Puppy behaviour training. Never hit your pup

Have a new puppy or are about to buy one?

Save your sanity, your carpets and the future of your puppy by knowing the essentials of puppy behaviour training.

Potty training.

Potty training is best done as soon as you get your puppy home amongst the new family. All behaviour training starts at home with your whole family knowing the basics.

Firstly if you haven't done so already.

1. Decide on an area for your puppy to sleep.Make sure it is not too hot or cold and that it is never in someone's bed!

This single and very understandable mistake made more often than not is allowing your cuddly new puppy to sleep in someone's bed!

Please do not do this, it has many consequences. The training from this point on will be difficult if you break this rule now and you will learn why in a minute.

2. Decide on where and when your puppy goes to the toilet.

You can teach your puppy to go to the toilet on demand in an appropriate open space at home outside the house or in a park, or while walking the puppy. Simply put him on a leash and when he wants to pee or go to the toilet say toilet once only and point. After he goes (clean up) say "good boy" quietly but with warmth in your voice, and offer a small food reward. Your puppy will quickly start trying to connect the reward with the behaviour.

Potty training like all animal training can be taught gently with simple repetition and rewards of affection and food.

First get your whole family together and lay down some very firm rules based on the knowledge from this page., otherwise the potty training and all other training will fail to some degree.The rules must be followed strictly at all times in the early stages of training.You will not need to remind your puppy for long, and the early training has enormous advantages for puppies and owners as well.Trust me If there was really an easier way to start puppy training, then I have never heard of it.

• You can call this process puppy whispering if you like, as it is the one thing that works all the time.. If you get this part right you will be amazed at how quickly your puppy learns every new trick you can think of by thinking for himself, which he will enjoy more than most things.

You can even control your puppy's behaviour with tiny secret movements or facial expressions. it is simple to do this with a puppy without the years of learning it takes to do this with older poorly trained dogs.

To have the happiest best behaved puppy you must make these "pack" rules before you even get a puppy home if you can or as soon as possible after. Any mistakes you make will be paid for!

• The puppy sleeps in his bed only. No exceptions. This is essential. (I explain why below.)

• Do not allow the puppy to jump up on people at all.

All that is needed is a firm No! pushing the puppy away firmly when he jumps up, the secret is to be completely consistent.

  You must control every person's pack behaviour or the puppy will not understand why she is allowed to jump on one person and not another.

If you follow all the pack rules you will not have problems unless your puppy is an aggressive breed, in which case you may already have problems controlling him.

If the puppy already has problems like biting, aggression, or jumping up get professional help immediately, as this endangers little children and adults alike and must be dealt with to avoid possible accidents.Do not hit the puppy, it will make the job even harder for the professional trainer to correct the problem.

A puppy needs his place in the pack to feel loved and secure. No exceptions, he needs his own bed every night, not your bed. His bedding should be kept clean, with puppy toys around the bed.

This is his little corner in the pack, and although he may share your bed some times later, now is the wrong time to allow this.as it will destroy the basis of the early training.

A simple way to potty train means a kind way .

If the puppy has a place to pee at home, when he goes to pee put him there by gently and quickly moving him. Then when he does his business there say"Good boy" in your warmest voice once. reward with food to re-enforce the behaviour. The puppy will quickly go to the toilet on demand, and when he does not, clean it up and do not chastise the puppy!

Make it clear that no one is to yell at or frighten the puppy as this is useless behaviour that is cruel to any sentient animal and counter productive.

If you have trouble get professional help. Learn from a master. You are on the Internet so only a mouse click away from having the best experts in the world to tell you the truth about dog training. that is if you can find it amongst the clamour of information on the Internet.

Your puppy cost a lot of money. It will cost money to feed him and keep him healthy, yet all that is useless if your puppy is not trained from the very start.

A properly trained puppy is a joy to control, so he can enjoy play without messing in your home or destroying your hand made embroidery. He will play with his toys and scruff them and bite them, not jump up on a baby and bite .

Your puppy will learn no matter how young he is and he will enjoy being trained if it is done properly right from the start.

