Training Video: Obedience training for puppies

Puppy obedience training: Top tips

Obedience training is all about creating patterns of behaviour that are going to be useful to us, as we navigate life’s ups and downs.

Creating patterns of behaviour or muscle memory is best achieved using food to positively reinforce or lure the puppy.

Your puppy’s food is the best, easiest and healthiest way you can do that. It’s also a really good way to strengthen your position as a leader.

Stick to good quality, healthy food at regular mealtimes and your puppy’s relationship with food will be one you can use for training.

Use a handful of food as this makes a massive scent target. You can also dispense varying amounts of food, which will keep your puppy interested.

It’s important that once our puppy has learned a new behaviour, they also learn that they won’t always receive a food reward.

Sometimes it will be verbal praise. Or sometimes they will have to do the behaviour multiple times or quicker to achieve a food reward.

Clicker training is often a good place to start. Clicker training teaches a dog that a certain noise means they have completed or done something we ask or want.

Using food is the easiest way to train, but even if your dog isn't a foodie, you can occasionally change the reward to a toy. This keeps the training interesting for your puppy and allows you to add other skills to your regime like basic retrieves or dropping on command.

Obedience is a level of control, and no matter how much positive reinforcement and repetitions we do, we are going to undermine that training if we don’t understand how the world and its distractions affect them.

Life is challenging and is going to present your puppy with distractions. Make sure your training reflects this. Once your puppy understands a behaviour, add distractions and failure to their training.

Embrace failure, and be ok with it. Having to redo things will make your puppy more resilient to the world around them. Be consistent, firm and fair.