Five Puppy Training Misconceptions You Need To Do Away With Before You Buy A Puppy

If you’re planning to get a puppy, you should also be planning to train them properly too, and this is not always a quick or simple process. You need to know what you’re getting in to where training is concerned before you bring your pup home, and rid yourself of any misconceptions about puppy training that will come back to haunt you later.

This article will tell you five common puppy training misconceptions that you need to address before you get your puppy home. Read on to learn more.

Training is optional or something to think about in the future

A disappointingly high number of puppy buyers get their puppy home without any plan to train them, or even any intention to train them at all in some cases. Many puppy owners also talk about starting training their pup at a certain age or at some point in the future; and a reasonable number when pressed think that puppies almost train themselves, in that if you simply put them on a lead or give them a command it will sink in sooner or later, which without proper training, is unlikely to happen.

If you take on the responsibility of having a dog or puppy, you also take on the responsibility of training them properly to a basic level, or having them trained for you; although if you’re not actively involved in the process, your pup’s responses are likely to be patchy if present at all when it is you giving the commands.

Also, training is something that you build upon over time and that should actually begin as soon as you bring your puppy home, in terms of enforcing the rules you want them to keep, such as not jumping up (which all dogs should be taught) and if relevant, not getting onto certain chairs.

Training only needs to take an hour or so a week in a class

Those on their way out to buy a puppy that do understand that pups need to be trained often greatly underestimate the time it takes to achieve this, how intensive it can be, and how involved the whole thing is.

Much as they may have a mental visual of walking and playing with the pup, many buyers also think that training can and will be taken care of by signing up to a puppy training class for an hour or so a week for six to eight weeks.

Courses of this type run all over the country at various times of the year, and can be really valuable for puppy owners to get some direction and assistance. However, you need to continue and build upon that work with your puppy the rest of the time too, training your pup and building their skills every day in short sessions.

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Toilet training is easy as puppies don’t like to live in their own mess

Another rude awakening for many puppy buyers is learning that toilet training a puppy isn’t something that happens on its own either, and can take protracted periods of time to get right reliably; and it is all too easy for puppy owners to inadvertently sabotage their own work ad set things back considerably.

Unfortunately, many breeders claim their pups are already toilet trained when they sell them, when this is not usually the case, or certainly not fully. Even for pups that really are toilet trained, the move, change of routine and change of location can take you back to square one all over again.

Someone else can train your puppy for you

It is of course possible to send your pup away for training or hire someone to train your dog for you; after all, adult dogs that are trained don’t forget it all if they change owners!

However, this is really only done for working dogs like gun dogs and assistance dogs, which are picked for certain skills and personalities.

It is also very expensive, and also, dog owners who are not experienced trainers also often require training too, and so puppy training isn’t really something you can hand off to someone to do for you, or not get involved in yourself.

Working with a trainer interactively is perfectly fine though!

Training is something that has a finite end point

Even those who haven’t brought their pup home yet and people who have begun training too often think of training the puppy as being something that as a finish line, in terms of either perhaps the number of commands you want to teach, a point at which the dog stops learning, and/or a set age or finish date.

While it is true that every dog will top out at a certain number of commands taught and this may just be the five core commands like sit, stay, come, leave it and “no,” training is something you need to refresh and keep reinforcing for the duration of your pup’s life. Teaching them the commands themselves is just the first part!