Puppy Training At Home

Everyone who gets a dog wants to be a good dog owner. Everyone agrees that dogs should be trained to make them easier to live with. Many responsible dog owners make a commitment to take their puppy to training classes as soon as possible.

The thing is, ''as soon as possible" isn't soon enough.

No dog training class will enroll a puppy until he's had all his shots; that is, when he's four months old. A four month old puppy is a teenager! He's as distractable and fizzing with excess energy as a human teenager. Yes, he's trainable, but it will be a harder task if he doesn't even know what training is.

Far better, then, to start training your puppy at home. You're going to be playing with and interacting with him anyway. So include some simple training, and he'll just be that much more lovable and less exasperating sooner.

Some simple commands you can teach your puppy at home are: sit, down, stay, come, and off.

Does your dog know his name?

But first, make sure your puppy knows his name.   The name should be something short and simple - one or two syllables, the name you usually use to refer to your dog. If he's a purebred, he probably has a triple-barrelled AKC name that makes him sound like European royalty, and you'll probably also wind up calling your dog all sorts of nicknames throughout his life, but the call name should be a name you give your puppy the day you get him, and continue to call him that throughout his life. Max, Princess, Brandy, Bear.   You get the idea.

Your puppy should know his name because when you give him a command, you precede the command with the name so he knows to be paying attention.   If you're on the phone with your mother, complaining "I was so busy I didn't have a chance to sit down all day", Rex is not going to sit when you say the word sit - he's not paying attention. When you say, "Rex, sit" - now he's paying attention and knows you're talking to him.

Training with treats

You're going to be using treats in your training sessions. Choose your treats with care. Commercial doggy treats available at the supermarket (Beggin' Strips, Pupperoni, etc) are just too large if used as sold.

Why too big? Well, in the first place, it interrupts the training. Give your pup a whole Pupperoni, and he's got to go off and consume it. And big as they are, once you've given two or three rewards, the puppy is full and probably no longer interested.

You can use these commercial treats, so long as you cut them into tiny pieces.   The pieces should be just large enough to give the puppy a taste, and be back bright and eager for more.

If your puppy is on a restricted diet for some reason, you can use a handful of his dinner kibble for treats, fed one piece at a time.