by Dennis Fisher
This article is one of a great many articles written by Dennis Fisher about a very wide variety of subjects concerning different dogs, such as obedience training, breeding, showing, health matters, training problems and other subjects. All these articles appear on Dennis Fisher's websites. Visit http://www.allaboutgermanshepherddogs.com the site that has been set up specifically for German Shepherd Dog enthusiasts, or http://www.freedogadvice.com if you interested in a breed other than German Shepherd Dogs
Your voice
and the tone you use is very important indeed in obedience training and you
should take full advantage of using it correctly.
There are
basically only a few words that your dog needs to understand and it is important
to use them in a way that is likely to bring the best response from the dog.
There are six basic words that you are
going to use over and over again in dog training they are the following:
From a
practical point of view the most important of the six is the
word COME.
Nothing
can be more frustrating that going for a walk with your dog, letting him run in
a field, asking him to come and
then watching quite helplessly, while he completely ignores you; turns
around occasionally to see if you are there and then carries on doing what he
wants to, quite oblivious to your presence.
Because
the COME is such an important part of training, I am going to reproduce here an
article I wrote recently about tips you
can use to encourage your dog to come immediately you call:
Training
your dog to come immediately you call is one of the most important and
satisfying aspects of dog training. It can also be the most frustrating feature
of training if you don’t approach the training process correctly.
A dog that
returns to you immediately you call is a delight. A dog that carries on doing
what it wants to and completely ignores your command can be a maddening
experience.
How do you
make sure that you dog returns to quickly and willingly immediately you
call?
As simple
as the answer is, many people who have not had much experience training dogs
find it surprisingly difficult. The
secret is to make the experience so pleasant for the dog that it comes to you
with tremendous enthusiasm.
There are
a number of ways this can be done.
The method I’m going to describe in this article is a basic method you can use
if your dog has had virtually no training at all. Later in these series of dog
training articles you will find slightly more advanced methods.
Go to a
field, preferably one that is
fenced in some way, and have a friend accompany you.
Walk together on to the field with your friend and your dog on leash.
Then hand the leashed dog to your friend and run a distance away, about
fifty yards.
When you
are about 50 yards away from your friend and
your leashed dog, which will probably be straining to get to you, call
the dog by name, clapping your hands enthusiastically and shouting out:
“ROGER COME!” as pleasantly and as excitedly as you can.
When the
dog comes bounding towards you, make a tremendous fuss of the animal, expressing
enthusiastic and extravagant praise.
Repeat this process a number of times.
The whole
point of the exercise, obviously, is to make the dog WANT to come back to you.
By your excited attitude you will make the dog extremely keen to come
immediately you call.
The reward
for the dog is your extravagant praise, repeating it’s name over and over
accompanied with the “THAT’S A GOOD DOG!” as enthusiastically as you can.
Once you
have done this a number of times on different occasions, you will have
established the basic routine. At this stage of training no food reward is
necessary. Your enthusiastic praise
is all that is necessary to encourage your dog to come quickly back to you.
As
mentioned, this is the basic method to use where your dog has had very little
training. In subsequent articles more advanced training methods will be set out.
Advanced
training methods include a number of
tricks and also the use of good to make the dog come to you and sit
straight in front of you before returning to heel, but this falls outside the
scope of this present discussion.
The
word COME is also a very
good word from the point of sound, as are most of the other five basic commands.
SIT can be used very expressively, with the correct tone of voice as can
the word STAND which has a sound
that can be easily stretched out.
This also applies to the word
DOWN. This word is certainly
not stretched out in training it is expressed very much as a command.
It is an easy word to say and when you say it there must be no suggestion
of a request. You have told the dog
to DOWN and it must drop like a stone immediately.
In
training you have the advantage of training collar and a lead in your hand and
when you are training the dog to go DOWN you can accompany your command with a
very definite tug on the leash an force the dog to obey immediately.
It is of
the greatest importance that the dog does listen immediately.
I was once able to save the life of a fox terrier that I owned, while
still at school, by making use of the command DOWN
when the dog was running into the street in the face of oncoming traffic.
One
English word that is not as effective as the others, because of the soft sound
is the word HEEL.
It is not
an easy word to say with much conviction. Nevertheless most dogs seem to respond
to word quite adequately. The German word “Fuss” however is much more
expressive.
As far as
reprimands are concerned, the word NO is as effective in English as any other
training command in any other language.
Here again, it is the tone that is of the greatest importance.