Dog Training

What you learn here you find nowhere else - unless they copy from us: the Cynology Hub MyGermanShepherd.Org.

Once you appreciate that dog socialization must be your first priority, you can give the right dog training consideration too.

What is the right dog training?

1. The kind of training that matches your training purpose: "Why do you want to train your dog at all?", "What's it for?"
2. The kind of training that matches your dog's personality.

Why not your training purpose and your personality?

Because your training purpose may not match your personality. You will understand more the more you read at this Cynology Hub.

So remember:

Training matching Your Training Purpose

Your training purpose I can't know. So until you write your training purpose here, let's continue here with what our training purpose is at MYGERMANSHEPHERD.ORG:

This goes way beyond dog training, yes, but never mind, we love to set the goal high, there is too much mediocrity on dog-related websites already.

Training matching Your Dog's Personality

Unless you describe your dog here, I cannot know what your dog is and what your dog's personality is. If you like to see an example, Miguel's German Shepherd personality is here.

But even if you have a German Shepherd too(?), yours will be different. And so the breed specific dog personality traits are called dog temperament, and the German Shepherd temperament is here.

The German Shepherd breed personality (=temperament) is what has been bred into this dog for hundreds if not thousands of dog generations. The GSD has been bred to be able to manage a large herd of sheep or other livestock all alone:

• keeping the herd together
• bringing strays back to the herd
• supporting the weak members
• limiting the boisterous members
• defending the herd against all kinds of intruders and attackers
• etc.

Now, the key point to understand is:

Regardless what your training purpose is, if you also want to meet the second premise - to match your dog's personality - then you cannot choose a kind of dog training that ignores your dog's temperament: what your dog has been bred for. For example in this case, the German Shepherd temperament.

Because the dog's temperament is the breed specific part of dog personality.

In the case of the German Shepherd, you cannot choose a kind of dog training that ignores this dog's inbred management personality. Because the GSD has been bred to be the manager of a herd of livestock.

And so, if you don't know and you resist to learn how to build the best relationship with a manager, then a Labrador or Doberman may be a great alternative, just not a German Shepherd, nor a Belgian Shepherd.

IMHO these two herding dogs originally had the most pronounced management personality inbred.

To be successful in managing a group of individuals (a herd of livestock), the German Shepherd has been bred to organize, lead, control, and protect.

Thus to decide and act autonomously! Few dog owners get this critical part of German Shepherd temperament.

Very few if any other dogs have been bred to be autonomous: This markedly distinguishes the original German Shepherd from pretty much all other dogs.

Thus certainly for Training a German Shepherd - and quite possibly for other dogs too - we would be misguided if we followed the herd of dog trainers that teach and apply Obedience Training to the dog. Or today by many preferably called "positive reinforcement training".

Or generally, any kind of dog training that is heavy on dog commands and poor on the trainer's self-reflection.

Right Dog Training

Therefore in my opinion, the right dog training, and certainly the right German Shepherd training is Behavior Training, not Obedience Training.

I developed Behavior Training to overcome the flaws of Obedience Training. Particularly for the modern dog owner household: where the dog owners are at work for most of the day, and so ideally train the dog in a way that the dog behaves well when left alone, with free run of the house.

This is NOT achievable with any form of Obedience Training or "positive reinforcement training", clicker training, etc! Explained there why not.

And precisely that is the reason why the majority of dog owners have learned from obedience and "positive reinforcement" dog trainers to keep their dog locked up when they are at work and at night.

This is both sad and unnecessary!

Can you train your dog yourself?

Absolutely! You can train your dog better than a "Pro".

In the Dog Expert Interviews with Reviews I even revealed WHY "accredited" professional dog trainers can only be mediocre at best, and what to do instead. It is enlightening! You may check it out now.

---

Learning dog training from written words and spoken words may not bring sunshine and a smile on everyone's face, I understand. Seeing all live in videos does.

If that's your case, then the absolute best I have found is The Online Dog Trainer Doggy Dan with his video training series. He truly is a TOP dog trainer, not a dog conditioner like most other professional dog trainers are.

If you've gone through all the above links, you now know precisely how to train your dog right, yes.