By Tristan Andrews

When you decide you want to bring a new puppy home, you need to make sure you are ready for the training that goes along with it. You can”t just bring home a puppy and think you can let it outside every now and then and be done with it. It doesn”t work that way. You will have an adult dog that jumps on people and one that doesn”t listen when you tell it something such as sit or stay or come, it will just keep doing what it wants and you really don”t want that in a dog.

The reward system is a great way to train you puppy. This means if you puppy jumps up on you and you don”t want them too, do not give them a reward or treat. If you say ”no jump” and the puppy says down, then reward her! One thing to remember is to keep the commands simple, dogs don”t understand complicated sentences. Sit, stay, come, off, no, down, potty etc are all you need when training you new puppy.

If you get an adolescent dog or an older dog that is not trained, you must start from the beginning and use the same methods as with a puppy, but be prepared for some resistant’’s because older dogs are set in their ways just as people have a way of doing things and don”t like change.

Repetition is the key to any type of training and anything you want your puppy or dog to do. This works mainly because dogs are repetitive animals. When you want your dog to stop jumping on you, or other people, simply push them down & gently say ”off.” You use the command ”off” rather than down because if you were to train the dog at agility or some other type of competitive sport, down means ”lay down” so ”off” means ”get off.” Gently push the puppy into a sitting position and say ”off” loudly and eventually, she will learn that you don”t want her to jump on you that you want her ”off” you.

Now with jumping on other people, it’’s similar to the ”off” command, only it’’s ”no jump” and gently pull the puppy to a sitting position. Every command should end in a sitting position and you should always tell the dog ”good girl/good boy” when they have done what you asked of them, even if you needed to assist them. This way they know they will gain your approval and praise if they do something correctly.

The tone of your voice is crucial to training. When you are correcting your puppy or dog, use a flat, monotone voice, but when you are praising the animal, use a high pitched, loving type voice so they know the difference.

When a puppy or dog has done something wrong, such as chewed through your new boots and you discover this when you get home from work, there are a few things to remember here. First is that you don”t know when he chewed the boots, so giving him a crack on the nose now would be senseless because he doesn”t know what he did three hours ago. Second, hitting your dog shows the dog that aggression is okay and you don”t want an aggressive dog. You show the dog your disappointment with the tone of your voice.

About The Author

Tristan Andrews is a freelance author who writes articles about Dogs and Dog News.