We're getting our puppy in just over 2 weeks. He'll be 8 weeks old. I know "they" say begin training the day a puppy comes home, but how much training? - when do you enforce the behavior you want? (Ie calm door exiting behavior, walking on a lose leash, waiting for the dinner bowl, etc) - how much training is "too much" for an 8 week old? - what is reasonable behavior for an 8 week old? I know this is a broad question and it's hard to really clearly say my question. I know crate training, bite inhibition, potty training, basic commands, and even basic recall can begin immediately. But just curious about overall behavior and setting rules and boundaries. Where should my expectations be set? Hope this makes sense.
I wouldn't rush things. I think the thing your puppy needs to learn above all is that being with you is the best place to be -that near you it is safe and fun. I'd start taking them out for toileting every 30minutes from day one, but other than that I'd just play -get him to chase you, sit him on your lap and hold one end of a chew for him to gnaw (ricebones are good). Even a confident puppy can feel a bit overwhelmed at first, so just be gentle and have fun.
Play play play, I agree. It can be structured play, as pups need to learn there are rules to every game. I feel my inner Monica coming out, for any Friends fans here Formal training session should be no more than literally a minute or two. Set a timer for 2 minutes and don't go past that. MAKE IT FUN. I personally don't believe rewarding with treats in a dead-pan manner gets you anywhere near the results as it does if you're animated, and celebrate the small successes with a party. Your puppy could well be quiet for a few days as he adjusts. He could be distressed. He could be completely the opposite. It depends so much, it's impossible to say what is "reasonable". Some puppies don't start biting and being destructive immediately. Others do. What to expect? A steep learning curve! With things like waiting for the bowl and door behaviour, I would start on that the second he arrives, so he learns that he never pushes through a door and he never takes his food without being told he can (if that's important to you - it isn't to some, and that's perfectly fine, too). With the door thing, you need to consider that he will need to go out very regularly and very urgently, so that is not an appropriate time to be stopping him going through the door until he waits nicely, so I'd recommend for toilet trips, you pick him up to take him out. Loose leash will come later, but after a few days, you can start getting him accustomed to wearing a harness and collar. Take it slowly. Here's a video of me doing some DS work with Squidge and her harness: https://thislittledoggy.com/2017/01/08/desensitisation-to-the-harness/ In the meantime, if you have a garden, you can reward him lots for staying with you as you walk, trot and run around. If you want a strong heel at left, always reward on that side. If you want him to be able to walk both sides, mix it up. Again, keep it no more than a minute or two, keep it fun, high energy and, at the end, reward with whatever floats his boat - tummy rubs, a game of tug or whatever. If you can build up the value of games and toys at this stage, it sets you up to have a big repertoire of rewards later on, which is really useful. Most of all, enjoy, take lots of pictures and sleep when you can
Hi, I think the most important thing is for you to come up with a list of behaviours you want them to know as a fully grown dog. Things like waiting for food, loose lead walking (I messed up on this!), not jumping up on people, no mouthing / biting etc etc and then break it down to importance and work on those. I started with waiting for food, sit, toilet training, no biting and leaving her for a very short period of time and building it up. This was all I concentrated on for a few weeks, then I slowly added other things weekly.
Toilet training starts on day one. Start taking him out to his place as soon as he wakes up and give him lots of praise when he performs. He will have an instinct to follow you around but this will die off over the first few weeks. It's a good opportunity to get him accustomed to your recall signal. Whenever he's moving towards you give the signal. He will start to associate the signal with coming to you, which is a great instinct to develop. I hope you have lots of fun together, and please remember to take LOTS of puppy pictures. That wonderful time goes by so quickly.
Our first week with a new Guide Dog puppy is spent settling him into his new home - so quiet playing, feeding and playing with him in his crate, going outside every 30 minutes or so, and teaching him his name as part of recall. Not rushing an open door is started from the moment we get home, and waiting for his bowl starts with the first meal. Part of his two or three daily training sessions is sitting on the floor with pup between my legs, gently stroking and handling him from nose to tail and treating him as we go, starting with 2 minutes at a time. Then we'll have a break and do 2 minutes of clicker work. Every week this gets longer by a minute or two depending on how he's handling it. Whats nice is there's no rush, and Labs do love to learn.
