How To Raise A Good Dog

I have a wonderful, 12 year old dog that I’ve never trained. He doesn’t sit or down on command. Yet, he’s the most polite and relaxed dog in the house.

First on the list of how to raise a great dog is MANAGEMENT. Refrain from giving more freedom than a pup can handle. Control the environment and control the pup within it. Supervise 100% or keep the pup safe in a crate.

SOCIALIZATION is essential. A social dog understands and respect boundaries. When it comes to dogs, the human needs to establish and uphold social standards.

People succeed in teaching boundaries they find important. You may achieve 100% reliability in teaching your dog to stay off the new, white sofa but can’t prevent her from barking at squirrels. It’s impossible to teach a dog to respect a rule that you don’t really value –some people enjoy watching their dog bark at small animals, yet complain that it does! Your dog ‘hears’ your feelings more than your words.

Socialization mimics the way dogs communicate. It’s based on “don’t do that.” For example, ‘stay’ is actually ‘don’t get up’ and needs to be taught using that philosophy.

TRAINING is the act positively reinforcing desired behaviors. If you exclusively employ an all-positive-reinforcement method, you may not understand that I consider TRAINING as a “nice to have” and not an essential aspect of dog ownership. SOCIALIZATION requires the use of corrections paired with unwanted behaviors and makes sense to dogs.

You can’t TRAIN (using positive reinforcement) an anti-social dog to be RELIABLE any more than you can train a zoo animal to be reliable. The positive reinforcement method used with wild animals can appear quite successful until the animal loses its motivation to acquire the food reward or to perform the behavior. But, dogs are not WILD. We can (and we must) properly manage and socialize them to live in our world. Then, training is fun because you start with a respectful, willing student that understands authentic obedience.