Benefits of Dog Training from a New York City Dog Trainer

Benefits of dog Training 

Positive puppy training teaches that anything you ask the puppy to do is an offer to earn affection, fun, food and games.

There is no upside to ignoring you and there is no downside to complying. What you offer the puppy is always the most enticing choice. 

Puppy training is so much more than merely house training. Your puppy comes with a whole variety of character traits. Highly reward the traits you want to bring out and ignore the ones you’d rather see disappear. It will also help avoid all sorts of possible “nuisance behaviors” in the future. 

 I do not really love the term ‘dog obedience’ because is contains an element of coercion, A sense of the old fashioned “ you will obey or else you will be punished.”  I do not like people to have a relationship with their dog in which they just scream NO a lot. In all likelihood the dog simply does not understand what the human actually wants.

The wonderful thing about positive reinforcement dog training is that the dog really learns that he can control his world by pleasing the human. Complying is voluntary. In my opinion, that is what dog obedience really is all about, eliciting voluntary compliance. If you do not have that kind of relationship you cannot count on the dog to act appropriately in a difficult situation or emergency, when it really counts! 

Dog obedience training

We love our dogs, but we are so busy texting, e-mailing, making calls, running errands and going to work for long hours. We have so many obligations. With our hectic life styles, how realistic would it be to take time out for formal dog obedience training in NYC?

Yet there is no question that our dogs thrive on mental stimulation and crave interactions with their humans. Dogs are genetically wired to please us. It is also a wonderful tool to keep the communication alive so your dog is ready to respond to you at all times.

Once a basic repertoire of skills has been established, there are a million ways you can work them into your daily chores. It takes hardly any effort or time because you are still going about your business but using your own activities as distractions to solidify basic skills and generalize them. 

An example of a dog obedience exercise would be: ask your dog to sit while you get ready for work, walk around, open and close closet doors, put on your coat etc. voila! You have just practiced a long sit/stay with major distractions.
 

Another example: ask you dog to ‘go to his bed and lie down’. Then throw out the trash in the hallway. When you return, you release your dog. Again, this is another wonderful and simple but difficult part of dog obedience training incorporated into your chores. 

Teaching your dog to pick up dirty laundry and drop it into the basket or get you a drink from the fridge is a whole different realm of dog training. Afterall, dog training is as flexible as your imagination!

Elisabeth Weiss is a professional New York dog trainer providing common sense solutions for puppy training, dog behavior modification, dog training and dog obedience.