A family pet, such as a dog, can be a great experience for everyone involved. Dogs offer you not only companionship but loyalty. Unfortunately, many people don’t take the necessary steps when the dog is younger to properly train them for every day life. Yes, there’s the typical “No” and training them to not go in the house but how many people can say that their dog actually goes and waits at the door for them if they need to use the bathroom? I can tell you right off the bat that I’m one of them. How? I properly trained my dog!
From the first day of having my dog, I made it a point to put myself (and her) on a schedule for using the bathroom. It’s hard to train a 3 month old puppy, this I know, but if you’re determined enough to work through it than over a rather short period of time you’ll notice your dog is doing everything you’re telling it to do without having to yell commands in their direction. A big thing for me was a dog training collars. Now, I did wait until she was approximately one years old before I used a training collar on her. I felt it was inhumane to shock/zap a puppy so I used voice commands as well as hand gestures to get my dog where I wanted her. If you say “pee pee” or “poo poo” she’ll go and sit at the door to wait for you to put a collar on her. After you put the collar on her, if you happen to need to run back because you’d forgotten something, she’ll stay at the door and patiently wait for your return. If you say “no!” she’ll stop whatever she’s doing and walk over to you, sitting down right in front of you waiting for her next command. Roll over doesn’t require a hand gesture either, she just knows what the term ‘over’ means, dogs know only one word at a time that’s how their brains work. It’s easy for them to remember their names because there’s only one part of their name that they actually hear – or at least that’s what I’ve read.
One thing that I did have trouble with, with her, was the barking at strangers. Living in New York she wasn’t given the ability to socialize with many people because of the area I lived in. Now that I’m living in a gated community in Delaware (probably one of the nicest states on the Eastern Shore) she’s had the ability to interact with not only other dogs, but strangers as well. She no longer barks when someone walks by but that’s not the case for one of the older dogs in the house.
If you’ve ever gone past a house and instantly heard the sound of a dog barking in excess I’m sure your initial reaction is “Wow, glad I don’t live there!”. Welcome to my world because I’m living in that house. We have an older dog that does not interact well with anyone, even the wind. She barks in excess and can be vicious around men. It’s impossible to socialize her because not many other dogs in the community would bother to giver her the chance considering her barking would more than likely scare them off. For quite some time my fiance and I have considered getting a bark collar for her but the actual owner of the dog is against it. It doesn’t hurt the dog, she’s an overweight 10 year old dachshunds so a beep in her ears or even a small zap to the throat that will stop her from barking and annoying every single person in a 100 foot radius, would not hurt her by any means. When it comes to this other dog, I’ve looked into many different collars but after doing some research I’ve found one on pet-super-store.com that’s more than likely the best thing for her. I’ve pasted the image off to the side, it’s a solid piece of technology that would have a huge impact on how this dog acts on a daily basis. It would be nice to live in the quiet dog house, you know?