Tips To Ease The Training Experience

Never undertake any formal training lesson if you are not in a good mood. If you do not adhere to this rule, you will almost certainly lose your patience with your puppy. This can only result in frustration and problems for you both.

Never make lessons long and boring. Restrict the early sessions to no more than ten minutes each. You can, however, give the puppy three or four les¬sons over the course of a day. Always commence and end lessons on an upbeat. This means start with some¬thing the puppy can already do.

Give praise. This will set the pattern for what is to follow. End with something the pup can do so that its memory of lessons is pleasurable. Spend a few minutes playing with the puppy after a lesson. This again acts to reinforce that lessons are fun. If things are not going well, don’t continue with the lesson.

End with something positive. Your puppy will only learn from what it does right, not from what it does wrong. Never physically punish your puppy if it is doing badly—this will only rein¬force the notion that training sessions are not pleasurable. If the pup is not doing well, it simply does not know what is expected of it.

Always keep commands short. If you start to yell out long sentences, these are meaningless and will merely frustrate the puppy. Make notes on problem areas so these can be studied when you have time to sit and think things out. The problem is almost certainly of your making rather than the puppy. Remember, you are the teacher, not the puppy. Always conduct training sessions where there are no other distractions— which includes other people. You need to get your puppy's full concen¬tration. Pups can only concentrate for a few minutes at a time, after which their mind will start to wander to other things.

That is the way with all juvenile animals, so never expect your puppy to be different Never attempt to teach a given command within a certain number of lessons. It is not important that your puppy progresses as rapidly as a neighbor's pup or one owned by a friend. Other pups may be more intelligent than yours, their owner may have a greater talent to train than you have, or it may be a mixture of these reasons. If you are satisfied that progress is being made, then things will work out, even if it takes a little longer than you perhaps anticipated.

If things just are going from bad to worse, then you must stand back and reevaluate what might be going wrong. Normally, the best course to take is to go right back to the beginning and start again.