Making the decision to adopt a puppy into your family can be a big step and can have its challenges. Many people are hesitant to get a puppy because of the work of training that is involved. Nobody wants to have a puppy that tears furniture apart or goes potty in the house. This is why it is so important to focus on training a puppy while it is still young. Maybe you have the time, commitment, and techniques needed to train a puppy. If so, good for you! However, many people aren’t sure how to effectively train their puppy to understand what they want or aren’t able to patiently give consistent direction that puppies need to learn well.
Most people choose to take their puppy to an obedience class where they will go through several weeks of training. This, however, doesn’t always yield the desired results. Sometimes the “problem” might be on the owner’s part and not the dog’s. This is especially true for first time dog owners that don’t have experience with owning and training a dog. Dogs have personalities and not every personality learns the same way—just like people. This is one way the standard obedience class lacks because not only does the puppy need to learn commands, but the owner needs to learn how to give those commands for their dog’s personality in order to effectively train them. This is the reason why many people choose to hire a private trainer.
A private trainer can give one-on-one time and attention to your puppy, learn its unique personality style and teach accordingly. A good trainer will have experience with knowing how to adapt their training sessions to fit each individual puppy. This is the best way to have success in getting a well-behaved puppy.
Here at Country Haven Puppies, we’re proud to offer the unique training experience of using a trainer that is dedicated to training your puppy in many different ways. This isn’t just a once a week training session, however! Your puppy will get the opportunity to actually live with the trainer’s family in their own home where lots of devoted personalized time can be given to the puppy. Because of this kind of specialized training, space is limited and early reservation is recommended.
Types of Training
We currently offer two levels of training. With each of these, we maintain close contact with the trainer to get an idea of the puppy’s personality since it is only beginning to show between 6-8 weeks of age and is not so clear until 12-16 weeks of age. By doing this, it ensures that you, the customer, will have the best chance at getting a dog that will match your lifestyle. It is well known that even puppies from the same litter can have very different personalities and for that reason will have different strengths and weaknesses. Some will do better at being therapy dogs while others will excel in other areas of service, but they will all thrive on the love and attention you give them and knowing they are pleasing you.
This is a 4-week course that will start when the puppy turns 8 weeks old. During this time, the puppy will learn many different commands and will be started on house-training. They will be socialized daily as they interact both with people and other animals as well as being taken on car rides. This level gives the puppies a basic understanding of what is being asked of them and gets them started off right for future training if desired.
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This level is an 8-week course that is simply an additional 4 weeks after the first level of training. During this course, all commands that were learned in Level 1 are reinforced and the puppy learns with hand signals with no voice. Some additional commands will be learned as well. Puppies will learn the most effectively when the commands are taught consistently, and this is where the level 2 training really shows. A well-trained dog is worth their weight in gold!
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In many ways, puppies are like children and accidents can happen, so the short answer is no. We start them on house training in Level 1 and during this time they are learning when and where are proper times to use the potty. By the end of the course, they have a good understanding of what is expected, and accidents should be rare—if any. An untrained puppy will go anywhere at any time, but a trained puppy will give a look, make a noise or go to the door indicating their need to go outside.
In our Level 1 training, some of the commands we work on are sit, come, stay, down, kennel, heel, load up and they will be started on crate training. This is a lot for a puppy to learn and we break it out over the 4 weeks that we have the puppy. Of course additional training can be done afterwards for any other commands as well. Our Level 2 training course simply starts where Level 1 left off and reinforces what was learned previously as well as learning a few extra commands.
We believe very strongly in the effectiveness of using treats to train our puppies. They need to know that good behavior will be rewarded. Puppies thrive on praise and they need lots of it! We will not punish our puppies but rather withhold a treat until they do what we are asking. This encourages them to listen and obey. Every small step in the right direction will be met with an acknowledgement that they did what’s right.
This is perhaps not the best way to ask that question. While it may cost a fair amount to get a puppy trained, the cost of an untrained puppy can far exceed it. Many people spend thousands of dollars to take their puppy to either an obedience class or some other method of training and take time off work which can get quite expensive. This is one advantage of purchasing a puppy that has already gone through training class and while the price of a trained puppy may not be cheap, the end results are priceless!
