The DEV Dog Blog

There are sooooo many cool tricks, commands, sports, and more to train your dog, but before you get into any of that, we always recommend teaching what we in dog trainer land call Markers. 

Markers are short sounds that we use to give our dogs feedback on their decisions and behaviors. 

We call our Marker system: The Communication! Partially because we wanted to get a little fancy and fun with it! Partially because we feel that it is a better way to express the purpose of using these sounds. Once the pup and the human understand them well, we can use them to effectively “have a conversation” with our pupper to guide them in the right direction. That way instead of having to use commands all the time to keep our pups safe and to mind their manners, we can instead just tell them “Hey, that’s great, do that more often” or “Nope, don’t do that”. We can create strong boundaries, which ultimately allows more freedom since our dogs know what they can do and what they can’t. 

The Communicat...

 Short answer = right away! 

Every moment that you are with your dog, you are training your dog. So! It is important that once you get done reading this article you start to make changes to improve your and your dog’s life. Regardless of whether you have a brand new puppy, a bouncy adolescent who can’t seem to keep themselves together, or a dog with behavioral issues, now is the time to start training! 

Your dog’s age and maturity level is a huge factor in your training focus: 

With young puppies, especially under 4 months, it’s important to keep training super easy and fun. Starting marker training (particularly teaching Yes), name recognition games, crate games, engagement games, recall, and simply experiencing the world are super important. Keep your play and training sessions short. Like 5-10 minutes short. You’ll also want to make sure your puppy is getting plenty of quality rest in between your sessions! Puppies need up to 20 hours of sleep every day! Cranky puppies are no fun...

What is a substrate preference you ask?

Basically whatever surface your puppy potties on when they’re teeny tiny babies will become the type of surface they seek out to potty as they grow. 

For example, puppies who potty on pee pads when they’re babies, are more likely to seek out rugs, carpeting, clothing, or other types of fabric like items to potty on later on in life. Puppies who are brought outside to potty on grass, rocks, woodchips, etc, will seek out those surfaces when nature calls. 

Seek out breeders and rescues who make sure their puppies have plenty of opportunity to potty outdoors.

When you bring your puppy home, they will likely have some accidents, they happen, but do what you can to make sure that they go outside. The more often they’re allowed to potty indoors either by mistake or on purpose with potty pads, the more difficult it will be to properly potty train them. 

Instead, crate train, get your wee pup on a regular potty schedule, and reward them for going out...