K.I.S.S. Dog Training has been fortunate enough to win Best of Johnson County back-to-back and three out of the last four years. I’m incredibly proud of that, but after 18 years of dog-training experience, with 16 years owning K.I.S.S. Dog Training and focusing on in-home training, the biggest lessons really have very little to do with awards.
One of the most important things I tell clients is simple: routines are training.
Your dog is learning all day long, not just during the 30 or 45 minutes when you decide it is officially “training time.” Feeding, going outside, getting on the leash, greeting people, settling down while you watch TV, getting into the car, and even waiting at a door are all opportunities to teach your dog what works.
That is why I focus so heavily on rewarding the behaviors we want so they repeat.
Dogs are very good at figuring out what gets them what they want. If sitting calmly gets attention, sitting calmly becomes more valuable. If pulling on the leash gets them where they want to go, pulling becomes more valuable too.
The same principle applies when we are dealing with unwanted behavior.
Rather than spending all our time correcting the dog, I want to redirect the dog away from the behavior we don’t want and give them something better to do instead. Then we reward that better choice.
Over time, we begin breaking down the bad behavior or routine and replacing it with a better one.
That is where consistency matters.
If the dog gets rewarded for one behavior today but accidentally gets rewarded for the opposite behavior tomorrow, progress becomes much harder. Everybody in the household does not have to be a professional dog trainer, but everybody needs to be reasonably consistent about what behaviors work and which ones do not.
And finally, training needs to be fun.
If training feels miserable for you, you are probably not going to keep doing it. If it is frustrating or confusing for your dog, your dog is probably not going to stay engaged either.
Training needs structure, but it also needs to be simple, practical, rewarding, and something both ends of the leash can succeed at.
That philosophy is really where the name K.I.S.S. Dog Training comes from: Keep It Simple Stupid.
After all, the goal is not to turn every dog owner into a professional trainer. The goal is to give people practical tools they can actually use every day, build better routines, reward the behaviors they want, and replace the behaviors they do not.
Practice when it’s easy so you stand a chance when it’s hard.
K.I.S.S. Dog Training provides positive-reinforcement, in-home dog training throughout the Kansas City area. To learn more, visit KISSDogTraining.com.
