While asking around for shar pei training classes for your dog, you may have heard that you can either pick the motivation-based training, or the traditional training. Which do you choose? The former steers the training towards forming a positive bond between you and your dog. As for the traditional method, it is a wholly different (and really old) approach that mostly aims to stop the dog, with the help of restrictive methods, from doing undesirable behavior.

Personally, positive shar pei training is superior to traditional training in many ways. The former is about teaching the dog the appropriate behavior, and then giving it a morale-boosting reward for doing so. To put it another way, the dog needs to make a move towards the better behavior so that he gets privileges, food or acceptance. In due time, the dog himself will put into action the manners we are teaching him. This works in the long-run since dogs like to do something only if they get something out of it.

To end inappropriate behavior the positive training way, we need to determine what is the least reinforcing action, examples of which are ignoring or leaving the dog, and this is an action that must stay consistent. Then for each undesirable behavior you want to rid of, your Shar-Pei needs to also be taught how to behave instead. If he does not learn a new way, he will come up with another sort of behavior that may or may not be that appealing. Everytime a dog is taught a new behavior, the dog needs to have a likelihood of succeeding, i. e. helping him understand what we want, and once they act on it, rewarding them for acting accordingly.

Thus, in order to teach a dog to sit for the first time, try holding a treat against the dog's nose and slowly moving it back, over his head. As his head turns up to follow the treat, his body will eventually fall into a sitting position. The moment he indeed sits on the floor, give him his treat so he remembers that sitting is rewarding. The next step is to make a link between the word "sit" and the action. When you are indeed able to get the dog to sit two or three times whenever you put the treat in front of his nose, start saying "Sit" whenever you make the dog bend back to sit. After repeating the action together with the word a handful of times, you may do away with the treat to encourage the behavior. Try saying "sit" and holding a treat-less hand over the dog, and see how he reacts. Eventually he will try sitting, and then, say "YES!" and give a treat out of your other hand. He still gets the reward, but we don't show it to him ahead of time, this way he isn't sitting just because he sees a treat, he is learning to sit when you ask him to. The list of reinforcers is limitless. The more reinforcers you have, the more opportunities you have to reward your dog. Be creative, make your own list - figure out what motivates your dog and use it in shar pei training.