Training Reminders

Your Responsibility: Always remember that your puppy is a baby who doesn’t know anything about your world or expectations. It’s up to you to teach and reinforce rules and behaviors as they grow. Your puppy will learn fastest through consistent and positive interactions and experiences.

Containment: Leaving a young puppy unsupervised can lead to potty accidents, destructive behavior, injuries, and ingestion of harmful substances. Always use a safe, contained area to keep them secure when you cannot provide your undivided attention. Playpens are the most popular option so that the puppy can still be around family activities, but a fully puppy-proof room can work if you are especially diligent – just make sure they don’t attempt to dig at the floors or chew any baseboards.

Our companions are eager to work with their people. Focus on building a strong bond with your puppy over the next few months – it will pay off multiple times over in their adulthood!

Early Training: Your puppy began learning crate training, polite leash walking, and to “sit” to communicate their needs and wants like attention and food while we were raising them. This is a head start into forming these behaviors, and only a small part of what they need to learn to become a well-behaved adult dog.

Professional Help: We recommend attending at least a few in-person puppy classes starting when your puppy is around 12 weeks old. Choose a professional dog trainer or program that focuses on socialization and that generously rewards good behaviors as your puppy is learning.

Reasonable Expectations: Your puppy is very smart, but you should still expect it to take many training sessions and repetitions for them to understand things. It is likely that they will not begin to fully learn any behavior until they are 4-6 months old, and it is normal for them to be forgetful along the way.

Take a Step Back: Remember, most puppy “problems” can be solved by adjusting your approach. Put your puppy in their safe area and take a step back to think about what might be causing the issue or consult your professional trainer for solutions. Please reach out to us if you need any support.

Promoting Relacation: Puppies need 18-20 hours of sleep every day. Most of our puppies will naturally match the energy of the room, but sometimes we need them to rest even when there are exciting things happening around them, and that comes less naturally to them. One of the most important skills is teaching your puppy to be content doing nothing, regardless of nearby excitement. Your trainer should provide exercises for this, maybe similar to the exercise shown below.

Grooming

It is best to have short 1-2 minute brushing sessions every day as your puppy matures to promote a positive attitude towards brushing. Remember that we are teaching them that brushing is a relaxing time, not playtime, so it is best to schedule this after they are tired from other activities – and do not allow them to bite or play with the brush.

As an adult, you should expect to spend around 5-10 minutes 1-2 times per week brushing your dog. The line brushing technique demonstrated in the video below is a very quick and effective way to remove tangles from your dog’s coat and will keep them clean and matt-free between grooming appointments.

In shedding season, it is MUCH easier to bathe them and use a forced-air dryer to push out the excess coat, instead of trying to brush it all out!

We highly recommend visiting your groomer for a de-shedding service, but please make sure that they do not use Furminator or other harsh de-shedding tools, these will cut the outer coat which increases the risk of undercoat impaction and matting in the future.

If you would like to bathe your dog at home, DO NOT allow their fur to air dry – it takes many hours to dry that way, and it is very likely that they will develop a matted coat and possibly even a skin infection.

A powerful forced-air dryer is essential for grooming, as it efficiently pushes water from the coat and ensures the dog is dried down to the skin. It also makes de-shedding easier, as the dried undercoat slides right out of the freshly clean outer coat.

We use and recommend the Aeolian forced air dryer – it is the most powerful dryer we have found that won’t trip a regular household outlet. It is possible to find cheaper dryers on Amazon, we used a model similar to the popular shelandy dryer for a few years, but they take three times as long to dry.