Recently there has been an increase in popularity in using a head collar for dog training because it has been found that head collars would give you the better control over your dog. The two most popular head collars available in the market are the Halti Training Collar and the Gentle Leader Training Collar.
How Does The Collar Works
The Halti and the Gentle Leader collars provide control over a dog's direction and movement without restricting airflow, panting, drinking or grasping objects in his mouth. Pressure on this type of collar pulls the dog's head towards the handler. When you have control of your dog's head, you have control of the dog.
These training collars look more like a horse's halter, with a band going around the back of the head and another around the nose. The leash snaps onto the collar under the chin. When you pull on the leash, the dog's head will either be pulled down or to the side – this makes it virtually impossible for the dog to move ahead or pull you forward.
Why Train With the Halti Collar
Training with a Halti or Gentle Leader collar has some advantages over a traditional training collar. Head collars are usually more intuitive to use than a traditional training collar. If walking your dog is important to you, head collars make this much easier. Head collars also make it easy to keep your dog from pulling you when walking. Head collars are a good tool for those who are not strong enough to control a dog with a regular training collar.
Head collars can be effectively used to control dogs in difficult situations or where training the dog would require too much effort. This could be situations were you know you will have a hard time controlling the dog, and it can include times when the dog will have a difficult time with self-control. ItÂ’s better to physically restrain the dog with a head collar than have the dog learn to be out of control.
When to Use The Head Collar
A good time to use the head collar is when you are on an outing where you know there will be high level distractions and youÂ’re also aware that you will be paying more attention to having fun than training your dog. Training a dog with the head collar is most effective when done in combination with reinforcement training (giving your dog a reward for good behavior).
There are some dog owners who are hesitant to use the collar because they feel it looks more like a muzzle than a collar. You may even find them asking you about the collar and it may make you feel uncomfortable. You can take some time off to explain the benefits of using the head collars and tell them they can use it to aid in their dog training too!
Moses Wright is the webmaster of Dog Collar. You can find more useful information on Dog Training Collar and Electronic Dog Collar on his site. You can reprint this article if you keep the content and live link intact.
Having an inside dog is terrific for both the dog and you because it allows the dog to truly be one of the family. However, allowing your dog to live inside the house is not without its challenges. Many dog owners have turned to an indoor dog fence to help protect certain areas of the house or items in it. There are several indoor dog fence options and the most popular ones are detailed below.
1) Electronic or wireless indoor dog fence. Also called wireless radio containment systems, these fencing systems work very similarly to the way the outdoor versions work. You place a transmitter somewhere in the house and it relays a radio signal to a receiver or several receivers. These receivers can be placed strategically through the home, wherever you want to keep your dog away from. They emit a separate radio signal that is read by the collar that your dog wears if he gets too close to the area. If the collar gets close enough to read the signal, a small shock occurs to teach the dog to stay away from that spot.
2) Mist sprayers. These devices work off of motion detection and if the motion sensor is triggered, a spray of mist sprays out. The mist is usually a type of citronella or scented liquid that is very unpleasant to a dog's sensitive nose. They learn quickly to stay away.
3) Scat Mats. These electric mats are placed on furniture or counters to teach the dog not to jump up and sit or lay there. When the dog does it, the pressure and weight of the dog's body triggers a small electric shock from the mat. The shock is not strong enough to hurt your pet, just strong enough to make it unpleasant to stay where it is.
The purpose of this article is to improve the publicÂ’s knowledge about dogs, the West Highland Terrier in particular. Many people decide that they want a dog based off of appearance alone. While this may not be a terrible thing to do if the person has the ability to accommodate all types of dogs, for some individuals the care for specific types of dog breeds is not possible. The best way to avoid any surprises after the adopting or purchase of a dog is to understand the breed and what it takes to care for it. We will go over some of the basic characteristics of the West Highland Terrier to help you get a better understanding of the West Highland Terrier as a breed and possibly a new addition to your family.
The West Highland Terrier, or “Westie”, is a small high spirited breed with a shrill voice and insatiable appetite for companionship. The Westie is very easy to keep fed due to their small size at 11 inches and 19 lbs. The main drawback to this breed is the constant need for bathing since their snow white coat dirties easily and quickly. The Westie, as small as they are, will make a great protector of the home, as I am not sure they know their actual size. This is an ideal breed for families and individuals alike.
