Puppy Obedience Training Tips
Saturday, October 17th, 2009Puppy Obedience Training Tips – Teaching Commands
To help you in training your puppy to understand and obey commands, you need understand how your pup thinks and reacts to his environment. Here’s some puppy obedience training tips to help out.
Puppy obedience training needs enthusiasm from your pup so keep him motivated. A motivated pup not only learns faster but it continues to enjoy training, which is very important. To prevent your puppy from becoming demotivated, never go on too long with the training. In the beginning, five or ten minutes is long enough when training a puppy. Ring the changes by playing with your dog in between some of the commands. Never tire it by continually giving the same commands, because this makes the puppy bored and obstinate. Always give the commands clearly and in a fairly high (= friendly) tone.
Puppy obedience training requires focus and undivided attention, so prevent distraction. Young pups are very easily distracted. When training your puppy, too, it can happen that something else attracts your puppy’s attention so that your commands are not getting registered properly. Train, therefore, in a quiet spot where few dogs come, and your dog will not be distracted by traffic or other people. If you have a large garden, then this is the ideal place.
When training your puppy, do not allow others to watch or to interfere. Only one member of the family should take the training upon himself/herself and this person should continue to train the puppy until it knows all the commands. Only give a command when you know for sure that your puppy is not being distracted.
Do not repeat yourself unnecessarily. Some people keep on repeating the same command. Before the dog gets a chance to “Sit,” it has been told to do it six times already.
From this, your dog will learn that you are prepared to give it a command several times. The words then lose their meaning. Attract your dog first by calling its name and, once you are sure you have its undivided attention, give the command loudly and clearly. It may be necessary to repeat a command once but do not go on doing this, as the command will lose its meaning for the pup.
Puppy obedience training needs your full attention and lots of patience – so take it easy. Do not go out to train if you are in a bad mood. In this state of mind, you will not be able to tolerate as much from your dog, and you will correct it sooner or more severely than is necessary. Always remain quiet, and be fair; do not yell at your dog, and stay calm at all times.
Do not demand too much when training a puppy. Young puppies are easily distracted. Certainly in the first phase they will only sit or lie for a moment. That does not matter. In the first instance, it is more than enough that your dog learns what the commands mean. Therefore, always praise the dog when it carries out your command, even though it jumps up again joyfully half a second later.
Not until it knows the commands well can you expect more from your dog. Do not make the mistake of training your puppy too much at once. If it is a “turbo-charged” pupil and learns what the command “Sit” means in one session, make that enough for one day. You can always see the next day whether it has remembered the command and then go on to the next exercise.
Choose the right moment to go through your puppy obedience training routines. A pup is less motivated with a full stomach than an empty one, although real hunger is not conducive to performance and could lead to bad or other unacceptable dog behavior. Sleepy dogs or those that have yet to wake up properly are not the best pupils either.
Finally, it is difficult for a puppy to keep its mind on a puppy obedience training lesson when it has a full bladder. You should therefore carefully choose the time you train your dog and see to it that it has relieved itself beforehand.
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