Making the Most of Your Dog’s Behavioral Training

Posted on: 31 July 2015

Nothing can try your patience more than having a new puppy living in your home. While puppies are fun to play with and snuggle, they need to be taught basic manners while they are still young. Early training for puppies is essential to keep the sanity of everyone in your household and to train your puppy how to become an obedient adult dog.

Follow these tips to keep your sanity while training your family's new puppy:

Use Praise, Not Punishment for Potty Training

While many people believe that it is effective to punish a puppy for going to the bathroom in your house or for chewing up your favorite pair of shoes, the reality is that even spanking your puppy with a rolled newspaper is damaging to their psyche. Hitting your dog, even with a pain-free tool, makes your dog fear you rather than respect you. Since dogs are natural pack animals, it is important that your dog respects you as the pack leader, or they will not follow your commands as they grow older and wiser.

The best way to train your puppy to perform the good behaviors, and stop doing things that are destructive, is to follow them around and praise all of the appropriate things that they do. For example, don't hit your dog with the paper when it tries to urinate on your recliner, instead, take it outside and praise it well when it urinates on a bush. Pet the puppy. Clap and use an excited voice and say; "Good dog!" This behavior shows your puppy that you are pleased when they take this action, and even young puppies will respond to praise training.

Provide Appropriate Chew Toys and Daily Exercise

Puppies get a much deserved bad rap for chewing on things like a person's favorite shoes or the TV remote control. Sadly, puppies are both teething and still learning about their world, so they can be very destructive. This growth time leads puppies to act similarly to human babies and explore using their mouth. This is one of the main causes of chewing - the puppy is trying to relieve their gum pain and explore their new world.

To help a puppy cut their teeth, you should always provide them with appropriate chew toys. While rawhide is not acceptable for puppies, there are some good quality synthetic dog bones on the market that allow your dog to chew as much as they want, without the gastrointestinal problems that can come from rawhide.

Puppies also chew because they become bored. When their mind and body is not stimulated, this makes dogs revert to a primal instinct to chew and groom. This is one of the reasons that abandoned dogs often chew on their own feet or continually groom themselves.

In order to prevent bad habits such as chewing, make sure that you exercise your puppy each day. Simply throwing a ball around your backyard for a few minutes can make the world of difference for your dog and can completely stop chewing behavior caused by boredom.

If you need help with your training or want more tips, contact a local training center like Levenson Barb Dog Training Centers.