Barbara J. Tharpe

Your dog will perform best on a healthy diet. The effects a bad diet has on your dog extend further than you might think. Not only is this bad for their health, but it can influence their behavior towards you and their environment. Simply enhancing a dog’s diet can make a big difference in its receptiveness to training. Training is arguably among the most important things you can do for your pet. Dogs, like human children, need discipline and self-control to feel like they fit into the family. Your dog will be happier after going through training, because he knows what you expect him to do and how to please you. You can learn more about how important training your dog is.

Feed your dog a healthy diet. A poor diet will negatively affect your dog’s skin, eyes, muscles, bones and joints. It can not only damage their health, it can also influence their behavior. Improving your dog’s diet can make training him easier.

Do not quit when you are training your dog. While it may be frustrating at times, if you don’t persevere and constantly reinforce the teachings to the dog, your efforts will be wasted. You always need to keep training your dog, just like you need to continue feeding it and providing it shelter.

You should always keep the tone of training sessions upbeat and positive with lots of praise. Always reward your dog when they successfully respond to a command. Your dog will become fearful and less responsive to commands if you attempt to use fear and punishment as training motivation tools.

When you are working on crate training with your dog or puppy small steps is what works best for them to get used to it. If your dog seems comfortable inside the crate when the door is open, shut it and feed them a treat. Gradually increase the amount of time your dog spends in the crate, starting with just a few seconds. If the puppy becomes upset, you may be progressing too quickly.

It is not good for a puppy to train too often, it will wear it out if it has to process too much information. A puppy has a short attention span and limited energy to focus, so keep your sessions brief and as positive as possible. A training session that wears your puppy out is going to turn into an unpleasant memory, making him less likely to respond well to subsequent sessions, and more inclined to ignore what you are trying to teach him. Keep your sessions short to accommodate a short attention span. Dogs can only handle a short amount of training at a time, so don’t overdo it. Training sessions should be limited to about 10 minutes of time or less.