This page on Working with Young Dogs is part of the Auxiliary
Section of the Beginners Course of the D. S. Dog Training Workshop
Page One of a two-page article:
The Age at Which Training Should Begin
Go to the index for this article
Introduction
Unless your dog has grown senile or feeble with age, there is no upper limit on how old your family pet can be and still be trained. A dog who is set in his ways will require more patience as you introduce him to the new way of doing things, but most certainly, you can teach an old dog new tricks. No need to worry about that.
On the other hand, you can do serious harm to your dog's personality and to his ability to function in the world of humans, as well as to your relationship with him, if you to use the wrong approach, especially if you use a harsh training regimen with a puppy.
Because you can go so wrong when working with a young dog, and because that perilous age also represents a golden opportunity - the like of which will never come again - please make it a point to read all of this page, along with all of the first two sections of the beginner's workshop, as well as all of the associated pages, before you begin working with your pup.
Rewarding Your Pup For Doing the Right Thing
Much of the training process consists of rewarding your dog for doing the right thing. For example, only half of the task of housebreaking your dog consists of turning it into an unpleasant experience anytime he sets about doing his business indoors. The other half of the task focuses on getting your dog to feel good about going where he should.
You can't go wrong with making your dog feel good, unless you make him feel good soon after he does something bad. Therefore, even with the youngest of puppies, you can go ahead and reward him for doing the right thing without fear that your intervention will cause him any harm whatsoever.
In fact, you definitely should reward your puppy when he does the right thing. So, when your pup urinates outside where he should, you'll want to be sure to reward him for that, because it is always much easier to punish wrongful behavior out of existence if you are simultaneously reinforcing your dog for doing the right thing instead. The point being that it is easier to get your dog to stop peeing in the house if you make it rewarding for him to pee outside instead.
It is best to avoid putting your puppy in a situation where he can do the wrong thing until after you have first had the chance to reinforce him several times for doing the right thing. So to continue on with the example of housebreaking your pup, it would be best to avoid taking him inside where he can pee on the rug, until he first pees outside a few times. Therefore, when you first get your dog you may want to spend a few hours outdoors with him watching and waiting for him to relieve himself so that you can make an obvious display of being extremely pleased each time he does it.
That way, after you have made your dog feel good about peeing in the yard, all you have to do, then, is to make him feel just upset enough to turn in into an unpleasant experience any time he starts to pee any place else. After that, it will be an easy choice for him to make. Does he want to drain the yellow river in the place where it never works out and he always ends up feeling upset, or would he rather do it in a place where everything always works out great, and all the bystanders seem delighted every time drops he load?
Even with puppies, it is okay for you to go heavy on the reinforcement for doing the right thing. You can't go very wrong doing that. However, you have to be extremely careful about using aversives with a young dog.
Correcting Your Puppy's Errant Behavior
When your pup does something for which he must be corrected, remember that even though we urge you to punish the errant response, all that really means is that you're supposed to make the little guy just upset enough to turn his act of misbehavior into a somewhat unpleasant experience. So don't overdo it.
The best way to punish your pup is to use your unsettling voice to infuse him with just enough anxiety to cause him to regret his misdeeds.
You will find that you get great results if you alternate between using your unsettling voice to engender anxiety in your dog when he misbehaves and using your gladdening voice to infuse him with joy when you want to foster a desirable response through reinforcement.
You will find that you get better results, yet, if you master the art of switching rapidly between the two voices to employ a do this - not that procedure, in which your dog learns to differentiate between that which is allowed and that which is not, by whichever tone of your voice you are using at the moment.
If you need to step up the intensity of your vocal punishment procedure, you can imbue your voice with a bit more authority by adopting a more aggressive body language as you speak the word of rebuke.
If you need something stronger than that to get a problematic response stopped, you can gently add in an extremely light, corrective tap, delivered crisply, though gently on your dog's nose.