Avoid THESE Puppy Training First Week MISTAKES!
We know that what puppies
learn first, they learn best. So that's why it's really important that
you're intentional with what you teach them the very first week home. If
you've been following our series so far, you would have seen that we are giving
you tons of information about the first day home first night home with your puppy. But if this is your first
time visiting our series, let me bring you up to speed. This is
our new puppy vlog. Now as a dog trainer, for more than 20 years, I have raised
and trained a lot of dogs already.
In this series, I'm gonna share with you some tips and
tricks that I've learned along the way. And I bet many of them you've
never heard of I'm Kayl McCann. This is eight-week-old week old
mixed-breed puppy, 5-Alive. Welcome back to McCann Dogs Here on this YouTube channel, we make videos specifically to help you
to have a four-legged family member. So if this is your first time here,
make sure you hit that subscribe button. In today's video, we are gonna be talking about 5-alive's first week home, all the things we've
accomplished in one week, how we did that and where you should be
with your puppies after the first week home as well. First, we need to
talk about house training. Now, remember when it comes to house training, your puppy is gonna have
to go to the bathroom. At specific times throughout the day. It's usually gonna be when they wake up
from a nap after they had a big play, after you fed them first thing in the
morning, right before they go to bed, all of these times are gonna be times
that you can be proactive in knowing when your puppy needs to go outside.
Now we've done pretty good with
our house training because I, we are pretty able to predict a lot
of these things, but I will be honest. We have had a few accidents. Now I can tell you exactly why or where
we went wrong with our two accidents. Both times it was in
exactly the same scenario. It was right after I had a
little play time with him.
And this is actually where a
lot of people make the mistake. They often will play with a puppy.
They're having such a great time. Oh, did you get a little Fox Fox. And then they don't really realize that
after the dogs had all that en exercise, they actually have to go to the bathroom. And this was certainly the case with
me. Now, I had let him out for a pee. I had come in and played. I think I might have looked at my phone
for two seconds or was doing something on the countertop. And he
squatted to have a pee feet. Now, luckily he was only within
six feet of me or so, and I was able to catch him in the act. I was able to mark him right
away and then get him outside. And I actually think that because that
happened twice and I was right there to catch him.
It sort of propelled the whole asking
to go outside thing even better. Now it's okay. If your puppy has a, not that you want them to
have a lot of accidents, but if they have one or two and you're
able to catch them in the act with really good timing, it allows them to know the
rules of the house. You can then say, Nope, this is wrong. But this is
where I want you to go instead, when you take them outside, make sure
you praise them and you let them know. Because that sort of starts to teach
the dog to have a little bit of responsibility. On the flipside, though. It is important that you are still really
aware of when your puppy needs to go to the bathroom. And what's nice about having a week with
him is we started to learn a little bit more about his schedule. I now know,
after seven days of having him, he's gonna go outside in the morning,
he's gonna have two pee's and one poo.
So if that doesn't happen in the morning
and we come in and we start playing around, I know that there's still some left in
the tank that he's gonna have to go to the bathroom. I know he always has to
pee when he wakes up for him a nap. I know he usually has to
pee after we've had a play. So because I'm learning
about his schedule, it allows me to be more proactive and
prevent those accidents from happening now, with all of this really great
information with little five alive here, midweek, the coolest
thing started to happen. And I am so glad that we had a camera
set up to catch this, but he was, we were playing around in the kitchen. He ran over to the door and he started
to just sort of look at the door, indicate at the door. And at first I wasn't really sure if he
was actually putting it together or not.
So I just sort of waited
for a second. And then, because I wasn't really reacting. He
actually came to the door a second time. And because I was watching him
so closely, I was able to say, do you have to go
outside? And then we went, and that actually happened a couple
times and within the next day or so, he actually moved from just going to
look at the door to literally jumping up with his paws on the door.
He started
to figure out by doing this sign, mom's gonna take me outside. And then she is gonna go so crazy and
excited because I go to the bathroom outside. But those things
are really hard to do. If you're not supervising
your puppy really closely. And you're not aware of when they
might have to go to the washroom, but it is absolutely possible within
one week of your puppy being home, that they can at least start in the
process of letting you know when they need to go out.
So at the end of week one, your puppy should be at the point where
they're not having accidents in the house regularly anymore. You also should also should be at the
point where you have a good sense of what your puppy's potty schedule is knowing
when they have to pee or poo throughout the day. So you can be
proactive. And lastly, you should at least be on your
way to teaching your puppy. How to ask you to go outside. There's lots of different ways to
do that for us going to the doors, what works best for us, but you should be in the process
of that starting to happen.
