PUPPY COMES HOME - Easing the Transition from Litter to Family

Mr. President as a puppy

You’ve done your research, found the right breeder, rescue, or shelter, selected a puppy with the correct energy level, and are as certain as you can be that she will grow up to be your perfect canine companion for life. Now it’s time to bring her home. I always say, when you’re a pack leader, everything you do means something to your dog. Every action, every emotion, every signal you send—accidentally or intentionally—will be input into her computer and used to reevaluate who you are and what function you should play in her life. With puppies, all those tiny moments matter even more. Your puppy’s brain is still developing, and she is looking to you to model the behavior patterns she will follow from now on. Junior, Blizzard, Angel, and Mr. President all started out as calm-submissive, medium-energy, issue-free puppies. But even I—yes, I, the Dog Whisperer—could mess up their already perfect programming if I didn’t pay attention to every interaction I had with them from the first day forward, especially during those earliest weeks in which my puppies were making the transition from their first pack—their mom and littermates—to living with my pack—my human family and my other dogs.

THE TRIP HOME

When you pick up your dog from the breeder’s, shelter, or rescue, the previous caretaker will talk you through adoption or sales contracts, as well as fill you in on the details of her health history, including documented records of any shots she has had up until now. When your puppy comes home with you, she should already have had at least her first round of immunizations, against distemper, hepatitis, parainfluenza, and parvo, something we’ll address in more detail in the next chapter. Ideally, you will have already been to visit your puppy at least once before the actual adoption. Many breeders like their new owners to handle the puppies after they are two or three weeks old, to begin to get them familiar with the scents of their new pack leaders—remember, dogs memorize and recognize an individual’s scents in much the same way we humans remember faces, except dogs’ noses are hundreds of times more accurate than human eyes! In other words, your new puppy would be able to pick you out of a police lineup with far more accuracy than you would be able to recognize her in a lineup of similar-breed dogs!

Your dog’s powerful sense of scent works to your advantage in other ways. To help ease your puppy’s transition away from her first family, make sure to bring with you some clothing or toys that bear the scent of her mother and littermates. They will provide needed comfort for her first few days apart from the support system she has come to depend upon. You will also have with you a kennel or carrying case to transport your puppy. If this is the carrying case that will become your puppy’s permanent “crate” at your home, you can ask your breeder to start getting the puppy used to that particular crate a week or so in advance. You can even provide an item—a towel or undershirt—to put in the crate that has your scent on it, as long as it is totally sanitary and has never come into contact with any nonimmunized dogs or other pets! The more we can use our dogs’ noses to help them prepare for new situations, the easier any change will be for them.

KENNEL/CRATE TIPS

Choosing a Crate Style

WIRE CRATES

• Stay cooler in hot environments

• Give more ventilation

• Give a 360-degree view to the puppy

• Can be covered with a towel to minimize distractions

• Often fold flat for storage

Note: Make sure to keep the floor lined with comfortable paper, cardboard, or bedding.

HARD PLASTIC CRATES

• Are easy to clean

• Have comfortable, smooth floors that can be easily arranged with bedding and a raised sleeping area

• Are lightweight and better for portability

• Provide a ready-made “den-like” environment—naturally calming for excited puppies and helpful in soothing separation anxiety issues

The choice is yours, but whichever style you choose, be sure the crate is big enough so that there is enough room for the dog to stand up and turn around, and in which she can lie down and sleep in a comfortable position. It’s also best to allow some extra room for your puppy’s rapid growth.

When it comes time to bring your puppy to the car, you may be carrying her from the breeder’s in her crate, or you may choose the option that I prefer: walking her to the curb and allowing her to go into the car (and into her open crate inside the car) of her own volition. There’s a reason that I suggest to owners that they allow their puppies to propel themselves into new situations as much as possible: puppies are not marsupials, and they are not primates. When their mother wants them to go somewhere, she lets them figure out a way to follow her there. If they are too slow, somehow stray off the path, or get blocked by an object that’s in their way, she will go back, pick them up by the scruff, and move them back to where they need to be. Then she will continue on her journey, and they will once again have to figure out how to follow her. She doesn’t spend her days carrying her litter from place to place. If she did, her pups would never learn to fend for themselves, and that would be disastrous for the pack as a whole.

We need to keep our puppies’ mothers in mind at all times when helping them make the switch from their early lives to what will be their living situation for the majority of their puppyhood. Becoming a partner in your dog’s life from day one means helping her through challenging new circumstances but never rescuing her from those situations or doing all the work for her. Nature, with the added help of the mother, has already created a time-tested, nearly foolproof strategy for a dog’s education. We have to be aware that sometimes our best intentions drive us to actually block puppies from getting the benefits of Mother Nature’s lesson plan. Those best intentions, for too many owners, usually involve carrying their puppies around everywhere like babies, so the puppies never get a sense of how they got to where they’re going. This is very much against their nature and can seriously stunt their learning and development.

To use my method for introducing the puppy to the car and her kennel, park the car as close as possible to the pickup spot so you will be able to let the puppy follow you there. Many great breeders, like Brooke and Diana, have already conditioned their puppies to the sensation of the leash, so you can actually begin the leash-training process with this very first exercise you share together.

