We know that training your fur kid on your own can sometimes be frustrating and difficult… As such, we want to change that for you and help you through the process. Recently, we have collaborated with a professional dog trainer, Darren Yew (@MyDogsAdventuressg) to share some dog training tips with our pawrents. He was aspired to become a dog trainer since young and finally got to pursue his dream career as a dog trainer!
The top five areas of concern that our pawjourr pawrents face with their fur kids are: Potty training, giving healthy praises and scoldings, conducting basic commands, dealing with aggressive behaviour and separation anxiety. Read on to find out what tips Darren has been using to tackle these issues.
- Tips on potty training: For a start, pawrents can begin toilet training their dog by ‘crating’ him or her up during their puppy stage. Gradually, expand the ‘crating’ area as their dog grows up. Once their dog becomes an adult, they may choose to forgo the crate as they have already mastered potty training.
- Tips on giving healthy praises and scoldings to pets: Pawrents should give praises only when their dog is obedient or calm. As for scoldings, simple ones like “Hey!” and “No!” will do. Forbid slamming things or shouting at them.
- Tips on how to conduct basic command trainings: Pawrents can give treats to their dog like kibbles or small size snacks. An advice that I would give is to start conducting basic command training at home instead of holding it outdoors – safety comes first nonetheless! This is to avoid distractions that will more likely occur outdoors from things like birds and cars etc. Of course, pawrents can transition to training their dog outdoors but only when their dog is more advanced.
- Tips to deal with aggressive behaviour: When pawrents think that their dog is aggressive, they are not. Rather, they may just exhibit emotions like fear, uncertainty and defensiveness. When pawrents are faced with such situations, they should observe their dog’s body language. If their dog expresses fear, then pawrents should refrain from approaching them until their dog is more comfortable like if their dog starts sniffing or displaying curious behaviour.
- Tips to help with pet’s separation anxiety: Pawrents with anxious dogs should start to build a comfort place for their dog to rest like a mat. Their dog should not be following them around the house but learning to stay put in their comfort place. If their dog keeps following their pawrents around the house, this means that the hooman has become their comfort place instead, which would lead to separation anxiety.
We hope that you have found what Darren shared to be useful. To Darren, dog training is a constant learning process because each dog is unique in terms of their temperament. What matters most is for pawrents to be patient and never give up.
These tips are based on my own experience. There is no right or wrong training method because there are many ways a dog can be trained. These tips that I am sharing happen to work for me, and I truly hope that they would work for you too!
– Darren