Effective puppy training and socialization
One way to understand how to effectively train your puppy, is that you will also need to learn a little bit about how they are socialized. When you do so, you have made it easier for your puppy to live up to your highest expectations.
Just like human beings, training is much more effective if it is done at an early age. A puppy, as with a young child, has a clean slate; it has less 'baggage' to deal with than an adult dog. So it is wise to start training the puppy as soon as you can.
Puppies are born into the world bright, alert, and curious, so it will be easily distracted at first. So don't expect miracles the first day. In order to best address the puppy's short attention span, it is better to have much shorter training periods at first. Just do 20 minutes or so at a time, and try to tailor the session to end positively.
During the sessions, keep a close eye on your puppy's social skills. Your puppy needs to be able to interact well with others, changing its behavior in different situations for human and canine alike. A dog with poor socialization skills will become one of those dogs who bite, bark constantly, chew things up, and are even a nuisance to society. Dogs get poor social skills because of a lack of social interaction, for much the same reasons people fail to socialize well.
For one thing, puppies should not be removed from the litter at an age earlier than 8 weeks. The time period isn't just essential to be properly weaned and get immunity through the mother's milk until they can be vaccinated, but puppies learn how to behave in a pack with their siblings and learn proper attitudes towards humans from their mother.
You can also help your puppy acquire social skills through getting it out to meet the world. Do not keep it in a fenced yard all the time, thinking you can feed and water it and that's all it needs. Take it for daily walks in the city and in the park, where it can meet and interact with society.
Another strategy is to enroll your dog in a professional obedience school. Obedience schools aren't just to train dogs to sit and heel; they also learn to get along well with people and with other dogs.
Some owners like to roughhouse with their dogs as a kind of play. While there's nothing wrong with this, you should be careful to make it clear that there are limits. A puppy who play-nips is cute. A grown-up dog who meant to play-nip but actually broke the skin is a danger. Other things you should be careful not to encourage is jumping up on people. Remember that as a puppy, it's cute, but when it gets to where a 90-pound Doberman is knocking people over when they come to visit, you'll wish you'd taught it to greet people with more restraint.
Socializing a dog is often overlooked, since most people figure as long as it's house-broken and doesn't dig under the fence, it's trained. But dogs are companion animals after all, and lack of proper socializing leaves dogs shy, withdrawn, timid, aggressive, and worst of all, unhappy!
Teach Your Puppy To Sit Without Stress
or go back to the puppy training guide introduction page
or download the easy puppy training tips guide right now if you're ready,
