How To Train My Dog At Home

How to train my dog at home did not require ringing a bell to make it salivate. Still, Russian behaviorist Ivan Pavlov called this experimental outcome a conditioned response back in the 1890s. He had been researching the salivation response in dogs when fed.  By placing a tube into a dog’s mouth and presenting it with food (in his case, meat powder), this scientist was able to gauge the amount of saliva that the dog would produce the moment it became aware that food was on the plate.

But as he continued his research, Pavlov made an accidental discovery. His assistant brought the meat powder from down the hall making noise while walking to the lab. Realizing the food was on its way, the expectant dog began to fill the tube with saliva.

Discovering the event, Pavlov hardened his research, changed the variables and tested multiple dogs. He used a bell, that he’d ring before presenting the dog with meat powder.  Every dog he tested produced the same result. The dog would not salivate because of the bell, at first. But after ringing the bell every time food was on its way, the dogs began to associate the sound of the bell with the approaching food. The animals would actually salivate when the bell rang even if mealtime had not arrived. They’d been conditioned through repetition to expect it.

All dogs naturally salivate when presented with food.  This is instinctive, genetic from birth. And it’s an unconditioned response. But after Pavlov’s findings, the new response of salivation in the dog after hearing the bell became known as a conditioned response. This was the birth of behaviorism and a discipline that, when well comprehended, helps you and me understand how to train my dog at home.

In essence, the methodology that goes with conditioned response is what professional dog trainers use to get dogs to do what they naturally do but on command, like ringing a bell!

You can do this at home, without a professional trainer!  We are going to explore, give examples, and learn how the professionals use conditioned response methods to train one, or more dogs.  Because behind every action is a re-action and vice-versa, we will learn to create a reaction, a desired conditioned response in our dogs first by acting in specific ways.  In a sense, we are going to condition ourselves to be excellent dog trainers at home.  Are you ready?  Let’s dive in!

Dog Behavior Training for The Trainer First

The art of dog behavior training may seem a little confusing at times, if you don’t have the right information.  How do I train my dog at home to sit?  How to train my dog at home to stay?  Conversely, how do I stop my dog from whining when I’m in the kitchen?  How do I stop my dog from jumping on guests when they come to the house?

The answers to these questions are much simpler than it seems, although achieving the desired effect will take some patience and determination.  This patience and determination are our part.  To train our best friend, we must first train ourselves. Our dogs learn from our behaviors.  We are the pack leader, and they follow us.

How to Train My Dog at Home to Correct Behavior Problems

Our fuzzy guys are instinctual creatures. Some of these are undesirable natural instincts in domestic life.  For instance, it is natural for our pup to poop where it has gotten used to. That could be behind your bedroom’s door. Acceptable? Hardly.

Yet, we also want our dogs to be happy. What better happiness than to be the shining star pupil of their pack?  Our job for healthy success involves using both positive and negative behavior correction strategies, just as in a pack.

For example, if we feed our dog every time that we go into the kitchen, we are creating a conditioned response in our dog to expect food whenever we enter the kitchen.  If our dog begins to whine, in the expectation of food and we still provide the food, we are positively reinforcing the dog to whine when we walk into the kitchen to be fed.  If we choose not to feed our dog until our guy stops whining, then we are using negative reinforcement.

The negative aspect does not have to be painful, simply unrewarding. The dog is not receiving food when it whines. This negative reinforcement approach to training our dog is not negative in the sense that it being bad for our pooch. It is actually good because it helps to teach our pet what the desired conditioned response of their pack’s leader is. And it’s not to receive feed when whining occurs.

When our pup does what we expect of it to do, it receives its reward in dignity (loving affection) not only in treats.  The positive reinforcement has its effect when our furry comrade is in its non-whining state.

Fundamental Dog Training Strategies

The Need for Both Positive and Negative Reinforcement in Dog Obedience Training

Linked to your dog’s responses is what it learns from your behavior. In order to change your dog’s behaviors and create a desired conditioned response, you must first understand how your actions affect your dog’s expectations. Understanding this effect on your dog builds the well-rounded training plan for your fur ball that positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement techniques cement into place.

An example of effect that the use of both positive and negative reinforcement methods produce is in the training of a dog to “Sit and Come.”  These common commands are usually the first lesson that a pup learns when basic obedience training begins.  The “Sit” part of this training is done with positive reinforcement. The trainer holds a treat in the hand and raises it slowly above the dog’s head to draw its attention.

As our dog begins to look up and up and up, it becomes unnatural for it to remain in a standing position. The higher you raise the treat above the dog’s head, the more natural it becomes for the pup’s posture slowly to move to a sitting position. Eventually, our pet will sit. Right as this is to occur, tell it to “Sit” and give a hand signal, much as Pavlov signaled with the ringing of the bell the approaching food. Upon the dog taking a seat, provide your obedient trainee with a delicious treat or a pat on the head.

