The First 3 Things You MUST Teach Your Dog!

Many people always ask me, when they bring a new puppy home, what is the first thing I should teach him? What tricks should I focus on with my puppy? Well, I just brought a new puppy into my life. And I'm going to tell you the first three things I teach my puppies and what I think you should teach yours. Now, the first thing I think you should teach your puppy is something called loading the marker. In reality, it is a prerequisite before moving on to the training phase that your dog is able to understand when it has done the right thing. You may have seen people use clickers for this, and that's exactly what it is. A clicker is a marker to mark the moment when the dog has shown the correct behavior, which indicates to the dog that you have done something great and that it will receive a reward. But for them to understand that the reward is coming, for them to understand that they have done something good, first we have to teach them that. Before teaching any type of obedience, before teaching any type of trick, the first thing I do is condition my marker. Before, I always used a verbal marker of yes. However, with Reggie, I actually use a clicker as his marker. A verbal marker works perfectly and I have been very successful doing it in the past. However, I think a clicker is superior for two main reasons. First, I find that it is more accurate. With a clicker, I feel that I am shooting at the exact moment in which it is showing perfect behaviors, while a verbal one is accurate, but not as much as a clip. Second, I live with my wife and my two small children, and the reality is that I cannot control what they do and there are many possibilities that they use my verbal marker, even if it is by accident, which can cause problems with training. However, when I know that I am the only person who has access to the clicker, I can control that variable and configure our training to obtain maximum success. So, once I have my clicker conditioned, the second thing I teach my dog and that I teach people to teach their dogs is their name. Now, a dog will never, ever, ever understand the concept of having a name. It is not something that he can logically understand or that he can think of at all. And there is no amount of training that can teach him the concept of a name. So, that said, why bother teaching a name to a puppy? Well, for me, teaching a name to a puppy is actually a training of participation. For what I use the name of a dog is to say, Hey, you specifically you, because I usually work with dog breeds. I want you to look at me so that I can guide you and guide you because I am about to ask you to do something else. That could be the name of the dog. Now I need you to sit down. Dog name, now I need you to call me. Dog name, I need you to go to your place. Dog name, I need you to stop. So, his name is actually a form of training with tricks, a sign of obedience. And what I do is teach them that when I say his name, they have to look at me so that I guide them and guide them. So, his name is equivalent to looking up. And in the first stages of training, that's all we do. Click on the reward. Name, visual contact, click on the reward. That's the second thing I teach all the dogs I work with. Now, before moving on to the third thing I teach dogs. I know I've skipped those two things and you may wonder. Well, when do I teach that? How do I teach that? And you may have more questions than I have managed to answer. And the reality is that we don't have enough time on a YouTube video to be able to answer all those questions in such a detailed way that is required for you to have your own perfect puppy. Thousands of people have taken that course and have taken their 8-week-old puppy to become their dream partner. And you can do it too. So, if you want to learn exactly how and why we do everything with puppies and make sure you guarantee the success you want with your puppy, you will find a link to my course on the perfect puppy in the description box below. You can go see it and see if it's for you. But without further ado, let's move on to the third thing I teach my dogs. So, after conditioning the dog, after teaching him his name, I move on to the third thing I teach dogs. And this is the first part of proper obedience. The first trick, the exciting part of the training that most people are looking forward to starting with their puppies. For me, the first thing I teach a dog is to sit down. Sitting down is probably the most useful thing I have in my arsenal with dogs. And that is because, especially as a dog trainer, I focus on having calm, relaxed and polite dogs. And so that we can achieve it, I do everything possible to teach all the dogs I work with, including puppies and adult dogs, that if you want something in life, sit down. Wait calmly, in silence, with good manners, and so you will have access to it. That is why I use the order to sit down every day with all the dogs I live and work with on countless occasions. It is a fundamental principle to have the perfect canine companion. Whether we go to meet someone in public, instead of being unpleasant and jumping on people, the dog will sit down and wait in silence and with good manners. At lunchtime, instead of turning around, howling, jumping on you or trying to put your head in the bowl before you have put it on the floor, sit down. They wait calmly, in silence and with good manners. Do you want to go to a cafeteria and take your dog and not be the unpleasant dog that does not calm down, barks and howls at everything that happens? Of course, that is not what you want. What you want is a dog that sits down, waits calmly, in silence and with good manners. In public, all the time they tell me how incredibly polite my dogs are, but that never has to do with their sophisticated obedience. It never has to do with the fact that I train them using several languages. It is never about advanced training styles. The reason why they adore my dogs and would like their dogs to behave as well as the others is because my dogs have very good manners, which means that they can go out with me anywhere. And the manners are built on the basis of a dog that sits down, waits calmly, in silence and looks for you to guide them and give them direction. Guys, if you bring a new dog home, make sure to think about conditioning that marker well, to understand what a name means and to always encourage the interaction between you and your dog. Then you can teach him to sit down. And once you have taught that, the options are literally endless. Again, if you need more information, take a look at my course on perfect dogs. Reggie and I are looking forward to seeing you there.