Training a puppy when you first bring them home is critical. It is obvious that you need certain physical items such as a dog bed or crate, food and water bowls, puppy chow, collar, leash, toys, etc. Equally as important, all family members must decide and agree on routine, responsibility and rules.

The first few days are extremely important. Enthusiasm and emotions are up. Everyone wants to feed the puppy, play with the puppy and hold the puppy. Pre-established rules are easily broken. Everyone agreed that puppy will sleep in her crate but as soon as she’s home, someone melts and insists that puppy will sleep in bed. Everyone previously agreed not to let puppy jump up on them, but in the excitement, no one even notices that puppy is jumping up. No one sleeps the first night. Puppy wins and gets to sleep in bed. The next morning we find puppy has eliminated all over the bed. So the following night puppy is banned to her crate and screams all night. No one sleeps tonight either.

Grouchiness sets in; enthusiasm is down. No one wants to get up at the pre-agreed upon early morning feeding time. Who will be responsible for house training the puppy? How are we going to sleep with her constant whining and crying?

Your new puppy has just been taken away from her mom and littermates. She is vulnerable and impressionable. What she needs now is security and routine. Set up a small room to be her very own special haven for the next couple of months. Paper the entire floor and put her food/water bowls and bed in one corner. Scatter her toys everywhere.

Play with her quietly and gently. Don’t flood her with attention and activity. If she looks like she wants to sleep, leave her alone. Puppies need lots of sleep.

Decide who is responsible for feeding and cleaning up after her. Don’t deviate from the schedule. Routine is especially important for your puppy. Don’t spend all your time with her. If she is going to be alone during the day or night, she needs to start getting used to it now. If she wakes up from a nap and whines, resist the urge to run in and comfort her.

Biting is most common in young puppies and new dogs

Especially in play and while teething. It’s up to you to teach your puppy or dog what is acceptable and what is not. Most dogs and puppies are generally loving, sweet, adorable, affectionate and wonderful 99% of the time. Only 1% of the time does something specific happen that makes the dog bite. There are many causes of biting and here’s what you can do to prevent your puppy or dog from biting.

Dogs and Puppies Must Learn to Inhibit Biting

First of all, a puppy must learn to inhibit their bite before they are 4 months old. Normally, they would learn this from their mother, their littermates and other members of the pack. But, because we take them away from this environment before this learning is completed, we must take over the training for biting.

Socialization Prevents Biting

By allowing your puppy to socialize with other puppies and socialized dogs they can pick up where they left off. Puppies need to roll, tumble and play with each other. When they play, they bite each other everywhere and anywhere. This is where they learn to inhibit their biting. This is where they learn to control themselves.

If they are too rough or rambunctious, they will find out because of how the other dogs and puppies react and interact with them. This is something that happens naturally and it is something we cannot accomplish. It can only be learned from trial and error. There is nothing you can say or do to educate them in this realm. They must learn from their own experience with another dog or puppy.

Another major advantage of dog to dog socialization besides the fact that it will help your dog to grow up not being fearful of other dogs is that they can vent their energy in an acceptable manner. Puppies that have other puppies to play with do not need to treat you like littermates. So the amount of play biting on you and your family should dramatically decrease. A puppy that does not play with another puppy or dog is generally much more hyperactive and destructive in the home as well.

Lack of Socialization Causes Biting

A major cause of biting is lack of socialization. Lack of socialization often results in fearful or aggressive behavior. The two major reactions a dog has to something it is afraid of are to avoid it or to act aggressive in an attempt to make it go away. This is the most common cause of children being bitten. Dogs that are not socialized with children often end up biting them.

The optimum time to socialize is before the dog reaches 4 months. With large breed dogs, 4 months may be too late, simply because at this age the puppy may already be too large for most mothers of young children to feel comfortable around. For most owners, the larger the dog is, the more difficult it is to control, especially around children. If there is anything you do not want your dog to be afraid of or aggressive towards, you must begin to socialize your puppy with them before 4 months of age.

