What is Dog Training?
- Why are you here?
- What are your goals?
- What must you know before you begin?
- Why Manners In Minutes?
These are questions that have led you to this site, the home of Manners In Minutes. These questions will be answered as you work your way through this workbook.
What is Dog Training?
Training is Teaching; and as applied to dogs, the definition of Teaching is:
- to cause the dog to know something
- to show the dog how it is to be done.
- to make the dog know the disagreeable consequences of an action.
- to guide the dog and help him understand established, acceptable limits
- to impart the knowledge of the dog with new information and to establish acceptable, new “normals.”
To many people, the definition of training is simply teaching their dog to follow orders and react predictably associate certain behaviors with established commands. This type of training is performance based and teaches the dog to follow orders rather than make decisions. Sadly, when commands are not given or the dog is left alone, the dog is left to make his own decisions.
Sadly, with this method unless the dog bites someone, as long as the dog is happy, plays ball, eats treats and is wagging his tail, that is often enough to consider the training not necessarily successful, but adequate.
Along with this practice there is also the constant probability that one day the dog will make an uninformed, wrong decision: he runs away, he is injured or worse, chews something, bites someone, knocks someone down or destroys the wrong thing and loses his home.