The Invisible Puppy Trainer

Most puppies develop serious behavior problems as the direct result of something that I call Unintentional Invisible Training. Unintentional Invisible Training occurs when your puppy learns to behave in unwanted ways as the direct result of your actions.

While you may think you are helping your puppy with the hand-me-down advice that you were given by Aunt Paula, or worse, advice that you received from some unknown Puppy Wizard on the internet, the fact of the matter is that most puppies never get the kind of professional education they desperately need. Thousands upon thousands of good puppies are ruined, not because their owners are willfully neglectful, but because most people fail to recognize the cumulative and serious effects of Unintentional Invisible Training.

Understand this - you are training your puppy right now. Yes, at this very moment your puppy is learning from the environment in which you have placed it. The question is, do you know what it is learning? Ask yourself these questions:

• Is Your Puppy Really The Pet You Wanted?
• Do you find yourself always trying to cope with your puppy's unwanted behavior?
• Has Your Puppy Really Made You More Happy?

The secret to raising a great puppy has everything to do with taking control of the Unintentional Invisible Training that creeps up on you and make it INTENTIONAL.

On some level, most experienced puppy trainers realize how dangerous Unintentional Invisible Training is and how many puppies are damaged as the result of it. Most responsible training schools set aside special classroom time to help people understand how their day-to-day routines affect the behavior of their puppies.

Sadly, up until now, Unintentional Invisible Training has been regarded as a complicated problem that cannot be taught in classroom environments. Rather than discussing the complex nature of a puppy’s mind, many trainers have chosen to dummy down their curriculum and focus on simple, sports like, obedience routines to please their students.

All you need to do is look at the modern puppy training trends on the Internet. Behind a million clicks you will find training programs that Guarantee to have your dog trained instantly. “Follow my instructions,” they say, “and your dog will be trained in a few days.”
Really?
Over the years, real dog training has caved in to the public’s need to have everything set out for them as fast as possible. Quantity has killed the need for quality, and many people honestly believe that everything faster must be better. However, fast food has made our children unhealthy and fat. Fast cars simply get people killed. And fast dog training may very well be the fastest way to toss your puppy directly into the trash- can.

My Dog & I

The other day, while I was walking my Whippet, I met up with a young man who was also walking his dog, a two-year-old Golden Retriever.
“Wow!” he exclaimed, looking down at my dog, “How did you get her to do that?” He was referring to the almost perfect way that my dog was walking beside me, even though she was off of her leash.
I smiled at the man and said that I did not teach her anything, rather, it was he that had taught his dog to pull on the leash. Confused, the man smiled at me as if I was telling him a joke. “No, really,” he continued, “I would love to get my dog trained like that, how did you do it?”

The truth is that I have never spent a single second teaching my dog to walk by my side. Nor did I teach any of my other dogs to walk at my side. Natural heeling is something that all of my dogs have always done. Why? How? Because I have never unwittingly allowed them to learn how to pull me in the first place. And when a puppy has not learned how to pull, the only thing left for it to do is walk at your side.

But what about dogs like the Golden Retriever who have already learned how to pull on the leash? Surprisingly, one of the most important things I have ever learned about puppy training is also the most astonishing. The same training methods that are used to prevent problems can also be the methods used to solve them.

Puppies learn how to pull on their leashes when their owners allow them to pull from point A to point B. A healthy, normal, puppy will have a strong desire to socialize and explore. This need to explore is manifested when the puppy pulls on the leash as a means to get closer to something (or someone), it wants to investigate.

How many times have you excused your puppy’s pulling on the leash by saying something like, “She just wants to sniff”, or, “He gets excited when he sees other dogs.” Both of these excuses will have an immediate effect on how you interact with your puppy while it is pulling you. If you allow your puppy to pull you towards a tree, or to meet a friend, your puppy may learn that the pulling is a necessary component of socializing. The puppy thinks; “I pull, I get to socialize, and through socialization I have fun and meet friends.”

Wow, if your puppy is thinking this, why should it ever stop pulling? No matter how much you yank and pull and try to force your dog to walk with you, so long as it believes that pulling is a gateway behavior that could lead towards better things, your puppy will continue to pull, and in doing so it will continue to reaffirm that pulling is a necessary social behavior.

The above description is a prime example of how Unintentional Invisible Training can profoundly affect a puppy’s mind. All the while you thought you were being kind by letting your puppy pull and explore, you unintentionally created a problem that you could spend hundreds of dollars trying to cure.

Don't let Unintentional Training come between you and your puppy. Learn how to train your puppy effectively with the help of a certified Puppywishes trainer.

The above article is used with the written permission of Puppy Wishes.