When you imagine yourself as a puppy owner, your fantasy is your puppy is sitting calmly at your feet at a café or leisurely strolling beside you.
But reality is a bit more chaotic. Your pup will initially come with growing pains: Potty accidents, nipping, biting, barking, and other things that disrupt the perfect puppy fantasy.
However, teaching your pup a few things can go a long way if you want your vision of the perfect puppy to come true. With work and a lot of patience, your puppy will learn, grow, and quickly develop.
You have to train your dog daily and learn about its needs and behavior.
The timeline checklist is as follows:
What Will I Learn?
8-10 Weeks
Exposure to Environment
The first phase of puppy training starts at 8-10 weeks and it’s when they learn about their environment.
This period of a pup’s life is a critical period of socialization. Like any youngin, they are curious about their environment and want to see it, taste it, bite it, and feel it.
This is how they learn about their world…by the way things feel, taste, and smell.
Start with the following:
Surroundings: Includes car rides, public transportation, the area around your house, passersby, and other pups.
Activities: includes vet visits and body handling.
Crate Training
Crate training is an essential part of growing up. Your pup should see the crate as a safe and secure place. This helps speed up the process of housebreaking. You can start by putting the pup in a crate for a 10-minute interval when it’s nice and calm.
The training helps create an independent puppy and reduces separation anxiety. It will help if you reward your pup for going in the crate. You can try to feed it in the crate.
Name Recognition
Make sure your puppy knows their name as you will use it for the rest of their life. Start saying their name whenever you interact with them and notice if they look at you in recognition of their name.
Here their name is the “command”, and eye contact from your dog is the correct response. Have a session where you reward with a treat each time your pup looks at you or comes when called by name. To encourage eye contact, bring the treat to your eye level and reward your dog for making eye contact.
Socialization
Throughout its life, a dog will encounter new people and situations. Early social exposure helps your dog associate positive feelings with social interactions. Start by introducing your pup to your family and friends. But don’t introduce too many people at the same time to not overwhelm it.
Puppy socialization with other puppies?
10-12 Weeks
Basic Bite Inhibition
At this age, puppies tend to become bitey. Like human babies trying to “grasp” things to explore, puppies explore by putting things in their mouths, simply, biting. You can imagine their mouths are like their hands.
Puppies often get carried away with their biting and they don’t know it. Bite inhibition is the control your puppy has on its bite strength.
It is vital for the owner to teach the pup not to bite certain things or not to play rough. Puppies generally learn bite inhibition by playing with other puppies, or you can redirect this behavior by providing them with a chew toy if they start to bite you.
Impulse Control
Impulse control can be taught through many methods. An easy way to practice impulse control is by using the sit command having your pup wait for water or food near their bowl. The dog is excited and wants to eat right away, but impulse control training forces it to control their feelings and wait.
Ask the pup to sit before setting their bowls. Place the bowls down only when they have calmed down and release them from that position using a specific word like “break” or “okay.”
Ideally, you should try to incorporate this behavior into your pup’s playtime as well. In this case, your practices impulse control by waiting for you to throw the ball (and ignores the impulse to jump and grab it from you).
This kind of training can be done more easily once your dog learns basic commands like sit.
12-16 Weeks
Potty Training
This is the crucial part. Create a schedule for your pup, and make sure that you adhere to it. Take your puppy out first thing in the morning, after eating, before and after playtime, after naps throughout the day, and last thing at night.
That seems like a long and tiring process, but you have to comply with it; it is best for both of you. At this age, the pup will start to have some bladder control. Reward your puppy every time it goes outside to do its business and, more importantly, completes it.
Continue Socialization
Keep on introducing new situations and people to your pup. Let it meet calm, vaccinated dogs after it has been vaccinated itself. Additionally, start getting it used to more of the typical everyday situations and noises such as car horns, marketplace, traffic, hiking, etc.
Threshold Training
Threshold training consists of asking your pup to sit at specific places such as crosswalks, doorways, open doors, etc., and then helping them to walk through those places calmly.
All this will discourage them from pulling or lunging when they see an open door. That room means a new adventure to embark on or a new place to explore.
Up to 6 Months
Advanced Bite Inhibition and Polite Play
As you have already begun basic bite inhibition, level-up the difficulty. Make them bite even more politely while playing with you or other humans. Don’t forget to give them treats for successful trials.
Puppies who have learned to play politely tend to follow your commands and know when to stop, what is off-limits, and understand the concept of no-biting or bite inhibition. The puppy is still teething and strongly desires to bite everything in its vicinity.
It wants to chew on things, especially household items such as boxes, t-shirts, shoes, etc., anything that it can get its hands on. The pup thinks all things are its toys.
Being Alone
Now, you can start leaving your pup alone in a room or crate, but ensure that the room is puppy-proof for some time. Make sure that it feels safe when left alone in a crate or in a room; don’t overdo this; start with a few minutes.
Start Command Combinations
You can start giving your pup some command combinations. Start with trying to hold the dog a little longer in a specific command position, for example, a long stay or sit command.
You can try some fun combinations such as: Come, sit, shake, stay, lay, stand. Try to keep the pup engaged and provide positive reinforcements in the form of treats and petting.
6 Months-1 Year
Continue to Reinforce All Commands
Keep your pup engaged and keep on reinforcing all the learned behaviors. Start to incorporate advanced commands such as duration, distance, and distraction. Introduce more time of basic commands, increase the distance between you and your pup while giving commands and place them between more distractions
We recommend that first, you practice these commands outside in the yard or a park before incorporating them inside your house. Do add the command of recall in your practices.
Maintain a Hierarchy at Home
Your puppy is in the adolescent age; just like human teenagers, it will try to take control. It is not uncommon for puppies to start nipping, soiling at home, or other behaviors when the training starts to ease up.