7 Tips to Train Your Dog to Be Social

Smaller puppies are more open and receptive to acquiring new behaviors.

Once they have surpassed a certain age, they become more aware of their surroundings and turn more apprehensive of new people and things as a defense mechanism to shield themselves from uncalled danger.

Taking your dog for morning/evening walks daily gives them exposure to new people and surroundings.

The more it becomes a routine, the greater are the chances of your canine friend picking on new scents and behaving in a calm, composed manner when it comes to passing by other fellow animals on the streets, including humans.

If there is another dog in the neighborhood ready to pick up a fight or your dog is giving out threatening warning signs as is the case with many aggressive breeds, then it might as well lead to a dangerous situation.

It is often correlated that dogs who’ve led an isolated growing up years fail to pick up on social skills and therefore misread the incoming communication as a fear-based provocative response.

Thankfully, ‘dog classes’ come to the rescue for their trainers.

These classes are designed in a way where dogs are placed with other dogs to teach them positive things, and such association will be rewarded.

More than anything, patience is the key. You will have to make your friend trust your instincts and likewise.

There is a very famous experiment of Pavlov, a psychologist who presented the concept of classical conditioning in dogs.

This concludes that learning is reflexive in a way that a particular stimulus is responsible for generating a specific response.

Any form of behavior when is rewarded leads to conditioned learning.

So when the dogs are made to believe that good behavior in the presence of other dogs will be rewarded, they tend to do it more often.

This is one effective way of dealing with aggression where the dog learns that the presence of another dog leads to food treat the same way Pavlov made his dog learn to associate the sound of a bell with dinner.

The more time you spend with your dog, the better you will be at judging his behaviors.

It is, therefore, an important task to be observant of his body language and response patterns.

Every dog is unique with the way they are bonding with their owner and other members of the family, and it becomes the duty of the owner to not only make them learn new things but also be receptive to his actions because communication is a two-way road right.

Some breeds require a minimum amount of physical activity, and too much lethargy can harm their health.

Likewise, there are those saving on energy, the docile kinds, and extraneous exercise routines that might hamper their bodily functions.

The age and breed is one factor to be deciding how much longer the exercise routines need be.

But a healthy, playful practice will make your dog last longer with better mental health, thus easing in his temperament to look at nearby surroundings with more comfort, all owning up for better social skills.

Despite following the standard textbook measures in training your dog to be more social, you find it extremely difficult, making him unlearn his previous ways of living.

All your attempts seem futile, and you are considering going firm will miraculously change things.

Slow down right there and don’t take the high road.

While desperate times call for desperate measures, that is not how one should be enacted, especially when it comes to teaching discipline with your aggressive dog that is having a hard time adjusting to your mannerisms.

Go easy on retribution
Punishment sometimes intensifies the problem by backfiring what you intended in the first place.

While teaching your dog to be apprehensive of your scolding every time there is a new dog in the surroundings might save you the embarrassment temporarily, but that is not going to stop him the next time from doing it.

On the contrary, it will result in negative effects causing your dog undue psychological stress.

Also, with continuous punishments, the dog might learn to suppress his discomfort making his behavior unpredictable when presented with the same situation.

Dogs for the longest are known for their lifetime companionship in ways no other being on this planet would come even close in terms of their faithfulness and