How to set up your puppy for success
As we’ve written about before in this column, more people than ever adopted or bought dogs during the pandemic, a trend that is still continuing. There’s been a huge uptick in the acquisition of puppies in particular, evidenced by the parade of mini Australian shepherd, bernadoodle, French bulldog and the ever-popular golden retriever puppies and their guardians coming to Marin Humane for behavior and training classes.
On par with vaccinations and spay/neuter, training is key to a happy, healthy pup and a harmonious home life for all. While adorable and silly, puppies can also chew up shoes, soil the rug, slip out of leashes and generally wreak havoc on a previously calm household. Their energy is boundless and pesky behaviors that at first seem cute can soon become tiresome.
“It’s really important dogs don’t pick up bad habits as puppies,” says Dawn Kovell, director of behavior and training at Marin Humane. “It’s much harder to unwind bad behaviors later on than teach good ones from the beginning.”
Solid training goes hand-in-hand with good management tools, like crates, harnesses and appropriate toys. Once you have the right tools, you can more easily create training scenarios that set puppies up for success.
Recently, I sat in on one of Marin Humane’s “Puppies 101” classes to do a little research (OK, it may also have been motivated by the fact that, well, puppies). I watched as the instructor led her students — human and canine alike — through a series of different exercises, designed to lay the groundwork for appropriate behavior. The puppies learned quickly and the focused time between dog and guardian helped to strengthen their bond.
Another thing that goes hand-in-hand with training is puppy socialization. However, according to Kovell, that doesn’t mean simply taking your puppy to a dog park and hoping for the best.
“People get the message their puppies need to be socialized, which is true, but if you take them to a dog park, for example, and let them loose, it builds the expectation in your puppy that they can just happily run up to any dog they like,” she says. “Later, this can lead to leash frustration or even leash aggression, when the dog is no longer able to do that.”
Instead, small, supervised play groups with known dogs is better. In fact, puppies will often learn better behaviors if allowed to play with a patient, adult dog that enjoys puppies (some do not). The adult dog can teach the puppy proper play through modeling and setting boundaries, or even gently “correcting” unwelcome play behaviors. If your puppy only plays with other puppies, they’re less likely to learn socially appropriate behaviors — and may even have the notso-appropriate ones reinforced.
That being said, supervised play among puppies can be a great form of fun and exercise for your puppy but the key is supervised. In addition to puppy training classes, Marin Humane offers classes such as “Puppies in the Park,” which incorporates some training but is mostly an opportunity for your pup to safely socialize with other puppies.
So, if you’ve recently brought a puppy into your life, congratulations! Now, set your new fur buddy up for success as an adult dog (and save some of your shoes along the way).
For more information about training puppies and dogs of any age, go to marinhumane.org/oh-behave.
Lisa Bloch is the director of marketing and communications for Marin Humane which contributes Tails of Marin articles and welcomes animal-related questions and stories about the people and animals in our community. Gotomarinhumane. org, Twitter.com/ marinhumane, or email lbloch@marinhumane.org