ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED | OCTOBER 9, 1919 | THE FARMER'S ADVOCATE
A good farm dog is a valuable asset to any farmer, but a poor one is worse than nothing. To train a dog correctly is no easy task. In some respects it is about as big a job as training a child, and some people do it with as much care.
The first things in training a dog is to make friends with him. No one can train a pup successfully who hates dogs, unless he can properly conceal his feelings. One who likes and understands them can teach dogs and make them do things that the uninitiated can never understand. When there is a real bond between the owner and the dog, the dog will soon learn what his master likes and doesn’t like, and will do his best to please him.
Dogs should be treated with real kindness. A man who kicks his dog whenever he happens to be in reach will never have a dog good for much except snapping at people at every opportunity, and he will keep out of their reach whenever anything useful is to be done.
A person’s various moods should not be visited on the house dog. If we feel good we use him well, and if we are out of sorts we are cross and kick him around, etc. It is not a wise plan. Uniformity in training is desirable.
Judicious praise will help train a dog greatly. A dog loves flattery. If you praise him when he does something well, and pat him on the head, he soon learns to act wisely all the time.
If a pup has a well trained mother to go along with he will learn how to drive and round up cattle and sheep, when to bark at dogs and people in the easiest and best way. But he should not be trained so much in this way that like a spoiled child he tries to overdo it. When he has learned to heel the cattle a little and to bark at the sheep and hogs, he can go out alone with the owner sometimes and practice it through praise, kindness, etc. He will soon respond to his master’s wish, but it takes several months and sometimes years to get a dog trained just as you want him.
If he has to go out alone in the beginning it may be wise to tie him with a string and teach him to run after and heel cattle and pigs. He should learn to accompany his owner well. Then he should be tied up for awhile and then taught to follow or stay behind, as his master wishes.
A dog will soon learn to bark and to be kind or cross to strangers by his master’s attitude with him the first few times a stranger comes around. The dog will generally bark and sometimes jump or bite at the stranger, but if restrained and quietd as soon as the stranger comes in, he will soon learn to behave just right.
The pup should not be allowed to run around with other dogs, but to either go with his master or stay around the home. If he begins running around he soon learns bad habits. When a dog is caught in habits which are wrong it is a foolish plan to whip him after it is over. If he can be punished in the act it is good and wise, but if afterwards he thinks it is for coming to you,or he knows not what he is being punished for. Remember, dogs cannot reason, and as many dogs are spoiled this way as in any other.
W. B. J.