Starting Training 8 weeks-6months?

[ikeenzo07]

I agree. I was not saying I needed to do hard corrections, I was just wondering about the OB. I have always started them young. But recently a lot of people I talked to said to wait.. But I'm going with every ones advice. Thank you.

[ikeenzo07]

I agree. Thank you.

[JKlatsky]

Originally Posted by Deuce

I think maybe you should take her through a 6 week basic commands class before you move into anything more personally. Especially at her age

I actually would not do this. Most basic courses are focused on pet obedience and taking drive and enthusiasm out of the puppy so it can stop chewing up the house and settle and be a good pet. The focus of most of these classes is to make the puppy controllable in public because the majority of puppy class participants will not go on to any further training. You will. Games like "Pass the Puppy" and recall exercises with strangers are not really what you want.

You will need your puppy to be confident, eager, and a little pushy if you are planning on doing protection work. Your puppy needs to be super confident and not necessarily listening to everyone else.

I would go with DFrost's suggestion. Socialize that puppy. Get him used to different surfaces and environments and really I wouldn't expect much in the way of manners or "OB training". Jumping, mouthing, etc are all normal puppy behaviors that I will not try to "fix". In other words I might teach them to do a better behavior to get me to play, but I will not tell them to not jump or mouth. Those are things they need to do protection work and they cannot have bad associations. My puppies learn basic commands but always with rewards, always fun, no corrections, except maybe verbal to give them feedback, and at most 10 minutes a day. With puppies I do a lot of luring and clicker training.

Who is doing your protection training? Get with them. They will know what they need for you to be doing. Additionally, don't mess with the rag. Let your trainer take care of all of that. No bite work is better than bad bite work.

[onyx'girl]

As this thread is in the K9-police section. I would only follow the advice of K9 trainers and not the pet/obedience trainers. Agree w/ JKlatsky...on all points.

[Elaine]

There should be no corrections at this age other than maybe not giving a reward. By starting early, you set in good behavior patterns and you don't need to do a lot of corrections later.

[ikeenzo07]

Yes, we have found a trainer, I will get with him and see what he thinks. Tahnk you.

[ikeenzo07]

Thanks to JKlatsky, the things you suggested in this post are helpful and make sense. Thanks so much. I spoke with the trainer today and he explained everything to me. Thank you.