How To Train Your Dog.
Tips from a professional force-free dog trainer (and vet tech).
Chinchillas are incredibly fast runners, expert escape artists, and can jump six feet in the air. I used the latter to my advantage. If Ash escapes — I do not chase him. Chasing prey animals does absolutely no good because it scares them. So knowing that he was quite capable of jumping onto my five-foot self, I trained him to do it on command. Technically, I trained him, “shoulder”. That’s where he jumps to… it’s just never where he stays.
What does this have to do with dog training? Everything. Because the first rule of training your dog is understanding your dog. If you don’t know what they’re capable of and what behaviors of yours will elicit a fear response over the desired response — you will get exactly nowhere. Knowing that chasing a prey animal wouldn’t work was the first step to knowing that I could train my chinchilla to come back to me — if I did not scare him.
Make sense?
Okay.
Force-Free Training Rules.
No hitting.
No pushing their faces into excrement.
No screaming and stomping and throwing a giant human tantrum.
