Sit! Down! Stand! Good Girl!

Well, Daisy's training has officially begun. Not that I was slacking during her first week in the house or anything. I'm close to having completely reconciled my Big Dog Ownership Skills to my Circus Dog Ownership Skills. From earlier posts, you all know that our Daisy is quite adept at sleeping on the couch as well as in the bed. Her skills of manipulating cranky Scottish men are unparalleled and her cat-like agility is... well, supremely cat-like. In general, she is a darling 4 pound, 9 ounce pet and as my daughter said, "She clicked right into our family."


At twelve weeks she is formally learning SIT, DOWN, STAND in sequence. Puppies are taught these three commands in sequence with bait (ie. stinky food; I use BilJac liver treats) to train not only the brain but the muscles. Retention of formal, spoken commands at 12 weeks is somewhat still limited but developing. Hand signal are introduced by hiding the bait in your command hand. Capitalizing on a pup's ceaseless appetite and keeping the sessions short and fun for the pup are a great foundation for a good cooperative relationship with your dog. This is true for big dogs too. They benefit greatly from happy training sessions in the formative months and often one can avoid behavioral problems if positive, friendly handling is first employed.

Kids can also be introduced to the training, though this is subjective to age and ability (of the kid, not the dog!). My daughter has a tendency to give Daisy the whole treat after one sit rather than have her work all three commands because "She's SO hungry!" Just so you know, ALL puppies are hungry ALL the time; but that is why bait training works so well in the early months. Younger children can be employed as distraction. You can see Angus is doing his best to play with Daisy in the above picture yet she is still holding her commands.

As you pup gets more and more proficient at the commands you can extend the time of the command held. Not to brag but Daisy's up to a five second sit and just did a single five second down and stay.

One final note on this, training makes dogs TIRED. Most of you with pups have experienced the Frenetic Puppy Behavior (I will post a separate article for this alone) that is completely normal for young dogs. If you can map the Frenetic Periods during the day (most pups have two to four a day) you can start the training just before and capitalize on the explosion of energy.