How to train a circus dog?

Dog training has never been easy. To do this, we must be able to communicate with animals, and encourage them to properly construct a sequence of tricks, from the most simple to complex. One of the most popular methods of training in circus is method of encouragement. Of course, the name is some unscientific, but it is not necessarily the trainer knows all the details of construction of conditioned reflexes.

The essence of the encouragement method is in the fact that for every successful performance, the animal should be rewarded with something tasty. It is important to ensure the animal is hungry at that time. If you delve into the theory of conditioned reflexes, then for its formation there must be an unconditioned stimulus, which acts as hunger, destroying inside of the dog. In addition, if it has such a feeling, there is a great motivation to start doing something. This method is often used when raising children, but that is another story. Encouragement method is the most humane of all, which allows reaching the highest possible effectiveness of the training.

Encouragement method allows you to train a dog properly. It begins to obey the owner from the first time, gladly follows any orders transmitted to it, and follows the slightest action of the trainer. This suggests the animals conditioned reflex is formed. If the dog is not trained properly, it can also follow orders, but as if doing a favor. Often it is necessary to give the command several times that it began to do it. Moreover, very often it is necessary to use an aggressive tone. It looks more like a mockery of the poor animal, so it is certainly not our option.

Of course, if you use only the encouragement method, nothing sensible can happen, because the conditions are not complied with a successful training. Their number is small, only four. However, to ensure the implementation of these theoretical features in practice often requires a lot of work. What are these factors?

1. The contact between the dog and the handler. A very important factor for the entire process. The dog should love the owner. In this case, it confides everything he says. If it expresses distrust of him, it could even lead to a kind of sabotage.

2. Knowledge of basic commands. This significantly speeds up the learning process. Commands can be studied out of the dog training to perform at the circus, but before it by other techniques that are used by professional dog handlers to get the dog to learn certain words.

3. Understanding the basic principles of training. Anyone process reaches progress without this, aimed at developing certain behavioral patterns in dogs.

4. And of course, free time. If the circus performance with a dog is a future profession (you are planning to), you cannot call that free time, but currently work. You do not need a lot to teach the dog, but you need persistence.

Generally, the most important is the frequency of lessons, not its duration. If the stimulus is repeated too often, even a little, it forms a habit of not only dogs, but also humans. Slightly deviating from the topic, it is worth noting that for this reason drinking often, but little is fraught with greater risk of alcoholism. Similarly, you can generate positive habits and train yourself. All the principles used in this article in relation to dogs, are also applicable to humans.

In general, the frequent repetition of the stimulus fixes it in the depths of the brain both a dogs and ours. Only in our case, this process will take less time, because the more developed body is from the perspective of evolution, the sooner the formation of conditioned reflexes will be.

Generally, the optimal training of dogs continues from 20 minutes to one hour. If the performance is not very difficult and the dog is trained only to show presentation in front of a small audience, the twenty-minute sessions over a month or two (depending on the specific breed of dog) are quite enough. If the complex tricks are planned, and the potential target audience is too large, then it has to train an hour. However, the most important is fun in the process. In this case, you will not notice whether it was twenty minutes or an hour.