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House training, biting, lead work and sleep — in the order they come up.
De Pet Valley · · 4 min read
If a puppy has diarrhoea, worms in the stool, is straining to wee, or suddenly starts having accidents after weeks of getting it right, phone your vet before you change anything about the training.
The first six months arrive in a rough order: sleep, house training, biting, the lead, and the socialisation window running underneath all of it. Work on whatever is in front of you, keep the sessions short, and pay well for the thing you want more of.
A new puppy has just lost its mother, its litter and every smell it knows. The first three or four nights are usually broken. That is normal, and not a sign you chose the wrong puppy.
Put the crate or pen next to your bed. Being able to hear you settles most puppies faster than any of the tricks involving ticking clocks and hot water bottles. Take the last toilet trip right before lights out.
When they wake in the night, carry them outside, wait, praise quietly, and put them straight back. No talking, no play, no lights on. Most puppies sleep through inside a week or two, and you can shift the crate a little at a time after that if you want it somewhere else.
Take the puppy outside after every sleep, every meal, every burst of play, and roughly every hour in between while they are awake. Praise the second they finish, outside. A treat handed over two minutes later rewards walking back through the door.
Accidents indoors are a timing failure on your side, not defiance. Do not punish, and do not rub a nose in anything — all that teaches is to go where you cannot see. Clean with an enzymatic cleaner rather than an ordinary household one, because ammonia-based cleaners leave behind exactly the smell that says toilet.
Reckon on weeks, not days. Bladder control comes with age, and dry nights arrive later than dry days. Most puppies also go backwards for a few days around any change, like a move, a house guest or new flooring.
Puppies explore with their mouths and their teeth are needle-sharp. It is not aggression and you did not cause it. It still has to be worked on from day one, because a Boerboel doing at nine months what it did at nine weeks is a different problem entirely.
The rule that works is simple. Teeth on skin ends the game: stand up, fold your arms, leave the room for twenty or thirty seconds, then come back and carry on. Everyone in the house has to do the same thing, children included, or the puppy just learns which people are safe to bite.
Then give them something they are allowed to chew, and swap it in before the biting starts rather than after. Teething makes all of this worse for a few weeks from around four months. Chew toys and frozen things help. Wrestling with your hands does not.
Put the collar or harness on indoors for short spells with something good to eat, so it is never the thing that appears just before something frightening. Then clip the lead on and let them drag it around the house while you watch.
Do the first real walking in the garden. Reward the puppy for being beside your leg, stop dead the moment the lead goes tight, and move again only when it is slack. It is dull and it is the entire method. A puppy that reaches the gate by pulling has just been taught that pulling works.
Keep walks short. Ten minutes of new smells does more for a young puppy than two kilometres of pavement, and how much distance a growing skeleton should cover is a question for your vet, particularly with a large breed.
Somewhere around four or five months the recall you had falls apart, the chewing steps up, and a puppy that had learnt to sit appears never to have heard the word. This is adolescence starting. You have not broken anything.
Keep a long lead on in open spaces so recall never gets the chance to fail, and pay properly for coming back, every single time. Keep training to a few minutes at a stretch, several times a day, and stop while the puppy is still interested.
Ignore anything you read about being the alpha or asserting dominance. It rests on an old misreading of captive wolves, and in practice it makes a nervous dog more nervous and a confident dog harder to handle.