Dog Training is not just an Eight-week Class!

 Dog training is not a class that you temporarily enter for 8 weeks of your dog’s life, and immediately forget about. It is an ongoing effort that will continue for the life of your dog. It is just like raising a child. You take advantage of each opportunity to have your dog learn new life lessons and prepare him or her for what lies ahead. You take on the role of "Puppy Parent."

Training starts in the litter. The mother dog teaches many valuable lessons to the puppies. When they start being able to see, hear, and walk, it is the breeder’s responsibility to teach them valuable lessons that they would actually never learn on their own without human intervention. Some of these are (from the dog’s point of view):

• Humans love you; only good things come from humans
• You can actually take food out of a human’s hand (please do so gently)
• You can control the goodies you get from humans by performing certain behaviors (sit is usually a winner!)
• Humans voices are soothing and convey valuable information, if you listen carefully and learn the sounds
• Humans have tender skin, and you can’t bite them in the ears, nose, eyeballs and fingers, or play rough, like you do with your littermates (puppy teeth hurt!)

When the puppies are 7 ½ to 8 weeks old, and are ready to leave the litter, the breeder, and all of the valuable information they’ve learned from both, it becomes the new parent’s responsibility to continue the teaching. Some of life’s most valuable lessons happen during the brief period between 7 and 16 weeks of age. It is referred to as the Critical Socicialization Period. Critical, because if they don’t learn many of life’s important lessons in that time, chances are slim that they will lead anything close to a normal, comfortable life later (See Socialization- how to raise a puppy you won't want to part with.)

Some of the things it is the new parent's job to teach are:

• Pottying outside leads to treats or other rewards (none for going in the house)
• Crates are like your own private bedroom where you are kept warm and safe
• Leashes are the tools of adventure, and lead to interesting travels
• Kong toys are like a party, and they make shoes and furniture look like very dull and uninteresting chew toys
• It’s fun to be touched, handled and groomed by your owner (it usually involves cookies)
• When in doubt, sit and look up adoringly at the human (it’s usually good for treats and other good surprises)
• You are always safe with your human, with the use of all these new “gadgets” (crate, leash kongs, grooming tools) you will always be safe from harm, and will lead a comfortable, happy healthy life

These are just the very immediate lessons your puppy will learn in the first few days he or she spends with the new parent. These are just a start. If you want the puppy to grow up well adjusted with few if any sensitivities or phobias, your job for the next seven weeks will be a busy one.

So that your canine (when he's older) will not have an automatic fear reaction upon meeting his or her first “Aliens,” we want to make sure that NOTHING is alien to the puppy. To avoid him or her “freaking out” when approached by any of the following individuals and causing a scene with barking, wetting, fleeing into traffic, or biting the individual and getting you slapped with a law-suit, you must introduce these things to the pup before the age of 14 weeks. This must be done in a friendly (safe) or neutral manner. It’s ok if the kids are screaming and running (this is what you’re trying to get him or her used to), just so long as they are not frightening the puppy:

• Babies of all ages, toddlers, and preschoolers
• Grade school aged children of all sizes and shapes
• Teenagers
• Adults in uniforms, wheelchairs, funny hairdos, hats and halloween masks
• People of different nationalities and colors, with funny gaits and funny speech
• Elderly people
• Other dogs, cats, guinea pigs, horses, and every kind of animal you can find

In addition, you must calmly introduce your puppy to the following stimuli in a safe and positive manner (in some cases, this means starting at a considerable distance and working up to being closer as the puppy shows he is not afraid):

• Shopping centers, flea markets, parades, marching bands, fireworks, loud noises
• Blow dryers, vacuum cleaners, power washers, leaf blowers
• Linoleum, wood floors, cement, wire grating, carpeting, Astroturf, grass, gravel, water, sawdust, asphalt, sand, and every other surface you can think of
• Cars, car rides, bicycles, motorcycles, golf carts, boats, horse-drawn carts, shopping carts, baby buggies, skateboards, rollerblades, elevators etc.
• Woods, fields, subdivisions, ball parks, cities, playgrounds, beaches

When you’re done, keep giving them extra doses of safe kids, people in uniforms and strange noises, because those seem to be the things that come back to haunt even some of the more well-adjusted dogs through their lifetime.

Socialization is also not just a 7 week process, that ends when the pup is past the Critical Socialization Period. You should continue to give your dog opportunities for socialization with people and other dogs and new situations throughout his or her lifetime.

Now, onto the obedience training. This starts at 8 weeks of age, also. A puppy has it’s full adult brain when it is 49 days old (seven weeks). He or she will be a little learning “sponge” from that time onward. If you are not teaching positive lessons to the puppy, like the following, then you are, in effect, TEACHING your dog it's OK to be bad:

• Sitting gets attention; jumping up does not
• Eye contact is a good thing
• Doors slam shut suddenly when you try to barge out them; and open for the SIT and wait behaviors until told it is ok to proceed
• Humans are pretty good about feeding you right on time; your job as the dog is to sit and wait until the owner says it’s okay to dig in (otherwise the food goes away!)
• Begging is fun! At mealtimes you “beg” by going to your pillow and lying down quietly, and ignoring the dinner table. That’s a sure fire way of getting goodies while on your mat.
• Rough play results in the play session ending (humans are tender!)
• If you really want something, the best way to get it is by looking at the human for permission. Scraping human body parts with your claws doesn’t work; Diving on dropped food doesn’t work; Dragging the owner by the leash toward something you want doesn’t work; ASKING works (see article on indirect access).
• Whew, all these lessons and play make me too tired to be "bad"!

