#1. Being A Good Pack Leader. Being a Pack Leader doesn’t cure anything at all any more than just being a parent cures anything. You need to do it, be it and believe in it. It positions you above your dog(s) so that you they will listen to the training and corrections you give them. Establishing Pack Leadership is “dog psychology” and not dog training. It is the starting point necessary for everything else to work correctly. Pack Leaders control the dog’s environmental resources like food, water and access to the outdoors. It also includes control over meeting and greeting humans and other dogs.

In the methods that will be outlined in a moment, people often want to take issue with the strict adherence by the dog and owner to training or executing the methods. The reason is quite simple. During training, you go for strict obedience first. Once it is trained you may then modify the rules to suite your specific lifestyle and desires. It is far easier to relax rules later because your dog has had rigid training first.

Consistency is the key to success in all methods and exercises as well as rewarding good behavior and promptly correcting bad or inappropriate behavior. Learning to turn a situation in which you would normally need to make a correction, into a situation that you may reward for getting positive results, takes some thought and creativity. When you can turn a negative into a positive, it is one of the fastest and most effective training tools in your toolkit! It’s called “Redirection”. You redirect your dog from doing a bad behavior to doing a good behavior which you can reward.

#1a. Controlling Food. If you are using dry food, then dig your hand into it to get your scent on the food. Pretend to eat some of it in front of your dog because Pack Leaders eat first. If possible, eat your meals before feeding your dog.

Before you feed your dog, have him SIT 2-3 feet away from where you will place the food bowl and tell him to LEAVE IT. Attempt to put the bowl on the floor. If the dog moves, lift the bowl straight up, make him SIT and tell him to LEAVE IT again. Repeat this until you can put the food bowl down and the dog leaves it alone.

Once he leaves it alone, even for a couple seconds, say TAKE or TAKE IT and walk away. Gradually increase the LEAVE IT time until your dog can do it for at least 1 minute!

This is also the setup for more intense training. While the dog is laying down or just DOWN him, put a favorite treat at the inches from his front paws and tell him to LEAVE IT. Once he does this for a few seconds, tell him to TAKE. When he has that one under control you can graduate him to putting cooked beef or chicken directly on top of one of his paws and tell him to LEAVE IT. After a few seconds tell him to TAKE.

As in all waiting exercises, keep making it harder by increasing the wait time before the dog gets the reward. Eventually you can command your dog to leave “anything” alone that want him to. It a very powerful and useful command.

#1b. Controlling Doorways, Hallways And Access To The Outdoors. Here you want to have your dog STAY at a considerable distance away from the door (car or house). It doesn’t matter if you are leaving or allowing others into the home or entering and exiting the car. The dog must stay away from the door and do so calmly and submissively until he is called or released from the command.

It is usually much easier if you have 2 people working this. One person silently holds the dog on leash at the desired distance, while the other commands the dog to STAY. If the dog moves toward the doorway, the door person says STAY in a firmer voice and the handler reinforces the command with a firm but gentle sideways tug on the leash. If the dog even shows the signs of getting ready to move or fixating on the door, the handler should break the dog’s concentration immediately with a leash correction.

The dog is never allowed to enter or exit through any door while he is excited or is commanded to do so! That means you will often just have to wait him out until he is calm. He will learn that he never gets anywhere unless he is calm and obedient.

With the exception of cars, you should always enter and exit a door before your dog or with the dog at your side and slightly behind you. Pack Leaders lead the way.

A beneficial side effect is that this also cures door bolting or the dog attempting to make a hasty escape outside by sneaking through an open door.

You eventually want to be able to prop the door open, command your dog to STAY and walk outside while he just stays there until you call him.

At PP time the door training continues. Here you can tease your dog by slowly opening the door. If he moves pull it shut. Put him back where he was and tell him to stay. Repeat it until he gets it. His reward is being about to go outside and PP as odd as that may sound.

#1c. House Guest And Dog Greeting Training. Once the dog is door trained you will probably need to train your dog and your house guests how to greet each other.

