What Age Should I Start To Train My Puppy?
It is a very good question and the answer is…
From day one! Well, your breeder or rescue will technically have them from their very first day, but what I’m talking about is the first day you bring your puppy home.
I get lots of enquiries from families asking whether it is too early to start training their puppy when their puppy is, in fact, barely a puppy anymore and nearer to being a teenager! Whilst it is never too late to start training your puppy or dog, you are missing a big opportunity for learning by leaving the training until they are older. Not only that, by leaving training until later, your puppy is highly likely to develop bad habits within that time and we all know that habits are hard to break.
Breeders:
Puppies are remarkable and their ability to learn starts way before we bring them home, typically around eight weeks of age. A really good breeder will already have started training your puppy and some puppies can be toilet trained before they join your family! If nothing else though, any good breeder will have, at least, started to socialise your puppy to lots of environmental stimuli which is all part of the learning process.
When You Bring Them Home:
You can train your puppy from day one and it is highly recommended that you don’t leave it too long to start. Whilst your very young puppy might have the attention span of a gnat, as most baby puppies do, you will be surprised with just how much learning they can do when you do tiny little training sessions with them right from the start. With that in mind remember, they can learn both good and bad things as easily as each other, so the sooner you start training them the right things, the better!
But My Training Class Doesn’t Allow Puppies To Join Until They Are Fully Vaccinated:
If you are waiting for training classes to start before you train your puppy, you’re are missing key valuable training time within which most issues that people face with their puppies could be resolved before they become really stressful for everyone or, more likely, not even happen at all. This is why I only offer one-to-one puppy training sessions; because we can start the training from your home from day one, either in-person or online. Puppies that start training early compared to puppies who wait to start training are so much further ahead in terms of their behaviour, maturity and skills.
Whilst it is never too late to start to train your puppy, the earlier you do start, the better they will be.
Happy training and enjoy your puppy, they don’t stay so little for long xx
