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My Puppy Project |
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A Twelve Week Chronicle of Puppy Development and Training |
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Sixth Week |
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The puppies began their sixth week by graduating from their small weaning pen to “Puppy City.” They caught on right away to the toilet area, and things smell much better around here, now. This photo was taken when they had just turned five weeks old. |
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Puppy Training Party! Some of my friends came over for a puppy training party on Saturday, when the puppies were five weeks and five days old. As you can see from the video, we had a crazy-good time, and the puppies were wiped out at the end of the party. In addition to the practical behaviors the puppies learned, there were a lot of general benefits to having a party like this for the puppies at this age:
Socialization The puppies are in their socialization period, now. During the socialization period, generally around 6-12 weeks, the puppies will accept “novel” situations and people. Even if they meet strange things with fear, at first, they normally will recover and then file away that odd person, smell, sensation, etc, under the “that’s OK” heading. Anything not introduced to a puppy during this socialization period will be harder for the dog to accept as an adult. Much of the problems that people have with reactive, fearful, or inappropriate dogs comes from poor socialization during this critical period. If you look at the video, how many novel things can you see that these puppies might not have encountered before? They look like normal people, to you, but, to one of the puppies, the woman with the hat was scary for the first few moments. The puppies also got to encounter a man with a bead and people with glasses— not things they see around my house. This is great for the puppies!
Working for Others Just the fact that the puppies learned to work for six new people that they had never met before is important. Many people, myself included, feel that a dog’s ability to work for anyone without hesitation is a very important foundation behavior. A dog that sees everyone in the world as a potential training partner is much more likely to be friendly and at ease with everyone in the world. The ability to work and behave for strangers is also priceless when the puppies grow up and have to go to the vet or stay at a kennel, or be passed of to a handler to show.
Here are the stations we set up and what we hope the puppies learned form each of them:
1. Buja board— about a foot square piece of plywood with something cylindrical taped to the bottom of it so it has a slight rocking motion, like a tiny see saw. By clicking the puppies for slamming the board down and/or walking over it, we teach them to not only tolerate unstable surfaces and banging noises, but to enjoy them! 2. Mini dogwalk— a tiny to-scale sized dog walk. The puppies learn to enjoy being above the ground, and they also learn that they have to watch their feet! The dogwalk is tiny and we are there to catch them, but they gain coordination and control by trying to climb up and stay on. They also learn that trying to do things that seem scary earns them big rewards. Puppies that are exposed to challenges with a fear element such as the mini-dogwalk and the Buja board will actually seek out challenges as adults rather than being fearful of them. 3. Cat tunnel— the puppies already play in this tunnel, but it is a great way to put some fun into practicing recalls, and also teaches the puppies to run through unstable surfaces.
We divided into three teams, and each team took a station and a puppy. We worked each puppy for a few minutes, and then rotated the puppies around so that they each got a chance to do all the stations. After each group of three puppies, we also rotated the training teams so that all the people got a chance to try each training station. It was a really fun day of puppy training, and when we finished with the puppies we got to have some lasagna, wine, cookies, and eggnog. What more could anyone ask for ;o)?
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