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Training the Down Command To A Dominant Dog
by Christi Clark
A dominant dog is a dog who becomes uncertain when he is forced to change his mood.
Since his response to resistance is to the point, the dog feels the need to assert himself. A
dog will push back when he feels the left hand on his shoulder blade and may also growl.
Since he's feeling a bit anxious, he won't seem interested in eating, so any type of gesture
other than a snap at your hand or the lead won’t transpire.
This type of pet is often misunderstood. Since he's naturally active and direct, this dog will
run into a lot of emotional roadblocks in his dealings with people, and so he thinks of s all
changes as bad, relative to humans.
Real hunger is sensible when beginning of training. When your pet dog is hungry enough,
he will go on the down position smoothly. Improving the contact training is important
because the resistance between the dog and the owner or handler is the key issue in this
dog's temperament. The goal here is to make sure that your dog feels calm about the
status issue and that he is taught that flexibility to change is actually good.
Make sure that you address the problem more firmly, since you will have to work the dog
without food. The first thing you’ll want to do is to teach him that suppleness to the touch,
like he a puppy. Then, when you’re ready to train without food, put your left foot on the
lead while you holding on to it with your right hand and wait patiently. As long as your pet
dog doesn't overload or become anxious, slowly increase the pressure downward on his
Make sure that you keep your head away from this type of dog because doing so will make
his problem more acute and will strengthen his need to resist. As he gets tired or seems
like he wants to lay down to get more comfortable, talk to him in a gentle voice. This
weakens resistance. Continue the soothing demeanor by scratching his top-line and his
The goal is for the dog to sense that by lying down he becomes the focus of the group. You
aren't trying to make yourself dominant, since that would only reinforce his lack of
confidence and reconfirm his negative assessment of humans who make him change his
mood. Instead, you want him to understand that being subordinate results in him having a
positive experience from the flow.
When the dog lies down, just rub his belly. It's fine for him to roll over because he's getting
the experience of flow and you want to energize him in this moment so that his top-line is
positively affected. His back is absorbing positive contact with the ground, and he's
associating you with such a positive drive flow; you are doing a lot to teach him that
“Down” is a peaceful pathway. If his top-line becomes supple, each repetition will see him
go down faster and with less resistance.
With dominant dogs, the issue you face isn’t that they're dominant but that they're brittle,
yet at the same time they know who they are. They don't function well and usually don’t
like to encounter new experiences. Since they're brittle and change slowly due to a strong
sense of place, they appear to be a tough dog, which leads to their being misunderstood.
As a result, in training they are pushed too fast and too hard. Since they have a strong
sense of their place, they inevitably have to learn to push back.
Information written by Christi Clark of www.ohmydogsupplies.com</a>, the best spot to
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