Secrets to training your Staffordshire Bull Terrier (Part two)
Secrets to training your Staffordshire Bull Terrier (Part two)
Content posted by forum member Ben(Staffinating)
Session Length
Keep sessions short and enjoyable so that your dog maintains concentration throughout. Quality not quantity is the golden rule. In addition, you should always finish a training session on a positive note if you can.
Attitude
Be reasonable in your expectation of what your dog can achieve. It will take time to get results. You should ensure that you have the dogs full attention and that you are giving your best when performing a training session. You may wish to settle yourself or the dog down by taking a long walk before the session commences.
Praise
Use praise whenever your dog has completed an exercise correctly. Praise should also be delivered to your dog as soon as the desired act has been done (remember the section on timing). When delivering praise look directly into the dogs eyes so that he understands the connection between your voice or touch and his action.
Deliver praise verbally or with the hand by either patting or stroking him. Try not to over praise your dog, as excessive chatter will only serve to confuse him and may disrupt his concentration for the rest of the training session.
Alternating treats with displays of affection can be a useful way of overcoming problems that your dog may have in learning some of the exercises. Some types of dogs, like Beagles, do not often care for displays of affection in which case using food, as a reward, will produce much better and quicker results.
You should remember that when using treats you should deduct the amount of treats used for training from the normal diet. Too many treats = Big Fat unhealthy Dog.
Eye Contact
Using eye contact can be more effective than using the spoken word more so if there is a close bond between dog and owner. If a dog wishes to communicate with you, he will look directly into your eyes trying to read your intent. It is well known that dogs that do not make good eye contact can be difficult to train.
Spend time learning your dogs body language.
Hand Signals
Using a specific hand motion, while at the same time giving a vocal command, can be an effective way of training a dog to respond to different stimuli and is useful for getting your dog to respond at long distances. Eventually you can wean your dog off the vocal command so that he responds to the hand signal alone. Give hand signals in front of and above the dogs head as that is their best field of vision.
Voice Signals
Dogs, while being intelligent animals, will only be able to understand a few words, even this is more of an association between the sound you make and an action the dog has learnt to respond to the sound with. Use one command for one action and pronounce that command with the same tone and inflection. You should gain your dogs attention by saying his name before stating a command.
For example, fido SIT Will attract your dogs attention to the command to follow. Once you have his attention it is unnecessary to keep using the dogs name. It is important to know that your dog will not understand everything that you say and may misunderstand the meaning of what you say. For example if you have trained your dog to respond to the command Down it may perform the same action if you said the word Drown due to the vocal similarities between the words.
Similarly if your dog is lying on the furniture and you say Get Down the dog will probably not move as he has recognized only the Down part of the command.
We hope you enjoyed this training article. Watch out for more great training articles in future Staffy forum news posts.
Tags: staffordshire bull terrier, dog obedience, dog training, staffy training, staffy forum