12-STEP PUPPY TRAINING

Dear Jubilee:
Help! Our puppy won’t stop biting.
We have a 10-week-old Airedale puppy, Annabel. We love her dearly, but she is biting us and our five-year-old son like crazy. My son is used to a 12-year-old dog that used to let him do anything with her. I tell our puppy to stop biting and give her a toy to bit, but it does not help. How can I help her understand what I want her to do?
At Our Wit’s End

Dear Wit’s End,
Congratulations on your new puppy. Please remember, she is a very young puppy.
You need to bring your son into the training program and do some things so that Annabel understands that he is above her in your pack. I have recommended that people with a child of this age give the puppy its meals for a couple of weeks, and the first thing that your son and the puppy need to learn is that the puppy has to work for her food. That means nothing more than Annabel sitting down and waiting while your son puts the food down. At first, you might have to put a leash and collar on her so that if she tries to break the sit and jump on your son, you can hold her in the sitting position. Your son does not put the food bowl on the floor until Annabel is sitting and waiting and your son says "Eat!" (Don't use O.K. We all use OK too frequently in conversation and the dog may be on a sit stay, hear you say it, and think it is all right to break her stay).

Also, five year olds are as excitable as 10-week old puppies. Squealing, racing around, and other normal child behaviors are invitations to such a young puppy to do the same! By bringing your son into her training program and having all of you use the same terms for her commands, Annabel will learn to behave for him as well as for you.
Forget your other dogs when thinking of what Annabel should do. First, she is a puppy, and mouthing and jumping on people goes with the territory. You can teach her to be careful, but the word NO! means absolutely nothing to a puppy or a dog. What you want to do is show the dog what you want and how to fix her mistake (miss-take means take it again). Here are twelve steps (and half steps) to help you calm Annabel or any young dog and get her working with you in a training program:

1. When she pinches you, do what her littermates did: Screech ouch. She is not biting; she is mouthing in play. Her mouth is the only way she can show you how much she enjoys being with you. Let her know, her teeth hurt. That is the only way she will learn to control the pressure she uses when she mouths you. And say it like it hurts. Not too excited. Not like a game. This is serious. You hurt me! But she cannot stand still for long enough for you to say all of that, so just OUCH! or some other sharp sound you would make to indicate a hurt. Then turn your back and walk away. Same goes for your husband and your son. You must all be consistent in the way you train her so that she doesn't learn to manipulate different members of the family.

2. Give her directions for what to do instead of what not to do. Get into the habit of using positive commands which you can immediately reward with a treat or praise. For example, you can probably tell when she is going to mouth (and please, call it mouthing, not biting -- puppies do not know the strength of their teeth, but all dogs mouth -- they just learn to do it without hurting you). When you see that she is going to mouth, toss a toy for her to fetch and reward her for going after it. Turn this into a way to teach her to retrieve or fetch. Children love to do this. I was once visiting my grandsons who were five and three. I had two six month old puppies with me who were jumping on the children and that hurt. Both children looked hurt and disappointed. Then my older grandson said: "I know what to do, Granny, let's teach her fetch." And we did! With a stick from a tree in the yard, we taught fetch. The children and the puppies ended up having a blast, and they got over the jumping on the children (read they used up a lot of energy) so that when we went inside, the children started playing races with the puppies, and suddenly, there were two little boys and two little puppies (Airedales) running circles around the house with no jumping on the children and no mouthing.

3. In giving her directions for what to do, form a picture or thought in your mind of exactly what you want her to do. Not a picture of her misbehaving. Whenever you think of her misbehaving, she reads your mind and thinks she is doing what you want her to do. So, get rid of all thoughts of her biting. Every one of them. I teach puppy classes, and I can give you story after story of how effectively this works. In one of my classes, a puppy was acting out horribly. I helped her owner with a program of daily working with the puppy - a program in which she replaced her thoughts and mind pictures of the puppy behaving badly with the puppy behaving just the way she wanted her to behave. Within four days, there was a tremendous difference. Several weeks later, when the puppy had been behaving wonderfully so much that the owner had forgotten my training, the puppy lapsed. I asked her what she had been thinking when the puppy did the bad behavior. She started laughing: she had had a fleeting thought of the puppy acting out! The whole class was amazed. The owner changed her thought pattern, and the puppy started behaving again. This is not easy to do, especially when you are afraid that the puppy will do the bad behavior again. But remember, every time you fear the puppy will do something, you have a mental picture of the puppy doing it, and that is what the puppy thinks you want her to do.

