I’ve had my puppy for two weeks now, and I swear he is getting bigger and heavier every day. He is quite a confident pup and loves exploring new things, especially with his mouth.
I had a list of over twenty things I planned to do with him in the first couple of weeks. I’ve actually managed to do a little bit of most things with him, although of course we are only at the baby steps of everything. Unfortunately he has to spend a lot of time in his ex-pen as Rik is not quite ready to meet him face-to-face yet, but I shut her in my bedroom with a Kong every few hours so that he can come out and have an adventure in the garden.
Here’s The List … most of these things will be works-in-progress for many months.
- Socialisation. I used to think this meant shoving my puppy into situations that scared him and hoping he would get over it. Since my last puppy I have read quite a bit on the subject, and had the experience of adopting an adult dog off a farm who was terrified of everything in her new environment. I am taking a much less pushy approach this time around – I still take my pup out to see and hear and do new things, but I let him investigate things at his own pace.
- Puppy Play Dates. He met Szylvie the Mini Schnauzer last weekend and he was terrified of her as she was a bit too boisterous for him. He has also met Jack the Cocker Spaniel, who tolerated his presence but didn’t really play with him. Hopefully I can get him into a puppy preschool soon.
- Meeting Rik. My older dog Rik is not particularly fond of other dogs, and has never been around a young puppy in the time that I’ve had her. She is warming to the idea of having a baby brother better than I thought she would – she will come quite close to him when he’s on a lead and she doesn’t snap at him – but I am going to take it slowly so that the puppy doesn’t have any bad experiences. From past mistakes I have learned that puppies should Always Always Always be on lead when interacting with older dogs who may not like them – this allows the other dog to make a gracious exit if the pup is pushing things way too far and doesn’t have the social skills to recognise that they are in danger.
- Separation practice. I work from home, and my dogs go pretty much everywhere with me. This is a recipe for separation anxiety if my circumstances change later on in Able’s life and I need to leave him for long periods. I’ve left him several times for half an hour or so, sometimes with Rik and sometimes on his own. I’ll continue doing this, and build up to longer duration separations when I have the chance.
- Toilet training. Who knew that one puppy could pee 14 times in 12 hours?
- Body handling. This includes a variety of things – handling his body in preparation for grooming, his mouth in preparation for future vet visits, and his paws so that I will be able to trim his nails easily in future. This is not particularly easy work with a squirmy puppy that keeps trying to climb me!
- Car ride practice. I make sure to take my pup out in the car at least every couple of days to help him get used to the sensation, so that he hopefully won’t be carsick later in life.
- Handfeeding.
- Calm agility behaviour. This is one of the things on the list we haven’t got to yet, only because I haven’t been to agility training since I got him. My last two dogs have both been very enthusiatic agility spectators, and I’d like to have a dog that doesn’t yank on the lead as he tries to herd each dog off the start line. I also hope to have a dog that will walk into the agility ring on a loose lead! My plan for this is to let the pup spend lots of time hanging out at a 10m distance from agility rings and reinforce him for choices that I do want, like sitting or lying down or chewing on a Kong.
- Shaping. I’ve played a few shaping games with my pup, to encourage him to explore different objects. So far this has included Paws in a Box, stepping onto a flattened cardboard box, and stepping onto an upside-down baking tray (which wobbles a bit and makes a noise). My puppy will continue to learn lots of things through shaping throughout his lifetime.
- Body awareness (proprioception). You’ll notice that all of the shaping examples I give above involve my puppy placing his legs somewhere. Agility dogs need to know where all their legs are, especially the rear ones. With my past dogs I’ve only worked on body this when it’s stopped them from making progress on something “more important”. This time round I’m hoping that I can preload some of this now, revisit it regularly as Able grows, and enjoy more efficient training on “real agility” once he’s older.
- Search. This is a cue I use to tell my dog they can look on the floor for a food reward. The dog should move out of whatever position they’re currently in, which makes it a good way to reset your dog (especially if you can’t get them out of their box so that they can practise getting back in again). It’s very easy to train – just say the word “Search”, pause for half a second, and then let the puppy see you throwing a treat on the floor. With lots of work on It’s Yer Choice, my older dog Rik has progressed to the point where she will ignore treats on the ground – even an entire full dinner bowl – and work with me until I give her the Search cue.
