PUPPY TRAINING OPTIONS

Before you book any puppy training, it's important to know a few things about your puppy, how they learn, how much time you have to make a difference (hint: not long), and the distinction between training your puppy yourself and enrolling them in a board-and-train program at my home. ​ One of the first things you need to consider before getting a puppy is how much time you can devote to training and exposure during these early stages. Do you work 8+ hours a day, five days a week? Leaving your puppy in a safe space at home or in the yard while you’re gone all day and only doing one training session when you get home—or just training on weekends—is not enough. You will miss a valuable window of opportunity to help your puppy grow into a stable, non-reactive adult, which will reduce their stress when encountering new experiences in the future. If you do nothing but leave your puppy in your backyard and don’t take them anywhere until they are fully vaccinated, will they be okay? Maybe. Genetics play a huge role in how your puppy will develop. So, even if you do everything right, it might not be enough if your dog comes from a fearful and unstable gene pool. Do you want to take that chance with a dog you’ll have for at least the next 10 to 14 years? ​ It's also important to note that if you pay a large sum of money for someone else to provide the safe and necessary exposure to new environments and people, as well as to start your puppy’s training, all that effort will be wasted if you, the owner, do not continue the training once the puppy returns home. Why pay a trainer to do this? That’s a great question. Are you ready and available to guide your puppy during its first critical stages of life? Do you have the time and knowledge to safely expose your puppy to everything on a very long list - to view the list click on the link below this section that says 'Puppy Exposure List'. ​ What if you wait until the puppy is fully vaccinated? Delaying socialization until puppies finish their vaccinations is counterproductive. Once a puppy is older than 4 months, the experiences they encounter can no longer be considered true socialization, and they will require the expertise of a qualified dog trainer to counter-condition them when facing potentially negative situations. Just as you wouldn’t skip your dog’s vaccinations, you shouldn’t neglect to properly and safely socialize your puppy. ​ If you skip socialization, you risk having a fearful dog, and if you socialize incorrectly, you could end up with an unhealthy one. Is this a minefield? It certainly can be. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't. Be sure to thoroughly understand the benefits and drawbacks, as well as the responsibilities that come with early socialization. ​ One of my primary goals as a dog trainer is to educate pet owners about the importance of properly exposing dogs (often called socialization). There’s no doubt that effective socialization significantly reduces future stress in a dog’s life. Many more dogs are euthanized because they end up in shelters due to fear-related issues and reactivity stemming from inadequate socialization than those who contract diseases from early socialization. ​ In addition to safely exposing your new puppy to a vast new world, there’s also obedience training to get them started on the right path. Imprinting obedience behaviors early in a puppy will help them as they reach adulthood and will support your continued training when they get home. Every single step a puppy takes during their early growth is a teachable moment. And I mean EVERY step. If you aren’t teaching your puppy good behavior and guiding them to make the right choices, they will learn bad behavior and make poor choices. Puppies are constantly learning—either what we want them to know or what they figure out through trial and error. If they attempt to pee on the rug or chew on the couch, they may conclude that those actions are acceptable. If we catch them and punish them, they simply learn not to get caught. Often, our misguided responses can make training even harder. ​ A puppy that lives with me is learning every second of every day to do the right thing. You may not see or appreciate every single thing I do to help your puppy, as some actions are just tiny steps between the big milestones and part of daily puppy life. But I can assure you that they are guided to make the right choices in everything they do. From the moment they wake up in the morning to the last thing they do at night, they are learning. It is much easier to teach good behavior than to fix bad behavior—so setting your puppy up for success is ideal. ​ Just today, a puppy slept while a Roomba vacuum bumped against the side of his crate (while I cautiously observed). This was only possible because I had slowly introduced this strange vacuuming robot to the puppy from a distance, gradually bringing it closer and rewarding the puppy for remaining neutral. Some puppies might be scared of it, while others might want to chase it and get overly excited. (If you have read this far, congratulations. You get one hundred dollars off any board and train program). Exposing your puppy to various stimuli is a balancing act aimed at fostering neutrality toward everything, everyone, and every dog. Does this mean they will walk through life like a robot? Yes and no. When I need my personal dogs to navigate a hectic environment, I want them to remain neutral and focused on my commands. When we are walking off-leash down a country lane heading to the beach, they can be dogs, have fun, and sniff around—but they will be ready to be recalled at a moment’s notice. ​ Any animal—puppy, dog, cat, or horse—needs to learn HOW to learn. They aren’t preprogrammed with knowledge of commands and basic obedience (there are always outliers that are naturally obedient). In basic terms, they need to learn the verbal cues and markers and understand their meanings, as well as how to fit into society and be well-mannered, polite dogs that can exist in any scenario, whether at an outdoor café, in the cabin of an airplane, walking down a busy street, or running off-leash at the beach. ​ When I finish my training with your puppy—whether it’s a 3-week, 5-week, or longer program—you must continue their daily training. I'll emphasize this again: you must continue their daily training. For the several weeks I have had your puppy they look at me for everything, they engage with me and know I am the one who gets them out to train them, walk them, plays with them, I am their world - we have what is called engagement. Upon their return they now need to engage with you and respond to your requests for obedience as they navigate the world. If you don’t create a bond and engage with your puppy while following through with training, I can guarantee that your dog will revert to being untrained. They will retain all the valuable exposure they experienced with me, but the training will fade. So before you spend a lot of money on training, thinking that your 14 to 16-week-old puppy will come back fully trained and that you won’t have to do anything from that day forward, think again. You are responsible for how they navigate the world. You must advocate for them in difficult situations and do your best to set them up for success.