Dogs are loving pets because of the ability to become a family member and keep everyone entertained. But dogs can also offer good personal protection to the entire family, and many pet owners look upon it as the savior and guardian too. They want dogs to spend fun time with family and friends but also protect them from intruders or attackers. Finding the right type of dog that adapts perfectly to the family is indeed important, but it is also very important to train the dog to teach the nuances of protection. In this regard, you must be able to distinguish between a trained dog that knows how to offer protection and an attack dog.
An attack dog is more of a personal protection dog that remains faithful to one person only. The specialty of attack dogs is that only one person who is also the handler interacts with it, trains it, exercises it, and there is no other person that can get close to it. It is a one on one relationship with no other person ever touching the dog or showering affection. As a result, the dog treats any other person as a rank outsider and stranger. An attack dog cannot make friends with anyone except for the primary handler with whom it remains closely attached.
If you need a personal protection dog that mixes well with the family members, then you must send the pet for dog training Northwest Arkansas to learn how to behave in different conditions, especially in hostile environments when there is some perceived threat faced by any family member. What your dog would learn during the training will become clear ongoing through this article.
The dog learns obedience commands
The first module of dog training consists of obedience training, which is the foundation for all other types of dog training like service dog training, dog aggression training scent detection, etc. During the training, the dog learns how to respond to different commands that teach obedience. When called, the dog must obey the command in full whether you ask it to lie down, sit or call it to come to you. The dog learns how to heel without a leash and how to respond to ‘leave it’ and ‘bark’ commands. How much the dog responds to the training and the level of compliance, indicate the possibilities of the dog turning into a proper protection dog. If the dog does not fulfill the commands 100%, then its ability to offer proper protection is low.
Socializing your dog
The dog must receive training in socializing so that it does not fear unusual and new situations. Every dog has a sensitive period to become acquainted with socialization, which is normally up to 16 weeks from birth, but as it is not always possible, you must do it as soon as possible. Delay in giving opportunities of socializing may result in the dog picking up the bad habits that are hard to change later. Taking the dog for a walk is the best way to introduce it to other people and dogs so that it learns how to behave in that environment. Allowing the dog to familiarize with strange objects by encouraging it to investigate the object will drive away unwanted fear. By looking at other people on the road or in the park, the dog will learn how to recognize any threatful personality.
Barking on command
You must teach the dog to bark at approaching strangers and encourage the behavior. Protection begins by the dog barking whenever any stranger approaches it, which is good enough to stall the person from progressing. The ploy is more effective to thwart aggression of intruders than a dog responding to an attack command and charging towards the stranger without barking. However, it might not always be easy to make the dog respond to the ‘bark’ command, and you can choose any other word that excites the dog naturally and makes it bark. Observing the behavior of the dog in various situations should help to identify the right word. Although barking is a natural response of dogs, you must also teach it to stop barking. Barking on command and stopping when asked to stop are the traits of a good protection dog.
Learning to defend you
In the next step of the training, you must expose your dog to some stranger who does some play-acting and walks up to the animal and challenges it. This should make the dog bark on hearing your command, and the stranger should act as if feeling afraid and runoff. On seeing the effectiveness of barking at the stranger, the dog becomes more confident in its abilities to keep strangers away by barking only. Barking dogs are quite frightful indeed, and no one would dare to defy it, which means that you get the protection when you are walking with your dog and encounter some threatening situation. Trying to train the dog for attacking may not be a good idea if you want it to be a lovable pet that mixes well with the family members.
Teach the dog to back off
Personal protection means that the dog must act sensibly to ward off threats and at the same time, be ready to leave the person alone when he or she does not attempt to renew the threat. For example, if the dog puts his teeth on the stranger just for frightening, it should stop at it and be ready to back off when asked by you. On hearing the command ‘leave it,’ the dog should leave the person, and you must immediately appreciate the act in recognition of the dog’s perfect response to the command.
This is a very important phase of the training because if the dog does not respond appropriately to the command, there can be some very serious consequences as the dog could go out of control.
Only when the dog is highly responsive to your commands that you can consider it fit for playing the role of a loving pet and protector.
