Training your pet is a lot harder than some may realize. Just think of your pet as a child, if you have had children or you know the “rules” of raising them, its pretty much a “training” process. But in the human worl we don’t train our children we teach them. We need to realize that pets need to be taught right from wrong, the do’s and don’ts and so on. Even as adults we are always learning new things and conditioning the old. If you are lucky enough to send your pet to training class, you’re one step ahead. But what we don’t always realize is that you MUST continue that training. Pets forget, and its more than obvious that we do to. In bringing in a new pet to our family we have learned that it is so important to learn what their past training experience was and how we can continue that training experience now. When we first adopted Neko, he wouldn’t dare jump on the couch, or on people. Little by little, Neko started to test his boundaries. It started with a head on the couch, looking so cute and innocent. We’d pet his head for a while and think nothing of it. Then the next thing was his paw, no harm right? So we let him be. Well to state the obvious he has started to slowly “climb” the couch to sit with you. I hate to be a stickler, I really do, but in my adult life I have realized that this is not appropriate. Why? because when you have visitors not everyone is comfortable snuggling on the counch with a 95 pound dog. And its not always fun to sit in a pool of slobber either. We have a great pillow bed for him and that’s where he needs to realize that this is his special place.
OK back to basics, when a child does something wrong we don’t let them do it over and over again. We first try to correct it by tell them they can’t do that and direct them in the right place. But if they continue to do it over and over still, we then need to tackle this in a way that they won’t want to do it again. And that way is usually in timeout. They sit, they think about why they are there and then hopefully we won’t need to do it again.
So I hope we are all following this, timeout for the pup. Redirect him, tell him no in a stern voice and let him know you’re not happy. NEVER NEVER NEVER strike your dog!
