I’m getting a new puppy and it’s my first working dog, I have a lot of questions and I’m hoping you can give me a timeline on how to work with my pup.

Question

We are getting a puppy next month and plan to eventually do protection work with him--this will be our first time.  We have watched the following DVDs: Your Puppy 8 wks to 8 months, Basic Dog Obedience, Pack Structure for the family pet, Raising a working puppy, Building Drive & Focus, and the First Steps of Bite Training.  I have spent a lot of time on the website reading and trying to put it all together but I am still so confused!  For example, in one of the Q&As it says bite work can begin at 8 wks, but in another Q&A you say to do the first steps of bite training when the puppy is a year.  I'm trying to kind of establish a general timeline or at least order of things in relation to the following (keeping in mind it all depends on the individual puppy) of when to begin the following things and how they might affect the others from 8 wks to a year or so:

    - Bite work
- Basic obedience work
 - Corrections
- E-collar use
- Prong collar use

    Also, if you start bite work at 8 weeks and do not actually start to do any defense work until the dog is much older, isn't there a good chance the dog will become "locked in prey" from working in prey for so long?

    While I have found information on individual specific things on the website, as I mentioned before I have read different things at times and am still not sure how it all fits together in the bigger picture.  I really appreciate your time and I'm sorry to keep bugging you!  I just want to do it right the first time and have a complete understanding so I don't have to go back and correct mistakes later.

    Shelly
Charlotte, NC

Accepted Answer

Doing “bite work” with a puppy is only to teach the mechanical skills your dog will later need with a helper You don’t want your dog working in anything other than prey with you, because that’s not beneficial to the relationship you want to have with your dog. I wouldn’t worry about ‘being locked in prey’. If the protection work foundation is done right AND you later work with the right decoy/helper AND your dog has the correct genetics and temperament this won’t be a problem.

Since you don’t even have your puppy yet, I might suggest you work on the relationship and a communication system FIRST. This is best done using markers.

The Power of Training Dogs with Markers

We teach all the basic behaviors with food, and then switch to a tug when the pup is done teething.

The Power of Training Dogs with Food

The Power of Playing Tug with Your Dog

This is how I have raised my current dog, Rush. Rush is now 2 years old and I’m very happy with how his training is coming along. You can see him working in a lot of our streaming video.

A lot of dog training is taking bits and pieces of what you learn, evaluating how things are going with your dog and not being afraid to try what works for you and your dog. There really is NO generic recipe for how to train every puppy and to worry too much about it before you even have the dog is not constructive. It’s a journey that’s supposed to be fun for you and your dog. You WILL make mistakes, we all do. If you do correct work with your puppy those mistakes will be overcome quickly and will be part of the learning process. I think once you get your puppy things will fall into place nicely.

I hope this helps.

Cindy