We hope that we have assisted you I your quest for knowledge and understanding of the West Highland Terrier. Please look below for some additional resources. The first thing you will want to do is see what the West Highland Terrier looks like. The next thing you will need to do is house train your West Highland Terrier. We find that one of the most common reasons that someone will get rid of West Highland TerrierÂ’s is that they are not house trained. There is a wonderful manual that can be used and you will find the link below. Lastly we want you to show off your new West Highland Terrier. There is a wonderful online dog community complete with a forum for you to post pictures to. Check it out.
The key to success is to love your West Highland Terrier and nothing will help you achieve that more than bonding with them. Spend time with your West Highland Terrier and make them a happy and healthy addition to your family.
Using a leave command will give you much greater control over what your dog eats and sniffs when you are out walking the streets. You can also use it at home or any situation. The leave command is essentially a word that tells your dog not to sniff or eat something and it is the first step in training food refusal. There is not usually a hand signal involved in this type of training because it is more than likely used when you are walking and as your dog may be on the leash, you will not have your hands free.
Why should I use a leave command?
A leave command is a very useful tool to have in your dog training toolkit because it is easy to train and can be used in a variety of situations. It is also very important because it can stop your dog from eating something that may make it sick or may cause choking.
How do I start training a leave command?
Choose the word you want to use - some trainers use the word 'leave'. You can do either or both of the following. For the quickest and best results, do both and ask someone to help you when training food refusal. When you are out in the street and your dog goes to sniff or eat something off the ground, say 'leave' and keep walking. Don't give your dog the opportunity to get to it anyway by walking quickly away. Because this is a form of capturing, it will take some time because you are reliant on there being something on the ground. The second method is better because you have full control and can practise it anytime.
Choose a food that your dog likes and leave a very small pile on the ground. Put your dog on the leash and walk by the food. Walk close enough for him to sniff it but not too close so he can reach it. Give the leave command just as your dog goes for the food. In all good training timing is everything. Your dog needs to understand what you want straight away. You need to interrupt his behaviour as soon as it starts.
When you are walking past, give your dog praise. If you want to use treats to reward him, wait until you are five paces away. Your dog needs to learn that he is being rewarded for leaving the food on the ground and walking away so putting a small distance between the treat and the food on the ground will reinforce this.
FOOD REFUSAL
Food refusal can save your dog from eating poisoned food or over eating. Training food refusal may take a long time depending upon your dog's appetite and with some breeds like Labradors it needs constant practise and reminders.
Before you begin food refusal, choose an 'eat' command. Some people use 'eat' and others 'OK'. Whatever word you choose has to be different from any other word you use for your training.
Put your dog on his leash and get him into a sit. Ask someone to walk up to him and offer him some treats. It is important that you keep your dog in a sit and only let him have the treats when you say so. If he learns forward and stands up, re-command him into a sit and ask the person with the food to step away. When he can sit and wait for your command to eat, that's when he has learnt what you want. Now you have to practise and start making his training more intense.
Remember: always give your dog or puppy the opportunity to correct his behaviour and do the right thing. It is up to you to teach him what is acceptable and what is not. Reward acceptable behaviour; discourage unacceptable behaviour by using loud unpleasant noises, withdrawal of attention or treats or leaving your puppy on its own. Never hit or strike your puppy; you will only be teaching him that violence is an acceptable behaviour in your pack and he may use it on other pack members or friends including children.
Sue Day is a dog behaviourist with experience in puppy training, dog agility, obedience, and re homing shelter dogs. Sue owns Messy Pawz Dog Training which advocates positive training methods. Sue has made a lot of information available for free on her website: http://www.messypawz.com
Come to think of it, training a God is not just converting your dog to simple following your instructions and commands. When you start training your dog for obedience and anti aggressive behavior you actually increase your interaction with your pet. In the course of training, your dog learns a few tricks, but at the same time you also get to learn a lot about your four legged companion.
There are numerous ways and means to train a dog, but one of the most effective dog training aids is an electronic clicker The essence of clicker training is that the dog is guided, not forced, into the desired behavior.
The clicker works on the principles of conditioning behavior and association of actions with sounds as experimented by Ivan Pavlov (a Russian Behavioral expert) long ago. He researched and established a relation between sounds and sight. He determined that even in the absence of the actual situation we can condition an intelligent animal such as a dog to react for a situation on hearing a sound even in the absence of the actual situation and associating sounds with events and required actions.
Pavlov had trained conditioned his dog for associating the sound of a bell with food and the dogs even started producing additional saliva when the bell rang and food was not provided as they had over a period of time associated the sound with food.
