Although they could be YouTube, DVD or videotape, instructional tips of dog training that you can watch over and over again are usually called dog training videos. There are many specialty videos or DVDs made for specific jobs your dog may have, including being a police dog, show dog or drug-sniffing dog. But the majority of dog training videos are made for the average dog owner in mind.
Like Recipe Books
Dog training videos are to be used a merely suggestions and helpful hints and not followed like gospel. Your dog will often not behave like the dogs in dog training videos. If you have a toy dog, it will be very hard to find dog training videos just for toy dogs. So, you have to get videos of trainers working with large dog breeds and have to improvise. It’s a bit like a cookbook, where following a recipe to the letter is merely optional, not a requirement for a good meal.
But there are some basic ingredients that should be a part of every dog’s life to help any advice from dog training videos to work. Your dog needs to have regular exercise, eat quality food (and not too much of it), have only occasional human food as treats, needs regular vet check ups and really needs to be spayed or neutered. Without the sex hormones running amuck in a dog’s brain, they are more ready to pay attention to you and to let you be the boss.
Positive Reinforcement
Whether you are looking for a video on housebreaking, general obedience or for dog agility training videos, you need to pay the most attention to those which feature positive reinforcement as the main training method. If you are given dog training videos featuring punishment or the use of gadgets like prong collars, chuck them in the trash. All you are learning from those videos is how to terrorize and abuse your dog. Your dog then becomes terrified of you and is more prone to bite and disobey.
Methods of positive reinforcement include clicker training and shaping. This is where undesired behavior is ignored and positive behavior rewarded with a click (or other marker noise) and a treat. Eventually, you won’t need to give a treat every single time you give a command. But in the beginning, it sure helps. You need to be patient, persistent and have a big sense of humor.