It’s really important to train your puppy and teach it some basic things from a young age. We’re talking about genuinely impactful behaviors that’ll improve both their and your life. You can stop trying to teach it funny little tricks for now and focus on these three essential things instead:
Teach them to stay and come
Teaching your puppy to stay and then respond to a call to come to you is vital for many reasons. Firstly, when it gets older and you take it for a walk, you need to know it’ll run back to you. Secondly, teaching a puppy to stay instills discipline. It won’t grow into a dog that runs around like crazy and never sits for you.
The sooner you teach a dog this, the better. It’ll grow up knowing when to stay and be patient as well as how to respond to its name and come back to you. Like all things on this list, it’s going to take time for your puppy to grasp these commands – but be patient and stick with it!
Teach them not to bite
Remember, puppies and dogs are wild animals by nature. No matter how much we’ve domesticated them, some of their wild instincts remain. This is why they run off on walks and start sniffing trails – it’s the hunter instincts deep within them!
Unfortunately, some of these wild tendencies can be bad. For instance, you don’t want your dog to start biting you or other humans. Puppy bites are relatively harmless, but as they get bigger and older it becomes a larger issue. If a fully-grown dog bites someone, you’ll have an experienced dog bite lawyer to answer to and a whole load of problems.
So, teach your puppy from a young age not to bite other people or things. Give it some chew toys to satisfy its cravings to sink its teeth into something. As a result, it’ll grow into a dog that knows boundaries and never tries to bite anyone.
Teach them to go to the toilet
Puppies are not toilet trained. They don’t know where to go to the toilet, which can be a problem in your house. Teach them how to go to the bathroom from a very young age. When they’re super little, you need to look for signs they need to go out. Pick them up or guide them outside to a safe area. Make sure you reinforce that this is where they go to the toilet by pointing to the area and saying “toilet” or “bathroom”.
As they get older, they will start to understand how to go to the toilet without your help. It’s very important to start this training as early as can be. Not just for the safety of your carpets, but for your dog’s happiness too. Dogs can get anxious, particularly if they need to pee or poop but don’t know where to go or what to do. If you housetrain them early on, this won’t be an issue.
I would say these are the three main things to focus on when training or teaching a new puppy. Once you’ve nailed them, you can move onto some of the less essential things – like fun tricks, etc.