Dogz at Home Training Centre is dedicated to teaching and promoting positive, reward-based training methods and in today’s article on puppy raising we’re giving you our top 5 challenges faced during puppy raising and how to resolve them using a rewards-based approach.
What Do We Mean By A Rewards-Based Approach?
It means that we strongly discourage smacking with newspaper and flyswatters, intimidating shouts, ‘scruffing’ , ‘alpha rolling’ or any other force and punishment based techniques. These methods are unkind, they will cause permanent damage to your pups mental well-being and their relationship with you and to top it off they’re not even all that reliable.
Instead we promote guidance and relationship building with a strong focus on rewarding and redirecting towards wanted behaviour and simply starving out unwanted behaviour by actively preventing it with supervision, or by not making it rewarding.
That sounds way too easy right? Well let’s be honest, there are no silver bullet techniques and there are very few undertakings in life that will reward you without the appropriate level of consistent effort, but the payoff of seeing your pup grow into a happy, well-adjusted and ‘civilised’ member of the family and knowing that you achieved that without harsh words and punishment is huge.
To see how this works in practice we’ve put together our top five puppy raising challenges and outlined our rewards-based approach for addressing them If there’s a question you’d really love to have answered that we didn’t cover you’re welcome to pose it on our Facebook page and start a conversation!
1. How Can I Get My Puppy To Stop Jumping On Visitors When They Arrive?
This has to be one of the most frequently asked puppy questions – here is a simple technique:
Answer the door, with your pup on a leash and make sure to tell your guests to ignore the puppy.
Stay at least a lead length from entering guests – if your pup tries to jump on a one of them ask for a simple behaviour (sit, down, watch me) to get their attention and reward that behaviour.
If excitement levels are higher, draw their attention by showing them the treat first, or you could try standing further away while someone else greets the guests and you continually reward ‘four feet on the ground’.
2. How Can I Keep My Puppy Off The Furniture?
When your puppy first arrives in your home it won’t know any of these arbitrary rules you made up. If the first thing you do when you get home is sit down on the couch and cuddle the puppy on your lap, you’ve already established that the couch could be a happy fun place.
To avoid this try and create a puppy space in every room the family frequents with a blanket or pillow, when the puppy is in that room lure them to their spot with high value treats and then keep rewarding them for being there. This is a great opportunity to bring out a stuffed kong, or another boredom busting healthy chew to create happy associations with their spot.
If you’ve left the pup unsupervised (bad human!) and they’ve climbed onto a couch or bed do not yell and scold them – just walk up, calmly say “off”, guide or lure them back to their preferred spot and then reward and praise them.
If you are consistent your puppy will prefer the places where it gets rewarded and it will stop even considering other options.
If you choose to let your puppy onto your bed or certain other furniture, we strongly recommend that you only introduce this as an optional privilege when your pup is older and once you have taught them where their own beds are. You should also actively reinforce sending them off to their own bed and rewarding them when you decide that it’s become too crowded. In the beginning make sure that these are very short and ‘special treat moments’ or you will compromise all your consistent training.
Creating exceptions to rules is fine, but that’s hard to do when you never had one to begin with!
3. How Can I Stop My Puppy From Running Around The House Causing Trouble?
The simple answer is just don’t allow it!
When your puppy is still little it should probably be asleep more than it’s awake. When your puppy wakes up and has energy to burn you need to make sure that you are supervising their behaviour and making full use of the learning opportunities.
If you just want to let them explore independently you can use a trailing lead on their collar so you’ll have something to grab onto if you need to intervene quickly. Have a little stash of treats in each room of the house so whoever is closest can take advantage of rewarding good behaviour.
You can play lots of little games amongst the family to improve name recognition and recall, or reinforce your basic training which will keep your puppy involved in rewarding activities and drain off mental and physical energy – your puppy is a sponge and can learn amazingly fast in this period – don’t squander it!
If your pup decides to lie down in one of its allowed spots and have a rest – casually walk past give some verbal praise and drop a reward in front of them.
If you’re sitting in one spot watching a show, or doing some work you can use the trailing lead to tether the puppy to you, or a chair leg and bring out something chewy to keep them busy, or you could bring their crate into the room.