The guests should be notified in advance (when possible) or at the doorway, that they should completely and absolutely IGNORE the dog as if you don’t even own a dog! They never go to the dog. Let the dog come to them when it’s time to make introductions. They should not offer their hand to the dog or make any gestures toward his face. When it’s time, they should greet the dog in calm, relaxed and soft conversational tones and not with high squealing and over excited voices. Any excited greeting will escalate the dog to the same level or even higher excitement. You want calm.

The dog’s part in this is nearly identical to doorway training. He must be calm, submissive and obedient and is not allowed to greet anyone at the doorway. He must STAY in his position away from the door until released, called or he walks away in any other direction except toward the door and the guests. The dog IS ALLOWED to walk away from the door and guests which is excellent! He may not approach your guests while he is excited.

Once you and your guests are settled in AND the dog is calm and submissive, he may be released from his STAY and allowed to wander about normally if he isn’t already. At some point the dog will want to investigate your guests who have been calmly ignoring him. When he does, NOW is the time to allow the greeting to take place!

The only other caveat to this is that your guests need to know that they may engage in excited interaction with the dog later, if they chose to. At that point they also need to be willing to deal with having gotten the dog all exited. They’re on their own now!

Having your guests do some well known commands with your dogs for a few minutes will quickly establish them as being above the dogs as well and makes for good entertainment for your guests.

#1d. Walking The Dog. This is primarily a bonding and focusing activity that also serves to reinforce your Leadership role. The goal is for your dog to walk beside and slightly behind you on a loose leash without any pulling and to follow your lead and to stop when you stop. This is a more relaxed version of HEEL training.

The very first mistake that nearly everyone makes is to ask their dogs if they want to go for a walk in a very excited voice. You just shot yourself in the foot! You wanted him to be calm and controllable, so why did you just get him all excited? So just don’t do that anymore.

It’s easier if the walking training begins after the dog has relieved himself so that you are not trying to compete with his natural callings and can focus on the walk!

Loose leash walking is generally easy to accomplish in most dogs that get lots of invigorating exercise, do not have a high prey drive for the distracting squirrels in the neighborhood, or any aggression towards other people or dogs. While it might seem strange, if you have a treadmill, you can burn off a touch of his energy before you begin the walk which will make the training and the walk go more smoothly.

Pulling and distractions are the most common problems. Change your direction frequently and without warning to the dog. When he pulls up along side of you after a quick change, give him praise and a treat while continuing the walk. Change your pace frequently as well to keep the dog focused on you and your movements.

Making sharp left turns across the dog's path is especially effective. He is forced to watch you so your leg doesn’t bump him when you cut across his path!

In the face of any distraction or pulling, immediately turn and start walking in the opposite direction. Let the leash just snap tight and give the correction for you. Again, when the dog catches up to the correct position, reward him!

No matter what, always stay calm. You do not need to verbally direct or correct a dog for walk training. You just turn in another direction and MOVE ever onward.

If your dog has dog and people aggression issues and you are faced with having to pass close to them, you have two basic choices. Always pass quickly, with as much distance in-between you and them as possible and you are always between them and your dog. The alternative is to yield them the right of way by taking your dog off to the side and commanding him to either SIT or DOWN (lay down) until they have passed.

In the alternative method you immediately interrupt any aggressive signals from your dog, such as fixated staring or glaring before it escalates in to any physical movements by your dog toward the passersby.

You may also offer treats during the pass or while using the alternate method to promote a positive association between your dog and other people and dogs as well as to keep their attention focused on you.

#1e. Signs Of Weak Or No Pack Leadership. You can’t talk about good pack leadership without including the bad. The following signs are not exclusive to poor leadership. However, the more of them that you or your dog exhibits the more likely it is that poor pack leadership is the cause or a big contributing factor. They are, fear, aggression towards other dogs and people, over protectiveness, constant barking at the sight of other dogs and people, ignoring your commands, always going for the high ground like chairs, beds and sofas, food and toy aggression and generally being an unruly dog!

