Puppy training is a very vital aspect, regardless of whether it is your first puppy or your twentieth. In order to let your puppy be a valued member of your family and your community, you need to let it be properly trained and socialized.
In some ways training a puppy is easier than training an adult or adolescent dog. One reason is that the puppy is essentially a "blank slate", untroubled by past training techniques and other issues. In other ways, however, the puppy can be more difficult to train than an older dog.
One area to overcome when training a new puppy is that the puppy will have shorter attention span, as compared to adolescent and adult dogs. Why? Because everything will be new to a puppy, and each new experience is a reason for distraction. For this reason, it will be good advice to keep each training session short when working with a puppy. Also it will be good to end each session on a positive note.
It is also important to allow the puppy plenty of time to play, and to interact with other puppies and dogs. Socialization training is vital to making your new puppy a good canine citizen, as dog aggression is a growing problem in many areas. A properly socialized dog learns how to play properly with other dogs, and overly aggressive play is punished by the other dogs in the play group.
This type of play learning is something that happens among siblings in litters of puppies. As the puppies play with each other, they learn what is appropriate and what is not. Inappropriate behavior, such as hard biting or scratching, is punished by the other puppies, by the mother dog, or both.
The unfortunate thing that usually happens is that many puppies are removed from their mothers and sold or adopted before they have the chance to fully socialize. Thus, puppy play sessions are a very essential part of any session on puppy training. Most credible puppy preschool training programs provide time in each session for this type of interaction among puppies and older dogs.
Letting your puppy have enough of new experiences and introducing them to new locations is an important part of puppy training. Training your dog to obey and respond to you, even in the face of distractions, is vital when training dogs and puppies.
One great channel to help your puppy socialize with both new people and dogs is to bring it on a trip to your local pet store. Many major pet store chains, and may smaller ones too, allow dogs and puppies to be brought to their premises. These stores can be great places for puppies to get accustomed to new things and experiences. Of course, do check with the pet store to be sure that they allow you to bring your beloved puppy over.
It is really essential for puppy owners to implement a structure in their pet's environment so that the puppy is rewarded for good behaviors and not for the wrong ones. For example, jumping on people. Many of us unknowingly reward this wrong behavior because it can be cute. While it is quite correct that jumping can be cute for a 10-pound puppy, it will not be so when this same puppy has grown into a 100-pound dog.
Instead of rewarding the puppy for jumping, try rewarding it for sitting instead. This type of positive reinforcement will result in a well behaved adult dog that is a valued member of both the family and the community at large.
This type of behavior training can also be used in potty training the new puppy. For example, teaching a puppy to use a unique surface such as gravel or asphalt is a good technique. The theory is that the puppy will associate this surface with the need to relieve itself, and therefore be reluctant to use other surfaces (like your kitchen carpet for instance).
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