One of the most popular additions to the family home after children, are pets. Purchasing a pet is easy but enabling them to live in our houses and become a part of our lives isn’t always so straightforward. In-fact much like children, we have little if any way of knowing how they will turn out when they start to develop and mature. Also, like children, the way we teach and behave around animals will largely help to sculpt and shape their behaviour and knowledge of right and wrong.
This is particularly true with dogs, who are incredibly observant animals that like to know the rules because it makes them more acceptant to their owners, but who also know how to stretch the rules, play on their owner’s weaknesses, and generally become a bit cheekier in order to get what they want. Dog training Brisbane is highly recommended for all young families, for this reason.
Dogs by nature are pack animals. Their instinct, no matter how domesticated they have become or how far from the wild they have been bred, is to hunt as a pack. This is part of their genetic makeup to ensure feeding of their young, and to maintain an ability to protect their territory. Animal packs of course constitute animals that play different roles within the group; some are hunters, some are the apex leaders, some are the carers, and the breeding pair are often the most dominant.
Wherever you acquire your new family dog from, you really have very little idea about its background and, often, its genetic makeup. Therefore, it’s all well and good when the family has a little puppy bundle of fluff to play with, but should the dog start to display its instinctive behaviour when it gets a little older, then if not properly prepared for and managed, the dog could develop into a threat to other members of the family.
The essential advantage to training your dog from an early age is your ability to instruct your dog with a language that that it has learned and grown-up with. Simple commands like ‘stop’, ‘sit’, ‘wait’ and ‘come’ might seem like a novelty at first, but in later years the ability to maintain control over a dog which is displaying signs of aggression to new visitors to the home, or for example to Australia Post-delivery workers can be a gamechanger.
Aggression is of course just one of several traits that can start to reveal themselves. A less dangerous but just as problematic behaviour is the small puppy that jumps up at visitors. This is all well and good – and entertaining – at an early age, but once puppy has developed into a fully grown German Shepard and is jumping up at elderly relatives in the backyard on Australia Day can of course be a bit more serious.
So don’t delay. The prospect of putting your dog through a training program whilst it is still young and might seem a bit cruel, but it’s for their good as well as your own peace of mind. And what’s more, it might not seem like it at first, but dogs love the engagement and they especially like the treats that start to magically appear when they get things right!