If your dog is doing what he wants without paying attention to you, it’s time for orientation training. You and your four-legged friend learn to pay attention to each other and understand each other better. You can read what exactly the goals and content of such training are.
Especially in critical situations, it is essential that your dog does not decide for itself as it pleases but that you check with yourself beforehand how it should behave. But it is also safer for your four-legged friend if he pays attention to you and follows you.
If he doesn’t, orientation training can teach you how to regain your dog’s attention, improve communication between you and your pet, and build mutual trust.
What is orientation training for?
Unlike cats, dogs were bred from the start to work with humans. Cats have not been domesticated for that long and were brought to humans as exterminators in their own right – it was only in the last century that they were also discovered as pets, keeping humans company and sharing their lives with them, even if they only mice for the fun hunt and not just to survive. On the other hand, dogs and humans have been a close team for tens of thousands of years, and the four-legged friend should always help his master or mistress. The fact that dogs are guided by their owners is basically due to their disposition.
However, dogs are also very trainable and always do what they find most rewarding and enjoyable. For example, suppose your dog notices that you don’t respond to his reassurance glances or don’t understand his cues that he’s waiting for your direction. In that case, he will eventually stop waiting or paying attention to your decision. Then he makes his own decisions and does what he wants. This means, for example, that when you go for a walk, he sniffs the ground devotedly and moves further and further away from you. He runs away because he has seen something interesting somewhere or a potential prey animal. Or he will indiscriminately eat things he finds on the ground, which can be life-threatening in the case of poison bait. The orientation training serves to bring the dog and owner closer together and to rekindle attention for each other.
What happens during orientation training with the dog and owner?
The technical term for when dogs start ignoring their humans and following their own decisions is self-reward. In the orientation training, you will learn how to prevent self-rewarding through the right rewards and how to work with positive reinforcement. Clicker training or clicker training without a clicker can also be used for the dog. You and your dog also practice attention training through eye contact. Your four-legged friend should learn not to follow his spontaneous impulses without a look and reassurance from you; You should learn to perceive your dog’s subtle signs and faces and react accordingly.
So it is also about improving the cooperation between dog and owner. You will also learn the best holding techniques to keep your dog safely on a leash. The so-called radius training is about ensuring that your four-legged friend does not move out of your sphere of influence. The orientation training is usually carried out on the tow line, and you will usually receive essential tips and exercises for the dog walk in the dog school.
