Puppy training for beginners

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Puppy training for beginners

By Paul Rawlings

Friday, 25 July 2008

Training begins the moment you get your puppy home, with house training, sitting for its food, keeping off the furniture, not chewing or barking for attention.

As with a young child, the puppy will not be able to absorb a more formal education until it has developed both mentally and physically in order to accept the discipline necessary to make it obedient.

This, as a guide, is usually between six and nine months old. I compare it with puberty and becoming a teenager.

Each puppy is different, and I tend to let mine have plenty of freedom to exercise, socialise and develop their natural hunting and retrieving instincts during the first few months.

I can continually assess how each is reacting to me and once they start failing to come back immediately they are called or begin chasing things with intent, I begin the formal education process and freedom outside is curtailed with exercise taking place in the confines of kennels or the garden.

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