Once you reach your vehicle, open the door or tailgate and lift up the puppy by her scruff, but put only her front two paws down on the car seat or cargo area. This will trigger her brain to automatically want to put all four feet down where the first two landed. You have helped her accomplish this monumental new feat, but you haven’t done all the work for her. Instead you’ve been a partner in the learning experience.

Next, the puppy will want to explore the new space, first with her body and then with her nose, so you can use food to lure her into her transport kennel. She’ll also be attracted by the item containing the scents of her littermates and mom. Make sure she is relaxed and comfortable inside the kennel before you close the door. Never, ever close a door on an excited or anxious puppy. This can contribute to kennel phobias and even separation anxiety. Finally, position her near enough to smell and see you during the drive home.

Remember, scent and sight are far more important to your puppy than sound! In fact, sound can sometimes reinforce any fear or anxiety the puppy may be experiencing about this first-time adventure. If your puppy is whining throughout the trip and you are constantly repeating, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” what you are actually communicating to your puppy—not with the words but with the energy behind that sound—is that her discomfort and whining are okay. Also, try to refrain from using the squeaky, high-pitched cooing and baby talk people seem to slip into when they are around cute baby animals. If you are feeling sorry for the puppy, her first impression of you will be one of a creature with weak energy. As always, silent, calm-assertive energy is better for your puppy than talk or even touch at this point.

To calm a very anxious puppy, I always recommend using scent to distract first, then, once the puppy begins to relax, reinforcing that with a treat if necessary. But petting a fretful puppy can actually create exactly the outcome you don’t want—a puppy that always gets upset whenever she is inside a car or her kennel.

INTRODUCING YOUR PUPPY TO YOUR HOME

For those of you who have read my other books about rehabilitating adult dogs, you will be familiar with my instructions for walking a new dog around her new neighborhood for thirty minutes to an hour before inviting her into your home. This begins the forging of a bond and simulates the experience of migration, so that moving into your house feels like migrating from one area to another, and thus makes sense to her on a primal level.

For puppies, I recommend a kind of “abridged” version of this process. Before you bring your puppy inside your house it’s important for her to have a sense of the environment she’s going to live in, to get a taste of the smells, sounds, and sights of your yard, home, and neighborhood. You must begin to communicate to your puppy that your driveway or hedges or white picket fence marks the beginning of your territory. If your puppy already has had some experience with a leash or is open to wearing one, place a short leash high up on the puppy’s neck, so you can have a comfortable amount of control. This is the ideal situation, both to establish a lifetime routine and for your puppy’s immediate safety. Next, place the puppy on the ground, then walk toward your home, letting her follow you inside the front door. Do not let her get distracted or sniff the ground. Chris and Johanna Komives describe following this protocol with their new puppy, Eliza: “When I picked her up from the breeder, I put a leash on her—the breeder had already familiarized the puppies with leashes—and walked her briefly before putting her in the car,” says Chris. Clearly, Chris remembered the lessons he’s learned from six seasons of shooting Dog Whisperer, since this is another exercise I always insist upon for clients adopting adult dogs, but it’s also a first-rate way to begin the bonding process with a new puppy. “I had her crate in the car and put her in and waited until she was calm before closing the door and driving off,” Chris continues. “When we arrived home, I sprayed bleach-water in front of our house and two houses down and walked her this distance before entering the backyard. I let her explore the backyard, and then showed her the area in the back hallway we had prepared for her.”

If you live in an apartment, place the puppy a few feet outside the door and wait for her to follow you inside. Patience is key here, because she may be a bit disoriented and a little reticent in the beginning. Hesitancy is normal in puppies, because everything is new to them. As we discussed in the last chapter, your puppy may still be in the “cautious” phase that marks the end of her early socialization period. So don’t force the puppy inside if she is “putting the brakes on.” Remember my formula: nose-eyes-ears. Use a bully stick, treat, scented toy, or the item with her littermates’ or mother’s scents on it to engage her nose. Eventually she will show natural curiosity and willingness to come in after you. As timid as she might seem at first, it’s in her computer program to follow you. It’s very important that you remain calm, relaxed, and fully accepting of her natural tentativeness. On the day you plan to bring your puppy home, set aside several hours or even a good part of the day for the process so that you don’t become impatient. Remember, the energy you share with your puppy will become her energy. If you are tense and frustrated with her, she will reflect that negativity right back at you. Introducing a puppy to new environments should be a joyful activity for you, not one of frustration and stress.

Eliza at home

THE PUPPY-READY HOME

“When someone is buying a puppy, I always give them lots of information about how to prepare their houses,” says Diana Foster.

When people aren’t prepared, it’s a recipe for disaster. And it’s totally unnecessary. It’s as if a woman were pregnant for nine months; she goes to the hospital to have the baby; she comes home, but there’s nothing ready. There’s no crib. There’s no playpen. There’s no booster seat or diapers. So she just leaves the infant on the floor. That may sound extreme, but there really are people who buy a puppy on a whim and that’s the kind of thing they do. Then they wonder why their house is a wreck and they have all these behavior problems. They blame the dog for being out of control. I make sure I never let one of my German shepherd puppies go to someone who’s not prepared.

