How to train your Puppy - conditioning & imitation

The little curious puppy discovers the world. He still has a lot to learn, he is willing and able to learn. But a small dog is not a pre-programmed robot that can do everything and knows everything right from the start. Without your help and without a proper education he will be able to learn a few things, but actually, he remains a naughty lout or develops into a hardly socializable eccentric. Often harassed and blamed, the dog wanders through his life unhappily, especially as he does not understand where his mistake lies.

Learning mechanisms for puppies

A puppy begins to learn at the latest with its first breath. Some scientists even suspect that the first learning takes place in the womb. The little puppy learns a lot through imprinting by discovering his mother and siblings and accepting them as his first family. The imprinting is also done by man: If the puppy gets to know loving people at the very beginning of his life, he will be positively influenced at all. If the small dislike and unfriendliness experiences, it can lead conversely to a negative coinage. This is difficult to change later.

READ: When to Start Training a Puppy - Starting Your Puppy Off Right

Dog training

A further learning mechanism is habituation: a puppy gets used to its surroundings, becomes familiar with them. He learns about pleasant and unpleasant smells and noises and associates them with associations. The associative learning process is one of the most important mechanisms that dog training also makes use of.

It is about the following: A puppy, for example, perceives that its human being goes to the cellar before each feeding to fetch the portion of dry food. Thus a growing dog will expect a snack every time a human goes to the cellar. Many of these associations arise unnoticed by us humans. Many a master or mistress then wonders why his dog runs to the bowl even though it is not feeding time.

Now we have actually arrived at the important subject of conditioning and take a brief look at this decisive learning path.

Classical and instrumental conditioning of a puppy

Classic conditioning is a process by which a puppy learns to react to a certain stimulus with the desired behavior. He associates this stimulus or signal with a pattern of behavior.

READ: Puppy Obedience Training - Things to Consider

Another learning mechanism is called instrumental conditioning: In this case, a puppy wants to achieve his goal with a certain behavior pattern.

Puppy Intuition - an often underestimated path

Dogs are social creatures just like humans. They learn a lot from their peers. In the past, learning through imitation was often underestimated in puppy and dog education, but this learning mechanism proves to be extremely important. Learning by imitation, also called social learning or learning on the model, helps a puppy to recognize dangers and enemies or to find the shortest way to food.

Fully motivated for learning success

The learning effect can be increased by simple "boosters" and the way to a well-educated dog can be smoothed. Among these accelerators are of course treats (food at all) in the first place because of a dog cookie or a piece of cheese increase the motivation of a puppy enormously. But some boosters may also be of an immaterial nature. Cuddles, praise or a common game after a successfully solved task or a correctly executed command are no less important for many dogs than a small snack.

READ: How to Get Your Puppy to Stop Biting

Not without my humans!

If a dog puppy was influenced positively on humans and he feels closely connected with his humans, he learns much faster in his (their) presence. The human being has become a "safe haven" for the puppy. In his presence, the little one feels well and fulfills every task with bravura.

Puppy education: praise and punish

However, the question arises as to whether punishment is also appropriate as a method of puppy education. In the wild, the wild relatives of the dogs - the wolves - learn by no means only through encouragement and praise, but not least on the less pleasant way of punishment by the mother as well as by fighting with their siblings.

Basically, nothing speaks against applying species-appropriate punishments with a puppy.