Using Positive Reinforcement to Train Your Dog

Using positive reinforcement to train your dog is essential if you want your dog to obey you all the time. Positive reinforcement is giving your dog something he loves e.g. a toy or a treat as praise for a command that he has just completed successfully. This is the animal equivalent to a parent giving their child money for doing household chores or for getting good grades in an exam. This kind of positive reinforcement teaches the dog that commands such as the recall or ‘leave it’ are good to obey because they will get rewarded at the end of it.

Shouting, hitting and punishing is the complete opposite of using positive reinforcement to train your dog, so should never be used. If you shout or hit your dog because he didn’t return to you when you first used the recall command your dog will eventually connect obeying the recall command with being punished and hit. This will reverse all your hard work and you will be back to square one with training your dog.

You don’t need to spend a lot of money buying the latest hi-tech equipment to train your dog effectively. All you need is time, dedication and a lot of patience. Using positive reinforcement to train your dog will improve your dogs training for both of you as you will have a lot more fun if your dog is willing to learn.

Alongside using positive reinforcement to train your dog and voice commands try to use hand gestures as much as possible. This will make it easier for your dog to understand what you want. For example, if you are practicing the recall command your dog will be far away from you. Therefore if you only use a voice command your dog could become confused if he has misheard what you said. If you use hand signals as well as voice commands, your dog will be able to see you from a distance so the training will be a success every time.