There are six basic obedience behaviors that every family dog should learn in their lifetime. Life with a dog becomes much simpler when your dog listens to you and your family members. And besides teaching your dog these skills may potentially save his life someday. This article is for anyone who has a family dog and wants him to obey certain commands.

Studies have demonstrated how basic obedience training can help to lower the risk of a dog biting and other bad behaviors. Obedience training teaches you how to reinforce good behaviors and how to eliminate the bad behaviors.

The six basic obedience behaviors are:

1. Heel and walking on a loose leash. The difference between the two is that when a dog is heeling he is walking directly to your left side and following you every step whereas walking on a loose leash means that the dog can walk anywhere around you as long as there is no tension on the leash. Heeling is one of the most important obedience behaviors that you must train in any obedience training class.

2. Sit and sit by your side. The sit command is very important because it allows you to have control over your dog whenever you want to. He cannot jump up or bother someone if you get him to sit down. Getting your dog to sit by your side is also an obedience skill that is highly effective. It allows you to begin your training sessions with more control over your dog and to get him to easily focus on you.

3. Down and down stay. Teaching your dog to lie down is very effective at controlling the dog since he has to get out before he can do anything else. And when you train this behavior it is very easy to tell when the dog is about to stand from the down position which makes it easy to reprimand the dog. The best thing about teaching your dog to lie down is that it also allows you to teach the stay command.

4. Leave it. A very important but sometimes neglected command is to teach your dog to leave a certain distraction alone. Let's say you are walking down the road and your dog suddenly looks at a squirrel, telling your dog to leave it would instruct the dog to ignore the squirrel and to keep walking.

5. Look at me. There is no other skill more important than your dog's attention on you. If you plan on participating in any type of dog show or dog sport then you will need your dog to look at you for information. This behavior is easily trained by constantly rewarding the dog for looking at you and at your face.

6. Quiet. Another obedience training skill is to teach your dog to be quiet and to stop barking when instructed to. This is great when you have somebody delivering something at your house and you don't want your dog barking the entire time that they are there.