What your puppy will have done with us -(before Fast Track Training)
Most breeders don’t do early work with the pups, as it takes an enormous amount of time and commitment. However the evidence shows that pups that are worked and played with from young will take that additional confidence and experience with them through life.
Puppies will still require training, consistently, and well beyond the level of just puppy school. If you aren’t getting the results you want, then you will need to engage a professional trainer to assist.
Before your puppy comes home, they will have done biosensor training from 3 -16 days of age. This is also called early neurological stimulation, and there is a video here which explains about it here. We find it makes a big difference to pups.
After that pups become used to different noises, different surfaces and have the chance to meet quiet, older strange dogs, in a safe way.
We set them up so they start learning to toilet outside in our artificial turf runs as soon as they begin leaving the ‘den’ at about 3 weeks. This will make it easier for families to house train when puppy arrives home.
Every day they are played with, and they are called to food with a fast, high pitched “pup pup pup” call. We reward behaviour that has 4 feet on the ground.
The early work with pups increases confidence when they arrive, and helps them settle in more readily.
Pups have not met children or other species, however tend to do very well with both.
So, pups have had an excellent start. Please make sure to continue with socialising when puppy comes home. As you will have read in Puppy Zen, the first couple of months when your puppy comes home are important.
Training Videos
There are excellent dog training videos HERE at McCann Dog Training. Please look for the appropriate videos here and implement what they suggest before contacting us. This is a video on training during the first week. Please note their suggestion to keep puppy on a lead while inside. We completely agree with this in the early days or weeks of training.
Before puppy comes home
Pups do not arrive trained at 8 weeks. That is a process that you, as the dogs’ owner and family are undertaking. What is acceptable behaviour and what isn’t? Behaviours that are not a problem with a little puppy, may be a obnoxious or dangerous in a grown dog. Behaviours that you are best to prevent ever starting and nip in the bud when they do are:
Connecting their teeth or mouths with your hands or body.
Jumping up / Standing on back legs - 4 feet on the floor for any attention or rewards.
Barking for attention (or whining or any other noise) - quiet behaviour preferred
Jumping up on furniture
Pulling when walking
Highly active playing games in the house
Barking at visitors
Resource guarding
Chewing on or playing with non - toy items
Firstly, sit the whole family down, and discuss how you want your puppy to behave as an adult, and work backwards from there. If you want a calm, well controlled dog in your home, who is a happy, well-integrated member of your family, then training your puppy and continuing with training is crucial.
The following are the items we suggest you have ready:
Crate for sleeping and starting toilet training. Kmart have wire crates which work well, provided they are covered with a blanket. We like them to have a bit of extra room, so suggest the large size.
Clip station and bed or blanket.
Lead
Outside area (garden is great) for playing and toileting
Play pen (large, wire type) (non completely necessary if you have a suitable, secure garden area).
A good introduction to your home:
Bring your puppy home into a peaceful environment.
Your puppy is 8 weeks old and has just left everything and everyone they know. You need to take some quiet time to get to know one another. Do not stop to show friends on the way or invite people over. Leave that for a few days. For this reason, pups who are ready to go just prior to Christmas, will not be released until either Christmas Day is over or you can guarantee me that it will be a very quiet Christmas indeed.
The atmosphere around your pup will rub off. without appropriate training, They will mirror the energy in your family.
EARLY HOUSE RULES
These are the rules which we really strongly suggest you follow with puppy until early training is established:
NO RUNNING AROUND THE HOUSE FREELY: Outside is for play and toileting. Inside is for calm, relaxed behaviour. Therefore, puppy is not to run freely around your house. Keep puppy with you on a lead when inside. I keep a blanket beside my chair, and when puppy relaxes on that, they are rewarded. Pups quickly learn to follow you on the lead, and pay attention, because when they sit quietly and look up at you (Manding) they will be treated and rewarded. We suggest puppy does not have free run of the house until fully house trained plus 2 weeks.
