Puppy - First Months Of Life

2023 Author: Molly Page | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-08-25 12:41

Much has been written about what, when and how much to feed the dog. This case is individual for the breed and age. But it is equally important for big and small, for fat and thin to be educated.

You can start training your dog on Monday, or you may not do this painful business at all, but bring it up always, even when you really don't want to do it. Something you like, something you dislike, spanked yesterday, praised tomorrow. You look, and the dog has accumulated enough information about what is allowed and what is not, how to carry itself in one situation, and how not to behave in another.

Unconscious education is a pleasant thing, because it is unobtrusive. But as a result, you suddenly find at the opposite end of the leash a creature ready to lick everyone, or cowardly, or eating everything from the ground and spitting on the owner so frankly that it becomes ashamed in front of passers-by. Moreover, to correct the behavior of a grown dog, oh, how difficult it is. For example, it is very rarely possible to wean an ill-bred (read: "improperly brought up") dog of one year old to pick up from the ground. But education can prevent this behavior.

The rules of behavior at the table are not at all complicated, their educational value lies in the consistency of application and rigor in compliance with you, your family members, guests and other outsiders.

Rule one. A dog can and should eat only from its own bowl or from its hands. Never feed your dog in other situations. Over time, only the sight of the bowl will induce feeding behavior in the dog. Whatever you want to give to the dog, put in a bowl.

The second rule. The dog should eat food only on command. The team can be arbitrary. If the puppy is very small, hold him, not allowing him to bury himself in the bowl for 15-30 seconds, and then on command, allow. If the puppy is older, seat him in front of a full bowl and gradually increase the exposure. Never let your dog eat without a command.

Third rule. Never allow your dog to pick up from the floor or the ground. If a piece falls out of the bowl, falls from the hand, falls out of the dog's mouth, it becomes taboo for the puppy. It is not necessary to beat the puppy. It is enough to hold him or push him away, immediately offering him food from his hand and on command. The fallen piece must be defiantly removed. Do not feed the freshly lifted bite to your dog.

From 2-3 months you can conduct special classes. When giving your dog a treat, drop some bits on purpose. If the puppy reaches for the fallen piece, pull it back slightly and immediately offer another one from the hand and on command. As it gets older, train your puppy to sit over the fallen food for longer, feeding chunks from the palm of your hand from time to time.

When the puppy, seeing how the piece fell, rushes not after him, but to you and demands his own, give yourself an excellent mark and go on to another lesson. Moving with the dog on a leash, throw away a handful of "treats" during the movement and, bypassing it, make sure that the dog reaches not to him, but to your hand.

Rule four. Never let strangers feed your dog. The dog should not take food from strangers, but at the same time not be afraid of an outstretched hand with food and not be aggressive. This is very important, especially in big cities, when at any moment a candy or gingerbread can be extended to a dog by a child in love with animals or a compassionate old woman.

Creating this behavior is not as difficult as it sounds. The main thing is to make it clear to the dog that a person, even holding out a "delicacy", will never let him eat. It just won't. At the same time, hurting the puppy is also undesirable, as well as pretending that they are afraid of him. Let's remember: both aggression and cowardice are equally undesirable.

The indifferent attitude of the dog to the stretched food is achieved through several training sessions, during which you ask relatives, friends and acquaintances of your acquaintances to offer the dog food and not give it, clenching your hand into a fist in time. It is desirable that there would be more such outsiders. The puppy will quickly remember 2-3 permanent assistants and everything will go down the drain. It is very helpful, after strangers have offered food, to praise the puppy and give a few bits from your pocket.

The educational value of such techniques lies in the fact that the owner does not completely cancel the feeding behavior, which is impossible to do in a puppy, since it is dominant in a young dog, but reorients it. An attempt to cancel the feeding behavior will only lead to the fact that the dog will begin to look for new ways and ways to satisfy its nutritional need, regardless of sources.

The fifth rule, the essence of which is the constancy of compliance with all the rules. The point is this, it turns out: it is possible to slow down some behavior, that is, to make it not reproducible in the future, by eliminating what reinforces it. In our case, the dog will stop leaning towards food on the ground or reaching for the palm of an outsider, if this does not lead to receiving food. Such behavior loses its expediency - why is it useless to drag out ?! But if sometimes, from time to time, occasionally, your dog manages to eat a piece in such situations, then, oddly enough, the behavior will not only not disappear, but on the contrary, it will become even more difficult to fight it.

As shown by laboratory studies of scientists, a conditioned reflex reaction can be developed with a 25 percent probability of reinforcement.

Of course, such a reaction is more difficult to develop than in the case of 100 percent reinforcement, but it is extinguished with even more difficulty. The animal becomes ready for the fact that not every reaction is reinforced, that it is necessary to reproduce the reaction 3-4 times in order to receive reinforcement. This is the effect of the so-called probabilistic or variational reinforcement.

So if you are negligent about the responsibilities of the educator, that is, you allow a probabilistic regime of reinforcement, then the behavior with which you are fighting will not only not weaken and will not disappear, but, on the contrary, will become stronger, will become even stronger.