Training your Boston Terrier at home can be one of the most rewarding undertakings for any pet owner. Watching your dog respond to your commands and learn new tricks can be a quite fun and rewarding experience. Making that much progress together not only teaches your pet but builds the bond between pet and owner as well.
Boston Terrier owners who are just starting out with their training sessions will often encounter small problems that can directly impede the progress of the pet. If your Boston Terrier is not responding to more classical training approaches, you may want to try clicker training. Clicker training (or operant conditioning), emphasizes the direct connection between targeted actions and rewards.
Having an immediate and direct association between the desired action and reward is the fastest way to let your dog know they are doing well. Consistent use of immediate rewards (within 1 or 2 seconds) continually reinforces the lessons. Use of a clicker during training is the best way to be able to give that rapid response to the desired action and produces maximum results from training.
There are two indispensable elements that must always be present during clicker training: the clicker, and some treats. Sometimes people offer toys, and even verbal praise, for treats. But for the purpose of quickly getting your dog's attention, I highly recommend that you find some kind ofa tasty treat that your dog will not mind eating over and over as a reward at the start. After a pattern has been built you can add other kinds of rewards.
5 Training Tips
1. A solid connection between your command and the action needs to be established right from the beginning. Start by giving a treat right as you click the clicker to build an association between the clicking sound and treat. Once your dog has that association they can then build the associations between actions they perform and the click they hear and the reward they expect.
If you see your pet is not associating the click with a treat then you should go back and complete this step again until that association is properly built. Further progress in this training is not possible without this being done correctly. The basic building block of this training is conditioning your dog to receive a treat when the clicker sounds.
2. Once your dog has mastered the non verbal cues you will be ready to add in verbal commands. The non verbal cues are much easier for your dog to understand and learn. Building on the non verbal cues is why this training method works so well and it is also why many traditional methods are not as effective.
3. You should keep training session short and interesting rather than long and drawn out. Even ten minutes is a long time to work, especially for a dog that has never been through any training. In the first several training sessions you should aim for 3 to 5 minutes at most. Once your dog is responding to the training you should be able to get 20 successful actions in those 3 to 5 minutes .
4. Using only positive reinforcement is another thing that is vital to this training method. Dogs are quite able to pick up on not only our tone of voice but also our moods. Avoiding harsh words or anything like that will be best. If your pet is not very motivated by the treat switching treats is always a good idea.
5. As with any training method there will be a time when you need to correct your pet. At these times it is vital that you use a steady and natural voice. Using words like "wrong" or "no" in a neutral tone of voice will still let the dog know it did not perform correctly without causing it distress and making the training much harder.
Boston Terrier owners who are just starting out with their training sessions will often encounter small problems that can directly impede the progress of the pet. If your Boston Terrier is not responding to more classical training approaches, you may want to try clicker training. Clicker training (or operant conditioning), emphasizes the direct connection between targeted actions and rewards.
Having an immediate and direct association between the desired action and reward is the fastest way to let your dog know they are doing well. Consistent use of immediate rewards (within 1 or 2 seconds) continually reinforces the lessons. Use of a clicker during training is the best way to be able to give that rapid response to the desired action and produces maximum results from training.
There are two indispensable elements that must always be present during clicker training: the clicker, and some treats. Sometimes people offer toys, and even verbal praise, for treats. But for the purpose of quickly getting your dog's attention, I highly recommend that you find some kind ofa tasty treat that your dog will not mind eating over and over as a reward at the start. After a pattern has been built you can add other kinds of rewards.
5 Training Tips
1. A solid connection between your command and the action needs to be established right from the beginning. Start by giving a treat right as you click the clicker to build an association between the clicking sound and treat. Once your dog has that association they can then build the associations between actions they perform and the click they hear and the reward they expect.
If you see your pet is not associating the click with a treat then you should go back and complete this step again until that association is properly built. Further progress in this training is not possible without this being done correctly. The basic building block of this training is conditioning your dog to receive a treat when the clicker sounds.
2. Once your dog has mastered the non verbal cues you will be ready to add in verbal commands. The non verbal cues are much easier for your dog to understand and learn. Building on the non verbal cues is why this training method works so well and it is also why many traditional methods are not as effective.
3. You should keep training session short and interesting rather than long and drawn out. Even ten minutes is a long time to work, especially for a dog that has never been through any training. In the first several training sessions you should aim for 3 to 5 minutes at most. Once your dog is responding to the training you should be able to get 20 successful actions in those 3 to 5 minutes .
4. Using only positive reinforcement is another thing that is vital to this training method. Dogs are quite able to pick up on not only our tone of voice but also our moods. Avoiding harsh words or anything like that will be best. If your pet is not very motivated by the treat switching treats is always a good idea.
5. As with any training method there will be a time when you need to correct your pet. At these times it is vital that you use a steady and natural voice. Using words like "wrong" or "no" in a neutral tone of voice will still let the dog know it did not perform correctly without causing it distress and making the training much harder.
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