Puppy Training

This is the useful info we used to train our dogs:

Crate Training:

Crate training is one of the most efficient and effective ways to train a puppy or dog.
The single most important aspect of dog and puppy training is that you reward and praise your dog or puppy each and every time she does the right thing. For example: praise her when she chews her own toys instead of the couch or eliminates outside instead of in the house. The more time you spend with your puppy or dog, the quicker and easier it will be to train her.
The key to house training is to establish a routine that increases the chances that your dog will eliminate in the right place in your presence, so that she can be praised and rewarded; and decreases the chances that your dog will eliminate in the wrong place so that she will not develop bad habits.
It is important that you make provisions for your dog when you are not home. Until your dog is housetrained, she should not be allowed free run of your house. Otherwise, she will develop a habit of leaving piles and puddles anywhere and everywhere. Confine her to a small area such as a kitchen, bathroom or utility room that has water/stain resistant floors. Confinement is NOT crate training.

What is Crate Training?

Crate training can be an efficient and effective way to house train a dog. Dogs do not like to soil their resting/sleeping quarters if given adequate opportunity to eliminate elsewhere. Temporarily confining your dog to a small area strongly inhibits the tendency to urinate and defecate. However, there is still a far more important aspect of crate training.

If your dog does not eliminate while she is confined, then she will need to eliminate when she is released, i.e., she eliminates when you are present to reward and praise her.
Be sure to understand the difference between temporarily confining your dog to a crate and long term confinement when you are not home. The major purpose of confinement when your are not home is to restrict mistakes to a small protected area. The purpose of crate training is quite the opposite. Short term confinement to a crate is intended to inhibit your dog from eliminating when confined, so that she will want to eliminate when released from confinement and taken to an appropriate area. Crate training also helps teach your dog to have bladder and bowel control. Instead of going whenever she feels like it, she learns to hold it and go at convenient scheduled times.
Crate training should not be abused, otherwise the problem will get drastically worse. The crate is not intended as a place to lock up the dog and forget her for extended periods of time. If your dog soils her crate because you left her there too long, the house training process will be set back several weeks, if not months.
Your dog should only be confined to a crate when you are at home. Except at night, give your dog an opportunity to relieve herself every hour. Each time you let her out, put her on leash and immediately take her outside. Once outside, give her about three to five minutes to produce. If she does not eliminate within the allotted time period, simply return her to her crate. If she does perform, then immediately reward her with praise, food treats, affection, play, an extended walk and permission to run around and play in your house for a couple of hours. For young pups, after 45 minutes to an hour, take her to her toilet area again. Never give your dog free run of your home unless you know without a doubt that her bowels and bladder are empty.
During this crate training procedure, keep a diary of when your dog eliminates. If you have her on a regular feeding schedule, she should soon adopt a corresponding elimination schedule. Once you know what time of day she usually needs to eliminate, you can begin taking her out only at those times instead of every hour. After she has eliminated, she can have free, but supervised, run of your house. About one hour before she needs to eliminate (as calculated by your diary) put her in her crate. This will prevent her from going earlier than you had planned. With your consistency and abundance of rewards and praise for eliminating outside, she will become more reliable about holding it until you take her out. Then the amount of time you confine her before her scheduled outing can be reduced, then eliminated.

Mistakes and Accidents During Training:

If you ever find an accident in the house, just clean it up. Do not punish your dog. All this means is that you have given her unsupervised access to your house too soon. Until she can be trusted, don't give her unsupervised free run of your house. If mistakes and accidents occur, it is best to go back to the crate training. You need to more accurately predict when your dog needs to eliminate and she needs more time to develop bladder and bowel control.

Puppy chewing and home alone:

Stage one - chewing:

1. When your pup looks interested in chewing an unsuitable object, disrupt their thoughts with a word like "toy".
2. Remove unsuitable object from them.
3. Replace it with their favourite toy and encourage them to chew it by playing with it.
4. Praise them when they chew their toy.
Tips
• Give your pup extra large raw bones or something that's virtually indestructible. For example, a rubber Kong filled daily with some food the dog has to spend time and energy trying to get out.
• Pups all go through a teething phase - some last until 12 months of age. While it's in this phase - put away ALL shoes, sports gear, anything you couldn't bear being chewed. And block off any access to your good furniture and clothes etc - especially those blowing around on the washing line.

