What Dog Behavior Training Does Your New Pup Need?
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Getting a new puppy can be an exhilarating experience for the entire family. But with this new pet comes a lot of hard work and responsibility. Your new puppy is cute and cuddly now but in only a few short months, it will be much larger and have picked up a few habits, good or bad.
Before you bring your new little puppy home sit down with the entire family and decide about how you want to go about instilling the right kind of behavior from the beginning. This is to avoid inconsistency in the training from the start.
So when is the best time to start your new puppy’s behavior training? As soon as possible. It will be best for the pup if it knows as soon as it arrives in your home what the rules are.
A few basic things you will need to take care of before the new member of the family joins you will be to create a comfortable place for it to sleep and eat. Also be sure to designate an area outside for it to do its business.
Once in agreement and everyone understands their roles, is when you should bring the puppy home. Instruction will also be easier to give to your puppy when you designate who in the family will be the “Alpha Dog” or the leader of the family. It should be someone who will be responsible for the dog’s primary training.
Repetition is key to any good training program for your dog. Always remember to praise your dog when a task is performed well and use a frown or form of disapproval to let the dog know you are not pleased.
Had your puppy been reared by its mother then she would have used growling or nipping to reprimand it when it did something she didn’t like. She would not have used growling to stop her little one jumping up on the bed though. You may not want to walk around the house growling so you will need other ways.
Behavior training should be done in the moment. This means that should your puppy start to do something you don’t want it to do like chew on a slipper, for instance, you will need to enforce discipline right there and then. The dog will not learn if you wait until later and then try and teach it not to chew on shoes.
Once you have a technique for disciplining then get everyone to use the same technique. This will speed up the effectiveness of the behavior training.
If you want to train the correct behavior into your puppy from the day it arrives in your home, then the entire family will have to learn to take responsibility, be patient and most of all love the dog enough to want what’s best for it.