Trust and Respect Inhibits Biting

There are many other reasons your puppy will bite and you will have to take an active role in teaching them about biting. However, before you can teach your puppy anything, there are two prerequisites that are essential. They are trust and respect. If your puppy doesn’t trust you, there is no reason why he should respect you. If your dog does not respect you, your relationship will be like two 5 year olds bossing each other around. If your puppy does not trust and respect you, then when you attempt to teach your puppy something, he will regard you as if he were thinking, “Who do you think you are to tell me what to do?”

Use of Reprimands and Biting

Never hit, kick or slap your puppy. This is the quickest way to erode the puppy’s trust in you. Yes, he will still love you. Even abused dogs love their owners. A unique characteristic of dogs is their unconditional love. You don’t have to do anything to acquire your dog’s love. But you must do a lot to gain your puppy’s trust and respect. Another area where we destroy our dog’s trust in us is when we scold or punish them for house training mistakes and accidents.

Summary Tips on Biting

1. Reprimand alone will never stop biting.
2. If no respect exists, the biting will get worse. If you act like a littermate, the puppy will treat you as one.
3. If trust is not there, the dog may eventually bite out of fear or lack of confidence.
4. Inconsistency sabotages training. If you let the puppy bite some of the time, then biting will never be completely eliminated.
5. Don’t forget follow up. The puppy must understand that it is the biting that you don’t like, not the puppy himself. Make up afterwards, to cultivate trust and confidence in the puppy.

Most owners wait until a bite just “happens to occur” before trying to deal with it and are therefore totally unprepared when it happens – and do all the wrong things, thus making the problem worse.

Puppy mills, or puppy farms, are about as inhumane as it gets. Puppies are bred in bulk and forced to live in tiny cages amongst ghastly, poor conditions until they are sold to pet stores. Due to the lack of sanitary conditions, these puppy mills are a breeding ground for disease—many puppies end up with behavioral and health problems.

In Michigan, recent abuses have caused the state government to revive the “Puppy Protection Act” into state law. As reported by The Huffington Post, this new attempt came out of necessity, after a recent case of animal cruelty in Alleghan County. More than 300 puppies and dogs were rescued from a two-bedroom house, where they were being “raised for profit” by a local couple. The rescued dogs were dirty and many had minor health issues.

This incident in Alleghan County highlights the need for preventative legislation like the “Puppy Protection Act.” Many believe that the proposed bill could have prevented this episode, and would help stop similar events from happening again. “Something like this bill would give us the authority to make sure it doesn’t get to this point,” said Dr. Steve Halstead, a veterinarian with the Michigan Department of Agriculture.

Specifically, the bill would empower officials to regulate breeders who own more than 15 female dogs. This would enforce humane treatment of the dogs and their puppies, and prevent these breeders from becoming large-scale “puppy mills.”

Help limit the number of puppy mills and protect puppies from abuse. Sign below to support the Puppy Protection Act and the state representatives who have sponsored it.

Puppy training classes are important for several reasons but there can be some disadvantages also. Balancing these things and understanding the ideals behind them is important for your puppy.

• The advantages for your puppy are getting to be around other dogs and people.
• This socialization factor teaches him to accept strangers in public situations as normal. However it also means protection is important as puppies can be susceptible to parvo and other health issues if they run across exposure that we can’t see.
• It also gives structure to the puppy’s learning and gives you an outside person to ask about training issues, if any, or better ideas to get the results that you want.

Another disadvantage can be the length of training. Ideally training sessions are short, no more than 20 minutes to keep the learning fun and increase motivation. Because obedience is something best learned early puppy training classes are often recommended for puppies as young as 3-4 months.

• At this age they are young to stay focused for very long. As a trainer you want to stop asking just before your puppy gets tired.
• This keeps the puppy motivated to learn.
  •    If you sign up for puppy training classes that are 45 minutes to an hour, try to take a short play break part way through the session.
• This can be for a few minutes playing with a squeaky toy but as children need recess and adults need a break so do puppies need a short break from drilling and repetition. It helps them more easily work with you when you request focus from them.

