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Training Tips for your New Puppy

  1. Socialization Pointers for Training Your New Puppy

  2. Training Your Puppy to Love, Trust and Respect You

  3. Puppy House Training Tips


 Socialization Pointers for Training Your New Puppy

Socialization and puppy training are of utmost importance as puppy hood is the most important and critical time in your puppy's development. What you do and do not do right now will affect your puppy's behavior forever. A properly socialized puppy is well adjusted and makes a good companion.  Make sure that each of the following events are pleasant and non-threatening. If your puppy's first experience with something is painful and frightening, you will be defeating your purpose. In fact, you will be creating a phobia that will often last a lifetime. It's better to go too slow and assure your puppy is not frightened or injured than to rush and force your pup to meet new things and people.

  • Invite friends over to meet your pup. Include men, women, youngsters, oldsters, different ethnic backgrounds, etc.

  • Invite friendly, healthy, vaccinated dogs, puppies and even cats to your home to meet and play with your new puppy. Take your puppy to the homes of these pets, preferably with dog-friendly cats.

  • Carry your pup to shopping centers, parks, school playgrounds, etc; places where there are crowds of people and plenty of activity.

  • Take your puppy for short, frequent rides in the car. Stop the car and let your puppy watch the world go by through the window.

  • Introduce your puppy to umbrellas, bags, boxes, the vacuum cleaner, etc. Encourage your puppy to explore and investigate his environment.

  • Get your puppy accustomed to seeing different and unfamiliar objects by creating your own. Set a chair upside down. Lay the trash can (empty) on its side, set up the ironing board right-side up one day and upside down the next day.

  • Introduce your puppy to new and various sounds. Loud, obnoxious sounds should be introduced from a distance and gradually brought closer.

  • Accustom your puppy to being brushed, bathed, inspected, having its nails clipped, teeth and ears cleaned and all the routines of grooming and physical examination.

  • Introduce your puppy to stairs, his own collar and leash.  Introduce anything and everything you want your puppy to be comfortable with and around.



 Training Your Puppy to Love, Trust and Respect You

Many people try to win their new puppy's love by letting the puppy always have its way. The pup is showered with affection and attention because he is so cute and cuddly. Buckets of affection is a wonderful thing for most puppies, but it must be tempered with respect. If you give in to your puppy's every whim, your pup will never learn self control and self discipline. Your puppy will never learn to respect you. If your puppy does not respect you, it will have no reason to do anything for you. Your relationship will be like two 5 year olds bossing each other around. Just as a child needs a caring parent; an athletic team needs a coach; your puppy needs a leader and a clear social hierarchy. If you do not take up the role of leader, your dog will; and you will end up with an unruly, disobedient, out of control, often aggressive monster of a dog. Most of these dogs end up living a life of isolation in the back yard because no one can deal with it; or they end up dead - euthanized at the local animal shelter. They end up at the shelter because either the owner can't live with the dog anymore, or a member of the public has filed a complaint against the dog and government officials have taken the dog away from the owner. DON'T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU AND YOUR DOG!

Other people have an equally erroneous misconception of this issue. Instead of showering the dog with love and affection, they think that to earn the dog's respect they must bully, dominate and terrorize the dog into being submissive. A dog treated this way will eventually bite their owner. This is not respect. Respect is not something that is forced. It is won. A dog will not respect someone it does not trust. The old fashioned method of dominance via the alpha roll over does not win respect.

 

Puppy House Training Tips

Establishing good habits early on in housetraining your puppy is critical. If you allow your puppy to eliminate every where and any where he wants in your home, you will end up with an adult dog who will always have a tendency to want to eliminate in your home. You will have to live with it forever, or go through some time-consuming, tedious retraining later on. A dog is either housetrained or not. There is no such thing as weekly 'accidents.' A truly housetrained dog will NEVER eliminate in your house unless forced to do so or because of illness or excessively long confinement. Don't expect your puppy to be reliably housetrained until it is at least 6 months old.

Puppy Housetraining Do's

  • Provide constant access to the toilet area. If you are home, take your puppy there every hour or less. If you are not home or cannot tend to the puppy, then it is best for you to confine your puppy to a dog-proofed area like a dog crate.  The general rule of thumb is that a puppy will not go to the bathroom where he sleeps thus making the pup learn bladder control. Don't leave your pup outdoors in the sun, wind, heat or cold unattended. Be sure to provide shelter and water in the confinement area. 

  • While monitoring your pup watch for signs that they have to go to the toilet ie. circling, sniffing, unusual walk etc. When you see this behavior take then to the toilet area immediately.

  • Praise and reward your puppy each and every time possible for eliminating in his toilet area.

  • Feed your puppy at regular times. What goes in on schedule will come out on schedule.

  • Use a crate to help your puppy develop self control. Confine him for gradually increasing periods of time when you are home to monitor him.

  • Be patient. It can take until the dog is 6 months old for him to be housetrained.

Your goal is to never allow your puppy to eliminate on carpet, tile, hardwood, or anything that resembles the flooring in your home. Once a habit is established, it is difficult to break, therefore, do not let your pup form bad habits in the first place.

Puppy Housetraining Don'ts

  • Do not reprimand your puppy for mistakes. Reprimand has no place in housetraining.

  • Do not leave food and water out all day and night for your puppy to eat and drink at whim. Use some common sense here. Obviously if the weather is hot, it is appropriate to give the pup access to water, but if this is the case, then you need to be more alert to the possibility of the pup needing to urinate more frequently.

  • Do not allow your pup to eliminate anywhere other than his toilet area.

  • Do not give your puppy free unattended run of your house.

 

We highly recommend taking your pup to Puppy Classes and Obedience classes.

As we like to say "they are training the owners not the dogs".

 

Last modified: 10/15/07