German Shepherd Dog Training – 3 Secrets To Success
German Shepherd Dog Training
Since German Shepherds are generally larger dogs with an unfortunate bad reputation in many people’s eyes, it’s your responsibility to show what a great and obedient dog your GSD can be.
Training should start as young as possible, and crate training puppies is a great place to start. Your German Shepherd needs to know from your first day together that you are in charge.
You can set the tone early by doing simple things like always entering and exiting doors first, because a physical following will translate into a following mentality.
German Shepherds are very mouthy, bitey dogs, even though they may be just playing, so you need to discourage this early and often, because this could turn into a sign of dominance, if not complete aggression.
If your shepherd starts to chew on any part of you, immediately stop and correct the behavior by giving them something acceptable to chew on, like a bone or rawhide. Do this for as long as it takes, until they realize you are not a chew toy.
The next step of training, before even moving on to the more traditional commands, is to socialize your dog, so it gets used to other people and pets.
Any signs of aggression should be stopped and corrected instantly, but never hit or abuse your dog, because that could only make the problems worse down the road.
Using calm and assertive tones and actions will have a more positive and lasting effect.
German Shepherd Dog Training – Advanced
Once you’ve mastered basic social training and established yourself as the leader, then you can move on to the more novel tricks and commands.
Always start with the most essential and useful ones: sit, stay, down, come, and heel.
These can come in very handy in public situations to keep your dog out of trouble and in control.
If you’d like to venture into the fun and more complex training techniques, GSD’s are very versatile and adept at mastering just about anything, which is why they are so often used as police and therapy dogs.
They respond well to agility drills, fetching, attack and stop commands, and more, and all of these things are excellent not only for their physical needs, but they provide much-needed mental stimulation as well.
German shepherd dog training is a very rewarding thing to concentrate on, and the sky is really the limit with the general intelligence and obedience of this wonderful breed.
Sep 22, 2010 | 0 | german shepherd dog training
