There is no denying that a dog is a human’s best friend.
They are adorable, loveable, and always up to rescue. So, they deserve special treatment.
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The internet may be clustered with tips to raise your puppy, but it is very hard to separate the actually helpful advice from those that range from being useless to downright harmful.
Grooming Your Dog
Dogs, just like humans, have personalities and characters.
Some are awesome to begin with while others need some guidance to reach their true calling.
Needless to say, whether it be humans or dogs (or any other pet for the matter), improvement can only occur through cooperating and communicating.
Dogs are highly emotional, and as a result, are affected by the way their owner treats them.
Negative treatment may develop negative character traits.
Similarly, behaving positively will make your dog carry the same attitude and habits.
Using Behavior Reinforcement
One method of training your dog would be positive and negative reinforcement.
It is a proven method that has worked successfully on humans (adults and children) and animals.
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Examples of positive reinforcement may include giving treats to your dog, taking him out for a walk, or cuddling it on showing good behavior.
Negative reinforcement can also be used to convey a message that your dog is doing something wrong.
Yet one must be cautious with using negative reinforcement as it can produce stressful conditions for your dog.
Why it’s Important to Bond With Your Dog?
Every relation needs time. The same goes for your relationship with your dog.
To raise a good dog, you first need to establish a bond with it.
Developing Trust
You can only teach your dog if it trusts you.
One way to develop this bond is to engage with your dog in fun activities.
These can be fun tricks that you can teach your dog.
These tricks will not only make engagement easy and fun but will also make your dog learn new things.
As a bonus, your dog may eventually accept you as a teacher and will start to follow your cues.
Common Dog Tricks
• The commando crawl,
• High-fives,
• Kiss,
• Bark on Command,
• Eat on Command,
• Shake Hands,
• Fetch,
• Roll Over,
• Play Dead,
• Spin on command,
• Stand on Hind Legs
Training Schools – Should you Enroll in One?
Now you may think that I can take my dog to a dog training school to teach all these tricks.
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Well, surely you can, although not only will it be expensive but also you will not be bonding with your dog as much.
Also, where is the fun in that?
Stay Focused
Sometimes, we can get so involved in teaching our dogs tricks that we forget the important stuff!
While tricks can be impressive and cool and can get you “Wow, that was awesome” or some other form of appreciation at a social gathering.
Remember that it was not the goal of teaching those tricks.
Our goal was to bond with the dog as much as we can.
So, one should always keep in check the fundamental training and behavior of the dog.
For instance, the tricks won’t be worth it if your dog shows aggression towards his food or if he doesn’t let go of stuff and has dominancy issues.
Did you know that many dogs are euthanized for aggression, barking, or even growling?
What’s devastating is that a lot of those dogs could have been saved had they been taught properly.
Despite that, most dog trainers don’t teach the fundamentals of good leadership, which consequently leads to dogs showing underlying issues later on.
So, we should always stay focused and not get distracted by the amusement of the tricks.
Also, it is never too late to introduce the fundaments to train a perfect dog.
Perfect Dog: The Public Opinion
As we have discussed tips to raise our dogs, it is fair we notice what traits people expect from a perfect dog.
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Albeit having varying opinions and preferences towards desirable dog habits, the prominent habits are as follows:
• Dog should be calm around all other dogs, animals, children, and adults.
• It should be friendly at all times.
• A dog should be obedient.
Final Verdict
Always remember that if your dog makes one wrong move, you may very likely find yourself in a court fighting for your dog, paying legal and compensation fees.
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To avoid such situations, it is all the more important to groom your dog in the best possible manner.
With all that said, it is also worthy to note that just like trying to meet the perfect person, it’s just as impossible to have a perfect dog.
So, even though we should strive to keep on developing our dog’s behavior, we should not be critical of their minor mistakes and sometimes allow them to grow from making those mistakes.
