Training Your Dog
Training your dog needs to start the same day he sets foot in your home. The first few months your dog is home are critical. They set the tone and pattern for what your relationship will be for the dog’s lifetime. That may sound a little bit intimidating, but training your dog right is relatively easy with a little discipline and consistency on your part.
Before you bring your dog home, take a few minutes to visualize him two years from now. When learning how to train a dog, think about how do you want him to behave? For the next two years, remember you are training your dog whether you intend to or not.
Leaving the Past Behind
One of the great things about dogs is that they live in the moment. Good or bad, whatever background they come from, they are ready to leave it behind. When training your dog you may need to bear in mind that some of them may need a little help in overcoming learned fears or in changing bad habits, but they don’t lie around dwelling on anything that happened before. Whatever your dog’s past is, there is nothing that you can do to take it away or make up for it, so all you can do is move forward.
Let It Go
While letting go of the past is easy for dogs, it often isn’t so easy for people. Sometimes new owners focus on the dogs’ past, making excuses for the dog’s behavior and attributing every mistake to a history of abuse, real or imagined. They can actually keep the dog from progressing because they’re so wrapped up in coddling the "victim." While coddling might make the caretaker feel better, it doesn’t help the dog at all. Training your dog should focus on his future, not his past – remember this and everything will work out fine.
Other people might be holding on to their own past, or memories of past dogs, and expect the new dog to behave in the same way as the previous dog did, especially if they are the same breed. Even worse when training your dog is expecting the new dog to know the same rules and commands the other dog knew.
