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You can make your dog more obedient and get rid of their behavior problems just by using the techniques that SitStayFetch teaches in their course, or at least that is what they claim. So I will be conducting a case study to determine if their dog training tips will work to make my dog obedient to my commands.

For my case study, I am going to take their tips and use them to train my German Shepherd dog, Bear, whom has no training experience. Bear’s main problem at this time is that he does not come when called. So, I am going to take their tips on how to train your dog to come on command and see if he improves using their tips.

My dog bear loves to play tag with the dog next door. This by itself is not a problem, but it becomes a problem when he plays tag running along the fence inside my garden. So, in order to save my garden, I try and call him to come inside by saying, ‘Bear. . . come.. .’ but he does not listen to me. He only glances at me long enough to acknowledge I said something and then goes on his merry way doing what he pleases.

Now frustration sets in, so I start shouting “Bear. . .Come!!!” He will not even acknowledge me now. So I start yelling in frustration and go grab him by the collar and make him come inside, letting him know I am angry at him for not listening to me. I am sure many dog owners have been there and done that. SitStayFetch tells me that I am approaching this all wrong as dogs think differently than humans. They inform me the reason why my dog is not listening to me and tell me by just implementing the why into my training will make my dog a lot more obedient to my commands.

What exactly does SitStayFetch teach us about training our dogs to be obedient to our commands? They teach us that when we discipline our dog for not doing what we want, our dog is learning that the command is bad and they should not listen to it. So, if we give our dog the command, come, and then yell at him for not listening, the dog will relate that command to bad things and will not do what you want. You see, dogs learn from positive reinforcement. By getting mad and giving your dog a command, he thinks that command means he is in trouble and will avoid it whereas we think that the dog will learn that his actions were bad and will learn to do it right. SitStayFetch informs us that if we want our dogs to listen to us, we need to use positive reinforcement that rewards our dogs and teaches them by performing the command good things will happen.

If we want our dogs to learn the come command, we need to teach him with positive words and not with negative words or actions. To accomplish this, SitStayFetch teaches us that there are some things we need to do in order to get our dog to listen to us. I will address 3 of the tips here that I feel are the most important, or are the ones that helped my dog Bear the most.

One: Have some great treats in hand. Some good treats they mention are dog treats, cheese and hot dogs. I use Cheetos and hot dogs, but not dog treats since Bear does not care for them, go figure.

Two: Make sure your voice is upbeat and happy when you give your dog the command.

Three: Use a long leash so you can reel him in when saying come.

With my new tips in hand, I took a deep breathe, gathered my treats and leash and took bear outside to teach him that the command come means good things and hopefully get him to listen. The results. . .

At first Bear did not listen because I had initially taught him that the command come meant that he was in trouble. So, I gave Bear the come command by saying ‘Bear. . . come. . .’ showed him the cheetos, reeled him into me while saying in a cheerful voice, ‘Good Boy Bear. . . Good Come’, and then gave him his reward of a couple of cheetos. That peeked his interest and got his tail wagging. I then let him go out and play once again and then called him using the come command. This time something wonderful happened, Bear came anxiously awaiting his great reward. I can not believe how easy it was to teach him this command once I practiced what SitStayFetch tells us to do.

So does SitStayFetch’s dog obedience training tips work? Bear proved to me that they do indeed work when you apply what they teach you and I am very happy with the results I seen. I have been working with the come command daily with Bear and he now comes when called, even when playing with his dog friend next door. Your dog can also learn to be obedient to your commands when you train him the correct way and SitStayFetch does an excellent job at teaching you how to do that the correct way.

Last 5 posts by Regenna Deruso

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Tags: Pets