Dog training especially needs to be done all the time, and training your puppy on a walk helps teach your new puppy how to behave and cope in various situations and to enjoy being on a walk in different weathers, and different environments.
This is early socialisation which we touched on in another post on Simply Dog Articles called “Why is early socialisation important in dogs”, but there is more you can do on a walk besides early socialisation to help a puppy become calm.
It’s not just about going out on a walk for exercise. Yes, exercise and the physical workout for a dog are good but it needs to smell and take in the world.
Training Your Puppy on a Walk
When your new puppy smells a bush or lamp post, it is like a Facebook post for dogs. It can smell the other dog’s urine and knows if it lives locally depending on if it has smelt that urine smell previously.
It will also know how that dog is feeling with the urine smell releasing pheromones communicating information to your puppy and other dogs. Your puppy will most probably then have a wee and pass its information on to and so on, so there is a world of communication going on non-verbally.
Now on a walk, you can let your dog sniff and enjoy the outside world, teach it to walk nicely on a loose lead through simple ways like if the lead is tight you don’t walk, and if you get a loose lead you walk and when it is near you praise in a soft voice and let your puppy know it is doing well.
You can feed on the walk to help your dog relax. You can also put obedience into the walk to help your puppy relax while also learning to listen to you and start to pay more attention to you when out.
The Sit Command on a Walk
Let’s start with the sit command. Imagine you’re walking along and you turn to your puppy and say “Rover Sit” (change the name if your dog is not called Rover) and when it sits you feed it a treat.
Then when you’re ready after a few seconds you walk on calmly and maybe put a new command to walk on like “Let’s go”.
Then over a period of time, the sits being asked on a walk will help get more obedience, help relax your dog, it will be more responsive to you and the “let’s go” command will over time let it know that when you say “let’s go” it means were going to start walking again, whether that’s from a sniff or from it sitting.
The Stop Command on a Walk
Other things you can add to your walk for training are things like the “stop” command and also an auto check-in.
These are great for calming a dog down on a walk and for it to become more focused on you.
So, a simple way to put the “stop” command in is when you’re walking to a curb you say “stop” before you get there while you also slightly slow down at the same time.
This helps a dog learn to be more alert near a curb and as time goes on if you don’t ask for a “sit” the puppy will just naturally sit anyway as you have kept asking it to “stop”.
How do I teach my puppy to keep their attention on me on walks?
The auto check-in is good too. When you’re walking along and your puppy looks at you, simply praise your dog and carry on walking. When it looks at you again, praise and keep walking. After many repetitions, your dog will naturally keep looking at you.
What we have covered above is nothing major, you’ve just gone out for a walk and added some things to the walk.
But, imagine where your puppy could be behaviour-wise in 4 weeks’ time by putting simple things into the walk on a daily basis.
Now, these kinds of training principles are all included in the Complete Puppy Training Program so if you want a plan to just go with this will help you on a daily basis so you have a calm well-mannered puppy.
Anyway, enjoy your training and I hope you benefit from this post.