You might not be perfect, but you
should be on your way. Next, let's talk about crate training. Go kennel. Yes. Good boy. In terms of crate training, this is an area where we
have really lucked out. This puppy has been really,
really great with crate training. But I wanna break down a few reasons
why I think it's gone so well. Firstly, one of the reasons why 5 is
fairly comfortable in his
crate already is because we introduced the crate the
very first day he came home.
He'll be able to watch a lot of
that in our first day home video, but basically we utilized it right away. Secondly is when 5 goes into his crate. Often we put him in his crate after
he's had some type of physical or mental stimulation, which means typically
most times when he's going in there, he's kind of ready to go in for a nap
or to kind of veg out for a little bit. Now that's not to say that if
we've just played with him, taken him out for a pee and put him in, he hasn't whimpered a little
bit for a few minutes, but typically he then sort of
settles down and he goes to sleep. The other thing that we've spent a lot
of time with is teaching him that going in his crate is a really fun thing. So
we played little crate games with him.
I've taken some treats, thrown them in the back of the
crate and by a week weeks gone by, he started to put together,
if you want. Yes. Good boy. You gotta go all the way in
though. If you want these treats, you gotta go in your crate. Good
boy. Ready? Okay. Go in. Yes. Good. I just started off by Luing
him in the crate a few times. Yes. Good boy. We've done a
little bit of offering. Okay, good boy. So again, anytime initially
when he went near the crate, yes. Good boy. Anything to do with the crate I would
reward and then we've built up yes. To be able to actually remain in the
crate. Yes. With the door. Open me. Not at much of a distance. Oops. I
was not paying attention to you. Yes. Good boy. Okay. Okay. Yes. See, there's so much
value for being in the crate.
Sometimes he doesn't
wanna come out. Good boy. Another thing that's really helped
with his crate training is we've been selective about how long he spends in
the crate and also where the crate is. So if it's time where we just want
him to go in his crate and chill out. So he is not loose with us all
the time, you know, late at night, if we wanna watch TV or, you know, if
we just want, you know, a puppy break, I don't know how you would ever wanna
break from this puppy, cuz he's so cute. But sometimes, you know, he
needs to just go away and he, his crate and have a bit of just downtime.
We will sometimes put the crate
in the room that we're at. So if this is our TV room, we
would put him in the crate here. I don't always ask him
to go in with a cookie. Sometimes I just put him in there.
I put him in there, close the door, he's got a Kong in there.
He's got a chew bone in there. And then we would sit on the, the couch
and we would relax for a little bit. Some puppies will be more settled
in their crate if they can see you. But it is also important that this
isn't the only thing that you do. And you should also have your puppy crate
in a different room. So for instance, we might have him stay crated here in the
kitchen where we would be in the other room, you know, watching TV or having dinner or
maybe upstairs working in the office.
So it is important that your
puppy realizes that they
should go in their crate and that it could be in a location where
people are walking by all day long or maybe sometimes they're
gonna be on their own. And it's really helpful if you
introduce your puppy to both styles. So they don't become too anxious
or unsure. If they, you know, can't see you anymore, this is going to enable you to leave
the house a little bit more easily. So make sure you balance it out. Sometimes the crate's with
you and sometimes it's not. So at the end of the first week,
in terms of your crate training, you should probably be sort of
near the following.
Number one, you should be utilizing your crate
many times throughout the day. When you can't supervise your puppy and
they should be comfortable able to pop in and out of the crate all day
long, number two, the length of time, this is gonna vary per puppy, but they should be able to go in their
crate for a few hours and be comfortable with that. Now that is provided that
you've given them adequate exercise. You've kind of trained them.
You've done a little bit. So by the time they go
in, they are ready to nap.
So if you are going to get to a point
where you need your puppy to spend hours in the crate at a time, you need to make sure that what happens
before that is really important. That's something that I've had to utilize
immensely this week because I had to teach, I had to do a bunch of things and I needed
to prepare him to be in the crate for a few hours. So what we did
beforehand was really helpful. The third thing is that trying to
utilize feeding time to bring value to the crate.
So a little
bit of their breakfast, a little bit of their dinner every
single day should be used in the crate, crate door closed and let
them have it from there. You could certainly use the rest of it
for training and for certain things, but that's just such an easy time
to build value for the crate. And last but not least by
the end of the first week, your puppy should be comfortable being
crated both in the same room with you. And then also when you're
not in the same room. And you can start to work on this with
your puppy for smart small periods of time, many times throughout the
day, and also in the evening. Let's talk about the house-line. Now our house line already after
seven days looks really ratty. And one of the reasons why it looks like
this is because we have used this on his collar every single second that
he has been out of his crate.
