Effective communication is crucial for cultivating a strong connection between you and your puppy, enabling them to understand and respond to your instructions. Mastering clear and concise communication ensures consistent and successful teaching of basic obedience commands. Here’s how to consistently convey your commands with clarity and precision, strengthening the bond between you and your new puppy!
The Puppy Academy student: Waylon!
A question we often get from our brand new puppy parents before they get started with puppy training at The Puppy Academy is: "Why doesn’t my puppy listening to me?!” The truth is, it's often not a matter of them ignoring you; rather, it's about clarity in communication, and how they view you. Puppies don't instinctively grasp language nuances; they need guidance that comes from their leader (parent). Overloading commands with excessive words is a common mistake new puppy parents make that confuses them.
But just saying a command, isn’t the same as being clear. You need to engage your puppy so their focus is on you, show them what you want them to do first (you can do this by using a lure which we covered in our previous blog), and say the command to create the association between the behavior and the word. When you first start on the puppy training journey, you’ll repeat a similar formula for each command until your puppy learns each one and can move on to building connections. More to come on that in later blog posts, but first, to help you remember the sequence of how to ask your puppy a command the right way, we developed this step-by-step process that’s easy to remember and follow!
Attention
↓
Eye Contact
↓
Command
↓
Marker “Good!” (Reward with food)
↓
Marker “Break!” (Reward with food)
If you haven’t read our previous blog that covers starting your puppy off with the basics, we talk about an effective technique we like to use with our students called “luring” to help gain your puppy’s attention and eye contact. In the beginning phases of your puppy training, you can also use luring as a way to show your puppy what you want them to do!
Quick Guide on Giving Your Puppy a Command, the RIGHT Way!
Let’s break down what each of the actions in this sequence really means and how you can start to apply them to your puppy training now!
1. Attention: First thing’s first, start off by gaining your puppy’s attention by calling out their name.
2. Eye Contact: Establish eye contact with them by using a lure with food. To do this: bring the lure up to your pup’s nose so they focus on it, then slowly bring it up to your eyes to draw in their focus!
3. Command: Next, ask the command that you want your puppy to do, for example, “Sit”. For extra direction, use a specific hand signal for the command when you say it, as pups understand body language first!
*Note: at this stage, if your puppy still hasn’t had at least some practice with basic obedience commands, you can continue to use a lure to guide them to perform the command. We’ll cover that in detail in the next section!
4. Marker “Good!”: Once your puppy does the desired command, say the marker word “Good!” and reward them with their food! This helps to reinforce the command and convey that we want them to keep doing what they’re doing!
5. Marker “Break!”: At this point, your puppy has successfully completed what you asked them to do so finish off with “Break!” to release your puppy.
*Note: For the last point, the goal here really is developing muscle memory, not having your puppy hold the command for a long period of time.
The Puppy Academy student: Kinsley!
Teaching the Basic Commands: “Sit” and “House”!
Now that you understand the process of how to give a command, you can start working on the two of the commands you’ll use most on a daily basis: “Sit” and “House” (a.k.a. crate). As we mentioned earlier, you may need to utilize the handy lure technique until your puppy understands the desired behaviors associated with the commands.
For the “Sit” command, it’s common for some puppies to naturally want to sit at your feet if you have a valuable reward in hand. That’s not the case with every puppy though and doesn’t mean that your puppy knows how to sit when you ask them to either. Bring the lure to your puppy’s nose and slowly guide your puppy into a sitting position by bringing the food over their nose and head. This movement encourages your puppy to follow, which will naturally bring their head up, and their hind down! When your puppy sits, say the command “Sit” and you can mark it with “Good!”, then reward them with food!
Your puppy’s “House” or crate will become part of their daily life, especially during potty training and for their daily puppy schedule. Sometimes though, you might need to encourage your puppy to enter their crate if it’s totally new to them. Train your puppy “House” by applying the luring method again, guiding your puppy into the crate with a piece of food and saying “House” and rewarding them once they enter! You can even give them a few more pieces of food once they are inside the crate to really reinforce the command and to help them feel comfortable in the crate.
