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Understanding how to train a golden retriever is an essential part of responsible golden retriever ownership. Golden retrievers are known for being smart and very willing to please, which makes training them fairly easy.
Whether training a new puppy or an adult golden, you will need to invest time and patience to achieve a well-mannered dog who responds to your commands and behaves appropriately among people and other dogs. You will also need to spend time finding out how to go about training your golden retriever. You can either do this by signing up at a local dog training class or there are some good training courses available online at very modest prices.
»Click here to Discover how to Train a Golden Retriever«
Study how to teach each command and be clear and assertive when giving commands. Remember you need your dog to see you at the leader.
Some tips on how to Train a Golden Retriever
- Paying attention to you – this is the first step. With your dog in front of you, call her name and when she looks at you mark it and reward her with a treat. Repeat this and gradually extend the time she holds eye contact before rewarding her.
- Sit. Hold your dog on a short lead. Take a treat in your other hand and show her the food. Move your hand back over her head, using the food as a lure to lead your dog’s nose backwards. As her nose goes higher she should naturally adopt a sitting position. As her bottom goes down say ‘Sit’ and mark it as soon as it reaches the floor, then give the reward. Repeat this process but give the command ‘Sit’ as you show the treat. Once she has the hang of this repeat but do not always give a treat. Simple praise will be enough.
- Lie Down. Again use a treat as a lure and move your hand smoothly down to the ground. When your dog lies down, mark it and give her the treat. Stay down with her and then say ‘OK’ to release her as you stand up. Now repeat using the word ‘Down’ or ‘Lie’. After several repeats, try just using a command and downward hand signal.
- Stay. Continuing from the ‘Lie’ command, gradually increase the time internal between the marking of your dog lying down and rewarding her. If she gets up before release, quickly repeat the command and move your hand down to the ground again and reward again to set her up for success. Once your dog is happy to lie down, create distractions to test her stay. She should get up only when you release her.
It takes regular training and lots of patience, especially with a puppy, to get these simple commands firmly embedded and reinforced. Once you have mastered how to train a golden retriever the basics, you can then begin to move on to more advanced golden retriever training.
