How to Train Your Dog

By on May 20, 2019

A dog provides unconditional love and friendship to a caring owner. A well-trained dog increases your pleasure and satisfaction ten times over, as compared to an untrained dog. Studies have shown that a well-trained dog is a happier and more content animal than one who is not. At Midway Dog Academy, we have been training dogs for some years now, and our objective is always to have a pet that is happy in any situation, including coming in contact with children or other animals. We have been successful in accomplishing this with absolutely no cruelty and without breaking a dog’s spirit. When proper training techniques are employed, you will be surprised how quickly a dog will learn to follow your commands.

Many people believe that dog training is hard. Many also find that some dogs are not trainable. Both of these views are wrong. The truth of the matter is this: all dogs are trainable, and training a dog doesn’t have to be hard work. Indeed, training a dog can be fun. It is, of course, true that some dog breeds are easier to train than others. What we disagree with, however, is the assertion that there are dogs which can’t be trained – because that is so untrue. What we venture to explore then, are some of the things you need to do, to get the training of your dog right.

Check out our Dog Training in Omaha page for options! And for potty training help, click here.

Early initiation as the key to success in the training dogs

Simply put, there are some skills that you can only teach a dog when he or she is young. This means that the commonly held belief that puppies below six months of age shouldn’t be trained is altogether wrong. There are some skills you’ll find hard to teach a dog that is older than six months. It is worth noting that unlike us humans, dogs are (in some ways) highly evolved animals – whose life skills learning process starts the moment they are born. That is why a puppy that loses his mother at three months of age may be able to survive in the wild, whereas it would be very hard for a human baby who lost his mother at the same age to survive on his or her own in a similar environment.

A dog’s memory

We all know that goldfish have short memories. However, you may be surprised to know that dogs also have short retention memories. If you could tell your dog something, it is likely that by the next day or a few hours later, they will have forgotten. On the other hand (or paw) dogs do have incredibly good associated memory. This means that if your dog can associate something with what you tell it, then it will likely remember what you told it for years to come. For example, if you said your dog (assuming you could speak the doggy language) that the chocolate biscuits were in the cupboard your dog would probably forget this within a few hours. However, if you showed your dog where the chocolate biscuits were, repeating the words ‘chocolate biscuits’, every time you said ‘chocolate biscuits’ it would probably go straight to the cupboard. It may also search the cupboard every few hours for the rest of its life looking for the chocolate biscuits, but that’s not the point.

Communicate with confidence

When training your dog, especially a dog new to you or new to training, your movements and body language should give off an air of calm, relaxed confidence. As much as is realistic, remain upright without being rigid. (Remember your facial expression? Your body language should also “invite learning.”) As a rule, an upright but relaxed posture helps communicate confident authority – an excellent teaching posture. If your body needs to bend, keeping your shoulders relatively back will help maintain a bearing of self-assurance. While this is more important with a dog beginning its training, and with naturally effusive or assertive personalities, any dog can become confused by too much bowing, bending, ducking, and bobbing. He may naturally assume that you are playing, acting submissive, anything but training! Any hand signals associated with commands should be clean, simple, and definitive. They should be free from excessive, meaningless motion, and should never be used to threaten or pester the dog.

At Midway Dog Academy, we offer you years of experience and knowledge as well as a variety of dog services. You don’t want just anyone training your dog; you can trust our team to take care of your dog and all of his/her training needs. Midway Academy provides a wide range of dog training services for new puppies, adult dogs, and even senior dogs. If you are searching on internet “dog training near me” then finding the right dog trainer can be challenging to choose from hundreds of results, that’s why you needn’t look any further than right here.

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