Training Your Dog: Become The Pack's Alpha by Craig Mannington

Training your dog is a great way for you to get to know him or her. There are several ways of training that can be done, but the best ones always include active participation by the owner. You may choose to take your dog to an experienced trainer, which is generally useful for newer pet owners, and those with puppies. You may also choose to take on the training yourself, especially since there is a great deal of dog training equipment, like dog training collars, available, and also a large amount of media in several formats from videos, to books, to the internet.

Before getting your dog involved in training, it is important to have some idea how your dog's behavior is influenced. Before dogs were domesticated and became pets, they lived in packs, much the same way wolves do today. Being a part of a group, comes naturally to dogs because it is predominately instinct. In fact, unless your dog was the only puppy, he was born into a pack. He fought his siblings for the preferred teat to suckle, and tussled for position of rank and power. But now he is away from his birth pack and in your home.

Your dog doesn't see himself as a puppy and you as its owner or even as a human. On the contrary; to him, you are two members of the same pack. Every pack must have leaders, an alpha male and female. These leaders often pair up together, but you shouldn't have this problem unless you have many dogs. The problem you do need to deal with is displays of alpha behavior from your pet, such as eating first, sleeping where he wishes, and taking and marking territory he desires. He believes that he can act as he wishes as leader of the pack.

Training your dog must include as its primary goal, determining who will be the alpha. The reason for this is that you are seen as part of the pack unless you want your dog to control you. With a puppy, it's easy to establish alpha via easy to use methods. Training a grown dog can be more difficult. When the dog is aggressive, it may be too difficult to train the dog yourself so hiring a trainer who is experienced in behavior modification dog training is a good solution.

To establish yourself as the alpha you can use two basic actions. In the first technique, you briefly stare at your dog and tell it to "sit". Non-alpha animals will look away while alpha dogs will stare as well. In the second technique, the dog is forced to sit as a prerequisite to other forms of attention such as receiving food, being pet, or being played with. Dominance is established quickly.

Keep in mind that in the end, there will be an alpha dog. If it's you, your dog will follow you. If it's your dog, you will be following him. So are you going to be training your dog, or is your dog going to be training you?