NO UNSUPERVISED PLAY WITH CHILDREN: Children are high energy, make high pitched noises which excite pups, who without training, respond like they would with another puppy by trying to invite play and nipping, and need to learn how to interact quietly and appropriately with a pup indoors. Leave the crazy busy play outdoors and always controlled and supervised by an adult. Keep puppy on a lead and sit down with them and children indoors. Show children to pet puppy quietly, and get puppy to sit down quietly, not leap around.
CHILDREN TRAINING PUPS: Pups love playing with children, and vice versa, however training needs to be consistent, with good timing of commands and reinforcements to be effective. For children to be involved in training puppy, we suggest that your child attends puppy preschool with you first. Young children do not have the required understanding of the timing of commands / reinforcements to provide the consistent training that is important for puppy, so it is best if adults do the training initially, and teach children how to play with puppy.
CRATE TRAIN: This really works well for getting puppy to know where their quiet space is, and to switch off quietly and go to sleep. This also helps with house training, preventing anxious behaviours, and stopping over-excited behaviours in the house . Videos are on McCann Puppy Training site.
THE BEHAVIOUR IMMEDIATELY PRECEEDING YOUR INTERACTION OR REWARD WILL INCREASE. If you have puppy in a play pen or outside and they bark, and you go and reign them in or out of the pen, in one or two sessions puppy will have learnt to bark for attention. Barking or whining must NEVER result in you going to puppy or getting them out of a pen or crate. If it does, it will rapidly become an ingrained, learnt behaviour and require consistency and persistence to replace with a wanted quiet, relaxed behaviour
CONSISTENCY: Your whole family needs to be on board with what behaviours are wanted, and how to train puppy. You need to be consistent every time. If puppy barks when it is in a crate, you must ignore the barking until it is quiet, then take it out. If you respond when puppy is barking, it will rapidly become a situation where it will persistently bark because it knows that is how if eventually comes out of the crate.
TIMING: When a puppy sits and looks at you for instance, say “Yes” (high pitched marking sound to mark wanted behaviour) and treat. You have about a second and a half to respond after a wanted behaviour for the puppy to link the treat and reward to the behaviour. Look for good behaviour, and be ready to reward instantly.
BALANCED TRAINERS: If you need a trainer, look for a balanced trainer. They will do what is required to obtain the needed outcomes with a pup. A trainer who just works with treats is bribing, not training. Pups that are bribed will lose interest in listening to you if the incentive to do something such as run off to another dog, is stronger than the incentive to have another treat.
We are happy to help with questions, and will add them to this page, however if you need a trainer, then go to a professional, balanced trainer. We breed and do early training work.
Failure to train:
The result of not doing consistent training is you will end up with an unruly older dog. This takes a considerable amount of professional work to correct, which is why we do not offer any money back if you want an older dog rehomed.
Puppy Bite Inhibition
Excellent video HERE on avoiding puppy nipping in the first place. This is by far the best way to do it. Make sure you have a well trained pup, who has learnt to have a soft mouth and looks to you for leadership.
All puppies bite each other naturally when communicating or wanting to play. Play is simply an innate action which enhances the chances of future survival for a particular species. For many predators, including dogs, this involves growling, barking, biting, and can seem to have intent. They need to learn that it is not an acceptable way of communicating with humans.
There is a good video HERE to watch and implement first. The side hold is excellent, and there are some other tips that work well. As with all training, the key is consistency - you must stick with a ‘not once, not ever’ in terms of pups nipping, and they will know in a very short time that it isnt an acceptable behaviour, and give up.
The times we see this behaviour not extinguished quickly are often if people have not taken notice of what we have emphasised about limiting interaction with children to when pups are with an adult on the leash, and behaving quietly. Quiet petting when puppy is sitting is fine. Puppy being free to ‘play’ with children before they know what is appropriate, is not. Children have higher pitched voices, and faster movements. This will be understood by the pup as an invitation to play, and raise the energy level of the pup considerably, which is the opposite to what you want to be doing.
