What is Obedience Training?
Obedience training essentially aims to establish a calm state of mind for your dog by teaching your dog behaviours that you and your family find polite, adorable and preferable in any given situation. Training for obedience puts you in charge of any activity that you do with your beloved pets, i.e. your walks, your play time, greeting your guests, etc.
Benefits of training for obedience
1. Establish a language of communication
Since dogs don't speak our verbal language, we have no way of reliably communicating a message to our dog without training. Granted that dogs are intelligent and they can read a situation, but will they read it factually or based on their perception? For instance, is a car or bike passing by actually threatening? No. Yet, there are hundreds of dogs that panic, bark, run away from or worse RUN TOWARD an approaching vehicle.
Therefore, we use a handful of obedience commands combined with a calm and receptive state of mind as a solution for fearful, excitable or aggressive behaviour to help our dogs overcome the big feelings they experience.
2. Dogs thrive under structure and a balanced lifestyle
Obedience training goes beyond teaching commands; it's about creating a balanced lifestyle. Many of us bring home a dog and provide it with lots of affection, fun toys, cute accessories and good food, but barely ever take a dog out for a walk. This is a lifestyle that's not balanced. Dogs are wild animals, and although they may have been domesticated, their need for exercise, fresh air and sunlight cannot be overlooked.
Moreover, as a pet, your dog is living in a human-dominated world, one which they are not naturally equipped to navigate. They feel overwhelmed by vacuum cleaners, stairs, strangers and bikes revving, and every time that we cuddle them and pet them sympathetically, we're actually reinforcing their fears. Instead, we should be working to build confidence by training an attitude of indifference. You don't want your dog to get over excited and chase revving bikes or vacuum cleaners, nor do you wants them to run away and hide from stairs or bark incessantly at strangers. How do you build confidence or indifference? Simple: obedience.
Also, did you know that dogs like when they can predict the events of their day? They can't read a clock, but they make associations through sequence of events. For instance, they usually wake up, go for a walk and then come back to have breakfast, and you will see that they wait eagerly for each activity by waiting at the door or walking towards their food bowl because they know it’s time. Same thing with play time: maybe you have made a habit of tossing the ball around for your dog before bed, so if you forget or go to bed without playing on a given day, they’ll seem restless, bring you the ball if it’s accessible or pace around. Dogs are creatures of habit; therefore, if you can keep your dog's activities nailed to approximately the same time everyday, they will wait patiently.
Lastly, discipline is the fourth factor in maintaining a balanced lifestyle. If a dog has complete freedom to do anything it wants and has open access to toys and treats 24/7, it loses drive, enthusiasm and motivation. This directly affects the bond you have with your dog, making it unfulfilling. By itself, you might not think much of it, but what if you can't engage your dog’s attention enough to prevent your dog from getting into or causing trouble? How will you stop him from eating toxic items from the ground? How will you stop him picking a fight with another dog? Wouldn't that extent of freedom and privilege work against your dog's best interest?
3. Gives you the clarity to take charge of a situation
When you have an obedient dog, you can go out feeling confident that you can keep your dog safe. Using obedience in “stressful” situations essentially means that you make a pact with your dog where you train him or her to look to you for guidance rather than acting out on their own. Obedience training teaches you that your dog’s action in a given moment is not as important as your response to it, so as long as your dog can sit or lie down reliably on command, you can take control of the situation. With your dog reliably in command, and appearing non-threatening to other dogs or people, the situation can be prevented from escalating.
4. Keep your dog safe from the environment
Do you believe that dogs are born wild and free, and that we should not try and change them for our purposes? Are you against putting using a leash and collar on your dog? What about muzzles and other training tools?
The problem with that school of thought is that sometimes our dogs don’t know what’s good for them and what’s not. If you have a dog that’s ever picked up food scraps or plastic waste on your walks, or quickly gulped down grapes or a fallen chocolate before you could pick it up, you will know that your dog has no idea what could happen to them if they consumed these things? Similarly, many dogs chase frogs, bugs or snakes which could be toxic or fatal to them.
Having a well-trained dog that is obedient actually earns your dog more freedom and privilege simply because you feel relaxed knowing that they will let go of objects on command or return to you promptly when called.
If you wouldn’t allow your children to go off wandering without sufficient reassurance that they can take care of themselves, you shouldn’t allow your dog to go off on his own without at least a few reliable basic obedience commands in your tool-kit!
5. Keep others safe from your dog
Do you have an excitable dog that loves to approach people or jump on them for affection? Do you have a dog that loves to charge at other dogs even if it is to play? Do you have a nervous or aggressive dog that doesn’t like to be approached by strange people or dogs?
When you go out, you never know what kind of people or dogs you’re going to meet and how much they know about dog behaviour and body language. If someone doesn't want to be approached by your dog, they have to be given the choice. They might not want to greet you dog due to fear, a prior bad experience or simply because it's not convenient for them at the time. (My own father is scared of stranger's dogs because of an accident with a dog that incapacitated him for 3 long months.)
Taking our dogs out in public is a privilege that comes with responsibility. If you cannot keep your dog under control, you could be the cause of someone else’s bad experience, injury or fatal accident. To avoid carrying the burden of an unfortunate accident, you should have your dogs trained to behave well around common distractions they’re likely to experience.
In summary, obedience training is not a matter of ego or dominance over your dog; it’s a matter of responsibility: you brought a pet dog into your world surrounded by human inventions and social norms, so now you must show your dog the safe way for him or her to interact with people and the surroundings. Obedience training starts with the owners being aware of their surrounding and taking preemptive action before matters have a chance to escalate. At Dog Wise, a dog is considered trained in basic obedience when you have to say the command only ONCE and the dog listens. This allows your dog access to public places without being a threat to others or themselves, while also allowing you, the handler, to relax and have a good time knowing that even if your dog does get triggered (positively or negatively), you have the knowledge and tools to handle the situation safely.
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