If your pup needs some extra motivation to go in, try tossing in a special treat ahead of them to entice them to hop in and get it! For more help with crate training, check out our step-by-step guide to crate training a puppy.
The Puppy Academy students: Beignet and Bear!
7 Tips on Communicating Clearly and Effectively with Your Puppy!
If you’re still having issues getting your puppy’s attention and getting them to listen, take a little time to examine your body language cues and continue to work on the clarity of your communication. The tips below are good to keep in mind when puppy training:
1. Watch Your Tone of Voice
Excited voice = excited puppy! Calm voice = calm puppy. And when it comes to puppy training, keeping calm can help you successfully tackle your puppy training sessions. If your puppy is naturally excitable, keep a calm tone to help your puppy settle down, and keep engaged and focused.
2. Watch Your Energy Level
Confidence helps puppies succeed in puppy training! Remain calm, even if your puppy isn’t at the moment. Let them settle down so you can continue working with your puppy. And remember that your body language speaks volumes. Stand up straight when you are giving commands to establish a leadership role with your puppy and keep their focus on you!
3. Give Your Puppy Time to Respond
Puppies are young and still learning so be patient with them when you are giving them a command. “Sit”, “Come”, and “House” are bizarre words to them still, and they need a little time to process what they might mean. Allow up to three seconds for your puppy to respond to the command.
4. “Sit, Sit, SIT!” Don’t be a Broken Record
If your puppy isn’t responding to the command within a three-second window, don’t fall into the common puppy training mistake of repeating the command over and over until they get it right. All this does is diminish the value and meaning of the commands (and the same goes for their name!) and can lead your puppy to get excited and even tune you out. Instead, repeat the command word again once again in a strong tone, and use the corresponding hand signal and food lure to help guide them as to what you would like them to do.
5. Use Clear Words
“Okay-my-darling-sweet-pup-you-are-such-a-good-boy-now-Siiiiiiit!” These are all new, strange — and waaaay too many — words and can be very confusing for a new puppy! Your puppy won’t be able to decipher that what you actually want is for them to “Sit”. Use clear, concise single words when you are puppy training to help your puppy learn exactly what you are asking them to do. It will lead to less frustration for your puppy — and you!
6. Leverage is Your Friend
When training, you want to appear to your puppy as the most valuable person and thing in the room, over any other distraction! Your pup’s food is extremely valuable to them, so use it to your advantage by having it on you at all times. (If you don’t have a treat much yet, now’s the time to get one!) You’ll eventually wean them off of getting a reward for every command you ask, but in the beginning, this can provide amazing leverage for you and your puppy will be far more focused and willing to listen knowing you will hand over a delicious reward!
7. Professional Puppy Training Can Make a HUGE Difference
Puppy training is all about building your relationship with your puppy through skills and communication so they learn to respond to you. The beginning few weeks of your puppy’s training will involve consistently showing them the behavior you’re asking them to do, and creating the association between the behavior and commands. It’s easy to become discouraged if your puppy doesn’t get it right away. All puppies are different and some pick up on verbal commands faster than others. But that doesn’t mean your puppy is untrainable!
Working with professional puppy trainers who can give you a plan to follow and tweak training to your puppy’s needs when needed, can get you and your puppy communicating faster than trying to work through it on your own. This is what we help all our clients with in our puppy training school The Puppy Academy and in our Online School! For a simple puppy training program you can easily follow from anywhere with guaranteed results, check out The Puppy Academy Online School:
Have more questions about training your new puppy? Ask our trainers LIVE every Wednesday at 1 pm Pacific Time 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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Check out these blogs related to puppy training and more!
Puppy Training 101: Start Your Puppy with the Basics!
Puppy Training 101: How to Establish Leadership with Your Puppy!