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General Pet is your source for advice and information for a happy and healthy pet.
Author: Nanette Hughston Article source: http://www.articlealley.com/. Used with author's permission.
So, you bought a puppy. Now what? He is cute and adorable, but now the fun starts. He or she starts chewing your shoes, going to the bathroom where he shouldn't and many other natural behaviors that will soon turn into destructive or just plain annoying habits. Dogs will bark at anything, do you want a barking dog that howls at every sound that he hears? Do you want her chewing up all of your shoes and furniture? Dog training is essential. There are many things you can do when you first start training your dog, but the first thing is that you understand completely the responsibility of being a dog owner.
The necessary elements of pet ownership and dog training include: socialization, nutrition, love, training, veterinary care and a good regular exercise plan. Dogs which are tied up, kenneled all day or even crated all day are considered in my opinion a neglected dog. These constraints will produce a dog with serious behavioral problems. It is up to you to make sure your dog gets plenty of love, freedom to play, and gets regular exercise, and not just when it is convenient for you.
Biting dogs and mouthing is very common in puppies and dogs especially during play time. Dogs must learn to control their bite and to do it normally. They naturally would learn this from their mothers or litter mates and in the wild, their pack mates, but we take them away from this at a very young age, so it is now our responsibility to take over the training. This should be controlled by the time the puppy is four months old, by allowing your dog or puppy to get socialized with other socialized dogs and puppies this will continue with their natural course of training. During play time with other puppies, they tend to bite each other at any location they can get their mouths on, this is the exact place they learn how to control their biting. If you do not socialize your dog, this creates an and can cause biting.
Two key factors in your training are trust and respect. If you dog doesn't trust you how can he respect you? If you don't develop these two factors, you will not be able to train your dog successfully.
You should never hit, kick, slap, bite or beat your dog. This will definitely make the dog not trust you, he may still love you as they usually have unconditional love for their owners, but without the trust factor you may be in trouble. For example, if you are house training your puppy, never punish or reprimand them even if you catch them doing it. You have no right to punish the dog as if he goes in the wrong place it is your fault and not his.
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