Rehoming Your Furry Friend in Apartments in Rockford IL

Congratulations! Your new best friend has found you and you're ready to provide your rescued canine companion with a fur-ever home. You have worked with your property manager to amend your lease, you have identified nearby opportunities for outdoor doggy exercise and jumped on the best dog advice websites to prepare you for the endless possibilities that come with dog ownership. Now what?

Now, it's time to be thinking about how to best help your new buddy adjust to living in apartments in Rockford IL. After all, you want your dog to feel comfortable, while also thinking about your neighbors. You don't want to have incessant barking or property damage. This article will explore 3 great training tips to help you both have an easy transition.

1. Understand the power of reward

Times have changed in the dog training world. While it was once “common knowledge" to believe that dogs only respond to being dominated by their owners, the science of animal behaviorism has changed our understanding of dog learning. In fact, a reward is a very powerful tool in the professional dog trainer's arsenal, and it's one that all dog owners can learn to use.

When your training methods focus on rewarding and reinforcing appropriate behaviors, what you'll find is that your dog comes to the table excited to learn that next great trick or the kinds of manners you want them to master. And, after they have learned correct behaviors, the occasional punishment for crossing the line is going to be much more effective.

2. Consider crate training dog in box

Crate training is a method of using positive reinforcement methods to help your dog associate their comfy crate with safety, pleasure and calm. When done right, it can even prevent the development of problematic and even unsafe behavioral issues, such as problem barking or destructive separation anxiety. In fact, since both conditions can result in having to rehome your dog in apartments in Rockford IL, any preventative measure is worth exploring.

Crate training done right is a slow progression. It starts by making the crate comfortable, feeding and treating the dog in the crate with the door open, and rewarding when your dog chooses to go in the crate on her own. Many trainers recommend the use of a favorite peanut butter stuffed toy which can last for 20 minutes or more, reserved just for when your furry friend is in their crate.

3. Identify problem behaviors and focus on training positive alternatives dog on bed

It's almost instinctive to punish behaviors we don't like as a kind of “go-to" dog training. Some of this has to do with the way humans learn. For example, if a child violates some rule, the parent can use punishment to curb the behavior.

Instead, pro trainers first identify the problem behaviors they want to change. Second, they identify the triggers for those behaviors. Third, they train a new more appropriate behavior in response to that trigger, reinforcing it with reward such as rehoming to apartments in RockfordIL, while ignoring the negative behavior. Finally, only after they have trained a positive behavior and deeply reinforced it, do they use punishment of the negative to “proof" the positive behavior they have trained.