When you bring home a new dog, whether it's a puppy or adult dog, you'll want to begin training right away. An unruly dog can make your life unpleasant even if the dog just misbehaves out of excitement or joy to see you. While you can teach a dog all kinds of fun tricks, there are some essential skills your dog needs to learn to stay safe and to make sharing a house more enjoyable. If you need help teaching your dog good behavior, take a dog training class or hire a trainer to come to your home. Here are some tips that might help.

Reward Only Good Behavior

While you might think it's obvious you wouldn't reward bad behavior, you should understand that rewards go beyond praise and giving treats. Just by reacting when your dog jumps on you when you get home from work, you could be reinforcing the behavior. Although it may take a lot of patience, you should ignore behaviors you don't like and wait until your dog does something you do like, such as sitting at your feet, and then lavish praise. This method of dog training can be extended further to include the rule that the dog shouldn't be punished for doing something wrong, only praised for doing something right.

Timing is also important since scolding your dog for chewing up your shoe yesterday is confusing for your dog. Instead, stay in the moment so your dog makes quick connections between behaviors that are rewarded with treats and love.

Teach Safety Commands Right Away

While you'll probably keep your dog on a leash when you're out walking, you might drop the leash and then your dog would be free to run off. Teaching your dog to obey commands to stop, heel, and come are essential for your pet's safety because they could keep your dog from running into traffic. Dog training isn't always easy since it isn't intuitive when you've never done it before. You may want to take your dog for professional training so both you and your dog can learn how to instill behaviors that keep your pet safe.

Be Consistent With The Rules

Sometimes, dog training can fail because the humans in the family won't follow rules. You may prohibit eating from the table, but one of your kids may secretly sneak food under the table because they feel sorry for the dog. Before you bring the dog home, talk to your family about the importance of training and how much better a pet is when trained properly. Establish rules that everyone must follow such as keeping the dog off the couch, not feeding the dog human food, and giving the dog private space in a crate or laundry room. Teach kids how to respond to biting, barking, and jumping so everyone reinforces the rules with the dog. Eventually, your dog will learn the house rules and become a joy to live with rather than a nuisance that you love so much you put up with annoying behaviors.

Reach out to a company such as DOG TRAINING B YBOB MAIDA to learn more.