Is your dog's bad behavior causing you stress? Don’t just put it with it. It’s time to get down to some consistent dog obedience training. This means you need to be consistent and persistent with your training. However, training should always be fun for your dog or it will quickly get bored!

A Dog's Basic Need

With power comes great responsibility. If you don’t satisfy your dog's basic needs, you shouldn't be surprised if you have a badly behaved  or neurotic dog. What are the basic needs? Here are the main ones:

• water and food
• regular exercise
• social interaction with dogs and people
• an environment which stimulates him.

The main point in training your dog is to understand positive and negative reinforcement. When your dog engages in a behavior that is desired, you should reward him with a treat or affection. The treat or affection must come as soon after the behavior as humanly possible in order for it to be effective.

It’s best to concentrate on positive reinforcement for desired behaviors rather than negative reinforcement for behaviors you want to stop. This has been found to be a more productive way of training.

Physical punishment is not productive or compassionate way to train dogs and will only lead to a  fearful and neurotic dog. You can say a firm “No” in a growling tone of voice to stop him engaging in an unwanted behavior. Ignoring your dog and turning away from him is the most productive thing for you to do when he does something you don’t like. Dogs crave attention and if you ignore him - that will be negative reinforcement in itself.

An important aspect of training is to understand that a dog is a dog, not a human being. Don’t humanize him. It will help you to do this if you study dog communication and the dynamics of a dog pack. You read about what their body language means: the position of the tail, the mouth positions, the ear position and the sounds they make.

Another important aspect of training is to position yourself as the pack leader. If your dog is the alpha dog, he is never going to be well-behaved for you because he thinks you are one of his pack. Some advice on setting yourself up as alpha dog:
-eat a a little snack in front of your dog as he waits for his food. The alpha dog always eats first.
-don’t allow him to onto the bed or sofa. The alpha dog sleeps on higher ground.
-make sure you go through doors before your dog.

This is an introduction to some important points in dog obedience training. I recommend you look into the most systematic of training methods: clicker training.