Basic Puppy Cues!

29 Nov


Name Attention: This is the attention our dogs give us when we have called their name, we want to teach them their name means to look at our eyes, not our treat bag! 

Name Attention steps:

  1. Say Fido's name, then take a treat and draw a line from Fido nose, to your eye, when Fido looks, say yes and follow with a treat. Practice at this level until Fido does this every time
  2. Then we want to do the same thing, but in small increments, move the treat a couple of inches from our eye, we want to then say Fido's name and draw the line up to near our eye, when Fido stops looking at the treat and moves t looking at our eyes, we say yes and follow with a treat
  3. Continue this but slowly moving the treat further and further from our eye, until the treat is behind our back, from that point it goes back in our treat pouch and only comes out as a reward, when you say Fido's name, and they look to your eyes! 

Offered Attention

 This is exactly how it sounds, reward any attention your puppy offers you inside, outside, when they are bored, when they are distracted, etc.
If Fido breaks away from what they are doing to offer you attention, we have to reward that! Even if you don’t have a treat offer a yes and an ear scratch, show Fido what they did right!

Reward Marker/No Reward Marker

A reward marker is a word we use to let Fido know what they have done is what we wanted to see! It is a word that means food, or good things, we condition it to mean that! By making sure the word we use is always followed by a reward! We want to power up our yes, by using Fido's kibble and practicing! 

We want to say “yes” and follow with a treat or kibble, doesn’t matter what Fido is doing, as long as they are attentive to you, do this with every individual piece of kibble Fido eats! 

Then we can start marking behaviours we like, with our yes word! And can follow with a treat

This way, if we ask Fido to sit and he or she does a great sit, and you are in the living room, but the treats are in the kitchen, we can say that yes word(reward marker) to let Fido know that was what we asked in the 2 second reward window we have to let Fido know that behaviour was rewarding or non rewarding, and then walk over to get a treat and he will know that treat was for sitting! Cool hey! 

Mouthing & Chewing – What to do!   

  1. Verbally reward Fido for chewing items they should! Give them all the attention for chewing their items, and ignore them when they chew other items, walk up, and trade them the item they shouldn’t have, for one they should.
  2. As soon as they are chewing an appropriate item again, give them tons of praise and verbal reward! 
  3. Keep items they shouldn’t have out of reach, prevent them practicing chewing the wrong items! Ex. Shoes in closet, closing doors and limiting freedom when alone, etc.
  4. Don’t let Fido have full freedom of the house until they’ve shown you they can make the correct choices, limit space, so you can be sure there are only good items in that space, no off limit items. 
  5. Try not to make any sounds when Fido chews on you! Either offer a toy, or walk away from Fido for 30 seconds and then come back and offer a toy. Even negative attention is attention for our dogs! 
  6. Lastly! Give lots of bones and chews too, the harder chews will help get that need to chew out on the right items, and remember, toys are meant to be destroyed! We would rather they rip up 100 toys, then grab all the off limits items and chew them, am I right?!


Pair all new things with yummy treats, even if Fido doesn’t alert or startle to the new thing. Also pair anything Fido finds scary with yummy treats too.
Loud noises, cars, bikes, joggers, bags, hats, dogs, people, other animals they may encounter, different floors, BATH TIME, brushing, car rides, stairs, SKATEBOARDS, glasses, cats, and water are all good examples of some things we need to pair with extra yummy treats with our puppies who are under 5 months old to ensure they build positive associations to things that may end up being scary to them!

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