Puppies are Not Born Trained
Up next are a few training rules that will allow you to live an enjoyable life with your new puppy. They are as follows:
1. Teach your puppy at an early age to respect the human hands. This is very important to teach at a young age. New puppies have the tendency to mouth, or gnaw, on human hands because they know that is where the food comes from. Make sure to lay down the rules at an early age by teaching your puppy that just because you feed it, it does not mean that you always have food in your hand. This is also an important aspect in teaching you puppy to not jump on visitors while they are eating (see the first article)
2. Never let your new puppy beg for food. This goes along with not letting your puppy jump on visitors the second they walk in the door. This can be very annoying to your visitors, especially when they are trying to eat.
3. Make sure you new puppy knows that you are the leader of the pack, not him. If you let the dog think that it is in charge from the beginning you will have a problem. Lay down the law early so that the dog has respect for you, and at the same time it understands that you have the same respect for it.
4. Teach your dog basic commands in order to make your life easier. Some of these commands would be sit, stay, lay, and come. All though these may seem obvious, some new owners neglect to teach their puppy these basic. Imagine how easy it would be if your dog would stay on command. You would never have to worry again about it running out of the yard when you turn your back for a second. As you can all of these rules go hand in hand!
5. Teach your puppy to be independent. In other words make sure that your new puppy is not always dependent on you to keep it occupied. Your new puppy should be able to play and relax on its own. If your puppy gets in the habit of never playing alone, every time it gets a burst of energy it will be chasing you around the house or yard; where as if your dog is trained to play alone, it can take out its pent up energy by itself by chasing its ball, or chewing on its toy. This is one of the most overlooked steps in the training process because it is so hard to not pay constant attention to your new puppy, but it is necessary
6. Your new puppy should be taught to move on command. In other words if your new puppy is on your leather couch, and you do not want it there, teach it to remove itself on command. This will pay off in the long run for a couple of reasons. First off, you do not want to be picking your dog up its entire life. That gets old very quick. Secondly, it is always a plus if you can get your dog to obey directional commands when you have visitors.
7. Being that exercise is a big part of a new puppy’s life, you need to teach it to go on a walk and behave itself. Mainly, this means not pulling on the leash during its walk. There is nothing more annoying than being pulled on and tugged by your new puppy. And if you think it is annoying when a little 10 pound puppy is pulling you, wait until it is full grown and you have 80 pounds dragging you down the street. Do not let the problem escalate that far and train your puppy right from its very first walk!
It is important to remember that there are a lot of other training needs that should be taken care of. In fact there are some that you have probably never thought of. Just remember to keep an open mind, and start at an early age. If you do this you will most definitely cut back on a lot of problems later on.
