In the Hands Off Dog Training Formula I have a dog obedience training video that I believe is critical to ever having your dog behaving in your home.

And I don’t mean if he’ll sit or not bite, that’s not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about behaving himself when you aren’t there… and training your dog HOW to behave in your home so you aren’t always having to keep an eye out for what kind of trouble he might be getting into.

When I taught my dog these 2 skills, my life with him got infinetly easier.

These two skills are…

1. The ability to disengage from ANYTHING he was currently doing and back away, or “Leave it”
2. The willingness to drop ANYTHING that he has in his mouth

If you’ll take the time to teach your dog these 2 skills, it makes all the difference in the world.

He’ll drop baby toys he wasn’t supposed to have, he’ll leave people alone if you need him to, he’ll back away from people who are afraid of dogs, and it does one other thing…

It teaches your dog that YOU are the boss.

That he can’t just get into anything he wants to.

He learns that there are rules, and that it’s in his best interest to follow them.  And you may not realize this, but teaching something as simple as “Back Away” or “Drop It” actually helps establish you as the leader of your household… but in a way that isn’t dominating.  A leader your dog can respect, because we taught him the skills with positive reinforcement, and he understands what you mean 100%.

And there is a natural instinct in dogs to do what I call “Fill The Void”.

“Filling The Void” is when a dog looks around his environment and says to himself, “hmmmm, there is nobody leading this parade.  And if somebody doesn’t start leading, I’m going to have to fill that leadership void.”

It’s an instinct that in the wild keeps dogs alive, but as pets can become incredibly annoying if we don’t understand what’s going on.

And to understand what’s going on, is a bit beyond the scope of this post, but I’ll give you a quick summary of the main points.

You see dogs speak “dog”, which as it turns out is a COMPLETELY different language than english.

It’s a NON verbal language.

It’s a language where tone, and pronounciation do NOT matter.

It’s a language of observation of their surroundings, and it’s genetically hard wired into them because of their past history of descending from wolves.

They can’t ignore this language.  It’s in their DNA to obey it.  And if we as their owners don’t learn to speak a few “words and phrases” of wolf, we’re going to end up with a hi maintenance dog.

Here’s an example that shows you how just making the littlest of mistakes with your dog, tells your dog so much about you, without you ever realizing it.

A leader of the pack checks out new territory before everyone else.

So I ask you, do you make your dog sit before you walk out your front door 1st?  Or do you let your dog run out first and then you follow?  What do you think that says to your dog in “Wolf”?

It says that sinse you don’t know how to make me sit back while you check things out, I need to fill the void and start to become a better leader of this house.

So how does this relate to “Back off” and “Drop It”.

Well one of the issues that comes up in dogs is with what is called “resource guarding”.  It’s when a dog protects it’s bone or toy or food.  And it can create dangerous situations, if for example a toddler tries to go take a bone away from a dog who’s chewing on it.

The dog might bare his teeth and snap at the child.  And we don’t want that.

So what you can do is follow the instructions that I teach in my “Back Away” dog obedience training video that is one of the things that comes with my Hands Off Dog Training Formula.

It’ll show you how to get a dog to back away from whatever he’s doing, inclucing playing with a toy, eating or whatever.

And by taking a few weeks to teach this skill you’ll be able to show your dog that it’s in his best interest to obey you… and NOT because he’ll get beat or yelled at if he doesn’t comply, but because of how we teach you how to structure a positive reward that overtime is MORE motivating than holding onto that treat, or not letting go of a toy when you need him to.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 at 12:15 pm and is filed under Dog Obedience Training, Dog Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.