Hi there!

My name is Jaimz, I’m one of owners here at Grizzly Goldens, Golden Convert and self declared Golden Whisperer... ‘emphasis on the self declared.’ Anyways I wanted to take a second to talk to you guys about some of the practices that we follow here at Grizzly Kennels! I’m hoping that this information is be super helpful for you to read as your waiting for your puppy and help strengthen your knowledge and make you feel more prepared when it’s time for you to continue their training!

What is manding?

The first thing I want to talk about it Manding. Fun fact! Manding is the opposite of Demanding and isn’t Commanding. Manding is offering a positive behavior instead of demanding something. This is in essence what we want all of our puppies to have learned before they’ve left us. For us this is such a high priority that we’ll solely focus on this if a puppy is struggling picking it up. To us, sitting and lay down and other such commands aren’t nearly as important for a dog's long term social growth as Manding.

So what is Manding? Well to explain manding we need to explain the difference between a command and a behavior. Behaviors are something that a dog does on it’s own to achieve or comply with something in a human’s everyday life. For instance, teaching your puppy to use the litter box, in a way is a sort of behavior that helps comply with human behavior of keeping clean and tidy. In this way Manding impacts your dogs daily interaction with you.

For your puppy, the natural instinct to ask and to get attention is to jump up on you. This is a core and fundamental part of your puppy that he or she naturally learns interacting with it’s litter mates and mother. When they want to play with their siblings, they tussle each other’s fur and jump on each other. It’s natural and in itself is not wrong. This is communication at for them and we don’t want puppy’s to feel like they can’t communicate. So we have to show them how to communicate, because if we don't and simply suppress their one way of talking, this would inevitably lead to a very frustrated, reckless & wild dog.

What we focus on then is changing the way the puppy asks for things by rewarding what we want and simply ignoring the bad behavior. Dogs are smart, particularly Goldens! So they have no trouble at all learning at a young age what behaviors you want to see in them.

Let’s get specific though. The behavior that we look for in our puppies to display a quite posture while sitting and look at you. Each of these qualities are important and go a long way to improve the relationship between dog and human.

Here, let me explain. We don't want them to be pawing and jumping, so instead we reward them when they are sitting. This helps counteract the puppy behavior of jumping on new people to get attention.

We teach them to be quiet by default when asking for something because we want them to know that even when they get frustrated, barking is not an acceptable behavior. Having a dog that constantly barks is something that will try anyone's patience. So we don’t reward a puppy that is barking. Instead one must patiently wait for them to stop before giving them a treat or continuing training. Now while this may seem counter intuitive, especially for us humans, it’s important that as soon as a puppy displays a good behavior that you reward it! Unlike us, puppies think very much in the moment. So that moment they get that treat or hear the clicker, those actions are now reinforced the moment of action. Give or take a few seconds.

"The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said." - Peter Drucker

Lastly we want the dog to look at you. A Golden that looks into your eyes is forever in love. Or so we say. Making sure that your puppy knows that treats are coming from you and not your hand is a surprisingly big difference. We highly recommend for a greater connection to your fur-ever friend, to put the treat and clicker behind your back and wait for them to look into your eyes when Manding. Or for starters just the general area of your face. This helps build eye contact and will make it easier for you in the future to know that they are quietly saying to you, “Hey Humen, treatz plz!”

On a last note. As you continue training your puppy in manding, start varying the time that the puppy has to wait. This will help them build up resistance to frustration as they can expect a variety of time that they must wait to receive a treat. The first few sessions, keep it simple with immediate clicks and immediate rewards. But as time goes on, give immediate clicks followed by a few second delay. Over the course of the next seven training sessions however, expand that to be variable between ten to two second, and if your puppy shows exceptional bravo, go for fifteen seconds! Just try to avoid frustrating your puppy to soon in this training as it might establish some back habits.

Well that’s all I’ve got for you today on Manding! The next blogpost will be about Introducing your puppy to a new home and honing in on the next steps of litter training.