You can make your dog more obedient and get rid of their behavior problems just by using the techniques that SitStayFetch teaches in their course, or at least that is what they claim. So I will be conducting a case study to determine if their dog training tips will work to make my dog obedient to my commands.
I will be evaluating how well their tips work by testing them on my German Shepherd dog, Bear. Bear is the perfect candidate to test their techniques on because he currently has no training and he is a young pup, around 8 months old. I will start off teaching him the ‘come’ command because this is his biggest problem right now.
Here’s a normal day with Bear. I let him outside so he can play and get some exercise. I soon notice he starts running up and down the fence with my neighbors dog playing tag and tearing up my garden. I call him with a “Bear. . .Come. . .” command and do you know what he does? He looks at me, acknowledging I said something, and then keeps on playing, completely ignoring me.
I then become very aggravated at my dog for not listening to me and repeat the come command with a louder yelling voice. Bear will then entirely ignore me and go on with his business of playing tag with his friend inside my garden. By this time, I lose my patience and go grab him by the collar and make him come inside, all the while yelling at him for not listening to me. I later found out that I was approaching training Bear the come command all wrong, because SitStayFetch teaches us that dogs think and behave differently than humans. SitStayFetch also teaches us how to properly use the command and they explain why doing it they way they teach works.
What exactly does SitStayFetch teach us about training our dogs to be obedient to our commands? They teach us that when we discipline our dog for not doing what we want, our dog is learning that the command is bad and they should not listen to it. So, if we give our dog the command, come, and then yell at him for not listening, the dog will relate that command to bad things and will not do what you want. You see, dogs learn from positive reinforcement. By getting mad and giving your dog a command, he thinks that command means he is in trouble and will avoid it whereas we think that the dog will learn that his actions were bad and will learn to do it right. SitStayFetch informs us that if we want our dogs to listen to us, we need to use positive reinforcement that rewards our dogs and teaches them by performing the command good things will happen.
If I want my dog to listen and obey the command, come, I need to use positive reinforcement so my dog learns that the command means good things will happen and that he should listen to the command. I also need to stop using the negative reinforcement of yelling and getting mad at my dog for not listening. To accomplish this, SitStayFetch has several great tips for us to learn from, but I will address the 3 tips I believe are the most important.
One: Get some treats that your dog will enjoy. You can try cheese, hotdogs, and dog treats. I use Cheetos for Bear because they are his favorite food.
Two: Make sure your voice is upbeat and happy when you give your dog the command.
Three: Make sure you have a long leash handy which will help reinforce exactly what the command means for your dog.
Now that SitStayFetch has taught me the correct way to perform the command come, I hooked Bear up to my 15 foot leash, got a small bag of cheetos in my jacket pocket, and went outside to teach him his new command. The results. . .
I let Bear go play and then gave him the come command. He just looked at me and went back to playing because he knew this command meant he was in trouble. So I tugged on his leash and pulled him into me all the while saying, “Good Boy Bear. . . Good Come. . .”. When he got up to me, I gave him his treat of cheetos and gave him a few pats on the head. I could instantly see Bears attitude change and he was now excited. I let him go play once again and then called him using the come command. This time, something miraculous happened, he came to where I was wagging his tail and waiting for his treat of cheetos. I was amazed and very pleased and so was Bear. Because of the techniques that SitStayFetch teaches, Bear learned how to come in a short period of time.
Does the dog obedience training tips that SitStayFetch teach really work to train your dog? The results I have seen in just 1 day of implementing the tips to teach Bear the come command are proof to me that yes they do work. SitStayFetch helped me accomplish in 1 day what I had been trying to teach Bear for months. It is so nice to have a dog that actually listens to your commands. Just apply the techniques that SitStayFetch teaches you, and your dog will be obedient in no time at all.
About the Author:
Discover how you can stop your dog’s behavioral problems and start to gain some knowledge on how to get your dog obey your commands. Visit this dog obedience training site to follow along with a comprehensive case study on dog training techniques where we experiment with some training methods to determine if they can prevent and handle problem behaviors in dogs.
