Training your puppy or dogThe first year you will spend a lot of time training your puppy. This is needed when you want to enjoy a well behaved dog in the next 10 to 16 years of your life. Puppy training starts at the moment the puppy comes in your home (most times about 8 weeks after birth). Potty training will be one of the first things you will do.
But in the months to come you will have to train the puppy in to certain other behaviors. If a puppy isn't trained in a good manner in the first 4 to 8 months, it will be difficult to re-train when it gets older. Like the saying goes "you can't teach an old dog new tricks". That's not completely true, but it will be much harder so it is best to start early. Training never stops. The moment you stop being consequent in your behavior towards the dog he/she will start doing things in a different way. And probably that's not going to be the way you like.
Before we tell you the different ways of learning to train your dog there is one thing you should realize. Dogs, like humans, have a period of puberty before becoming an adult dog. When that time comes, chances are that everything you have thought them in those first months will be forgotten. It depends on the breed of the dog how long this period will be and how much is forgotten by the pup/dog. But don't despair, it will all come back and then you can pick the fruits of all the training. However it is important to continue the training during this time even if it doesn't seem to have any effect anymore and the dog is driving you insane. Being consequent is what it's all about.
Training a dog is something that comes naturally only to a few persons on this planet. Most of us need a way to learn this fine art of training. There are different methods of doing this.
BooksYou can get different books on the subject and learn a lot from those. This can be difficult if you have never trained a puppy or dog before.
Puppy training courseYou can take a special puppy training course. Don't be fooled by the name, the puppy won't get any training here. These courses teach you, the owner, how to train your puppy. This is a better way to start then just by reading a book on the subject. And if it is a good training program you will get home assignments that you will need to teach your puppy before the next class. There are however some down sides to these training courses. One day, the final class will come and then you are on your own again. Another thing is that you will have to follow their schedule and that is not always in your or the pups favor. You will always have to keep in mind that the puppy does not have to much exercise before you go to class otherwise he/she will be exhausted. That is not something you want to expose your puppy to in this early stage of his/her life. Also don't take classes from trainers that will exercise your puppy for more then half an hour.
Puppy and dog training onlineThese days you also have the option of online Internet courses. They come in different forms, most of them are pdf documents you can download. There are also on line training courses that teach you in an audio/visual manner. Those training courses come close to the above mentioned real life courses and even have some advantages over them. A real life course has an end date, the online courses don't. You can take them over and over again and at those times that it's best for you and the puppy. And when your dog gets in to puberty and you start to think that you are doing it the wrong way you can take another look at that part of the training and confirm that it's the puberty blues showing in the dog and continue the training as you did before. And when the dog gets past puberty and becomes an adult you can still go back to see if your still correctly applying the things you learned. The online courses can also be supplemental to the real life training. Just see it as a back up for when the real life teacher is not around.
There is one online training that we favor above the others that are available. It's the training given by Dove Cresswell. Dove is a professional dog trainer in Hollywood. She has trained dogs for a lot of feature films and commercials. The reason we like here way of training is because she shows not only how to train your dog but also let's you hear how you should address your dog in such a way that the dog is always having fun. Training should always be a positive experience for your dog and that's the way Dove teaches you to do it. She believes in the reward system to train dogs to show a certain behavior. The training Dove teaches is not only for puppies but also for older dogs so you don't throw your money away.
You can find out more about Dove and here training videos here.
Finally it is up to you. You should invest in your dog and you will get back the rewards of your efforts. And remember, the dog is showing behavior you have thought him or her so teach them well.
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