Biggest Mistake Dog Owners Make
I just came across this fantastic free online workshop on dog training from the K9 Training Institute that I recommend that you sign up for right away.
This is the first workshop of its kind that is designed to help "normal" dogs like yours have the same level of calmness, obedience and impulse control as service dogs.
The workshop was a complete eye-opener for me and helped me understand why regular dog owners often have so much difficulty training their dogs.
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| Washee photo copyright A. Higgins |
Giving Your Dog a Job to Do
One of the many things I learned from the workshop is the biggest mistake that most dog owners make with their dogs is that they don't give their dogs work to do.
The reason service dogs are so well-behaved is that they always have work to do.
Now, by “job” or “work”, I don’t mean that a service dog is always doing something physical in nature.
Instead, what I mean is that when you give a service dog the hand signal for the DOWN cue for instance, here’s how the service dog would have been trained to think:
“My owner has now given me the job of lying down. So I will remain lying down here in this exact spot until my owner tells me to do something else, because the job that my owner wants me to do for her now is to lie down.”
So unlike most “normal” dogs who think of DOWN as just a trick that they have to perform for a few seconds after which they can do whatever they feel like, service dogs think of DOWN as a serious job that they have to do with commitment, dedication and purpose until they get their next job from their owner.
As you can imagine, it’s a dramatically different mindset!
And this mindset is the reason service dogs are so well-behaved, and so many “normal” dogs (even if they know cues like DOWN or SIT) are not.
How to Train Your Dog to Have the Same Mindset as a Service Dog
The good news is that you can train your dog to have the same mindset as a service dog as well.
That’s precisely where K9 Training Institute's free online workshop comes in.
It helps you to train your dog using the exact same techniques used by the service dog training industry.
It's being conducted by Dr. Alexa Diaz (one of the top service dog trainers in the U.S.) and Eric Presnall (host of the hit Animal Planet TV show "Who Let the Dogs Out").
Frankly, the techniques described in the workshop are fairly groundbreaking - I haven't seen anyone else talk of these techniques.
This is because it's the first time ever (at least that I know of) that anyone has revealed the secret techniques used by the service dog training industry to train service dogs.
The tips shared in this free workshop work on ALL dog breeds - from small breeds like Pomeranians and Chihuahuas to large breeds like English Mastiffs and Great Danes.
Also, puppies as young as 6 weeks old, and previously untrained adult dogs as old as 13 years, have been successfully trained using these techniques.
It's not a live workshop - rather, it's a pre-recorded workshop, which means that you can watch it at your convenience.
However, while the workshop is free, I am not sure whether it's going to be online for too long, so please check it out as soon as you can.
