Basic Commands for your puppy
First things first, when you bring your puppy home you must teach him or her their name. I personally found a clicker very useful for basic training however you can use food based rewards if you’d prefer.
After your puppy has explored his surroundings get him to stay in the same room as yourself. I presume you have chosen a name for him by now, although I can understand if you haven’t - its more difficult than naming a child!
For the purposes of this article I will name the said dog Rex.
When your puppy is looking at you say “Rex” as cheerily as you can then click and reward him. Again let him ponder around and when he looks at you say “Rex” and click and reward again. This method of training is called ‘Encouragement training’ where you are rewarding behaviour they are already doing, rather than asking for the behaviour. After a few times of this you can try saying “Rex” when he is looking the other way. If he turns round and looks at you click and reward him. Do this randomly over the next few hours. If he ignores you go back to the beginning and only reward him when he is looking at you.
Never repeat the command more than once or twice (if you feel he may not have heard you) otherwise you are basically telling him “It’s ok you don’t have to listen to me the first time, just look at me when your ready” and if he knows this from day one, getting your dog to do just about anything will become very difficult.
Secondly when he has mastered his name, or as close as you are happy with, you can begin with the sit. Try and get your puppy to stand somewhere near you or hold something very tasty in your hand to get his attention. Whilst he is in front of you raise the hand up above his nose with the treat, most pups will automatically put their bums on the floor, however he may need a little encouragement. So you may need to push his bum down for him, once in the correct sitting position reward him and give him lots of praise. Repeat this step at least 5 times and every other hour.
Remember puppies get bored very easily, so do not expect yours to concentrate on you any longer than for perhaps 5 or 10 minutes. Plus it is important for them to have fun as well as training so make it short and sweet.
With the sit command, do not introduce the word “sit” until he is sitting without a treat encouraging him. Hopefully after a while just by pointing your finger up they will understand this is sit. Once at that stage you can start saying “Rex, Sit”
You will also have to remember with dogs it goes, smell, sight then sound. So if you start asking your pup to sit with no hand signal, it may not know what you are on about for a while, don’t be angry with him or her, its natural for them.
Once you feel you have got sit under control, you can then introduce “Lay down” or “down” whichever your prefer. We use “lay down”, as “down” means “get off the sofa/bed/kitchen worktop!” in our house. And for this example I will use Lay Down.
First get your pup into the sit position; he should know this fairly well by now. Then raise your hand with a tasty treat inside and place it in front of your pups nose, as he is frantically trying to eat the inside of your hand, lower your hand so his full body is on the floor. Sometimes pups may raise their bums, if he does this, place him back in the sit position and repeat the process. Again you may need to help him for a while by keeping your hand flat on his bum so he cannot raise it. But eventually he will grasp it.
After a few days of this you can gradually remove the treat and begin to point towards the ground as your signal for lay down. Once this is mastered, you can introduce the word “Lay Down” (or “Down”) and your now ready to move onto your next batch of basic training lessons.
Written by Nats