Apart from completely losing your cool, how can you discipline your dog so that he knows to not repeat the bad behavior again?
Some people might say that raising a dog is like raising a child – you love them with all your heart, even when they get into trouble. Dogs are notorious for giving the puppy eye look when they’ve done something bad and they know it.
1. Be Positive When Providing Discipline
When training your dog, try not to use negative reinforcement. While it may work for some dogs, most dogs take longer to learn that the behaviour is not acceptable defeating your efforts to discipline.
Under no circumstances is it ever ok to hit your dog.
The dog may become fearful of you and may even start to become aggressive. Then you’ll have a bad behaving dog that easily gets defensive, which can be a nightmare. The goal when training your dog is to reinforce good behavior.
2. Say “No”
If you catch your dog behaving badly, such as jumping on the couch, firmly say “No”. You only need to say it once. Repeating yourself may cause your dog to ignore you and continue engaging in bad behaviour.
If your dog doesn’t stop, you may need to remove him/her from the situation.
Keeping trash cans out of sight or shoes out of reach can also help deter your dog from repeating bad behaviours.
3. Provide A Distraction Instead
If your dog enjoys chewing on shoes, give her a chew toy instead. Distracting your dog from bad behaviours may help in correcting the behaviour, as a soft form of discipline. Your dog may have pent up energy and is releasing it by being mischievous.
Make sure you are taking the dog on daily walks and allowing for play time.
Be careful not to mistake a distraction for a reward. If your dog thinks that she’s being rewarded for going through the trash, then she’s going to keep doing it.
4. Use A Timeout As Discipline
If you dog doesn’t stop misbehaving, you may need to put them in a timeout, as a form of discipline.
Place them in their kennel without any toys for 5 minutes. Your dog may start whining or barking but you need to leave them be. If you tell them to be quiet, your dog will likely continue whining until you let them out.
When your dog is in timeout, do not acknowledge them at all.
Over time, your dog will learn not to repeat bad behaviours to avoid being sent to timeout.
Via 1. Play Train Dog 2. The Pooch Mobile 3. Alfie 4. Pinterest
