Teaching your Puppy Fun and Useful Behaviour

How to teach your puppy fun and useful behaviour.

Leaving cookies on his paws.

Lining up treats on your puppy’s legs and paws teaches him that it’s his choice to listen to you and leave the cookies or snatch it right off of his legs. Here is how to teach your pup this and why it is important.

Start by getting your pal to lay down and then take a seat in front of him looking right at him. Always have a ton of tasty treats on hand for any type of training session.  Take your treats and place them on the ground between pup paws, the puppy will, of course, want to go for the treats; why wouldn’t he as they are right in front of his nose.

Take one of the treats in your hand and take it to the far left or far right to distract puppy from the big pile that is in front of him.  This teaches the puppy that it is his choice on what treat he goes for, the one you are giving him or the ten that you are not.  After he has gotten the right idea of this concept, you can start to take a treat from the pile with the hand that is not giving him treats and place it on his paw.

At first, he will be confused about what is happening but just continue to not let him have the one that is on his paw and give him all the treats he wants on either side.  Soon you can work your way up to all the cookies on his paws and start taking them off the paws to give to him.  Your puppy will get so comfortable with this idea that you can slow down the treating process and soon stop until you are finished then rewarding puppy like crazy for him choosing not to take the treats that are on his paws.  This helps teach him that the rewards he gets are the ones given to him.

Waiting at the door to be let out.

After a long day of work you’re most likely tired, and your pup?  Well, he is probably almost the exact opposite as he has been alone all day, so he is ready to play! Assuming you have left him in either a crate or a room, he is more than ready to get out and run around and jump all over you.

By letting him out of his room when he is not presenting controlled behaviour like sitting or lying down, you are rewarding the fact that he is jumping and acting like a crazy citizen.  What you want to teach is your hand on the doorknob means sit.  And this means at any point, going in and out of the house or crate and car.  They must always be showing controlled behaviour if they want in or out.  Hand on the doorknob means sit, so how do we get to this point?  Well, the best way for that is starting with the crate game, have your pup go in his crate and just start by standing outside it and randomly dropping treats in the top.  This teaches the puppy that the crate is not a bad place after all!

After a bit of this stop and put your hand on the crate door and wait for the puppy to sit, do not say anything this is when being patient comes in to play. The puppy will eventually sit or lay down this is when you say, good boy! Now open the crate door puppy will most likely come bounding out, but you did not say the magic release word OK.  So shut the door before pup can get and start again.  Hand on the door means sit, once you get that sit the door can open, and he is safe to exit after the OK has been given.  Repeat this as many times as it takes your friend to understand the game and then start doing it to every door the pair of you exit and enter.

Written by Jenica Lucius, ACA