6 Top Tips for Training Your Labradoodle
Labradoodles are a cross between two intelligent breeds that love to please their people, so they are fairly easy to train. The process will go even more quickly if you do it properly, so it is worth taking the time to train yourself before you train your dog. There are a few broad techniques that you need to keep in mind if you want to get the best results and ensure that your labradoodle learns how to behave.
1- Start Early
It is possible for old dogs to learn new tricks, but it is a lot easier if they start when they are puppies. Young dogs have brains that are wired for learning, since they need to figure out how to survive before they grow up. You can take advantage of that by teaching them when they are young. The habits that they learn in their youth will stick with them for the rest of their lives, so it is also vital to make sure that you are not accidentally teaching them any bad habits at this age.
2- Take Your Time
Learning is a process. Your labradoodle will need time and practice in order to get things right, and it isn’t possible to skip the process. Once your dog has learned what a command means, it will still need to practice it regularly for quite a while to make sure that it can remember the command. The training will also work better if you do a little bit each day rather than going through a small number of long sessions. The puppies simply need time to process the lessons, and there is only so much that they can learn at once.
3- Learn Their Body Language
Good trainers learn to communicate with their dogs in ways that the animals can understand, and they also learn to look at a dog and understand how it feels. Learning about canine body language is the key to doing that, since dogs say more with their body than they do by barking. If you know how a dog feels, you can treat it the right way, such as encouraging an anxious dog to calm down or teaching an aggressive animal to relax. This accelerates training because it is more efficient to deal with the cause of a problematic behavior than it is to try to teach the dog entirely new habits.
4- Use Positive Reinforcement
Positive reinforcement is generally more effective than punishing animals for making mistakes. Most dogs are motivated by pleasing their humans or trying to get rewards, so providing those things is the most effective option. Most dogs are also much happier when they are seeking rewards than when they are trying to avoid punishment, so this method gives your dog a more pleasant life and tends to lead to a stronger relationship between the animal and the human.
5- Watch Your Tone
Dogs have been with humans for thousands of years, so they have learned to pick up on human body language and the tone of human voices. That means that how you say things matters much more than what you say to the dog. They will take an angry tone of voice as a threatening behavior. Many humans also make their dogs more anxious by comforting them in a high-pitched voice, which they take as a sign of fear or nervousness. Try to be aware of how you sound to your dog and make an effort to use the right tone for the job when you are communicating with your pet.
6- Be Consistent
Dogs need consistency if they are going to learn. If you reward a dog for behavior once, and then ignore it the next time, the poor animal will get confused and will not be able to figure out how you want it to act. You need to reward positive behaviors every time to make sure that your dog understands that they are good, even if that reward is as minor as petting him and telling him that he is a good boy. Your labradoodle will be sure to learn quickly as long as you manage to follow this rule.
