Training A Puppy. What Is The Smart Way To Start.
If you’ve just brought home a puppy, building a clear training structure can feel difficult. Where do you start. What do you teach first. And when do you add something new.
Especially with a first puppy, many people try to do everything at once. This quickly leads to confusion for the dog and frustration for the owner. Structure in training is essential.
No Fixed Blueprint, But A Clear Structure
Raising and training a puppy is different for every dog. It depends on what you want to teach your puppy and for what purpose. That is why there is no fixed blueprint for training a puppy.
What always helps is first being clear about what your puppy ultimately needs to learn. From that overview, you can build the training logically and step by step.
Why Not Train Everything At Once
What we often see is that a puppy hears all kinds of commands from day one. Sit. Here. Down. Stay. Heel. All mixed together.
While the puppy does not yet truly understand a single command. For the dog, it becomes unclear what is actually being asked.
A puppy learns fastest when you keep it simple. One exercise at a time. One clear task.
No overload of words and no combination of different exercises that have not yet been learned. By offering multiple commands and exercises at the same time, you make training unnecessarily complicated and increase the chance of mistakes.
Teaching One Exercise, Without Noise
An exercise should first be taught without distractions and without multiple commands. You choose one exercise and fully focus on that.
Only when the exercise is clear to your puppy do you add the command. This way, the puppy first understands what to do before a word is connected to the behavior.
These first training sessions should always take place in the same location, for example inside the house or in the garden. A calm environment helps your puppy focus on the exercise itself, without being distracted by outside influences.
This puppy is learning the “here” exercise in simple, clear steps.
Building Step By Step
Once an exercise has been learned and the corresponding command is clear, only then do you add a new exercise. That exercise is again trained separately.
Only when multiple exercises have been properly learned on their own do you start combining them. This way, it always remains clear to the puppy what is expected.
By working this way, you prevent exercises from blending together. Your puppy learns in a structured manner, makes fewer mistakes and understands more quickly what the goal is.
Basic Exercises That Often Return
With most puppies, a number of basic exercises almost always return:
- Learning the name
- Here
- Place / heel
- Follow
- Down
- Stay
Later on, puppies can also be trained in other areas such as retrieving, indication, searching, tracking and detection work. Which exercises you choose depends on what you want to achieve with your puppy.
Our Experience With Jacky
This is exactly how we trained our own puppy Jacky. She is now 6 months old and the foundation of all exercises and commands has been taught.
In the first six months, we deliberately built her up and shaped her in the desired direction according to our method: what is learned young, stays for life.
and now combining them into structured sequences.
Train Without Distractions First
An exercise should always be taught first in a location with minimal distractions. Once it works well there, you can train the same exercise in different environments.
This teaches your puppy that an exercise always means the same thing, regardless of location. Motivation remains important, but the foundation is always built in calmness and clarity.
Continue Learning In The Online Training School
In our online training school, we show this way of training step by step.
For example, we kept a detailed training diary of Suzie, from puppy to fully trained working dog. You follow her from the very first day she arrived with us until she is fully trained.
We show which steps we take, how we teach exercises and in which order.
In addition, you will find all related courses in the training school where we explain exactly how to teach these exercises yourself. As a Premium+ Member, you get access to all of these trainings and the complete program.
