From the 1st night in your home - teach "Quiet"

“Quiet” in Your Home:

The first night a puppy comes to your home is a night of ‘grace’ and praying the puppy will quit screaming.  OF COURSE, A PUPPY THAT HASN’T BEEN HOUSEBROKEN OR KENNEL TRAINED IS GOING TO MAKE NOISE AND INITIALLY YOU MUST ASSUME THAT  NOISE MEANS THAT PUPPY NEEDS TO GO NOW. Follow your kennel protocal (see Kennel) and get that puppy outside where you have provided the same place for it to relieve itself.  

Give the puppy 5 minutes, give your “Go-Potty” command, give the puppy a brief opportunity for water, and immediately kennel it up again. DON’T get sucked into playing or cuddling or coddling or feeding a puppy or you will lose many hours of great sleep because you are trained, by the puppy, to do what they want.  I don’t know about you, but at 2 am in the morning, I am less than thrilled at puppy antics and only want to go back to sleep.

SO, make sure and have your puppy relieve itself before bed every night. It should only take 1-2 weeks, maximum, for you to know your puppy’s schedule and for your puppy to be able to sleep 6-7 hours straight through the night. Your puppy will do better if it goes to bed at approximately the same time each night. Also, remember the ticking clock close to the kennel will help the puppy.

Making sure your puppy has had time to relieve itself, because after the first night, the ‘grace’ from ceases. A young puppy MUST learn immediately that making noise, while kenneled or backtied,will earn a correction.

Here’s how you teach “Quiet” & using “Phooey”. 

Air your puppy just before you go to sleep, then kennel your puppy, go to bed and wait. Once the noise starts, you will have to go to the kennel and say “Quiet”. Go back to bed, it won’t be long, the noise will start again, so go to the kennel and say “Quiet” and shake the kennel. Go back to bed, it won’t be long, the noise will start again. This time, have a small pillow handy and if you can in the dark, command “Quiet” and launch that pillow at the kennel. It should startle the dog enough for the dog to cease. 

Hopefully, you get a reprieve, catch a couple of hours of sleep, the noise will start, so assume the puppy needs to go and follow the same protocal. Having a lot of small pillow handy to launch at kennels.  You can also use small pillows at a puppy that is eating your furniture as you say “Phooey”.  I use “Phooey” for a young dog as the word “No” is heard everywhere in our modern world so how is an unschooled young dog to know the word “No” does or does not apply to them?

So my word for no is "Phooey!" sometimes followed by an unexpected pillow flying through the air-:)  Now, I can command "Phooey" from a distance and Pree knows whatever she was doing had best stop now. Very effective.  Why?

The reason the pillow works and continues to work is because it is unexpected and causes the dogs startle response. The point of doing this correctly, especially when doing it initially, is that the “Phooey” followed by a pillow from somewhere? is a firm, fair and very consistent way to communicate to the dog that ‘something MIGHT happen’ at any time. This puts the responsibility on the dog to think and make the right choice. In time, the word “Phooey” carries enough weight (and memory) in the dogs mind to cause the dog to suspect that ‘a something MIGHT happen’ at any time so perhaps the wise choice is to do the right thing. So, this sets up a training scenario where the dog learns to think and do right without treats or toys or harsh corrections. Just some good ole’fashioned dog training psychology that really works well.

There are other corrections to teach “Quiet”, but hopefully the above will do the trick. If not, let me know and I’ll share the next correction to cure a noisy dog. BTW, it is easier to do this staunchly, firmly and consistently in the beginning than to dance around the noise issue. Do what needs to be done, get it done and over with (kind’ve like do you want to rip off a band-air quickly? or pull it off s…l…o…w…l…y and prolong the pain?)