Reward Your Dog When Obedience Training

Rewarding your dog is the best motivator when training. It is well known that using rewards and other positive reinforcement when obedience training a dog is the most effective method and achieves the best results.
You can make obedience training fun for the dog - and yourself too - by making a game of it. This makes both your dog and you, as the trainer, more willing and motivated to give it your all. Incorporate a period of play at the start and the end of each training session to ensure that the session ends positively. Teaching your dog to heel is the most basic of all the obedience commands. This refers to having the dog walk along with you on a loose lead. Heeling is generally the first obedience behavior taught to a dog, and it is easy to teach this using reward training.
Begin the training by getting your dog a good training collar and lead. Make sure the collar is strong and fits the dog properly. If you don't know how to fit the collar, ask a dog trainer or the pet store manager when you buy your training equipment. As you start to walk with the dog, be aware of the dog's position in relation to your own. If the dog begins to get ahead of you, pull gently on the leash. This will engage the collar and provide the dog with a gentle indication that he should slow down. You may have to apply more pressure in the beginning until your dog learns to accept the discipline. If the dog falls behind, slow down and encourage the dog to come forward. Use a lure or the dog's favorite toy to teach him to walk by your side. If you keep the lure at the position you'd like the dog to be, he will learn quickly to walk in the correct position.
Always give your dog lots of praise, treats, toys, and other rewards when he or she does what is expected. Dogs learn best when desired behavior is rewarded in a positive manner. Positive reinforcement means that when a dog does what the trainer wants, the dog receives a reward. This can be a pat on the head or a treat or toy of some kind. If the dog shows even the slightest attempt to please you, especially at the beginning of training, you should lavish positive reinforcement on him or her.
It is much less effective to attempt to train a dog through reprimands and punishment. Dogs become discouraged and confused by too much punishment. You may have to reprimand the dog sometimes to correct a potentially dangerous behavior. For example, chasing cars or biting must be punished, but the reprimands must be direct, short and directly linked to the bad behavior. After the immediate danger is over, training should go on, based on the reward method as before.
Dogs must learn to associate rewards with good behaviors and reprimands with undesirable behaviors. It is difficult to change any negative associations once they have taken hold. It's easier to train the dog properly in the first place than to try and retrain him later. You should teach your dog to associate behaviors like coming when called, heeling, and sitting on command, with the happy and fun times you shared during training.
To recommend a good dog breed to someone, you need to know two things:
1. You must have an in-depth and personal experience with many different breeds. And more specifically, you must have multiple experiences with each breed. When you've been training dogs professionally for about 10 years, you've seen pretty much everything cross your path, at least three or four times. And for the more popular breeds, you've had literally hundreds of experiences that can put you in a very good position to analyze the pro's and con's of each breed.
2. You need to understand both the wants and needs of the family who is looking to adopt a new dog. A couple who have very dominant personalities and no children will generally be able to handle a dog with more horsepower than would a quiet, submissive couple with a few small children.
That being said, here are the top five breeds I recommend to people I don't know very well:
1. Golden Retriever: These dogs have a soft, pliable and easily trainable temperament. They are very pain-resistant and very forgiving to the owner who accidentally steps on a toe or clumsily trips on the dog. Purchased from a good breeder, these dogs are a joy to own.
2. Poodle (any variety): These dogs score extremely high on both the trainability scale and on the intelligence scale. I'm always amazed at how quickly these dogs can pick up an new behavior. It's almost like communicating to a human in dog clothing. If it wasn't for the sissy factor, I'd probably own one myself. Professional dog trainers see very few dog owners who walk through the door with troubling behavior problems. If everyone owned a Poodle, we'd all be out of business.
3. Australian Shepherd: Not to be confused with the Australian Cattle Dog (also an excellent breed but not for the amateur or weak owner) the Australian Shepherd - if obtained from a quality breeder - is fantastic. I don't think that there is anything you can't train this breed to do.
4. Boston Terrier: These dogs are clean and quiet. They make a fantastic house dog and are very easy to get along with. A perfect companion for the elder dog owner, or just somebody who wants a very peaceful dog ownership experience with a breed that is not very demanding.
5. Shetland Sheepdog: Small, easily trainable and possessing a soft temperament, they are intelligent and - with the right training techniques - will learn new behaviors very quickly. ( by Ken Snodin )