How to Guarantee That Your Dog Learns the Most Common Obedience Commands

Would you like to guarantee that your dog learns the most common obedience commands?

This is much easier than you might believe!

Think carefully about the times you interact with your dog(s) during the day and see which of the common obedience commands you can incorporate into these interactions.

Here's a few examples:

Examples
1. You're bringing your dog in from outdoors. Ask him to Sit and Stay, and once you've walked through the door into your home, ask him to Come. Same commands going out the door, unless the dog really has to go!

2. Before you put his full food disk on the floor, ask for a Sit or a Down.

3. Your new puppy is shadowing you all over the house. As he's following you, stop, say Come, and lavish a lot of praise when the dog comes to you (and he will).

4. My pup Alvin gets an occasional ice cube to supplement his drinking water. I get him to lie down, put the ice cube a foot in front of him, and say Leave It. Once he looks at me, I say Okay and he gets the ice cube.

5. My other pup Simon is leased in the house sometimes because he's not fully housetrained. So we practice the Come command a lot.

What Happens When You Follow Through With These Activities?
I'm sure you can think of other situations where you can use these common obedience commands. Once you've reinforced these activities for a few weeks, they become part of the routine. Your dog will do them automatically.

You will find that it'll make life easier for you and you will have a well-trained dog in no time. As a new puppy owner myself, anything that makes life easier is a gift!

Learn More About Teaching Common Obedience Commands
Take a quick look at this Puppy and Dog Training DVD.

When you're faced with puppy training problems and need solutions FAST, you'll get answers from professional dog trainers in the Dog Training BIBLE, Secrets to Dog Training.

3 Ways To Fix Your Picture-Taking Mistakes For FREE

These tips for taking digital photos address fixing some of the most common picture-taking blunders. Lots of people get a digital camera, neglect to read the manual, and then wonder why the results are less than satisfactory.

Yup, if the photo opportunity has past and you’re stuck with a so-so picture, fix it! Use these tips for taking digital photos to turn your blunders into almost-perfect pictures.

What You Need To Fix A Photo
You need a PC with photo-editing software that will perform a few simple functions such as crop, lighten, and adjust colors.

You can download easy and free photo-editing software that will edit, organize, and share photos. The best-rated free software is Google Picasa.

Your camera might have come with editing software. Load this software and see if it has the features to fix your photo.

Common Picture-Taking Mistakes
The photo you want is part of the original
Let’s say you took a picture of the members of a band during a concert, but you want a photo of the lead singer. Crop the piece of the picture you want and save the result. As long as your crop is fairly large, the new photo resolution will be okay for sending or printing.

Your photo is dark
As long as the photo isn’t too dark, you can lighten the photo with your editing software “brightness” setting. Save the brightened picture.

The photo colors are not true
Occasionally, photos taken in bright sunlight are too blue. Editing software will allow you to change the bluetones back to their true colors. The editing feature will be named something like “color adjustment” – usually there’s a slider to test the colors. You may be able to see the color change as you move the slider.
Once you adjust a few photos, you’ll discover it’s simple to do. And you have fixed your mistakes!

More Tips For Taking Digital Photos
Interested in a camera for shooting perfect pictures?
See the features AND reviews for the Canon EOS Rebel T1i EF-S Digital SLR Camera.
Its coolest feature is the ability to shoot High Definition videos!

Shoot a lot of pet photos? Make sure you consider these 5 Tips For Taking Digital Photos of Puppies and Dogs – Lighting, Focus, Angle of Shot, Fill the Frame, and Fix Your Mistakes.

Puppy Training Problems? Be Sure To Take This Action FIRST

Does your pup react like this

when you give a command?
We call this expression "Alvin's Evil Eye."

Teaching a puppy requires a special temperament. As a rule, pups have the attention span of a flea and you can easily lose your patience if you’re not careful. It’s a good idea to sidestep bad habits before they start. Here are 4 ways to avoid puppy training problems:

The Most Important Thing You Must Do First
If you don’t do this one activity, you will end up BEING one of the puppy training problems.

You need to get and keep the dog’s attention. How? Well, for example, I’ve trained two puppies to sit at attention looking at me when I stand with my hands behind my back. Their expectation is that treats will follow if they do so.

Repetition
I always mention the story from Yahoo Answers! The questioner implied that a puppy obedience class was sufficient training and could not understand why her pup was disobedient.

How about reinforcing the obedience training in everyday activities? Sit and stay are good commands to use before the pup gets his meals or a treat. If you get the dog to work a bit for a reward, he won’t forget the command.

Use The SAME Word(s) Each Time You issue A Command
Puppies get confused when the words command words change. Recall is a good example. Say the dog’s name and the word Come once. Not “Fido, come over here now” or “Fido, get over here.” “Fido, Come” is sufficient.

Take One Step At A Time
I once complained to a trainer that my puppy Simon would not respond to a verbal command for Down. As she watched me give the down command, she said “Give the command and then wait a few seconds before you do anything else.”

Apparently I was combining an action with the verbal command and really confusing the pup. And I thought he was stupid! Once I waited after saying the command and then lured the pup down, he learned quickly. I wasted a lot of time because I was teaching the command incorrectly.

Hope these ways to avoid puppy training problems were helpful. Be sure to get the pup’s attention as the first thing you do.

Bonus Tip
Most puppies bite and mouth. Make sure you correct this behavior while the pup is young. Check out this tip: Correcting Puppy Biting.

If you’re like most people with a new pup, you're dealing with training and behavior problems on a daily basis. AND you need solutions FAST. Find out how to address these issues in Secrets to Dog Training, the Dog Training "bible."