Teaching Your Dog Boundaries The Expert’s Way

There are many reasons for wanting to teach your dog boundaries, for example maybe you want to keep them out of the babies room, prevent them from stealing food, keep them off the fancy furniture or away from the front the door. Thankfully all this can be possible with the proper consistent training and a fair amount of time. It is important to keep in mind that boundary training can not happen passively and your dog requires your full attention.

Easy Access

Easily train your dog boundaries by controlling the environment in which they live in, this can be done by physically attaching the dogs leash to yourself when supervised and leaving them in a controlled area when they are unsupervised. This will prevent the dog from wandering a stray or going where they shouldn’t when you are not home, helping to instill the boundaries you wish to have created. Remember that when your dog gets used to seeing you do normal things like cooking or cleaning well you are enforcing the rules upon them they will learn much faster.

Impulses

Before you are ready to begin training your dog boundaries it is necessary for your dogs to have developed impulse control. This can be tested by placing food or a treat on the ground in front of them, the goal being the dog to resist the urge to gobble up the snack. Once you are confident in your dog’s ability to refute the impulse trying throwing the food around them instead of placing it, as well as turning your back to them because some dogs think the rules don’t apply if no one is looking. Creating solid impulse control within your dog is crucial to developing boundaries, especially if you wish to keep your dog out of the kitchen, off the table or from wrongly eating food.

Room Control

It is common for dogs to behave how expected when supervised but then go back to bad behaviours when left unattended. If you want your dog to stay out of a certain room, or from eating food of the counter and table, then assigning a specific spot for the dog to stay that is within eye contact would benefit greatly. 

Step 1:

Get your dog very comfortable with the assigned spot by practicing lots of sitting and staying, well you test the dogs impulse control on the designated spot.

Step 2:

Once you are comfortable with your dog’s ability to sit and stay on the spot, leave the room with some food to entice them sitting on the counter and see if your dog remains in the spot. In order to improve your dog’s boundary obedience be sure to leave the room for a longer period of time as your dogs skills grow and develop.

Step 3:

Reward your dog before they have a chance to slip up, so the moment you see your dogs face, head or body look like it is showing restraint give them a reward even if the restraint was only momentarily.