How To Teach A New Dog Old Tricks

We are going to talk about how to teach a new dog old tricks. Old tricks are, basically, what we would like our dogs to do, so when you get a new dog, you want it to be able to sit, lay down, stay still when you want it to, come back when it is called, walk nicely on a lead and not bark excessively. People sometimes think that when you take on a new dog, particularly if it is a rescued dog, that is some kind of an excuse not to train it and I am infuriated by the number of times I have been out in public myself and had someone's dog barking at me and been told, "I am sorry, it is a rescued dog".

Being a rescued dog is not an excuse for not to train it. There is no question that it can be a little more difficult to take on anything other than about a four-month old puppy, because quite often, a previous owner has not put the time and effort to, so your starting point is to look at this dog and say, "Is it being deliberately naughty, is it deliberately ignoring me or has it actually never learned how to behave properly?" and quite often, particularly dogs who come through rescue, they simply do not know. They are not deliberately out to take over the world or to ignore you or to do things that deliberately upset you.

It can seem like it, especially if they have chewed up on your best shoes or been barking all day in the neighbours of to come play, but they are not doing that on purpose. Your job is to make sure that you can teach them how to behave. A lot of people put off from going to training classes because they think if they have got an older dog they are going to turn up with a room full of puppies and simply look out the old one out.

This is not true. If you have never been to a training class go along without your dog and have a look. You will find that eighty percent of the dogs there are noy puppies.

They are dogs anything from six months old to sometimes ten and eleven. I have had dogs of twelve turning up to a class of mine, simply because the owner has just got it and the dog at twelve still did not know the basics. There is no such thing as behaviour that you can not train.

You can have an effect on more things and if a dog is pulled on lead or perhaps never been on a lead for ten years, it still does not mean that is impossible to actually get that dog to do it for you. So what is important is to look at the health of your dog, to look at the quality of food that you are feeding your dog and to make sure that you teach the basics pretty much in the same way that you would if it was a puppy. You might want to use treats as a reward, you might want to use one of the more modern gadgets, head collars, different kinds of extending leads, a long training line so that the dog can learn recall but have anything up to fifty feet to rule about to.

Do not assume that because you have a new dog of any age it is not trainable because somebody else did not do it properly. Your dog is your responsibility and you can teach dogs of any age and I know because I have done it. .