What puppies learn first, they learn
best. Meet Ryan and his daughter Logan, and their new puppy Bentley. Now they're actually first time puppy
owners and things are going pretty well with Bentley, but they're still a bit confused as to
what they're supposed to be working on. Now I'm gonna share with him a few things
that I do with every single one of my puppies when I first get them home. So one of the first things that we like
to do with our puppies in the first week home is do a little bit of food work. Now luckily we have a very willing
participant because we have a puppy that's very interested in food, but we don't
just wanna feed the dog to feed the dog. There's lots of little
things that we can do. So this is gonna be super
easy for, uh, for your puppy, but we want the puppy to be able to
follow the food. So this is called luring. The actual technique is called luring.
And basically wherever the food goes, my puppy goes to. And once I know
that he's willing to do that, which is super easy for you, then I can actually start
to teach him some things. Now there's like 1,000,001 things that
you can do teaching the puppy with that method. Walking, sits, downs, endless
tricks, like there's all kinds of things. But in the first week we
wanna just keep it simple. So we're gonna focus on just a
couple things. So first things first, we're gonna work on, I think you said you were already
doing a bit of this Logan, um, working on like sit and down. So I'm gonna have you grab some treats
and just kind of show me what you've been working on in terms of
like the sit and the down. So typically if we want the
sit, we would take the food, put it close to the nose, and then
lift it high. Perfect. And then yes, reward them. Sit. Yes. Good. Okay. Now two little tips.
Number one, when you do it, keep the food close to your body.
So whenever he learns to sit, he sits really close because what happens
if they sit way over there and they're used to us walking over to feed them? We kind of teach the puppy to kind of
hang out at like a bit of a bubble, a bit of a distance. So if he
sits out there, praise him. Cause technically he's a good boy, but just kind of wiggle your fingers
and encourage him to come in a little closer. So he's actually nice and close
notes so you can get him sit there. Yeah. Good. Perfect. So super simple but like little things.
Um, so having the puppies sit close. Also when we teach it, we wanna try to be careful that we don't
say sit multiple times because then the puppies will sort of say, okay, I'll wait till the sixth time to listen.
So if you're working, Hey puppy, this is why we have a house line on.
So you can't wander away. So say I, I say sit and it takes like a couple extra
seconds for him to kind of process or work through it. I would just sort of wait quietly and
then yes him as soon as his butt hits the floor. So he learns one command
and then do the behavior. But then obviously the better he gets
at it, the faster and faster he will go. Okay. Okay. So keeping those things
in mind, now we're gonna try the down. So I personally find it easiest
to start with the puppy sitting. I sometimes will say sit. Sometimes
I just lure the puppy into a sit. Then I would say down and then I would
lure the puppy with a treat one second later. You know, I tried to fake you
out there and it didn't work. Um, so I would lure from the nose to the
toes and then once the little elbows hit the floor, I would, yes, and then give
the treat. You wanna try that? Down. Go ahead down and then just
kind of hold it there. No, you wanna repeat it but yes.
And reward. Very go. Perfect. Good. All right. And then what I
will also do is once he gets down, and again he doesn't really
know any of this stuff yet. I'm just trying to kind of paint the
picture. So I have the puppy sitting down, then lure and then once he's rewarded,
I'm gonna reward a couple times. And before he gets up I
would tell him, okay, yay. And give him permission. Because another thing we want 'em to
learn right from the beginning is not to use us as like a drive through. I take
the treat, I did my job. Okay, bye. So we always try to give
them permission to leave, but it's just passive like in
kind of easygoing. And the goal, because he doesn't really know
to hold positions right now, is to beat 'em to the punch. So say
okay before he has a chance to leave. So it kind of is your idea, even though at this point in the
game he's just happening to do it. But eventually you'll learn to just hold
that position until you release him. Okay. Would. You say that okay is a
really good permission word
or is there any other words that you. Recommend to use? Um, you can use, some
people say break. Some people say free. Some people say release.
