Training A Well Behaved Dog

When teaching dog owners how to train their dog, I like to take a 2 step approach to developing a well behaved dog. This process is; practice develops habits, habits develop behavior.
The first step to having a well behaved dog is to practice. This can come from working with your dog at home or getting some formal training done. Teaching the basics is what we are looking for. Work with your dog on the commands of come, sit, down, and heel. At Sit Means Sit Dog Training, we teach stay is implied “sit means sit”. Virtually any issue you would ever have with your dog can be solved with a few basic commands. Example if your dog is jumping on you or others, tell your dog to sit every time they come up to you or another person.
Now that we have the basics down we want to work on developing habits . Habits are made through repetition. At this point we don’t need to focus so much time on working with the basics, but rather make sure that your dog is being reminded of what they should be doing. No different than a kid being reminded to say please and thank you. Habits will typically start to form after a few weeks of practice. There is no time table for this stage in training, depending on the age of your dog behaviors you should start to notice after a couple months.
We have done all the hard work to develop some good habits with our dog, now we get to enjoy a well behaved dog. At this point your dog should know what is expected out of them. Spend your time still working on the things that give you a hard time. For the most part you should have to do minimal work with up keep of the training. However, you should continue to teach your dog new things and further their training to reach your dogs max potential.