First Week Puppy Training – The 6 Skills To Teach First – Professional Dog Training Tips
– The first week home for a new puppy is a very impressionable time. And there are a few exercises
that you should be doing with your new puppy during
their first week home that will really help speed
up the learning process. In this video I'm going
to teach you six exercises that you can do with your new puppy that will help them to
become a well-behaved four-legged family member
who loves to listen. I'm Ken Steepe, this is Hippy Hippy Shake, welcome back to McCann Dogs. (acoustic instrumental music) (dog barking) Now the first thing you
need to keep in mind is that puppies have tiny bellies and they also have really
short attention span. So as you're working with your puppy for the first couple of weeks, keep those training sessions really short and take advantage of all the
natural training opportunities that are presented to you.
For us, we'll often portion out a little bit of the puppies food, whether it's their breakfast
or lunch or dinner or whatever and use that for training. We know that we have a
motivated dog to work for food because it's their feeding time and we're also not giving
our puppy too much food over the course of the day. Now the first thing I want to talk about is the response to name. Now, before your puppy knows their name, it's just a word, they've
never heard it before.
So we need to do something
to build value on that word and the first thing we're going to do for the first few repetitions
is just say their name then reward them. And it goes a little something
like this, I'll say, Hippy, then reward. Hippy, then reward. Hippy, then reward. Now I'm making it really
easy for Hippy right now and I'm building value on that word. But in just a few sessions you'll be able to make it a little bit more
challenging for your puppy. Now here's where we're going to increase the challenge of that response name a little bit for your puppy. I want you to wait for a moment
when your puppy's distracted which probably won't take that long because puppies are
naturally pretty distracted by all of the things in their environment.
But have a few treats in hand. When your puppy gets distracted, call their name and put
a treat on their nose, turn them in toward you and yes, reward when your puppy is facing you. That way they're gonna start to understand that every time they hear their name they need to turn in toward you. And I'll show you how it
goes, kind of like this. I'll get her distracted. Hippy. I'll turn her toward me. Yes, good girl. So do that a few times. And I'll try it again. Hippy. Turn her toward me. Yes, good girl, very nice. Hippy. Turn her toward me. Yes, good girl. Hippy is starting to understand that every time she hears her name she needs to turn toward me because something good is about to happen. Now something you need to keep in mind is that when you've got your puppy at home avoid using their name all the time unless you're training this exercise. The last thing you want to do is water down how important that word is. So we use something like,
"Here, pup, pup, pup." or "Here, here, here."
or something like that until we're ready to
train our puppy's name and that way that name is
always something valuable.
Another thing that we like to do for the response to name training is after you've had a few
successful repetitions of turning your puppy
away from a distraction, you and a partner will sit
at either end of a hallway and one person will hold the puppy and get them really excited. The other person will have some food and they might use some exciting language to really keep the puppy's
focus and keep their attention. Then they'll call the puppy's name and that partner will release
the puppy down to them. It really builds motivation and drive for an excited response to name. In those first few days
of your puppy coming home, make sure you have an opportunity to get them accustomed to their collar. Now, when you pop your
puppy's new collar on for the first couple times,
they may itch and scratch at it and it's just them getting used to it, it's like you wearing
a new pair of glasses or something like that. But it's going to be
important down the road for you to keep your puppy
safe, keep your young dog safe that you can have a collar on them safely, you can clip a leash to it.
And even more importantly, be
able to put on a house line, which is something we talked
about in a previous video and I'll link that in the card above. Puppies explore the
world with their mouths, so a great way to engage with them is by using something
like an interactive toy. I've got this Bungee Tug here. The other great thing is for those of you who want to do dog sports in the future or you want your dog to have
a great retrieve or a fetch. Having toy driving your dog is
going to be really important. The other great thing that you can start doing with your puppy is laying the foundation for their out by engaging with the toy and
then presenting some food, Hippy's gonna start to learn
what the out command means.
So let's get started. With your puppy I want you
to get that interactive toy and animate it on the ground. Make it look really exciting, so that your puppy get
gets interested in it. I'll show you with Hippy Shake. Ready? Okay, get that tug! Tug, tug, tug! So when your puppy gets… Hippy Shake's got it now,
she's starting to tug on it. When your puppy gets a hold of that toy and it seems really excited about it, you're gonna say, "Out" and
then you can present the food. Very nice, good girl. We'll try it one more time
to get her even more excited. Ready? Get that thing. Oh, she's very excited now. Tug, tug, tug, tug, tug. You can see how much she
loves playing this game. I'm gonna tell her "Out"
and then present the food. The great part about using
these interactive toys is that not only does your dog
have fun playing with the toy but they begin to understand
that the toy is only fun when they get to play with it with you.
Now another exercise will
always do with our young puppies are some luring exercises and that's simply teaching
our puppy to follow food. Now following food is
going to be really helpful if you want to train
your dog to do any tricks or you want to teach your
puppy to walk on a loose leash. It's even helpful for things
like the down and sit command. But with our puppies, as they're
eight, nine, 10 weeks old, we're just going to lure
them around a little bit. And when they really commit to that food, we might make it as challenging
or as easy as your puppy is capable of following. We're just going to lure them around, we're not gonna give them any commands, we're not going to ask
them to do anything. All they need to do is follow that food. Now if your puppy gets distracted
easily or doesn't like, seems to not be that
interested in the food. You might need to reward
them a little more frequently or pick a little higher value food reward. Now don't make it too tough, you just want to maybe turn
your puppy a little bit.
Yes, and reward. You might want to… Let's see if I can get Hippy
Shake to just move around. She went into a down position. I can, yes, reward her. We're not really looking
for anything specific but we definitely want our
puppies to follow this food. Okay, buddy. And these luring exercises are really going to help you down the road with some of your obedience training. Now we often talk about
the value of a crate when you're training a puppy And whether you're using it as a safe place for your puppy to be when you aren't able to supervise them.
Or you're using it as a limited space area so that you can speed
up their potty training. The crate is a really useful tool. Now, something we need
to do with our puppies is have them build a positive
association with that crate. And a great way to do that is by feeding your puppy
each of their meals inside the crate. So I'm just gonna tell Hippy Shake, "Okay" and then I'm gonna put
her dinner inside here.
Now if you have any challenges
with your crate training, we posted a video not that long ago. And I'll post a card to it
above that you can check out and it'll really teach your puppy to love being in their crate. So by doing these exercises
in the first few weeks that you bring your puppy home, you're really starting
to lay the foundation of learning for your puppy. You're also beginning to
understand how they like to learn, which can be a really helpful tool when you're training them. Now if this is your
first time on the channel and you consider your dog
a member of the family, make sure you hit that subscribe button. We publish new videos every single week to help you to have a well-behaved four-legged family member. Do you see that playlist beside us? That's actually our puppy
training tips playlist and I think you're gonna find some of those videos helpful as well. On that note, I'm Ken,
this is Hippy Shake. Happy training. (melodious instrumental music).