Don't forget puppies need lots of sleep, they will play and then perhaps sleep for an hour or so and repeat that during the day.
@Labmama0701 I don't know if you have had other dogs? I would highly recommend the Happy Puppy handbook. It took me a while to get mine because local suppliers were out of stock and I live in Africa. But it should answer a lot of questions. Personally: For me, it was more of a learning curve FOR ME. I needed to "sync" with Harls and create a language, that we know from science and research, works and then build a foundation with that, so that we could use it later. So training Harley to understand positive reinforcement and use her own brain was a double sided sword...because the clever pup started making her own things up that she thought would work. But right in the beginning it was the absolute basics of positively reinforcing behaviour and getting her out quick enough for a wee And what I really needed to learn was that dogs are not dumb, they know when you are faking the positive stuff and when they are little puppies I don't think they care so much but as they get older and they are attuned to you they are very good at sensing it. So in many ways the first few months that are SO hard because most pups are weeing and biting and eating and playing what seems to be nonstop, we needed to dig deep to find positive behaviour from our side, for her. Oh, and we never took our eyes off her if she wasn't in her crate. We tried to prevent destructive behaviours.
I raised a husky when I was 14. She was 6 weeks when I got her. (not a good start. But she was a surprise gift from my mom so wasn't a choice.) I worked with her a ton but I had basically all the time in the world since this was the end of the school year and I had nothing to do. I took her to a lot of training classes and did everything with her. She turned out to be a good dog, but had some faults that were more than likely my fault, not hers. She was my baby for 14 years. I've been reading, aside from many many posts and articles from this site, but also Pippa's Total Recall and The Art of Raising a Puppy by the Monks of New Skete. Have also been watching tons of dog/puppy training videos on YouTube. And even listening to dog trainers on podcasts when I can't sit down to read or watch something. I literally can't stop learning about everything possible regarding puppy raising. I'm so excited for this new adventure. Maybe even obsessed!
I haven't read this book, but have seen some YouTube videos and it looks as though they're into pack leadership and lead jerks. So I'd suggest looking elsewhere for training ideas. For videos the kikopup ones on YouTube are great.
Yeah they do promote leash jerks. I'm finding their education and perspective on dog behavior pretty enlightening however. Ive been focusing mostly on this forum posts/articles and Total Recall. I haven't watched kikopup yet but have been seeing the name a lot on the net.
Harley must have read that book because she is currently using lead jerks to train me to go in the direction she wants And being on the recieving end of the jerks I would highly recommend giving it a skip with regards to training your pup. It is great that you are a dog person and have had all the experience with your husky. I can't wait to see photos of your new pup
From what I understand (and I admit I haven't read the book, I should do in order to be able to talk with better knowledge), their ideas of behaviour and training are very outdated and based on the dominance/pack model. This was hypothesised from a study done on captive wolves, which even the people who performed the study later dismissed as highly flawed. Yet, sadly, it formed the basis of a lot of the methods and "understanding" at that time, which has unfortunately pervaded the dog training world ever since.
Interesting. Will keep an open mind but will set it aside. I'm at a part unrelavent to me anyway. Lol
Have you seen the forum challenge thread? https://thelabradorforum.com/threads/july-august-challenge.20050/ Everyone who has posted videos there has trained their dog with reward-based methods. I just thought it might be an illustration of how reward-based doesn't mean you let the dog behave badly.
I have read some of that book years ago Monks of New Skete (checked it out at library) and it completely turned me off. Unfortunately my son in law swears by it with his shepherd. Anyway, I recommend any Karen Pryor books, and anything by Patricia McConnel. Pat Miller's book "The Other End of the Leash" is also great. Hope it's ok to recommend authors on here!
