[yorkietalkjilly]

I wasn't going to say anything about them if you'd already bought them but when you posted you were having second thoughts, I thought I'd say what I thought! I don't think just any dog training is better than none but these kind of aversives use to train a dog isn't necessary and badly scares a nervous dog. Just basic old sit, lie down, stay, stop, turn around, rollover and positive rewards-based training is all that it takes to start an unruly dog down the road to redemption. Just training them over and over in those simple things gets them used to listen to and obeying your requests. And the dogs will be begging for training all of the time. They will start to "throw behaviors" or do their tricks when not asked to in order to tell you it is time to train. Tibbe will come and just rollover or sit up and beg out of the blue - and then stop and stand starring at me - begging me for a training session. It is his most favorite thing in the world - well, that and barking at cats and squirrels!

In time, you start to stand up, walk over to them and back them off bad behaviors with your body attitude, no-nonsense eye contact, pointing at them as you walk toward them and stopping the behavior then and there. You then stay over them until they turn away and show no sign of trying the behavior again and you keep looking over at them to reinforce that for a good while. When one of my dogs in training does back off a bad behavior, calm down and shows no sign of repeating a bad behavior, I will often - but not always - get up and give it a treat or toss one from my treat pouch which is usually near. Over time even the wildest dog will start to listen to someone who works faithfully with them in basic obedience and backs them off bad behavior and keeps a stern watch. To further keep good behavior going, once a dog has back off a bad behavior, I will get his toy basket out accompanied by great enthusiasm and talking high in a squeaky voice or give him something to chew on - something to play with, toss him a ball over and over and over. Play with or walk him. All of that to kind of get his thoughts away from and as a further reward to backing off what he was doing wrong.

It's simple but it works. Plain old teaching a dog to do simple tricks and rewarding them doing those basic tricks over and over will in time cause that same dog to pay lots more attention to other things you indicate for it to do or not to do. Simple but nobody wants to stick with it for too long or get up and stop a bad behavior in the middle of a good movie or while washing clothes, sweeping the floor, etc. But those are the times you do have to stop what you are doing and back them off, stand them down. In time - a simple "no" from the other room will work!

A good trainer will come out and show you all of this with you doing it and give you a schedule to work on, etc., then come back out in two weeks and see your program. Some will let you Skype your activities on your TV in the meantime and will stop anything you are doing wrong then.

In the meantime, joining an obedience club somewhere in your area can find you a good trainer if you can't find one otherwise. Watching videos of how to do simple obedience training on YouTube will help, too. Watch those that are positive-reward based and don't involve aversives training.