Some of these items, separately or in small combinations, can be associated with lack of exercise, lack of sufficient mental stimulation, lack of discipline and training, lack of socialization training, having the bad behaviors reinforced, being given just love and attention instead of exercise, training/discipline and then love, and finally complete inconsistency in how you deal with the dog.

There are only shades of gray and rarely is anything cut and dried and attributable to a single cause. However, if you started with a wonderful puppy and ended up with a nightmare, then rest assured, you are most likely the reason for it! If you got an older and problematic shelter dog, we’ll cut you a little slack. If he didn’t get any worse then you were close to being on the right path. If he kept getting worse, you were encouraging and reinforcing the wrong behavior.

Contrary to popular belief, it is actually impossible to raise a well balanced dog on love alone unless he is in a coma or has a mental disorder that always works in your favor! The very worst dogs are nearly always loved into being that way.

#2. Anticipation, Your Hilarious And Adorable Enemy. Anticipation can be positively hilarious, adorable and very annoying as well. The more your dog learns and the better trained he becomes the smarter and more clever he becomes. This is when your dog tries to anticipate what you want instead of waiting for a specific command and the dog may perform several commands in a row, on its own, trying to guess what you want.

I wanted to teach my big dog to hop on her hind legs. As soon as she saw that I had treats, she performed a Sit, offered each paw to Shake Hands, Beg, Down, Play Dead, Crawl and Roll Over. I hadn’t even said anything yet! She was trying to outguess or Anticipate what she needed to do to please me and to get that treat so she did it all. It’s very tempting to reward a dog for putting on such a great show but don’t ever do it because you’ll really regret having reinforced that behavior. Anticipation just happens and it can be easily fixed.

We often actually train our dog to anticipate something during training or they just learn it from observing our routine behaviors like when we are preparing to leave the house for work. In dog training you teach things in progressive steps by building on what you have previously trained. Normally you teach the Sit command first. Then you teach the Down (lay down) command next because your dog is already half way there. Since you always say Sit just before you say Down, the dog tries to outguess you. You say Sit and he just lays Down without doing the Sit. Oopsie! Now you need to teach him to understand that they are separate commands.

You need to mix it up now and change the order in which you do the commands. While he is Down, tell him to Sit which is the exact reverse of his original training. Make him Down from a standing, begging or any other command except Sit. When they are Anticipating you, that is the best time to teach them a brand new command because it throws a monkey wrench into their thinking. Keep it fresh and keep it interesting and just don’t give in because it’s so adorable when they do it.

There are ALWAYS times when you want to take advantage of and want to expect Anticipation and to allow it. The ritual of leavening for work, knocking or doorbells ringing, going through doorways, behaviors around guests, walking and so many more. Here you want your dog to anticipate what you want without always giving him commands. You generally always want the same good manners and same good behaviors for the same things every time they happen. When your dog automatically behaves correctly is when we say our dog has learned its manners!

Anticipation is actually the very highest compliment and a tribute to both your training ability and to your great relationship with your dog. Your dog just put on a whole show to please you! Next thing you know he will learn his manners. What more could you want than that!

#3. Whistle Come Off Leash Command Tool. Nothing has a higher value in dog ownership than having your dog COME back to you on command! NOTHING! The Whistle Come is a command tool more than it is a command. The purpose is to develop a near sure fire way to get your dog to come back to you, even from long distances and completely out of sight. It means to get back here right NOW and on the double!

Get either a toy or good quality sports whistle. Inside your home, toot (don’t blow your fool head off) the whistle, 3 times then give your dog a treat. Do this a dozen times. Just toot and treat with a really good treat!

Move away from the dog like you are done training and wait for the dog to loose interest and begin to move away from you. Toot again and treat if you dog came to you which he no doubt did.

Leave the dog and go into another area of the house that is out of your dog’s sight. Toot and reward if the dog comes. Repeat this randomly throughout the day and your dog will likely be charging his way through the house to find you and that yummy treat.

