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Remember that training isn’t a something that you do for a period of time and then quit. Training is something that starts the day the puppy comes home and ends when it dies.

There are as many opinions about training a dog as there are dog owners. If you ask ten different people you will get ten different answers.

The one thing that I suggest all new dog owners, especially owners of pit bulls to do, is avoid prong collar training, and techniques that require shocking. Not that the prong collar, if properly used, doesn’t work. I have seen several dogs that did well with that technique. But it is not an easy technique for new trainers to master. An in-experienced trainer runs a high risk of over correcting and potentially causing unrepairable damage to the dog.

I always suggest that a new owner start training using positive reinforcement or marker training. I normally suggest that you start a young dog or puppy with positive reinforcement training, I find that treats are the easiest to start with. I generally start to wing dogs off of treats later as they become more confident in there abilities. However, praise is always given when they do something correct (in some form or another).

In order to get started you will need a couple of things

1. Treats - I prefer treats that don’t use grains.
2. Time - I find it best, because dogs need routines, to do short training sessions after I bring the dog in after potty time. Try to limit sessions to just a few minutes at first, then increase as the dogs attention span increases.
3. Dog - I like pit bulls, your breed may vary.

I like to use hand signals in addition to vocal commands with my dogs, but at first just work with vocal commands and slowly start implementing the hand signals later.

When you get started the first couple of sessions your going to effectively be tricking your dog into doing the expected command. A great command to start with is “Sit”. I would take a treat and hold it above the dogs head and clearly say “Sit”, even young puppies at this point will sit. Once the dogs sits I state “Good Dog” and give the dog the treat.

Eventually, your first several sessions you may have to continue to trick the dog into the desired action. Its important that you remain patience. But, eventually you should be able to issue the command with out having to bait the dog with the treat. Depending on the age of the dog, and the breed, it may be a couple days. However, I have had dogs master the concept in a single session.

It is important that you remain consistent at first with giving the treats. I always reward after every trick for the first couple of months, eventually you can reduce the amount of treats that are given.

A few good commands to teach in the beginning is sit, lay down, roll over, and stay. You will find that as your dog progresses, his ability to learn new concepts increases as well. After mastering the basic commands I like to move on to teaching my dog to identify his toys. Its a fun game where you reward the dog for picking the correct toy out of a group of toys.

My last word of advice, is that you always keep the training sessions fun, both for the owner and the dog. The dog should look forward to getting to work with you.