Puppy-proofing a home doesn’t have to be a monumental project, especially if you keep your puppy in a confined space for the first few weeks, gradually expanding her territory more and more as she becomes housebroken and starts to feel more at home in your family pack. Finding a secure, limited space in which to keep your puppy—at least during her early months—makes it easier for her to internalize your rules, boundaries, and limitations, gives her a sense of order and structure, and protects your home from accidental destruction. Chris and Johanna Komives prepared an area in their back hallway (with a dog door to the backyard) where they put Eliza’s crate. In our home, all new dogs—including Junior, Blizzard, Angel, and Mr. President—began their residency in their kennels, in our large, well-ventilated garage, with an open door to our side yard and a wall of baby gates as an additional boundary. Of course, our puppies will be staying in that garage with the balanced adult dogs already living there. I don’t ever recommend leaving a young puppy crated alone in a garage or a distant, closed-off room, simply because being so completely isolated from the sounds and smells of a living pack will be very upsetting for her.

Diana Foster recommends that families ignore her German shepherd puppies for the majority of their first days home but put their crates in a far corner of a family room or kitchen, where they can feel a part of the pack even while not engaging in the family’s activities. This teaches them that excitement in the family doesn’t mean they have to respond with excitement, a vital skill for powerful-breed puppies that will grow up to be large, brawny dogs. A mudroom or laundry room just off a kitchen makes an ideal place for this kind of setup. Some people bring their puppy’s kennel into their bedroom to minimize her loneliness for the first few nights, then decide to leave it there indefinitely. The place you choose should be an area of which you are not obsessively house-proud, so if an accident does occur, you won’t lose your temper and blame your puppy for a mistake that is not her “fault.”

Diana Foster’s crate setup for her Thinschmidt German shepherds

I am the world’s biggest fan of baby gates, be they metal, wire, wood, or plastic. I keep lots of them folded up in my garage and use them for a variety of purposes—as barriers, as “map” boundaries to show where I want the dogs to go, and even as behavioral enrichment tools in obstacle courses for the regular challenges I use to fulfill my dogs’ need to work. It’s important to remember, however, that a clever puppy can easily push or leap over a lightweight baby gate. It’s up to you to set an invisible boundary as well as a physical one wherever you choose to keep your dog.

 Spot Check

Although you should always be supervising your puppy in the more open areas of your home, as her confidence grows she will be driven to explore most everything in her immediate environment. Accidents can happen, no matter how diligent you are. That’s why it’s important to do a puppy-proofing of each room before your bring your littlest pack member home. Pass through each room, checking for loose wires or electrical cords that might appear all too chewable, and move them out of sight or tape them down. Make sure that the food in your kitchen is put away on high shelves or in sealed containers; make sure your garbage can has a firm lid and is out of reach. Put a latch on any low cabinets containing cleaning products, in both the kitchen and bathroom. Examine your bathroom floors and low shelves and clear them of any human grooming products—soaps, shampoos, shaving lotions, loofahs or sponges—that might prove to be temptations. Keep the toilet bowl down at all times. In our garage I have high shelves, locked cabinets, and sealed plastic containers that house any loose odds and ends I don’t want the dogs to get near.

Houseplants are a huge enticement—dogs are attracted to anything natural, so the scent of the soil and leaves will be very inviting to them. Terriers like Angel may instinctually want to dig up your prize two-hundred-dollar fern when you’re not looking, so be sure to remove plants from the floors of any rooms in which you eventually plan to allow your puppy. There are also a few very common house-plants that can be toxic to dogs, including

Aloe vera                 Lilies

Asparagus fern         Mistletoe

Bean plants                 Philodendron

Cactus                         Poinsettia

Caladium                 Potted chrysanthemum

Dumbcane                 Umbrella plant

Hydrangea                 Various ivies

Indian rubber plant         Weeping fig

Don’t forget your backyard in this process. Like houseplants, several common yard plants and trees are poisonous to your puppy, including

Autumn crocus         Lily of the valley

Castor bean                 Morning glory

Foxglove                         Nightshade

Hibiscus                         Oleander

Hyacinth                         Precatory beans

Japanese yew                 Trumpet vine

Jerusalem cherry         Tulips

Kalanchoe                 Wisteria

Larkspur

The ASPCA’s excellent website offers a more comprehensive list of toxic and nontoxic plants, as well as tips on how to spot symptoms of poisoning.

 Supplies

In addition to your crate or kennel, you should be prepared with the following items and tools to help both of you adjust to your new life together:

• Healthy puppy or dog food approved by your vet

• Food and water bowls

• Collar and leash

• ID tags (also consult with your vet about microchipping)

• Grooming supplies: nail clippers, brushes, flea comb, dog shampoo, ear-cleaning pads, toothbrush, and dog toothpaste

• Wee-wee pads

• Baby gates

• Natural-material chew bone (I am a big fan of the bully stick, because rawhide can be rough on a puppy’s digestion)

• Vet-approved training treats for rewarding

• Plastic bags or scooper for poop

• Dog bed or dog cushion

• A variety of stimulating play toys

A PRESIDENTIAL PUPPY-PROOFING

When Mr. President was three and a half months old, my wife and I took a trip to Australia for business, then went on to Fiji for a short vacation and spiritual retreat. For the two weeks we would be away, Dog Psychology Center director Adriana Barnes took care of the dogs in my home pack, but our hardworking researcher for this book, Crystal Reel, campaigned fiercely for the opportunity to foster our winsome English bulldog puppy. I believe everyone in my human pack should have the joy of spending time with dogs, even if they don’t own them permanently, and I encourage everybody who works with me to get hands-on experience practicing the principles of calm-assertive leadership that I teach. But since Mr. President is an accomplished chewer, I instructed Crystal to thoroughly puppy-proof her townhouse before the presidential visit.

