Dogs are learning 24/7, and they learn through reinforcement. If they do something and its rewarding, then they are likely to do it again, if they do something and its punishing they are less likely to do it again. HOWEVER, with punishment, if it comes from a human there will often be a fall out from it. For example if every time your pup jumps up you were to shake a bottle of stones, or squirt them with water then the fall out could be they are terrified of loud noises, they may never completely trust you when you have something in your hands, or they could become scared of water.

Therefore its important to reinforce what you like, but manage what you don't so they stop doing it (this will make sense later on).

There are two different sides to training our dogs, and often we think they are both the same. There is:

• The behavioural/emotional side of our dogs
• Dog Training

It is important to know the difference, as often we may think something is a training issue, when in fact it is much more to do with the emotional state of our dog. You often read comments such as 'You should train your dog more', 'Your dog should be trained to not do that' etc, but actually for some behaviours we have to look at the emotional state of our dogs rather than what training they have had.

Therefore in order to train/raise a puppy it is very important we consider their emotions. The way to do this is to observe your puppy in different situations and scenarios, in the socialisation section in here there is a form for you to complete, once you have done this, we will then send some info over on how to socialise them depending on their personality.

The issues you have with them as a puppy nearly always have a emotional side to them, for example if toilet training is taking a long time it could be something in the garden is worrying them (fear anxiety), or if they are biting hard, they are potentially over tired, or chewing things when you leave the room (anxiety). So as well as training our puppies, it is just, or if not more important to understand the emotional side of your puppy.

• Recognise signs of when they are getting over tired
• Observe their behaviour in new environments, do they look concerned, scared, worried (this can change quickly if they become over tired) if they do then remove them from that environment.
• How much exercise do they seem to be able to cope with?
• Are there certain times of the day they are reluctant to go to the toilet outside? (weather, other animals, traffic could worry them)
• Have they done a lot in the past day or so?
• Has anything happened to them that may have worried them? (met new people, vets, dogs etc)

All of the above will help you going forward, often a lot of the emotional side of our pups is missed, and the issues appear when they hit sexual maturity.

Reinforcement -

This is why we use reward based training, its the kindest way to train, we reinforce what we like, and ask for something else if they are doing something that we don't.

You don't want to only reinforce what you ask them to do, you also want to reinforce good behaviour when you haven't asked for it. For example if you are in the kitchen preparing something and they are sat lovely next to you, then reward them for that, if they remain sat nicely after 20 seconds or so reward them again and tell them they're a good dog.

We go into more detail on reinforcement and rewards in the next section.