Reasons to Train Your Dog

Training ensures that you will spend valuable time with your dog.  To train your dog, you have to work with him often, preferably every day.  As a social animal, your dog craves time with you. Taking your dog on daily walks is a great way to spend time bonding as well as discovering his unique characteristics.

Training improves your relationship with your dog. Like their wolf ancestors, dogs have a pack mentality. They want a leader, and if you don’t assume that role, they try to fill it themselves. As you train your dog, you establish a relationship in which your dog learns to trust and look up to you, to respect you as a kind and benevolent leader. Gradually, he will learn to seek eye contact with you and become more attuned to your wishes.

Training makes your dog smarter! A trained dog pays more attention to the world around him and is more attentive to humans. If you train your dog well, using a positive rather than a punitive method of training, you will find that the dog’s reasoning capacity grows. He will actually try to figure things out. Most dogs can think and reason to a limited extent, and they generalize easily.

Obedience training helps solve other problems. Many behavioral problems that dogs exhibit are actually relational problems, occurring because the dog is unsure of its role in the family “pack”, or because it thinks it is the leader. As you train and your dog’s admiration for you grows, you may find that some of his unpleasant behaviors disappear. You can solve other problems easily as you learn how to relate to your dog, or as you get help from your training instructor.

Training opens doors! You would be surprised at how many establishments will gladly admit a dog that stays by its owner’s side, responds immediately to his owner’s voice, and actually stays when told.

Basic obedience training opens doors to learning fun activities as well. Agility training is very popular, and it is an activity that is open to both mixed and pure breeds. If you have ever wanted to get involved in this rapidly growing sport but worried that your dog would not behave himself, with a little bit of obedience training, you and your dog can easily get into the game.

Your groomer and vet will thank you for your extra time and effort spent on working with your dog. A trained and well socialized dog is much easier to examine.

Training not only makes for a better relationship with your dog, it can save his life. Imagine the terror of seeing your dog happily running and playing, unaware of the busy street full of cars passing by that he is getting too close to, or accidentally slipping out of his collar. What a relief to know that your dog will instantly respond to your command as you ask him to sit or return to your side before he darts out into the street.

Training your dog will not be easy. It takes a lot of patience, time and hard work before it will reach the stage at which you can proudly show off your work, but it is well worth the effort. Every dog can be trained. Some breeds and certain dogs may take longer than others, but they can be trained.