Crystal reported later:

My puppy-proofing started with the kitchen, because that is where Mr. President would hang out if I couldn’t take him somewhere with me, such as the grocery store or a restaurant—I learned quickly that most people didn’t buy the story that he was my Seeing Eye dog! In the kitchen I had to make sure he couldn’t get into any of the household cleaning chemicals that I keep under the sink. Baby locks and duct tape work great to keep these securely closed.

Next came the pantry cabinets. Bulldogs might not have the best sense of smell in the world, but Mr. President quickly figured out that his food was in there. I learned the hard way that he could open my pantry cabinet. I set up a webcam in my kitchen so I could watch Mr. President from my computer at work on the rare days I wasn’t able to bring him into our very dog-friendly offices. There I was, working away, when I saw Mr. President actually open the pantry cabinet and start pulling out the bags of doggie cookies I had placed on the bottom shelf! I was terrified he would eat the plastic bag the cookies came in, so I immediately jumped up from my desk, hopped into my car, and raced back to the west side, a good forty-five-minute drive. Luckily, Mr. President has good taste—he ate all the treats and left the plastic bag—but still I’m glad I had set up the webcam so I knew what he was doing at all times.

I also puppy-proofed the living room and my bedroom by making sure to hide or pick up off the ground any cables or cords he might be able to chew on, as well as shoes and other things I had on the ground that I didn’t want eaten. I then vacuumed everywhere because we have leaves and twigs and such that get tracked in around the front door from outside and I didn’t want him to eat any of those either.

The direction Cesar gave me on puppy-proofing was to keep an eye on his chewing and redirect his energy. He told me bully sticks were best because rawhide can be hard on a puppy’s digestive system. So I made sure to have a lot of bully sticks on hand, and they really did come in handy!

PUPPY-PROOFING CHECKLIST

• Keep floors free of loose or small items that could become choking hazards: loose change, pens or pencils, paper clips, jewelry, etc.

• Move electrical cords out of the way, tape them down, or cover them with heavy rugs. Purchase plastic outlet covers for open outlets.

• Make sure breakable items—curios, lamps, etc.—are safely removed from puppy’s play area.

• Set up baby gates to block off access to forbidden areas.

• Install childproof locks on low cabinet doors, and remove all cleaning supplies or toxic chemicals to high shelves.

• Fence in or cover swimming pools, hot tubs, and other open bodies of water.

• Remove potentially poisonous houseplants and outdoor landscaping.

• Keep toilet seats down.

• Make sure trash can lids are locked and sealed.

BOUNDARIES BEHIND WALLS

Since a recurring theme of this book is “how not to raise Marley,” here’s another telling incident from John Grogan’s poignant and hilarious memoir, describing the very first time he brought their two-month-old Labrador into their small home. “When we got home, I led him inside and unhooked his leash. He began sniffing and didn’t stop until he had sniffed every square inch of the place.”

A cautious new puppy checking out his new crib—sounds like a perfectly reasonable reaction, doesn’t it? What first-time dog owner John didn’t realize was that almost all puppies at eight weeks of age will act polite and tentative while checking out an unfamiliar environment. But a casual introduction like this one sets the precedent for a puppy eventually to believe that he should “own” that entire space. Once a dog starts feeling secure and confident within the confines of his new real estate—especially a fast-growing, powerful, and very-high-energy dog like Marley—problems can multiply with lightning speed. True to form, within a few short weeks, Marley was acting like a drunken rock star hell-bent on trashing a hotel suite: “Every last object in our house that was at knee level or below was knocked asunder by Mar-ley’s wildly wagging weapon. He cleared coffee tables, scattered magazines, knocked framed photographs off shelves, sent beer bottles and wineglasses flying. He even cracked a pane in the French door.”

The Grogans’ decision to let Marley explore his new environment on his own is one of the most common errors I see new puppy owners make. And I’m not alone in observing this. “The very, very worst thing you can do to a puppy when you bring it home is introduce it to your whole house,” Brooke Walker says emphatically. Diana Foster agrees. “He doesn’t need the whole house, and he doesn’t need the whole yard. Those are the owners who will call me a couple of weeks later, complaining, ‘I thought the dog was supposed to be well-behaved. This dog is out of control.’” Unfortunately, some of the most popular puppy-training books on the market advocate letting a new puppy run free, claiming that you “owe” your new puppy her “freedom.” Freedom, in my experience, means something quite different to a puppy than it does to us, or even to an older dog.

