Training Two Puppies at Once

A neighbor of mine has two Doberman puppies. They are over four months old now, and I’ve been giving her a hand with the basics of training since she got them a couple of months ago. They are brother and sister — here, Rosa is shown with the male Pele. His sister, gazing at the camera lower down the page, is Ushka.

At first, it was quite a challenge to train two, even with the two of us humans. The puppies have their own tiny enclosed yard but at that point they could get back into the main yard in a jiffy; now that’s been fixed. One of us would hold one of them while the other did some clicker training and then we’d switch off, but neither puppy was all that eager to sit on the sidelines!

A further complication was the language. I’m living in Mexico, by Lake Chapala outside of Guadalajara, and Rosa’s English is minimal. My Spanish gets us by, and the puppies are becoming bilingual, learning both Come and Ven, both Sit and Sientate. It works, though some of my theoretical explanations of how the clickers work may lose a little in translation.

The puppies were afraid of me when I first started coming over but a couple of sessions with food treats took care of that. Rosa and her husband Victor had already been teaching them to sit, and so I added the clicker to that. Rosa and I would just hold a piece of dry dog food or other treat over the dogs’ heads till they sat, then click and reward. Pele, shown above, just loves to sit. Whenever he’s not quite sure what to do, he sits.

Now they walk pretty well on leash and have crates they are used to, so things have advanced quite a bit. We can each work with one — it’s like having our own puppy class!

We are working on their staying, and we now take them out for walks where there are more distractions. Rosa and Victor often take them places too.

Ushka, gazing up here, is a very mouthy girl. Right from the start, I showed Rosa some Tellington TTouches to do around her mouth, and they helped a lot. Now, when I come over, Rosa usually has Pele out of the way. Ushka greets me at the entry and tends to jump up and nip. By having just one puppy, I at least have a chance to get her to sit. She’s one smart cookie and is getting better.

I’ve never trained Dobies before. I must say these two are a great pleasure as they learn so quickly. A good thing, as they are growing rapidly. We’re doing a lot of puppy training while they are still relatively small.

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!