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 Two of a two-page article:
The Age at Which Training Should Begin
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Never Punish a Puppy for Things Not Done Right
You should always punish your dog when he does something that you do not want him to do. For example, if he starts to chew a book, or he starts to pee in the living room, or he gets up on a couch where he is not allowed, you need to do something to turn those events into unpleasant experiences, so that he will be less likely to do those things again.
That's the process whereby your dog learns not to do those things. By allowing your dog to start to make those mistakes early on and, then, correcting him for them, you activate a paradigm of strategic punishment that will save both you and your dog an enormous amount of hassle in the long run.
However, while it is important for you to punish your dog when he does something wrong, it is absolutely essential that you never, ever punish a dog who is just learning, for not doing something right, especially when you are dealing with a puppy. Allow me to illustrate.
When you are first teaching obedience skills to your dog, you will issue him a command. Then, you will physically move the animal into the proper position. Eventually, your dog will get the idea and begin to move himself into the desired posture when he hears you give the command.
You can reward and reinforce your dog for being in the right posture after you move him into that position. In fact, if you want to get your dog properly trained, when you are first teaching him, you must do so religiously.
As he starts to catch on and figure out what you want, you can also reward and thereby, reinforce your dog for being in the right posture after he obeys your command and moves himself into the right position.
After your dog is already well trained, if he was to fail to instantly obey a command, it would be a good idea to punish him for that lapse, perhaps by repeating the command using a harsh unsettling voice, or maybe by reaching down and moving him into position in a way that was just rough enough to turn it into an unpleasant experience.
As in the example in the previous paragraph, after your dog has learned the proper way of doing something, so he is perfectly clear on what he is supposed to do and he has a well established history of doing it, at that point, should your dog fail to live up to expectations, you should go ahead and apply a mild punisher, like the ones described in the paragraph above.
It makes sense for you to do that and in fact, if you want to have a well trained dog, it is necessary for you to punish in that fashion when your dog fails to complete a given task in the way that he knows he is supposed to do it.
However, when a dog is first learning and he is uncertain as to just exactly what it is that he is supposed to do, that is a different story. It would be a mistake of cataclysmic proportions for you to punish your dog in any way for not doing a thing the way he is supposed to do it before it is clear to him just exactly how it is that it is supposed to be done.
When a dog is first learning something, especially when you are dealing with a pup, you can get excited and you can praise, reward, and reinforce every aspect of everything that is right, but when it may not be clear to him just exactly what all is expected, then, you must turn a blind eye to all the ways that the little guy comes up short.
It is okay to dispense mild punishers to a dog who fails to deliver on those skills that he has long since mastered. In fact, it is necessary if you want a dog whose skills are on the cutting edge of perfection. But dropping aversives on a dog who is just learning because he doesn't understand what you want him to do is a recipe for disaster.
Tune In to Your Pup
The process of being trained should be fun for your dog. He may seem distressed for an instant immediately after being punished for some forbidden response, but the process or being corrected should not be traumatic for your dog. During the brief interval between when your dog does something he knows to be wrong and the time that you dispense punishment, your dog should look anxious, because he knows that something unpleasant is about to happen. However, other than that brief instant of tension, throughout his training your dog should be happy, confident and free of anxiety.
Training should be a joyful event for your dog. If he seems distressed or more than fleetingly confused during training, in a way that he usually does not, you need to take a step back and figure out what the problem is before your proceed further.
When to Begin
You can begin both happenstance training and obedience training with your dog at around six weeks-of age.
To be sure, the period that extends from the sixth week to the twelfth week of your dog's life is prime time for incidental training. Indeed, those are the golden weeks of socialization, so you will make more progress in that regard during your dog's critical stage of development than at any other time in his life.
However, the opposite is true of doing command work with a dog during his critical stage. To begin with, no matter how intensely you work with your dog, there is no way that you are going to be able to make much headway teaching obedience commands to a little critical stage puppy.
At that age, teaching your dog to sit consists of giving the command and then, physically moving the animal into the right posture before acting like you are thrilled and amazed at how phenomenally great he is at being pushed into position. Anyway, that's how much progress you can expect to see from a litle six to twelve-week old puppy as you give him commands and gently move him into the right posture - no discernable progress at all, really. Not at that time, anyway.
Nonetheless, despite the fact that your tiny pup will appear to show almost no immediate progress if you work with him on obedience skills at that age, it still makes sense for you to go through the motions with your critical stage pup while taking great care to ensure that he finds the exercise to be a highly rewarding experience.
Comparing Two Options For Teaching Obedience Skills to a Young Dog
Let's compare two options that you have for working with your six-week old puppy. First, you could begin doing obedience work with your little dog right away and continue on right through his critical stage and beyond, until he has mastered his obedience skills. Or, you could wait until you dog is four or five months old before you begin command training.
If your dog is from one of the breeds that are known for their obedience potential, then, if you do things right, no matter which of the two options you choose, at one-year of age your dog will know all of his obedience commands well enough to perform them reliably.
In fact, if you were to add up the number of hours it takes to obedience train a dog who started at five weeks versus how many repetitious hours were spent training the dog who started at six months, you would see that, in total, you would spend fewer hours training the older dog, who started at a later age.
Nonetheless, I recommend that you do age appropriate obedience work with your critical stage pup. Personally, I would not miss it for the world, because even though it takes endless patience to do obedience drills with a dog that young, high levels of stimulation during the critical stage can predispose a dog to greatness.
There just seems to be something very different about an adult dog whose skills and personality were conditioned by way of a double whammy that included both happenstance training and obedience training, administered during his critical stage.
Such dogs seem to be especially reliable and intelligent relative to others of their breed which, one would assume, results from their having received high levels of stimulation and a big dose of highly focused human interaction during their critical stage of development. Furthermore, as adults, critical stage trainees also tend to possess excellent judgment and a level of performance that approaches the infallible. It seems that their intense, early life experience somehow endows them with a propensity to, thereafter, readily develop additional skills throughout the remainder of their lives.
I never encounter a Level Four dog without trying to picture what he must have looked like as a tiny puppy, as someone with huge hands commanded him to sit before gently moving him into position.