Puppy Problems and Training

Most puppies really don’t have behavior problems – they are just displaying normal puppy behaviors such as chewing everything in sight, including your hands; relieving themselves whenever and wherever they need to because they haven’t yet learned where you want them to “go”; thinking the leg of the couch is just a new chew stick to be tested; and jumping on your visitors because they are oh so happy to make a new friend.

You don’t want to be heavy handed and suppress your puppy’s joyful tendencies or desire to learn about his world. Instead you want to channel your puppy’s wonderful puppy energy and natural inquisitiveness into learning the behaviors you want. Catch your puppy doing something right and reward him for it rather than thinking up ways to get him to stop something you don’t like.

That’s just one step in the Five Step Positive Proaction Plan© that is the foundation of our award winning “Raising a Behaviorally Healthy Puppy” book. This reference has chapters on all the puppy behaviors that might be troubling you – housetraining, crate training, chewing, nipping, rough and tumble play, introducing your puppy to your other pets and more.

Good puppy classes will also tell you how to deal with these behaviors as well as offering vitally important socialization experiences with people and other dogs. Before enrolling your puppy in a class, review our guidelines on “How To Select A Dog Trainer”. You can also visit www.ccpdt.org to find a Certified Professional Dog Trainer.

PRODUCTS FROM HELPING FIDO THAT WILL HELP YOU UNDERSTAND, PREVENT AND RESOLVE PUPPY PROBLEMS

Start with our book “Raising a Behaviorally Healthy Puppy” we described above that addresses all the major puppy issues and questions puppy parents have including house training, destructiveness, crate training, and teaching your puppy to sit, down, come, how to walk on a leash, teaching your puppy to “give” what’s in his mouth, and managing his behavior with visitors.

Even better, purchase our Puppy Package which includes the puppy book plus booklets “76 Ways To Get Your Dog To Do What You Want” and “What Dogs Need and How They Think”. You’ll be amazed at how much information we’ve packed into these two booklets that will make raising your puppy oh so much easier. Written from Fido’s point of view if you followed all the tips in these booklets, you’d have the best behaved pup on the planet!

If you’re serious about knowing how to train your puppy as he matures and having a resource you can refer to about how to use rewards and punishment or “discipline” effectively, then you need to know how your puppy learns. Get our 4 CD audio program “How Fido Learns Best”, which is based on our live telecourse. Your puppy will be part of your family for many years, and you will always need to be updating his training, so you’ll get years of value from this program. Any trainer who teaches puppy classes should know the information contained in this program. So if you decide to enroll in a puppy class, this program will help you evaluate the trainer.

A fun way to train your puppy is to use a clicker. If you start “clicking and treating” your puppy for good behaviors, you will be amazed at how quickly the behaviors you like occur more often. To get started right away, get our Clicker Training For Dogs Kit.

Puppies need to chew. No sense trying to stop them from chewing, just provide them with toys that meet their needs. The Tug a Jug and Bouncy Bone do a great job at this. These toys provide HOURS of fun for our dogs because they are refillable. No more having to replace squeaky or fleece toys that our dogs chew up sometimes literally in minutes. Watch these toys in action in our video!

Puppies don’t come knowing what the sound of the doorbell means. Before your puppy learns bad habits of barking and jumping on people, teach her to sit calmly to be petted when people walk in the door. It’s so much easier to teach desirable behaviors from the beginning than have to replace unwanted ones. While you may think it cute for your small puppy to jump on visitors, it won’t be so cute when she’s a 75 pound adult. Our “Managing Chaos at the Door” audio CD is just what you need. This program gives you over 10 strategies to easily train your puppy to sit quietly and engage in behaviors you like before she learns to annoy your guests.