It is important at the beginning of the dog training process for a dog owner to have a clear objective of what results they want to achieve by implementing a dog training program. There are however some basics which all dog training regimes should include. Some of the basics of obedience and good people skills for example. Before you can even start with the basics though it is vital that you understand how a dog thinks and its behavioral traits. A good understanding of dogs is the first foundation for implementing a successful dog training exercise.

The first thing we need to understand is that we communicate using our human perception and understanding of communication. We talk to the dog and we expect the dog to react straight away understanding fully what we are trying to communicate. Unfortunately, dogs are not humans and that is not the case. A dog's perception of communication is totally different to a human's and we need to respond to that in order for there to be a working relationship between dog and owner. Once we grasp this, we will have more realistic expectation of our dogs, and we will have more patients with them especially in the beginning stages of the training process.

I a way you could compare dog behavior modification to learning a new language. Your dog is in the process of learning a complete new way of communicating; much like a toddler or infant.

Bearing this in mind will help you understand that there will be a learning curve that will continue well into your dog's maturity. As your dog learns the basics of your style of communication the learning curve tends to decrease and the saying of ?You can't teach an old dog new tricks? changes to ?You can teach an old dog new tricks quickly if you know how to communicate with it?. There are a few things which you should avoid during the process communication development with your dog. Yelling or screaming at the dog will dramatically affect, for the worse, the dog's ability to understand your communication. The dog will understand one thing though, that you are angry and that will be the only perception they make.

Another point worth bearing in mind is that a dog will need to be trained by the same person throughout the dog behavior modification program. Dogs are very perceptive and will pick up on an individual's particular method of communication. One person training the dog will avoid extra learn load on the dog in it trying to understand a different form of communication as well as avoid confusion on the dogs behalf. Minor differences like differences in the tone of voice during particular commands will all be noticed by the dog and will aid confusion. It's also very important that the manor of praise given to the dog is consistent. It will avoid the dog associating certain commands with a better or worse praise and therefore can develop different obedience patterns.

It is always advisable to keep training session, with your dog, short. At the beginning of the process I would recommend that you start off with session no longer then 2-3 minutes. After a while you can increase the amount of time spent during a training session to a maximum of 10 minutes.

It's also important that you finish every training session with a skill that the dog has already mastered. This will give the dog confidence and it will look forward to the next session. Try and only move onto a new command or skill once the previous skill has been mastered. Keep in mind that when training there should be lots of opportunity for repetition and lots of praise during the sessions. This will increase the effectiveness of the training dramatically.

Basic dog training.