Dog Obedience

The Very Foundation of Successful Dog Obedience Training is understanding how your dog communicates and learning how you can effectively communicate with your dog. It's hard to build a relationship with someone when you just can't seem to communicate with each other. Well, it's the same with building a relationship with your dog.

Once you learn how to communicate with your dog and how she communicates with you, dog obedience training gets much, much easier--and becomes much, much more enjoyable, for both of you!

Essentially, there are four basic ways that a dog communicates:

Body Language, Speaking,
Touching and Smelling.

The first three are used in dog obedience training.

Knowing how to read a dog's Body Language Is Critical because knowing what to look for will help you identify behaviors—even if they appear innocent or cute—that reveal a dog's potential for aggressive behavior. Identifying aggressive tendencies is an important part of dog obedience, as it directs you to those behaviors that you want to nip in the bud immediately.

Staring. When a dog stares at you, it can be friendly—your dog is giving you his undivided, devoted attention. Or it can be confrontational and the dog is staring you down to intimidate you. He's the boss, not you! Effective dog obedience training puts you in the top dog position and puts an end to a dog asserting himself over you.

Posture. If a dog stands stiff and tall, ears perked up, it can mean several things. If he's facing something other than you, whatever it is now has his complete and utter attention. He may be preparing to run toward it, either aggressively or playfully, depending on his demeanor. If the dog is facing you in the same posture, he could be poised to greet and lick you excitedly—or he could be preparing to attack. So you can see why figuring out these clues are so important, and how helpful they can be when starting dog obedience training for your dog.

Touching. If your dog leans against you, it may be that she takes comfort in your presence beside her; she finds the feel of your body against her to be reassuring. However, if the dog is leaning hard against you, pushes you to where you may even lose your balance, or jumps up on you with her paws against your chest or back, it could be aggressive and intimidating, her way of saying she is superior and wants to make sure you know it. Obedience training is definitely called for in that instance!

Even seemingly innocent actions can in fact be a dog's way of communicating to you.

If your dog sleeps in a doorway, resisting moving when you pass,
or chooses an elevated position such as a sofa or your bed and
Refuses to get off, these are all clues to dominant behavior
that must and can be remedied with Effective Dog Obedience Training.

For more great tips and insights to your dog's behavior and how to start off dog obedience training the right way, you can sign up (at the top right of this page) for our informative, Free e-book where you will Discover how to turn your Disobedient, Noisy and Frustrating dog into a well behaved member of the family that you can be PROUD of and others will ADMIRE!