There is a good book about this, April Frost, Beyond Obedience: Training With Awareness for You and Your Dog.

4. Get rid of "No!" Annabel does not understand "No!" It makes no sense to her and when she hears it so often, she tunes it out (or even worse, thinks that it is her name as in "I think my name is No-No). Use terms like "Leave it!," "Off!," or "Stop it!" Say these words firmly and dramatically: Scowl, glare with your eyes, turn your lips down, pull yourself up full height and very rigid. She will know that she has displeased you and she will want to please you. Don't scream at her; just be very very powerful (dramatic, firm, etc.).

5. Give the puppy nothing, no attention, no food, no treats, no acknowledgement unless she earns it. She has to do something. For example, you are sitting in the family room watching a TV program. She comes over and nuzzles you to pet her. You pet her. You have just given her control of the situation. Instead, when she comes over and nuzzles you to be petted, tell her to "Sit!" or "Down!" and then pet her when she does what you have told her to do. She will quickly get the idea that she has to earn her attention, that she cannot demand it.

6. One of the best techniques that I know for working with a young dog is to "tether" her to you for a certain amount of time every day for at least a week, maybe two weeks. Put on her collar and her leash and attach her leash to your belt or a belt loop (I use a double ended clip for this but you can tie the lead around your waist). When she is tethered to you, she has to go with you wherever you go. If you are working in the kitchen, she is sitting or lying down beside you. If you go to answer the door, she goes with you and you have her sit and stay when you greet a visitor. Some people train their dogs so that they think the doorbell is a command to get a toy. You are going to have a lot of children in and out, and she needs to learn that she cannot jump on them or mouth them. So give her jobs that she can do. Being tethered to you will do several things: you can teach her the alternative behaviors and she cannot get away from you; she will learn to pay attention to you (because if she doesn't, you may surprise her and you go in a different direction; she will learn to follow you around the house and yard).

7. Teach her to walk on a loose lead. To do this, use a six-foot leather lead and your regular collar. Hold the leash so that you have control of the loop for your hand (so she cannot get loose) and loop a large section of the lead (about three feet) so that she has only three feet of leash; When you start out and she rushes ahead, stop, let the leash out to its full six-foot length, and let her keep going. When she jerks herself at the end of the lead and turns to look at you, be full of concern: "What happened, Annabel? Are you all right?" It may take her three times of running to the end of the leash, but she will know that she did this to herself. Be very friendly, very concerned. Kneel down, tell her come to you, and praise her for coming to you. You may have to repeat this for several days, but quite quickly, you will see that when she starts to run ahead, you can just let the three-foot loop open, she will feel its weight, and she will stop! Another thing to do for walking and getting her to walk without forging ahead is to keep changing direction (reverse, right turn, left turn, circle around, etc.). She will quickly learn that she cannot rely on you to be going in a straight line, that she has to watch out for you because you are unpredictable!

7.a. Teach her to "Come". Come is a very important command for every dog to learn. All of you, teach her to come. When you say "Come!", say it happily and joyfully. Never call her to come for punishment. Coming must always be the most wonderful thing she can do, and you must be a constant source of fun, treats, anything that makes you the only thing she wants to get to. So when she is running around, say with great enthusiasm, "Come, Annabel, Come!" Kneel down a little in the beginning, throw your arms open wide, and watch her come flying. Then reward her with a treat or a hug or whatever. NEVER PUNISH HER FOR COMING. This and stay are her most important commands because they could save her life some day. So when you say come, she must stop whatever she is doing and come to you whenever you give that command. There is nothing in the world that she is going to prefer to do than to come to you on that command.

