Читать книгу Clever Dog: Understand What Your Dog is Telling You - Sarah Whitehead - Страница 8

TOP TIPS ON BUILDING A GREAT RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR DOG

» Work on building a trusting relationship with your dog. Don’t assume he is trying to challenge you for ‘leadership’. The best dog/owner combinations are teams, not competitors.

» Start as you mean to go on. If you don’t want your huge, muddy dog getting on the sofa when he’s three years old, don’t let him do it when he’s twelve weeks old – no matter how cute.

» Start training early, the second that you can – especially with big breeds. The old adage that you can’t start to train a dog until he’s six months old is wrong. Just think how much easier it is for children to learn a new language than it is for adults.

» Be consistent. Agree rules and boundaries within your family – and stick to them. Write them down if it will help to avoid domestic arguments later. Dogs like to know exactly what they can and can’t do.

» Choose a training class that uses kind, fair and effective methods. The days of choke chains and ‘yank and jerk’ training are long gone.

» Use brain, not brawn. If your dog tries to manipulate a situation by engaging in a battle of strength, immediately disengage and use your superior intellect to defuse the situation. Many dogs enjoy physical confrontation – so you will ‘win’ by refusing to compete in this way.

» Replace negative commands with positive ones. For example, ask your dog to sit rather than nagging him not to jump up.

» Clicker training is a great way to teach dogs new tricks that can have an effect on their emotional states and the way they behave generally, not just their immediate actions. They also impress humans.