In the similar way you can train your dogs to act and behave in a required manner to the sound of a clicker. It takes a lot of patience, but is entirely non-confrontational. If you learn and understand clicker training you will not only be more effective in training dogs, but you will probably also improve your people handling skills.
Clicker in my opinion is one of the greatest dog training aids developed till now and suitable for dogs of all sizes and breeds.
I've created a 6 Day Dog Training Aids Program for anyone who would like to get excellent results in 6 days. This program is designed to help you start training your dogs quicker than you ever thought possible. You'll have a dog that knows how to behave in the shortest amount of time possible. You can find this plan at http://www.MyDogTrainingAids.com.
Being a dog owner is a wonderful experience. But if your dog barks excessively it can be a real pain. If you live in the country a barking dog may not be such a bad thing it can warn you of impending danger. But if you are a city dweller with neighbors a barking dog can be a real pain. Training your dog not to bark is like most other aspects of dog training it takes time and patience. In this article I will give you some tips on to easily train your dog to stop barking.
First, try to establish the cause for your dog's barking. Do they need to go outside to do their business.Is there an animal outside that is causing them to bark? Some dogs like the sound of their own bark, just like some people like the sound of their own voice.
Secondly, check to see if your dogs basic needs are being met. Do they need food or water? Do they need a walk? Do they feel threatened?
Third, you may want to make a life a little easier for your dog so they don't feel like they have to bark. Make sure there is always enough food and water. Take them for a walk or allow them to go out in the yard often.
Fourth, some experts recommend Citronella no-bark collars. They are considered to be effective and cause no pain to your dog. They spray Citronella when your dog barks and most dogs do not like it.
Fifth, you may want to use the reward system. If you tell your dog not to bark and they don't you can reward them with praise or a treat. This works with many dogs.
Lastly, if you can't seem to make your dog stop barking you may want to consider speaking with an expert. But do keep in mind before you seek outside help that there is usually a good reason for your dog to bark. So checkout all possibilities first.
You spent half a dozen books on dog house training, enrolled your dog in obedience school, spent a fortune on dog biscuits --- and still, your dog refuses to follow your commands. Add to that, the dog still pees on your couch. Is your dog trying to wear your patience out?
No. Your dog didn't just wake up one morning and decided to make your life miserable. There is no such thing. It is just that complex commands are not something dogs are capable of responding to. Ultimately, dogs respond to straightforward emotions such as fear, sadness or happiness.
Through time, dogs are able to connect certain emotions to certain events. If an act is repeated, they can only draw an emotion from it. Suffice to say, not because you hit your dog for peeing on the carpet, it would retaliate and bite you. Instead, it could only express an emotion, such as, probably fear, when you hit it.
So say you have made a house training rule that your dog should only pee on the newspapers you set up by the door. But one time, you forgot and left newspapers on the living room floor. The next scene, you see your dog peeing on these newspapers. Now scolding or hitting your dog from doing so would confuse the house training you have already began. Your dog already has associated newspapers as the peeing area.
Remember not to punish your dog when he makes this mistake as fear may cause it to stop learning your rules. Instead, take care in formulating your commands and maybe next time; take care of leaving the newspapers in the designated area only.
So what do you do if your dog pees on your furniture? One thing is for sure --- do not throw a fit. Do not show that you are upset. Quickly take your dog outside or in another area and clean up the mess. In order that your dog does not repeat the incident, remove the smell completely. For dogs, their pee marks the area where they can repeat the act again and again. Vinegar is a good choice for removing the smell. Stay away from ammonia-smelling disinfectants since it mimics that smell of dog urine.
If after all these efforts and your dog still strikes your ire you might want to bring your dog to the veterinarian. Studies show that certain illnesses may affect your dog's response in house training.
Certain conditions can cause your dog to urinate or poop uncontrollably and therefore cannot meet your demands in dog house training.
Visit Basic Dog Training Advice for more information on house training a dog. The website contains valuable information on dog training and other related services.
Many hunters prefer to train their hunting dog themselves; this is for a few reasons. Oftentimes dogs will only respond and obey one person when taking commands; if this person isn't the hunter, there will be plenty of problems in the field. The other reason is that the hunter can have complete control over what his dog learns, and how he learns it. A hunter will genuinely have more trust in a dog if he's played a large part in the training process. While it may seem overwhelming at first, training a dog isn't that difficult; most hunters take great pride and enjoy the process. There are some supplies however that every hunter should use when training his hunting dog.
