Five Crucial Lessons Every Puppy Should Learn

Puppies are teachable.

If you've recently brought a puppy into your home, you're already looking forward to enjoying your dog's companionship for years to come. This is especially true if you have children, who will get to experience what it's like seeing a dog grow up in front of their very eyes. But in order to raise a healthy and happy dog from a puppy, you're going to have to set some ground rules and, more importantly, teach it a few important lessons. Here are five of those lessons that every puppy should learn from the outset.

1. Its name.

This is the easiest thing to teach a dog. Why? Because human beings are so consistent in calling a dog by its name that the dog picks up on it in a relatively short amount of time. This illustrates the power of persistence and consistency when teaching a dog, and if you plan on teaching it anything else, think back to how it learned its name: from your consistent use of the word.

2. Basic words.

Words like "sit," "stay," and "down" will be crucial for your dog because it will help you exercise a degree of control over its behavior, protecting both the puppy and your family. When you set out to teach your dog a few words, make sure that you start with the simple, basic ones that your dog will use the most.

3. Socialization.

Even if your dog is living with you out in the country, you need to properly socialize it. That means exposing it to safe conditions in which other dogs and humans will be around. Don't throw your dog "to the wolves," so to speak, simply start your puppy off with incremental situations like walks, then parks, and then more crowded public gatherings. The more a puppy sees how normal it is to have other people and dogs around, the better socialized it will be later in life.

4. Boundaries.

Your puppy can absolutely not get away with aggression toward members of your household, particularly scratching or using teeth. Make sure to instantly correct this behavior every single time by saying a command like "Down!" and using a calm but firm tone of voice. If you don't enforce these boundaries on your dog from its age as a puppy, how do you expect it will learn them?

5. Housebreaking.

Lastly, you'll want to start a relatively young dog off on a housebreaking program. This can be as simple as taking notice of when your puppy uses the bathroom and bringing it outside for these times, and then rewarding the dog once it's done it outside, not inside.

Photo Credits: Brian Hathcock

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