For a very good guide to all sorts of dog training processes and dog behavior challenges, I use and recommend Clickertraining ...that link goes to the description of this terrific ebook you download immediately, wherever you are! -- Rosana

Does your dog pull on leash? If not, consider yourself lucky (or skilled!) and don’t bother listening to this short audio. It outlines how you can train your dog to stop pulling on leash…. That link takes you to the page on this website where you can read the article that this is based on.

Pulling on leash is a widespread problem, and I have found with my own dogs that it takes a certain amount of determination on my part to overcome it!

If you’d like to download the sound file, here it is. Just right-click or whatever Mac users do, to save it:

http://www.training-dogs.com/sound-files/leashpull.mp3

I imagine that most people get angry at our dogs sometimes, or upset over something they have done. I get annoyed at LarryDog when he barks and barks at the dog next door, or a bit upset when Lola destroys another plant from our garden. (We stopped growing carrots after she dug up and ate the whole crop, but that’s another story.)

When you are angry or upset, you should take a time out for yourself from the dog, whether you are training at the moment or not, till you can collect yourself. This needn’t be a physical time out – I often find that just turning away from my dog for a moment while I take a deep breath or two is sufficient. Try this sometime yourself. Read the rest of this entry

Dogs love fun. Who can doubt it, watching a group of dogs running joyously across a field or dog park?  Today’s dog training tip is simple: play with your dogs.

There is a movement afoot to encourage us to play with our dogs. New books and DVDs are coming out, and training experts are suggesting that we lighten up and play. Great advice for most humans, I’d say, and most dogs could have told us that in the first place. In this tip, I’m talking about human-dog play, but dog-dog play is also valuable for our canine friends.

So how can you use play in training? Here are two ways: Read the rest of this entry

This series of weekly dog training tips  will include puppy training tips. That’s the case today, because bite inhibition is best taught very early on. In fact, the process begins with the puppy’s littermates. As they play, they naturally “mouth” each other — that is, they use their mouths to nip at each other. Their little teeth are plenty sharp, so it hurts, but their jaws are relatively weak at first so mouthing doesn’t do that much damage.

When one puppy does hurt another one, often the hurt one will stop playing for a while and move away. By this happening repeatedly as the litter grows up, puppies learn bite inhibition, that if they pretend to bite but use less force, the games continue. So the puppies begin to develop what’s called a soft mouth. This is one of several reasons that it’s important for puppies to stay with their mothers and littermates for a couple of months or so after birth.

The puppies’ mother or other adult dogs in the household will also correct the mouthing. If a puppy bites them, they may growl, curl their lips at the puppy, or get up and walk away.

Your Role in Training Bite Inhibition

If you get a puppy of whatever age, one of the first things for you to do — and it will naturally happen in the first day, most likely — is to determine just how far along your pup is in learning bite inhibition. At this stage, you are not looking for NO mouthing or biting. It’s actually much better for their training process if they will learn to develop a gentle bite. This is because if your dog should bite later on in life, the bite will do far less damage if the mouthing process has been allowed to develop into that ability to bite gently.

Of course, all this takes time and you will be enduring some sharp nips in the process.

Puppies often mouth when they are excited, or when they first wake up to an exciting new day. At those times, or at any time that your puppy mouths, here is what you or your children can do. Kids are more likely to be mouthed than adults because they are more lively than we are.

Say “ouch!” or yelp like another puppy would. Or say NO in a stern voice. Then stand up if you aren’t standing, and turn away from the puppy. Put your arms around your chest, to be less interesting to the pup. Stay like that, silently ignoring your puppy for around half a minute. Then resume interacting in a gentle manner.

Ian Dunbar has a wonderful DVD on training puppies which explains this in a lot more detail. Bite inhibition is actually one the very most important things you need to teach your puppy, and he explains why. See my review of Sirius Puppy Training here. One of the things I’m happiest about regarding this website is that hundreds and hundreds of people have bought this program and presumably gotten their puppies off to a better start in life. But with or without that DVD, keep at the bite inhibition process and within weeks you will see progress.