Puppy training is a journey and it starts with taking the right first step! These activities will pave the path for successfully training your puppy in their basic obedience commands and life-long good manners!
The Puppy Academy Online School students: Becky, George, and their puppy Wally!
What are the “Basics” in Puppy Training?
Puppy training is all about building new skills in your puppy. The basics cover simple activities you can start practicing with your puppy to gain their focus, build your relationship, and start to establish clear lines of communication.
Communication is key when it comes to puppy training! Your body language and movements, tone of voice, eye contact -- all of these elements are communicating something to your pup!
In both The Puppy Academy and The Puppy Academy Online School, we love beginning to work on building communication by using a pup’s natural drive for food and play, eagerness to learn, plus their curiosity, to your advantage. Here’s how we introduce training to all our new pups!
Start with “Luring”!
“Luring” with The Puppy Academy student: Van!
Luring practice takes your pup’s natural drive and uses it to instill muscle memory and follower mode into your puppy. During your training session with your puppy, take a piece of their food, and bring it to your puppy’s nose so they become aware of what’s in your hand. When you gain your pup’s attention, you can begin to move your hand away and “lure” them to follow you.
The main objective of this activity is to gain your puppy’s focus when you are puppy training. When your puppy successfully starts to follow you, you’ve established a clear communication that you want your puppy to focus on you and not all of the other things happening around at home. Plus, it’s working on your pup’s desire to engage in something fun while learning at the same time! From here, this is a great opportunity to start introducing your puppy’s name and the obedience command “Come” into their skill set! More to come on that soon!
Use Clear “Marker” Words
If this is your first time hearing the term “marker” words, they are words puppy trainers use to indicate a certain desired behavior. We use “Good” when we want them to keep doing what they’re doing, “No” or “Nope” when we don’t agree with the behavior or choice the puppy is making, and “Break” as their release word, which means to stop doing or holding a command.
If you've heard of "clicker training" this is a similar concept, only we use a marker word instead of holding a separate device that makes a clicking sound when pressed to “mark” the command.
To use marker words while puppy training, introduce the marker “Good!” in combination with a command when your puppy completes the desired behavior you're asking of them. For example, if you asked your puppy to “Sit” and they did, reinforce the correct behavior with “Good!” The rationale behind this is to help develop an association with your puppy that they are doing the right thing and should continue to do so! For much younger puppies that are totally new to puppy training, you’ll want to reward the marker words until they begin to create the association. And it all depends on your puppy, how quickly they catch on to their commands when you can start to wean off and then eliminate rewarding each marker.
If your puppy does the wrong command, for example, starts to “Come” while supposed to be in “Stay”, simply say "Nope" followed with the desired command you want to help guide them. Don't forget to mark that with a "Good" and a reward! We always want to follow up with something positive.
“Break” is the final marker to use while training to release your puppy after a command is complete. What it does is tell your puppy that they no longer need to hold the command and can essentially relax! In the beginning, you’ll need to add value to “Break” and teach them what it means by giving your puppy a reward each time until eventually, you can begin to wean them away from rewards. Later on, as your puppy matures and as you build on your puppy’s duration, your puppy will learn to hold their commands for longer and longer chunks of time until they hear you say the release “Break”!
Teach Them Their Name and Introduce the “Come” Command!
One of the very first things to teach your puppy is their name! It’s super important that your puppy learns to respond to their name early on to help gain their attention when you need and respond to commands. With the luring technique, you can start teaching your puppy to follow you when you call their name by taking a piece of their food in your hand, bringing it to their nose then taking a step back and calling out their name as they follow you.
Keep your puppy on a leash during this exercise so they don’t run off if something catches their attention. And if your puppy doesn’t get it right away, instead of pulling them toward you, just reset and repeat the same luring technique! Hint: This is also a great opportunity to introduce the “Come” command once your puppy has learned their name! If you want to learn more about effectively teaching your puppy their name and getting them to respond to it every time, read up on our tips in, “Play the Name Game: How to Teach Your Puppy Their Name!” blog!
The Puppy Academy student: Mia!
Teach Calm Thresholds and Impulse Control!
Puppies have a natural curious drive and can get excited at the endless possibilities available with an open door in front of them! But bolting through doorways isn’t a good or safe habit to allow your puppy to develop. The best way to manage this is establishing calm thresholds, starting with your puppy’s crate (or as we call it, “House”).
Start by creating moments where your puppy needs to wait in order to exit their crate. If your puppy tries to step out of their crate without you asking them to “Come”, use the crate door and just lightly close it again so your puppy can’t continue forward. You might need to repeat this a few times until your puppy realizes maybe they should just check in with you and wait. As your puppy progresses with this exercise, you’re helping them build impulse control and lay the groundwork for them learning to apply it in other situations.
Impulse control training can also be applied to feeding time, especially for those excitable puppies jumping up for their bowls! In this scenario, you can use your puppy’s crate to help teach your puppy to wait for their food and water bowls. By applying the same technique as calm thresholds, with your puppy in their crate, lightly close the crate door if they start to take a step forward for their bowls. Doing so, you’re creating that moment of pause and teaching your puppy that the desired behavior is calm and patience instead of excitement and jumping. Their reward for doing this, of course, if getting to eat their meal!
Establish Eye Contact with Your Puppy
Communication with your puppy will no just depend on your verbal cues, but teaching them to check in with you regularly. Creating the habit of gaining eye contact with your pup helps keep them looking to you as their leader for their next command!
At first, you’ll probably need to lure your puppy’s gaze up to your eyes with a piece of their food. Start to do this during a training session by luring your puppy to look up at you (raise the food up to your eyes) and marking it with a “Good”! Then you can start adding in commands to follow the eye contact. This will really help as your puppy progresses with their basic obedience training and take on more challenging commands and routines as they grow!
Introducing training to your puppy can feel like a daunting task, but by beginning with just these few basics: luring, marker words, name recognition, “Come”, thresholds, impulse control and eye contact, you’re creating the best foundation to build the rest of your puppy’s training on!
Get more step-by-step plus 1-on-1 help with this with The Puppy Academy Online School!
Even if you have started already some training, incorporate these activities into your training sessions and you will see how much more engaged, eager, and responsive your pup becomes. And make sure to keep following us along each week for more Puppy Training 101!
Have more questions about training your new puppy? Ask our trainers LIVE every Wednesday at 1 pm PT on our Instagram @thepuppyacademy and TikTok @thepuppyacademy during the Ask A Puppy Trainer Show! All replays are posted afterward, and you can catch up on our last ones on our YouTube channel!
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