- It’s Yer Choice. This is a classic game for teaching dogs to focus on their handlers despite the presence of distractions, created by Susan Garrett. There are similar games from other trainers called Doggie Zen, Zen Cookie etc. You can find lots of videos on YouTube of people working through these games if you want to play along. It’s Yer choice is the secret sauce to turning distractions into rewards – creating a dog t hat sees something he wants and then pays more attention to you because he wants the opportunity to earn access to that thing.
- His name. This is also quite simple to train in theory – say the name, pause for half a second, and then feed the puppy. It’s much easier to work on things like this in a small, controlled environment where your pup can’t get distracted – I pop a chair into his ex-pen and sit there.
- Collar Grabs. This is a simple conditioning exercise, just like teaching my puppy his name. I take his collar with one hand, pause for half a second, and then feed the puppy. Gradually I will work on making the “grab” more forceful, to simulate how I might try to catch the puppy in an emergency situation. If you always grab your pup’s collar as soon as he comes to you, before you dish out any rewards, you will never have to deal with the delightful game of arm’s-length Can’t Catch Me.
- Recalls. To practise a recall you first need to get away from your puppy. The easiest way to do this, if you have a helper, is a restrained recall. Get your helper to hold the puppy, walk several metres away, wait until the puppy’s looking at you and then call him and start running. Your helper should not release the puppy until after you’ve called him, and even then only if he is looking in the right direction. I don’t have a helper so I’m mostly taking a different approach – I let him loose in one room of the house and practise saying his name, grabbing his collar, and feeding him. He is coming to his name in a small quiet room, so now I will start to practise in more exciting places, like our garden.
- Crate Games. This is another of Susan Garrett’s popular games. The basic game is that you put your puppy in a crate, close the door, start to open it while your puppy is being still, but then close it up again if your pup moves. This gives you a sit stay but the video goes on to demonstrate so many more ways you can use crates to start on agility foundation skills. My favourite thing about Crate Games is that it gives you a practical example of how to “correct” your puppy’s mistakes without overusing the No word. Again you can find lots of demos on YouTube, or if you belong to an agility club you can probably borrow a copy of the DVD off another member.
- Sit. I have been doing Crate Games-like stuff with my puppy in his ex-pen. I wait for him to settle before I open the door, and then give a verbal release cue for him to pop out. This week he has begun to automatically pop into a sit and hold it until cued – his first sit stay! Now I only let him out when he sits squarely (no “puppy sits” where he is slouched on one hip) and he is getting pretty good at offering these.
- Release cue. A release cue is how you tell your dog that he can move after you’ve asked him to stay in one position. I don’t really train a separate “Stay” or “Wait” cue – when I say “Sit” that means my dog should stay sitting until I cue him to do something else. Some people don’t like to use “OK” as it’s two syllables and it’s a word that is used a lot in everyday life. I’ve been using it for 25 years and it just comes out of my mouth naturally, but I do also have a one-syllable version of it (“Oak”) which I try to stick to in formal training sessions.
- Tugging. Tugging is a very useful reinforcer for agility training, for all dogs from the very hyper to the very laidback. It’s fun for handler and dog, and it’s interactive – it encourages the dog to engage back with the handler instead of just grabbing their reward and going. I was off to a head start with Able (he was already interested in tugging, and we had a little game when I visited him at 6 weeks old) but any dog can learn to tug. It took me until six or seven months to get my last puppy Spring really into tugging, but it was worth the effort! Now that I have my pup keen on tugging, next week I will start teaching him to give the toy back promptly on cue.
- Hand targets. This is a super useful tool for day-to-day life, and can make your agility training easier too. It’s another fairly simple shaping exercise to teach your puppy to touch his nose to the palm of your hand, and then you can increase your criteria to require firmer and longer nose touches (sooky nose touches become non-existent nose touches when your pup is more interested in something else). I use this lots for getting dogs out from underfoot, or getting them to exactly the right spot to start a training exercise. It’s also a nice basic exercise to help keep your dog’s attention on you when you’re in distracting environments – and if you want to liven your dog up a bit, you can move around and get him to chase your hand down.
New puppies are hard work! That is a long list, and a lot of the work happens throughout the day rather than in scheduled training sessions. On the other hand, you can often squeeze four or five things of the list into a few minutes of training. The main thing above all I want my puppy to learn at this age is that training is fun, and that he has the power to make awesome things happen by figuring out what I want.
Keep your sessions really short and remember to enjoy your puppy’s cute little antics … they won’t be using your flax bush as a tug toy every day for the rest of their life (hopefully).