Training Starts Yesterday

If the joke name "Bad Dog Gimme That" is not a clue to how stubborn our new australian shepherd/border collie mix puppy is, then the fact that we have decided to start training her should be a good hint. Up until now, we thought that this puppy was seven weeks old when we got her, which would make her eight weeks old now and another week away before we could start really training her to be a good dog. Except, then I counted the number of weeks since she was born that the breeder told us. Turns our that yesterday was her tenth-week-since-birth day. Upon learning this, a unanimous group decision was made that she starts training right away.

That was yesterday, and that is exactly what happened. Although we are still working on getting her a crate that we think she will enjoy, we are now tirelessly working on making sure she learns who is the boss. You see, up until now we have let her eat when she wants, play outside as long as she wants, tug on things, jump on things, bite us, and a mountain of other things that a dog should not do. All of that stopped. Here's how we've changed it:

• Eat When She Wants: She now has a food schedule, three times a day as recommended online and this will change to twice a day once she becomes a year or so old. We take the bowl away after half an hour of her feeding time and if she did not eat her fill, then she goes hungry for five hours or so.
• Play Outside: When she asks us to come inside, we do not always let her go in. We need her to know that the door opens when we say it opens, that she does not have a magical ability to command us to open the door, and that we will do it when we can. However, at the same time we are also trying to teach her to ask politely (as in whimper or bark) for the door to be open, which she has started doing. To clarify, this is not so much a large deal of letting her inside, but more of a who has control. And do not worry, we sit out there with her even on hot days, so we know when it is too hot.
• Tug on Things: We can't have our baby girl tearing up the house and to stop her we already bought some spray called Grannick's Bitter Apple. At first we were using some other stuff that said it stopped dogs, but after reading reviews we immediately turned it in because she actually attacked things more. This new spray stuff smells bad and after putting some down, she does not attack the object until it wears off (and it does wear off).
• Jump on Things: There are two reasons we do not want her jumping on things, because we do not want her up on furniture or other items and we do not want her jumping on guests that come over. A simple tug on the collar (it does not hurt her, but gives a physical reminder to stubborn dogs that they are not supposed to do it) and one of us saying, "No!" So far she has been learning quickly, not liking the tugs on the collar and learning to stop doing whatever she is doing wrong. There is still more training to go. 
• As an added note here, we are okay with her coming up and jumping on people that have given the signal that they do not mind being jumped on. This signal is that they get down to her level, on their knees or sitting on the ground, but if the person is standing she needs to know not to jump.
• Bite Us: This has been concerning for all of us, because sometimes when she gets playful she also starts nipping. Her teeth are sharp and painful if they dig in, and she has a habit of not liking to let go. So to say the least, we do not want her biting. Unfortunately, she is also still teething, so biting on stuff helps relieve some of the teething pain and so all she wants to do is bite. We have done two things to try and stop her from biting us.
• First we grab her muzzle lightly, shutting her jaw for a second, and we say, "No!" We do this about ten times, giving her plenty of opportunities to stop and we usually try and take her outside so she can be rough on sticks and toys and not us.
• If she keeps biting, no matter what, then she gets a 10 minute time out. I've never heard such cries and had I not have been strong, I think we all would have caved to letter her sit out for a few minutes.
• By doing this, she is learning much more quickly not to bite us.

And do not get me wrong, my family and I are being overly nice to the puppy too. If she has an accident inside, we just take her outside and let her finish her business. We never hit our dogs, we never smack or anything like that to our pets! These are family members and we know it does not teach her to stop doing the bad thing she is doing, but rather just makes the animal scared of us. Instead, we just clean it up and move on, hoping she does not do it again.

Anyway, I love that puppy dog, but she has to be properly trained! And these are just the things at the top of our list! We also want to train her to do normal dog tricks, such as sit, stay, lay down, roll over, and even the basic come here. And from there we also want her to learn how to heel, take car rides, and  never bark at other dogs. It is going to be a challenge, but I know that putting in this time and effort will lead to years of love and I mean both ways!