Puppy Training At 8 Weeks – Professional Dog Training Tips
– If you’re a new puppy owner,
or you’re about to
become a new puppy owner,
you’re probably doing lots of research
about how to give your
puppy the best information.
Well, in today’s video,
we’re going to give you
five tips for puppy training
that will set your puppy up for a lifetime
of successful learning.
I’m Ken Steepe.
– And I’m Mark Herfert.
– And this is Rev.
– Is Rev.
– Welcome back to McCann Dogs.
(guitar strumming)
(puppy barking)
So Mark, talk a little bit about
using a house line with Rev.
When you might use it,
why you’re using it,
you know the benefits
of using a house line.
– Yeah, so with a little puppy like this
honestly at this point she
doesn’t really know a whole lot
and she’s just gonna be a
little wild child at the house
and running around, so I need
some way of being able to
maintain a little bit more control on her.
Throughout the house, if
this kid gets away from me,
she’s running underneath tables,
she’s running behind the couch,
and the last thing I want
to do is run after her
because if I’m running
after her then she’s like,
“Hey, this is awesome!”
And it’s just a game
of catch sort of thing.
So by having this long
line, if she decides to go
a little way of distance from me
and I need to get her closer to me,
I can just step on it and I
have full control over her.
– Yeah, so anytime we’re
working with our puppies
we want to make sure we
do have control of them
in case they decide to scoot away.
It just gives you a
little bit more control
and it makes you look like
a dog training superhero
because you don’t have to
actually take hold of them
for you to have a little bit more control.
– Yeah and the beauty
is that even if I went
out in the backyard I still
have that long line on,
she’s only gonna go, you know,
when we’re in the backyard
maybe seven, eight feet away from me
but I’ve got this long line on me
that I can easily catch
up to her at any time.
– You know something that a
lot of us trainers will do
with our new puppies is
something called hand feeding,
and I know, Mark, you feed her raw,
you feed all of your dogs raw,
but it’s something that you could do
with your feeding process with your puppy,
now tell our audience a little bit about
what hand feeding could mean for them.
– Yeah, no matter what you’re feeding,
it’s really good because
what the purpose behind
why we’re doing that is
we want these puppies to
begin to realize that all
good things come from us.
And of course food, and
especially a puppy being
eternally hungry sort of thing,
if the food comes from me,
the puppy knows that I’m the one that
provides all the necessities for it.
And it just builds that
relationship between us as handlers
and the dog that much stronger.
– Tell us a little bit about
loading your puppy’s name
and how you can do that at
their regular feeding time.
– Yeah so at this point
right now there’s no point
in calling Rev’s name cause as
much as Ken knows Rev’s name,
I was gonna say Ken knows Ken’s name,
(laughs)
as much as Ken knows Rev’s
name and I know Rev’s name,
Rev has no idea what her
name is at this point.
So if I just sit there and call
her name and call her name,
nothing’s gonna happen
and we’re just gonna deaden that command.
So what we like to do is we
take a high value reward,
hopefully she’s got a hungry belly,
and we take that food,
place it on the nose,
call her name and that
will lure her towards us.
The reality is she’s following
the food not the call to her name,
but right away there’s
name, reward, name, reward,
name, reward and she starts
to build value in that name.
– Yeah and Mark mentioned
something really important.
So if your puppy isn’t
paying attention to you,
you can use that treat,
put it on their nose
and guide them back toward you.
Once you have that undivided attention,
you can break that up a little bit,
so Mark would say, “Rev,” then reward.
“Rev,” then reward, “Rev,” then reward.
It really is a Pavlovian
idea of ringing the bell,
and your dog starts to
associate that with something.
So what you’re doing with
your eight week old puppy,
is you’re really building
value for that work
by saying your puppy’s
name, then feeding them.
It doesn’t even need to
be a complicated process.
It’s a pretty quick training opportunity
but man oh man does it ever
build value for that name.
The one thing you do have
to be careful of though
is that you’re not calling your dog’s name
throughout times in the house
where they can make a mistake.
Mark mentioned that you
really run the risk of
reducing the value of that word
if you’re using your puppy’s name
when you don’t have an
opportunity to follow it up.
So in the house, Mark might use
something like, “Here pup pup!”
or anything else other than Rev’s name
when he needs to get her attention
or when he’s having fun
with her in his home.
