Articles about American Pit Bull Terrier
...to start reading this article from the beginning please click on here...The great advantage to having a word is that it's always with you; the disadvantage is that it's difficult to keep the word sounding the same, which tends to slightly blunt its effectiveness. A whistle or other mechanical noisemaker has to be carried with you but it always sounds the same. One may call this the Secret Stimulus or Secret Sound (SS). The reason it is a secret is that it must be something you use only when you are sure the dog will respond. It shouldn't be something you use in every day conversation or when you don't know the dog will respond. You will be setting out to deliberately create a reflex in your dog's body; it will be much easier to get that reflex and keep it honed sharp if you are careful about the cue that stimulates the reflex. Step Two: figure out a list of twenty things that your dog wants. Hunter's list would look like this: Cheerios, desiccated liver, strained baby food meat (if refrigerated it makes a nice stiff paste), peanut butter, homemade crispy treats, Froot Loops, banana, apple, bits of steak, cream cheese, cheeseburger, squeaky rat toy, hedgehog, Fuzz-bee (fake fur disc), fake fur snakie, tennis ball, canvas bumper, raw beef bone, Holly [the kitten], Mist, chest scritches, butt scritches, picked up and hugged by Mommy. Some of these things are more portable than others--but they can all be used in at least one situation. To get in the most training, make most of the desired things as small as possible. Some dogs will work for individual Cheerios or Rice Krispies (but hey, they think they're starving). An occasional jackpot might be a large hunk of food or several throws of the tennis ball or a prolonged game of tug with the fake fur snakie--but jackpots are, IMHO, of less effect in training than many tiny reinforcements. For example, imagine what you could get trained with one hot dog cut into sixty pieces versus the same hotdog cut in half. With many dogs there doesn't seem to be much difference between one piece of food and five pieces of food given all at once.
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