I recently got a new puppy – my first baby puppy in 14 years! This happy event has been several years in the making, and I have spent most of that time working on an absurdly detailed puppy plan that will no doubt go out the window shortly after first contact with a real puppy.
One thing I’ve thought about a lot is the Very First Training Session, which has been a frustrating and disappointing experience with each of my previous dogs. After a lot of research and reflection I think I’ve figured it out and Able had a much more pleasant introduction to training. But first, a tour of my previous dogs…
1995: FUNZIE
When: Six months old, at the local obedience club. Everybody knows you couldn’t train a puppy before it was six months old!
The Plan: Not be the worst puppy in the class, and pass our Grade 1 certificate.
The Result: 3 stars
Funzie was rather overwhelmed by being in close proximity to 9 strange large dogs at once, so walking with me on a loose lead wasn’t a problem. She was also good at sitting when I pushed on her bum, but not so good at lying down ad very bad at staying – because she was terrified. Still, not the worst puppy in the class so goal achieved!
2001: TOAD
When: Seven weeks old, about six hours after I’d brought him home.
The Plan: Power up the clicker. My dad had subscribed to Clean Run magazine for a year in 1997 and I had loved Susan Garrett’s regular column about training Buzz (this became her book Shaping Success). Clearly shaping was the way of the future, and everyone knows you can’t shape without a clicker!
The Result: 1 star
The book I’d read said to wait 30-60 seconds between clicking and only click when the puppy wasn’t looking at you. I plonked myself down on a chair in the garden and stared robotically at my puppy, waiting for him to disengage from me so I could stuff treats into his face. The puppy found this terribly boring so he wandered off to sniff in the garden.
I posted a woe-is-me post to the NZ Clicker yahoo group and got scolded by several people who were adamant that Sniffing Is A Calming Signal and my puppy was clearly stressed out and scared of training with me.
2007: SPRING
When: Eight weeks old. I’d had her a week but decided to let her “settle in” for a few days before I started training. My lack of success with Toad clearly meant that 7-week-old puppies weren’t mature enough for training, and … well, it was O Week, gigs to go to, friends to catch up with…
The Plan: World domination, first step: power up the clicker.
The Result: 2 stars
Same chair, same back yard, same result. The puppy had no idea what was going on, although at least we had some bond so she was polite enough to stay in my vicinity … until a butterfly flew past.
At least I was a bit less neurotic about this colossal “failure” this time – after all, Toad had turned out fine.
2014: RIK
When: 2.5 years of age. She’d been off the farm for 48 hours and had not yet mastered basic life skills like walking through doorways and jumping into the car.
The Plan: Teach her her new name. The theory of this is that you say “New Name … Old Name” and then reward when they react to their old name, so that the dog learns to anticipate the reward when they hear their new name. I thought it would be good to start with something simple that she already knew – her name.
The Result: 2 stars
The farmer had told me her old name was Trix. As I discovered later, he was wrong about that and her old name was actually Oi C’mere. Rik sat next to me and looked around the kitchen with a faint air of bewilderment, occasionally glancing at me.
I tried again with a clicker the next day and was equally unsuccessful. It was actually quite difficult to get the treats into the dog – she would glance up when I clicked, but then her attention drifted off to the microwave or the rug or something else among the host of bizarre contraptions I had in my kitchen.
2021: ABLE
When: 8 weeks old, half an hour after he’d arrived in his new home.
The Plan: Teach the puppy to eat food out of my hand.
The Result: 5 stars!
I sat down on the kitchen floor with Able’s dinner bowl, and he sat on my lap while I handfed him his dinner. My puppy hopefully developed some positive associations between me and food, and I learned how many pieces of kibble my puppy can eat in one bite – two! We repeated this the next morning, and then it was easy to move on to other basic classical conditioning exercises – teaching the pup that his name, a touch on his collar, or a click also mean food.
What I’ve Learned
- Start early – every meal that you feed your puppy in a bowl is a waste of a learning opportunity. But start with something really, really, really easy.
- It’s not possible to have good timing if your pup doesn’t know how to take treats from your hand. Practise the delivery of the rewards first, and then you can use them to “actually train something”.
- Sniffing Is Not Always a Calming Signal. Yes, dogs that leave training sessions to sniff might be doing so because they find training stressful. But they might also just be going where the reward value is highest – and to a very young puppy chewing up a plant or chasing a butterfly is going to be more fun than hanging round a person who is sitting and staring at them like a robot!
- Choose your environment carefully. A garden has too many other interesting things to see and do. Susan Garrett and Kamal Fernandez both talk about “bathroom training” with baby puppies – literally just sitting down on the bathroom floor with their puppies to train, because this is the smallest room and has the fewest distractions. Even then, you might want to restrain your puppy with a lead or by holding him on your lap, so that you can prevent him from wandering off.
I’ve enjoyed my first week with Able (although I really don’t recommend moving house and getting a puppy at the same time!) and I’m looking forward to lots of happy training sessions in our future.