Knowing how to properly start and complete German Shepherd obedience training is a vital part of owning this type of breed. Being pack animals by nature, it is best to establish early on that you are the pack leader so that it will be easier for them to listen to your commands. If you have not already begun training your dog, know that it is never too late. But the sooner you get started the easier it will be to train your dog and the less time it will take. Just as it would be your responsibility to teach a child what is good and bad behavior, it is also your responsibility to teach your German Shepherd right and wrong behavior. If done properly, you can help to make sure that your dog is under your control and able to live comfortably within your home and yard and outside in society.
While everyone wants to see their puppy do amazing tricks, German Shepherd obedience training, or housebreaking, is generally the most important to get through because having a puppy using every room as a potty or ends up chewing up the end of your sofa, is much more of a concern then one who doesn’t yet understand the command to sit. The key to getting through the house breaking stage is to be calm, patient, and consistent. Every single time the puppy does something wrong, they must be corrected or else they will not understand that it isn’t a behavior that is allowed. And most importantly you must praise, praise and then praise some more when they are on the right track. Your puppy will learn right from wrong by seeing what action gets a correction and what action gets love and attention. Within a couple of weeks, you will have a perfectly housebroken puppy and won’t even remember the times of frustration you may have felt deep down during that time.
It is thought that once the housebreaking part is over, the next step is to move onto commands such as sit and stay for your German Shepherd obedience training. But with these sort of lessons, it is best to take one command at a time and focus on one command and only one command until the puppy is showing signs of truly understanding the word command and what to do when it is spoken. Once finished with one command, you can then move onto the next one on your list. Just be sure to allow your puppy breaks during training, as they tend to have shorter attention spans so an hour-long training would be pointless. Give many breaks but try not to skip an entire day. While you don’t want to be overbearing, you must remain consistent at all times in order for the German Shepherd training to go well and for the results to last.
When thinking of German Shepherd training, the first thing that comes to mind that others struggle with is obedience training and this article hopes to relieve some of that stress. As any of the dog training books will tell you, German Shepherd obedience training is a vital part of raising an emotionally stable dog.