Hi everyone... So, it's now 5 weeks this Saturday that we will be bringing home our little fluffball. After sorting out our plan with the raw feeding... we are now wanting to get some advice on training our puppy. A few questions are instantly in our minds: 1. What is first ( and does this begin on the first day he is home or do we just let him completely settle for the few days)? 2. Clicker training.... I have read a lot (the full labrador handbook) and all the online stuff but i'm still a little hazy on exactly the timings of the click, the vocals being incorporated etc. Could anyone advise please? Finally 3. Any other advice on training the little one - I have three weeks now off with him so want to get as much done as possible so it makes the whole process easier and therefore when my partner has the other 2 weeks off after my 3... He can move on wit the training before we start out training classes in May Any advice would be perfect and very much appreciated! Thank you x
Sorry - I just wanted to follow through with my promise to upload a picture of him... He is about 3 and a half weeks now
Oh, lovely! Give him a day or so to settle in before thinking of any training, but take his lead. If he's super chilled, then there's no reason you can't start charging the clicker straight away, because this isn't "training" as such, just building an association. You just need to make sure he's relaxed first, then click-treat. Click-treat. Don't wait for any particular behaviour, just get ten treats in your hand and do that charging, a few times in a day. When you click, you must follow up with a treat, even if in between he did something you don't like. The click is a promise, and you don't want to break your promise! Then, what you train is up to you! What do you think will be most important? For example, I've not taught my 15 week old puppy "sit" or "down" or most of the other regular "first" behaviours yet. I have no use for them at this stage and they will be easy to put on cue later. But, because I want to try my hand at showing with her, I have been teaching her to stand since early on. She gets rewarded for offering me a nice square stand. When I feed her, I wait for her to stop throwing herself at me and to stand calmly for a second before she gets her food. With my older dogs, because I had no interest in showing, I taught them a "default sit", meaning, when they want something and don't know how to get it, they sit to ask "please". So, that may be something to consider. Door etiquette is good to start on early, so they learn to wait until told to go through the door. Desensitisation to collar, harness, lead. Husbandry skills - grooming, nail trimming, checking teeth, ears and eyes. A hand target is fun to teach and very useful down the line. Initial stages of recall. I also want Luna to be trained as a gun dog, so we play fun and basic retrieving games. I'm sure there's plenty more, as well as your obvious toilet training and crate training, which take up a LOT of time! Training sessions for a little baby should be no more than a minute or two. Get ten treats in your hand and, once they've gone, the game is over. You can do several in a day, but never longer than that, or he'll get tired and bored. You want to always finish a session with him wanting more. As for clicking, think of the click being the sound of a camera shutter. You click at the exact moment where, if you took a photo, you'd see the behaviour you were trying to capture. You don't add a verbal cue until you would put a £100 bet on him performing the behaviour. Then you use new cue - old cue - behaviour. So, to use the example of a sit, you'd start by using a food lure, which you raise from his nose up. The instant his bum hits the floor, you click. Do this a handful of times, then just pretend to have a treat in your hand, but make it clear after the click that there was nothing there, and feed him from the other hand. Then, stop pretending, but make the similar movement. If you wish to keep a visual cue, you would, at this point, start refining that, until he was able to sit when you had your hand open, palm up, moving in an upwards direction. Either way, once you've done as much as the hand as you wish, and you're ready to add a verbal cue, you will say "sit", followed by your hand cue, which will make him sit. Do this a few times, then wait a couple of seconds after the "sit", before the hand. If he sits in this time, great, keep practicing that. If not, use the hand signal again, and keep pairing verbal cue, visual cue, behaviour. After a few more goes, try the pause again. Eventually, he will get it, and you can start to drop the visual cue - although be prepared to have to use it as a back up now and again until he completely understands the verbal cue. I hope that helps?
That's great information, thank you. I totally understand the letting him settle kind of thing I suppose I'm just concerned that I want to get started with the training as i'm really excited! I think door etiquette would be a good one for us as my partner has a 5 year old daughter who comes twice a week so we would need him to be calm around her (she is unbelievably advanced for her age so understands if we tell her to be calm exactly why that is and even understands the clicker training we have been telling her about!). I suppose for showing etc the training you do is brilliant, for us we aren't planning on doing anything like that so I'd probably opt for the basic sit, down, leave etc. With his name and the 'come' cue.... Obviously we want him to learn 'come' and we were getting a little confused last night whether or not we wait until he is on his way over to us to say 'Barkley, come' and then it's more of a learned behavior where me makes the association. I feel like I've read so much so it's all merging into one!!
Yes, wait until he's on his way to you before you say the cue. Only begin to say it beforehand when you know he'll reliably come to you I strongly recommend the 'total recall' book. I've used it successfully on five pups now. ...
I'd advise not using his name. Names get over-used and so they become "white noise" - completely meaningless. To start off with, you only use the recall cue when the puppy is moving towards you. I'd recommend getting Total Recall and working through that. I'd also advise using a whistle, it's a lot more powerful than your voice. The Acme 210.5 or 211.5 whistles are perfect, as they are tuned so each whistle (of the same tone) has exactly the same note. This means when you need to replace your whistle, it's easy to do so without confusing the dog because the new one sounds different. Leave is useful, but you should probably start with "no mugging". Kikopup has a good video on this. In fact, it's worth looking through all her videos. As you're new to the clicker, I'd advise practicing before you get your puppy. You can do this by bouncing a ball and trying to click at the precise moment it touches the floor. Or, ask your OH to do something (sit on a chair, for example) and click when his bum touches the seat. He should try to fake you out a bit, too, to make it more realistic When you start clicker training, it's worth picking something that's not important to work on first. That way, you can practice without "breaking" anything
I won't give you any more advice as you've already received fantastic suggestions, but just wanted to say he is adorable
OUr puppy learnt sit and her name first up in those first couple of weeks - it will help put you ahead when you start training. As does learning how to bring puppy alongside this we learnt when she was around 14 weeks and started the bigger puppy pre school obedience classes (after the 4 weeks of puppy pre school at the vet).
