Some dogs are naturally more energetic than others. If your dog’s high energy or excitability are causing behavioral problems, you may need to work with your dog to be calmer.
Hyper dogs can sometimes be aggressive, and more often than not, they tend to unintentionally hurt people even if all they wanted was to play because of their violent reaction.
Here are the following seven ways that can help you in conditioning and calm down your dog.
1. Find out what they need
First, you need to find out what your dog needs. Look around to know what is causing his odd behavior.
Some dogs just wanted to go out of the house, catch your attention, wants to play with another dog, or simply looking for food. Once you identify the cause of his energetic outburst, it can be easier for you to tame your dog.
2. Don’t let the dog repeat his violent reaction
As soon as you take out your dog for a walk, it will start on jumping up and down in excitement. And if you are going to wait for your dog to calm down before you can even place a leash on his neck, he will not hesitate to do it again.
Hence, you should make sure that your dog does not repeat any of his violent reaction.
When he starts on jumping up and down, you should tell him to sit and calm him down first before you place the leash carefully on his neck.
Do not make the dog feel that what he is doing is getting you excited as well because you will only encourage his aggressive reactions.
3. Don’t show your dog your frustration
When it comes to training your dog how to be calm and conditioning his body, you should not show any signs of irritation or frustration as it can only worsen the situation.
Seeing you with such high emotions will also increase the excitability of the dog, making it harder for him to calm down and listen to you.
4. Reward your dog
Carry some dog treats with you wherever you go. If you let the dog run crazily inside of the house and after a little while, when he gets tired and rests on the floor for a few seconds, you should reward him with some biscuits or meat strips.
Repeat this process every time your dog will stay on his four paws without your guidance.
After a few attempts, he will realize what you wanted him to practice and will keep on repeating the good behavior in hopes for snacks and signs of approval from his owner.
5. Practice consistency
Once you’ve started training your dog, you should make sure that you practice consistency all throughout the week. Make sure that you keep on reminding him of his attitude so that the dog doesn’t get confused.
For instance, if you allow your dog to run and jump crazily around the house and the next time you scolds him for it, it might become a stressor for your dog as he will not understand what you are trying to imply.
Hence, no matter how tired and exhausted you are, you should make sure that you still follow the training protocol every single day until your dog finally learned his basic house manners.
6. Impose some cues
You might want to impose several cues when you are training your dog to make him understand better that calming down will let him get what he wants.
For instance, you should ask the dog to sit down and calm down first before you give him his meal. You should also ask the dog to wait for your cue before you let him jump out of the car or the house.
Talk to your dog softly and do not encourage him to run the moment he steps a foot outside of his crate. Imposing these cues in your training is important to ensure that your dog will always look for your sign before doing anything.
7. Learn to ignore your dog
If it seems like your dog is not listening to you, the best way you can do right now is to ignore him. Let him do whatever he wants, make him jump and run crazily around the house.
When they noticed you aren’t tailing him anymore, he will most likely stop what he is doing and figure out if something is wrong.
Once your dog stays quiet after you’ve ignored him, you should return to him and reward him with some baked goodies or meat strips. But if he’s not, continue ignoring him until he grows tired of running and doing exhibitions inside the house.
Calming down a hyper and super active dog is not easy. This can be quite a daunting task especially if you are going to train an adult dog who had been practicing this bad attitude all his life.
That’s why we highly recommend training your dog while it’s still young so that you can avoid developing bad attitude later on.
Follow the aforementioned tips to make the training a lot easier for you and avoid rookie mistakes in the process.
Just make sure that once you start on training, you should be committed and dedicated to your dog’s needs and be patient because it takes a lot of time for a dog to condition himself and behave properly around you fully.
But once all of this training phase is over, the result will be worth it.