One of the simplest, yet most effective dog training supplies is the use of the dog treat. This technique is well known and used for good reason; it is quite possibly the most effective way to train a dog. A good way to teach your dog obedience and willpower is to put the treat on his nose and not allow him to eat it until you say so. This is certainly a difficult trick for any dog to accomplish, but with time and patience on the hunter's part, it can be done. The longer the dog is able to leave the treat on his nose the better. When the hunter does tell the dog to get the treat, the dog will learn that when he listens to his owner, good things will happen. It's best when a dog is just starting out to use a lot of treats in training, but as training advances many prefer to alternate the reward of the treat with the reward of affection. When a hunter is out in the field and the dog performs well, the hunter will probably not have a treat for the dog, so the dog needs to learn that his owner's attention is just as important.
Another tool many dog trainers use is the whistle. This can be used in a few different ways, and how you choose to use it will be up to your own preference. Most trainers use the whistle to get the dog's attention; if the dog isn't paying attention, or is far out in the field, blowing one short blow on the whistle is an effective way to turn your dog. The other way in which trainers use the whistle is for punishment. While a short blow won't bother them, a longer, harder blow will. When they do something wrong this can be an effective way to let them know that it's wrong. Some trainers even use the whistle in both ways; either way, your dog is bound to learn the lesson.
Imagine how you would feel if you knew that all of the work and effort you put into clicker training your dog could be completely undone by being a split second off in your timing. Here are the mistakes to avoid:
You must practice to be able to set off the clicker at the exact moment you want it to. Anyone who has used a clicker knows that it takes awhile to get this down perfectly. You must think of the clicker box like a touchy camera exposure button. You want to capture the desired behavior from your dog the moment it happens. If you "press the button" at the wrong time you will be enforcing the wrong behavior. Everyone has had the experience where a camera took the picture a second after the button was pressed, missing the image you wanted to capture. In the same way that the resulting image is not what you want; the behavior reinforced will not be what you want.
Say you want to teach your dog to sit. Wait until the exact moment your dog's bottom hits the floor. Only click and treat at that moment. The click must go off at that exact instant. You are looking for a full sit, not a half squat or bounce. It will be strange to give the command "sit" and only have your dog do a half booty drop as a result, (unless you are training the dog to be a backup dancer in a rap video). Your dog will soon understand that sitting down means a click and a treat. And he should soon start offering the sit position to continue to get treats.
You must also make sure that your training sessions are short, never longer than 5 minutes. Sessions should be condensed learning where you are giving a treat and rewarding at a rapid pace. Every few seconds during the training session you should be rewarding your dog with a treat. The amount of food you will be giving your dog is going to be high so make sure to factor these treats into your dog's daily calorie count.
Dog Breed Pictures Pulaski County Humane Society takes in 143 dogs from 1 breeder
Dozens of dogs in Pulaski County need homes and that's before the Humane Society took in another 143 over the weekend. A breeder voluntarily handed them over.
The purpose of this article is to improve the publicÂ’s knowledge about dogs, the Akita in particular. Many people decide that they want a dog based off of appearance alone. While this may not be a terrible thing to do if the person has the ability to accommodate all types of dogs, for some individuals the care for specific types of dog breeds is not possible. The best way to avoid any surprises after the adopting or purchase of a dog is to understand the breed and what it takes to care for it. We will go over some of the basic characteristics of the Akita to help you get a better understanding of the Akita as a breed and possibly a new addition to your family.
Sometimes categorized in the working group, the Akita is a powerful, attention demanding dog, due to its large size of 28 inches tall and 110 lbs. They have a crisp color scheme, sharp lines and curled tail. The Akita is very controlling of its environment and all of the people in it. The owning of an Akita takes a specific type of person. Aggressive by nature armed with the tools needed for destruction, the Akita is not a good family dog. This breed requires a sizable amount of food and grooming and needs lots of exercise. If the Akita fits your lifestyle, you will have a fantastic companion, however if the circumstances are not right it could be a recipe for disaster.
We hope that we have assisted you I your quest for knowledge and understanding of the Akita. Please look below for some additional resources. The first thing you will want to do is see what the Akita looks like. The next thing you will need to do is house train your Akita. We find that one of the most common reasons that someone will get rid of AkitaÂ’s is that they are not house trained. There is a wonderful manual that can be used and you will find the link below. Lastly we want you to show off your new Akita. There is a wonderful online dog community complete with a forum for you to post pictures to. Check it out.
The key to success is to love your Akita and nothing will help you achieve that more than bonding with them. Spend time with your Akita and make them a happy and healthy addition to your family.