How Does You Dog Process Training Information?
Before you dismiss your dog as dumb, think about the last time he pawed your leg under the table and gave you those big sad eyes. He was letting you know what he wanted, and this is far from dumb!
The relationship between dogs and humans goes back thousands of years, and one reason that it has been so successful is because we communicate in a way that they understand. Consider your dog bringing a tennis ball to lay at your feet. Without any words being said, you know that it is time to play fetch!
These are just two ways that your dog can tell you what he wants and what he is thinking and this shows that indeed, he can learn!
Through language and body posture, they communicate with us, but remember that they process it very differently from the ways than we do.
Remember that your dog’s eyes will respond very differently to color, and they can see very well in low light. They can turn their ears around very quickly and accurately, which lets them figure out where sounds come from, and don’t forget that famous sense of smell.
These differences lead to a difference in the way that their minds work, and the way that they figure out cause and effect is very different from the way that we do.
Consider classical training, where you learn to associate a stimulus with a response. This is something that humans can ignore pretty easily. For instance, we can shake off an undesired response to a car accident or a visit to a doctor much more easily than a dog can.
Operant conditioning, where positive and negative reinforcement is used, is something that dogs and humans respond very differently to.
Whenever I am going to go play fetch with my Golden Retrievers, I go out the back door. Whenever I do this, we always play fetch. On the other hand, when I let them out the side door, I never go with them, and I just let them go outside for half an hour or so. Because of this, they know to go to the back when it is time to play games.
With every command that I give them, I always use a very specific tone and hand gesture. This helps them learn a lot of desirable behaviors, which means that they can sit, stay, lie down, come, roll over, let go of something, fetch and release, even eliminate at my say so.
However, consider the fact that telling them not to eat something off the floor that will give them a bellyache is not going to work, no matter how many times they suffer through it. There is just too much of a time lapse that is in place there for them to really figure out what they need to do to stop it from happening.
What you should take from this information is that your dog, whether he is a Shepherd, a Retriever, a Basset Hound or a Dachshund, can learn a lot, if only you remember that he is a dog and not a human!
For instance, look at dogs that can dance on command on the show circuit, or search and rescue dogs that can locate small children and pull them from swollen rivers and bad avalanches. Service dogs can do everything from opening a door to pulling a wheelchair to guiding a blind person.
Remember, though, that they are not people, and that even when they try to act like us and communicate like us, they are still going to do things like eat little dead critters they find in the yard and turn around three times before they sleep!
Learn to select the correct Dog Bedding for your dog. Do not allow Puppy Potty Training become a prolonged or tedious experience.
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