Stage two - home alone:

Tips
• Train dog when you are home, not when you're going out
• Start this lesson when your dog or pup is tired and ready to sleep, not when it's very excited.
• Always leave your dog with something to chew for hours
• A radio on in the background helps
1. Put them where they'd be if left alone, like in a secure yard or a laundry.
2. Get them to go onto their bed, calmly give them a treat that'll take a while to eat (a large bone or chewy treat).
3. Leave them, without talking to them, you don't want to excite them. If they get up from their bed before you leave, put them back and say "quiet".
4. Close the door on them.
5. Leave them undisturbed for 20 minutes at a time.
6. If there's no whining for 20 mins, go in quietly or even bring them out.
7. If they start to whine or bark, go to the door say something in an annoyed voice such as "be quiet", and go away quietly. Repeat your annoyed voice from afar if your pup keeps crying.
8. Do this every day and build up the time you leave it alone to three hours.
Potential problems:
• Whatever you do, don't go in and see the crying pup, because that's a reward, so it'll quickly learn to whine to make you come in!
• Never make it obvious that you're leaving your dog home alone. So no jangling of keys and closing doors loudly, not until you have a very relaxed quiet dog who's used to being alone for hours occupied with chewing on a meaty bone.
The good news is - this lesson always works and gives you a stress-free happy dog forever after!
1. This step involves saying what you usually say when you leave (for example, "I'll be right back. Be good."), leaving your home, and then returning within a minute. Do not make a fuss over the dog upon returning. Either ignore the dog or greet it mildly with soft words or a gentle pat. If the dog is relaxed, repeat another departure and one minute absence. If the dog appears at all anxious, wait until it relaxes. After the dog has tolerated several one-minute absences, leave it alone for two or three minutes. Gradually increase the lengths of the absences. Do many departure/absences that last under ten minutes. You can do many departures within one daily session of an hour or so, assuming the dog relaxes sufficiently between the departures. Or you can scatter them throughout the day. For instance, practice several just before going to work, several after returning, and many on the weekends. Don't worry about the dog's attention span. If the dog loses interest and doesn't pay attention to your departures, so much the better! We have found that once a dog can tolerate absences of about an hour (30 to 90 minutes), it readily learns to tolerate spending longer intervals alone - 2 to 3 hours, then 4 to 6. You don't have to accustom a dog, minute by minute, to being alone all day (8 to 10 hours). The tedious part is at the beginning, but the job becomes easier as you go along. It is impossible to predict how quickly individual dogs and owners will progress because such factors as the severity of the problem and the length of time it takes the dog to relax between departures.
Examples of Absence Durations (in minutes)
Dog #1 1, 1, 3, 5, 2, 5, 10, 5, 15, 5, 10, 15, 20
Dog #2 1, 1, 1, 1, 11/2, 1, 11/2, 1, 11/2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1, 2, 11/2, 1, 21/2, 2, …
Dog #3 1, 1, 2, 1, 4, 2, 5, 3, 10 (dog barked), 1, 1, 2, 4, 3, 5, 6, 7, 3, 7, 4, 6, 8, 2, 9, 7, 10, (no bark or anxiety), 5, 12, 8, 15, 10…

Rules To Follow Regarding Practice Departures:

1. Start with absence durations that the dog can tolerate, for example 10 seconds.
2. Repeat each absence duration enough times to ensure that the dog is not anxious.
3. Slowly increase the length of your absence. If the dog becomes even a little anxious, Practice more, shorter absences.
4. Increase your absence duration randomly so the dog cannot learn to anticipate when you will return.

Remember, your goal is gradually to accustom the dog to being alone without becoming anxious. The dog should come to expect that most absences are going to be very short. The accompanying chart lists schedules of absence durations used in some real cases. Notice how each is different.

Serious Cases:

Some dogs have such severe problems that they become extremely distressed even before their owners leave. In these cases, the dog must be counter conditioned to the pre-departure routine of the owner. This process involves teaching the dog to sit and stay for praise and//or treats while you do one or more things related to your departures -but then do not leave. For example, the dog is told to sit/stay as you pick up and put down the car keys, go to and from the front door, rattle the knob, put on a coat, and so forth. The dog gradually learns that when you behave in these ways it will get a reward if it stays seated (or at least doesn't follow) and remains calm.
An alternative to the above procedure is simply to repeat pre-departure routines continually until the dog ignores them. No reward is required. The reason the dog reacts to these stimuli is that it associates them with being left alone for (from the dog's point of view) a long time. Repeating some or all of these routines many times without actually leaving will disassociate them from the unpleasant experience of being alone and anxious, and eventually the dog will reduce its response to them.
You can practice many of these procedures during television commercials; allow enough time in between for the dog to relax again. This takes very little effort or time on your part.

