People talk a lot about training and teaching commands but they forget the most important aspect – what needs to be done before starting the training! The first thing that is taught to the dog is to be in contact with his owner. What is this contact? In brief, it means that the dog is always ready to cooperate with you, he watches you, keeps eye contact with you, asks with his whole posture “What are we going to do?” – all this is contact. Contact means, of course, a lot more – it is the connection between a dog and his owner, to a bystander it would seem that the dog “sees” only his owner and has no interest in anything else in the surroundings.

Teaching contact will begin as soon as the puppy has adjusted to his new home. Exercises to make contact take place in “boring” homey environment at first, this way it is easier for us to catch the dog’s attention. Puppies are very social and seek contact by their nature, those characteristics should be taken advantage of. NB! It should be kept in mind that if you ignore the puppies natural trait to make contact, he will start to consider it unimportant and will abandon it after a while, but it is a lot harder to make good contact with a grown dog! I dare to say that contact is inevitable for the sake of good relationship between the dog and his owner! Without contact, there cannot be a good, working, mutually enjoyable relationship! Contact is the foundation for any training! How to begin? It is very easy – ALWAYS praise the puppy when he looks into your eyes or seeks contact with you, this way he is encouraged to do so. The puppy is being taught that looking at his owner and listening to him is GREAT, his owner must always assure him that. There are very many various exercises to maintain contact, only a few easier ones are given here as an example:  

•  Hold treat in your hand and show it to the dog, then hide it in your fist and raise your hand to the same level as your face; if the dog looks at you even for a moment, praise IMMEDIATELY. And in abundance! You can vary the same exercise (especially if the puppy is not very eager to look at you) by putting the treat into your mouth in front of the dog and if he then looks into your eyes, you “spit” the treat and give it to him as a reward; and, naturally, praise him. (You can also use the command “Look” or another word that suits you.)

•  Kneel down and hide your face, the dog will probably start looking for it and nudging your neck or armpit with his muzzle to make your face come out. If this does not happen, make a whining, or some other interesting sound to attract the dog’s attention. (You can also crawl away from the dog, etc, use your imagination.) The point is that the dog “works” for the owner / pack leader to lift his upper body and reveal his face. Let him have interest in you, then raise your head and offer him the treat. Finish the exercise by playing with the dog.

•  Teach the dog to stay near you on walks; for example, take him to the woods for a walk, make zigzags and hide yourself every once in a while. This is a very good method to teach the puppy that he must stay near his “pack”. I trained the contact before feeding the puppy as well. I gave him the command “Sit”, placed his bowl in front of him, stopped him gently with my hand from taking the food. At last he looked at me in bewilderment and when I said “Here you go”, I let him start eating. Naturally, you should not let your dog wait for too long, 3-5 seconds is enough, after that he should be given permission to eat. It took only about 2-3 times for him to learn to first sit, then look at me and then start eating after getting the permission to.
  

By the way, having control over food strengthens your pack leader position. The relationship between the owner and dog must base on trust, we must have contact with our dogs, we accept each other, this way he is tractable and receptive to our influence. In general, if your relationship works, you make contact and if you make contact, you can train your dog efficiently. In order to obtain a good relationship, you need affection, love, desire and will. We must provide our dogs with the feeling of security. It can be said that a dog who has no (eye)contact with his owner, is deaf to commands. Yes, it is possible to train the dog mechanically, by screaming, fear, and punishment, but in that case, we would get an irritable dog afraid of his owner. Which one would you prefer – a dog that obeys from fear or joy?

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