Digital Dog Training Textbook

Congratulations on beginning your search for a puppy. Please take your time making your decision. Your puppy’s quality of life as an adult dog pretty much depends on his socialization and training during his first few weeks in your home.

From the very first day your puppy comes home the clock is ticking. All aspects of puppy training and behavior modification will only get harder as time goes by, so don’t wait, start training today!

The first item on the agenda is errorless housetraining and chewtoy-training. You can’t expect your new pup to magically know where to pee and poop, what to chew, or when to bark. Instead, you need to teach her. Additionally, you will need to teach your pup that these rules still apply when she is home alone, and that there’s no need to be anxious in your absence. All of this is easy with a doggy den and puppy playpen: short- and long-term confinement areas for your puppy that will help her learn to have free reign of the house.

Even if you only manage to teach your puppy/dog to sit on cue, you will have solved countless behavior problems. Sitting promptly and reliably whenever asked prevents your dog from performing a limitless list of inappropriate and unacceptable behaviors, because sitting and most problem behaviors are mutually exclusive, i.e., your dog cannot sit and misbehave at the same time. So, at least teach your dog to sit when requested.

However, since off-leash, lure/reward training techniques are so amazingly simple and effective, you’ll no doubt want to expand your dog’s vocabulary and teach your dog to come when called, lie down, stand, stay, and to follow and heel as well.

The most urgent priority is to continue socializing your puppy to a wide variety of people, especially children, men, and strangers. Well-socialized puppies grow up to be wonderful companions, whereas antisocial dogs are difficult, time-consuming, and potentially dangerous. Your puppy needs to learn to enjoy the company of all people and to enjoy being handled by all people, especially children and strangers.

By now you're probably quite exhausted by your puppy-raising efforts. Hopefully, though, you are justifiably proud of your well-mannered, well-behaved, highly socialized dog with dependable bite inhibition. However...

Adolescence is a time of change.

To ensure that your attentive, mannerly and friendly puppy remains attentive, mannerly and friendly throughout adulthood, you need to accelerate socialization and training. Do not take your puppy’s stellar qualities for granted. Make a point always to praise your dog when he acts appropriately and to reward him whenever he is exceptionally well behaved.

As dogs mature, they develop many doggy interests that may compete with dog training. For example, dogs may find that sniffing the grass, playing with other dogs and chasing squirrels are all much more exciting than listening to their owners and following repetitive instructions — come, sit, down, heel, sit, heel, sit, etc. Puppy training techniques begin to fail, environmental stimulation causes sensory overload and many dogs become hyperactive or reactive to other dogs and people. Owners become frustrated by the dog’s hyperactivity and inattentiveness and the relationship starts to go downhill.

Why do dogs misbehave? Or, perhaps we should ask, do dogs misbehave? Certainly, dogs are dogs, and unless given appropriate guidance, puppies will grow up to behave like dogs. However, most behavior problems that irritate owners are, in fact, perfectly normal, natural and necessary canine behaviors.

Dog behavior is a hugely fascinating yet widely misunderstood topic. All too often, normal play behavior and communication is misinterpreted as aggression and all too often, a myopic “understanding” of dog social behavior is used as an excuse for people to use aggression when training dogs.

In Chapter Seven: Dog Behavior & Play
The Alpha Fallacy
Dog Play
Dog Communication

— The Ultimate Dog Show —
Over the past few years, television has gone to the dogs! Dogs have become more and more prominent in the media, movies and sitcoms. Puppy dogs have a proven “Ahhhhh!-factor” and are used to advertise numerous products from cars to beer. In England dogs even advertise toilet tissue! Dogs have everything. The time has come for dogs to advertise themselves!

Twenty years ago, I predicted, that dog events (especially Dog Dancing) would become the next big-money TV sport, in much the same way that Figure Skating (skating repetitive figures) has evolved into Ice Dancing. It is just begging to happen.