Posts Tagged ‘classes’

Puppy training is quite simple. Think about what behaviors you want your puppy to have when they are a year, and full grown and start the rules from day one.

Puppy training is all about reinforcing or rewarding what your dog does. Sometimes, a puppy will get reinforced without you even around. If your puppy jumps up on the table and eats a big piece of chicken – the puppy got a reward for jumping up. See how easy that is? The number one rule for puppy training is ALWAYS WATCH YOUR PUPPY. If you aren’t watching you can’t see what they are about to get into. I always tell my puppy training clients to put the puppy on leash and keep that baby with you 100% of the time. If you can’t watch the puppy, put him in his crate for a time with a stuffed kong in order to keep the puppy busy – or if you notice they are going to sleep, its often wise to let them have a nap in their little den.

If you always praised the dog or gave a piece of food ( cheerios are great for puppy training ) for the doing doing good things then the behaviors you liked would increase. Teach sit, loose leash walking and start on stays while your puppy is young. Here are some puppy training rules you have to decide on when starting puppy training.

1. Will you let your dog jump on people? If you have a small dog, it might not bother you to let your dog jump – thats a personal decision. If you dont want your dog to jump, puppy training should include never talking to, pushing, or making eye contact with a dog who is jumping.
2. Will you let your dog on the furniture? If not, dont let them up there during puppy training.
3. Do you want your dog to whine in their crate? If not, never open a crate for a whining puppy.
4. Will you let your puppy chew on your hands? If not, never let it happen during puppy training! Pull your hand away and ignore your puppy for 30 seconds.

You see, when you are puppy training, you have to evaluate each individual behavior and think – this is cute now, but will this be so cute in a year? When your puppy is full grown? They are only small for a very short time!

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Its very important that you research any dog trainer before attending their classes or having them help you with your dog. The best thing to do is go and watch an appointment or class. If you are unable to do that here are some questions you can ask them.

1) What type of method do you use?

Many dog trainers will say they use motivation, that needs to be clarified.  I like to ask how do they teach heel.  If they are using food and rewards such as toys, then that is a good thing!  We all know that dogs learn well when they are motivated by something they like instead using fear or pain.

2) What do you charge?

When choosing a dog trainer, cost will certainly come into play.  Its OK to ask that and have that as part of your decision.  Some trainers will charge $195 for 6 week classes while others charge $50. Research the pricing in your area and see what works for you. Cheaper is not always better, and more expensive is not always better.

3) Do you offer a guarantee?

Choose a dog trainer who does not guarantee behavor! Most trainers will not offer a guarantee of behavior. If they do, find out what that guarantee means. Some places will offer free classes which is appropriate. It could be a gimick just to get you in the door.

4) What will happen if your dog barks in class?

This is a good way to find out about a dog trainer. A lot of dogs bark in classes for different reasons. Some are stressed and some are just excited. Dealing with this behavior should be either giving the dog more room, redirecting with food, or possibly switching to a less stressful environment such as private appointments.

5) What is your certification?

Often times dog trainers will say they have a certification and they may, but its from an unrecognized source. Here are some dog training certifications you can trust:  CPDT-KA;  ABC (this is typically for new dog trainers); KPACTP

I’m sure I’m missing a few but these are the big ones!

Good luck in trying to choose a dog trainer for your dog or puppy!

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Surviving Puppyhood Dealing with puppy chewing

Dani Weinberg

“I’m too old for this,” I thought, wiping up yet another puppy piddle from the kitchen floor. Surely, puppies, like human infants, should be raised only by the young and healthy. On second thought, maybe even the young and healthy develop a few grey hairs in the process.

Ruby was our first puppy in over 7 years, and I was experiencing the all-too-common Return to Reality. I remembered our previous puppy as having been “easy.” Had I simply forgotten? Come to think of it, what about those two (or was it three) remote controls that had been eaten? And my prescription sunglasses? And what about our wonderful Oriental rug, a legacy from my mother, that had been chewed through in several places? And what about….and what about…and what about….The memories were beginning to flood in. I decided to sit down, have a cup of coffee (Ruby was zonked out in her crate), and think about my promised article for Forward.

We privileged few who are trainers live in a dream world. For a few hours every week, we teach puppy classes. We get to watch our little canine students grow, develop, and learn – and we get to send them home at the end of the hour. We hear all about their awful antics on the phone between classes. We patiently explain to their owners about developmental stages and how to manage them. We sometimes wonder why these owners seem so frantic and so inept
at following our simple suggestions.

Puppy chewing on the furniture? No problem. Just make the furniture taste bad and offer puppy something delicious (and “appropriate”) to chew on instead. Puppy nipping at the heels of the children?
No problem. Just teach the kids to stop acting like prey animals. Puppy yowling all night in his crate? No problem. Just ignore the “unwanted” behavior until it “extinguishes” (most of us, to our credit, actually say “stops”). And please do keep up with your training. It’s so important for puppy to learn to sit on cue.

It all makes perfect sense in theory. But what happens when one of us privileged few gets her own live-in, full-time, for-better-or-for-worse puppy? Shock,
delight, exhaustion, some new watchbands and eyeglass cases – and the incomparable experiencing of falling in love again.

I brought Ruby home when she was 7 weeks old. The very next day, I started her training. During the previous seven puppyless years, I’d learned a lot and had become quite a proficient clicker trainer and instructor. I now had an opportunity for firsthand experience
with the techniques I had been teaching so many students. Experimenting on Ruby, I modified or simplified some of these techniques and raised my standards on others. For example, knowing that Ruby was headed for a brilliant career in Obedience, I knew I had to teach her Utility-quality
behaviors right from the start. I was not willing to put in the
time and energy later on to retrain a rocked-back Sit or a forward-folding
Down. Clicker training made it easy to do it right the first time.

