The First 5 Things to Teach Your Puppy

Obedience training is so incredibly important for your puppy. Properly training your puppy when they are young helps them adjust to your family and keep them safe in the long run. Taking the time to socialize your dog will help them interact with you, their owner, other dogs, different environments, noises, and strangers. Bottom line: the earlier you practice training with your puppy, the better. 

How should you start training your puppy and where should you begin? Training a new puppy can be incredibly overwhelming. Besides potty training your new puppy and teaching them their name, there are so many other basic commands to cover! We made so many training mistakes with Navy that ended up costing us more in the long run to correct. January is National Train Your Dog Month and on the last day of this month, we are celebrating with a post highlighting what we believe to be the first five things you should teach your puppy.

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HOW TO SIT

The sit command is probably the easiest but most important in dog training. How to sit is the foundation for so many other training techniques. Want to learn how to teach your puppy to sit on command? Take a look at the video below. After your puppy gets the basic sit down on command, start adding in distractions!

DROP IT/LEAVE IT

Training your dog to release something or leave something on command is so critical. Teaching your dog to “drop” whatever is in their mouth or “leave” something they are interested in pursuing can protect your dog from a dangerous situation. We’ve had a couple close calls with Duke and Navy chasing after wasps and getting into trash off the side of the road.

STAY

Teaching a dog to stay is critical for their self-control. To teach this skill your puppy will need to learn to stay and not move until you give them a release. We actually have two release words for Duke and Navy. We use “break” to release the two from sitting or laying down, and “okay” when we are releasing them to eat dinner or snag a treat that dropped. If you are a visual person, take a look at the video below. Also, this is a fabulous article from the AKC on teaching your dog to stay.

COME

Having a strong recall, or learning to come when called is probably the most important thing you can teach your dog. Every time you ask a dog to come, you are asking them to stop everything they are doing and come to you. Our trainers recommended having two commands for recall. For us a hard “COME” is used sparingly. Duke and Navy will almost always drop what they are doing and come and we reward them with the best treats. We say “comesies” or “here” every other time.

LAY DOWN

Down may seem like an easy thing for your dog to learn, but it is not all that easy to teach. There was an adorable French Bulldog puppy in one of Navy’s puppy kindergarten classes that refused to lay down for more than a few seconds. The trainer suspected the floor was too cold on the pup’s belly, making laying down in class uncomfortable. Duke is a dog on high alert; he struggled to learn down. Learning the down command can help your dog relax in stressful situations. Take a look at this video to teach your puppy how to lay down on command.

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We are by no means dog trainers, but we’ve definitely learned a thing or two training with puppy training Duke and Navy. What are your thoughts? I am curious to know what your training priorities were when training your puppy.

If you liked this post, check out more posts from our Puppy 101 series. As always, if you have questions or suggestions, feel free to comment them below or shoot us an email. Our inbox is always open!