If your puppy is just having one of those days where it’s turned into a little whirlwind with teeth and you’ve already done everything you can think of to help it let off steam don’t feel guilty about popping them back in their crate with a chew and letting them chill for a bit. It’s just as important for your puppy to learn self-control and to sit quietly on its own at times. This is not a punishment and doesn’t come with yelling and scolding – even if you are feeling frustrated – it’s needed down time for you and the puppy.
4. How Do I Toilet Train My Puppy?
You would think that toilet training needs a whole article to itself, but actually it’s a very simple process that follows the same simple principle of redirection and reward.
You should already have chosen a spot you will use for your puppy to go to the toilet, remember everything is about routine and consistency so stick to the same spot every time.
When you arrive home with your new pup they will probably need to go after the car trip so take them straight to the toilet spot on a lead (so they can’t wander off too far) and hang out for a few minutes to see if they decide to relieve themselves. If they do make a huge fuss and reward them with some yummy treats – you did bring the treats with right? From now on make sure you have treats handy close to the toilet area so you can reward your pup every time you go there.
As you train your puppy you’ll start teaching them various key words, or markers to signal the particular behaviour you want them to repeat, you can start with the very first one now by using a simple word like ‘toilet’ every time they relieve themselves.
Believe it or not that’s actually all there is to it. Establish a routine, consistently use the same spot and mark and reward the behaviour.
Here are a few more helpful pointers:
Your pup should be taken out every time it wakes up, after every meal and play session and as a general rule at least once every hour.
Carry your pup out to the toilet spot to avoid accidents enroute, especially after they’ve just woken up.
Don’t stop toilet training to soon – your pup is not house trained till about 5 months old and even after that bad weather, or being left indoors for too long could result in an accident.
Never punish, or scold your dog for relieving itself in the house, simply clean up the mess and move forward.
If you catch them in the act simply clap your hands to interrupt and then quickly scoop them up and carry them to the correct spot.
Keep a spray bottle with a white vinegar solution handy for accidents – this will mask the smell and reduce the likelihood of your pup going back to the same spot.
5. How Can I Stop My Puppy From Digging Up The Garden?
This is last, but definitely not least on the list. Puppies without proper guidance are notorious garden destroyers and this can lead to serious frustration.
Here’s a simple trick to not only save your garden, but also provide your puppy with a rewarding and stimulating activity for your puppy.
Cordon off a small sandy patch of your garden that you’re willing to sacrifice, or alternatively get a plastic shell such as the ones used for a child’s splash pool and fill it with white building sand.
Now take your puppy to the digging spot and let them see you bury some high value treats, make a big show of it so they get really excited about finding those treats. You may need an assistant for this exercise so the pup doesn’t climb all over you while you’re trying to do the burying.
For this first attempt you should make it really easy for your pup to succeed.
Now just keep repeating the exercise and pretty soon your puppy will think of this as their own personal treasure trove – making the other parts of your garden seem pretty boring and pointless to dig up.
You can keep the digging spot as a lifelong source of enrichment and entertainment for your dog, bury bones, stuffed kongs, their favourite toy, maybe breakfast wrapped in newspaper parcels, just use your imagination.
Wrapping Up
This is by no means a complete list, but these are probably the five most common questions we get asked by people with new puppies. The principles we’ve outlined can be applied with common sense to many other situations you’ll encounter as your pup grows up.
We sincerely hope that one of the most important things you will take away from this guide is that these techniques are all centred around the principle of creating a loving, rewarding and safe environment for your puppy to grow in, without the use of any force, or punishment. We promise you that they are also all tried, tested and completely effective.
One last thing: A common pitfall that we see is that once the toilet training is complete and the pup starts to look a bit ‘grown-up’ people tend to let their guard down, and adolescent dogs suddenly find themselves with full, unsupervised run of the property, often with disastrous results.
We don’t expect you to supervise your young dog 24/7 indefinitely, but you must continue to adapt your approach to the stage of life they are in, and keep actively engaging with them and providing the guidance and redirection that they need, to successfully navigate in the human world they live in.