training an adult dog.
November 16th, 2009
training an adult dog is not impossible, but it must have at least some degree of. In the first place, it is not very likely that you will be able to teach your dog to do tricks if it is a badly behaved dog .
The basic commands such as sit, down, heel etc, should be known by your dog before trick training begins, as this will make life so much easier in the future. Once your dog has learnt these, you can start to build on them and your dog will soon be amazing your friends with the following 3 common tricks.
Begging.
It’s best to get your dog to sit in a corner of the room with it back to the wall and you standing in front of him/her when you start teaching it this trick. The walls will help your dog gain the confidence that he/she won’t fall over if he/she raises his/her front legs off the floor.
Take some small pieces of food and hold them above your dog whilst luring it into reach up for it. Every time he takes the food, praise him and repeat this procedure slowly encouraging him to reach higher every time.
Whilst encouraging the dog to reach up for the food, you have to make sure that he/she is keeping its backside on the floor.This is achieved by moving the food forwards over his/her head slightly making the dog shift its weight back over its hindlegs teaching him/her to keep balance.
Once these have been mastered, you can begin to teach it some tricks and your dog will soon be amazing your friends with the following three simple tricks. At this stage, you should expect the dog to seem to be going backwards in its learning, but this is to be expected until the dog is able to perfect it by just using its own body weight.
Shaking hands.
There are two parts of this trick for your dog to learn. Both, a verbal part and a non-verbal part which work together to give the dog a cue that you want him/her to perform the trick.
In the first place, the dog should start off in a sitting position. Make a single word verbal command such as ‘shake’, while at the same time reaching out with your right hand until it is just a few inches from your dog’s right leg. Your outstretched arm becomes the non-verbal cue.
Initially, your dog will probably just sit motionless not sure of what to do, so with your left hand, kindly push its right leg forwards until it rests in your right hand. Once he/she has done the trick properly, praise him/her so that it knows he/she has done what you wanted it to do.
Practise this trick several times; praising after each successful result and gradually reducing the amount of left hand prompting until only the verbal and non-verbal cues become everything that’s necessary.
An important factor to take into account when training a mature dog to do these tricks is that the dog will learn at its own pace.
Never scold your dog if he seems not to be learning, it is always better to be patient and give it more encouragement.
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