Puppy Training Limitations

To get your dog training on the right track, go slow with your puppy; allow him his puppy hood without rushing him through his training. Develop his prey instinct instead of repressing it so that you maximize its flexibility. With the flow of drive cooled by the prey instinct, limits that normally make dogs nervous can instead be converted into positive stimuli to work. On the other hand, if the prey instinct is violated, the puppy is filled with dread and a sense of alienation, giving a host of undesirable behaviors in his temperament.

The limit is inside the dog. You just need to let the prey instinct tiptoe up to the danger line, and then get in tune with whatever is in the dog’s heart so that you can smoothly redirect his attention your way. It could be something as gentle as a warm touch, or as active as a good game of ball.

You need to let your puppy be a puppy, but that doesn’t mean that you are going to let him explore his limits on his own. If you take an overbearing approach to a puppy, you can violate his emotional limits. You have to decisively define the limits according to your standards, or the temperament will assign them according to instinctive standards.

A dog raised in a permissive household feels that danger is everywhere. You must be active in this regard so that learning isn’t left to chance. The puppy must be carefully managed or indiscriminate emotional bruising will be the result. By encouraging the prey instinct under controlled circumstances, a limit can be assigned to your liking. Then, once the bounds are carefully secured, the pup is free not only to make prey within them but to be in harmony with his family as well.

The most obvious limitation in puppies is their short attention span. When confronted with resistance, he is unable to blend two different emotional values (strengths of attraction) together to come up with one focused response.

The simple prey instinct follows a simple rhythm in a natural way. Anything that is more complex, which is pretty much all of our training and domestic requirements will cause the dog to divert his attention so that he doesn’t have a negative experience. Not until he sexually matures and can process stress into social behaviors will he be able to handle such a complex undertaking.

Therefore, it is important to recognize this limitation and not become upset with a puppy if he gives out when faced with a simple objective. The next time, make the problem easier. Problems in this regard reflect errors by the trainer, not learning deficiencies in the puppy.

Attention spans lengthen as instincts are strengthened through the flow of drive. Getting a puppy to perform a task is not as important as “hardening” his focus on a positive stimulation so that he learns to persevere. Success for the dog must be focused on gaining instinctive gratification rather than on avoiding a correction.

An obvious limitation in puppies is that they tire easily, both emotionally and physically. Being young, the prey instinct isn’t synchronized with the outside world; the puppy can’t pace himself. He’ll go at full tilt toward whatever is interesting him until he’s exhausted. Conversely, he’ll easily panic if something is upsetting him. When tired, a puppy will only learn to be nervous rather than how to do an exercise.

In addition, a puppy can’t be expected to inhibit a natural impulse. Puppies just want to have fun through the drive to bite; that is what millions of years of instinctual development are telling them to do.

Another limitation in the puppy is that outside the scope of the simple prey instinct, he can’t change direction or moods quickly. He gets into following the prey instinct along its natural path and can’t get out of it until it reaches a natural conclusion or until he’s exhausted.

It would be like discovering an intriguing path in the forest and wanting to walk it to see where it leads. Puppies, like children, need time to explore, and we have to guide them gently through transitions of mood with an alternative attraction such as a piece of food, a happy tone of voice, or a ball. A puppy needs a good reason to change a mood.

Knowing and recognizing these limits is the sensitive aspect of being a dog owner. It should now be easier to see how a puppy could be overloaded and given a bad experience in a very subtle way. For example, you could be asking him to return the ball to you when he’s tiring and you’ve thrown it once too often.

This may seem a minor point, but to a puppy, bad experiences have a cumulative weight and their load never goes away. Recognize when your puppy has reached his limit so that an unreasonable demand isn’t placed on his behavior.

Many believe that most of what a dog does is a random charting of the world through the experience of positive and negative reinforcements. Nothing could be further from the truth. The negative is most broadly defined when drive loses its focus or none is to be found; then the security of the order is itself shattered. All of a sudden, the dog is in the midst of chaos as surely as if a predator swooped into the den and was ravaging the litter.

It is a shocking experience that he is not able to cope with and for which a flurry of subsequent positives can never compensate. Therefore, a correction is something that needs to be carefully administered at the appropriate time. It should guide and enhance focus rather than be used as a means of inhibiting the individual.