Basics of Flat-Coated Retriever Training
It's essential for Flat-Coated Retriever parents like you to know certain basic factors that determine your relationship with your Flat-Coated Retriever and can go a long way in training him effectively.
Before you begin training your Flat-Coated Retriever, it is absolutely essential that you build a loving bond with him. This is important as it helps you to understand his needs and instincts and also allows your Flat-Coated Retriever to have complete trust in you.
Let us see how.......
How To Bond With Your Flat-Coated Retriever
Building a bond with your Flat-Coated Retriever is the first and the most crucial step involved in training him successfully. As soon as you bring your Flat-Coated Retriever home, you must first try to develop a caring and loving relationship with him in order to win his trust and confidence.
When Flat-Coated Retrievers are secure in the knowledge that they belong to the family, they are more likely to respond better to their owners' training commands. Just like with any relationship, there must be mutual trust and respect between you and your Flat-Coated Retriever.
Trust takes time to develop and respect comes from defining boundaries and treating any breach of those boundaries with firmness and fairness.
Without enforceable limitations, respect can’t be developed. And when there is no respect, building a bond with your Flat-Coated Retriever is almost impossible.
4 Golden Rules To Building A Relationship With Your Flat-Coated Retriever:
- Spend quality time together;
- Take him out in the world and experience life together;
- Establish and promote a level of mutual respect; and
- Develop a way of communicating to understand each other's needs.
Love Your Flat-Coated Retriever and He Will Love You back
Once you're successful in building a bond with your Flat-Coated Retriever, you can rest assured that training him and teaching him new and clever tricks will be a cakewalk.
How Your Flat-Coated RetrieverLearns...
Your Flat-Coated Retriever's learning period can be divided into five phases:
The Teaching Phase - This is the phase where you must physically demonstrate to your Flat-Coated Retriever exactly what you want him to do.
The Practicing Phase - Practice makes Perfect. Once a lesson is learnt, practice with your Flat-Coated Retriever what you have just taught him.
The Generalizing Phase - Here you must continue practicing with your Flat-Coated Retriever in different locations and in an environment with a few distractions. You can take your Flat-Coated Retriever out for a walk, or to a nearby park and command him to practice whatever you've taught him.
Practicing the learned lessons in multiple locations and in the presence of small distractions will help him learn and retain lessons better.
The Testing Phase - Once you're sure that your Flat-Coated Retriever has achieved almost 90% success....he responds correctly almost every time you give a command, you must start testing his accuracy in newer locations with a lot of distractions.
Example: Take him to the local shopping mall and ask him to obey your command. He may not come up with the correct response the very first time you do this, but you must not lose hope.
The idea is to test your Flat-Coated Retriever to see how he responds in an environment which is new to him. Set-up a situation where you are in control of the environment and your Flat-Coated Retriever.
There are only 2 possibilities:
- Your Flat-Coated Retriever succeeds!!! (Trumpets please!)
- In case your Flat-Coated Retriever fails, re-examine the situation. Review and/or change your training. Then try testing again.
Keep on testing until he succeeds. Follow the rule of the 3 Ps – patience, persistence, praise.
Internalizing Phase - Finally, comes the extremely rewarding phase where your Flat-Coated Retriever does everything he is taught to do even without your commands.
Remember:
- Never scold your Flat-Coated Retriever if he fails. It's not his fault. You have failed as a trainer!
- You must be patient and persistent for your efforts to show rewards.
- Appreciate and love your Flat-Coated Retriever when he does it right! A little encouragement will work wonders for your Flat-Coated Retriever.
- Flat-Coated Retriever Training is easy when you do it right.