1. Not following through.
There is one crucial rule you need to follow when training your new pup, CONSISTENCY! Dogs understand in black and white so u need to be very clear, any grey areas can confuse you pup and lead them to feel frustrated and disregardless to your commands. For example: when your pup is little you cuddle him in the couch when he will grow up we will not allow him to stand on the coach, the dog will; fill confused … for him it was his throne and doesn’t understand why the rules changed. So when training a puppy u should be clear and make the rules from the beginning. Basically, it’s not fair to your dog to change the rules at different times and expect him to adapt just as easily as humans do. With dogs, you need to be straight up and follow through!
2. It’s all about that timing.
Poor timing is another major problem where people make a huge mistake when training their dogs. Dogs live in the moment so your reaction to what they are doing “right now” is the key when it comes to correct or to teach good and bad actions.
When your dog does something good or correct behavior, its important that you must praise him in that instant. On the other side if your dog has done something wrong or missbehaved but you didn’t catch him in action, you should not try to correct him after.
3. Too many commands equals ?????? in your pup’s head.
We have all said the command “sit over and over” and the dog is still standing and staring at you in a confused way. After this you feel very angry and frustrated and shout “Sit” for the tenth time with a different tone …. and the pup immediately plops the bottom down to the ground.
So what’s the issue here? If you continue to train and work with you dogs this way you will end up teaching your dog to obey only when you rally “mean it” the tenth time, and not to pay attention to your commands until a certain tone of voice is used. Remember that these are obedience commands: You are not asking your dog if they feel like sitting, you are telling them to sit. For the safety of everybody around, including your pooch, dogs must always obey the commands at the first instance. So try not to over-repeat commands. Just really MEAN IT the first time.
4. Human Boredom.
Training you pup to quickly in an other mistake many many dog owners make when working with their fuzzbutts. We often assume our dogs already learned a command and we rush to teach them something more complicated, but rushing its a huge mistake.
For example if you are teaching your dog to sit-stay command and your dog stays for 5 five second without moving you will proceed to a ten second sit-stay. The dog then fails repeatedly at the longer stay command. The problem here is with you, assuming that dogs understands something before they may actually do it its wrong. The misuse with this is that if dogs keep failing and can no longer earn praise, they often give up. To avoid setting your pup up to fail, simply back up a step and continue to work on what they are successful at until it’s polished and pawfect! THEN move on to the next step.
5. Treating dogs like humans.
