Petting Zoe with a Purpose to Motivate Her to Listen
By: David Codr
Published Date: June 26, 2019
For this Omaha dog training session we showed 2 year-old Shih Tzu Zoe’s guardian how to motivate her to listen by playing hard to get and petting with a purpose.
I could immediately tell that while Zoe loves her guardian, she did not respect her as a leader. She listened when she wanted, did as she liked and had the guardian repeating commands over and over. For dogs, the more you say it, the less you mean it.
I foraged on and we even shot a video on one of Zoe’s behavior problems, potty-ing on the deck after getting in to a habit of doing so when there was snow. I handed the guardian my camera and had to describe how to accomplish this as Zoe wasn’t interested in listening to me either.
Regardless, you can learn how to train a dog to go to the yard to potty by watching the free dog training video below.
As you saw in the above video, Zoe wasn’t interested in coming over for the treats. In some cases this could communicate a negative association with the steps or yard. Not in this case. Zoe simply didn’t feel like listening and that is what she is used to. Some people may call her a stubborn dog, Id say she is determined to do things her way.
We headed back inside so we could discuss her day to day life and ways to get the dog to listen to her guardian. Turns out Zoe didn’t have any rules and was able to demand attention whenever she wanted. This effectively removed any motivation the dog had to listen to her human.
The secret to getting a dog to listen is all about creating a healthy leader follower dynamic. Years ago I encapsulated this in something I call Petting with a Purpose. This super easy method to get a dog to listen and obey you is extremely effective if people practice it effectively. You can learn how to pet your dog with a purpose to get it to be more obedient in the free dog training video below.
It doesn’t get much easier than Petting with a purpose. The hardest part os getting into a habit of doing so. The guardian will undoubtably forget at first and pet Zoe when she jumps up to demand attention. But if she stays vigilant and gets into a habit of petting with a purpose, each pet will increase the dog’s respect for her, boost the pup’s confidence and help her practice basic dog obedience.
Petting with a purpose works with all dogs, you dont have to be a professional Shih Tzu dog trainer to do it. Just some consistency.
To help the guardian remember all the tips we shared in this in home Omaha dog training session, we filmed a roadmap to success video summarizing everything.
Categorized in: Dog Behavior