Safety Signals:

Dogs readily learn to associate specific events or items with short, non-anxiety- provoking absences by their owners. For example, many dogs are unaffected by being left alone in the car because the car is a signal that their owners will be gone for only a short time. Similarly, when an owner takes a garbage bag out the door, the dog knows the owner will return soon and therefore doesn't become anxious. Thus, it is sometimes helpful to associate a clear, distinct signal with a practice departure and short absence. The dog can use this cue as a safety signal.
Items that can serve as obvious safety signals are a playing radio, Television or stereo: a loudly ticking clock: a palatable bone (not one that can be splintered): or and interesting toy. If the dog's separation distress is manifested by chewing, providing a chewing item in addition to other signals is a good idea. If safety signals are used during practice sessions, it is important that they never be presented to the dog when you leave for a period of time longer than the dog can tolerate. If you should do so, the value of the safety signal would be lost. The common suggestion of leaving the radio on to "provide the dog company" is not particularly successful, by itself, in solving a separation anxiety problem. A playing radio is likely to work only if the dog has consistently associated it with being alone in a non-anxious state.

Long Absences:

The ideal in treating separation anxiety is never to let the dog engage in its inappropriate behavior during the course of treatment. Every time the dog is left alone for longer than it can safely tolerate, it will engage in an anxiety response. This is counterproductive because the dog again experiences anxiety with a departure while you are trying to teach the dog that departures are safe. If you must leave home for longer than you have successfully practiced, you might take the dog with you or leave it with a friend, dog sitter, or at a kennel. If these solutions are impossible or impractical the alternatives are to:
1. Proceed with the program despite the possibility of setbacks caused by the longer absences. Sometimes this course of action works, and other times it makes the whole treatment process ineffective.
2. Condition the dog to be relaxed and comfortable in a specific room or crate where it will remain while you are away. However, there are serious potential drawbacks and contradictions to these procedures. These will be discussed later in this pamphlet.
3. Administer anti-anxiety medication.

Anti-anxiety Medication:

Anti-anxiety medication may be used temporarily to suppress the dog's anxiety response when it has to be left alone for long periods during the course of treatment. Anti-anxiety medications are also helpful in treating dogs that cannot tolerate even short practice absences. Occasionally, dogs with mild separation anxiety can be treated through the temporary use of a drug without any behavior modification techniques.
A good anti-anxiety drug should not sedate the dog but simply reduce its anxiety while you are gone. It should be stressed that such medication is a temporary measure. As progress is made, the drug dose is gradually lowered until the dog can remain alone in an unmedicated state. The choice of an appropriate medication must be carefully made with the help of your veterinarian. It is wise first to administer the drug when you will be home for several hours to watch for any side effects that might occur. Some drugs might make the dog excitable, in which case you would not want to leave the dog alone.

Punishment:

Most owners get angry or upset when they find that their dogs have been destructive or eliminated while they were gone. People seem naturally to think that the dog should be punished: they yell at of hit the dog, take it to the "spot" and scold it, or isolate it in the bathroom for a while. Most owners discover these tactics do not work. Neither does waiting outside the door until the dog barks and becomes destructive and then rushing in and scolding the dog or tossing a can filled with pennies. Punishment, in general, is not an effective way to treat separation anxiety. In fact, punishment delivered by the owner may actually increase the dog's separation anxiety either by paradoxically increasing its attachment or by making the dog anxious about the owner's return or departure.

Some people mistake the dog's natural submissive behavior in response to punishment as "guilt". Owners frequently tell us that the dog "looks guilty" only when it has done something wrong. Actually, the dog has made an association between the owner's return; the presence of urine, feces, or chewed items; and impending punishment. The dog has not made the connection between its own behavior (barking, chewing, etc.) in the morning and the punishment delivered by the owner in the afternoon.

Punishment might work for some behavior problems that are not related to separation anxiety. For example, scolding a dog may decrease it's barking at neighbors, and applying bitter-tasting substances to furniture may reduce "puppy teething" behaviors. To reduce problem behaviors resulting form separation anxiety, however, you have to reduce the dog's anxiety.

