Raising your puppy right from the ground up!

Besides researching breeds, breeders/rescues (etc) there is a lot of things to do before bringing home your puppy. Most of these things are more about thinking through and pre planning to really help set up for a successful puppy-hood into adulthood. Everybody’s opinions of the ‘perfect’ dog is a little bit different. Some people don’t really care if their dogs are on furniture; while others really don’t want their dog on furniture for example. Nobody’s wrong, everybody has to live with their own dog. Everyone gets to choose -for the most part- how that dog behaves.

Before taking home your puppy it really is in your best interest to sit down and really decide what you want your puppy’s life to look like. Or at the very least how you want your puppy to react to what your life looks like. If you always have friends over, do you want a dog that is continuously jumping at them at the doorway, or choosing to go and chew on their shoe? By envisioning your life and how you would like your dog to fit into it, you can really start from Square one. Teaching your puppy those behaviours that you want them to be very good at.

There’s a thousand and one things that your puppy can learn. It is up to you to make sure that the really important parts to you is what your puppy gets to practice the most. An easy way to really define what is important to you is to envision typical situations with your dog full grown. For example do you really love your puppy dragging you down the street to say hi to that stranger? Is this a useful behaviour for you? At 50lbs would you like your grown adult dog to do the same? Are you so extroverted that you love saying hi every single human being that you meet on the street? If you answered yes to ALL those questions that’s totally fine! However, most people don’t mind puppies pulling but they don’t like when their adult dog is lunging at the end of the leash to greet another stranger. If this sounds more like you, maybe you will want to figure out a game plan before letting your puppy meet strangers on the street. Perhaps, you don’t mind if your puppy greets people but you want them to think through their greetings. You don’t want the pulling, you don’t want the jumping but you do want a dog that’s friendly and polite. This is a plan you can start from day one to implement with greetings. Implementing it from day one means a decrease in frustration on either end of the leash.

By taking out some of your most common every day situations and really pre planning how you would like your dog to behave you can really shape your own personalized training planning. Remember that puppies make mistakes, – It might seem like a never ending tunnel at times. Keep with the plan. Let your puppy practice the behaviours you want not the behaviours you will want to change in the future.