Um, we mostly say okay, it doesn't matter what word you use,
just have to be consistent with it. So whatever you guys decide, just
everyone needs to use the same one. Another little food lure thing that
I wanna show you, we have our sits, we have our downs is um, something
that we work on in terms of handling. So when we have puppies
right from the get go, we want them to be really comfortable
with our hands getting all around his head, his his. Yes, we may have been working on that before
the camera turned on <laugh> and you're brilliant, you passed. So here's why teaching your puppy
to follow food is so valuable. Essentially what we're doing here
is not only teaching him to do a few exercises, we're actually teaching him how to learn.
What I need him to understand is that food is a valuable resource. He
wants that, but in order to get it, he needs to learn to do things for me. Um, now eventually we want down the road our
dog to be able to listen to us without using food. But in the early stages we need to use
something that motivates the puppy. So food is a great resource for that. If your puppy's a bit hesitant to
follow food in the early stages, don't make them do too much
before giving them a win. Maybe you lure them one
step and then reward. Maybe you do it at times of the day when
your puppy's really hungry or there's no distractions around. So there's
really only you to focus on. And then you can build to
more complicated things. And one of the things that I'll do is
encourage my puppy to come close and then I'll get my hand inside the collar.
Cause if you think about it, how many times we have to take the collar
to put his leash on or to pick him up and put him in the car? And some puppies,
not necessarily in the early stages. Most of the time when they're young
like him, they don't really care. But as they start to get older and maybe
more nipping starts to happen or they start to just get a little bit more sure
of themselves. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, you go to reach a hold of call to get a
hold of their collar and they'll avoid or they'll nip in that moment. But
from a puppy, if he's been conditioned, I take a hold and then you get rewarded,
then they're basically like, take me, take me. This is a great thing. Because
they, they know it's so good. Yeah. So another thing that I'll teach the
puppy within the first week of being home is how to respond to their name.
Um, now what we're looking for
though is a specific response. So when we say the name, we
wanna only have to say it once. We want the dog to turn
really quickly when we say it. So there's certain exercises that we do
that creates that response in the puppy. Because the most common thing that people
do, especially the first week home, is we're excited about the puppy. So
it's like Bentley, Bentley, Bentley, Bentley, Bentley. Like we just use it all the time and then
you're not actually getting a response from the pup. So the first thing that I would do right
off the bat before I do anything else, is just play a little word association
and I think we're ready for this. So basically what I would do is say the
name Bentley and then I would give a reward one second later. And I would do this when he is paying
attention so he is not distracted. So it's just name feet, your name is not
name, your name is Bentley. Bentley. And then feet Bentley and
then feet literally like that. Now that looks dead easy, but most
people do this. Bentley <laugh>, right? Yeah. They get the treat and
then they say the name. Then he's like, I don't care about the name you're
feeding me. This is great. Yeah. So it needs to be name then feed. Because then what starts to happen is
if he hears that word and then goes, oh, she's gonna reward me, I now can start
working a little bit on distractions. Okay, so the next thing we're gonna do is we're
going to kind of let him get a little bit disengaged and then we're
gonna try calling his name. There's two ways we can go about this. We can set him up for total success
and we can say his name and then automatically turn him away from the
distraction. So he doesn't have an opportunity to be wrong or we can
test him, we can say his name, see what happens, and if
he turns we can reward. And if he doesn't we can train through
that. So we're going to start off. Ryan, I think what I'm gonna have
you do is take a couple, maybe just hold the bowl
in your hand and then um hmm. I'm gonna show you first. So
you just hold the bowl in your hand. So I want him to know it and I'm just
gonna show you what we're gonna do for the, uh, distraction. So he sees
it there. So I would say Bentley, yes. Good boy. So I would say his name and then turn
him away so he doesn't really have a chance to be wrong. Good boy. Yes.
