How To Train Your Guard Dog
Most times, the training of guard dogs is always left in the hands of professionals. However, you can still perform the task on your own by following some important steps, similar to those supported by professionals.
It is important to note that training a guard dog at an earlier stage is much more effective than doing it when the dog has already grown up. This is because the dog has competing skills, with every skill competing to be acquired first. That’s the reason as to why this training is well done by professionals as they are well equipped with techniques for doing it until the dogs can efficiently function as guard dogs. But you can still train your guard dog to expertise skills such as personal protection, obedience, socializing and bark on command.
Personal protection training
If you are one of those people who like walking at night, then it is high time you train your guard dog on personal protection. How do you do it?
Training a dog for personal protection is quite easy. You need to look for a friend whom the dog doesn’t know. Ask the stranger to walk towards the dog and challenge it. Ask him to act afraid once you command your dog to bark at him, and run away. This will make your dog more confident and it will now threaten anyone who will make any attempt of threatening you.
Obedience training
Your dog should respond immediately when you give a command. In fact, obedience is the first basic discipline you need to teach your dog.
You can easily train your dog to obey by reinforcing her behavior. For instance, if you want her to lie down, command her with “lie down” phrase as you point down. Reinforce the behavior more often such that she will obey later even without the reinforcement. You can also choose to sign her for an obedience training class. Electric fences are a way to train your dog to stay on the property unsupervised. You would need to hire a good installer like Electrician Indianapolis to ensure proper configuration of the fence.
Socialization training
If your dog doesn’t know how to socialize, she will always get alarmed whenever she finds herself in new situations. Most dogs are effectively trained for socialization from 0-16 months, a stage known as sensitive socialization period.
Effective socialization training occurs when you go out and take your dog for a walk. If you suspect that the dog is nervous at the sight of a new or unusual object, don’t hesitate to take her near the object so that she can have a closer look. Such a walk can also help your dog to recognize normal pedestrians so that she doesn’t feel threatened by every person she encounters.
Bark on command
Some dogs will bark at strangers, while there are still those who just respond to “attack” commands. To train your dog to bark on command, just create a word that you will be using to issue the back command. For instance, you may observe that the dog barks when she sees a certain bird. You can use the name of the bird to train the dog to bark on command. An example is a dog that used to bark at the vultures. To train her to bark on command, the owner had to say the word “Urubu” (vulture) and the dog would bark. The secret here is for you to note what the dog does naturally.