Making Your Dog Training A Family Affair Part 2
Making dog training a family affair is a fun and rewarding experience for everyone. To start, you must commit to the rules that will govern your dog’s behavior and everyone must follow these rules, because family consistency is essential to achieve good results.
Establishing The Rules
If one person in the family allows the dog to jump on them, or play rough games, your dog will try these behaviors with other people and when your family isn’t consistent about keeping the rules, don’t expect your dog to either!
The best time to establish rules is before you bring your puppy or adult dog home. That way, everyone can be consistent right from the start. If you’re reading this article now, you probably already have your dog at home with you, so if you have not established the rules, start today. Make sure the whole family knows what they are and have everyone agreeing to follow them.
Family Meeting Time
Call the whole family together to create a list of the important rules regarding the dog. Encourage each person, including the children, to offer ideas and describe how they’d like the dog to behave, so everyone will feel included.
Discuss reasons for each rule you decide to implement so its importance is understood. Big rules – such as not feeding from the table or the types of play that will be allowed – must be the same for everyone.
Write down your list of agreed-upon rules and let the children illustrate the page by drawing pictures of your dog being good. The more personal involvement each family member has with the list of dog rules, the more likely everyone will abide by them. When your list is finished and illustrated, post it in a central location, such as the refrigerator, so no one forgets the rules
I cannot stress how important it is for your children (and everyone else in the house) to all have the same mindset and understanding of how you want your dog handled during training.