Do you want your puppy to be loved by all your family and friends? Of course you do. A puppy that rips peoples clothes or bites children or messes inside your home and anyone else's home you visit is a major nuisance and usually ends up at a so called dogs home, never to be anyone's pet ever again.

These otherwise beautiful puppys will most likely be "disposed of" instead of living a happy life and enjoying their potential.

That potential is to be your loving companion and friend for many wonderful years. Not much of a choice is it?

The younger you start the easier and better the training will be for puppy and you, but it is you who needs to be trained first, and this is vital to your future life together, because at this point you are deciding between learning or failing to give your much loved puppy a good life with you.

Early training is very important for pups. If you can get your puppies behaviour under your control early, he will know where he stands in the family and will be very comfortable once he understands his place in the pack.

Dogs are pack animals and in the pack they take their rightful place obeying the boss dog and the older females, and older siblings or any dog bigger and stronger, or with more power in the pack than they have.

They are then content as they know who is in charge of them and this allows them to feel secure as a family member of that pack.

It is the same in your family. You are his pack leader. You feed him.

You do not have to yell at him. He gets that you are in charge. You are in charge of both food and shelter, a powerful pack leader indeed in his eyes!

If you watch closely you will see your puppy trying to understand the spoken word. He will lift up his ears, and put his head on one side as if he understands. This is very cute to watch, but he is also watching. Watching you to see if you are giving him a signal.

• Treats and praise are the best tools to use to encourage him to learn from this desire to understand what you would like from him and because as a pack animal this is what provides his security..

The way puppy sees it , if you are the one who supplies the food and shelter then you are the boss of the whole planet.

Many so called dog trainers just don't know how to potty train because although they understand pack behaviour they copy the top dog idea in the wrong way.

You do not have to yell or bully nor frighten or hit your puppy. He is willing to do whatever you want. You must learn how he thinks to know how to train him.

Here are some bad mistakes that trainers make when potty training pups.

• Putting down paper inside the house, then letting the puppy wee on it.

This just teaches him that it is ok to do his business inside your home!

• Hitting him or telling him he is a bad puppy in a rough or loud voice.

This has exactly the wrong affect and does damage to all training that has been done up to this point and causes more problems for future trainers

because

He will be confused and anxious. He knows you are a part of his new family.

As you feed him he knows you are the boss. He has not challenged you as boss so why would you be growling at him and biting him? (hitting him).

This is why you need training, you need to understand a dogs world to train your dog or puppy.

• Not being consistent is as bad as not training at all.

He will be getting mixed signals and will not know what you expect of him.

• Training for more than a few minutes at a time.

It is important to only teach him as long as his attention span lasts.You will need to experiment with this one, but like child puppies have short attention spans.

About 10 minutes is average for many breeds with some others it will be longer or shorter. Be observant and stop when he gets distracted.

There is no need to speak to your puppy when training him.

Let me explain that statement.

Although some dogs develop a rather large vocabulary with some knowing more than a hundred words they do not "learn" language so there is no need to speak at all, let alone yell at your puppy.

Save sounds for more advanced training and start from this attention gaining base. It is better if your puppy is looking for signals from you, rather than trying to get his attention.

Real professional trainers never raise their voice when training a puppy and I would recommend doing your first training with little or no speech. Good Boy or good girl said quietly if you must.

My family have had a lot of dogs. We still have even though we all live in major cities these days, so to be fair to our dogs the breeds  have changed a lot over the years. In the city I like dogs that are happy in the city. Hunting and working breeds like sheep and cattle dogs are least comfortable in the city.

My daughter has a new puppy it is her third and the biggest problem she has is the 3 year old twin girls who confuse her. She is a very smart pup but inconsistent commands have made the process of training longer than it should be.

My daughter in law is a professional dog groomer who takes her own dog to work with her every day. She can do so because he has been socialised properly.

An memorable example of socialising and training that makes the point well happened to me when walking my neighbours huge Japanese wolf dog.

He was never trained and would attack other dogs whenever he could, so I took on the job of trying to change his aggressive behaviour.

