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Pupforum presents your training questions answered by professional dog trainers.
Dawn has a background in competition in breed and the obedience ring, the whelping box, trained her own ‘registered therapy dog’, herding, tracking, lure coursing, water work training, field training, agility, and sailing with her boat trained dog. Dawn was one of the few trainers utilizing ‘positive reinforcement’ based methods before it’s popularity. Dawn has been interviewed by authors for a variety of articles such as Dog Fancy and The Washington Post. The Washingtonian Magazine chose Dawn as one of “Washington’s Best Dog Trainers”. As the owner, and founder of Merit Puppy Training, LLC, she continues to teach group classes and also works as a private consultant.
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9/26/2005
The commands necessary to teach a puppy or older dog NOT to mouth are easy and fun. They will tell the puppy in a language ‘he’ understands. Remember, we are trying to view life through his eyes, and look at what he already started to learn when he was with his littermates.
Hold a small handful of the dog’s food, say "take it" in a honey sweet tone of voice, and give the dog one piece of food, you may want to offer 2 or 4 pieces of food, or some yummy treats. Now close the rest of the food in your hand, sometimes turning your hand as you close your fist helps. When the dog starts to come back for more you say, "off" in a tone of voice not so sweet but calmly. With some of the more pushy type canines a ‘gruff’ tone of voice may be needed to get the point across. When the dog has not touched your hand for 2, 3 to 5 seconds say, "take it" and give one piece of food, don’t forget to praise for a job well done. We are teaching the canine that "off" means not to touch and back off. You should do this with the dog before every meal for, every toy, every treat, many many times a day for a few minutes here and there as well as any other time you are interacting with your pup or he is alone chewing a favorite toy.
Once the canine is performing the above exercise with his food, it is time to help him ‘generalize’ this command to other things. You may practice with all his toys, and also include making ‘trades’ for other toys. While your puppy is chewin
g on a toy make an effort to interrupt his chewing time and go over to him and tell him, “off”…he should stop chewing, then you reach in and take his toy, tell him “good”….then offer him a nice little treat, or give him another toy of ‘equal’ value.
The goals here are to teach ‘bite inhibition ( not bite suppression’) in combination with the ‘off’ command which means, “don’t touch and back away”. Also incorporating the ‘trade’ (teaching the dog to give things back to you without guarding or biting your hand) of anything the dog has in his possession. All 3 exercises work hand in hand, and help to teach the dog compliance.
The exercises above can be used on dogs of all ages, obviously a young puppy is like a blank slate and much easier to work with. I believe that the above temperament training exercises should be installed in all dogs of all ages, I continue to use these techniques on my own dogs’ who are all adults now. I keep a ‘check’ on their willingness to release objects from their mouths at all times as well as releasing me, no matter what the item is they have in their possession as well as the person asking them to release it.
Creating a ‘soft’ mouth when dogs want to play as they grab your arm, and releasing favorite play toys when you ask them to is a process that takes time and practice and must always be addressed in everyday life as well as setting up training scenarios.....this assures safety AROUND your canine.
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