Dog Obedience Training: Causes Of Problem Behaviors By Dr. Mayra Alfonso At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

The most effective dog obedience training is the one that can solve dog problem behaviors such as digging, chewing, your dog biting, and dog barking too much. Unfortunately, there is no one set of obedience training techniques that will be effective on all kinds of dogs. Each kind of dog will respond differently to various techniques. And this is when the creativity and resourcefulness of the dog trainer come in. The dog trainer does not read a manual and follow it blindly. Dog trainers decide which techniques are effective based on fundamental principles of dog training. And the most fundamental is the identification of the cause of the problem behaviors. Here are some of them.

Anxiety

Training the dog and removing problem behaviors involve knowing the cause of the problem behaviors in the first place. Why is the dog or the puppy behaving in such a manner? There are several common reasons for problem behaviors. One is called dog separation anxiety. Dogs, like humans, are social animals. The wild dogs hunt in packs and dogs will always welcome the affection of their master. But what if the master goes away during the day? What if the dog is taken to a training school? The dog will experience separation anxiety.

Miscommunication

Another common cause of problem behavior is miscommunication or the lack of communication. The dog does not have a frontal lobe that is as big as humans’. And this is why dogs do not make a lot of inferences and abstractions. But the dogs learn by association, similar to the classical learning theories described by psychologists such as Pavlov and Skinner. When a pet is given a treat, it assumes that the master likes its most recent behavior and will associate such behavior with the dog treat. Unfortunately, not every dog owner is aware of this method of learning of dogs. As a result, the dog does not know what its master wanted. At the same time, the master gets frustrated and irritated. This irritation is communicated to the dog and the dog’s problem behaviors multiply.

Inconsistency

The best way to train a dog is to maintain consistency. If a behavior is unacceptable, it must be met with a correction. This unacceptable behavior must remain unacceptable. For example, the dog may start chewing the carpet. This is horrible and replacing the carpet is expensive. The dog is given a correction. But at the next hour, the dog may start chewing the flip flops of a sibling. It appears funny and the dog is given food. From the dog’s point of view, the act of “chewing” is not “bad.” There are things it can chew and things it cannot chew. As a result, the dog starts chewing everything in order to see which one is approved and which one is not.

Leadership Challenge

It is the nature of dogs to challenge the leadership of the dog trainer. This is not done out of spite but out of the primordial instinct to survive. The dog wants to know that the leader it recognizes is a strong and fair leader that could be trusted in everything, including its life. This is one of the crucial reasons why dogs must undergo obedience training. It will demonstrate to the dog that the dog trainer is the master.

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