– Yeah absolutely, at
that point we’re just
making up nicknames that will have
no real expectations for it later,
so pup-pup-pup-pup, half the time
I’ll probably call her
monkey-monkey-monkey
or something like that.
– Right, yeah!
– I will have no expectations
for that word later,
as opposed to her name,
I will have a lot of expectations for.
– Now we are really loading a ton of
great exercises into these meal times
and one thing you can do is
teach your puppy that taking their collar
is a really great thing.
And how would you do that with Rev?
– Yeah, so it’s really
important cause what we want
is a dog that’s very calm when
we’re grabbing their collar,
we don’t wanna see that thing
that you see all the time,
a person was grabbing the collar
and the dog just deeks away
– Totally
– and wants to get away from mom or dad.
So what we will do is
we will make it worth it
to the dog to allow us
to grab that collar.
So again, I’m gonna grab food,
you can see a recurring theme here,
so I’m gonna grab some food,
put it on my dog’s nose.
While it’s pretty much on
the dog’s nose and the dog is
nibbling away at the
food I’m gonna reach in,
grab that collar ever so softly,
say, “Yes, good dog,”
give my dog the food,
and then I’m gonna multiple times
just going in, grabbing,
going in, grabbing,
and calmly holding that collar.
– Yeah, it’s such a
really nice opportunity
to teach your dog that the moment
you have control of their collar,
you can “yes” then reward them
and this is something, as Mark mentioned,
there’s so many people who
their dog will know exactly
how long their arms are.
They will come in to that point where
you can almost take hold of them,
but if you start by
really making it valuable
to have control of your dog’s collar early
by gently taking their collar
and then rewarding them for that,
you will very quickly teach them
that it’s worth being close to you.
That it’s worth you
having control of them,
because you’re gonna need to do it
when you take their leash, you know,
when you’re gonna attach their leash.
Maybe if you need to pick them
up for one reason or another.
There’s just so many times
you want to be able to
take control of your dog’s collar
and by really front loading the value
while maybe during a meal time
or while you’re working with your puppy,
it’s such a beneficial skill.
And it’s a great thing to do
with those brand new puppies.
With those eight week old puppies
cause it’s so simple to teach.
Let’s talk about luring for a moment.
What sort of things are you doing
to teach your puppy to sit, to
teach your puppy to lie down,
talk about what you’re doing
with that eight week old puppy
that will set them up
to be faster learners
as they get older.
– Yeah so again, it’s
nice and simple stuff
with such a young puppy
we can’t expect too much,
and we have to make it really obvious
to them what we want them to do.
So what we’re doing is
luring, which is exactly that.
All we’re doing is grabbing
that high value treat,
I can put that treat on the
nose, and then from there,
just as the word says, I’m luring
the dog to do the action
that I want it to do.
So if I want to do it on a sit
I would just place the
food on the dog’s nose,
raise it back, the dog is
basically just following the food.
The dog has no idea that it’s
actually doing the command,
it’s just following the food.
And with regards to that command too,
at this point you are
certainly not putting
a command on to it, it’s
simply following the food.
– Yeah, that’s great.
And one thing I want you to be sure of is
because these are brand
new things for your puppy,
new positions, you’re gonna be
really deliberate about
those luring techniques.
You’re gonna slowly guide
them maybe up and into a sit,
you’re gonna slowly bring
them into a down position
and maybe if you get a
little bit more advanced
you can guide them into a stand.
But at no point are you using the words.
We’re really building on
a solid foundation here
and we wanna show our puppies
that being in those positions
is ultimately what we want them to do,
but at this point we’re not
associating with the words,
we’re just guiding them into that sit
and guiding them into that down
and by doing that, you’re
really setting them up
so that when you do start
to pair those actions
with a word they’re gonna
learn it so much faster.
– Yeah and I will say this too,
when we are luring, using
that food to lure the puppy,
and as Ken said, guiding the dog,
remember this that a dog has
an attention span of about six inches.
So if that food is on my dog’s nose,
chances are my dog’s gonna follow me.
As soon as you go six inches away,
there is way more
interesting things out there
for this puppy to focus on.
– Absolutely
Good thing to remember with you guys
with those brand new puppies at home.
So now that you’ve given
your brand new puppy
all sorts of great information,
you should check out that puppy
training tips playlist next to us.
It will give you all sorts of
tips and tricks for training
your puppy as they get older.
On that note, I’m Ken.
– I’m Mark, and this is Rev.
– Happy training.
Bye for now!
