It is helpful to be reminded of some basic principals of dog training. It is really hard to put down on a top ten list when you really need a book.

11. A Carrot and a Stick.

It is really simple. Your dog needs to know when he has been good or bad. Dogs can't really understand what we are saying but they can understand the inflection in our voice. In other words when your dog is doing something good, you need to almost “sing” with praise. “Good Boy!” And when your dog is doing something bad that you don't want him to do you need to be able to get loud, to growl, like “what are you doing” or “no” People that have a monotone voice make poor dog trainers. Generally I think men need to work on their voice giving praise and I think women need to practice their growling, being loud and making their voices deeper.

12 The Down.

I'll teach the down to a dog when he is off of stock. And make the dog lie down but all the down actually means stop, that is all it means. It doesn't mean lie on your belly and most dogs even when you teach them down, then you go to the stock, they forget all about it anyway. I have found the best way actually to teach the stop is to give that command to the dog when he pulls up on the balance point is the time you can, when you are in a small area, you can use your body to block the dog and when as you do that and the dog comes to a stop you just tell them to “lie down” and this way most dogs learn to stop on their feet. I can't stress how important a stop is on your dog. If you can stop a dog anytime you can stop unwanted behavior. If you have a young dog that will stop when you tell it to, already you have a useful dog around your ranch.

13. Don't Nag at your Dog.

If you find yourself giving the command over and over again and the dog not changing his behavior, for example if you are yelling “comeby, comeby, “ and the dog continues going straight, you've got a problem. What you are actually teaching the dog to do is to disobey you. Although this principle I actually learned from my wife and my kid, Where my wife would tell my kid to do something about five times. The kid got to know that on the 6th time he was gonna get smacked on the back of the head. And he would usually take the full five times before he would change what he was doing. Typically I will give a command twice. I'll take time to stop and enforce the command so the dog is listening to me. Again if you find yourself giving the same command over and over again get into a small area, a round pen or up against a fence where you can enforce your commands both with your voice and with your body language.

14. Work on Good Habits Only.

I know some ranchers that will run a young dog with an older dog expecting the young dog to pick up on the job. My opinion is that they hardly ever learn any of the good habits of the old dog most generally they develop their own bad ones. And when you are doing a lot of hollering at your young dog to change the unwanted behavior you need to understand that your old dog is actually hearing that correction too and thinking it is intended for him. I don't doubt that you can eventually train dogs this way but it is the slow way to do it and not the best.

15. Be Consistent.

Give the command in a calm voice, not too loud just loud enough for the dog to hear you and if it doesn't obey, give the correction in a loud voice and then go back to giving the command again and drop back down to the normal voice again whatever it takes to get the job done. If you find yourself hollering all the time, your training program is in trouble. Get back into a smaller area and get things in control again.

16. Know When to Quit.

Always leave with your dog when the dog is still wanting to do more. If you are working your dog all of a sudden it leaves the stock to go get water or goes to lie down in the shade understand you had a monumental failure. Understand it is YOUR failure not the dogs. Some dogs can take more work than others. And you can actually train a dog so that it won't work at all or be alert of the signs that your dog has had enough training. It will start looking away from the stock, running too wide or you find yourself calling it back onto the stock. Call it back on the stock, get it excited one last time and then quit when you want to quit not when the dog does.

17. Don't Sour Your Dog.

There is an old saying “dogs don't get any better in Kennels” but actually sometimes they do. If things are going bad and particularly if you don't know what to do about fixing it if you've got a dog that is starting to turn off or if you've got a dog that is starting to do something that you think might be a problem put the dog up for a week maybe even two weeks when you take it back out again it may forget that unwanted behavior and sometimes the break will do you both good.

18. One At a Time.

Teach one or two things at a time. What we mean here is , if you are working on your dog to get back, then basically work on the get back. It doesn't mean that you can't tell your dog to lie down or work more on balancing. It just means what your emphasis is on. Put your emphasis on one or two things don't try to teach eight things at once. Basically teach one thing and get it right before going on to something else. You will be done faster than trying to teach a bunch of things at once.

19. Top Dog.

You are the top dog in your kennel. Whether you have one dog or twenty remember

that you are top dog. You are number 1 in the pecking order. And you above all else are to be respected. All dogs have a pecking order that are in the kennel. Dog fights can be very expensive, physically to the dogs and financially to you. And unhappy dogs don't work up to their full potential. Dogs that growl or show their teeth to another dog or walk around with their fur up and their tail high are really just a dog fight looking for a place to happen. You must make it perfectly clear to the dog that is exhibiting this kind of behavior that you don't allow it.

20. Magic & Mystery

Back in the old days when pickups weren't as reliable as they are today. When things were simpler we use to be able to work on your vehicles ourselves. So when the truck wouldn't start, Dad would go out would go out with his jumper cables, a screw driver, a flash light and a hammer and see what he could do to get it going. And when he tried everything that he knew, he would always come back in and proclaim that it was the carburetor. Now Dad didn't know anything about carburetors and they were a complete mystery to him and yes, he even probably thought they were a bit magical. Well, anyway, after he tried everything he knew he would finally give up and call the guy down at the garage so that he was sure that the mechanic had some tool or knowledge that he didn't have to fit his carburetor. Looking back on it for the past 40 years, I can safely say that the carburetor was probably never at fault because after the mechanic left and the truck was running we never actually heard what was wrong with the truck. We were left to believe that Dad was right and the mechanic had some secret to get our truck going. We all want to believe that the pros have secrets and perhaps even a little bit of magic for training dogs. But actually what they have experience, skill and knowledge.

I'll tell you this story because a young rancher came out with his young dog. We put it on the stock and at first it kind of went in a busted them up, we started getting her going around one way and then the other and she started looking around, she wanted to leave the stock and he has had this problem with her. In fact, she would run off and he would not be able to catch her. I told him how I would fix it. But he was sure there was some magical way we could do that to give him immediate results and thought that if he could get an electric collar that if she started to leave the field that he would be able to stop her and get her back on the stock again. What I had to explain to this young man was that people that use electric collars simply don't understand how to get a dog to stop and collars are never the answer to training stockdogs. . The moral of this story is ‘There ain't no such thing as a magic wand that we can wave over a problem and it will change just like that. If you are having trouble just back up. Get in a smaller area and let your dog know how important it is to stop when you tell them to stop, where you tell them to stop. Use your body and the pressure of a fence or round pen to be able to help stop your dog. It is always easier to start with these basic training principals like your dog stopping when you tell it to, than it is to go back and fix a problem later when a dog has been allowed to develop a bad habit such as not stopping at all or taking 5 or 6 steps after you tell him to stop. There is no dog that can not be stopped. I don't care how hard you think your dog is. If you are consistent and your dog believes you can make him stop, he will. Don't let your dog give you the “doggy paw”!

Mike Canaday

Entire site © 2005 Border Collie Puppies dot com