Okay, so you’ve got the jitters! You either have a puppy coming or it’s already home with you, and you have no idea where to start on training. There’s this feeling of not knowing what to do that we’ve all felt at some time in our life starting at your head and slowly working its way to your stomach. Doubts, concerns, to do lists, shopping lists.

But fret not, for hopefully I have a cure to your worries. In this blogpost, and many to follow in each subsequent months, these little training excerpts will be posted here for you to read at your own leisure and time. Or even to reread if that suits your fancy. (Yes I’ve been reading a lot of old English Novels lately.) So read on!

Alright, I think it’s important before we begin talking about training sessions that we cover first what a training session is and what is needed to carry one out.

 If you don’t have these already, add them to your grocery list now before you forget! The sooner you have these items, the better, there is nothing worse then forgetting to get these items and not being able to do a proper training session for two weeks. The time now is crucial for your puppy! Any missed training time can add a lot of extra work on your end later down the road, don’t miss this golden opportunity.

Here’s what you’re going to need.

- Treats! | Lots of them, get some that keep well if possible. Again you don’t want to have to miss a training session because you’ve run out. We recommend checking out Doggie Style Gourmet Treats

- Clicker | These are really good for immediately reinforcing good to let the puppy know that a treat is on the way!

- Training Area | You’re going to need a small area, either an empty spare bedroom, mudroom or a collapsible puppy pen that can fit you and your puppy. The idea is to create a distraction free zone to train in where it’ll be just you and the puppy.

- Puppy Toys | You’ll want a couple of these to play with the puppy. More on that later.

So let's define

A training by definition is all in all short and sweet. Before starting your training session make sure that you set up your training area making sure that it’s free of distractions. Puppies love seeing new things! Having a consistent training spot helps keep the puppies attention you and not those new objects and smells.

Now let’s grab a handful of treats. Not a fistful, just a good handful. This is your timer for the training session. Once you run out of treats it’s time to end the training session. The reason for this, is that your puppies attention span isn’t very long yet and you want to gradually work your way up. Your training sessions are going to start around the five minute mark and pretty rapidly hit the ten minute mark. You can do multiple training sessions a day if you want. Just make sure the puppy has had a nap in between training sessions so that your puppies brain has a chance to store all of the useful information from the last session.

Lastly grab your clicker. And you’re all set to go. You’ll use this to to reinforce good behavior on the spot. I’ll be talking about this in more detail in the next blog post.

We won’t go into detail on training your puppy, there’s lots of videos on YouTube that go into the specifics with you and later blog posts will definitely touch on them. But to generalize, work with your puppy in the distraction free zone. In between bouts of training, grab the play toys and just play with your puppy for a short little spirt to help tire him or her out. Then continue training. There’s no rules against rewarding your puppy for showing good behavior while playing!.

"By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail." - Benjamin Franklin

Now before we part, I do want to part with one very important rule. Stick to one, and only one training behavior, command or trick per training session. DO NOT do reward multiple behaviors until the puppy is much older. You want the puppy to easily identify what you’re wanting with a specific command. It’s easy for it to get a little muddled if you are doing multiple one. Now there are exceptions to this, if you’re outside of the training zone and the puppy offers multiple behaviors feel free to treat outside of that zone. Or, if you’re attending a puppy class, don’t feel that the training is going to overly confuse the dog. The training is just as much there for you as it is for the puppy, so that you can go home and continue practicing one on one. And lastly, a disclaimer, always hold the advice of an in person trainer above what you read here. Because that trainer is in person, they are going to be able to give you much more specific information for your situation. Each situation is completely different, every puppy has different behaviors and intelligence levels, do what is best for you and you little furry family member.

Next month’s blog post we’ll be going over Clickers and how to use them in conjunction with training!