Resource Guarding
An important part of training to cover is to prevent Resource Guarding. This video shows how to prevent it, and further down how to correct it. Please contact a balanced trainer, such as a National Dog Trainers Federation trainer to work with you if you aren’t making progress quickly, or if a behavioural challenge is increasing.
Not long ago, resource guarding was simply a way to survive, and dogs still have the evolutionary desire to protect what is valuable to them. This can be as strange as a particular toy or dirty socks, sometimes a dog or pup will guard if someone wants to touch their owner, however the most common thing that dogs guard by far, is food. A trainer once said to me it was a bit like our reaction of hanging onto a handbag if someone walked up and tried to take it. Although it is a natural behaviour, it is an important one to train out of a pup or dog.
Resource guarding is easiest to correct in a puppy, and the earlier it is addressed after it first shows, then better.
We hope that you have a balanced trainer you are working with. Check out the National Dog Trainers Federation website to find a trainer in your area.
Resource guarding can be stopped by Counter Conditioning, and good training, with the dog looking to you for leadership. Effective training works can make changes very quickly.
Here is an article by a very well known trainer on stopping resource guarding. She controls the food resource, and determines the behaviour of the dog just before giving food, a spoonful at a time. This can work quickly and effectively.
Counter Conditioning for Resource Guarding.
Find a treat which your dog loves more than the thing they are guarding. A smelly treat such as small pieces of chicken or turkey.
Find the distance that your dog starts resource guarding at. Some dogs dont get possessive until you are just a few metres away. Others get tense if you are in the same room while they eat. Find the distance at which they know you are there, but aren’t becoming tense or reacting with guarding behaviour. For example if your dog starts eating faster when you’re 2 metres away, start this exercise from 3 metres. You’re determining what their distance threshold is for guarding a resource.
Give your dog their meal or chew as usual, then walk away.
Approach your dog, but stop a couple of metres before their distance threshold. Toss a piece of chicken to them. Once they eat it, toss another, and repeat a few times before walking away.
Continue this exercise any time your dog has something they guard.
After a few sessions begin to add one or more steps towards them before tossing the treat, and then step back. You are now decreasing their distance threshold. Dont rush this step.
If your dog gets tense or shows signs of stress or resource guarding, take the training back a step.
Please contact a balanced trainer in your area to work with.
Toilet Training
If you need an inside toilet, pups have been used to toileting on artificial turf outdoors. We suggest that you train puppy that outside is the place to toilet, and do not use wee mats inside. There isn’t any point in re-training them to toilet inside the house, but if you need to, then use an artificial turf toilet. These can either be bought from Kmart or pet shops, or you can use pee pads under a square of artificial turf from Bunnings.
Learning to go through the night. If puppy has done fast track training with us, they will have had several short sessions in a crate during the day. Our pups toilet outside on artificial turf from a young age. They have not been crated at nights. Although they have had every start to learn to toilet outside, it isnt fair as a breeder to claim pups are house trained. The reason is that dogs dont generalise their training to different locations, and you need to train the same command in several different places for it to be locked in completely. We suggest the following:
No food or treats after 5pm.
Whoever is up latest, take puppy outside and have a good play session in the garden, and make it long enough that puppy poos and wees.
Put the crate next to an adult’s bed and put puppy inside. Puppy will be comforted knowing you are close by, as you are their security, as a small, young animal.
Cover the crate with a blanket if it is a wire one.
If puppy whines or cries, do not respond in any way at all or you will increase this behaviour.
If puppy wakes up during the night, they will wake you up. Take puppy outside to toilet. Be quiet and boring, dont give treats or interact. We want night times to be sleepy times.
When puppy awakes in the morning, they will be ready for a good drink, run around outside and breakfast.
There are toilet training videos in the link at the top of this page.
“Hi Sonia, today has been so much better. I’ve started the tips you suggested and he’s responding really well. The nipping has reduced to just some occasional attempts. He seems more settled and and we all are too. It’s improved my confidence so much knowing I can shape his behaviour and quite quickly. Thank you! “