Your eight- to ten-week-old puppy has just come from living with her mother, who provided her with specific rules, boundaries, and limitations from day one. Your puppy could romp and play and explore, but there were always limits. She could wrestle, bite, and pounce, but there were always limits. If she had a conscientious breeder, she also learned to feel self-assured within the world of human boundaries. To your puppy, that world of very clear structure has come to represent comfort, safety, and security. Structure gave her harmony, serenity, and a growing sense of self-confidence. If freedom equals peace of mind, then, as it turns out, structure actually makes up the foundation of a dog’s freedom.

In contrast to the Grogans’ first day with Marley, consider Chris and Johanna Komives’s first day with Eliza:

When we brought her home, we took her right to the back hall, which we had already set up for her. We had her crate there, her food, and a dog door (but we left it closed until she was crate trained). She stayed in her crate or the backyard for the first week. Then I brought her into the living room on her leash and introduced her to her “place”: a dog bed. She was not allowed to leave her place when she was in the living room. We began teaching her commands right away. She learned sit, stay, down, and go to your place. A week or so later, we showed her the kitchen.

The Komiveses may never write a bestseller about Eliza’s crazy antics, but they still have an intact home and a dog they can confidently take with them anywhere without worrying about destruction or a lawsuit!

Once you cross the threshold of your domain, it’s up to you to supervise and control how your puppy first experiences her new environment. The Komiveses chose a foolproof way of communicating to a puppy the idea that the humans are the ones who control all the space within their walls. To eight- to ten-week-old puppies, the vast-ness of a strange new environment may seem overwhelming and frightening. Having a well-defined space that they know is theirs is actually a comfort to them. If you have followed my instructions so far, you have blocked off a small area—a “safe” area—in which you’ve put your puppy’s crate or bed. Baby gates are great to use as barriers, because the puppy can have you in her scent and sight but still be in a limited area. The Komiveses’ approach involved bringing Eliza through the front door, then walking her immediately to her area.

THE FIRST NIGHT HOME

Bedtime, for your new puppy, will be the moment it really sinks in for her that she will no longer have her mother and siblings around for warmth, company, and comfort. In their natural world, puppies always sleep with their mother and siblings. This transition from her pack to yours is a monumental challenge in the process of becoming your perfect pet. It’s where the rubber meets the road.

For a puppy, the next-best thing to having her original pack around is to sleep near or with another dog. If you already have a dog at home, however, you’ll have had to introduce that dog to the new puppy, and determine whether or not the dog is receptive and nurturing. Warning: A dog that growls, ignores, or acts wary around a puppy will need a lot more introductory work from you before she can be left alone with the puppy. It’s also important that any older dog sleeping with a puppy is compatible in size with that puppy, since a very small puppy can easily be suffocated by a well-meaning but heavy larger dog. If you have any doubts at all about this, check with your breeder or your vet.

Junior slept with Daddy from the first night he came home with me. Daddy and Junior were already used to caring for a variety of dogs in various states of mind and stability, and I trusted them absolutely with the welfare of the new puppies. They became grandfather and big brother respectively to the two-month-old yellow Lab puppy, Blizzard, who slept in his own crate but next to the other dogs’ crates in the garage. And since Mr. President and Angel came home with me around the same time, the two of them automatically accepted each other as “stepbrothers” and have been inseparable ever since, always sharing a crate as if they were actually littermates. Thanks to the dogs of my pack, not one of the puppies in this book has ever had trouble adjusting to his new lifestyle. Most likely, however, you don’t have another balanced dog that is ready and willing to take on the role of “nanny” to your puppy. It is up to you to reduce any trauma the pup might have on her first night away from her birth family.

When it comes time for sleep, set up the puppy’s crate, kennel, or bedding in the area where you want her to stay, making sure to line any hard surfaces with newspaper or a towel. A raised bed in the back and papers on the ground will prevent the puppy from having to sleep in her own excrement, should a nocturnal accident happen. If it does, change all the bedding and completely clean and sanitize the crate the next day, so the puppy never smells her own excrement and becomes accustomed to relieving herself in there. Also outfit the crate or bed with an item with the mother’s and siblings’ scent on it; a good, smelly chew toy like a bully stick; and perhaps even a soft dog toy with a simulated “heartbeat” inside it, which can be quite comforting for a puppy.

For the first few days or weeks, make sure the location of the sleeping place is not so far away from you that your puppy can’t smell or sense your presence—staying in a closed garage all by herself might be fine in two or three months’ time, but on night one, it could cause a panic reaction. If you have created a space for your dog in the laundry room or hallway, you can choose to begin the sleeping arrangement or crate training right then and there, but be prepared for a long, restless night. Most puppies will whine, and some will scream, when separated from their packs. To minimize this reaction, make sure your puppy is as tired as possible before her first bedtime. Once she shows signs of slowing down, let her follow you to where her resting place is going to be. Don’t just pick her up and drop her in the crate or on the bed; let her find it herself. Use scent, nose-eyes-ears, or just your presence to attract her to settle down in that place. Provide an inviting toy or treat. By going there on her own steam—especially if led by a treat—she will associate her new “den” area with pleasant relaxation. Remember, you may have created the most luxurious, inviting paradise in the world for her to sleep in, but if you introduce it in a negative way, your puppy will never want to stay there.

