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Show all resultsLife with dogs, made clearer
Early foundations for dogs under about six months, built around short sessions and plenty of rest.
Puppy training is less about obedience than about building a dog who finds the world manageable. Sessions are short, rewards are frequent, and rest matters as much as practice.
The lessons here assume a puppy who is still growing. They avoid repetition that loads immature joints, they keep exposure gentle and controlled, and they treat sleep as part of the training plan rather than an interruption to it.
17 free lessons
Work through these in sequence. Each lesson states what your dog should already be able to do before you start it.
Build a precise marker, a clicker or a short word, that tells your puppy exactly which instant earned the food, before you use it to teach anything else.
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Build a name that reliably turns your puppy's head, using short paired repetitions in a quiet room before you ask for it anywhere harder.
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Two simple positioning skills that let you move and steady your puppy without pulling a collar, taught with food in short daily sessions.
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Lure a sit into a settled down by taking food between the front paws rather than pushing on the body, with a fallback for puppies who pop straight back up.
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Teach your puppy that lying down on a mat pays, building calm duration a few seconds at a time before you ever ask for it in a busy room.
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Build a genuinely positive association with the crate through feeding and free choice before the door is ever closed, so it becomes somewhere your puppy wants to be.
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Turn frequent trips outside into a reliable routine by taking your puppy to the same spot on lead, rewarding at the moment they finish, and managing accidents rather than punishing them.
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Teach your puppy to soften their mouth and redirect onto a chew, using calm withdrawal rather than a dramatic reaction to every nip.
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Prevent jumping from ever becoming a rehearsed habit by rewarding four paws on the floor from the very first greeting.
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Teach your puppy to accept grooming, ear checks and paw handling by asking permission in short sessions and stopping the moment they say no.
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Build comfortable harness wearing and a slack lead before any expectation of walking, so equipment never becomes something to fight against.
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Build the closed-fist leave it from scratch, rewarding your puppy from your other hand the instant they back off rather than from the fist itself.
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Turn a grabbed sock or chew into a fair trade, so your puppy learns that opening their mouth pays better than running off with it.
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Teach your puppy to pause before a door opens, so a held sit becomes a habit that keeps them safe long before it becomes good manners.
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Turn a reliable name response into a puppy who runs to you and stays close enough to touch, built indoors and in the garden before anything harder.
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Pair ordinary household and outdoor noise with something pleasant, at a volume your puppy barely notices, so sound stops being something to fear.
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Build a positive association with the car in small, stationary steps before the first real journey, so travel never starts with something unpleasant.
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