An Emotional Support Dog Guide To Basic Manners And Training Tips

Training a dog is as simple as it can get. You can impulse control your support dog with treats, teach roll overs and other tricks. Similar to a child, sometimes an emotional support dog lacks basic manners. That’s why they throw tantrums, especially when they don’t get what they want. It’s just natural.

Teaching Your Emotional Support Dog

Good thing is that your emotional support dog can be trained with basic commands. Here are descriptions of dog commands.

Take A Spot

One of the basic manners is ‘sit’, or act of sitting. Teaching this behavior can be tricky, especially if your dog is hyper-energetic. Dogs trained to sit show more calmness and obedience. To teach your emotional support dog, the ‘sit’ or ‘take a spot’ command DIY these steps:-

1. Hold one of favorite treat very close to his nose
2. Intentionally move your hand up (let his head to follow)
3. Once he sits
4. Say ‘sit’ or ‘take a spot’
5. Give him the treat

Remember, your affection is important as the treat. Repeat the sequence a few times and your dog will master it.

Here

Once your emotional support dog follows commands like ‘sit’, you can try another one. Go for an important command ‘here’ or ‘come’. It is extremely useful, especially when someone’s grip is weak, for example, children and grandparents. ‘Here’ commands probably also come handy when you have a habit of leaving the front door open (accidentally). To teach this command, put your dog on his leash.

1. Put a collar around your dog
2. Now, you take a knee and say ‘here’ or ‘come’
3. Gently pull on the leash and repeat the command again

You can give a treat to him only when he gets to you. Remember, your affection plays an important role. For the first few times, you might need to pull him, but soon he will master it. Now, try the same command once again without a leash.

No

It’s one of the important commands for all owners. Teaching ‘No’ will help keep him safe. Sometimes, dogs can get very curious, they might run after another dog and small animals. In the worst case, they might chase a baby or a person. Apart from that, they might probably smell and chase sometimes fancy but potentially dangerous things. So you need to teach him to ignore an item. You’d need another, even better replacement of the item. Use the following DIY steps: -

1. Keep a treat in both hands
2. Now show him treat and close your palm
3. Give the command ‘no’ or ‘leave it’
4. He might lick, sniff and bark to get it (ignore it)
5. Once he backs off, give the treat from another hand

Your emotional support dog might take little extra time to learn this behavior. Teaching ‘no’ is challenging because it’s counterintuitive to a dog’s basic nature. So repeat the aforementioned steps and only give a treat when he looks up to you and moves away from the first treat.

Rooting To You

Try not to rush, in other words, take it slow and low. Training a pup is like raising a plant. You need to be patient, with proper command he will learn the new behavior. You don’t have to stick to three commands once he learns to ‘sit’, go wild and teach him many fancy things. Although dogs have limited attention but they have enormous ability to learn.