To Motivate Your Dog to work

More than one dog owner has had trouble motivating their canine companions to work. Here are some of my thoughts on the subject:

Using Food or a Toy

Some dog trainers use this method to communicate or motivate a dog. They start to associate the command being given with the exercise. It is all well when being taught in play or prey; however, it might be easy to predict the dog’s reaction in a serious situation. Dogs trained this way will wait for the clicker to click or the toy to make a sound, rather than retreat! It is easy to deduce that while the dog was in communication with the accessory, it made no connection with its handler.

Communication Barriers

Is there ever a reason to raise communication barriers between yourself and the dog? When training a dog on what to do when in danger or under stress, being open and honest will take you farther than bribery ever could. 

You might complain that your dog is not taking it seriously; however, understand that serious work requires serious motivation and communication. You can only motivate the canine through your own motivation.

As explained previously, maintain a working attitude while working with your dog to let it realize the gravity of the training. Another important thing to take under consideration is the breed your dog belongs to, which has an impact on how it gets trained. Training a sled dog or a Shitzu to Search and Rescue would be pretty useless. Select a breed that will suit the “work” because someone’s life may be depending on your training!

Honesty and attentiveness when training your dog will serve you well in the field. Bribery will not. To learn

more visit, www.ccprotectiondogs.com

It is all in a days work at the Kennel

The work that we do is very special, unlike many dog training videos you may see on YouTube, we don’t use any food, balls, or tugs for reward. The training concept that we use at CCPD is very simple, it’s called communication. As humans, we have a tendency to talk when we shouldn’t and don’t talk when we should. We work our dogs at a very young age, in fact, we start are pups at five weeks. We feel that this is the most important time of the pups life, from the age of five weeks to eight weeks, this lays the foundation for the pup for the rest of its life.

This weekend we did a marathon training session with all of our dogs, from all age groups from thirteen weeks to three years of age. We started at 6 a.m. with basic obedience, then moved on to advanced off leash training. After a short break, we were on the agility course to get the dogs use to different environments and surfaces. A good Protection Dog has to be confident in any situation, whether they have to swim across ponds or climb a ten foot wall.

After taking time out for lunch, we then worked our dogs doing article searches. We were extremely proud of our new KNPV German Shepherd puppies; Max (thirteen weeks) and Tina (six months of age) had no problem doing a 100 yard article search for the key and cone. We then loaded up the dogs into the trucks and drove across the Kennel to have the decoys getup to do the bite work. We role played as many scenarios as possible, using many props, such as guns, knives, baseball bats. These props help to condition the dogs to take out the weapon hand.

As a daylight fell we gathered the dogs for man scent tracking in the deep woods. All the dogs did extremely well including the two female German Shepherds that were in heat.

This work that we do is all in a days work. Not a day will go by that all our dogs are doing some form of training, even if it is merrily walking on a busy street we will take that opportunity to develop their street smarts.

For more information about our training  principal and philosophy visit our website at, http://ccprotectiondogs.com