- Breeders, Veterinarians and Pet Stores are the first point of contact with puppies and any successful puppy raising program depends on you. Please do your best to ensure that puppy owners contact trainers as early as possible to prevent them from going to shelters.
- Puppies must be safely socialized to people and taught to enjoy being hugged and handled (restrained and examined) before they are three months old, otherwise, during adolescence they will likely become wary and fearful and maybe aggressive towards people. Socialization is an ongoing process and must start very early and is on ongoing process.
- Puppies need to be raised with housetraining, chewtoy-training and alone-time-training programs up and running from the outset in order to prevent housesoiling, destructive chewing, excessive barking and separation anxiety.
- Puppies benefit from early manners training — lure/reward training is as quick and easy as it is enjoyable.
- Start out ahead by searching for a puppy that has been raised with errorless housetraining and chewtoy-training programs underway, that has been safely socialized with and handled by at least a hundred people and has been taught some basic manners.
- Prevent housesoiling, destructive chewing, excessive barking and separation anxiety by starting your puppy’s errorless housetraining, chewtoy-training, and alone-time-training programs the very first day he/she comes home.
Tracy is running puppy classes and wants to make them as useful and successful as possible. Unfortunately, she’s having trouble getting the volume of puppies that will allow her puppies to get a variety of socialization experiences with other dogs. Jamie & Kelly explain how she can still provide plenty of socialization with people and props. And she can certainly use a rotating schedule of puppies, or a regular play session for puppies to interact with adult graduates of her puppy school. It’s really valuable for puppies to play with a variety of dogs of a variety of ages, assuming it can be done in a controlled and safe manner.
October 5th, 2010 by Dr. Ian Dunbar
Whatever tools you use to train your dog, it's important that you phase them out eventually. Ultimately you want a dog that will listen to verbal commands under any circumstances, off-leash, at a distance, surrounded by distractions. It's just as easy to become dependant on a leash or a shock collar as it is to become dependant on food treats. With lure reward training you can phase out the use of food and replace it with life-rewards, the fun and play that are probably you got a dog in the first place!
Dogs act like dogs. However, rather than teaching them how to appropriately act like dogs when living with people, many owners try to eliminate the dog's natural tendencies altogether by punishing the poor dog every time he acts like a dog. However, since the dog's behaviors are both innate and habitual, the punishments are often ineffective. Unpleasant? Often! But ineffective nonetheless.
 I believe the term “Retreat ’n Treat” was first coined by Suzanne Clothier. I initially called the technique “Retreat With Honor” after getting into a dodgy situation with an Akita. Basically, we were much too close and the situation was beginning to escalate — the Akita growled and I reprimanded. Both of us desperately wanted to normalize the interaction without losing face.
The wicked witch of Wycombe paused to howl at the full moon before ripping another mouthful of flesh from the freshly killed rabbit. Lycanthropy — a temporary transformation of witch into wolf? Or perhaps a form of madness, wherein the patient imagines himself as a wolf and develops a growly voice and a depraved appetite for raw red meat. Unbelievable? A dog becoming a person? A person becoming a dog? Not necessarily. Many people treat their dogs as humans in furry suits. Some trainers fancy domestic dogs to be wolves and yet other trainers go the whole lycanthropic hog and imagine themselves as wolves inflicting wolfy-punishments to dominate dogs and convince them to tow the line.
The easiest way to begin training your dog is by using food as a lure. But you dont want the dog to listen to you only when you have a treat, so the first step is to phase out food lures.
LURE/REWARD TRAINING
The science of lure/reward training is pure and simple —as simple, in fact, as 1–2–3–4:
1. Request
2. Lure,
3. Response
4. Reward.
For example: 1. Say, “Sit,” 2. Lure the dog to sit by moving a food lure upwards in front of the dog’s nose, so that 3. As the dog raises his head to follow the food, he compensates by lowering his rump to the ground and sits — the desired Response and so, 4. Reward the dog with a scratch behind his ear, by throwing Tennis Tug ball to retrieve, or simply just give him the food.
September 9th, 2010 by Dr. Ian Dunbar
Dr. Ian Dunbar explains the absolutely critical nature of puppyhood. Young puppies are impressionable, adorable, and eager to learn. With a little preparation and training they can learn so much, and they can learn it so quickly that they'll be inoculated against the problematic behaviors that are so very predictable and cause adolescent dogs to end up in shelters. Owners (and shelters, breeders, anyone who finds themself caring for a young pup) need to start their puppies off right, with an effective housetraining, socialization and obedience training program that starts the very first moment the pup comes home.
This is just an hors d'oeurve of what's on the menu of my latest seminar series, check out my 2010/2011 appearance schedule if you'd like to take a bigger bite!
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