Teaching Your Puppy to Wear a Collar

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     In order to successfully train your puppy you need to make your puppy believe instead of harsh training, that the two of you are having fun. There is no need for extreme discipline in training. While some dogs are harder to train than others, if you are patient and persistent any dog can be taught to be obedient.

In training a puppy it is important to stick to very short training sessions and it should just be the two of you working together, to keep him from being distracted. Generally puppies are like small children. They have a short attention span, and cannot be worked in training for too long. Pay attention, and when he gets tired of the chore at hand, stop the training. If you can, try to end your training session on a positive note, with the puppy being praised for an achievement. That way he will look forward to future training successes.

You should put your puppy on a long leash. That way he can't take off and ignore you, but he still can move about a bit while listening to your messages. While you should work together in a more quiet setting in the beginning, once he starts learning commands, you can switch to a more social setting and try to get him to follow commands with distractions. It is important he learn to respond not only when it is it the two of you, but in real life situations as well.

For puppies, home training is usually enough to get them to do important things like 'sit', 'stay', 'come', and 'down'. When he is older you may want to take him into other styles of training classes.

Leash training is not always easy for puppies. Some automatically like the leash; others are not fans and have to be worked with for some time. You should start with a narrow collar that is loose. It will let the dog know what the restraint feels like, but not be too tight. You want to make sure it is tight enough that he can't get out of it.

You should present the collar with excitement. If you 'dress your puppy for the day' putting the collar on in the morning, and then taking it off at bedtime, he will come to understand that it is part of his day and be more understanding of it. While some dog owners don't like to put a collar on while the puppy is inside, it is a good way to get him accustomed to wearing it.

In addition, having a collar always on your puppy makes it easier to grab a hold of him if you need to. Puppies are known for dashing off in one direction to another, and with a collar you can catch him if needed. If you are keeping your puppy in a fenced-in yard, you need to make sure your pup will not catch his collar on a post or wire in the fence.