Improve your dog's skills and behaviour with my basic obedience and life skills training. Obedience training sounds like you will be bossing your dog around in an aggressive manner however when done correctly this is not the case. With a positive attitude, use of effective training techniques and most importantly a sense of fun obedience training can help to build a strong bond between you and your dog.

Dogs love the mental stimulation and physical exercise that results from training. Dogs learn primarily through association. Your timing, tone of voice, physical signals and consistency map out the route to successful results. There are essential cues that your dog needs to learn that can go as far as to save their lives such as leave it and stay.

Some dogs are naturally more biddable than others making training easier but even the dogs that are more of a challenge can begin to embrace the training process when you are equipped with tried and proven methods.

Here are some of the most common and helpful cues/commands that dogs learn:

The basics (nature has already done a lot of the heavy lifting).

• Sit
• Paw
• Lie down

The cues we use to get our dogs to disengage from unwanted behaviour 

• Leave it
• Drop it
• Off
• Down
• Stay

The cues we use to get our dogs to engage with desired behaviour

• Let's go
• Heel
• Fetch
• Touch
• Look at me
• Take it
• Gentle
• Come
• Go find
• Middle (dog walking through your legs)

Obedience training top tips:

"With reward based training people can become frustrated by their dogs apparent lack of motivation. This is why it is so important to really get to know what makes your dog tick. For food rewards do preference testing. Space out 3 small plates of different foods such as chicken, ham and cheese. Lead your dog towards the tasty treats and see which one she goes for first. Lead your dog away and then return so your dog can again show you their first choice. You will then know your dogs favourite food. This can then be used as their high value reward. If your dog struggles with recall reserve their high value reward for recall only"

"Tone, pitch and pace of voice are key. For most cues you want a calm, assertive tone however with recall you want to rev up the gears and make your voice sound more fun and peppy."

Obedience training skills can be used for dogs with or without behavioural issues. I can also help with life skills such as preparing your dog for a new baby entering the home, feeling more relaxed with car journeys, reducing anxiety following a rescue experience and much more.