The Use of Crates: A Cautionary Note

A common recommendation for controlling disruptive behaviors in the absence of the owner, is putting the dog in a crate. Whereas crates can be effective in housebreaking puppies and preventing puppy chewing, their use in the treatment of separation anxiety problems is usually counterproductive. The animal will still be distressed at being alone and probably will engage in anxiety responses in the crate. It may urinate, defecate, howl or even attempt to escape from the crate and thus injure itself. A crate can be used in dogs with a separation anxiety problem only if the dog is first gradually accustomed to spending time in the crate and then gradually accustomed to being alone in the crate.

Even though dogs do sleep many hours per day and sometimes like to sleep in enclosed spaces, they usually change position frequently. Contrary to what many dog "behavior" books state, wolves and dogs are not den-dwelling creatures: they do not naturally spend day after day in small enclosures.

It is therefore debatable how comfortable the dog will be in a small crate for as long as 8 to 12 hours. Another disadvantage to using crates is that the animal's watchdog capabilities are obviously reduced.

Ancillary Measures:

Sometimes, in addition to the techniques discussed above, it is also helpful to instigate minor and temporary changes in daily interaction with an excessively attached dog to help "wean" the dog from the owner. When you are home, you might require the dog to stay in a room by itself for a few minutes before allowing it accompany you. The dog also might be discouraged from sleeping on your bed leaning against you, sitting in your lap and so forth. The idea is to getSince canines are highly social creatures, being alone can be quite stressful for them. Fortunately, you can teach your pup to enjoy his alone time, or at least tolerate it. If he never grasps how to do this, you may wind up with a dog who acts out through excessive barking, digging, and chewing - or develops a very serious case of separation anxiety.

Steps to teaching your dog to be alone:

1. Leave your puppy alone in his crate or puppy playroom for at least 30 minutes to an hour each day. If he's nervous about even spending this much time in a crate you can gradually increase the length of time each day. Your pup will begin to adjust to being alone, as well as learn a valuable lesson: you always come back.
We recommend you leave your dog in a safe place, either a roomy crate or puppy playroom, whenever you leave the house until they're about a year old, though some dogs may need a few extra months of training.
2. Make your pup's alone time the main time he eats, and he'll learn to enjoy these stretches more. Using kibble he'd normally get at meals, stuff a couple of Kongs and give them to your pup whenever you leave him alone.
3. Teach your dog that "quiet time" is a good thing by showing him how to settle. Every so often, interrupt his playtime with short, quiet breaks. Tell your dog, "settle down," and ask him to lie still for a second or two. Then reward him and resume playing.
At first, these intervals should be very short - just a few seconds in length. When he's able to settle successfully for these brief periods, slowly build up to longer segments - 10 to 20 seconds of settling. Your dog soon learns that quiet time is followed by playtime, and the wait is never more than he can handle.

DogTime tip:

In the beginning, keep his time alone short (30 minutes at most) so he has no trouble remembering that you'll be back. Make the experience pleasant by leaving him with two or three stuffed chew toys. Increase the time alone by 5- or 10-minute increments every day. Shake things up every now and then by throwing in a really short quiet time so he can't predict a pattern.

Troubleshooting:

My puppy was doing well--until he stopped. Now he cries every time I leave:
Chances are you went too far, too fast. Wait for a break in the crying before going back in. One he's re-engaged with his chew toys or settled down, take another much shorter break from the room.
At your next alone time training, begin with a length of time you know your puppy handles easily and practice at that level for several sessions. Once he's got that down, gradually add on just a bit at a time, stopping just short of when he becomes anxious.
My puppy works himself into a frenzy when I leave him alone.
This may well be a normal puppy reaction to your absence--they can kick up an amazing mini-storm when they're first left alone. You might also be surprised by how long it takes him to get to a break in his vocalizing--5 or 10 minutes is normal, but it can seem like an eternity when it's your baby howling and shrieking.
Many dogs will paw or chew on the kennel door in an attempt to come to you, but stop when it's clear it won't be successful.
These behaviors, upsetting though they may be, are to be expected when you're first starting this type of training. Follow the above steps, make sure you don't keep your puppy in his crate for too long, and make sure the toys you give him when you leave are well stuffed and beloved.

Symptoms your dog may have separation anxiety, and need a dog trainer's help:

* He's not eating food or treats left out while you're away
* Destructive chewing, scratching, or clawing at exit routes--doorways, windowpanes, or the kennel door. If your dog's nails, pads, or teeth are worn down or bloody, or he's panting from exhaustion, he's suffering real separation anxiety.
* Pacing, whining, drooling, and following you closely when you're getting ready to leave