Why puppy training is so important
Force-free Method Learning  / Pack-to-Basics

October 2008
Keith Coddington
k9 Natural Instincts
Phoenix, Arizona

The first few months of a puppy’s life are the most important! The shaping of characteristics and personality the puppy will carry with it for the rest of his or her life take place during this time.

Imprinting during this time is extremely important and depending on what the puppy is exposed and how the owner reacts to situations will have lasting effects for the entire life of the dog. These lasting effects can be worked with at a later date and honestly this is why the majority of people call me when they have an adult dog that has developed an unwanted behavior, but when it gets to that point it is often more difficult to remedy and the dog often suffers to some degree from what could have been prevented if the dog was nurtured properly as a young puppy.

Just imagine in the human world if we isolated our children from all others and failed to teach them the basics on how to live everyday life? What if we kept them on our property and rarely if ever took them out in public? What if we didn’t let them socialize with other humans until they were a few years old? This would without a doubt lead to severe social, mental and even physical problems down the road.

Keep in mind that a puppy is also usually without any of their own kind around which can teach them and show them in a language they instinctually understand. If there is another dog around often that dog has bad behaviors or the other dog is mentally unbalanced creating a poor example to follow yet the puppy does not know any better. The puppy is lost and often confused in this scenario and the owners don’t realize this until later in life when more serious problems start developing.

These more serious problems are often much more intense, destructive and often dangerous. Not only that, but when a dog gets very good at what the human considers a bad behavior it take much more time and consistent effort to replace that behavior. Many owners aren’t up to this task due to time, patience or knowledge. This will lead to either the dog being given up on and taken to a shelter, the dog remaining in this unhappy unbalanced state, or the owner having to pay for extensive training which can become costly.

As you can see this period of time during the life of the dog is without a doubt the most important. If you consider how long you will have this puppy you can easily see how investing in proper training now will bring in a huge return of a happy balanced companion throughout their entire life.