Puppy training tips

Tips to set you and your puppy up for success

Our puppy training tips are guaranteed to set you up for success. There are a few basic cues any puppy owner can start teaching their puppies. These cues are essential to setting boundaries, creating a solid puppy-owner bond, and stimulating your puppy’s mind. These cues will set your future training practices up for success by creating a solid foundation when your puppy’s mind is still like a sponge.

Helpful Tips Before Training Your Puppy

Before starting with the step-by-step training guides, consider a few training tips. Knowing and implementing these suggestions will make training easier, getting the most out of each training session. The more consistently you implement these tips, the quicker your puppy will learn and the more training success you will have.

Positive Reinforcement Works

The basis of your reward system should be positive reinforcement. Like people, dogs need some reward showing them that they did something right. Using a high-quality reward that your puppy will love will prompt them to repeat activities that led to the reward in the first place. For instance, if you give your puppy a treat after sitting on command, s/he will reperform the task with more ease and willingness than when s/he didn’t receive a reward.

Some people correct or scold their dogs if they don’t do as the owner asks. All this does is shut the dog’s mind down, making it less likely that information will be retained. So, don’t scold your dog. Instead, be patient and try the training steps again if your dog struggles.

Using Markers Alongside Positive Reinforcement

A marker is a sound you make to let your puppy know which exact action s/he just performed correctly. It could be a simple word, like “yes,” or it can be a clicker. For example, if you teach your puppy to sit, say “yes” or make a click the moment your puppy’s bum touches the ground. This way, s/he associates the correct action with the command you use.

Without markers, dogs can get confused about what the owners want them to do. For example, if you teach your puppy to come to you, s/he might associate the command “come” with standing up from a sit instead of the action of walking toward you. So, it is essential to mark the action associated with your cue.

Then, after you’ve given the marker, you can give a reward. The reward is a motivator, so your puppy repeats this acceptable behaviour in the future. So, to sum it up:

  • A marker marks the correct action
  • A reward is a positive reinforcement tool showing your pup s/he did something right

You can use toys or treats as rewards. Our Training Treats ideal to use for little rewards as they are just a small piece ideal for little pup mouths and also they are low in calories but high in protein as they are 100% pure meat. Sprats are also great or if you want to give your pup a ‘bigger’ reward at the end of the session, Rabbit ears would be a good option.

How Long to Train Your Puppy Every Day

Puppies don’t have large attention spans, so don’t over-train them. Overtraining can make a puppy bored and cause them to dislike training in general. Instead, train your puppy for 5-10 minutes sessions at a time. You can include 1-5 sessions daily, depending on your puppy’s eagerness to learn or your available schedule. As you do these sessions, also add some variety to the training. For example, don’t just teach your puppy to sit in one session. Try to vary two different cues. It keeps your puppy’s mind sharp, and don’t let them predict which command comes next.

Consistency is Key

With every training session, puppies learn quicker when their owners use the same techniques, step-by-step guides, reward systems, markers, verbal cues, and rewards. Because dogs are creatures of habit that thrive on structure, consistency will make your training even more successful. Even if there comes a day when your puppy doesn’t want to learn, don’t lose heart or patience but stay consistent.

Puppy Training Tips – The Key to Set Your Puppy Up for Success

It’s easy to get frustrated when our puppies don’t do as we ask, no matter how well we follow trainers’ advice and expertise. The fact is that your puppy will struggle at times. S/he won’t always be receptive to training, or some days s/he will struggle to understand you in training sessions. However, you can still do a few things to set your puppy up for success:

  • Start each training session in an area with little to no distractions. The fewer distractions there are, the easier your puppy can focus on the task at hand.
  • Only when your puppy reliably does a command in the quiet room can you move to an area with more distractions. The idea is that your puppy listens to your cues no matter the number of distractions. So, by slowly increasing your pup’s ability to listen and tolerate distractions, you will have more control in busy areas like the dog park.
  • When you train a cue (e.g. “sit”), only say the word once. You want your puppy to learn that when you ask once, s/he should perform the associated action. If you use the command more than once, your puppy can learn that it’s okay to wait until you say it several times before s/he should comply.
  • If your puppy fails to do a cue, try the step-by-step instructions again. Some puppies take longer to grasp a concept than others, and that’s okay.
  • Never reward your puppy if s/he didn’t do exactly what you’ve asked. All this does is create confusion when training your puppy in the future.
  • End each training session successfully. This means that your puppy should successfully perform the activity associated with the last cue you give in that session. So, if you’re teaching your puppy something new and s/he struggles to grasp it, let your puppy perform an action s/he already knows before ending the session. Finishing your training with success gives your puppy confidence and makes future training exciting.
  • If you’re increasing the difficulty level of your training and your puppy makes a mistake, start the training steps from scratch. For example, imagine you’re teaching your puppy to stay, you’re increasing the difficulty from stepping two feet away to three, and your puppy moves out of the stay position. Then, go back to the basics and start the training as if your puppy has never done it before. This simple trick will help rewire your puppy’s brain and help prevent any bad behaviours from forming.

Once you feel ready to do some training, please read our Ultimate Guide for First Time Dog Owners, which will guide you how to teach your pup basic commands such as sit, stay, wait, come, lie down and walk on a lead without pulling. In the meantime, good luck with your training and if you need any help, drop us a line.

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