In this simple but complete guide to know how we should educate our dog, we are going to work on the most important aspects of training in adult dogs. That is, a dog of more than twelve months of life.
Although it may seem a bit strange since at general levels you begin to teach tricks to dogs since they are puppies, the ideal age to start a serious education begins from the year of life, that is, when the dog is already an adult .
No matter the age of your dog, with these simple steps you can educate him to do what you tell him to. You just have to be very patient and always stay calm, it will take a week or a month, but you will succeed. Let’s see what is the technique to follow to educate a dog.
It may interest you: Dog Training Manual
Index of contents
- 0.1 Before starting to educate your dog… some tips and examples
- 1 How to train an adult dog to relieve itself
- 2 How to train an adult dog not to bite
- 3 How to train a dog not to bark
- 4 How to train a dog not to escape and return to our order
Before starting to educate your dog… some tips and examples
It is very important to be clear that our dog detects our mood, that is to say that if he sees us nervous or angry, he will know it and he will be nervous too. That is why it is super important to never lose your cool, practice all the techniques with great patience and never scold, hit or look badly at our dog.
If our dog does something wrong, a “No!” Will suffice. followed by your name and ignore it. Physically assaulting a dog is indirectly teaching that aggression is normal, so it will bite. Or just suppress and scare him to the level of depressing him … only cowards hit dogs.
It is not the same to educate an adult dog than educate a puppy, so you must understand that all these techniques are to be applied only and exclusively with adult dogs. Or what is the same, dogs older than twelve months of life, fourteen or fifteen actually in the larger breeds such as for example the Boxer.
There is only one way to train your dog well and that is to be persevering, always keeping calm and using positive reinforcement. Some dogs take a week or two to learn and other dogs take three or four months, they all learn but each does so at their own pace.
Just because your dog learns faster or slower does not mean that you are a better or worse handler, it just takes time to learn. Dogs older than eight years old at general levels often need more practice to learn.
The ideal is to educate your dog when he has already spent his energies a little, do not start to educate him just when he leaves the house because he will only want to walk and play. Let him play, take a walk, and then you can start his education session. With an average of half an hour a day is enough, it is not necessary to force our dog.
Remember that the correct way to give an order to the dog is by its name, followed by the order. If our dog is called Tobby and we want him to sit down, we will give him the order “Tobby sit down!”.
How to train an adult dog to relieve itself
Here we have two options, that of teaching our dog to relieve themselves indoors but in a specific place, such as in the kitchen, for example … Or teaching our dog to relieve himself outside the home, that is, in the park or in the street.
To educate our puppy to pee and poop away from home, the first thing we must do is set some walking times and always respect them. For example, we can go out fifteen minutes in the morning to make him pee and poop (about eight or nine in the morning, when we wake up). Then another outing to pee or home at noon (about one or two in the afternoon), a longer outing in the afternoon, where you can play, take a walk and relieve yourself, for at least one or two hours (at about seven or eight o’clock in the afternoon, nine o’clock if it is very hot) and one last exit before bedtime, to pee, at about eleven or twelve at night.
They are just some examples of the routine that we must do every day, always at the same time. Dogs learn routines very quickly and if they have a little pee, they will know how to wait until their next exit to do it outside the house (as long as they know when it is their turn to go out).
If our dog pees or poops inside the house, we should not scold him or run his nose over his urine, nor look at him badly or anything. We will simply clean it up and ignore our dog.
However if our dog pees or poops outside the house, coinciding with any of the scheduled outings that we must respect daily … we will wait for him to finish peeing or poop and we will congratulate him very much, with caresses, for words of encouragement and giving him some prize . For example, a dog biscuit or a piece of sausage.
In this way he will understand that peeing or pooping outside the house is very good and also has a prize, however if he does it inside there is no prize or congratulations. In no time you will learn, provided you follow these steps on a daily basis.
If we want our dog learn to relieve yourself in a specific place indoors, it’s best to buy absorbent dog wipes or training tray.
Teaching him is as simple as congratulating him a lot when he pees there, giving him caresses and prizes, a lot of positive reinforcement. And yet, ignoring it when you don’t do it there, don’t scold it, just ignore it.
How to train an adult dog not to bite
If our dog bites us playing or bites things at home, such as furniture or slippers … we must teach him not to bite with these simple steps.
When our dog bites us playing or bites a piece of furniture in the house or something we don’t want it to bite, we will simply scold him saying his name and a “No!”
If you stop doing it, great. If it does not stop, we must insist again saying his name and a “No!” at the same time that we give a little “touch” with the fingers at hip level. What is vulgarly called a wake-up call. You can view more information here: How to correct or give attention to your dog.
Once you have stopped, we will take one of your toys or teethers and put it in your mouth for you to bite into. We can vacillate you a bit, find you a little so that you are attracted to bite your toy and when you do, we will congratulate you very much. It is important to continue playing with it for a while, so that it is correctly associated that it can bite its toys but the rest.
This is the easiest way to teach a dog not to bite. But if your dog does not bite while playing, but bites due to aggressiveness, you shoul
d go to a professional trainer to help you solve this serious problem. It would even be interesting for your dog to muzzle as long as it does not learn correctly not to bite, as long as it is aggressive.
How to train a dog not to bark
In order to correct this annoying behavior, it is necessary to know the reason why our dog barks. There are many reasons and each one has his learning technique, the most common are:
- Barking for fear or warning, when the dog sees a stranger approaching home or when it is scared.
- Anxiety bark is the most common when it comes to separation stress. That is, when the dog barks because we are leaving home.
- Antisocial bark, which occurs when the dog has not been properly socialized.
- Barking from boredom is also very common as they usually spend a lot of time alone at home.
Depending on the origin of the bark, one technique or another will be applied, so to fully understand all the details we recommend reading: How to teach a dog not to bark.
On the other hand there are also anti-bark collars, which release a small vibration or electric shock / (depending on the model) each time the dog barks. Although in our opinion they are torture techniques, so we do not recommend them under any circumstances.
Once the reason why our dog barks is detected, we simply must follow the steps of the previously recommended guide and our dog will stop barking in a few months. It is not something that is taught in two weeks, we must be very patient and insistent.
How to train a dog not to escape and return to our order
This is one of the simplest and most practical techniques at the same time, which we not only can but must teach our dog on a mandatory basis. A dog that comes to our order is a good dog, since it will avoid us many problems.
If our dog escapes or is about to cross somewhere that should not, he will answer our call if we have educated him correctly. However, he will ignore us and endanger us if we have not spent time on his education.
We must cut several pieces of sausage and save them, we will use them as a reward for our dog later. The pieces should be small, not more than one centimeter large since we will use many.
We will go with our dog to a dog park or fenced area, where there is no danger that our dog can escape. There we will release our dog to play for a while and sniff the area a bit.
After a few minutes we will call you by name and then we will give you the order, for example “Tobby, come here!”. At the same time that we give him the order we must show a piece of sausage in his hand, so that he sees it and knows that if he comes he can eat it.
When he comes, we will congratulate him very much and give him the piece of sausage. This is called positive reinforcement and it is the best way to teach a dog. We will let a few seconds pass and we will start walking away from our dog a little, and then call him and give him another prize and congratulations when he comes.
You have to practice this as many times as possible, always giving him a reward when he obeys. After a month or two, we can give you a prize once if you don’t, although we will always congratulate you.
By teaching him to come to our order, we also teach him not to run away. Since when you do, all you have to do is call him and he will come to us. Although there are also other reasons why a dog runs away, for example when bitches are in heat or when they see a cat.
Remember that in perseverance, calm and positive reinforcement is the trick to properly educate a dog.