Many people used to "traditional" methods have trouble training certain dogs, I'm not sure if that is your case, do you rely on punishment? in any case I would really urge you to try clicker training. This allows you to teach the dog in small steps if you need to. So when teaching a dog to say...give his paw, you don't have to make him do the whole thing all at once. You can first reward for him shifting weight off the paw or moving the paw, then only click for lifting even slightly, then click for only higher lifts, then only lifts that contact your hand and then start actually holding and shaking the hand. This method also allows the dog to think! You are not manipulating the dog into doing things so he cannot just sit back and let you do the work, he really has to think about what to do to make you click and he will start experimenting with behavior to earn a click. You can click for any progress in his behavior, every time he gets closer to doing what you want he can be told that he did something that was correct so you bring him one step closer.
Some people can even clicker train without luring at all, they rely completely on capturing the behavior when the dog does it himself (but that would take patience for sure with certain commands).
If you ever need help with training a certain behavior or have any questions regarding clicker training I'd love to help! I can break down commands into steps because some dogs just need to take things slowly especially if they are used to being punished for behaviors (they don't know what "bad" behavior is to us so they feel they risk getting punished if they do ANYTHING that is not commanded to them and therefore don't like to try new things in training for risk of a correction).
Good luck, tell us how it goes and what you teach!  | 
07-18-2008, 01:22 AM
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