If the area is a crate with a door that closes, make sure the puppy is lying down and relaxed before closing it. This may involve quite a bit of patience at first. Use a sound or your energy to disagree with any whining, then wait quietly by the crate next to the puppy until she has thoroughly calmed down. She may begin to nod off on her own (remember, puppies need a lot of sleep—nearly eighteen hours a day during their peak growth period). Then quietly close the crate door and leave the room.

At a certain point, your puppy may wake up in the night and begin whining. This may sound horrific, but it is perfectly normal. With the exception of getting up to take the dog out to urinate (some dogs, like Angel, will already be conditioned to staying in a crate all night; others, like Eliza, will need to be let out every few hours until housebreaking really kicks in), you should not be rushing in to respond to the puppy’s mournful cries. Never comfort a whining puppy. I know, I know. It sounds heartbreaking. And, yes, your puppy is going through some distress at this moment, but it’s important to let her work through it. The only way possible for her to get past that anxiety permanently is to learn to solve the problem for herself. You must allow her the space and dignity of coming out on the other side of her discomforts, even if it makes you feel bad to listen to her. If you run to soothe her every time she cries, she will learn very quickly (a) that she controls you and can summon you by vocalizing, and (b) that you are agreeing with her whining because you are positively reinforcing it with comfort, attention, or a treat. You may also be setting the stage to create a nervous, fearful, dependent puppy. Ignoring at this early stage is also vital to prevent the issue of separation anxiety. For now, buy some foam earplugs at the drugstore, have a glass of warm milk before bed, do a little meditation, and repeat to yourself, “This, too, shall pass.” Trust me, it will, before you know it!

To minimize this common first-night trauma, I recommend that people set up their puppy’s crate or bed near or in their bedrooms, for the first few nights after arrival. The first night of whining may still keep you awake—and, no, you still can’t respond to it with cooing or comfort—but if the crate is near your bed, you can tap it once and make the sound you want your puppy to associate with a behavior you don’t agree with. This will stop the escalation of the behavior, sometimes long enough for relaxation to set in. If your puppy quiets down for a significant period of time after that, you can reward with praise or even a treat. A bully stick is great for this because it engages the nose and distracts the mind. Only reward a calm state of mind. Then put in your earplugs and ignore.

By the next night, your puppy should have reduced this behavior, or have stopped it entirely. She will begin to find comfort by just being around you or being in the familiar surroundings of her crate. This method also offers the advantage of your puppy’s picking up on your human sleeping patterns and learning to imitate them. If you don’t plan to have your puppy remain in your bedroom indefinitely, three days should be long enough to acclimate her to her new style of living. She may again whine through the night when you move her sleeping place, but if you tire her out and make sure she is relaxed before you put her down for the night, it won’t take long for her to adjust to the new location.

Don’t forget that your own energy and attitude toward your puppy’s sleeping arrangements will have a powerful impact on how she herself views them. If you feel terrible about putting your puppy’s crate in the laundry room and are wracked with guilt that she’ll feel abandoned out there, then your puppy will probably pick up on your negative emotions about the place. Decide on a sleeping arrangement that makes you feel that you are providing the best for your puppy, then make sure she is always tired out, relaxed, and submissive before you say good night. This will be your best guarantee for a lifetime of healthy, happy sleeping habits.

CRATE TRAINING

“Crate training is a must,” says Brooke Walker. “No dog ever leaves my house without learning to love a crate.”

Brooke didn’t always feel this way. Before she became a professional breeder, she had bought into the old-school myth that crate training was cruel, that dogs don’t like small spaces, that they always needed the run of the house or yard. It was breeding and living with generations of content, calm miniature schnauzers that changed her mind, because she saw such an enormous difference in the behavior and general level of happiness between her dogs and dogs whose lives did not have such predictable routine. In fact, crate training your puppy is one of the best things you can do for her as well as for yourself. Done correctly, crate training provides your puppy with a ready-made “den”—a place that she can associate with safety, tranquillity, and quiet. Instead of calming herself in a destructive manner when she is alone or when you need her to be at rest, the puppy will learn how to soothe herself by going into her private den and relaxing there.

Crate training also provides a familiar surrounding for traveling in cars or for spending nights at friends’ homes or pet-friendly motels and hotels. Dogs love adventures, and the easier it is for you to bring your dog wherever you travel, the more stimulating new experiences you will provide for her. Crate training helps maintain a calm-submissive mind and helps prevent all the unwanted behaviors that too much so-called freedom—I call it chaos—can inspire.

“We started crate training the first day,” says Chris Komives, now a confirmed fan. “I bought a crate appropriate for an adult wheaten terrier and made a partition to give her an area appropriate to her size. For the first two weeks she was in either the crate or the backyard. I made sure the crate was associated with calmness and safety. At first she was anxious, and I would wait for her to be calm and then go sit with her. She learned that when she’s calm in her crate, I reappear. Soon she was quiet when left in her crate.”

Teaching your puppy to use a crate requires patience and repetition, but it is not difficult, as the puppy instinctually feels comfortable in a den. If you’ve adopted your puppy from a breeder like Brooke or Diana, you will already be well ahead of the game. Place the crate in the area that you have chosen for your puppy’s resting place. Make sure it is not an isolated area but one in which the puppy can still feel a part of the rest of the pack, even if she’s behind a baby gate in her crate. Diana likes her new owners to set up their crates in a corner of the family room, where the German shepherd puppies can share in family togetherness from a distance, but where they won’t be constantly distracted by too much activity or foot traffic.

