Building a solid relationship with your puppy through effective communication is essential if you want them to understand and follow your instructions. Being able to communicate clearly guarantees that basic obedience commands are taught consistently and successfully. Here’s how to provide clear, precise commands on a regular basis to train your puppy!
Before we begin to train your puppy at Maisies Dog Training, one of the most frequent questions we hear from prospective puppy parents is, “Why isn’t my puppy listening to me?!” In actuality, it’s usually not a question of them ignoring you; rather, it has to do with how they perceive you and how well they communicate. Puppies require direction from their leader, or parent, as they are not naturally adept at understanding linguistic subtleties. A typical mistake that confuses inexperienced puppy parents is to overuse terms in their commands.
Train your puppy with clear commands
However, being straightforward does not mean merely giving an order. To establish a connection between a behaviour and a word, you must first engage your puppy so that their attention is on you, then demonstrate what you want them to do (you may accomplish this by using a bait, which we discussed in a previous blog post). Finally, you must give the command. When you first begin training a puppy, you will teach them each command using a similar method until they understand it all and can proceed to building connections.
Attention: Calling out your puppy’s name will help you get their attention right away.
Eye Contact: Make eye contact with them by offering food as a lure. To accomplish this, first bring the bait up to your dog’s nose to get their attention, and then gradually move it up to your eyes to get their attention!
Command: Next, give your puppy the command you want them to obey, such “Sit.” Dogs read body language before they learn commands, so when you give one, make sure to utilise a particular hand gesture!
*Note: At this point, you can keep using a lure to entice your puppy to obey commands if they haven’t at least had some experience with them. In the section after this one, we’ll go into more detail!
Command “Good”: Say the marker word “Good!” and give your puppy some food as a reward after they obey the appropriate command. This makes it clearer that we want them to continue doing what they’re doing and reinforces the instruction!
Command “Break: Your puppy has now successfully finished the task you gave them to accomplish, so let them go by saying “Break!”
*Note: For the final point, you should really be working on your puppy’s muscle memory rather than expecting them to hold a command for an extended amount of time.
