Three Common Puppy Training Mistakes

Any puppy owner loves his or her puppy, but many puppy owners make the same three common puppy-training mistakes. As a puppy owner it is your responsibility to teach your puppy how he should behave, but if you don’t understand how to train him correctly you could end up with a puppy that just won’t behave.

1: Puppies relate to experience reward and repetition.

Its much better for your puppy if you reward praise and treat him when he has acted correctly, than it is to punish him harshly when he acts incorrectly. Punishing your puppy after an event such as soiling in the wrong place will only confuse your puppy and make him anxious, puppies have short memories and the chances are he doesn’t relate the soiling to the punishment anyway.

Make sure you take him to the designated place to toilet at specific times, upon waking, after meals or after any excitement and regularly about once an hour, encourage and reward him if he toilets there, he will relate the encouragement and rewarding experience to the correct use of the toilet area and soon go there to toilet every time.

2: Expecting too much too soon.

Many owners attempt to train their puppies but become frustrated when the puppy continues to act in an undesired manor. Puppies learn at varying rates that can be determined by intellect, breed and the owners understanding of the training methods, repetition is the key, the more you practice a training method the more the puppy will understand what is expected of him. Patience and persistence are essential and will eventually lead to success.

3: The owner not making the effort to understand their puppy and not bothering to learn the correct methods of training.

If you have a puppy and wish to train him you must first know the methods to use that will train him correctly, there are many books courses or classes that will teach you these, trying to train your puppy without any knowledge of puppy training is counter productive and only results in a totally confused animal.

It appears true that a puppy owner needs a little training as well as the puppy, using experience reward and repetition in the correct way is essential, take your time be persistent but don’t force your puppy because you think he’s taking too long to learn. Take the time to teach yourself the correct techniques needed to train your puppy use resources from a qualified professional or a reliable source. With persistence and practice your efforts will eventually pay off.