Puppy Training at home?

errica · 06-10-2008, 10:58 AM

Hi all! My pup, Apollo, is around 10 weeks old now. He has had two sets of shots and will be starting obedience in about a month. In the meantime, I'd like to start working with him on the basics, sit, down, stay but I have NO IDEA how to.

When I got Athena she was older, had slightly better focusing abilities and we could use a training collar. I am having a hard time figuring out how to make a puppy sit when I can't catch him!

**voodoolizard** · 06-10-2008, 04:15 PM

Get lots of treats..

make him come near you, say sit and do a hand signal if you want. if he does not sit ( which he wont cos he dont know what it is yet LOL )
gently push his bum down, say sit.. good boy give a treat !!
Repeat repeat repeat !!!

zeus got the hang of sit in a day..

for down, its easier if they are in a sit first, then say down.. put your hand behind his legs and pull gently towards you so he is then in a down, say down good boy.. treats etc... repeat etc.

do 5 mins a time a few times a day, get him to sit before food, opening the door to go out etc.. practice all you can.

stay is a hard one,so prob best to leave that for the classes.

you can do roll over.. from a down gently push him over, same as before etc.

but the main thing is to work on sit... keep going till he gets it.. then add down.. keep doing both till he gets down.. dont do to much at once to save confusion.

leave it is a good one.

treat in hand.. offer your hand out.. say leave it.. he will go for it !! so close your hand so he cant get it..
keep going till you can keep your hand open and he dont touch it till you say.. you need a release word like ok or go.

if you work on it leave it is great, my 2 now can down with a treat on a paw and not touch it till i tell them..

its cool.. i want to train so much more.. but we are perfecting roll over till we move on !!

errica · 06-10-2008, 04:21 PM

Thanks for the advice! That is what I set out to do, but as soon as he saw I had treats he tried to climb me... Do I need to wait for him to stop climbing on me before I try to get a sit out of him, or just place him in a sit, praise and treat, repeat?

**voodoolizard** · 06-10-2008, 04:24 PM

you can try turning and ignoring him for a bit( dont look at him look up totally ignore him) to see if he calms down.. but if not i would just place him in a sit, then praise and give a treat.. he will soon get the idea, climbing = no treats.. sit = treats

**Kratty** · 06-10-2008, 04:36 PM

We used a lure (Treat) based process with a motion that became the hand signal for a command. Once they learned the hand signal, we attached the verbal command to that signal. Dogs follow hand signal better than human words.

For sit: Have pup on leash and standing in front of you. Hold lure (treat) at your finger tips, palm up. Move lure toward the puppy face and over the top of his head. While they are following the lure, they will go into the sit position. Mark behavior and Reward. Repeat until they are following that hand lure consistently. You know have developed the hand signal, we use, for this command. Palm up and hand raising upwards. After some time, use they hand signal without the lure treat. This way they are following you hand signal instead.

Once they are doing this consistently, you know have to attach the command word to that hand motion. Say sit and then use that hand motion. Mark the correct behavior and reward. I don't use the lure treat as my reward treat, but you can at first. I always keep my reward treat in my other hand, that way they don't get distracted when using a lure in other commands...