I do not use choke chains on dogs as I consider it cruel, and although this dog was one of the largest I have seen I am heavier than him and so took him to a park with a normal but strong lead.

The choke chain that my neighbour used did not work anyway, as I discovered while cycling through the park one night to see my neighbour skiing behind this same dog as he dragged him across the park at high speed in pursuit of another dog.

This dog had already tried to kill several small dogs which he seemed to hate.

Back to my true story about socialising dogs.

When walking the dog by the river the Japanese wolf dog and I approached a man with a small Australian terrier.

The big dog tried to break away to kill the little fellow as was his way.

The owner encouraged me to let him go! I was not going to do so as I had seen him almost eat a small dog he saw when he escaped from his yard just the week before.

This fellow seemed very sure, so I held the big dog and let him within range of the little terrier. What happened next was the best proof for good social training I have ever seen.

The big dog did nothing. He just relaxed. The owner had taught the little terrier very well. He just stood there and the big Akita or Japanese wolf dog just ignored him!

The owner then told me proudly that he never had to worry about even big dogs as they never attack his terrier because the terrier was properly socialised and as I got to see, Terry the terrier was very smart and able to do dozens of useful and funny tricks with almost invisible commands that were often reduced by his owner to head or finger movements, or single words spoken in a certain tone, so that Terry would not get confused when others used the same word in a normal tone.

Fire! is a handy word to teach a dog to respond to. My friend Rod's dog Goofy (A part bloodhound) responds to the command "Fire" by crawling on his belly across the floor looking for the children!

His eldest child John got a bit tired of being dragged to the doorway by Goofy every time his Dad told the dog "Fire" His lovely missus and friends wet themselves laughing every time he pulled this stunt.

After a while, Rod taught Goofy to respond when the child calls "Fire". It only took him half an hour to change the command and this dog is 7 years old. This dog was trained by Rod, and he claims that early training was the main factor as it helped the dog to see thinking as a game to be enjoyed.

My childhood with dogs.

My father trained many working dogs, so I had dogs around me always as a child.

I learnt a valuable lesson as a kid from our neighbours on a farm that has stuck with me all my life.

About a mile away from us were two German brothers who had a large farm.

Their dog was totally different to all the other working dogs I had seen up tio this point. It was strange to see not only their dog but horses and cows so much calmer than on any farm I had seen.

The dog took the cows across the road every morning after milking and followed them down to the lush green river flats where they spent the day.The dog and cows always looked like they were having a nice day out for a stroll.

In the evening at exactly the right time this dog would go down to the river flats to fetch the cows for afternoon milking. As he arrived the cows would begin the walk back to the milking shed.I never saw him bark or bite the cows, he just turned up to help out and to make sure none of his friends were missing.

As you may know cows get to know milking time and look forward to it as they get uncomfortable with a full load of milk in their udders they want to be milked so there is nothing odd about them wandering back to the cow shed anyway.

What was unusual was that all the dog did was to look for any cows that may have strayed away from the herd, or were calving or caught in a fence or for any other reason were not with the herd. If so, he would run quickly back to the farmer for help.

The cows on this farm gave more milk than any other herds I knew of, their calves were bigger and they were very successful farmers.They handled all their animals with obvious affection and care.

I spent time and watched my father train his hunting dogs and we had working sheep and cattle dogs all around us on farms.

The training of these dogs had to be very effective as the dogs are very valuable. A dog is a great asset to a farmer, saving thousands a year on labour costs. Some of these working dogs were able to do spectacular things.

I also saw dogs abused. There never was a need to train in this way, even with working dogs yet many did not really understand any other way to treat their animals at that time.

The Basics.

• Never hit or yell at your puppy. This will only confuse him and make the potty training harder.
• Never do anything when training that involves touching your pup. Hands off is the best method always.
• Choose one spot for your puppy to go to the toilet.
• Make sure your puppy has easy access to go outside.
• Positive encouragement is always the best way to train.

Caring for any puppy or dog takes a little time, but you can save heaps of time if your dog or puppy is trained properly from the start.

