REWARD THE GOOD

The best way to teach and maintain a behaviour or skill is to reward the dog for doing it. Positive reinforcement is all about giving the dog something good during or immediately after it has done something that we wanted it to do eg drop, stay, sitting to say ‘hello’ (ie not jumping).

Rewards commonly used are food, toys, balls, games, patting and praise. Dogs differ in terms of what they find more rewarding. Learning what REALLY motivates your dog is fun and will be a powerful tool in your training kit.

Getting the timing right when rewarding is essential for the dog to be able to make the association between what it did and the reward it received. You only have about 1-2 seconds. If you leave it longer than that, the dog will have no idea what it was rewarded for or you may mistakenly reward the wrong behaviour. Remember ANY behaviour that is rewarded will be strengthened and this includes bad or undesirable behaviour