by Omar Williams
If you have a puppy, you must start training early, but do it gently.
Your puppy has to have confidence in you before he can begin learning. Remember that puppies are like children – they have growing bodies, short attention spans, and will only learn things when the conditions are right and when they understand what it is you’re trying to teach them.
That said, the earlier you start training dogs, the better. More specifically, it’s best if you start “socialization” from 8 weeks, simple commands like “come” and “sit” from 12 weeks, and more intensive training at 5 to 6 months.
While some early training can be started as soon as you bring your puppy home, the optimum time to begin obedience training is somewhere around 9 to 12 weeks of age.
Keep in mind that training can cover a broad range of topics – I’m not suggesting that you begin training your puppy at 8 weeks of age for agility competitions! Your training should start off with the basics – teaching him “No!” and beginning house-training.
Socialization skills are next – experts tell us the best window for your puppy to learn socialization skills is between 3 and 16 weeks – that’s the best time to insure that your puppy grows into a well-adjusted adult.
And remember, socialization isn’t about teaching him the right fork to use at the dinner table – it’s about giving your dog the self-assurance to deal correctly with any social environment he finds himself in is one of the most valuable and lasting lessons you can teach him.
A well-socialized dog will interact well with all types of people and situations, even those he has never been in before. With appropriate social skills, your dog will show little or no fear of most objects, people or other animals, and even if startled, will recover quickly and won’t panic.
Bottom line, a well-adjusted dog is one that is comfortable in a variety of situations and surroundings. He may be excited in a new setting, but not fearful. The key here is to create positive experiences as you expose your dog to more and more new situations.
Even training your puppy for 5 – 10 minutes per day as soon as you bring him home will make a big difference in the social skills and adaptability of your puppy.
Keep in mind that puppies have very short attention spans, so keep your lessons short and fun. How short an attention span? That depends on the age of the puppy, his breed and how mature your individual puppy is – but a good rule of thumb is to keep the training sessions within that 5 -10 minute range.
Depending on your puppy’s age and maturity level, sometime between 3 and 6 months of age you should be moving the training into the area of the basic commands such as Sit, Heel, Down, etc.
It’s important you have realistic expectations about your dog’s capabilities at this point – I don’t expect a puppy to be responding to the basic commands with any degree of regularity until they’ve reached 6 months of age.
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Training your dog 5-10 minutes a day… I would train longer. trust me, some dogs need it longer! What about that attention span?
I would train about 20 minutes or so a day. Shoot, that’s like a lunch break. Real simple. The trick is consistancy.
Just be sure you socialize early on, before 5 months. That’s when they will learn their life skills and their opinions of others. If they don’t socialize before around that 5 month mark, they could have problems in the future with meeting new people.
That socialization period is very important when it comes to having your dog able to greet friendlies nicely. Miss this step and it’s all over. It’s quite hard to socialize them in my opinion after the optimum time as that is their early childhood! Remember dog years!
Can you apply some of this to an older dog? Say your dog is 60-something dog years, can you still do that? one ofmy pugs is decently old like that and is either forgetting or never truely got some of my commands.