Polite Puppies Teaching Your Pup To Be Courteous & Well Mannered (part 1)

Polite Puppies: Teaching Your Pup To Be Courteous & Well-Mannered (Part 1)

How can anyone not love puppies, with their milk-breath innocence, soft, baby-sweet expressions and clumsy explorations of a world completely new to them?

Rare is the puppy adopter who enters into the relationship with anything less than good intentions for a lifelong commitment to the new four-legged family member. Why, then, do so many adolescent dogs end up in animals shelters, abandoned by families no longer enamored of their furry teenagers?

Often, it's because no one ever taught the puppy polite house manners. Successful puppy-raising requires a judicious mix of training, management and love. Too many puppy owners are long on love but short on the first two critical elements.

When your pup grows up and is still jumping on visitors, playing keep-away with your $125 dollar running shoes, and darting out the door and up the street when you're frantically trying to get to work on time, the love starts to sour!

Such a shame, because management and training are easier than you might imagine. A puppy is a blank slate whose mission in life is to make good stuff happen. Sparky's goal is to figure out how the world works – what he needs to do to make the most amount of good stuff happen as often as possible.

His list of good stuff centers on physical and mental comfort and safety: food, water, play and social contact; warmth when he's cold; coolness when he's hot; soft surfaces to lie on; satisfying objects to chew on; and protection from the elements, loud noises and other scary stimuli.

If you manage your pup's world so that desirable behaviors make good stuff happen, while inappropriate behaviors make good stuff go away, you'll end up with a well-behaved grown-up dog who never has to fear ending up at a shelter. In order for that to work, you have to control the good stuff.

The Right Management Tools

It's infinitely easier to raise a polite puppy if you use management tools such as crates, baby gates, tethers, doors and leashes. All living things repeat behaviors that are rewarding to them. If your pup is rewarded for impolite behaviors, those behaviors will increase. Behaviors that aren't reinforced go away.

The environment can be infinitely rewarding. Sparky barks at the cat, the cat runs away. Sparky chases. He's just been rewarded for chasing the cat (because cat-chasing is fun!), and he's more likely to chase the cat again the next time he sees it. You leave a roast beef sandwich on the coffee table for a moment while you answer the phone. Sparky learns he can find good stuff on tables, and you then have a counter-surfer in the making. You get the idea.

The biggest benefit of training a pup is that it's infinitely easier to prevent undesirable behaviors than to fix them. If you're skilled at managing Sparky's behavior by controlling good things so he gets them in return for doing things you like, polite manners are a cinch. It takes time, consistency – all family members have to agree to follow the rules – and a willingness to insist that the rest of the world follow the rules as well.

BONUS : Polite Puppies: Teaching Your Pup To Be Courteous & Well-Mannered (Part 2)

Polite Greetings

Everyone loves it when a tiny puppy jumps up to greet them. “Awww, so cute!” they say, but when that puppy grows up to be a full-grown Golden Retriever with muddy paws, it's no longer cute. In fact, it's down-right rude!

It's very easy to teach a pup to greet people politely. It's much harder to convince an adult dog who's been rewarded for jumping up that he should now greet people politely. Wouldn't you rather try the easy way?

The “good stuff” Sparky gets for jumping up is attention. When your pup jumps up, you look at him. You pet him. You talk to him. Perhaps you even pick him up and cuddle him. He learns that “up” is a desirable place to be.

At some point you decide that Sparky is too big to jump up anymore, but he does not know that. By then, it's a well-established habit for him – a reliable way to get the good stuff.

You try to stop giving Sparky attention for jumping up, but every once in a while, when the mood is right, you slip and pet him when he puts his paws in your lap. Uh-oh, big mistake! You are not reinforcing the impolite behavior randomly. Sometimes jumping up is rewarded, sometimes it's not.

A randomly reinforced behavior becomes extremely durable – it's hard to make it go away because Sparky learns that if he just keeps trying, eventually the behavior will pay off, like a slot machine that gives up its fortune if you keep pulling the handle long enough.

You're not the only one who inadvertently rewards your pup randomly for jumping up. Family members, passersby on the street who want to gush over your pup when you're walking him on the leash, visitors to your home – the entire world is a potential slot machine for your pup. This is where you combine good management with assertive insistence.

First, teach Sparky from the first day he sets a paw in your home that sitting politely in front of you earns attention. Jumping up makes you turn your back, walk away, or even step over or through a baby gate (a great management tool!) if necessary, leaving your puppy behind. Show your family how to respond in the same way so your pup learns the only way to get anyone to pay attention to him is by sitting.

When Sparky has learned that sitting is a rewardable behavior, and if you're walking him in public and someone approaches, gently but insistently inform them that your pup must sit before they can pet him. Your leash is your management tool – restrain Sparky so he can't charge forward and jump up. Tell the person if Sparky jumps up, they need to step back until he sits again, then allow them to pet your dog.