Puppies are like sponges soaking up huge amounts of information from the day they are born and certainly from the moment they meet you, so there is no such thing as starting training too early. However, I do like to give puppies a day or two to settle into their new home before applying any further pressures on top of the stress of their move, but once they are comfortable you can begin work right away.
With this being said, it is important that we begin correct work with our pup, focusing first on relationship building and teaching them how to simply be while defining a structure before we attempt to teach them cute tricks. What this results in is a dog that knows how to act and clearly understands their position in the pack as it walks through life with us, as opposed to a dog that can sit and give the paw in the home, but goes crazy as soon as the front door opens. Taking the reverse approach is what often leads me to people’s homes as behavioral issues arise and quickly become out of control.
We all want a balanced dog, but as explained in one of my previous posts we often fail to be what we want to see in our dog, meaning their apparent faults actually lie with us. To achieve energy balanced with calm and excitement we must lead by example, showing them when it is time to settle and when its time to play. If our relationship with our puppy is only one of high energy, it is no wonder they jump and nip and yap and while it may seem cute now, it quickly wears off as they grow and the play becomes more painful. Just as their mother would have, we must correctly proportion positive reinforcement and encouragement and consistent discipline when interacting with our pup, clearly defining the boundaries of what is and is not allowed.
I’ll explain what this looks like with an overview of some aspects of our past 4 months with the latest addition to our pack, Biggie Smalls, our 6-month-old French Bulldog puppy.
Preventing Anxiety:
From the moment we met Biggie we made a conscious effort not to make a fuss of him/give him too much attention (very hard to do with a pup!) and worked on this while projecting calm and assertive energy whether in our home, our car or on walks. The reason being is if this is what the pup learns to expect, anxiety quickly kicks in when they don’t receive the attention they are used to or are left alone, even if only for a short period. The pup also begins to understand the focus is on them and not us, reversing what the relationship should be. What this looks like with Biggie at 6 months old is we have worked up to leaving him alone for 4 to 5 hours at a time with both he and us being comfortable about it.
Jumping Up:
When Biggie was much smaller and couldn’t reach the sofa it lead to him starting to jump up and each time he did, without saying anything we calmly put him down and if he persisted, we held him there until he settled. We’re fine with him being on the sofa and he does come up most evenings, but as with everything, it must be on our terms. So now if he wants to come up, he’ll calmly sit in front of us and if we want him up we’ll let him, but if not, after some moments of extreme puppy dog eyes, he finds somewhere else to lie down. This principle also applies for when a pup jumps up at us, as we, of course, want to give them a cuddle from time to time, but no one likes a dog that won’t stop jumping.
Sit, Stay and General Obedience:
While we didn’t focus on teaching Biggie any tricks up until recently, we have been strict on him having good manners, particularly around feeding time, so his routine is always tightly followed. Since his third day with us, every time we have fed him we have calmly stood and waited for him to sit before beginning to move toward putting his bowl down. As we’ve done so, every time he’s become excited again we stand back upright and disengage, giving him no eye contact and wait for him to settle and sit. Once he has settled and waits while we put his bowl down and stand back upright, we then pause for some moments before giving him the go-ahead to eat. This did at first take time, but within a few weeks, Biggie would sit in front of his food for up to 10 minutes while we walked into other rooms or pottered around the flat and would only move once told to. This is a huge aspect of building a disciplined relationship with your pup as they learn we mean what we say and our commands/directions must be followed.
When the time came that we began working on some tricks with Biggie he knew the score in that we were working together with us giving commands and him following. This worked so much so that the first day we worked on getting him to bark on command, he was doing it within 10 minutes (with some guidance from Millie our GSD).
Walking On and Off-Leash:
Given most pups are nervous during their first few walks and want to be right under our feet, we look to use this lack of confidence to teach them how to move with us while on walks and reward them with pieces of food when they do. For Biggie’s first walk we took him to an enclosed park away from the exits/roads and simply let him off his leash and began walking away from him. Out of fear he didn’t leave our side and stuck by us throughout, following us (and the food) as we went. As the days passed he started to venture further away from us and we continued to walk away from him, praising and rewarding him when he came back to our side after his confidence would run out. Over time this has lead to him understanding he is free to run and play, but within range of us as we are the decision-makers of which direction we go in. This then transferred nicely into walking on-leash as the same principles applied in that we move, he follows and if he does overstep the mark a simple ‘ah ahh’ with guidance using the leash is enough to get him to fall back in line.
Recall:
Taking the idea from the last point of us moving away from our pup to show them they must move along with us feeds nicely into our recall work in that essentially, whether they’re 1m ahead of us while walking or 20m away playing with another dog in the park, when we move on, they should follow. Expectedly this will take some work as your pup is exposed to new things which will excite them, but as we’ve done with Biggie, through practice and patience in giving him the opportunity to come back, when we move on he usually follows and if not, calling his name once or twice generally does the trick. We make sure to remain calm, but assertive throughout and praise and reward him when he does well.
Check out the Biggie’s highlight on my Instagram to see the work mentioned above and much more - www.instagram.com/k9harkin