Now, if you've watch any of our other videos, you'll know that we are big lovers of
having a house leash or a house-line on our young puppies or really
before they are trustworthy before they're fully trained to
understand the rules of the house. And the wonderful thing
about the house-line is that
when our puppy makes a poor choice or if they get into mischief
or we need to get ahold of them, we never have to chase after the actual
puppy and scare them or intimidate them.
We can utilize the line to get control. A common frustration from some of our
puppy owners is that the puppies can often chew on their house line and then
people are hesitant to use it. And this has happened with 5 -Alive the
first couple days. In fact, to this day, he still will chew on
it from time to time. You can see there's all kinds of
bite marks on there, but again, because we're supervising our puppy, we can just stop them
in the act of doing it.
Typically what we've each time he's chewed
on his line is we've marked it with a little ah ah or leave it. And then we've just compensated by
giving him something else he should chew. It's also really good practice for them
to chew on a bone or something and have the house-line attached so that I can
move it all around. And he just says, oh, I love this bone you've
given me. That's great.
So make sure that if you are utilizing
the house line and they go to chew it, that you're ready to switch
them for something else, they, they should chew instead. And the
novelty really does wear off over time. But the amount of times that you'll
utilize this to get control of your puppy you will be so grateful that you
have it attached to their collar. So at the end of week, one,
in terms of your house line, you should be really consistent and it
should be just old habit of putting it on every single time they
come outta their crate. And if you do have a puppy that's still
pretty interested in chewing on it. You just need to be ready to be switching
them for something else at this point. And I promise you, the novelty will wear
off soon. Next let's talk about skills. And this is my favorite
thing to work on in the week, because this is just such a great way
to start molding and shaping my puppy to learn all of the good things.
Now, we have been doing a ton this
week in terms of training skills, but the kind of stuff that you've been
that we've been working on might surprise you. Basically in the initial week, my biggest goal is to teach him
that learning and working with me is a lot of fun. And I've done various things of starting
to teach him about his obedience skills. We've started working on a
couple little tricks. Paw. Yes. Good boy. Shake. Yes. Good boy. We've started to work on getting him
comfortable with handling so that I can start up his toils. We've
done all kinds of things, confidence building getting him on
different surfaces that might wobble and move. Just giving him
some worldly experience. I have practiced some luring exercises
where I'm using the food and I've also worked on some rule out types of
things so that he's learning yes, to have some manners, very
good boy, around food, all kinds of things to teach him
that learning and listening is fun. Now what's more important about
what we have been working on. It's what we haven't been working on.
And this is the part that I think will
surprise you at this point know with the McCann method, we are all about setting the puppy up to
be successful because really what they learn first, they learn best. So this week we have not
done any walking training. We have not gone on
even one walk together. I also really haven't
used his name at all, unless I've been training him unless
I've been backing it up with some type of food lure or tug toy or something,
that's gonna get him to respond.
I have not put him in any type of
scenario where I have tested or just seen guessed as to whether he
was gonna respond to me or not. I need to remember that with a
puppy. He doesn't know anything. It's my job in this first week. And actually in the first couple
weeks to mold and shape him to learn, this is your name. This is what you
do when you hear it. Something like, sit for example. Here pup. At this
point, I'm not gonna tell him, sit and expect him to hold position.
I'm gonna tell him sit. Yes. And then I'm gonna feed him every
couple of seconds. Good sit. Good boy. Good sit. Yes. Good sit. I'm gonna do things that are gonna help
him to be successful successful instead of expecting that he's gonna come
to my house, knowing what to do. And so in terms of what you guys should
be doing with your puppies is you wanna model that training plan.
You're gonna set your puppy up to be
successful by teaching them and showing them how to do things, right. And you're not going to put inappropriate
expectations on them because they're just not ready for that
yet. Now, eventually down the road, of course you can test
all of these things, but try not to be testing your puppy for
things that you have not really taken the time to train them to do quite yet. If you're looking for a training plan
that's specific to you and your puppy, and you wanna work with me and the
team of McCann Dogs instructors, make sure you check out our
Puppy Essentials online course. The link for that is in the description
below. So at the end of the first week, in terms of your skills, you should be
working on the following. Number one, your puppy should have a pretty good
idea of what the word yes is now because you've done lots of loading up that yes, command your puppy should
also have a really good, a positive association with their name. So you wanna take a lot of time
to load up their name.