Most people think that obedience training consists of come, heel, down, sit and stay. These are just the behaviors that help you along with your training and communication with your dog. Just taking an obedience class and teaching your dog these things will not result in a more well-behaved dog! You have to apply the lessons to everyday scenarios, so that the obedience training will really pay off for you.

Take the cue “come,” for example. The dog may learn that it means to come running to the parent when he or she hears the word in obedience class, or while practicing in the kitchen. It’s another thing entirely to expect the dog to stop chasing a squirrel and come to the parent to avoid running into the street and being killed by traffic. The same with the cues, down and stay. They are nothing by themselves, but can work wonders when asking the dog to go lie down on his or her pillow and stay for the duration of dinner time. It is the job of the parent to take these individual basic cues and work them into a “prescription for good manners,” by putting them to use in the dog’s everyday life.

It’s important to know that, as each cue is combined in a new environment, the dog must learn and rehearse this new combination until it has a solid history of bringing the dog what he wants. Teaching the individual cues are like learning the letters of the alphabet. They mean more when you put them with other letters to form words and phrases that are meaningful. Here are some ways to use the obedience exercises you learned in dog training class to form meaningful “messages” for the dog. Each example is written from the dogs perspective.

Sit:

• Sit before going through doorways.
• Sit instead of jumping up on people to greet them.
• Sit to get ready to learn a new behavior, like sit up, wave, speak, down…
• Sit to settle down and calm yourself.
• Sit for your supper
• Sit and look at the parent when you want ANYTHING (rather than just grabbing it for yourself)

Down:

• Down to relax or maintain a position for a while (as in, go to your bed and lie down)
• Down to better facilitate a grooming or massage session.
• Down to present a less threatening posture to an aggressive dog (it acts as a calming signal to the other dog).
• Down to settle down and calm yourself.
• Drop down on command from a dead run, to possibly save your life.
• Down to get ready to learn a new behavior, like crawl, roll over, where’s your belly?, or head down…

Stay:

• Stay to not disturb something (a waxed floor, a picnic on a blanket, a kitten in the yard, wet paint, a dangerous situation)
• Stay to remain in place until the parent comes back for you (so as not to become lost or get into trouble)
• Stay to maintain a static behavior for an extended period of time (sit, down, stand)
• Stay to not leave a confined area, as in: stay in the boat, stay in the car, stay in your crate, stay on your bed, stay in the kitchen…
• Stay as in: Wait until called by the parent or released by the parent
• Stay to get ready to learn a new behavior, like catch, sit/down from a distance, anything from a distance…

Come:

• Come close to the parent.
• Come toward the parent.
• Come away from something.
• Come as in “come front” (sit in front of parent).
• Come to dinner, get groomed, get a cookie, come inside…

Heel:

• Walk on the leash without pulling as in: Walks, Hikes, Backpacking, parades, etc.
• Heeling for tests like CGC, TDI, DSA, CD, Rally Obedience
• Go to heel position to get ready to do something else (greet people, go for a walk)
• Go to heel position for control (good place to be… right beside your parent)
• Go to heel position to get ready to learn a new behavior (wave, back up, stay, freestyle obedience moves, etc.)
• Move along in the heel position to get ready to learn something else (freestyle moves, like weaving through the legs, backward heeling, and other maneuvers)

Leave it:

• Don’t eat the poisonous, rotting meat lying on the ground.
• Don’t chase the porcupine or the rabid raccoon.
• Don’t take the cheese out of the baby’s hand.
• Don’t eat the baited fish hook that some angler left on the beach.
• Don’t roll in the rotting carp carcass lying on the beach.
• Don’t chase the squirrel across the highway.
• Don’t run after the kids on their bikes.
• Don’t eat the plate of food the parent left on the coffee table.
• Don't worry about the thing that is distracting you
• Look at the parent and don’t do anything until told it’s ok

How to teach all of these exercises is covered elsewhere on this website (How to teach the Dog Scout test behaviors in the "Certification Program" section.) It is done by giving the dog choices, and rewarding the correct choice (choosing to stay brings rewards; choosing to blow off the lesson and leave makes the rewards go away.) This is referred to as positive reinforcement. If the training class in your area is not based on positive reinforcement, you should look elsewhere for a training class. Most of the “good dog” training will take place at home, anyway, and not in a training class. Training class is just where the PARENT learns how to get response to the basic cues talked about in this article (it can also be a good place for your dog to socialize with other dogs). It is what the parent does with those basics, once they are learned, that will create a canine companion that is a joy to live with… or not!

Training your dog for good manners is a lifetime commitment. Each new situation is another training challenge for you and your dog. Instead of saying to your dog, “What’s wrong with you? You KNOW this! You’re embarrassing me!” Instead, use the opportunity to take your dog through the previously learned training steps to show him those rules apply in this new context. If he or she is behaving badly, obviously there is some confusion as to whether the usual rules apply in this new situation. Dogs will test their limits. Do not assume that because the dog always stays when asked to do so at home, that he or she will also do so in a distracting or new environment, where you have not practiced. Dogs do not generalize well, and don’t recognize even basic cue words in new environments and situations until taught they still work and apply. This is why you have to take your behaviors “on the road” and practice them in unlikely places away from your home environment, so that the dog will recognize the “sentences” you are putting together from the individual “letters” that he or she learned in the basic obedience training.