Rant alert... and a note to @Labmama0701, this is in no way aimed at you. I got to the end and then thought you might think it was attacking you for considering they might have some good ideas. I'm sure they do have some good points to be made in their book. But, alongside, they have some very dubious advice, if not downright dangerous. So, yes, step away from that book. What follows is a rant directed at no member of the forum, but the Monks of New Skete and "Brother Christopher" in particular Ew, I just read a letter by one of the monks, responding to an article someone had written about this book (that original article I've not read). https://www.whole-dog-journal.com/issues/3_3/letters/5078-1.html So, in his response, he not only shows a gaping void in his knowledge of behavioural science (negative reinforcement is not the opposite of positive reinforcement), but also is still saying it's perfectly fine to shake a baby puppy by the scruff to correct it. Er, no. No it's not. You are not its mother. You can't possibly give the same body language warnings that its mother would have to precede any interaction. Because, get this, you're not a dog. You also can't possibly administer any such "correction" in anything approaching the same manner. Because, get this, you're not a dog. Until you sprout a tail, a soggy nose, and learn to lick your own balls, stop pretending to be a dog because you suck at it!! No, waving treats around in front of a dog to get it to perform doesn't work long-term. But, you know what? That's not what positive reinforcement training is. It's not how it works. This response shows such a huge lack of understanding, which is just inexcusable because the information is all out there. You'd have thought that someone wanting to be top of their game would read about all the different methods, understand them, and then make an informed decision on how to proceed. But he clearly hasn't because he doesn't understand positive reinforcement at all. That in itself is enough to discredit him. Yes, positive punishment works, and can work very effectively. Anyone that says it doesn't is just as misinformed. However, it also opens the floodgates to all sorts of potential problems. Mis-time giving a treat and you have a dog that got a treat for doing something that you weren't quite after. Mis-time a physical correction and you've just punished your dog for doing something inoffensive. Yay, you. It has been shown in several studies (* cited below) that using positive punishment is associated with a rise in aggressive behaviours, often towards the handler. You don't get that from giving a bit of cheese at the wrong time. The idea that positive reinforcement training is permissive is another common misconception. Positive does not mean permissive. That's what the counter-point of positive reinforcement is about: negative punishment. That sound really bad, huh? It's got "negative" and "punishment" in the same phrase. But, in scientific terms it just means you're taking something away, and the dog doesn't like that. For example, to train my dogs not to take their food when I place their bowls on the floor, I don't growl at them, or bop them on the nose when they try to take it. I just lift it off the floor. Every time they move towards it, I lift it. This is negative punishment. I am taking something away (the food) and they don't like that consequence, so it stops their behaviour. Within a couple of days of doing this with my puppy, she knew that she had to sit and wait, without trying to get the food, until I released her to "take it". So, I ask anyone out there, when you can approach all these training situations without using any physical or emotional intimidation, why would you choose to do otherwise? I also note on their website, that they say they keep up with the latest advances, and so now use remote collar training. As more and more countries in the world are banning them, they consider this to be progressive?! Yet he can't be bothered to spend the time getting his head around how training with food rewards works. Right. * 1. Rooney N.J., Cowan S. Training methods and owner-dog interactions: Links with dog behaviour and learning ability. Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci. 2011;132:169–177. doi: 10.1016/j.applanim.2011.03.007. 2. Herron M.E., Shofer F.S., Reisner I.R. Survey of the use and outcome of confrontational and non-confrontational training methods in client-owned dogs showing undesired behaviors. Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci. 2009;117:47–54. doi: 10.1016/j.applanim.2008.12.011. 3. Blackwell E.J., Twells C., Seawright A., Casey R.A. The relationship between training methods and the occurrence of behavior problems, as reported by owners, in a population of domestic dogs. J. Vet. Behav. Clin. Appl. Res. 2008;3:207–217. doi: 10.1016/j.jveb.2007.10.008. 4. Haverbeke A., De Smet A., Depiereux E., Giffroy J., Diederich C. Assessing undesired aggression in military working dogs. Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci. 2009;117:55–62. doi: 10.1016/j.applanim.2008.12.002
Well said @snowbunny - very well said. Thanks for sharing. As of this morning, I'm currently reading Pippa's "Happy Puppy Handbook."
