February is Dog Training Education (or in our case PUPPIES!) Month! But puppy training is important every day, starting from the moment you bring home your new puppy. Here’s why!
Bringing a new puppy home is full of excitement and responsibility. Puppy training affords your puppy a life where they can communicate with you, increases their safety, and leads to more fulfillment, aka happiness! And a happy puppy means a happy puppy owner. :)
Puppy training is also the best way to get rid of that new puppyhood overwhelm the fastest! From potty training to walk training, and by introducing a few helpful commands, a new puppy can quickly go from wreaking havoc across the home, to being calm, polite, and being on their best behavior.
Taking that further, a well-trained pup has the opportunity to be at your side in a variety of environments and activities that you love to partake in! Pups can learn the confidence and social skills they need to interact with other people and dogs in a controlled, safe and respectful way.
What It Takes
Nearly every new puppy parent dreams of having that well-behaved pup they can take anywhere, and trust around the home unsupervised, but the reality is: it takes training, consistent practice, tons of repetitions and lots of patience before a puppy can grow up to be that way!
Many puppy owners can become discouraged early on and some don’t ever take the steps to enrolling their puppy in professional puppy training to begin with. The outcome, unfortunately in many cases, can mean that unwanted puppy behaviors evolve into more serious adult dog behavioral issues. And when things get worse, many of these pups are at risk of finding themselves re-homed or in a shelter.
We’ve learned that the biggest issues that new puppy parents face is the lack of access to the right support in solving these issues quickly, and setting them up for the best success possible.
As advocates for early puppy training, we educate and guide all our puppy parents through the toughest phases of puppyhood both in our in-person puppy school in Hermosa Beach, CA, and in our Online Puppy School!
So, if you’ve brought home a new puppy and aren’t sure if you should opt for spending money on puppy training, we can tell you (and our clients will too!) that the right training can be the best investment you ever decide to make. Training will add order and calmness into your life, while strengthening your bond with your puppy and enhance your life together with them in so many ways!
Establishes Communication and Trust
@arniethatch
Puppy training provides the quickest way to establish a line of communication between you and your puppy! It gives you the tools to ask your puppy to perform the desired behavior you want, and teaches your puppy how to correctly respond.
When you establish structure in your pup’s life with a daily schedule, along with work on specific commands to communicate with them, they quickly see you as their leader to look to for guidance and feel more comfortable knowing their needs are being met through their daily routine. This is one of the fastest ways of building communication and trust that will continue to grow as your relationship blossoms!
Unmanaged behaviors, like nipping, jumping and leash pulling, for example, that are left without proper guidance inevitably continue and worsen. An untrained adult dog can display behavioral issues simply because they were never shown what to do instead. Remember that puppies don’t instinctively understand what we want from them or how to live in our world, but they can learn how to, and when provided the right guidance, will thrive!
Teaches Your Puppy Skills They’ll Need for Life!
One of the most important skills for any puppy to learn is potty training. The problem some new puppy owners have is that they don’t realize, their new puppy doesn’t instinctually understand where they should go potty or how to “hold it”! These are things puppies need to be taught through a potty training schedule.
Potty training is an essential life skill, but it’s not the only one that puppy training provides puppies! Crate training, socialization, leash and walk training, learning how to greet other people and dogs calmly, being comfortable with being touched and handled by others, and being ok with being alone when you need to leave them — these are just some of the super important and extremely helpful areas that puppy training will help with!
Builds Confidence and Alleviates Stress
During 2020, we saw an influx of puppies coming into our training school with separation anxiety issues. No surprise there, from the moment these aptly coined “pandemic pups” arrived in their new homes, they spent every minute of the day with their owners! The problem: their owners eventually started to leave to go to work. Nowadays, with more people working from home on a daily basis, this still causes a major issue simply when you just need to leave the house!
The truth is, puppies need to learn how to be alone. When they don’t, destructive behaviors along with incessant whining, barking and crying can happen every time you’re out of their sight — better known as separation anxiety. This can be super stressful on the pup, AND the parents!
This is another area where puppy training can help alleviate your pup’s stress, where they learn how to build their confidence with being alone, as well as being able to adapt in new locations, and meeting new people and dogs without causing stress.
@dudetheberner
Socializing a puppy to new environments and experiences is a large part of puppy training and something we do daily at The Puppy Academy, as well as demonstrate exactly how to in our Online School. We strongly encourage our clients, once their pups are cleared by their veterinarian with all their vaccinations, to expose their puppy as much as possible! A well-trained puppy is confident in these situations and feels comfortable socializing with new people and dogs they meet.
Keeps Your Puppy Safe
Nothing is more important than your pup’s safety and as their guardian, it’s your number one responsibility! As we’ve mentioned, puppy training provides you the skills to communicate with your puppy. This is absolutely essential when it comes to effectively giving your puppy a command in different environments and situations where there may be a lot of distractions and your pup may be in danger. For example, knowing basic obedience commands like Come and Stay can protect your pup from confrontations with other dogs and wildlife.
Puppy training also teaches your puppy impulse control and learning to ignore things that would normally tempt them and potentially cause some trouble. Creating the good habit of sitting in thresholds instead of bolting through open doorways is just one of these important skills to learn! Nothing is scarier than a puppy rushing through a door and into a busy street. With the proper training, this, along with other potentially unsafe situations, can be completely avoided.
Creates the Perfect Companion!
@zucchini.pup
Puppy training can ensure your pup can fit right into your lifestyle whether you're an avid traveler, an activity-junky with excursions like hiking or paddle boarding, or a content creator looking for your next muse to capture and go viral!
Having certain skills under their belt and knowing specific commands will make your pup the perfect life companion and be able to keep up with you and your hobbies, while you make awesome memories together.
A well-trained puppy can learn whatever the two of you can put your minds to, and with consistent practice, you can utilize puppy training to your advantage, laying down a foundation of skills that can be applied to other activities throughout your life! Your puppy’s true potential has endless possibilities!
For more puppy help, join us for our next Ask A Puppy Trainer Show on Instagram and TikTok (@thepuppyacademy)! Each week we do a live Q&A every Wednesday at 1 pm PT with our expert trainers answering questions of all things puppy-related from puppy parents like you!
And you can sign up for our Very Important Puppy (VIP) list to receive weekly puppy training delivered right to your inbox!
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