In this simple but complete guide to know how we should educate our dog, we are going to work on the most important aspects of training in adult dogs. That is, a dog over twelve months old.
Although it may seem a bit strange since at general levels, tricks are taught to dogs since they are puppies, the ideal age to start a serious education begins from the year of life, that is, when the dog is already an adult .
No matter how old your dog is, with these simple steps you can educate it to do what you order. You simply have to be very patient and always remain calm, it will take a week or a month, but you will succeed. Let’s see what is the technique to follow to train a dog.
Before starting to train your dog – some tips and examples
It is very important to be clear that our dog detects our state of mind, that is, if he sees us nervous or angry, he will know it and he will also get nervous. That is why it is super important never to lose your cool, practice all the techniques with great patience and never scold, hit or look bad at our dog.
If our dog does something wrong, a “No!” followed by your name and ignore it. Physically assaulting a dog is indirectly teaching it that aggression is normal, so it will bite. Or just suppress him and scare him to the level of depressing him, only cowards beat dogs.
Educating an adult dog is not the same as educating a puppy , so you must understand that all these techniques are to be applied solely and exclusively with adult dogs. Or what is the same, dogs older than twelve months of life, fourteen or fifteen actually in larger breeds such as the Boxer.
There is only one way to train your dog well and that is to be persistent, always remain calm and use positive reinforcement. Some dogs take a week or two to learn and other dogs take three or four months, they all learn but each one does it at their own pace.
That your dog learns faster or slower does not mean that you are a better or worse trainer, it simply needs time to learn. Dogs over the age of eight at general levels usually need more practice to learn.
The ideal is to educate your dog when he has already used up his energies a bit, do not start educating him just when you leave the house because he will only want to walk and play. Let him play, walk around for a while and then you can start his education session. With an average of half an hour a day is enough, it is not necessary to force our dog.
Remember that the correct way to command the dog is by name, followed by the command. If our dog’s name is Tobby and we want him to sit down, we will give him the command “Tobby sit down!”.
How to train an adult dog to eliminate?
Here we have two options, to teach our dog to relieve himself inside the house but in a specific place, such as in the kitchen. Or teach our dog to relieve himself outside the home, that is, in the park or in the street.
To educate our puppy to pee and poop outside the home, the first thing we must do is set some timetables for walks and always respect them. For example, we can go out for fifteen minutes in the morning to pee and poop (around eight or nine in the morning, when we wake up). Then another outing to pee or home at noon (about one or two in the afternoon), a longer outing in the afternoon, where you can play, take a walk and relieve yourself, of at least one or two hours (at around seven or eight in the afternoon, nine if it’s very hot) and one last outing before going to sleep, to take a pee, at around eleven or twelve at night.
They are just a few examples of the routine that we must do every day, always at the same time. Dogs learn routines very quickly and if they have a bit of pee, they will know how to wait until their next outing to do it outside the house (as long as they know when it is time to go out).
If our dog pees or poops inside the house we should not scold him, or run his nose over his urine, or look at him badly or anything. We will just clean it up and ignore our dog.
However, if our dog pees or poops outside the home, coinciding with any of the scheduled outings that we must respect daily; we will wait for him to finish peeing or pooping and we will congratulate him a lot, with caresses, with words of encouragement and giving him a prize . Like for example a dog biscuit or a piece of sausage.
In this way, he will understand that peeing or pooping outside the home is very good and also has a prize, however if he does it inside there is no prize or congratulations. You will learn in no time, as long as you follow these steps daily.
If we want our dog to learn to relieve himself in a specific place in the house, it is best to buy absorbent wipes for dogs or a training tray.
Teaching him is so simple how to congratulate him a lot when he pees there, giving him caresses and rewards, a lot of positive reinforcement. And yet, ignoring it when it’s not there, don’t scold it, just ignore it.
How to train an adult dog not to bite?
If our dog bites us while playing or bites things around the house, such as furniture or slippers, we must teach him not to bite with these simple steps.
When our dog bites us while playing or bites a piece of furniture in the house or something that we do not want him to bite, we will simply scold him by saying his name and a “No!”
If you stop doing it, great. If he does not stop, we must insist again saying his name and a “No!” while we give it a small “touch” with the fingers at the height of the hips. What is vulgarly called a wake-up call.
Once he has stopped, we will take one of his toys or teethers and put it in his mouth for him to chew on. We can hesitate a bit, find him a little so that he is attracted to chew on his toy and when he does, we will congratulate him very much. It is important to continue playing with him for a while, so that he correctly associates that he can bite his toys but the rest.
This is the simplest way to teach a dog not to bite. But if your dog does not bite while playing, but bites out of aggression, you should go to a professional trainer to help you solve this serious problem. It would even be interesting for your dog to use a muzzle as long as he does not learn correctly not to bite, as long as it is aggressive.
How to train a dog not to bark?
In order to correct this annoying behavior, it is necessary to know what is the reason why our dog barks. There are many reasons and each one has its own learning technique, the most common are:
- Barking out of fear or warning, when the dog sees a stranger approaching home or when it is frightened.
- Anxiety barking is the most common when it comes to separation stress. That is, when the dog barks because we are leaving home.
- Antisocial barking, which occurs when the dog has not been properly socialized.
- Barking out of boredom is also very common since they normally spend a lot of time alone at home.
On the other hand, there are also anti-barking collars, which release a small vibration or electric shock / (depending on the model) every time the dog barks. Although in our opinion these are torture techniques, so we do not recommend them under any circumstances.
Once the reason why our dog barks is detected, we simply must follow the steps of the previously recommended guide and our dog will stop barking in a few months. It is not something that is taught in two weeks, we must be very patient and insistent.
How to train a dog not to run away and return to our command?
This is one of the simplest and most practical techniques at the same time, which not only we can but we must teach our dog in a compulsory way. A dog that comes to our command is a good dog, since it will save us many problems.
If our dog runs away or is about to cross somewhere he shouldn’t, he will come to our call if we have educated him correctly. However, you will ignore us and put yourself in danger if we have not spent time on your education.
We must cut several pieces of sausage and save them, we will use them as a treat for our dog later. The pieces should be small, no more than a centimeter large since we will use many.
We will go with our dog to a dog park or fenced area, where there is no danger that our dog can escape. There we will release our dog to play for a while and sniff the area a bit.
After a few minutes we will call you by name and then we will give you the order, for example “Tobby, come here!”. At the same time we give him the order, we must show a piece of sausage in his hand, so that he sees it and knows that if he comes he can eat it.
When you come, we will congratulate you very much and give you the piece of sausage. This is called positive reinforcement and it is the best way to teach a dog. We will allow a few seconds to pass and we will begin to walk, separating ourselves a little from our dog, and then call him and give him another prize and congratulations when he comes.
You have to practice this as many times as possible, always giving him a reward when he obeys. After a month or two, we can give you an award once if not once, although we will always congratulate you.
By teaching him to come at our command, we also teach him not to run away. Since when you do it will be enough to call u and you will come to us. Although there are also other reasons why a dog runs away, for example when female dogs are in heat or when they see a cat.
Remember that perseverance, calm and positive reinforcement is the trick to properly educating a dog.
