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Dogs are more than just pets - they are our loyal companions, confidants, and let's be honest, best friends. As dog owners, we want to provide our furry friends with the best possible care and training to ensure they live happy, healthy, and fulfilling lives. One of the most effective and humane ways to train dogs is through positive reinforcement. Let's take a look at Just Love The Dog's approach to positive reinforcement training, and how it can transform your relationship with your doggy companion.
What is Just Love The Dog?
Just Love The Dog is a duo of positive reinforcement trainers- Mallorie and Audrey, who jointly have broad experience and strong skill sets for resolving everything from potty training to aggression to reactivity and beyond. We really focus on helping owners to build strong and long lasting bonds while teaching their dogs what behaviors they prefer through positive and force free methods. We both believe that training should be fun, easy, and rewarding for both the dog and the owner. Just Love The Dog focuses on reinforcing preferred behaviors with treats, praise, play and whatever it is that the dog finds reinforcing. This helps to create a positive learning environment for the dog, building confidence and encouraging them to repeat the behaviors that earn them rewards.
Why Positive Reinforcement Training Works:
Positive reinforcement training is based on the principle of operant conditioning, which states that animals (including humans) learn by associating a behavior with its consequences. When a behavior is followed by a pleasant consequence (such as a treat or praise), the animal is more likely to repeat that behavior in the future. By focusing on reinforcing those preferred behaviors we can shift our mindset to really helping our dogs learn in a fun, effective, and truly humane manner. In addition to this we can implement management strategies to help prevent the rehearsal of the undesirable behaviors while we work on reinforcing those that we would prefer.
Enrichment and meeting your dogs needs:
Another huge aspect of the focus here at Just Love The Dog is meeting your dogs needs. Just like all living beings, your dog has their own set of needs and there are so many ways that you can help meet those needs! Dog enrichment refers to the various activities and experiences that promote a dog's physical and mental well-being by providing them with positive and stimulating experiences. Enrichment can take many forms, such as interactive toys, puzzles, training, playtime, sniffing, digging, exploring, and socialization. The goal of enrichment is to satisfy a dog's natural instincts and needs, such as their desire to explore, forage, shred, dig, sniff, and play. Providing enrichment can prevent boredom and destructive behaviors, reduce stress and anxiety, and improve a dog's overall quality of life.
Let us know what your favorite ways of meeting your dogs needs are and how positive reinforcement training has changed your bond with your sweet pup!
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