Best Puppy Training

Ryoko the yellow lab puppy is one of our personal dogs.
This video was taken when she was UNDER one year old!
A lot of dedicated training from when she first joined our family at 8 weeks old created the amazingly well behaved puppy you see in this video.
The number one comment we hear when we are out with Ryoko is "wow she is so calm, I wish my puppy (or young dog) would act like that". Everyone wants their puppy to become a well behaved and appropriately mannered family member so they can enjoy taking them out and doing more with them. Who wouldn't want that??
The problem is, not many owners know how to properly shape and develop the right things, to achieve this type of success with their puppy. We hear all of the frustrated stories from people of their hyper puppies pulling on the leash, jumping up on everyone and being over excited about everything.
We have been working hard to set up very specific and structured training with Ryoko. Since she was just a tiny puppy, we have encouraged and reinforced positive behaviors we want her to practice and display as much as possible. We have also set up many controlled and carefully structured experiences to help promote appropriate manners and behaviors. This has allowed us to avoid her practicing and reinforcing unwanted behaviors by randomly interacting with people / other dogs or acting inappropriately. These things were vital during her highly impressionable early life with us to help shape the results you see now in this video.
We started by not having her say hello or interact with ANYONE!
She needed to learn how to calmly exist around lots of people, new places and things. This allowed us to build her up with confidence and focus regardless of the environment so she wouldn't get over excited and distracted by anything.
Then we set up very specific training exercises at home to work with her on ignoring distractions such as someone baby talking at her while she was training with me, clapping their hands to try and get her attention, making kiss noises, etc.
These are all very common possible distractions that many dogs will encounter while out in public if/when the general public tries to interact with them. We wanted to make sure Ryoko was prepared to ignore and not be tempted by these common encounters with people by setting her up for success at home first with small steps.
As her training progressed, we began to ask friends and family while we were out in new locations to offer the same distractions to test and build Ryoko's skills at ignoring temptation.
Once she was doing well with indirect distractions, we began to introduce very small interactions set up with control and specific exercises at home. At first we had one person helping by briefly reaching out to touch / pet her and rewarding her for being calm and neutral. We built up from this to longer and more distracting interactions with friends / family before putting it into practice in public.
In public with new people, we still primarily focused on having her be calm and ignore most everyone. With a few carefully selected helpers at stores, the vets office, etc. we began to test and proof her ability to generalize her training to new places and new people.
Eventually we started to allow a few random strangers to pet and interact with her as she continued to show understanding of our expectations of her behavior and maintain calm self control.
Now she is able to go through a variety of environments and knows that she needs to ignore people, other dogs, kids, etc. and stay focused on training with her handler. Then when we do allow invitation for interaction with new people she is calm, politely allows petting, doesn't jump up and maintains great behavior so everyone can enjoy each others company.
THIS is why we told everyone who asked and wanted to pet Ryoko "NO, she is in training" when they swooned over the adorable little puppy we took all over town. It is also why we stress to all of our puppy clients about not letting their little one's rush into saying hello to all the people and dogs they meet while out and about. Their training, foundation and shaping of good behavior is more important than others getting the satisfactions of petting a cute puppy.
Training has helped her learn to behave and exist this way when asked. It is easy to think that she is just "a good dog", but this is not how she is all of the time. She displays calm behavior when we ask and is appropriate, but also let's loose and is still a feisty, crazy puppy when "off duty" and allowed free time.
We can help you and your puppy set up the foundation for success to work toward these results!
www.balancedlifek9.com