To Always Use a Dog's Name is a Myth

Series Summary

Teaching your dog or puppy basic obedience commands can be a tricky feat, but the reward of a happy, healthy pet makes it well worth the time and effort it takes to train a dog. Learning how to stay, sit, and heel are important for both you and your dogs happiness and safety. There are many variations and theories on how to train a dog, but most professional dog trainers will tell you to reward good behavior and negatively reinforce bad behavior. Of course this can be more difficult than it sounds and many people may end up unknowingly enforcing the bad behavior instead of the good, but with a little effort and knowledge of how a dog learns, even you can teach your dog basic obedience commands.

In this free video series, our expert dog trainer will demonstrate how to train a dog and what training myths to avoid. He will address many common myths that dog owners may believe, including the myths that dogs should fear their owners and that violence will make a dog respect their owner. He will also demonstrate helpful dog training tips on how to introduce a dog to water, and how to crate train your puppy. If you've got a brand new puppy or just want to teach your old dog some new tricks, this is the video for you!

Video Transcript

"On behalf of Expert Village, I'm Carlos Puentes with K-9 Solutions Dog Training in Miami, Florida and today we are going to talk about dog training myths from my new book, "Who is Training Who". Myth number 1, you are supposed to use your dog's name before you give him every command to get his attention. Wrong. Use your dog's name for common heel. Those are the action commands. The stationary commands are sit down and stay. You never want to use your dog's name for those commands. First thing people do when they bring their puppy or dog home is that they name them. They'll say Lucky. The dog will start moving towards him. Eventually they can add Lucky come, the dog starts moving over. If your dog is sitting there and you say Lucky down, he may towards you and then you may get mad at him. Now he is really confused or Lucky stay. So all that does is cause confusion. Sit down and stay. Those are the stationary commands. Never use the dog's name for those. "