Many professional dog breeders really start to pipe up this time of year and warn people to NOT get a puppy for Christmas. But to a soon to be dog owner who’s looking longingly into a little puppies eyes, that message tends to fall on deaf ears.
When breeders start to condemn people, flame them on forums or yell at them in chat rooms for buying a puppy around Christmas it really turns off these new prospective dog owners; and causes them to ignore them.
This is a shame, because for the most part, these breeders are right on.
Many breeders will argue that this Christmas Puppy shopping behavior is ruining thousands of dogs because it allows unethical breeding and selling of Puppy Mill Puppies that grow up to have LOTS of behavior problems and much higher than normal lifetime veterinary costs to fix problems associated with unethical breeding practices.
So here are some great tips from TheDogTrainingSecret.com. If you or someone you know does get a puppy for this Christmas these tips might be useful. Heck, I myself got my Golden Retriever on Christmas too…
3 Ways To Ruin Your Christmas Puppy
- Thinking Your Puppy Will Just Figure It Out
The biggest mistake I see people make when getting a new puppy, is in thinking that their new dog is just going to figure it out. People with this type of mentality tend to think that they’ll just scold, yell or punish their dog from doing all the stuff he’s not supposed to do, and think he’ll eventually get tired of being punished and stop doing those bad behaviors. This is woefully naïve thinking, for raising ANY emotionally healthy living creature. If you tend to approach your world that the only way to get rid of bad behavior is with punishment you are probably going to raise a puppy that has a lot of emotional baggage and will grow up with problems.
- Never Teaching Your Dog ESL
I heard a great quote from dog behavior specialist Dr. Ian Dunbar in a recent speech he gave about how dog owners don’t actively pursue teaching their dog’s ESL, (English as a second language). Most dog owners don’t go through the effort of teaching their dog how to TRULY understand the words we say. This causes dog owners to unknowingly send VERY mixed signals to their dogs… and fosters lots of behavior problems. Dogs are capable of learning drop it, leave it, stop barking, take it, names of toys, humans and hundreds of other things. If we would just spend 5 minutes a day teaching our dog something new, you equip yourself with a tool that make it much easier to eradicate behavior problems in the future… because your dog knows EXACTLY what to do. There doesn’t need to be yelling, or scolding, the dog just gets it.
- Missing The Socialization Windows
- To me, one of the saddest mistakes that I see dog owners make is not realizing that their dog has several social development windows while he’s a puppy. These windows are periods of time where “Positive Exposure” to other dogs is all it takes to prevent puppies from ever becoming dog to dog aggressive.
Many puppy owners get off on the right track by introducing their dog to other dogs when they first bring them home and think that’s all they have to do… WRONG! Your puppy continues to develop emotionally up until about the age of three. During those first 3 years of life, he needs constant and consistent exposure to multiple well behaved dogs that can teach him the proper social etiquette of dogs.
Dog owners who only expose their puppies to other dogs in the first month of life, and then slack off on this habit will notice their dogs becoming more and more territorial and aggressive to other strange dogs as they age. If they would simply continue to expose their dog to well behaved dogs regularly through all of puppy hood these problems tend to be much less likely to rear their ugly little heads.
So if you’re planning on getting a puppy this Christmas please realize that if you don’t have a desire to want to do the three puppy training techniques I’ve listed above, then any cute little puppy you get for Christmas is going to grow up with MORE behavior problems then he should have.
You have to train puppies if you want them to grow up to be good dogs. It’s not hard to do, but it will take an investment of your time. But it’s an investment that will save you a tremendous amount of hassle in the future.
If you’d like some additional resources on training your puppy, please sign up for the free dog training tips newsletter TheDogTrainingSecret.com. When you subscribe they’ll regularly send you helpful reports, videos and articles to help guide you on your journey of developing a perfect puppy.
