Taming Aggressive Dogs: The Importance Of Dog Training
Having a dog that is overly aggressive is a very daunting experience specially if you have been used to seeing exceptionally trained dogs on TV. Seeing a large, salivating, growling and continuously barking dog can elicit great fear particularly in those who fail to see the heritage of dogs as animals whose early forebears were wolves that hunted. These feelings of fear and apprehension are magnified when the dog matures into a fully grown animal without proper training.
It is important for you to train your own emotions and tendencies first, whenever faced with a fully-fledged adult dog. You might remember the times when you hugged what used to be a tiny puppy that you adored. You have two options at present, one is to commit the dog to a dog training facility with professional trainers to handle it and the second one is to get all the dog training advice you can on the Internet and do it yourself. The two have both positive and negative aspects.
The Mind of an Aggressive Dog
Aggression is primarily borne out of a vast myriad of emotions and conditions that your dog is experiencing or has experienced in the past. The emotions of fear, hunger, longing, ancestry, loneliness and seclusion have the same effect on dogs as they do on humans. It is your responsibility to determine the causes for these emotive states by first highlighting their existence through their various manifestations.
Essential Tools for Dog Training
A dog clicker is an essential apparatus that could aid you in your endeavor. However, it is vital to know beforehand that clicker training is not all about having a magical tool that would instantaneously turn your dog into a disciplined and submissive animal. Know that there is no magic locked within a dog clicker. It is just like other things that can make a sound. There are several other tools that you utilize to assist you in your regimen.
The most important thing is for you to be able to make and communicate the association between three general ideas to the dog. The first one is to associate the sound that a dog clicker makes to something that will make the dog feel good. Your next task would be to then connect that feeling of wellness, security and fulfillment with a particular chore or action that the dog must do first.
It must be emphasized that the dog clicker alone will not perform miracles. The thing just creates a loud clicking sound that can be heard by the dog. The function that it makes is simply to grab the situation and make your dog more aware that you are issuing verbal commands. In a way, it is similar to loud clapping or speaking on a microphone to boost your voice in order to get people to listen to you. In so doing, you are thus creating a semblance of a link between the auditory stimulus to a potential and incoming gratification that will be given to the dog. That specific reward must then be connected to a specific action or behavior that you want to elicit from the dog.
Concentrate on establishing these two: association and repetition. These two important terms will then make up the base of the training regimen for your aggressive dog. Once you master the art of repeatedly connecting a dog’s good emotions with the sound of a clicker, you will then be able to redirect that to a particular action or behavior that you want to elicit. One more important idea that you must be familiar with would be consistency. If there is no consistency in the manner by which you give out rewards and elicit conditions, a dog would be confused by exactly what you want it to do. These concepts are based on psychology. Psychology introduced the concept of behavior modification programs that could be done for both humans and animals. Even though not all living beings are naturally thinking creatures, most of them react according to certain stimuli. That means that when you offer a stimuli, there will be a corresponding response. In this situation, an aggressive dog would eventually be conditioned or trained to act in accordance with your will provided that its expectations will be met.
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