Persistence, Persistence, Persistence, and More Persistence!
by admin
Filed under Dog Behavior, Dog Training
Earlier, I was talking about the need to be consistent in training your dog. Persistence is also very important and your consistency won’t bring you the behavior results you are seeking if you don’t persist to the point the dog’s behavior is correct.
Unfortunately, many dog owners give up or stop to soon in trying to correct a particular behavior. Dog owners drop out of obedience classes all the time because they are worn down by their dog’s seemingly persistent behaviors, and they give up trying to teach their dogs new behaviors. The problem, here, is essentially that the owners gave up.
The lesson the dogs learn is that persistence pays off. When an owner gives in, the dog’s persistent behavior is strengthened and reinforced. Any determined dog owner can wear the dog down. Therefore, it is extremely important that you be more persistent than the dog about continuing the training process until the dog performs the desired behavior.
The dog must learn that the energy he spends engaging in undesirable behavior is not worth the effort, because you will persist. If you correct him for jumping up the first four times and don’t correct him for the fifth jump up you simply teach him to jump up five times for the payoff. Similarly, if you correct the dog for barking at the moon sometimes and not at other times, you teach him that sometimes barking is acceptable and sometimes it is not. The dog will continue to bark to determine when barking is acceptable and when it is not acceptable.
In this case, correcting the barking may actually encourage even more barking. If you don’t correct the dog for barking in the backyard because you are not at home, he will learn that barking is acceptable when you’re away. If you sneak out of the house so as not to cue him that it is acceptable to bark, he only needs to bark twice with no correction to figure out that you are not at home. The point to take away is that a behavior will be extinguished or changed only if you persist in correcting the dog every time he misbehaves.
[tags]consistent in dog training,persistent dog training,dog behavior,getting your dog to behave [/tags]
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