do amazing things, go on amazing adventures, and transform your life with training.
Become Clear On What You Want
Before we can start training our dogs, you need to understand that your mindset has to be in the right place. Not just how you think, but what you think. Many people are caught up in the idea of telling their dog to stop doing something, or they want their dog to just relax. Well, what does that truly look like? What would the alternative look like? What if we asked our dog to do the thing that we wanted them to do? Thinking in this way is rather dangerous. Not because it’s not what you should do, but actually because you start to see the world in a completely different light. When instead of thinking in terms of what we don’t want, we start to think in terms of what we do want it becomes very clear what we need to do. For example, if I want my dog to stop jumping on the counter, it would seem there is only one outcome. Don’t go on the counter.
But it isn’t very clear what my dog should be doing instead. There are 800 other things that they could do that would be worse than them jumping on the counter. Instead of going to the counter, maybe they rummage through the garbage. Instead of jumping on the counter, maybe they jump on the dining room table. See, if we put our dog on a bed and we then call that bed “place”, we inadvertently stopped them from jumping on the counter, the dining room table, or rubbing through the garbage, because they cannot do both. When you start to think about this concept, you will understand teaching your dog becomes very easy. Your dog’s learning becomes almost automatic. Stop thinking in terms of what you want your dog not to do, but rather what you would like them to do. In order to start training you have to first identify what you want your dog to do. This does not have to be overly complex and shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to think of. This, of course, depends on the severity of the behavior problem you’re trying to solve or the complexity of the behavior you’re trying to teach. With practice, good trainers can do this almost automatically and since they’ve been training dogs for decades, they no longer have to think about this part. That is why it’s often seen as an over-sight.
Well, it’s so simple. I just think of what my dog should be doing and I teach them to do that thing. I want to break down exactly how you can go about fixing any problem behavior or scheduling out a training plan for any new behavior without wasting time through trial and error. If you were to think of something good and spend 6 weeks training it, it might not actually have solved your problem. Instead, you might have created a new problem or just wasted 6 weeks thinking you’re solving a problem and you’re only making things worse. Let’s look at two options for ending problematic behaviors that are going to save you time and stress during training. The first option is to teach alternative behaviors. These are behaviors that your dog can do alternatively to the behavior that they’re currently doing. This is not to be confused with incompatible behaviors. An alternative is defined as “available as another possibility”. That simply means that it’s another option for your dog to try out. When they try out this new behavior, they will get rewarded heavily for it, as opposed to the original behavior.
This is classically done with a dog jumping up on guests. However, is often misused since we forget the other aspects that we are going to talk about in this book. If alternatively from jumping on guests I want my dog to sit, first, I need to teach them to sit. I cannot expect them to do this alternative behavior when the original behavior is still so heavily reinforced. This is only due to the fact that they have only practiced jumping up until this point. What is it being reinforced by? The person greeting the dog. Why would my dog try anything new if the original behavior is still working? Why would you go on a diet when you get a lot of enjoyment out of the food you already eat? Something needs to be the catalyst for change. Something needs to indicate that this new alternative behavior is better than the behavior our dog is already doing. That’s where training comes in.
In teaching an alternative behavior, the first step is to identify what behavior you want to teach. What we’re going to do is look at what behavior is the problem and see if there’s any other behavior that would be easier for our dog to do with a little bit of training and could be automatically rewarded by the original reward event. In the case of our dog jumping up on somebody, having them sit can still be rewarded by the greeting of the individual or guest. I don’t have to change anything else about the environment or situation besides the original behavior turning into the alternative behavior. As long as the behavior you’re changing can still be rewarded by the situation, it’s most likely a fine behavior. All you have to do now is select whether it’s a known behavior or a behavior that you must teach. “Sit” is one of the most commonly known behaviors alongside “paw”. If your dog knows those two behaviors, you can use either of those to indicate they are allowed to say hi to some-body. Let’s look at another example so that you can start to have a well-round concept of alternative behaviors.
You’re looking to teach an alternative behavior for your dog pulling you on a leash. Oftentimes we overthink this and expect our dog to be in perfect alignment with one of our legs as we walk. This is due to an overuse of military-style dog training in civilian life. There is no need for your dog to be glued to your leg every single step of the walk. Instead, it should be expected that they stay within a vicinity that you’ve pre-determined. This might be a five-foot radius (the common length of any standard leash) and as long as they don’t pull you in any direction, it’s okay for them to go to the end of the leash. The moment they start pulling, we have a behavior that needs to be addressed. Following the same logic as with our first behavior, jumping on guests, let’s see if we can identify an alternative behavior that our dog can do. One of my favorites is simply calling their name. If they’re about to get to the end of the 5-ft radius, I simply say their name and get them to turn back towards me. Instead of expecting them to understand the pressure on the leash, which is something you definitely could teach as an alternative behavior, I’m simply requiring that they recall back to me when I call their name. Not only does this practice the recall for other uses but simplifies the walk. They’re allowed to freely walk on a leash as long as when I call them they stop what they’re doing and turn back toward me. I would then reward them with either going back to the walk, with a treat or with other rewards. I can use the walk as the reward so long as they came back to me. If they did not come back to me when I called them, we would not continue the walk.