I have one more. He missed one. Uh, so another thing that I do with puppies
the very first week is I introduce some toy work because when we
have puppies this age, we don't necessarily want to be
taking them for really long walks, but we also make sure that they don't
get completely crazy and they need exercise. So teaching them
to play with toys with you, great relationship builder. Also a great way to tire them out so
that you can put them in the crate and actually have some peace. So we have
a puppy that's pretty into the toy, which is great, but I wanna talk first about one of the
exercises that we'll do before we do like fetch or anything like that is we
wanna work a little bit on the game, tugging out. Now the reason why we do
this is because it's great engagement, but also gives me an opportunity to
kind of show some leadership in a really non-confrontational way. That's
fun. That's super simple. Puts me in the driver's seat, but he's
like, Ooh, this is really great exercise. So first thing that I would do is
get the puppy engaged in the toy, which is not very difficult right now.
If you did let go of it though, what I would do is keep it moving around. What a lot of people will do is they
dangle it above the puppy and it doesn't, um, invoke it. Oh, good boy.
Um, enough like grabbing. I really want him to get into it. So
how he's shaking his head like that. Some people think like, oh,
is that okay? I love that. I want him to be like crazy. If he starts growling and like getting
really into it, that's perfect. Okay. I wanna make it really
exciting. The other thing too, I don't know if the camera picked
this up, but he just accidentally um, like bit my hand, but
immediately he went to the toy. I also love that because he's showing
me that he's learning to be respectful around my hand. He, I didn't even have to do anything.
He just did it all by himself. And I, I, you know, that's something that I would
praise him for. I really like that. Okay, so here comes the control
part cuz we can't woo woo, we can't just have a crazy beast. What
I'm gonna do. <laugh>. There you go. Once I feel that he's latched on, oop
whoop whoop. And if he gets disengaging, gonna get him back. What's
this <laugh>? Good boy. There we go. I gotta get him latched
gotta get him latched. There we go. I'm gonna get a piece of food out here. Now he's not quite on the toy
enough for me to work this, so I gotta get the toy a bit more. Do
we miss our moment? pup pup pup pup pup. This ready <laugh>. There we go. Get get get,
get, get get. There you go. Takes a get back treat. Gonna teach. Him. The puppy did such a good job there
but I definitely made him play too long because it was taking me forever to try
and get the treats out. Come on Kayl, get the treat out. Would've been a
lot easier if I was wearing a McCann. Dog's treat pouch. If you're looking for one of those for
your puppy to help you with great timing, you can get one on
McCannDogs.store. Yes. Good. And all we do with the puppies the
first week is do a bit of a trade. So I say the command again,
there's a theme here. I say the word one second later I show
the treat so that I'm not dependent on the treat later in life. So I say the word and then I trade him
for a piece of food. Now when I did that, I stopped tugging with him. I made that a little bit more boring
and I put the food literally like in his nostrils, <laugh> so that he
really couldn't resist good boy. And I would just practice that back
and forth. Tug, tug, tug, tug, tug. Once he's really engaged out or drop
it or whatever word you wanna use. And then trade for the food one second
later. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Okay, question. So when he grabs the slipper mm-hmm
<affirmative> and he's running with the slipper, okay, we don't reword that then. No. Great question Ryan. So if he's grabbing something
that he's not supposed to, you didn't start the game, he is just like having a
party and grabbing something. What I would do from
there is I would go in, make sure he has the house line
on because then you can stop him. I would go to the house line and right
away I would tell him out and in the early stages I would trade him
with it. As the weeks go on, you could just put your hand in his collar
and hold and then that sort of makes holding the slipper not so fun. And
he'll let go. Okay? And then when he, lets go, good boy. But then quickly
redirect him to something else. Grab his bone, something that says okay,
not cool, but this is awesome. Okay, couple things I wanted to mention about
what we've done here. To set this up for success is I have um,
