Archive for January 9, 2012

Training Your Dog

Just got a new dog and want to teach it some tricks? Training a dog is actually quite fun, depending on the dog that you get. In general, dogs will do something if they know they will get rewarded for it just like in sales (read Vector Marketing and Herbalife reviews) or any other job. We will do more of the things that we know will bring us some benefit. So here are a couple of tips for training your dog. Keep in mind that these tips are just from my own experience and they just happened to work for me.

The first tip is to catch your dog doing something right, then reward him/her for it. Let’s say you want your dog to bark on command. Since dogs bark all the time, try snapping your finger and saying the word “bark” while it’s barking. Repetition is key. After a while, test it out while the dog isn’t barking. Snap your fingers and say the word “bark”. If your dog starts to bark, reward it.

You can also use the negative to teach it to do something as well. For example, I trained my dog to not eat food that is place in front of him until I say he could. I basically did this by saying “no” a lot and if he did eat the food, I’d take the rest of it away. Eventually, I was able to leave food out and he wouldn’t eat it unless I said it was okay. Obviously, these tricks are more just to see how well you can train your dog. The fun comes in other things like telling him to sit, roll over, come sit by your side, crawl, or even go into his doghouse. It’s all a matter of rewarding for right behavior and using repetition.

Pet Fountains Are Amazing

Pet water fountains may seem like a strange item, but I’ve found them to be amazingly efficient and I think my two cats would miss it terribly if I ever took the fountain away from them.  I wasn’t exactly convinced when I first saw a pet fountain in the store, but after thinking about it for a bit, I decided to give the Drinkwell Platinum pet fountain a try.  My cats love running water so I knew they’d like it if it worked correctly, and to my surprise, it works like a charm.

I decided on the Platinum fountain because it holds a lot more water than Drinkwell’s other cat model, the Original.  It holds 168 ounces of water when full, and that’s more than enough to sustain my cats for over a week, provided they don’t spill a bunch.  The Original model is much smaller and considering the price difference, the Platinum makes more sense I think.  Though the Platinum fountain only allows one animal to drink the running water at a time, it really hasn’t been a problem in my household.

The other great thing about the fountain is that the filtration system keeps the water clean for my cats.  They tend to get small bits of food in their water from time to time, but the filter takes care of that problem.  Hair in the water also gets taken out by the filter.  Filters do need to be changed every other month or so, but they’re pretty inexpensive so it’s not too big of a deal.

The only complaint I do have about the fountain is that cleaning it does take time and it’s recommended that you do it about once a week.  I guess this is a necessary evil if I want to give my cats running water at all times during the day.  A more thorough cleaning is recommended once a month and I try to keep up with this as well, but there are some times when I just don’t get to it.

All in all, it’s been a good investment and my cats sure enjoy it.