A Super Easy Way to Teach a Dog to Relax and Develop Impulse Control

For this Omaha dog training session we worked with XL bully Joker, sharing tips to teach a dog to relax.

Joker is a very high energy dog who lives with a couple of other pooches. The family has multiple children and so it’s quite a busy household.

Although all three dogs are excitable, Joker’s size and habit of jumping up on people was concerning for his humans so they called us in for some dog behavior assistance.

We did series of 3 sessions with these dogs, but focused on Joker for most of them.

Of course we started off by covering a number of fundamentals; we introduced a marker word, discussed the importance of celebrating desired behaviors in our first session.

In our second session, I shared some creative exercise tips like feeding out of a snuffle mat, cookie in the corner and a clicker training trick to get dogs to listen better.

For the 3rd session we fine-tuned the other exercises that we had already coved before I turned my attention to Joker’s energy.

How to Teach a Dog to Relax

If you have a high energy dog, it’s really important that you find ways for them to let go of their excess energy. Sometimes another dog can help with this but often times, dogs will play too roughly if they are allowed to play unsupervised. I think a little bit of that was going on here and what started off as a little exuberance has now become a habit.

Another great trick for a high energy pooch is to teach a dog to relax. One of the easiest ways to do this is to develop impulse control. I have found one of the easiest way to develop impulse control in dogs is something called the relaxation protocol. This is actually an exercise I make all of our staff members go through when they first start. I do this because it teaches the trainer to break things down into small bite-size pieces.

To use this exercise to teach a dog to relax, you’ll need a dog bed, a quiet room and a bunch of high value training treats. If you have a high energy dog that you need to calm down, you should definitely check out the free positive dog training video below.

This is a great way to teach a dog to relax. The relaxation protocol works so well because it builds things up slowly. As you practice, the dog quickly learns that sitting there quietly is something that they will earn a reward for.

It was great to see how quickly Joker responded. Within minutes he was sitting and laying down on the bed as his humans walked around him or back-and-forth.

While this is a 15 day process, some dogs need to repeat a few of the days before they’re able to run through all of the exercises successfully. In fact, for some dogs you can only roll through a quarter or half of the steps in one sitting. That is OK, in fact it’s normal. Training a dog to be calm is not an overnight process.

The guardians did a great job on this exercise to teach a dog to relax. I’m confident that as they put the dog behavior tips we shared with them into use, they’re going to start seeing some pretty impressive results with their dog.

We wrapped up the final in Omaha dog training session answering a few remaining questions and then going over homework. I recommended the guardians practice these exercises three or four times a day in short training sessions except for the relaxation protocol. Those exercises take a little bit more time, but for the other things we covered, short more frequent sessions are the way to go.

We’re looking forward to getting a progress report on Joker as he learns to be a calm dog.