How To Train Your Puppy

 

These Are The 10 Most Effective And Healthy Dog Treats For Training Your Adorable Puppy To Sit, Stay And Walk To Heel 🐕

Analysts at kennel manufacturer Benchmark Kennels have surveyed dog owners to find their top treats, with everything from chicken to ice cubes proving popular with pups.

She said: “Certain breeds are definitely easier to train, but there is no ‘disobedient’ breed. Just some who are bred to be independent and some who are bred to work closely with you.

“More biddable breeds include German Shepherds, Labrador Retrievers, Toy Poodles, Border Collies - essentially the breeds that are often deemed ‘smart’ breeds, and the more aloof or independent breeds like Huskies, Harriers, Shiba Inu, and a whole host of terriers are usually equally smart, it can just be more difficult to find their wavelength.”

Treats can provide the perfect reward and incentive for pups to follow commands. Creating this positive connection between food and obedience can speed up the training process massively.

"However, some dogs are also more inclined to work for food than others, such as greedy Labradors and Pugs.

"These breeds happily see treats as their reward whereas working dogs such as Spaniels, Shepherds and Collies might find a toy and a good game of tug and war more enticing. The key to the training process is finding what motivates your dog in particular.”

Here’s what the survey found to be the most effective training treats.

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She said: “Certain breeds are definitely easier to train, but there is no ‘disobedient’ breed. Just some who are bred to be independent and some who are bred to work closely with you.

A pocketful of kibble - the protein-rich processed food made especially for animals - should have your pup hanging on your every command.

Photo: Canva/Getty Images

Just the smell of salmon jerky or freeze dried fish skin will get your pet trying to work out what it needs to do to get their paws on some.

Photo: Canva/Getty Images

Perhaps surprisingly, many dogs can't get enough of the crunchy consistency of slices of raw carrot. It's one of the healthiest treats so you don't have to be too worried about how much they eat.

Photo: Canva/Getty Images

Ideal for taining pups in warm conditions - ice cubes give your dog a crunchy treat and cool them down. An additional bonus is that they are a zero calorie snack.

Photo: Canva/Getty Images

How To Train Your Dog From Taking Poisoned Bait

"Warning: Poisoned bait." Sooner or later, every dog owner hears a scary story about two-legged terrorists hounding four-legged friends with booby-trapped treats.

Social media posts about animals having to be put down after finding sausages with razor blades in them or tasty morsels filled with rat poison are, sadly, all too common.

What should dog owners do? Firstly, don't panic: Experts say it's often unclear if stories about poisoned bait are even true, and how often pet owners become needlessly fearful.

"Unfortunately, there is no record anywhere of how often poisoned bait is put out or eaten by dogs," says Lea Schmitz, of an animal welfare association in Germany, where media reports of poisoned bait are currently rampant.

"I only share confirmed reports," says dog trainer Franziska Herre, who takes a sceptical approach when she sees viral posts about poisoned dogs on social media. After all, anyone can take a photo, label it "poisoned bait" and post it online along with a warning.

People who do that might be motivated by the desire to keep dogs away from a particular area, and would manage to do so with minimal effort, she says, adding that often, there's no official confirmation of the reports on social media.

If confirmed, muzzle up

If a case has been confirmed by the authorities, put a muzzle on your dog when you head out for a walk to stop it from eating anything along the way.

Poisoned bait might be pieces of sausage that contain a razor blade, drawing pins or toxic substances such as slug pellets, according to the animal welfare association.

"Sometimes the bait isn't intended for pets but other creatures like rats or mice," says Schmitz.

But poisoned bait isn't the only thing you should watch out for, and it's worth noting that chocolate, sugar-free chewing gum, household cleaners and certain plants are also toxic for dogs.

Some dog training schools even offer anti-poison bait courses for some time, including Herre. "This kind of training isn't a 100% insurance that nothing will happen," she says. "But it does reduce the likelihood that the dog will eat that kind of bait."

The best time to start training your dog is when it is a puppy. Focus on "impulse control", say the experts. Young dogs should learn not to react immediately to their impulses but learn to wait, if they see a delicious-looking treat that is within reach.

Experts take several approaches in anti-poison bait training, Herre says. One way is to forbid the dog from eating anything at all unless it has been expressly allowed to do so.

You can teach your dog to avoid rigged bait by holding out some food or dropping it. If your dog goes for the food, you cover it with your hand or foot. "They understand this in two minutes, and then they start to generalise," says Herre.

Dogs learn in a very location-specific way, so if you stop them from taking food in one particular place, they won't necessarily understand that this rule applies everywhere.

Treats for ignoring found food

If you want to teach the dog to avoid food everywhere outdoors, make sure you train the dog in several everyday situations in a good number of places.

Don't make the mistake of letting a "no" become a "yes", says Herre. That might happen for example if you forbid a dog from taking a treat from your hand, but then give it that treat for being well-behaved.

You can reward your dog's obedience with different treats from your other hand, says Herre, adding that the dog should never get the food that it wanted as part of the training to avoid food it finds outdoors.

Recall is another way you can train your dog. If you place food in a meadow and your dog runs to it but you call the pet back before they reach it, give the dog a generous reward for obeying. You can also attach a dragline to your dog's harness so you can stop the dog if it fails to obey the command.

Bartering is also a successful method, where the dog learns that if they give something to you, they get a great reward in exchange.

Start out by exchanging something that your dog is not especially excited about and give the pet something more appealing in exchange.

If you have successfully taught your dog that it is worthwhile giving you something as they are likely to receive something better in exchange, the animal is more likely to pass up on any poisoned bait.

If you do think your dog has swallowed something harmful, do not try to induce vomiting if you don't know what it is, as caustic poisons may burn the dog's throat, while razor blades will only cause further injury, say the animal welfare experts from Four Paws.

You're better off ringing your vet as quickly as possible and describing the dog's symptoms. Some of the symptoms typical of poisoning include diarrhoea, difficulty breathing, intense salivation, a fast heartbeat and vomiting. – dpa/Sabine Maurer

Using Open Source To Train Your Dog

An open-source canine training research tool was just been released by [Walker Arce] and [Jeffrey Stevens] at the University of Nebraska — Lincoln’s Canine Cognition and Human Interaction Lab (C-CHIL).

We didn’t realize that dog training research techniques were so high-tech. Operant conditioning, as opposed to Pavlovian, gives a positive reward, in this case dog treats, to reinforce a desired behavior. Traditionally operant conditioning involved dispensing the treat manually and some devices do exist using wireless remote controls, but they are still manually operated and can give inconsistent results (too many or too few treats). There weren’t any existing methods available to automate this process, so this team decided to rectify the situation.

They took a commercial treat dispenser and retro-fitted it with an interface board that taps into the dispenser’s IR sensors to detect that the hopper is moving and treats were actually dispensed. The interface board connects to a Raspberry Pi which serves as a full-featured platform to run the tests. In this demonstration it connects to an HDMI monitor, detecting touches from the dog’s nose to correlate with events onscreen. Future researchers won’t have to reinvent the wheel, just redesign the test itself, because [Walker] and [Jeffrey] have released all the firmware and hardware as open-source on the lab’s GitHub repository.

In the short video clip below, watch the dog as he gets a treat when he taps the white dot with his snout. If you look closely, at one point the dog briefly moves the mouse pointer as well. We predict by next year the C-CHIL researchers will have this fellow drawing pictures and playing checkers.

This isn’t the first animal behavior hack we’ve seen this month. Check out [Hans’] feeder that trains birds to clean up bottlecaps.