Puppy Training & Safety Tips

  • Buy a crate and a puppy pen or use baby gates to confine your puppy to its own area.

  • Ensure that your garden is escape proof.

  • Enrole in puppy school. Your puppy will learn some basic obedience, but the real benefit is socialization with other puppies and people.

  •  Continue obedience training after puppy school at a club or with a trainer.

  •  Don’t encourage behaviour that you’ll regret when your puppy grows bigger. Jumping up is cute when it weighs 5kgs but it won’t be cute when its 35kg.

  • Get your puppy used to being handled from day one, gently touching feet, nails, tail, ears, mouth, teeth, and tummy.

  • Introduce your puppy to all kinds of novel things such as people in funny hats, remote control cars, kids on skate boards, balloons, cats and car rides.

  • Socialize, don’t traumatize. Introduce new experiences slowly and never let your puppy get overwhelmed.

  • Frozen wet face clothes make great chews for teething puppies.

  • Avoid the dog park.  A couple bad experiences could ruin your puppy’s opinion of its own species.

  • Don’t leave food out to graze on.

  • If you plan on changing the diet do it gradually.

  •  Pick up anything you don’t want destroyed. If it’s on the floor, it will be chewed.

  • Be aware of dangers such as cables and power points.

  •  Check you garden for dangerous plants that the puppy might chew on.

  • Focus on what you want, not what you don’t want e.g. teach your puppy to sit when greeting people, don’t just yell at it for jumping up.

  • Rotate through the toys. Let your puppy have two or three toys at a time. Changing the toy selection will keep it interesting.

  • Treat-dispensing toys make great puppy sitters.

  • Practice separation.  Letting your puppy have time alone in its crate or pen will help prevent separation anxiety.

  • Don’t over exercise, remember the five minute rule, five minutes for every month of age, i.e. a six month old puppy should have no more that thirty minutes exercise.

  • Hellos and Goodbyes should be no big deal. Don’t make a fuss over your puppy when you leave or come home.

  •  Don’t use ammonia-based cleaners. Your puppy will think it smells like urine and it will actually encourage it to pee there again.

  • Puppies should not jump or climb more than a few stairs until they are over one year old,

  • Leave the TV or radio on when you leave your puppy home alone.

  • Remember that your puppy is a baby – don’t ask too much of it.

More information about our Northern Beaches puppy obedience and training classes »