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Why age appropriate training is important

It can be frustrating taking a puppy for a walk! However, it's just a puppy! Learn about age appropriate training.

Why age appropriate training is important

Hi, this is Wesley again from Thousand Hills Pet Resort and Gentle Touch Pet Training doing a Training Tip Tuesday. One of the things that I want to talk about today is training expectations.

With expectations comes teaching your dog age-appropriate skills as well as having fair expectations for those skills.

I wouldn't take my newborn and say, "hey, it's time to cook a meal," and try to teach them how to use the oven. It's not age-appropriate and it wouldn't happen. Sometimes, I see that with people and their dogs.

People tend to have high expectations for these tiny puppies. One of the highest expectations is puppies walking on a leash. A person may be walking their pup on a leash and the dog keeps stalling. Or sitting– so to speak. And so the person might say something like, "the dog is ornery. It doesn't listen to me." This expectation and skill isn't age-appropriate. Puppies are barely learning how walk as it is, let alone walk alongside you.

So people need to lower those expectations a little bit. What you could do is pick that puppy up, walk a little bit, put the puppy back down, and give them another opportunity. And that goes for all aspects! Whatever the physical and mental limitations of that dog may be.

If I have a Great Dane, I'm not going to teach it how to do a handstand because of their limitations. It's simply not appropriate for that dog. It'll help you in the end, and it'll be less stress on your dog, and less stress on you. Thank you.

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