- Jan 6, 2012
- 86
The girlfriend just brought home an 11 week old puppy. Half golden, half short hair pointer, looks just like a yellow lab. Our neighborhood is a very laid back mountain community, most everybody lets their dogs out at 8am, lets them back in at dusk before bears and coyotes get too active. Leashes, fences and shock collars are foreign concepts around here. I am not concerned about socializing with other dogs...5 or 6 of them were playing with Jackson outside within an hour of him coming home. The girlfriend is working full time, I have 5 more weeks of downtime until mtn bike season and employment begin.
Jackson is basically house broken already.
I have not trained a dog before.
The few big things we are working on right now:
Teaching him his name, come here, sit, etc. Verbal and visual.
No people food. His whole life.
He sleeps in the dog crate. Trying to make it a place for him to relax vs. penalty box, his own bedroom. He only gets to chew rawhide bones (his favorite toy so far) in the crate, so he gets comfortable there.
We eat first, he stays in a separate room and is fed once we are finished.
Any general purpose wisdom/advice? Reading up as much as possible, getting an early start before he gets to the rowdier stages.
Jackson is basically house broken already.
I have not trained a dog before.
The few big things we are working on right now:
Teaching him his name, come here, sit, etc. Verbal and visual.
No people food. His whole life.
He sleeps in the dog crate. Trying to make it a place for him to relax vs. penalty box, his own bedroom. He only gets to chew rawhide bones (his favorite toy so far) in the crate, so he gets comfortable there.
We eat first, he stays in a separate room and is fed once we are finished.
Any general purpose wisdom/advice? Reading up as much as possible, getting an early start before he gets to the rowdier stages.