Training A Puppy – Start as you mean to go on
When you’re training a puppy you should definitely start as you mean to go on, encouraging your puppy to do the right thing while preventing or stopping unwanted behavior. Training a puppy to get it right from the beginning is much easier for both of you.
It may take a few months for your puppy to learn how to live successfully with humans and to adjust fully to his new surroundings, so don’t expect too much too soon. Formal training can wait for a few weeks until your puppy has settled in, but good habits can be started straight way – here’s some puppy training tips to get started with.
When training a puppy to behave well, you need to be there to supervise him. During your puppy’s first year, look after him when he is in the house and garden, and encourage him to behave in an acceptable way so that he can be praised and rewarded.
If your puppy has already started an unwanted behavior, stop him immediately and show him what he should be doing, praising him when he does so. Since he may have already found out how much fun the unwanted behavior was, you need to take lots of care to prevent him from repeating it.
One of the most effective puppy training tips is to reward good behavior when it happens naturally with praise, games and treats. It is easy to forget about your puppy when he is being well behaved, but try to remember to reward him so that he is encouraged to be good more often.
Puppy Obedience Training Tips
Throughout your puppy’s first year:
- encourage and reward behavior you do like
- ignore or prevent behavior you don’t like
Good Manners
When most owners start out with a puppy, they hope they will be able to look after it all its life. Sadly, this is not always possible and dogs do sometimes need to be found new homes.
To make sure that your puppy has a good chance of finding a new home easily if the need should arise, by using effective puppy obedience training methods you’ll be able to raise him in such a way that his behavior will be acceptable anywhere. You may not mind if he jumps up, sleeps on the bed, hates children, bites the towel while being dried or is aggressive over his food, but others may find this more difficult to cope with.
To make him easier to live with and to make him into a dog that anyone would be happy to own, it is a good idea to try to iron out any problems and to teach him good manners while he is still a puppy. If you can manage to accomplish this now while he is still young, then good behavior will come naturally to him as he grows.
Questions and answer about training a puppy:
Q ‘Where should I put my puppy when I am unable to supervise him?’
A puppy playpen will prevent your puppy from getting into mischief and learning bad habits when you are not there to supervise him.
Q ‘What sort of playpen should I get and how large should it be?’
The pen needs to be secure and big enough to have separate areas for sleeping and playing.
Q ‘How long should he spend in the playpen?’
Make sure that your puppy is in the pen for short periods only, and never more than one hour.
Q ‘My puppy is reluctant to go in his playpen. How can I get him to go in without forcing him?’
Encourage him to go there with a few treats when he is tired and needs to rest.
Q ‘What should I put into the playpen?’
Cover the floor of the playpen first with polythene, then with a layer of newspaper. Always give your puppy a chance to go to the toilet before confining him in his pen. Leave him some water in a small bowl together with some toys and chews, and make sure that he has a comfortable bed to rest on.
Puppy Training Tips For Success
When training a puppy, try to prevent unwanted behavior by thinking ahead, so that he never learns how rewarding it can be to do the wrong thing.
Put things you don’t want him to have out of reach and block off access to cables and other dangerous items that he may chew.
Provide him with lots of things he can play with and explore instead.
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