I also had my own private hands-on “seminar” in puppy
individuality! For example, Ruby was so much more visual than auditory.
She focused easily on hand signals as cues and took much longer
to learn the verbal counterparts. Even now, at the age of 10 months,
she’s just beginning to get the meaning of the verbal cue
“Stand,” though she’s responded fluently to the
visual cue for several months now.

I wish I had videotaped our first day of training. It was so easy
and so much fun – a powerful confirmation of everything I
had been telling my students about clicker training and about starting
with baby puppies. On that first day, I spent just a couple of minutes
conditioning the clicker and then started right in with teaching
Sit. Since Ruby was offering Sit spontaneously, I didn’t do any
prompting but just caught the behavior with the clicker. I did have
to prompt Down at first but very quickly stopped and just waited
for her to offer it. For the next few weeks, I thoroughly enjoyed
the relaxation of not introducing cues until I was absolutely sure
I had the behavior in exactly the form I wanted. Once again, I experienced
affirmation of my belief that the clicker really was an excellent
communication and information device – much more powerful
than the linguistic sounds we utter, thinking that somehow our dogs
will understand what we mean by them.

In those first few weeks, I was also teaching a lot of basic household-manners
skills, using eye-contact training as a foundation. Ruby quickly
generalized the behavior to all permission-requesting situations
(like getting out of the crate or going through a doorway). I clicker-trained
her to use the dog door (which she could barely reach at first)
so that she’d have quick and easy access to the outdoors for elimination.
But I left nothing else to chance about her housetraining. This
was probably the most grueling part of that first week or two for
me. Being committed to accomplishing the housetraining quickly and
completely, I knew that I had to be present to reinforce her every
time she eliminated outdoors. Now, puppies do a lot of peeing! And
they do it around the clock! Within a week, though, she was sleeping
5 to 6 hours every night. During the daytime, on the other hand,
I found myself spending more and more time outdoors, balancing a
cup of coffee on the arm of the lawn chair and watching her for
that precious moment when I could say “Gooooood girl.”

By the time Ruby was 10 weeks old, she knew the following behaviors:
a tuck Sit (on visual cue), a foldback Down (on visual cue), Eye
Contact (on verbal cue), Leave It (from hand, on verbal cue), back-and-forth
Recalls (moving among 2-3 people), the beginning of a Mark (as in
Utility Gloves), stick and hand targeting (on verbal cue), the beginning
of a Go Out (using targeting), and a few tricks (Spin, Roll Over,
High Five). I tried to start loose-leash walking, but she was still
too short, and I didn’t want to present her with a distorted picture
of my body posture.

She loved training from the very start. She seemed to think it
was not work but play. It was clear that the more she learned, the
more she was capable of learning. Very quickly – as soon as
she knew a couple of behaviors – she began to offer behaviors
spontaneously. And in no time at all, she became my teacher just
as I was hers.

After extensive discussion with Ruby and with her permission, I
offer the following :

Seven Rules of Puppy Training.

1. Remember: your puppy is perfect – and normal! With this
as your starting point, everything else will fall into place.

2. Clear your calendar! If you train with positive methods, your
puppy will be a training addict in no time! Your problem will be
how to stop training because your puppy will think it’s all play
and will want to do it all the time.

3. Feel free to invent all kinds of new tricks and training techniques
as you and your puppy build your relationship. Your puppy will teach
you a lot – maybe even more than you’ll teach your puppy!

4. Set yourself only short-term goals – and don’t take those
too seriously either. Puppies change, grow, develop before your
very eyes, so what you thought you wanted to do or were doing at
this moment will (and should) change in the next moment.

5. Take your time about introducing cues (beyond the cues that
emerge naturally from any luring or prompting you do). Language
isn’t important to dogs anyway. And you’ll become a better trainer
if you immerse yourself in dog language. My motto is: “Think
Small/Go Slow.”

6. When something goes wrong or doesn’t seem to be working –
forget it! It will all be different by tomorrow anyway (see Rule
3 above). Seriously, like many health problems, puppy behavior "problems" mostly resolve themselves, as long as we don’t get in the way.

7. And, most important, have fun. They don’t stay puppies nearly
long enough, so enjoy them while you can.

© Dani Weinberg, 2001

Dani Weinberg
Albuquerque, New Mexico
daniw@earthlink.net

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Whenever  I talk about socialization, many people always assume  I  mean  with other dogs and people.  Socialize actually means introducing to something new.  With young puppies the old theory was to keep them in the house until they were 6 months old.  Then it became don’t take them out until they are fully vaccinated at 4 months. 

We now know that is not true, and its a mistake.  The fear period begins around 16 weeks of age,so the most important time to socialize is from 10-16 weeks.  Does this mean you should take your dog to the dog park to play? Absolutely not!  But here are some new puppy socialization ideas that are safe.

Sitting  outside a coffee shop on a Saturday morning.  Its buzzing with different types of people and kids.  In order to make this productive, bring some of your dogs food and of course a  hungry puppy.  As people walk by, offer a piece of food for brave behavior.  Even if that means laying down and looking at them.  Don’t worry about keeping your pups attention, that isn’t  the goal here. If people want to pet your puppy, ask them to give him a piece of food first, followed by some good old fashioned puppy loving.

If you need to stand on your puppies leash so he doesn’t jump, that’s ok.  Try not to correct your puppy for anything, just manage his behavior so he is good.  Prevention is the key!

Another great place to go is outside a grocery store.  Think of all those noises,  cars, grocery carts,big bags…its socialization heaven. Try to venture out to a few different places a week, keeping safety in mind.

Happy puppy training!

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