Your puppy's behaviour

• Your puppy's behaviour will directly affect everyone in your home so it is important that he receives the best quality training possible.

• Knowing exactly what to teach and how to train  takes far less time than you would think.

• How well you train is important to others as well. If your training is really good others will love your puppy too!

• You do not want your puppy to jump up on small children and knock them over, bark at other people or their pets, as this will mean you will have to limit where you take him.

• Never do anything to frighten your pup and ensure that no one else does either.

• Little children and puppy's go together like strawberries and cream, but the puppy needs to be trained before they play with little ones to avoid accidental eye or other face injury risks that can be reduced with proper training.

• Make plenty of time for them both to be together as soon as the puppy's training makes it safe for your little ones.

1. Decide on where and when your puppy goes to the toilet.

You can teach your puppy to go to the toilet on demand in an appropriate open space at home outside the house or in a park, or while walking the puppy. Simply put him on a leash and when he wants to pee or go to the toilet say toilet once only and point. After he goes (clean up) say "good boy" quetly but with warmth in your voice, and offer a small food reward. Your puppy will quickly start trying to connect the reward with the behaviour.

Potty training like all animal training can be taught gently with simple repetition and rewards of affection and food.

First get your whole family together and lay down some very firm rules based on the knowledge from this page., otherwise the potty training and all other training will fail to some degree.The rules must be followed strictly at all times in the early stages of training.You will not need to remind your puppy for long, and the early training has enormous advantages for puppies and owners as well.Trust me If there was really an easier way to start puppy training, then I have never heard of it.

• You can call this process puppy whispering if you like, as it is the one thing that works all the time.. If you get this part right you will be amazed at how quickly your puppy learns every new trick you can think of by thinking for himself, which he will enjoy more than most things.

You can even control your puppy's behavior with tiny secret movements or facial expressions. it is simple to do this with a puppy without the years of learning it takes to do this with older poorly trained dogs.

To have the happiest best behaved puppy you must make these "pack" rules before you even get a puppy home if you can or as soon as possible.

1. The puppy sleeps in his bed only. No exceptions. This is essential. (I explain why below.)
2. Do not allow the puppy to jump up on people at all.

All that is needed is a firm No! and pushing the puppy away firmly when he jumps up, the secret is to be completely consistent.You must control every person's pack behavior or the puppy will not understand why she is allowed to jump on one person and not another. If you follow all the pack rules you will not have problems unless your puppy is an aggressive breed, in which case you may already have problems controlling him.

If the puppy already has problems like biting, aggression, or jumping up get professional help immediately, as this endangers little children and adults alike and must be dealt with to avoid possible accidents.Do not hit the puppy, it will make the job even harder for the professional trainer. Get help here.

A puppy needs his place in the pack to feel loved and secure. No exceptions, he needs his own bed every night, not your bed.His bedding should be kept clean, with puppy toys around the bed.This is his little corner in the pack, and although he may share your bed some times later, now is the wrong time to allow this.as it will destroy the basis of the early training.

A simple way to potty train means a kind way .

If the puppy has a place to pee at home, when he goes to pee put him there by gently and quickly moving him. Then when he does his business there say"Good boy" in your warmest voice once. reward with food to re-inforce the behaviour. The puppy will quickly go to the toilet on demand, and when he does not, clean it up and do not chastise the puppy. Make it clear that no one is to yell at or frighten the puppy as this is useless behavior that is cruel and counter productive.

If you have trouble get professional help. Learn from a master. You are on the Internet so only a mouse click away from having the best experts in the world to tell you the truth about dog training. that is if you can find it amongst the clamour of information on the Internet.

Your puppy cost a lot of money. It will cost money to feed him and keep him healthy, yet all that is useless if your puppy is not trained. A properly trained puppy is a joy to control, so he can enjoy play without messing in your home or destroying your hand made embroidery. He will play with his toys and scruff them and bite them, not jump up on a baby and bite .

Your puppy will learn no matter how young he is and he will enjoy being trained if it is done properly right from the start.