Puppy training classes should focus on the basics. While fundamentals are good manners is important as well as making the learning fun.

• Examples of puppy training classes and the things taught are dealing with nipping, learning to walk on a leash and basic commands.
• Play time and interaction with others is also often a part of the class.
• Some have a more advanced class for older puppies to refine the skills but remember even at seven and eight months the puppy may look nearly grown but mentally is not ready for hard training yet.
• Working towards it and building on a foundation is excellent but remember to quit before he gets tired. Like us, when it becomes a chore and is demanded then it’s no longer fun to do. We begin to tune out and so will your puppy!

Of course there are some who can’t fit puppy training classes into your schedule but that doesn’t mean you should not fit in training your puppy. Whether a free mutt off the street or a $3000 show dog all dogs benefit from early training and manners! Teaching basic come when called, sit and stay and basic manners is expected. Socialization can come in other ways but puppy training classes allows all at the same place and time.

No matter what kind of dog or what work he’ll do all can benefit from early learning in puppy training classes. Whether a pet, a herding dog, watch dog or service dog this basic training is important and lasts a lifetime. It’s also a chance to bond with your puppy by spending time, not just money, with him.

NATALIE asks, “I have a silk rug from Turkey that I wish to train my dogs (black lab and welsh corgi) to not lay on. They are both smart dogs but I am not communicating what I want them to do effectively. I appreciate any guidance. Thank you, – Natalie”

Dear Natalie, It’s a good question. And the technique for training this behavior is really cool.

It’s the same approach we use to teach dogs to stay out of the street, or off the furniture. First, the dogs should be wearing pinch collars and tabs (1 foot leashes) any time you’re with them. And when you’re not with them, the dogs should be confined to an area where they cannot walk on the rug without getting corrected.

To start with, confine one dog, and with the other, put a 6′ leash on him. Now, throw something (like a toy) on the rug, that will tempt him to walk on it. As soon as he puts his first paw on the rug, say, “No!” and pop the leash (loose-tight-loose) in the direction that is away from the carpet.

Here’s the concept: You want the dog to think of the whole exercise as a safe zone/hot zone area. The safe zone is anywhere in the room EXCEPT the rug. The hot zone is the rug. The dog should come to understand that walking on the rug is similar to walking on a hot stove. It feels UNCOMFORTABLE, and he wants to get back into the safe zone as soon as possible.

Now, if the dog puts more than one foot on the rug, and actually walks to the center of the rug… it’s okay to drag (quickly) him back to the safe zone. This is one of the few instances where you’re actually pulling on the leash, instead of giving a quick “pop” on the leash.

What you’re doing is creating a constant negative motivation until the last of his four feet are off the hot zone. (When you rest your hand on a hot stove, it doesn’t just burn for a second… it keeps feeling uncomfortable until you take your hand off.)

Next, tempt the dog again. If your first correction was motivational, you’ll see him refuse to walk on the carpet. WHEN YOU SEE THAT THE DOG HAS MADE A DECISION, AND IT’S THE RIGHT decision… PRAISE HIM! WHEN THE DOG HAS MADE A WRONG DECISION, CORRECT HIM, AND THEN GIVE HIM THE OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE THE DECISION AGAIN. IF HE THEN MAKES THE RIGHT DECISION, YOU’RE GOING TO PRAISE HIM.

Next, you can put the tab on him and start doing the exercise with a variety of different distractions. If you’re half way across the room and he walks on the rug, you should say, “No!” as soon as his foot touches the carpet, and then “NO, no, no!” as you walk to him and immediately correct him back into the safe zone.

Your success with this exercise will depend on how motivational your corrections are, how precise your timing is (never correct the dog if he’s now in the safe zone) and your attention to making sure that you’re consistent in your enforcement until the dogs drop the behavior. Once you’ve done the one dog, put him away and repeat the exercise with the other dog.