Repeat this exercise enough times until your best friend learns to associate your command (both manual and vocal) or treat to sitting. This is classic positive reinforcement.  Our pet enjoys the treat and being dignified with praise. But now how do we teach your fuzz-ball to “Come?”

Teaching our little guy to “Come” is where we have to implement negative reinforcement techniques.  We can’t just keep feeding our buddy treats until it gets too full to stand! This wouldn’t teach our pet anything, anyway! Our dog would still think it’s getting the treat for its initial action of sitting. Instead, to counter the action to remain seated, the method is to use a short tug on the leash, followed by the commanding word, “Come!”

You get to use the same hand gesture every time, such a beckoning motion, whatever it may be, to help convey the visual indicator to your pet that you want it to move toward you. And tug on the leash.

We don’t hurt the dog, but over time this negative, annoying sensation – the tugging – for a dog that won’t move will cause your pet to associate the word “Come” and the hand gesture that you’re consistently using with that negative passive state of remaining seated. Once your dog learns to get up and go to you on command to avoid the tug, present it with a treat, further reinforcing with reward your dog’s obedience at going to you when called.

We want to keep these type of lessons short even if repetitive, as our pups do not usually have the longest of attention spans and prolonging the exercise in the beginning stages of training is not likely to benefit our pets learning experience.

Dog Training Methods for Training My Dog at Home

The Pros and Cons of Home-based Dog Training

While there are quite a few methods of dog training that are known to work, there is controversy over which methods may be most effective and best used by professionals.  Let’s explore some of these methods, their ideology, and what the critics say about each of them, so you know whether you’d like to test them at home yourself.

Positive Dog Training Techniques for The Patient at Heart

These methods of dog training use systematic rewarding to foster natural behavior in our dog. They DO NOT use force or any negative reinforcement. Instead, they focus on ignoring the undesirable behavior of our pups, a behavior that is also natural but not humanly appealing. Using reward stimuli to reinforcement a positive experience for the dog, these methods encourage a desirable yet natural trait in place of the natural yet undesirable ones. The following, is an example of this kind of positive dog training technique:

Our big, heavy, slobbering, scratching dog won’t stop jumping up on us, let’s say.  What do we do?  Every time your pup jumps up on us, you turn away and ignore your pet, right? Well, no because if you continued to ignore your pet, turning your back so to indicate that until it stops jumping, it won’t get positive feedback from you, then you’d pet might get the signal and stop jumping on you.

Conversely, when you notice your dog is standing with all four feet squarely on the floor as you enter through the door, then you reward it with love and praise. If you do this often enough, then over time your dog will be less and less likely to jump on you at those moments you liked it least done onto you. This method has been proven to work. But it takes diligence.

It may take a while for your pet to understand this signal from you, using positive training techniques alone. The downfall with this method is also that there is no negative reinforcement to counter any likely confusion the dog may experience regarding your will’s specificity.

That is, the dog won’t know whether not to jump on you only when you cross the threshold upon you arriving from work, but the moment you go to your room, then it will jump all over you and the bed. Why? Because your signal is not precise. When your pup is actually jumping, it won’t know which all jumping is unacceptable except the one not commended to stop. The con to this, therefore, is that positive methods alone lack precise communication with the animal when it is generally behaving undesirably.

Another example of only positive reinforced training is the “Sit” command commonly taught with rewards, as previously mentioned. Conversely, using positive reinforcement techniques to teach your dog to “Stay” would be approached differently than by tugging on a leash.

Instead, you have to reward your dog for staying seated when it wished to move. How do you do that? At first you’d reward your pup very soon after it sat. Then, you’d proceed to lengthen the time between it sitting and the receipt of its reward. As you distance the reward more and more over time and consistently tell the dog to “Stay”, adding a unique hand gesture, the dog would come to understand that it is good to stay because doing so produces a reward…eventually. See? It takes a lot of patience to exercise positive training methods.

Once again, it may take your pet a while to understand what you are trying to communicate. And this will bore the pet and test your patience. But, hey! Different strokes for different dog owners, right? So, the con here is that you can only communicate by giving reward, which limits your ability to communicating effectively only when the dog understands where the reward lies and not where the cause of discomfort to avoid lurks.

In conclusion, using only positive reinforcement techniques ensures that your dog does not become fearful or aggressive as a result of excessive or misapplied punitive action. It also ensures that you do no dissuade your dog physically or psychologically by negative signaling from doing anything. What it doesn’t do is allow you to communicate quickly and precisely with your pet when its actions are urgently undesirable.

