Importance of Consistency

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Today, I want to talk to you about consistency in your training. When you are training your dog or any animal

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It's really important to be consistent

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If you think about relationships

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You have the people that you trust the most and that you're bonded to the most are usually pretty consistent

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If somebody is inconsistent or changes what they say or it can be really, um hard on a relationship

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You never know what to expect and inconsistency can cause stress in a relationship including one with an animal or your dog, which whatever you're working with

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So when you are doing any kind of training, make sure you're consistent

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So if you're training sit and you make sure you always say the same word for your cue.

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So, if you want to use the word, sit, make sure you say sit over and over. A real common place that people don't know aren't always

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Consistent is with down or off

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So, they may say for down, To lay on their belly, they may say, down or lay down, or lay down, or down down different varieties of it

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And that can be a little confusing to your dog because lay down and down sound very different

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Then they may also say down when their dog jumps on them

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So now the dog doesn't know are they supposed to lay on their stomach

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Are they supposed to have all four feet on the floor? So you want to make sure you're consistent across the board

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So with your cues, you want to be consistent.

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So verbally sit down

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So I might use off for jumping and down for laying on your stomach so that it's very consistent

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Sometimes people, when they're practicing recall, they'll say come

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Sometimes, they'll say come here or come on over. Again, those things can be confusing for your dog

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You also want to make sure that your rules of the house are consistent

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So if you never want your dog to be on the couch, you need to make sure you teach them to be on the ground. If you don't care if they're on the couch, then that's fine

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But if you want them off the couch for a specific reason, you need to have a word

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You can't just expect that they'll know when they're allowed to be on the couch and when they're not. Sometimes people will teach their dogs that they can lay on a couch, if there's a blanket there

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So they'll have a specific blanket and that they invite the dog to lay on the couch, on that specific blanket

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And then, if that blanket is not there, the dog isn't allowed to be on the couch at that time

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So regardless of what you're training and what you're teaching it's important to be consistent. It's consistent with your behavior consistent with your expectations and consistent with your cues

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Whether verbal or if it's a body language cue, regardless of whatever it is being consistent, will not only help you be more

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um, the dog will know what to expect, but they will also help build your bond

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When we get a lot of places where things aren't consistent, it can create anxiety and worry and why do that to your animal? If you can just practice your behavior of being consistent

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So hopefully that helps you as you're training if you're having some training problems, look at and see if you're being consistent and being very clear because if you're not always doing the same word or the

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same hand signal, your dog may not know or your animal may not know what you're talkin about

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So good luck

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I hope that this helps eliminate any problem and I'll see you in the next video

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