Along with learning his responsibilities and duties, your puppy is also open to learning whatever tricks and games you want to teach. But before you decide to teach him any game or to let some cute puppy behavior continue, ask yourself whether what you think is cute now will be cute in a full-grown dog.

Dogs of all breeds will "Fetch," "Bring," and "Give." Especially if you have a sporting dog that you might hunt with someday, teach the "Give" or "Drop it" command at the same time you teach "Fetch.". Otherwise, you will spend your hunting days chasing down your dog to get the birds you thought you were going to have for supper!

Once you have taught the basics, you can teach him anything that works well to amuse you both, bond you, and make your lives together happier. The more you are your pup's teacher, the more firmly your pup looks to you as the leader of the pack. As your puppy knows more, he will welcome advanced lessons, be the lessons about what games you like to play or what jobs you want him to do.

Just like children, but on a more limited scale, the puppy thrives on going beyond the basics. While you stick firmly to consistency in things like feeding times and obeying certain commands, you and your maturing puppy can also cope with varying amounts of inconsistency. It is in these areas of innovation that you allow your pup's own unique personality to blossom.

Many people find great fulfillment in obedience training their dogs. A basic obedience course is necessary for anyone who is going to raise a civilized puppy, but one can go far beyond the basics. It all depends on what you want. Watching a well-trained obedience dog work is a pleasure, and in dog shows, it is the obedience ring where you will see the real honesty of dog and owner functioning as a team.

You can go beyond obedience into tracking, too. One does not have to have a bloodhound to participate in this sport. The puppy who has been taught the game of "Go find" can grow up to "Go find" in a very serious way. Dog-sledding is also becoming an increasingly popular sport. If you have ever watched well-trained herding dogs work, you know what precision they exhibit, and you can guess at the time and love it took to train them.

The more you learn about your puppy and his breed, the more you will see that your horizons are limited only by how much time and expense you want to invest in having fun with your canine companion.

Avoiding Stress In Training Your Puppy

The main purpose in puppy training is to build a communication system between the two of you. You are teaching your dog how to learn. In contrast to the positive approach of puppy training, many obedience classes use a lot of leash jerking and a certain amount of punishment if the dog is not performing well. There is a fine line between the two attitudes and it is a vitally important difference.

With a young puppy, if you are forcing him to perform perfectly and punishing him even mildly if he does not, you may be asking for trouble later on. After a puppy is six to eight months old, he can usually begin to handle corrections and accept much more firmness in his training but not at three, four and five months of age.

Stress should not be a specific part of puppy training. That comes later when the pup is six to eight months old and ready for a more formal training. Of course, it is not possible or necessary to completely avoid stress because there is often a small amount in any of a puppy's activities. However, stress should be eliminated as a planned part of the actual training.