Wherever you choose to place the crate (later you can move it from room to room if you like), take Brooke’s advice and use it as the number one destination for rewards or treats. Find a favorite toy or a snack or bully stick—whatever most motivates your puppy—and make the crate the place she is guaranteed to get it.

Begin this crating routine as soon as you bring your puppy home. Let your puppy play—supervised at all times, of course—then when she begins to tire, invite her into the crate and close her in for a half hour. Next time, make it an hour, then an hour and fifteen minutes, and so on. Never close the puppy in if she is excited or anxious, but if she becomes whiny later, ignore her; don’t inadvertently reward the behavior by trying to soothe her with your voice. Give her a firm “Tssst,” or the sound you choose to use as your “I disagree with that behavior” sound, wait until she calms down, then walk away and ignore. Always reward true calm submission in the crate with praise, petting, or treats. Do this at regular intervals throughout the day. Your goal is to build up to several hours of a peaceful, resting puppy. Having your puppy sleep in her crate facilitates this. After she is house-trained, she will be able to stay in her crate overnight for a full seven to nine hours.

CRATE-TRAINING SUCCESS STORY

Angel’s Night Out

My coauthor, Melissa Jo Peltier, can’t have a dog in her life right now, because she and her husband live in New York but travel back and forth to Los Angeles frequently for work. While we were working on this book, I offered her the chance to take Angel overnight to stay with them in their small short-term apartment near Universal Studios. Angel was just four months old and had never been away from his pack overnight before. As part of his learning program, I was curious to see how he would fare.

On a Friday afternoon, we put Angel in a midsize crate and seat-belted it tightly into the passenger seat of Melissa’s small convertible. I showed Melissa how to let Angel go into the crate on his own, following a bully stick with his nose. I also provided him a towel with the scent of “home,” and she put in a couple of her socks as well, so he could get used to her scent (he already knew her as a regular visitor to the pack). “The moment the car pulled out of Cesar’s driveway, Angel looked at me for reassurance, then lay down in his crate and promptly went to sleep,” Melissa reported. “He snoozed all the way—despite the stop-and-go rush-hour traffic and the deafening freeway noise, all the more distracting in a convertible with the top down. He only started to rouse himself after I had already exited the freeway and was about half a block from our destination. I believe he was that sensitive to my energy, even though he’d never been where we were going before.”

Melissa and her husband spent a delightful evening playing with Angel, taking him to an outdoor café (his first!) while they ate dinner, giving him one long and two short walks on Ventura Boulevard and in a nearby park, and making sure he eliminated right on schedule. “He spent the latter half of the evening getting some decadent belly rubs on the couch while we watched a DVD,” Melissa told me. Still, I was a little unsure about how he’d handle his first real sleepaway experience. He was only four months old and had thus far never experienced any traumatic nights, thanks to Brooke’s early crate training and, of course, to the comforting presence of the other dogs in my pack. But he was used to sleeping in the same crate as his adopted brother, Mr. President, every single night. How would he fare, all alone in an alien environment, with two complete strangers?

It turns out that Angel was an Angel, even away from home. Melissa reported:

I took him for one last walk outside so he could relieve himself, and did a very short but fast-paced sprint with him to help tire him out. It had been a big day anyway, so when it came time to go to bed, I placed the crate in a corner of the bedroom where I could watch it, and invited Angel in with his bully stick. He was really ready to crash by that time. The crate obviously represented relaxation to him, and he lay right down and started chewing quietly. When I was sure he was relaxed, I closed the door, and we got ready for bed ourselves. Cesar had told me he was worried that Angel might whine if he woke up during the night, but he uttered not a peep. When I opened my eyes in the morning, he was standing up in his crate trying to make eye contact with me, obviously ready to go out, but not at all anxious about it… just patiently waiting for me to come get him. It was so sweet! He didn’t have a single accident, was enthusiastic during our morning walk, and when it was time to bring him back to Cesar’s, he climbed right back in the crate and let me lift it into the car. Once again, he napped through the whole commute.

Angel’s “night out” illustrates how incredibly beneficial crate training can be for a dog’s well-being, helping him become adaptable to all sorts of new circumstances and opening up the possibilities of a life full of exciting adventures. I was very proud of Angel—and of Melissa, for reinforcing all his good lessons up to that point.

YARD RULES

If you are planning to let your puppy out in your yard, make sure it’s been puppy-proofed, and always begin by supervising. If you are going to use a dog door and make the yard a part of the space in which she’s allowed free rein, make sure—especially if it’s a large yard—that you start her off by containing her in a small part of it. Set up a gate between your yard and side yard, establish a yard pen, or hook up a dog run. The backyard is not supposed to be Chuck E. Cheese, where anything and everything goes. If a puppy has no structure in her backyard wanderings, letting her ramble around your property just because it makes you feel better will actually add stress to her life. She will be like a ship without a rudder, and instead of signifying freedom, the yard will begin to feel like a prison. Never leave your very young pup out in the yard unattended. The outdoor pen and indoor crate or confined, safe area should become the babysitters for your pup.

