Pampered Dog Blog

Puppy training is an essential part of dog ownership and provides many benefits. For starters, there’s the obvious payoff – you have a well-behaved, well-adjusted and easy to control dog. But puppy training achieves so much more than that. It builds a bond between you and your dog, provides you both with mental and physical stimulation, and is also a whole lot of fun.

The first dog training challenge is usually potty training, often a cause for exasperation, but actually a relatively simple task. The key is patience an persistence. Remember that a puppy is only a baby. You wouldn’t expect a human baby to get it right first time would you?

Just choose a method that is known to work, apply it diligently, and the results will follow.

And speaking of method, the three most popular house-training techniques are crate training, the paper method, and the supervision method. Of these, I find crate training to be the easiest and most effective. However, you should choose the method that works for you.

Most dogs will be fully housebroken within two weeks of consistent training. If you started at about 10 weeks your puppy will now be 12 weeks old and ready to start obedience training.

Before you get started, make a little commitment to yourself and to your dog. commit to patience, persistence and the work and hours required to make a success of this.

Promise yourself that you will not become irritable, yell, shout, or punish the dog. Commit to remaining calm and making training a fun, productive and fulfilling experience. Do this and you will have taken a huge step towards being an effective dog trainer.

In terms of the actual training, you can start by teaching your puppy his name. This is easy enough, just use his name whenever you can. Whenever you talk to the pup, praise him, feed him or give him a treat, say his name in a pleasant, encouraging voice and he’ll soon pick it up.

Once the puppy consistently responds to his name it is time to move on to the most basic obedience command, “sit”. To achieve this, stand or kneel in front of the dog. Hold a treat in your hand, level with the dog’s line of sight. Slowly move the treat towards the dog. As he continues to watch it he’ll be forced to sit. The moment he sits, say “sit”, then give him the treat right away, accompanied by lots of praise.

Simple as it is, this command is the basic building block of all dog training. If you can get your dog to sit on command you can get him to obey all kinds of commands, including sit, stay, come to me, and so on. From their you can expand your repertoire to tricks and advanced obedience, which is when it really becomes fun and interesting.

Visit www.dogsanddogtraining.com to discovermore about dog training, dog care, dog health and other helpful dog advice.