Article by Kay Ringelstetter

When you take your dog for a walk it should be a pleasurable experience and the best way to to make sure this happens is to familiarize your puppy with the leash and yourself with your dog poop bag holder as early as possible. You will not need to retrain your dog and yourself later, if you learn these skills right from the start. It is definitely worth your time and bit of energy to develop these skills now.

Always remember that you are the leader and it is up to you to lead your dog. Good communication is the key. Be consistent and make sure all of your family is consistent. It is a learning curve for everyone. Everyone needs to follow the same techniques or it will lead to total confusion for your puppy. Total training time may take up to two weeks and maybe longer. All dogs are different. Adapting to your particular pet and your patience are important.

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Article by Dave

Searching for ways on how to potty train a dog is a crucial duty of any pet owner. Just like humans do, young puppies need to be educated so that they could be taught where’s the right spot to urinate and eliminate wastes. This technique is recognized as “potty training”. For training to work, look at if your dog can readily follow commands or it will take time to enable them to obey or it responds when given treats. Understand the attitude of the dog first before doing training.

Potty training is significantly important as it is very difficult to clean up when dogs pee or wastes in any parts of your house like furniture, carpets or home equipment. There is an option to hire a dog trainer and pay the fee. But, if your dog is not used to other people, then this could be not the right decision to make. It is best to perform the potty training on your own.

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Article by Chris Austin

Clicker Training: What Is So Special About Using A Clicker To Train My Dog?

Using a clicker to train your dog is an extremely rewarding and fun approach to dog training. And most importantly, it works! This simple little training aid will go a long way to encouraging positive behavior and instituting obedience as well as tricks into your dog’s life.

What Is A Clicker?

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Question by ???: how to teach dog using clicker training if it was taught by voice and treats?
my 11 month old puppy was taught sit, shake, and lie down without a clicker. Now that I bought a clicker I don’t know how to introduce this type of training to her. Because I used my voice, encouragement, and treats, how am i supposed to get her to recognize the clicker?

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From reading a selection of recommended dog training books, in my experience, the best ones focus on using positive reinforcement, which seem to get the most positive response from the dogs or puppies being trained, as opposed to using more negative methods such as choke or check collar training or electric collar training. It is important to train your dog or puppy by gaining his or her respect and not through fear.

The books all teach methods of establishing yourself as your dog’s pack leader which is essential if you want to gain your dog’s trust and respect. There are several things you can do to accomplish this such as controlling your dog’s food, making sure he or she gets plenty of exercise and teaching him, or her, the basic obedience commands such as sit, stay, come and heel.

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The Praise and Reward System is without any doubt the most animal friendly approach to train your dog. This method, often referred to as positive reinforcement training, is considered by experts to be the correct method of dog training.

In the same fashion as parent reward and praise a child for good behavior so it is with training your dog. The difference in dog training is, you praise your dog when the dog does something you approve and ignore your dog’s behavior when you disapprove.

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The click and treat system, or positive reward training, has become the preferred method used by dog obedience training instructors all over the world.

Take a look at the dog’s world and try getting into your dog’s paws. You have heard your master’s car arrive home and you wait at the door, excited, eyes bright, tongue flopping out, tail madly wagging, and your master walks through the door – oh, oh, he has had a bad, bad day, he is in a sour mood and he has a headache. He totally ignores you and stomps into the kitchen, opens the back door and chases you outside.

A few minutes later, your master comes out of the kitchen door and calls you. He slips on a steel slip chain training collar and starts jerking you through your obedience training exercises: – sit, drop stand or whatever. He insists your attention gruffly, he is hard on you and does not like it when you sit too slow, or don’t stay in a sit and his voice is harsh and angry. You do not want to work in this obedience training session and so you receive more harsh words and you do what you have to do but you work most reluctantly.

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A dog training method called clicker training has become popular over the last several years.

Clicker training consist of positive reinforcement training – that is, rewarding the behaviours that we like instead of punishing behaviours that we don’t like. When the dog does what we want him to do, we ‘click’ and give him a treat. So, we train the dog to understand that the ‘click’ means “well done” and that a treat is coming.

The reward can be food such as roast beef, petting, playing with a tennis ball, or anything else your dog may enjoy.If you want to use a food reward, you must make sure that you use small pieces of food because you do not want your dog to be preoccupied with eating and forget about the clicker training.

Dog Training with a clicker can be more effective rather than positive words such “good dog” because dog are very perceptive to body language and tone of voice so will receive mixed signals depending on what mood you are.

3 Ways to train your using the clicker:


1. Start somewhere with minimal distractions. The first idea is show the dog the meaning of the clicker.Stand in front of him, click ONCE and give a treat. At this point, the dog doesn’t have to do anything for his treat – he just needs to learn the association of the ‘click’ and treat routine. Spend some time doing a ‘click’, then treat. Generally give 1 treat. ALWAYS treat after a click – even if you’ve accidentally clicked. The dog must have absolute faith in the ‘click means treat’ routine.

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I’m totally against a pinch collar and would never use one. I adopted a Dobie and want to start leash training her. I’m a huge fan of harnesses and would like her to get used to being walked with one. Is leash training the same when you use a harness rather than a collar? Thanks!