Before you try this outside you want to do it inside just before you go out to pre-condition your dog to respond. Immediately outside the door, do it again. Let the dog get further and further away each time before tooting the whistle. If you don’t have a fenced yard, then a 20 ft. leash or long thin rope will work to give him some room to wander. If you have a fenced in yard then you can randomly toot the whistle while the dog roams the yard or is playing with a toy or even if someone is playing with the dog. A fenced in public tennis court works very well to. In this case you increase the difficulty by having someone else throwing tennis balls for the dog and you will try to get him to break it off in favor of coming to you for the treat. This is called distraction training by getting obedience despite distractions.

When possible ALWAYS treat your dog, as in forever, every time your dog responds correctly and returns to you because it’s ALWAYS worth it!

Overuse of the Whistle Come command tool will eventually encourage your dog to ignore it just like yelling your dog’s name 50 times in a row when you can’t get his attention and shouldn’t be doing anyway. You don’t ever want to encourage any pet to ignore you.

Once it’s trained, reinforce the Whistle Come command tool by using it randomly and at unexpected times. This will keep your dog keen to it so that it is always a reliable tool! Once or twice a week is more than enough for the average dog. My dogs can’t run to me fast enough when they hear the whistle. They will even break off from playing with other dogs at the dog park and come a running!

#4. Distraction Training. Advanced Training for your dog. You must train your dog under the kinds of conditions that you expect him to be in and still obey you! After your dog learns a command, he needs to learn to obey it during normal distractions. You can’t teach a dog to sit in the quiet of your kitchen and then expect him to obey you when there are a bunch of children running around. Reinforce the command while the children are running around because THAT is when you need really good control.

A dog hasn’t really learned obedience and discipline until he obeys commands amidst distractions. You may think you were training your dog all along but you were just teaching your dogs the commands. Distraction training is the real dog training where you glue the desired behavior to the command for reliable performance even in distracting situations. Training your dog to listen at the dog park is ideal. Even at the park, some time should be spent training new or reinforcing old commands and it you don’t need to spend more than a few minutes on it. Keep the park enjoyable and your dog disciplined at the same time.

Many people have problems with their dogs when there are guests in the house. The problem is that you don’t want to be bothered with dog training when you have guests over. How else is he going to learn? The result is that you either spend a huge amount of time trying to control your dog or lock him up in frustration every time you have guests. Just ask your guest to help out! Wouldn’t it be better if you and your guests spent 20-30 minutes together to reinforce the house rules with your dog than it is to deal with his bad behavior or lock him up? Of course. Since you can involve the children you can make it a fun activity for everyone including the dog. Then, in time, the last thing you’ll need to worry about, if at all, is the dog.

When you do distraction training in a more serious way you will usually have the dog on a leash so you can correct him and return him to his starting position if he moves off of it or if he breaks command. You need to show him what he is supposed to do to help him to learn it correctly.

The STAY command is the one that will get the biggest workout. However, any command that requires your dog to maintain its current position or demands obedience should be reinforced while there are distractions happening. In addition to Stay, the Sit, Down, Place, Wait, Stop, Leave It and Come commands and others, all need to be reinforced under distraction. It would be too lengthy to outline distraction training for every command so we’ll stick with an overview.

Distractions can anything that will distract your dog from obeying you. If your dog loves to play ball then have some people playing ball while you train. Have children go running and screaming back and forth while you train. Have someone else keep calling and trying to coax your dog away from you. Have them use food to entice your dog away. The better your dog gets the harder you try to distract him until he meets your expectations and satisfies your particular needs.

The leash rule and command mode rule: Whomever holds the leash and/or is currently commanding the dog is “the only person” that the dog is allowed to obey. Not even another family member should be able to distract him from his current handler’s command until that handler releases or frees the dog from his command! There is no real standard for releasing a dog except for Attack, Therapy and Service dogs. You can use OK, Play, Free, Release or anything else that works for you to let your dog know he is out of training or command mode.

You can also target specific problems with this training for a dog you’ve had awhile, or, if you’re training a puppy and you do this stuff now, you won’t even have those problems.

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