Dog Training
Hello the people who may have accidentally clicked on this, I hope your day is going well. So this week I've been observing some dog training. As I'm taking a year out I thought that with all of my veterinary clinical work experience, I could do some other work experience on the other parts of veterinary, as I'm very interested in the human animal interactions I thought that watching some dog training would be beneficial. So here are a few of my observations from my week doing that.
First things first I have to say that dog training is so important, it allows you to understand your dog and what makes them tick, you get to learn their incentives. This is vital because dogs want to please us they love being rewarded and gaining your praise. Also dog training allows your dog to learn to use its brain and it teaches the dog discipline and self control. For example in some of the classes I watch with the puppies all the way to more experienced dogs, they all did the same obedience course, the basic version was walking the dog on the lead through it, then was letting go of the lead and finally no lead. These obedience courses forced the dogs to use their brains and bodies. The amount of brain power used did mean that for the younger dogs this could only be done a few times before they became unfocused. Lisa the lady who runs the training told me that you never want to set the dog up for failure, so as soon as she noticed that the dogs were starting to tire she would stop the dogs and we would change the exercise into a retrieve, so we would hide a treat under a cone, within a group of cones and the dog would have to find it. This was the fun part for all of the dogs, the more experienced dogs would watch the treat being placed under the cone then have to complete the whole obedience course off the lead then at the end go and find the treat. This exercise really taught the older dogs and more experienced dogs concentration whilst working.
A few tips I picked up from my week were, when trying to get your dog to heal or obey to a command start simple for example rewarding the dog when it walks by your side and slowly loosening off the lead until you aren't holding the dog at your side it is just walking there, a treat in the hand will always help with this, when a dog is first being trained eye contact is very important this keeps the dog focused on you so that they listen to your command words. Remember always reward the dog if they do something well, and use the same words for commands so that the dogs understand, using hand and arm gestures can also help as dogs are very intelligent animals and can read body language and link it to a command. With dog training repetition is key, if you keep repeating the good behaviour and rewarding your dog they will learn and eventually you can wean them off the treats.
With the dog training Lisa said that each week she did some this way the dogs and owners don't get bored, plus the dogs are constantly learning new things without realising it. One of my most important lessons I learnt was that dogs have a choice, especially with the older dogs giving the dogs a choice this way the dog wants to please you, you don't have to raise your voice or punish the dog given the choice they want to do the thing that will earn a reward.
So that is all for today I hope you enjoyed it, I will be back next week with an update some veterinary news and more stories to tell. Hope you all have a brilliant weekend. Thank you for reading.
First things first I have to say that dog training is so important, it allows you to understand your dog and what makes them tick, you get to learn their incentives. This is vital because dogs want to please us they love being rewarded and gaining your praise. Also dog training allows your dog to learn to use its brain and it teaches the dog discipline and self control. For example in some of the classes I watch with the puppies all the way to more experienced dogs, they all did the same obedience course, the basic version was walking the dog on the lead through it, then was letting go of the lead and finally no lead. These obedience courses forced the dogs to use their brains and bodies. The amount of brain power used did mean that for the younger dogs this could only be done a few times before they became unfocused. Lisa the lady who runs the training told me that you never want to set the dog up for failure, so as soon as she noticed that the dogs were starting to tire she would stop the dogs and we would change the exercise into a retrieve, so we would hide a treat under a cone, within a group of cones and the dog would have to find it. This was the fun part for all of the dogs, the more experienced dogs would watch the treat being placed under the cone then have to complete the whole obedience course off the lead then at the end go and find the treat. This exercise really taught the older dogs and more experienced dogs concentration whilst working.
A few tips I picked up from my week were, when trying to get your dog to heal or obey to a command start simple for example rewarding the dog when it walks by your side and slowly loosening off the lead until you aren't holding the dog at your side it is just walking there, a treat in the hand will always help with this, when a dog is first being trained eye contact is very important this keeps the dog focused on you so that they listen to your command words. Remember always reward the dog if they do something well, and use the same words for commands so that the dogs understand, using hand and arm gestures can also help as dogs are very intelligent animals and can read body language and link it to a command. With dog training repetition is key, if you keep repeating the good behaviour and rewarding your dog they will learn and eventually you can wean them off the treats.
With the dog training Lisa said that each week she did some this way the dogs and owners don't get bored, plus the dogs are constantly learning new things without realising it. One of my most important lessons I learnt was that dogs have a choice, especially with the older dogs giving the dogs a choice this way the dog wants to please you, you don't have to raise your voice or punish the dog given the choice they want to do the thing that will earn a reward.
So that is all for today I hope you enjoyed it, I will be back next week with an update some veterinary news and more stories to tell. Hope you all have a brilliant weekend. Thank you for reading.
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