Negative Dog Training Techniques for The Urgent in Need

To understand more clearly what negative dog training techniques involve, we must first define the usage and meaning of the word “negative” in relation to dog training. To better explain this, let’s use an analogy. There is a kind of exercise in use by weightlifters to increase their strength. It is known to be very effective at improving potency. Yet the exercise does not require the lifter to lift anything at all. In fact, they don’t lift, pull, push or do any other action that you’d usually exert when working out with weights.

Instead, the lifter, who is doing a bench press exercise, for instance, lays on the bench. A spotter stands behind him, to ensure safety. A large amount of weight (in relation to the persons strength) is added to the bar. Not so much weight that the person cannot take it off the rack, but enough that it is a struggle to hold.

The lifter takes the weight off the rack and lets the weight down upon themselves as slowly as possible, working against gravity. The spotter holds the bar, safely with the lifter and helps the person doing the exercise bring the weight down slowly. When the exercise is complete, the spotter removes the weight from the lifter. These kinds of exercises are called “negatives.”

The meaning of the word “negative,” as seen in this case, is not used in a destructive connotation but rather as a constructive positive. In other words, it doesn’t mean that something bad is happening. These exercises are called negatives because the body undergoes stress, and then is rewarded with a release of that stress after the exercise is complete.

Negative dog training techniques are similar to this in ideology. Something causes stress to our dog, and as a result our dog seeks to end that stress, leading to an improvement in behavior. Basically, it’s like working with gravity, another aspect of nature, to bear upon the dog and condition it. In negative dog training, that something else of nature is the dog trainer or a tool the trainer uses to convey a negative signal. When our dog displays the desired conditioned behavior, the trainer relieves the stress and the reward of comfort trains the dog to behave as desired.

An example of training that puts negative dog training principles into use is another version of the “Sit” command. This time, instead of teaching our pups by rewarding it with a treat if it sits, the trainer uses a hand slowly to pressure the top of dog’s backside. The trainer applies pressure until the dog’s discomfort naturally leads it to sit, tired from struggling against the uncomfortable force on its tail end.

Upon sitting, the trainer stops the pressure and simultaneously “Sit.” Over time, the dog associates the end of the discomfort on its back with staying sat. When commanded to sit, our pet will sit to avoid the uncomfortable feeling it once felt on its bottom when pressed before.

The main controversy around these negatives methods lies in the use of several tools of negative reinforcement that, if abused, may frighten and provoke a dog to become reactive against it, lashing out aggressively against it and its user. Also, dogs trained strictly with the use negative dog training techniques with no positive reinforcement to follow do display higher stress levels than dogs that are trained using both techniques or positive reinforcement techniques exclusively.

Another complication may occur using these negative reinforcement methods because of the use of positive punishment. What is this apparent oxymoron?

In order to release our pup from the stress that negative dog training techniques produce, you must first apply the stressful condition. There is no way around this. You need to stress your dog. This can be confusing to your pet, because it is not a rational creature. It won’t know that it is doing anything undesirable at the time of the stress application. It is simply doing what it’s natural, even if you dislike it. What’s undesirable about that from the dog’s perspective?

Positive punishment means conveying danger if the dog insists on doing what come natural under certain conditions.

Let’s say it poops on your carpet always at the same spot the same time of day. It’s now habitat. It won’t stop. When instinct calls to poop, there’s the spot: your carpet. Clean it. Deodorize it. It matters not. Poop has a toilet and it’s your carpet. The same goes for a favorite place where to go slobber over its bone or where to go scratch and dig. The only way to stop this quickly is through positive punishment.

So, what do you do? You make it perilous for the dog not to desist from its behavior and go elsewhere to do what comes naturally. Just as naturally this may lead to your dog feeling stressed. Making sure this is not a relentless experience will keep the risk of aggression to a minimum. This is why it is important to know how to apply these negative reinforcement methods sparingly. Moderation is paramount.

In conclusion, negative dog training techniques are proven effective. They strongly convey our message to our pet about what is undesirable behavior in a rapid, clear and incontestable manner. This is something that is much less direct when not combined with positive reinforcement techniques, however. The drawback, or con, is that some of these methods can create fear or aggression in our pups if thoughtlessly applied or in excess, because of the uncomfortable stress that is causes the dog.

Can You See Yourself Now Training Your Dog At Home?

A training plan based on scientific research and dog psychology to keep your training safe, effective and enjoyable for yourself and your dog is one that you may well be able to apply at home. If you’ve been having issues with your pooch and you’ve asked more than once “How to train my dog at home?”, then start by understanding the basics of conditioned response and the combined effectiveness of positive and negative reinforcement techniques.

These are at the heart of your home dog obedience training program. We’re happy to point you to several top programs taught by professional trainers for you to consider buying to begin undertaking this rewarding experience of getting your dog to do as you desire without injuring your pet or frustrating yourself to no end. If you’re happy with our site, give them a try. Here’s one such dog training program we recommend.