DOG Training TOYS

Whenever I am out in public and speak with people, whether it’s at a social gathering or just meeting someone, I often hear the question “What do you do for a living?” When I tell people my profession, it almost always sparks curiosity and genuine interest. Of course, as any dog trainer will tell you, it also stimulates about a trillion questions— which is why I sometimes cringe when I know the “what do you do” question is about to be asked. However, most of the time it is fun to talk about and a good topic of conversation.

One of the most common questions I hear is, “How old does my dog have to be to start training?” My answer has always been the same: “From the minute you get your dog home, you are training her. If you have a dog, you are a trainer.” Often this response earns me confused looks. After all, most people have heard things like, “Wait until the dog is six months old before training” or, “Get your dog into puppy classes at twelve to sixteen weeks.”

Thirty years ago, the six-month rule was fairly common. This was due, in part, to the fact that all too often training classes in those days involved strong physical corrections, and a puppy younger than six

months might be physically or emotionally damaged if she was trained that way before the six-month mark. As you can well imagine, putting a 12-week-old puppy on a choke chain and administering sharp leash corrections was generally a very harsh way to train, and sometimes caused real problems.
Fortunately—and this is one of the good things that has happened in the last 10 to 12 years—training methods have become far gentler. It is also pretty much universally understood in the training community that a…