Making Your Dog Your Best Friend

Patricia Guthrie               May Community Academy
                               516 South Lavergne
                               Chicago IL 60644
                               (312)854-2740

Objective:

This lesson is aimed for students of all grades to show them that hands, voice 
and heart is the basis of dog training and through demonstration and hands on 
experience, students will be able to teach a dog simple commands and to play a 
game. 

Materials Needed:

Dog, leash, collar, handouts for class, one toy for four groups (four toys)

Strategy:

1. Students will be introduced to a German Shepard dog named Buster Brown.
2. Students will be introduced to a training collar and leash their and uses 
   will be explained.
3.  a. Students will watch a demonstration of Buster performing the basic
       commands of heel, sit, come and finish (recall), long sit and long down.
    b. Students will brainstorm as a group and explain how they think that
       Buster learned his commands.
4. Students will learn how a trainer teaches a dog to learn the commands.
    Modeling-showing the dog what you want, i.e. sit;
    a. Hands-gently pushing dogs hind quarters down for his sit while pulling up 
       with the leash at the same time.
    b. Voice-a firm but gentle "sit" coincides with the hand command.
    c. Heart-rewards of praise and/or food.
5.  a. Students will be given simple dog toys such as a ball, a tug rope, a 
       squeak toy, etc. 
    b. Students will form into groups to develop a strategy for teaching Buster 
       to play a game. 
    c. Students will explain to the class what strategy they will use to teach
       Buster his game.
    d. Students will teach Buster to play his game.
6. The class will discuss what they've learned about how to teach a dog simple 
   commands and playing games. 
7. The class will discuss how they learn to play games and will relate teaching 
   Buster to how they learn. 

Performance Assessment:

Students should be able to know that training a dog involves uses of their 
hands, voice and heart with 95% accuracy. 

Students should be able to come up with a strategy to teach a dog a trick using 
their hands, voice and heart at 90% accuracy. 


Conclusion:

That the learning process for dogs involves modeling behaviors through use of 
his leash and collar.  Behaviors are taught through the use of hands - i.e. 
showing a dog what you want him to do, voice - i.e. explaining through simple 
commands (sit, stay etc.) and heart, use of praise, food, and tone of your 
voice - i.e. whether you are pleased or angry.