8, Get the video, Puppy Kindergarten. You can order it from www.clickertrain.com, and it is worth every penny you pay for it. It was produced by Corally Burmaster, one of the top clicker trainers in the country. Corally has been breeding and training Airedales for nearly 40 years. When you see how easily you can get great behaviors from Airedale puppies (and all the puppies in the video are Airedales and you will see them with children), you will have every confidence that you can raise Annabel to be the best dog that you have ever had. I cannot recommend this video highly enough.

9. Continue using her crate. Whenever you cannot supervise the puppy, put her in her crate for her protection and for the protection of your house and child.

9. a. Show your son how to act calmly around her and not squeal when she jumps or mouths him, but to let her know she has hurt him. Teach him to pull himself up and demand that she stop it! And do have him feed her for a couple of weeks (you get the food ready; he puts it down, but only if she sits and stays).

10. Training treats. Use something that you can both eat. Use very tiny pieces. Even popcorn broken into several pieces. When you give a command, and she does it, celebrate together by giving both of you a treat! When she doesn't do it, just say "wrong" quietly and calmly, and give yourself a treat. You are showing her that you are a team: when both parts of the team do it right, both celebrate with a treat. When only one does it right, only that one gets the treat. Wait and see the expression on her face when you eat your treat in front of her because you did your part correctly and she didn't! She will learn that in order to join you in a treat, she has to do what you ask her to do.

11. Don't always use the same treat because Annabel may lose interest. Keep your treats where you can get them easily when you are training (I use a carpenter's apron with two or three pockets that ties around my waist, or if I am outside, I use a fisherman's vest with lots of pockets).

12. You are training your dog so that she learns that the faster she responds, the sooner she gets what she wants. This makes her think that she is training you, and this is good because you are training with an awareness of how her mind works and celebrating how wonderful she is.

Good luck, and have fun with Annabel. They grow up very quickly, and we want them to grow into wonderful companions. Every moment you spend on training will be rewarded. You do not need to train for more than 10 minutes a day as long as you reinforce it by making her work for all attention, all treats, and all meals. I would discourage roughhousing with her because you don't want to confuse her.

Follow-Up from At Our Wit’s End:

Dear Jubilee,
Thank you so much for the steps you sent me on training Annabel. I am so excited on how wonderful and how quickly she is learning. When we do OUCH!, she immediately stops the pressure. She is still mouthing but not nearly as hard. My husband was like Wow! That really works.

I got on the Clicker web site, my husband isn't convinced that something like that would work on training but at least he is willing to give it a try.
I would like to maybe look into agility training & competition for her and my son. We have 4H up here. I don't know if you are familiar with that or not. And since we don't have cows or horses they do allow dog agility competition at the fairs and such. I think that would be fun for the whole family. My husband is looking forward to having her in the woods with him when he hunts and such. She is going to be definitely loved by everyone. My mother watches my son for us while we work and she just adores Annabel and Annabel adores her too. So everyone is helping with her training.

Dear No Longer At Our Wit’s End:

Agility is really good for Airedales, but please focus on obedience training first and wait until she is at least a year old before doing agility (unless they offer a pre-agility course with no jumping). Airedales should not do serious jumping until their growth plates have closed: too much danger of hurting themselves and their bones before they are mature. I started my agility girl when she was nearly two, and she has enjoyed it. At our national specialty, there are now four days of agility trials and it is so much fun to go watch the terriers do their interpretation of agility. Same goes for obedience.

Please be sure that the instructor has a positive attitude towards training an Airedale. Airedales do not learn by monotonous repetition: three times a training session over a period of time is the trick to getting them to work for you. Anything more than three is boring, and they quickly tune you out. I am very choosy about trainers for this reason, so I often ask people who know a lot about Airedales for referrals.

There are many good Airedale people in Ohio. You husband might be interested in contacting someone on the Hunting/Working Committee about working with your Airedale in the woods for hunting, etc. Every year in March, there is a big get-together for hunting working weekend that takes place in Ohio. He can find out more about this group of avid hunting people by going to http://www.huntingworkingairedales.com. It is a great group of people, and they always have a lot of fun. These people might also be able to refer you to good trainers in your area of Ohio.

Jubilee