Young Pup vs. Adult Dog

[scotty]

I was wondering why my poochin puppy (now 3 months old) is obedient when inside the house and hyper active when i bring it to the park. It runs all over the place where it wanted to, as if it was exercising, running and playing excessively than normal in the same time, but still listen to the 'come' command. So, is it normal for a puppy to do that?, or it will persist until later on where i will lose control of it. For now, i havent teach my puppy to walk on leash because his only interest is to bite the leash. And, is it ok if I walk it in morning or at night? or it will make the puppy confuse?

[Bill]

No, its not normal for a 3 month old puppy to listen to "come" while playing. Be happy!! It is completely normal for such a puppy to be completely exuberant when given the chance to play. Unfortunately, he will grow out of it. Its ok to walk him anytime you want to. The more the better.

[kernow]

The puppy sounds perfectly normal. It took me a long time to get one of my mums puppies to come reliably when outside, but we got there. Keep up with the leash training, it makes such a difference to have a dog that walks well on a leash.

[RubyRoo]

I think that it would be a good time to start training your puppy, before he gets any older and even more independent than now. The use of titbits when training or a toy that the pup particularly likes would be useful as a reward for returning to you when you teach the recall. Any toy used for training, is best kept for just training, so that it becomes more 'valuable' to the dog, because it doesn't always have access to it, so wants to get it more.

As for when you are at the park, I would get a long line, such as used for tracking dogs, or a long flexi lead, and keep your puppy on that until you have taught it a reliable recall. There are also at least two other reasons to use a long line as well. At this young age puppies running and tearing around like loonies are likely to damage themselves, pulling muscles etc and it also has the potential to damage hips and shoulders as well. Also too much exercise can damage the 'growth plates' in the puppy, so exercise should be kept fairly short and calm. It is said 1 minute exercise for every week of the puppy's age. So if your puppy is about 3 months old, then you would be giving it about 12/13 minutes per walk. It is better at this age to tire the brain rather than run the puppy around until it is exhausted. The other reason is the puppy running up to dogs that you and your pup don't know, which can be a recipe for your pup getting bitten or worse getting attacked. Not every dog in the park is going to enjoy having some strange dog belting up to it and then bouncing all over it.

For leash training, put the leash on when doing something which your puppy enjoys, but leave it trailing (don't leave puppy unattended though), so you could put the leash on every time you feed your puppy, or play with it. Clicker train it to be calm when wearing the leash. Plenty of clicker training articles if you 'Google', to teach you the basics of it, and why it works.

If you train your puppy right, using rewards that it enjoys then it will learn to be calm and sociable, while still being a fun loving dog to have around.

Take your training and do it any place you can, but to start with teach with as few distractions around as possible, so that your puppy pays attention to what you are trying to teach, then gradually adding distractions as it begins to understand what you want. Get friends to help, so that you can keep control of what is going on, and repeat certain exercises when you need to.

Finally would like to suggest that you obtain Victoria Stillwell's book 'It's Me Or the Dog'. It's sure to be a great help to you.

Many regards Jan

[dogtrainer]

Thanks for the post! I just wrote a book that covers a part of this on Dog Training | How to train my dog | coaching dogs