The First Seven Things To Train Your Puppy

If you’re about to get a new puppy then I am very, very excited for you! If you have just got a new puppy then congratulations! It is an extremely amazing and worthwhile experience. I bet for those of you new puppy parents, you’ve already realised how important it is to start their training as soon as possible; puppies don’t come with their own manual on ‘how to be good’ and they learn the bad stuff just as quickly as the good. Starting their training from day one means that you will be setting great foundations for the future.

In this guide I’m sharing my top seven skills to start training your puppy from day one. I hope it makes those early days easier for you.

There are skills to teach your puppy and there are absolute essentials that you need to cover as well. These essentials have to be done no matter what, so whilst they don’t show on the top seven list, they are behaviours that you shouldn’t ignore in the early days. They are, as it says, essentials. For details of how to work on each one, please see my Puppy Training Tips page. The essentials are:

• Toilet training

• Socialisation

• Preventing separation anxiety

• Handling and grooming introductions

• Dealing properly and appropriately with puppy biting and mouthing

• Introducing equipment such as collars, leads and harnesses correctly

Unless you get the most placid super-chilled puppy with an adult sized bladder, it is unlikely that you will get away without working on any of the above, from day one. For me, these are necessary background daily areas that you need to focus on over and above your top seven skills.

So, with those taken care of, what on earth do you start to train your puppy first?

1. Train them their name: you’ll be using it for the rest of their life and usually when you want their attention. Getting them used to it quickly is a good idea. Call your puppy’s name is a friendly and encouraging manner and say “yes” when they look at you. You can give them a treat after.

2. Teach them to sit: this is seen as a controversial first skill to teach your puppy in the dog trainer world as some see it as non-essential.  However, for me, teaching your puppy to sit is something most puppy parents want and use often. A sitting puppy isn’t jumping up at you or the work surfaces or darting across the road. It is an easy skill to teach and one that you will likely use most often throughout the rest of your dog’s life, so you might as well get it started straight away.

3. Teach them to leave things alone: puppies pick up everything. You don’t want to be chasing them around or grabbing things out of their mouths when they have something you don’t want them to have. This can actually lead to more serious issues long-term such as resource guarding and related aggression.  If we can teach them not to pick things up that they want in the first place, and love doing that, we avoid the risk of further behavioural problems in the future and help keep our puppies safe. Not only that, teaching a solid ‘leave it’ actually helps outdoors with distractions such as dogs, people and even wildlife. Effectively, the ‘leave it’ skill becomes a cue to disengage from anything that your dog is looking at and so it is extremely helpful to train so that you can enjoy on and off lead walks with your dog.

4. Teach them to drop things: teaching our puppies to drop things and spit things out of their mouths is also a crucial skill because we can’t always have eyes on our puppy and sometimes you’ll notice that they have something you don’t want them to have. Again, this avoids the risk of future behavioural issues, maintains a trusting relationship between you all and keeps our puppies safe. Dropping items is a different skill for a puppy than leaving items (as above). Leaving items means that they don’t pick it up in the first place. Dropping items means to spit something out that they already have. They are two completely distinct behaviours for our puppies to perform and both need training separately.

5. Teach them to recall: at first, your puppy is unlikely to stray far from you and come back to you when you ask them to. You’ll probably be lulled into a false sense of security that their recall is incredibly natural and doesn’t need to be trained. This couldn’t be further from the truth and puppies are good at fooling owners like that!  What happens, as they get older, more confident, hormones start to kick in and genetics take hold and switched on in different ways depending on a variety of factors (different internal gears that they have start to get used such as their prey drive) is that owners suddenly notice that their once amazing recalling puppy actually has no recall at all…and they now have no recall training to back them up! Starting to recall train your puppy in the early days and getting those foundations nice and solid before all the changes start to take place is vital, particularly if you want freedom and confidence on walks and want to give them the freedom of an off-lead lifestyle for the rest of their life.

6. Teach them to walk nicely on lead: nobody wants to be dragged down the road by their dog on lead. This just makes walking them miserable and you will be walking your dog thousands and thousands of times throughout their life.  Teaching them to walk nicely on a lead saves a lot of stress and pain! Remember, unless you have a tiny breed, as your dog gets older, they get a lot bigger and a lot stronger. Getting those foundations going from the start is a lifesaver. Not only that, a dog who is pulling you on lead down the road is a safety concern. A dog who pulls into the road is a risk to themselves, to you and to other people. Get that training going!

7. Teach them to settle: If you can teach your dog to settle on cue, you can ensure that they behave when you have guests over, are eating dinner, want to take them to the pub or want to chill out in the evening, to name just a few benefits of this training! Whilst this isn’t a life saving skill per se, I do believe it is one that saves puppy owners a whole lot of stress. It’s also a two-for-one skill in that you essentially train your dog to lie down on cue at the same time. So it’s a win, win in my eyes!