Mistakes You Make When Rewarding Your Dog

Rewarding your dog for its efforts is a very important part of fixing behavior problems and basic obedience training.

But it’s important to understand how to reward your dog correctly. This can make a big difference in the success of your dog training efforts.

Let’s get started:

If you pat your dog on his head, he will take it to mean you’re showing your dominance. Because of this, it isn’t a reward in the eyes of your dog.

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What your dog does like is long strokes along the length of his body. This is a much better reward for your dog, and he will understand it as such.

If you’re giving your dog too many toys, he can quite easily learn that he’s allowed to chew anything – because he associates his toys with general stuff he sees in the house, such as shoes.

It’s best to allow a maximum of three toys – and make sure they don’t look like anything else you may have around your home.

When you start training your dog, you need to make sure he realizes you have rewards or treats ready for him. Otherwise your dog has no reason to obey you – at least at first.

Timing is crucial when you reward your dog. Make sure you praise and reward your dog the instant he responds to your commands. Within 2 seconds maximum.

When your dog has learned your word and hand signals and is starting to respond to your commands, cut down on rewards slightly -- particularly food rewards.

Remember This: Never punish your dog after he has misbehaved.

Why? Because your dog won’t understand why you are punishing him unless you catch him red-handed. A good rule of thumb is to reward the good, and forget the bad.