Puppy training is the foundation of dog training, laying the foundation for your dog’s future development. Get it right and you can have a healthy, fun, well-behaved pet for the life of your dog. Get it wrong and you can be picking up messes for the next ten years.

The foundation of puppy training is a strong relationship with your puppy. Housebreaking and puppy obedience training are built on this basis. Here are some guidelines to help you lay a solid foundation with your puppy in each of these key areas.

Building Your Relationship with Your Puppy

Your relationship with your puppy is more fundamental to your training success than any techniques. Your relationship should establish three key things: your nurturing role, your dominant role, and a positive attitude towards training.

Your nurturing role is rooted in the fact that your puppy depends on you for food and comfort. Bringing your puppy its food dish and petting it reinforce this message on a much deeper level than any formal training.

Useful tip boxes in each chapter show every member of the household how to make the most out of training a puppy. 112 pages, hardcover.

 

 

Puppies are irresistible, with their cuddly good looks and funny antics. Acquiring a puppy is an enormous responsibility, because it will be depending on you for food, water, training, exercise, unconditional hugs and kisses, and to never put it in a position where it might get into trouble. Understanding your puppy, plus good planning and preparation, can help you raise a well-behaved, much loved member of the family.

Your dominant role, essential to obedience, is easy to assume when your puppy is small, but will be challenged as your dog grows, and you must work to maintain it. Teaching your puppy to sit and stay at an early age will help with this.

It’s also vital to cultivate a positive attitude towards training in both yourself and your puppy. Training is more effective when it’s fun. Don’t train your puppy when you’re in a bad mood, and stop before you get tired of it. Likewise, don’t train your puppy when it isn’t feeling well, and don’t make it train longer than its attention span will allow, which is about 2 to 5 minutes.

Housebreaking Your Puppy

Housebreaking should start the first time you bring your puppy home as one of the first parts of new puppy training. The key steps are training your puppy to recognize its den, establishing a regular feeding and exercise schedule, and training your puppy that when it’s time for it to relieve itself it should go to its designated toilet area.

Dogs naturally like to keep their den clean, so establishing your puppy’s den will create a base which it won’t want to use as a toilet. Use a crate with a gate which is large enough for your puppy to turn around and lie down comfortably, but not so big it has room to leave a mess without lying in it. Place a blanket or pad in the den for puppy pad training, to give your puppy’s sense of smell and touch a way of identifying its den.

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Double-Door Folding Dog Crate

If your schedule won’t let you attend to your puppy often enough to leave it safely locked in a gated den, you can use an exercise pen instead. In this case, cover one third of the pen with a blanket, leave the middle third uncovered, and cover the other third with newspapers to separate the dog’s toilet area from its sleeping den.

To get your dog used to its den, choose a command phrase such as “Go to bed” or “Go lie down.” Give your puppy this command, place it in its den, close the gate, praise it while you give it a treat, and then let it out. If it resists, use a treat or its meal to lure it into its den. Gradually increase the amount of time you leave your puppy in its den with the gate closed while you are out of the room. Start with 5 minutes, then gradually add 5-minute increments. The length of time your dog can remain in its den will increase as it gets older.

As you’re getting your dog accustomed to its den, you should also condition it to follow a regular feeding and exercise schedule. This will train your dog to relieve itself at the same time every day.

Set a feeding schedule based on your puppy’s age. Puppies need four meals a day until they are four months old. They can then cut back to three meals until they are seven months. After seven months, two meals a day is recommended. Let your dog eat 10 minutes at a time and then remove its dish. Don’t leave food out when it’s not feeding time, though you should leave fresh water available until 8 p.m.

Likewise, set an exercise schedule appropriate to your puppy’s age. Except during their sleep cycle, puppies will not be able to last more than four hours without going to the bathroom until they are about six months old. Initially they will need to go even more often. At first you should take your puppy out right after every meal. As time goes on, you can increase the length of time between eating and exercise periods.

While you are establishing your puppy’s schedule, you can also start establishing its toilet area. Select a spot outdoors in a straight line from the house. Take your puppy there when it’s time to go out, taking a scooper with you. Stay with your puppy while it’s going to the bathroom, remaining still and quiet until it’s done sniffing around. Then praise it and play with it a few minutes before taking it back in.

After sticking to this routine a while, you will start to recognize the signs when your puppy needs to go out. It will normally begin sniffing the ground in a circling motion.

If you catch your puppy in the act of going inside, call its name abruptly and clap your hands. If it pauses, take it out to its toilet area. Otherwise let it finish.

Don’t discipline your dog for going in the wrong spot after it’s already finished. It won’t understand why you’re upset. Wait to catch it in the act instead.

Once your puppy is used to going out to go to the bathroom, you can teach it to go faster by saying “Hurry up” just as it’s about to start. This will train your puppy to feel an urge to relieve itself up on hearing your command.

These techniques will work with the majority of puppies. Some breeds such as toy breeds may take more training.

Puppy Obedience Training

Puppy obedience training should include a number of basic commands. The four most fundamental are sit, lie down, leave it, and come.

The task of learning each command can be broken down into steps. Teach your puppy only one step of one command at a time. Don’t start teaching another step until the first one has been learned. Puppies have even shorter attention spans than adult dogs, so keep lessons short, no more than two to five minutes at a time. Break lessons up over several periods a day.

When teaching any command, the key to success is consistency. Always follow up your verbal instruction or body language with the desired behavior, followed by a reward, which can be a treat or a treat with a clicker. Speak to your puppy in a gentle but firm voice which clearly indicates your mood. Be sure you communicate immediately at the time your puppy performs the action, or else it will not associate your message with the action.

Teaching your puppy to sit is the first command you should teach, and serves as a good introduction to teaching your puppy other commands. You can break the process of learning to sit into three stages.

To begin, train your puppy that sitting means getting a treat. Say “sit” while you raise a treat above its head. Hold the treat high another that your puppy must sit in order to tilt its head back to reach the treat, but not so high it has to jump. When your puppy sits down, reward it with the treat and praise. If it doesn’t sit by itself, help it by placing your left hand under its tail and behind its knees, and your right hand on its chest, and wait until it has sat for about five seconds before rewarding it. Repeat this five times in a row over five days.

The next stage is to teach your puppy to sit on command. Hold the treat at your side in one hand and slide the other hand palm-up through your puppy’s training collar at the top of its neck. Say “sit.” If your puppy sits, reward it with a treat and praise. If it doesn’t sit, pull up gently on its collar and wait until it does before you reward it. Practice until your puppy sits when you issue the verbal command without you having to guide its collar.

The third stage is to train your puppy to sit without a treat. Gradually reduce the frequency of the treat. Start rewarding it only every other time. Then reward it randomly. You can also start alternating treats.

In advanced stages, you can train your puppy to sit outside of its training sessions when it’s distracted by other things. Often a dog will perform an action unerringly while training, but not necessarily in a “live” situation, such as when another dog or cat or squirrel suddenly dashes by. It takes additional reinforcement to make a command stick outside the “classroom.”

After you’ve taught your puppy to sit, you can teach it to stay and move on to other commands. Teaching it to sit first is important for establishing your dominant role, getting used to the training process, and providing a building block for teaching other commands that incorporate the action of sitting.

Puppy Training Resources

Beneful Puppy’s Life
Petco Puppy Classes
Purina on 4 Key Tips to Successful Crate Training
Humane Society Dog Care and Behavior Tips
Animal Planet Dog Guide

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