him on the house line. So if I was just to give him the toy, I don't know if we have lots of
puppy left to see if he'll do this, but lots of times if I just give
him the toy to play by himself, he he'll either get disengaged or what
a lot of puppies naturally wanna do is take it away and go and play with
the, with the toy on their own. And I don't let the puppies do that at
all ever actually no matter of the age. So when I have the long line on, I can make sure that he's playing nice
and close because I want him to learn that this is something
that we do together. So there's going to be certain toys in
the house that I will let him go and play with independently. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I'm sorry. So
this is a play toy, not a chew toy. Yeah, play toy or like interactive
toy. So like when he gets this, it's with you two or
your mom obviously. Um, but I wouldn't let him go
and just lie on a bed and, and play with this number one,
he'll destroy it. And number two, I'm missing a perfect opportunity to do
like an US thing cuz this is all about building relationship. Does that also help make it he's
not possessive of that toy as well? Yeah, because we're teaching him to engage
with the toy with control because I'm initiating it, I'm also ending it. So although he's can be wild
and crazy and have some fun, there's underlying rules that are
part of it. You don't bite me, you don't bite clothing. Um, you don't just jump up and
grab it when you want to. You have to give it up when, when I
ask you to. So there's rules there, but like it's packaged
in like a really fun way. Did you know that we're a family
owned business from Canada And Ryan and Logan are
actually local to us. So they're able to come and train with
us here in person at our facility in Flamborough, Ontario. But
if you're not close to us, you can still join our awesome community. You can work with me and the rest
of the gang on our online programs. We have a great puppy program called
Puppy Essentials and we have students from over 60 countries in the world. You can learn all about how awesome our
program is by clicking the link in the description below. So Ryan, you mentioned about whether you should
be walking Bentley or what you should do. So I'm actually gonna show you another
exercise that you can do instead of walking him, that's gonna
burn all that extra energy, which is gonna be important but also
is gonna work on teaching him some uh, name and some other things too.
When we have puppies that are this young, we just have them home for the first week. I don't worry at all about
using the become command. What I focus a lot on is just
teaching them their name. So we're gonna do something
called a restraint recall. This is something you can do by yourself
or you can also do this with multiple family members, which
makes it lots of fun. So essentially one of
you is gonna hold him, the other person is gonna stand in front
of him and they're gonna like tease him with this tug joint. Get him
like really wild about it. And when he kinda looks interested,
you're gonna call his name and run away. So he has to chase you.
And when he catches you, which will only be like
probably six or 10 feet, you're gonna play tug with him for a few
seconds and just let him have a lot of fun. And what he's gonna learn is
when he hears his name to chase, after you run back to you for uh, for
control, okay? Who wants to be the holder? Who wants to be the caller? Who wants to
be the caller? Okay, so Ry, let's, um, come just beside me and you're gonna
face this direction, okay? Logan, you're gonna start sort of facing him and
I want you to kind of wiggle the toy a little bit. Good boy. And then you're
gonna turn, so you're gonna Yeah, perfect. And you're gonna get him excited. Ready?
Ready. Now say Bentley and runaway Ben, that run, run, run, run, run,
run, run. Let him have it. Yeah. Now run back this way. Love run
back this way. Yeah. Good boy. Now have a little game of talk with
them. get it, get it, get it, get it. Get it. Yay. Good boy. Get that thing.
There we go. Lots of praise. Perfect. So he did what a lot of puppies do. They get like a head of steam up and
then they're like whoa and they can't go back. So then basically you just like
get a second little rep in there, say his name and then run
away. Okay. That was amazing. So let's talk a little
bit about what happened. A lot of things happened
great there, Logan. You were really good about waiting until
Bentley was focused before you call. And that's gonna be important because
it might not always go that way, especially if there's more distractions.
