Most puppies really don’t have behavior problems – they are just displaying normal puppy behaviors such as chewing everything in sight, including your hands; relieving themselves whenever and wherever they need to because they haven’t yet learned where you want them to “go”; thinking the leg of the couch is just a new chew stick to be tested; and jumping on your visitors because they are oh so happy to make a new friend.

You don’t want to be heavy handed and suppress your puppy’s joyful tendencies or desire to learn about his world. Instead you want to channel your puppy’s wonderful puppy energy and natural inquisitiveness into learning the behaviors you want. Catch your puppy doing something right and reward him for it rather than thinking up ways to get him to stop something you don’t like.

That’s just one step in the Five Step Positive Proaction Plan© that is the foundation of our award winning “Raising a Behaviorally Healthy Puppy” book. This reference has chapters on all the puppy behaviors that might be troubling you – housetraining, crate training, chewing, nipping, rough and tumble play, introducing your puppy to your other pets and more.

Good puppy classes will also tell you how to deal with these behaviors as well as offering vitally important socialization experiences with people and other dogs. Before enrolling your puppy in a class, review our guidelines on “How To Select A Dog Trainer”.

Enroll in our online course “Bring Out the Best In Your Dog’s Behavior”

If you’re serious about knowing how to train your puppy as he matures and having a resource you can refer to about how to use rewards and punishment or “discipline” effectively, then you need to know how your puppy learns. Enroll in our online course “Fundamentals of Animal Learning” . Your puppy will be part of your family for many years, and you will always need to be updating his training, so you’ll get years of value from this program. Any trainer who teaches puppy classes should know the information contained in this program. So if you decide to enroll in a puppy class, this program will help you evaluate the trainer.