By Bethany Kent, 30/12/2024
Not training with a reward your dog values – When you are training your dog you need to consider the type of reward you are giving your dog. Some dog are highly food driven and would love a treat where as other dogs you may need to consider a higher value food item, toy or an environmental reward.
Environmental Reward = Something that the dog does naturally in their environment that they value or like to do. For example letting your dog go for a sniff.
Being inconsistent with training – Unfortunately like anything you want to get good at consistency is key. You cannot just expect your dog to understand a behaviour as soon as you have taught it to them once. It will take time and continual training to help them understand what you would like them to do. This is exactly like learning how to drive or ride a bike. Everything takes practice. This also includes your cues. If you chop and change what you are using or do not use these consistently your dog could get confused and frustrated with your training.
Changing the training method too soon – We are all guilty of googling different methods of training that may help our dogs. Lots of us will only give a couple of weeks or a month or a training method to work. In most cases this is not long enough to see if a training method is effective. Changing training methods can also cause confusion for the dog which can increase the chance of undesirable behaviours due to frustration.
Getting frustrated with your dog – Frustration is an emotion that every owner will come across when training their dog. Their dog was doing a behaviour beautifully one day but will not do it the next. If you are finding yourself getting frustrated during a training session you should stop and come back to it at another point. This is because the dogs can sense your frustration which may be causing them to struggle with the behaviour as well.
Making a training session too long – When determination kicks in we tend to keep working our dogs too much. Dog tire just like humans do and if you are trying to get your dog to work for an extended period of time they may decide to stop working and refuse to train. Short bursts of training regularly is better for your dog to learn and allow them to process all the information you are giving them as well as from the environment around them. An example would be 5 sessions of 10 minutes a day depending on your dogs ability.
