E-Collar Puppy Training
A lot of people wonder how early you can begin training your dog. The answer is as early as possible – the minute you bring him home. It doesn’t matter if it is a puppy or an older dog, you are teaching him new information the minute you put him in the car and take him home.
Another concern we hear is how early can you begin e-collar training? As early as possible – around 12-16 weeks old. When you begin e-collar training at this young age, it is imperative that you use a high quality e-collar that will not harm your dog. This way you can ensure you are working at your pup’s lowest level and getting him off to a great start!
Meet Angus, our 16-week old puppy in training. His parents took advantage of using their out of country vacation to train their dog. This is one of many reasons why our Board & Train Program is so popular – it doubles as dog boarding as well as training (hence the name!). But it can work with your schedule.
We love to see the progress Angus has made in his first day with us. While puppies have lots of energy, they are oftentimes easier to work with because they do not have bad habits ingrained yet. We are able to focus on teaching them new, good behaviors rather then correcting existing bad behaviors.
So what do we do? We start our puppy training the same as we would any other dog. We introduce the e-collar with our command and use the leash as a guide. Once the dog is familiar with the command, the leash becomes unnecessary and acts only as a safety mechanism until we have worked on duration and distractions.
Angus’ day one is an introduction to the basic obedience commands that all dogs are expected to understand: sit, down, stay, place, and heel. The rest of his time with us will be proofing those commands by increasing their difficulty. This is achieved by bribing in distractions such as: walking around the room and being expected to hold the command. Or bringing in the resident cat to ensure there is restraint from trying to visit. And for place, it is increasing the amount of time they are expected to stay on place. It is easy to go to place, but not always easy to stay there for an hour.
We hope to have an update on Angus’ progress in the next week. Let us know if you have questions by filling out our contact form or giving us a call. We don’t bite! Promise!
