This One Secret Will Surprise You,
But It Works Like Magic!

The nest guarded secret to successful dog training is not about how good a trainer you are or how intelligent your dog is; it is about you having the 3 P’s – patience, persistence and perspiration! The problem is not that the dog will not learn a new skill; it is how much patience and persistence you will have to ensure he does learn.

Lets look at the last P first. Perspiration. This does not mean that you have to work long hours to train your dog. On the contrary, your dog training sessions for the first year should not last longer than 5-10 minutes. That is a long time for a young dog. But you will work up a sweat if you do it well.

Patience is the most important trait you can have, if you want to be a successful dog trainer. Pups, like children, will constantly test you. Sometimes they just don’t ‘get it’, other times they just don’t feel like working and yet other times you will be sure they are giving you the one finger salute! Be patient – don’t let annoyance, frustration or anger creep into your training sessions. You can undo all the good work with just one such episode.

To be persistent means that you will get results. If you train one activity for 5 minutes, 3 times a day for a week, your dog will learn. Now that is not a lot of time, but because of the repetition and regularity of the sessions, your dog will grasp the concepts and you will feel proud of your achievements – and proud of your dog!

I know I have tried day after day to get my dog to take the first step in the training plan for a new skill and he just does not perform. Then suddenly on the fourth or fifth day he starts to ‘get the message’. This breakthrough is very rewarding. And another thing I have noticed, he is understanding much more quickly now than he did at first. This is probably due to him being older, but also because his intelligence level seems to have increased and because he understands the clicker method and looks forward to the reward.

You will find this book useful on dog training
as it will help you understand even further than what this short course can tell you.

You can strike a problem if you want to train the dog to do two different activities that require related actions. The dog’s intelligence will make them anticipate what you want and they may choose the wrong action. All you can do if this happens is to ignore the wrong action and give the command again. It also helps if you do not perform the similar actions one after the other.

In the video below you will see Cooper learning to roll over. The first step (not shown on the video) is to have the dog in the ‘drop’ position and to hold a piece of food under his nose and gradually bring your hand around over his shoulder. Keep going until he turns his body (not just his head). At the first movement of the shoulders, click and reward.

Eventually you will have him on his back. Click and reward again. Then keep your hand going over until he has to roll to keep the food in sight. When you do this more quickly the momentum of his shoulders going over will probably roll him right over, which is what you want. Whew! This can be the perspiration part!

Once he does that a few times, add the command ‘Roll Over’ and give a hand signal like a rolling action. If you are patient it will work and the dog will obey the command because he enjoys it - and the food reward!

Click on picture to see video

Teaching Cooper to ‘play dead’ required him to do part of the ‘roll over’ action. He had to start from a drop position then roll onto his side – but then he had to stay there without the complete roll. I made sure the hand action was quite different (a short, slicing action) as I used the command ‘Die’ – it sounded very different to ‘Roll Over’.

Once he was lying there, he had to remain still. If his tail wagged a little, or a foot jerked, or he licked his lips, I gave a short guttural growl to let him know that was not allowed. Eventually while he lay there, I could walk around him, step over him and touch him, without him moving. The ultimate of this trick would be to close his eyes and to be picked up and stay loose and floppy. I haven’t taken it that far, for one thing, with bulgy eyed dogs, it would be harder to teach them to close their eyes. He actually keeps his eyes staring without blinking which looks like dead eyes might look! Check him out in the video below.

Click on picture to see video

So, if you can be patient, keep your lessons short but regular and work hard yourself, you will have a dog trained in no time at all. Once you and your dog get into the habit of training you will want to do some regularly for the rest of his life. After all, dogs love training and you love a clever, well behaved dog. Keep in mind that a training session can tire a dog out more than exercise. So if it is a cold, wet day and you don’t want to go for a walk, substitute it with a training session.

Have a look at this book which will give you a more in depth approach and understanding to dog training – it even talks about ‘dog whispering’!