So that's a super important thing. The other thing is because we
have the sort of the theme, we wanna say the command once and then
get a response. When we have a puppy, they don't know any better. We have to kinda use our gut and timing
to make sure that when they're focused and we say the name, it's actually
gonna happen. When he's running to you, you wanna resist the temptation to say,
Bentley, Bentley, Bentley, Bentley, Bentley. Cuz again, he starts
hearing multiple commands, but you literally can say anything else
on earth. Woo. Good boy, that's great. Like whatever. Talking to him is perfect
because it keeps him interested in, and focused. Um, the other thing that was so good
is he ran past you a little bit. And then when that happens, just take the opportunity to like
run into different directions, say his name again there, and then take off in a new direction until
he catches you. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And then basically the playing part
will probably take more time than the calling part. That also is
what helps tire him out. But that's what teaches them. If he gets to you and he gets
to tug for like two seconds, that's not really worth his while. He
needs to feel like whatever happens when he gets to you is just something that's
so worthwhile doing over and over. Put it like, uh, regurgitating
them. Okay? Look, what you're gonna do is you're gonna
come in and put the food on the nose and you're just gonna sort of be neutral
and you're gonna tease tease tease and you're gonna say his name once and then
you're gonna back up one or two steps and then feed him nice and
close. Yes, reward, good ahead. And then you're gonna take
his leash. And then Bry, you're gonna do the same thing back to
you and then you'll be neutral this time. So tease, tease tees, it's his
buddy. And then Bentley. Bentley, go ahead and back away. Good. Okay, now,
now that he sort of gets to the game, we're gonna go back and
forth. So as soon as you feed, you're just gonna turn him around
and aim him at Logan. And then Logan, you're gonna get down right there. tease
tease tease, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, Bentley. And then go back away. Back
away, back away. Be perfect. Okay, now you face him at your dad and then
right, you're gonna do the same thing. And then if you have more distance,
you can start putting more distance. So tease him. Ready, Bentley Ready. Don't say his name to tease him since
he's not focused. Just hold him. Logan, hold him like we, we got your hand right
here. Ready? Ready, ready. Now call. This is going really well, but we need to turn this up a notch
because we're trying to build a lot of motivation in driving our puppies and
we're also trying to tire them out at the same time. So check this out. So what you're gonna do this time just
to get 'em more animated is you're gonna come in and you're gonna start a little
closer. Ready? Ready, ready, ready, ready, ready, ready. And see how, yeah.
See how when I back up, he's like, okay, I wanna get to you. Then I'm gonna get
about six feet and then I'm gonna call. But I'm gonna kind of start in
close. And as I get the engagement, I'm gonna back up. You're gonna sound
a little bit like a crazy person, but you're gonna have a wicked recall
out of, okay. Hey, here, come back, Logan again. Okay, so Logan, you'll
be neutral while you're gonna come in. You can even show 'em the food.
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle. Ready? Ready. Ramp 'em up. Ready? Ready,
ready. Name Bentley. Yeah. Hey, Logan, same thing. You turn around,
you're gonna come in close. Rev him up. You want this? You want this?
Want this? Ready name? Yeah. Good. Just remember Only say it once.
Good. One of the things that, um, I am very obnoxious about,
as you can probably see, and those of us who who watch the YouTube
channel know that I'm obnoxious about praising and cheering.
It is a weird thing, especially when you're
learning something new to like, do all of this talk because
you're like, Hey, am I backing up? Do I lose my left hand? Do
do I hold the leash? Like, there's so much to think about, but
you really wanna get like them excited. I actually like with puppies
to use, um, like ready, set, go. And because I use that to ramp the puppy
up each and every time they actually start to get really crazy, as soon as
you start to say ready, they're like, oh my god, something's about to happen.
So you can use that a a little bit here. So let's just do one more. And
I want you to try that Logan. You're gonna come in when you tease 'em, I want you to say ready or on your mark, get set something that's like we're
about to blast off into crazy. So tease them up. Ready?
Ready, ready. Set. Set. Go Bentley. There we go. Jackpot reward. Now you know some of the things you have
to start working on with your puppy, you have to learn about all of
the other things, but don't worry, we have a plan for you. Check out that
video right here on that note, I'm Kayl. Happy training.
