6 Training Tips for Your Puppy

Did you know that it’s a smart idea to begin training your new dog, especially a puppy, immediately after you bring it home? Perhaps, you don’t know that puppy training will make life less stressful and more enjoyable for you and your puppy.

There are lots of training options for your puppy. Some options can be tricky while some are frustrating. To help you get started, here are 6 training tips for your puppy. These training tips are not only fun and easy lesson to do with your puppy but will also help to get you and your new puppy on the right track.

Training Tip 1: Teach Socialization

Teaching socialization should be the first and top priority. This involves exposing the puppy to its new family member, friends, neighbours, things and places in a way that is pleasant and not overwhelming for the dog.

Training Tip 2: Train Bite Inhibition

You wouldn’t want your puppy to grow into biting everyone in the neighbourhood during situations like when it might get scared or injured. Teaching bite inhibition will enable you to build the puppy’s ability to control the pressure of its bite. The best time to teach bite inhibition is mostly throughout playing with other puppies. 

If your puppy bites too hard while you play with the puppy, yelp then stop the play and ignore your puppy for some minutes. This will help the puppy to learn to control the pressure of its bite or will stop it from biting all together.

Training Tip 3: Train Handling

Most dogs act strangely or violently when touched in the wrong place, some even protest with growls, biting, or avoidance. This is because they were not trained with being touched or handled as a puppy. Such dogs can be dangerous around children.

You need to teach your puppy to love and tolerate getting touched using kibble and treats while they’re young. Every time you provide your puppy with its meal, gently touch it somewhere, like rubbing its ear, its paw, belly, and also try wiggling its tail gently.

Training Tip 4: Be Consistent with House Training

House training is the most time-consuming and hardest part of puppy training. Here are some house training tips you should consider for your puppy:

• Don’t use pee pads at all if you don’t plan to use them long term.
• Instead, give your puppy some potty training. Teach your puppy to go to the potty outside – you may need to take your puppy outside to the potty every hour during the day, and about twice during the night for the first few months of its life.

Training Tip 5: Try Crate Training

Crate training doesn’t only teach your puppy cleanliness but it also prevents your puppy from destructive chewing when it grows. A crate is a safe place to confine your puppy – where it can’t chew and swallow anything harmful.

Crate training also prepares your puppy for illnesses or injuries, travelling, boarding situations, and so on, and teaches your puppy how to self-entertain and self-soothe itself and stay calm.

Training Tip 6: Command Training

You need to teach your puppy some commands that help build manners, such as basic commands, obedience commands, and so on. Command training can help you prevent or manage some unwanted behaviours in your puppy and also keep your puppy safe, calm, and polite.

Some basic commands include sit, run, come, down, heel, stay, leave it, out, off, wait, place, and so on.

Other training tips for your puppy include:

• Food aggression training
• Reward good behaviour
• Discourage jumping right away
• Train your puppy to wait and give you eye contact before going to get its food

Final note

Though everyone has an opinion about dog training, the 6 training tips listed above should be basics for anyone getting a new puppy. Try these tips and don’t forget to be consistent with them.