5 Tips to Discipline Your Puppy

If there is one thing we know here, it is puppies! With a house full of pups, there is always one or more in training. While there are no “bad” dogs, there are times when sweet puppies do bad things and it is necessary to discipline your puppy.

The number one thing is that those cute puppies are going to grow up.

They may be cute and little right now, but will you want them doing the same behavior when they adults?

Part of teaching a puppy its role in your pack is discipline, but if it’s done wrong it can cause a lot of problems and troubles. 

Learning the best way to discipline your puppy will help speed up training and help your dog adjust to living with your family.

Here are 5 tips on how to discipline your puppy:

Never discipline your puppy out of anger or cause you’re mad!

Training a new puppy to be a part of your family will take time. 

Dogs don’t automatically know how to behave, so they will make lots of mistakes. 

When you discipline them only do it in a calm way to correct the behavior.

Discipline is not a punishment, but a correction.

Praise your puppy more than you discipline him. 

While discipline is an absolutely essential part of training a puppy, it should be secondary to praise. 

Every puppy wants to please its leader and it is much easier to get the behavior you want by reinforcing proper behavior through praise and affection.

Understand the difference between respect and fear. 

A puppy needs to know that you are his master or alpha, so it will respect and submit to you. 

This doesn’t mean that it should be scared of you!  

If you hit or beat your puppy it will become nervous and scared, which can cause the puppy to grow up to be an unpredictable dog. 

With consistent discipline used properly, your puppy will be calm and submissive and will respect, and obey, you.

Discipline immediately after the bad behavior. 

Dogs are not able to associate discipline given at one time with something they did more than a few moments before. 

If you don’t catch your puppy in the act of doing something wrong then it is too late for discipline. 

Proper discipline requires you to be very attentive to the puppy so you can catch him misbehaving, then provide an immediate correction.

Be consistent with your discipline.

If you’re not consistent in what you discipline your puppy for, and how you do it, he will just become confused. 

If, for example, you don’t want your puppy chewing on shoes it is important to discipline him immediately every time you see him chewing on them. 

In addition, if you’re unable or unwilling to discipline quickly at a specific time then remove the shoes from the area so he can’t chew on them. 

This will ensure he is disciplined every single time he does this behavior and he will quickly realize that it is unacceptable.

Training a dog takes a lot of time at first, but if you do it properly it will be well worth the effort. 

When you discipline your puppy properly, you can eliminate bad behavior very quickly. 

Following these five tips to discipline your puppy will help you out.  

But, finding the right types of discipline is also important. 

Each puppy will respond best to different types of discipline, but you should NEVER violently hit or beat any dog as it will not get you the results you’re looking for and only traumatize your dog.

Love and a lot of patience will get you there 🙂