Again, we're not testing them or showing our
puppies how to respond to their name. You also could start some of their
positions, teaching them to sit, lie down, stand, make sure their body can
go in different positions. Again, we're not really worrying too much about
the word at this point. We're just, luring our puppies and helping
them to go into position. I would definitely suggest that you
start a few trick tricks with your puppy. They can be super simple things, but the tricks are really great
for your puppy's and development. It's really great for problem solving. It's definitely something that we would
recommend that you start a lot of your time on and last but not least
something to do along with your recalls. You know, whether you play some
recall games up and down the hallway, maybe some restraint recalls things that
are gonna start to build a lot of value for your probably following you
and end coming to you.
But again, none of these things incorporate any
testing whatsoever. We are still showing, helping molding our puppies to do what
we want them to do by making it a really positive experience. So that our puppies are successful pretty
much a hundred percent of the time. The great thing about having your puppy
home for a week is it gives you an opportunity to really learn a little bit
more about what kind of puppy they are. Now, what we've learned from 5-Alive for this
for first week home is that he is very food motivated. And we're very happy about that because
that's gonna make a lot of the training and a bunch of other things really, really
easy. He's also really toy motivated. I've also learned that
if he's really hungry, he's not interested it
in going for the toys. He likes the food more than the toys. So this is an important uh
thing to understand about
your puppy because when it comes time to training or figuring
out what's rewarding to your puppy, you should be able to start to build
a bit of a value system.
You know, if I have a list of toys
and a list of treats, I wanna be able to easily number them
as top one all the way, like maybe the, the least valuable and compare that
against one another so that when I'm in a distracting environment or
any little bit more focus, I know exactly the tools to bring
with me to that training session. The other thing I've learned about five
alive is that he's a really energetic working dog. He likes to go and go and
go and go. And he's got lots of energy, which is great.
So I could actually train
him for a pretty long period of time. I have noticed though, is that if I'm working him and he
starts to feel a little disengaged, or he kind of wants to move away from
me that's sort of his sign that says you've trained me a little bit too long, or it's usually because he
has to go to the bathroom. So I need to get to the point where I'm
able to predict those things and then, and quit while I'm ahead in terms
of socialization and exposure.
He's a pretty confident,
happy go lucky dog. But this week I've
specifically made you know, times where I can go and meet
family members or friends, people I know that are gonna
be really great with him, so that all the people he meets for the
first time are gonna give him really positive. And you know, easygoing
experiences at this point in time, I'm not just gonna stop with any
random person on the street or whatnot. I need to make sure that, you know, all of the first times that he
sees people it's gonna be a really, really good situation. He's met
lots of new people this week. One thing that he has not done is
he hasn't met any dogs this week.
And I've been pretty strict about that
because I wanna make sure that I have a pretty good understanding
of the temperament and the
type of dog he is before I expose him to any new dogs. Now I'm certainly gonna be very selective
about dogs that are not our own for him to greet, but in terms of our
own dogs, we actually haven't, he hasn't met any of them yet. We've kept them completely separated
because we wanna have a little bit more time to get, to get to
know him a little bit more, maybe put a few skills under his belt
so that he listens a little better. Maybe next week, we'll start to integrate some of the
older dogs that aren't really gonna care and not gonna mind him too much. And then we'll go from there because
they certainly don't want him learning to bother the other dogs, jump on
them, bug them or be too much. So we're gonna do that very carefully. What kind of things did you know about
your puppy after the first week home? Well, you're gonna wanna
know, are they food motivated? What is their favorite treat at this
point? Are they motivated by toys? Do they have a, a favorite toy that you could use for
training and teaching them new things? What about things at their attention
span? You know, are they are a, a puppy that easily focuses on
you or do you need a little work, work a little harder to maybe make
less distractions when you're, when you're doing your training? And
then what about their confidence level? How do they handle, you know, new
places, new people, new things.
Is this something that you're gonna
have to approach differently with your puppy? So making sure that you
have a good understanding of, of the type of puppy that
you're working with, again, it's not specific to breed, it's
specific to brains and personality, because that's gonna allow you to make
the best choices with your puppy going forward. We have had a pretty
successful first week home. And part of the reason why is that we
have avoided a lot of the big mistakes that people often make.
And if you
wanna learn what those mistakes are, click this card right here, we're really enjoying bringing you along
in this journey as 5-Alive grows up with us. But if this is your
first time on this channel, make sure you hit that subscribe
button. On that note, I'm Kayl. This is 5-Alive, Happy Training..