
Author: Dur-e-Sabih
Rottweiler dogs on TV appear to be aggressive and muscular, which leaves a wrong impression that they aren’t a good choice for families. Whereas, in reality, they are much different. Rottweilers make up to be intelligent, loyal, and caring creatures.
Through a nurturing and compassionate environment, socialization, and proper training, Rottweiler puppies can become great family pets. Before you begin training, remember to practice patience as it’s the key to grooming your dog’s behavior.
Through patience and persistence, you can make your dog a loving, devoted, and social family member by following the training tips mentioned below.
1. Begin Training Early
Many dog owners, including professional trainers, recommend training a doggy from a young age. The golden time for training your doggy is between 6 weeks and 6 months of age.
However, if you have adopted a fully grown adult dog, it doesn’t mean they can’t be trained. Rottweiler is known for its traits of intelligence and loyalty. It would just require some extra effort and care from your side.
Practice positive reinforcement and communication with your dog, which can help in grooming a dog of any age.
2. Avoid Verbal or Physical Punishment
If the results of your teaching don’t turn out to be as you want, don’t start yelling or hitting your dog. Your pup will make mistakes and take its time to learn a new command or adopt good behavior.
If you feel frustrated that your doggy didn’t obey your instructions, then discontinue practicing and try again after you cool down. Physical or verbal punishment is going to only cause more harm than good.
Not only will it hurt the dog’s mental health, but it will damage the relationship that exists between you and your canine friend. Rather than teaching your dog good manners, it will begin to adopt aggressive behaviors.
If your dog had done an unacceptable act and you found out about it later, don’t yell at it. Instead, the next time you catch your pup doing it, firmly say no. Your facial expression and voice will give a clear indication to your dog that it did something wrong.
· Use Positive Reinforcement
A great technique that will help your dog to adopt skills faster is positive reinforcement. This involves giving a treat or reward to your pup when it follows your command or practices what it trained.
Gifting treats for action is a signal of approval for your dog that the owner is satisfied. Your Rottweiler will pick up good actions faster by knowing that it will get a reward in return from its owner.
To make the training activity fun for both you and your dog, you can create games based on the use of specific skills. When your dog clears a specific level, give it praise, a treat, or a toy. Make sure that you immediately reward your dog when it executes your command.
3. Training Basic Commands
All doggies require learning basic commands. Without them, your training efforts may go incomplete. Training begins from these basic commands, where you communicate what you want your furball to do. Remember to start easy, then raise the difficulty level steadily.
By teaching your basic Rottweiler commands, you’ve come closer to the goal of achieving a well-behaved dog. These basic commands include:-
· Sit
One of the first commands to teach your dog is sitting. By teaching it to sit at your command, other tasks such as grooming and feeding become easier. How to teach?
To train your dog, you must get your pup’s attention. This can be attained by standing close to it with a treat on a stick. Once you have your dog’s attention, slowly bring the treat towards its head.
Move the treat over your dog’s head and back towards its tail. Your dog will turn back to follow the treat and sit down to pick it up. As soon as it sits, says the command ‘sit’ and give your dog a treat. Repeat the above method several times until your dog sits immediately as it sees the treat.
This allows you to practice by only saying ‘sit’ to your dog without showing a treat. Once it sits, give your doggy its reward. With enough practice, your pet will sit on your command.
· Down
After training your dog to sit, teaching them to lay down becomes easier. Say the command ‘down’ and demonstrate with the motion of your hands. Move your hands towards the ground with the palms facing downwards and say ‘down.’
The motion of your hands can make it easier for your dog to understand your command. Repeat until your dog lays down and immediately reward it with a treat.
· Stay
This command is a bit more complex than sit. However, with time, patience, and repetition, your dog can learn how to stay in position. Before teaching ‘stay,’ you need to train your dog to move when you say a release word. This can be any word you like.
Command your dog to sit and say the word ‘stay.’ Move back one step from the dog, and then go back to the original position. Immediately give your doggy a treat and release it.
Repeat the above procedure several times with one step distance. Then, gradually move one step at a time further from your doggy.
4. Socialization
Socialization plays an important role in making your dog’s life happy and comfortable. Take your dog out to walks, parks, and public spaces where pets are allowed.
For social gatherings, start with small family or friends gatherings. Through gradual exposure to socialization, you can prevent the buildup of an anxious personality in your dog.
Conclusion
Who said the Rottweiler dog breed isn’t fit for families? Rottweiler puppies, through proper care, can grow up to be loving and loyal family dogs. When training your Rottweiler dog or puppy, remember to start from basic commands such as sit and stay.
Avoid verbal and physical punishment and use positive reinforcement for training your canine friend. By following the above-mentioned tips, you can successfully train a Rottweiler dog.