14 JunWhen Should I Start Training My Puppy?

When should I start training my puppy?

Dog trainers are notorious for disagreeing with each other, but this is one thing that every good trainer will agree on: now. Today. As soon as your ball of fluff comes home (assuming the pup is at least 8 weeks old — they should be).

The reason is that your puppy starts learning and forming associations about their new life the very moment they come through your door. While we definitely recommend starting manners training at this age (such as a Puppy Kindergarten course, a huge part of helping puppies develop into well-adjusted adults involves socialization: introducing new, potentially scary things to them in a safe, low-intensity environment. And for a young puppy, almost everything is new to them, from the sounds and smells outside to having carpeting, wood, grass or concrete under their paws.

A great way to socialize is by enrolling in a Puppy Playtime session (or organizing a similarly safe setup on your own), where a small group of pups are encouraged to interact with each other and their environment under the watch of their human guardians and a dog trainer. Just as important, though, is that you work on socialization yourself!

Think of all the things that dogs are known for being afraid of: skateboards, trucks, vacuums, thunder, dogs that look different than them, other dogs in general, kids, people in general, people of different heights or skin colors, being handled, and so on. Now, what if you could preemptively “inoculate” your dog by giving them a good association with those things before the pup can possibly create a bad one themselves? (You can.)

To help you organize this work, dog trainers create socialization checklists with all the varied things a dog will encounter in life, especially in the city. Working through this checklist will help inoculate your puppy against negative emotional responses — the root of so many behavioral problems — in the future, if you follow these guidelines:

• The puppy has to be allowed to approach or engage any new stimuli on the checklist at their own pace and from a distance that is comfortable to them.
• As each new stimuli is introduced, the pup should get lots of yummy treats to help create a good association with it.