How old does my dog have to be to start training?
ABC Practical Guide to Dog Training
Copyright . 2004 by Wiley Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved Howell
Book House
Appelbaum, Steven.
One of the most common questions I hear is, “How old does my dog have
to be to start training?” My answer has always been the same: “From
the minute you get your dog home, you are training her. If you have
a dog, you are a trainer.” Often this response earns me confused looks.
After all, most people have heard things like, “Wait until the dog is
six months old before training” or, “Get your dog into puppy classes
at twelve to sixteen weeks.”
Thirty years ago, the six-month rule was fairly common. This was due,
in part, to the fact that all too often training classes in those days
involved strong physical corrections, and a puppy younger than six months
might be physically or emotionally damaged if she was trained that way
before the six-month mark. As you can well imagine, putting a 12-week-old
puppy on a choke chain and administering sharp leash corrections was
generally a very harsh way to train, and sometimes caused real problems.
Fortunately—and this is one of the good things that has happened in
the last 10 to 12 years—training methods have become far gentler. It
is also pretty much universally understood in the training community
that a great deal of effective training can be accomplished with puppies
at a very young age. We have many trainers to thank for this, including
such visionaries as Dr. Ian Dunbar. Trainers like Dunbar and others,
including the ones in my company, have tried to communicate the importance
of formal training at a young age.
Formal training—that is, training with a professional instructor in
group or private lessons, or even in a kennel—can and does start much
earlier now than in the past. However, my “if you have a dog, you are
a trainer” answer goes a bit deeper than that. What I would like owners
to understand in this chapter is that any time you interact with your
dog, you are teaching your dog something. All too often what happens
is that owners inadvertently teach their dogs the wrong lessons, without
realizing they’re teaching lessons at all. This makes it tougher to
train the dogs formally later on.
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