Puppies are without a doubt some of the most adorable things on the planet. Parenting a new puppy, however, is no walk in the park. Here’s a guide to help you care for the new addition to the family.
When the time comes to finally bring your new puppy home for the first time, you can pretty much count on three things: unbridled joy, cleaning up your puppy’s accidents, and a major lifestyle adjustment. As you’ll soon learn, a growing puppy needs much more than a food bowl and a doghouse to thrive. And while it may be a lot of work initially, it’s well worth the effort. Establishing good and healthy habits in those first few sleep-deprived weeks will lay the foundation for many dog-years of happiness for you and your puppy.
Read all the tips HERE.
How To Stop A Puppy From Barking In His Crate At Night
When it comes to crate training puppies every puppy is different. We’re going to first share with you the basics of how to crate train a puppy and second, give you our best tips and tricks for those of you who have a stubborn puppy who doesn’t want to adjust to his crate.
A crate is a wire or molded plastic kennel that simulates a nest or den environment. A crate can become a puppy’s safe place, not to mention a house saver.
When properly used, the crate becomes a security blanket, a place where the puppy can retreat to escape the household confusion and to feel secure.
Read all the tips HERE.
Leash Walking Essentials – A Guide to Dog Walking Tools
There are dozens of leash walking tools on the market today. Many companies try to market their product as the perfect solution to leash pulling. “Just use our equipment and your dog will never pull again.”
Unfortunately, these companies only sell the tools, not the methods or techniques to actually train the dogs that wear them.
No tool on its own can stop a dog from pulling on a leash. Why? Because it takes training to stop that behavior, not a tool. Tools do not train dogs, people train dogs, sometimes with the help of tools.
The problem with these tools is they address the symptom, not the root cause. You may reduce pulling with certain leash walking tools, but you aren’t addressing why the dog is pulling in the first place.
Is he terrified of being outside? Overstimulated by so many things to smell and chase? Or is he just used to wandering where he pleases on the walk instead of being with you?
The answer may determine what specific tool you need and how to use it. In this article, we’re going to review the most common leash walking tools, why they are effective or ineffective, and when it is appropriate to choose one tool over another. These tools will specifically be things you put onto your dog to help with leash pulling on the walk.
Learn more HERE.
What Not to Do When Training A Dog: Dog Training Mistakes
There’s a lot of information out there about how to train a dog. You can teach your pet just about anything, using a variety of methods, but there are plenty of mistakes owners make when training their canine companions. These missteps are super common and can have a big impact on whether or not your efforts are successful. To avoid frustration on both ends of the leash, we’ve compiled some universal dog-training mistakes you should do your best to sidestep:
3. Failing to practice in-between classes
5. Working when you’re frustrated
Setting Dogs Up for Successful Learning
“I am always on the hunt for good life similarities to dog training. This week I stumbled upon more as my son is wrapping up his first week at kindergarten. At his orientation last week prior to the first day of school, we were walked through some simple ways to help our children develop a love of learning and there were a couple points that struck me as being parallel to the concept of how we can better help our dogs to learn.
First presented to the parents was the idea of creating an environment conductive to learning. For a child this looks like providing a quiet place to study at home. For my dog owner clients this looks like….you guessed it….providing a quiet place for their dog to learn! This especially rings true with puppies. If you are trying to train your puppy in some new behaviors at home, do not select the noisiest and busiest room in which to do so. Puppies can be very easily distracted, so finding a quiet area where you can garner their attention to work with them is essential. Once they have mastered the behaviors without distractions, then you can gradually add distractions in as you work with them. However throwing lots of distractions into the mix when they are in the first stages of learning a new behavior does not set them up for success and certainly will not create an environment that is conductive to learning.
Second was helping your child develop good study habits. How do we do this with children? Practice, practice and more practice. We help them to practice the learning process. You would not say to your child that they only have to do homework or study on Mondays and then the rest of the week they don’t need to do anything. We see the same concept of dog’s developing good habits by practicing behaviors that they have learned. Probably many of us have experienced that moment when we ask our dog for a behavior, let’s say it was “roll over”, and the dog looks at us like we have two heads because the last time we asked them for that behavior was a year ago! So we must practice training and helping our dogs learn, even if for just five to ten minutes a day. This also provides wonderful mental stimulation for the dog on a daily basis.
Lastly, and not presented by the school principal, but a parallel I drew this week from numerous conversations with my son when he got home from school, was ENJOY RECESS! I found this week that when my son has talked to me about his day, the majority of the conversation centers around recess. In this “play environment” is where he is building relationships with other kids, letting out excess energy and frankly just having a fabulous time. I think the same is true for our dogs. In the midst of “study” and learning new things, there must be time created for “recess.” This can be a time for dogs and owners to strengthen their bond, for dogs to release pent up energy and also just have fun. One of my favorite books on this topic was written by Karen B. London and Patricia B. McConnell and it is called “Play Together, Stay Together.” It is chock full of great play ideas for owners and dogs.
So remember to think through some of the concepts listed above when working with your dog. There are so many wonderful similarities to child learning and dog learning and helping to set them up for success in this process is a key factor in training our wonderful dogs.”