“There are just so many advantages to confining your young puppy to a side yard, dog run, or penned-off area,” says Diana Foster. “It prevents destructive behavior to the rest of the yard; it reduces territorial aggression; it cuts down on the stress caused by overstimulation, which in turn leads to arousal and barking; it reduces the excitement of jumping on people and annoying visitors; and it keeps your yard cleaner. How can anyone argue with that?”

DRAMA-FREE HOUSEBREAKING

“I think people still have a huge misconception about how to house-train a puppy,” says Dr. Paula Terifaj of Founders Veterinary Clinic in Brea, California. “They still use punishment or yelling. Puppies do not understand you, no matter how much you yell or swat at them. Consistency is the best way to house-break a puppy. Get a potty schedule going and the puppy will eventually get with the program.”

“I don’t understand what the fuss about housebreaking is all about,” Brooke Walker muses. “By the time my puppies are ten weeks old, they are all totally housebroken. My clients call me and say, ‘My dog has never had an accident inside the house.’ I can house-break any dog in three days.”

Like Brooke and Dr. Terifaj, I also have never been able to comprehend all the high drama that people tend to associate with house-breaking a puppy. The truth is, this is a situation in which you have Mother Nature working with you right from the start. When the puppies are first born, they eat and they relieve themselves inside the den, but the mother always cleans them. The mother stimulates their bodily functions, and her environment always remains unsoiled. There is never the scent of urine or feces where the puppies eat, sleep, and live. When they get old enough to follow the mother outside, they imitate her example and quickly learn to relieve themselves in the flora and fauna on the outskirts of their general living area. In this way, all dogs become conditioned never to eliminate in their dens or near the places where they eat and sleep. From two to four months of age, most pups pick up on the concept of housebreaking quite easily, since it is a part of their natural programming.

Of course, this doesn’t always apply to puppies that were raised in puppy mills. Dogs in puppy mills often wallow in their own waste twenty-four hours a day, and even though it is naturally abhorrent to them, it becomes the only thing they know. By the time you bring a puppy mill puppy home, the trauma of its neonatal period may have effectively canceled out many of its natural instincts. This is true of Georgia Peaches, the rescued puppy mill Yorkie in my pack. Her formative months were so miserable, so unnatural, that her common sense in many areas seems to have vanished. I have rehabilitated her to the point where she’s about 80 percent consistent, but she’s the only one in the pack who has regular accidents. The new puppies all got the hang of our bathroom schedule within a week or two of arriving at my house.

Another built-in plus when it comes to housebreaking is your puppy’s digestive tract, which is extremely quick and efficient. You can set your watch to it. Five to thirty minutes after a puppy eats, she’ll want to defecate. From the time you get your puppy until she’s about eight months old, you should be feeding her three times a day. I recommend that you keep to a very consistent feeding schedule and that you take your puppy outside immediately after eating and also right after naps, long confinements or trips, or extended play sessions so that it becomes her pattern.

When bringing your puppy outside after a meal, take her to an outdoor area where there’s dirt, grass, sand, rocks—some sort of natural surface that will stimulate the instinctual side of a puppy’s brain to look for a place to relieve herself. “By the time they leave my house,” Brooke states, “my puppies have learned how to defecate on grass, on dirt, on concrete, on brick, and on stone. That way, they are more adaptable when their owners take them places. Some people make the mistake of only potty-training their pups on one type of surface, so if they find themselves in another situation, the puppies don’t know what to do.”

In the early days of housebreaking, you also want to make sure that the puppy has a place to relieve herself where she feels safe, a place that seems and smells familiar. For a puppy’s digestion to be regular, she should feel totally relaxed when she relieves herself. If a dog is panicked, nervous, unsure, or insecure, she will shut down and not be able to eliminate.

As always, remember that your own energy is a big factor in your housebreaking efforts. If you are feeling nervous or impatient or are trying to rush a puppy to relieve herself, that can also stress her out and stop her down. When new owners call for advice on housebreaking their German shepherd puppies, Diana Foster always asks them to check their own energy and behavior, to make sure they are not the ones putting the drama into the housebreaking experience. “You take him out there. You’re all excited. You’re talking in a high squeaky voice, ‘Go potty for Mommy. Go potty—Mommy loves you!’ The dog is running around, all excited, and looking at the person, wondering, ‘What is she trying to say to me?’ You’re distracting the dog so much, he can’t relax. Then you think he doesn’t have to go because he’s not going, so you bring him in, and then he pees on the carpet. And the drama starts all over again.” If this is your pattern, Diana recommends that you go back inside the house and, if you have a closed yard, leave the dog for fifteen or twenty minutes or wander ten or fifteen feet away, to give him a chance to relax.

While in the early stages of housebreaking, also make sure you’re not just rushing outside, letting your puppy go, then rushing back inside. For most dogs, just spending time outside is a reward in itself. If your dog associates holding in her bodily functions with the reward of a game or a walk outside, it will be more motivation for her to practice that self-control.

And then there’s praise. “Praising your puppy when he does his business is very important,” Brooke Walker says, and I agree. Praise doesn’t have to be a big, loud celebration—it can simply be your quiet approval. Your dog picks up on the positive energy in your pleased and satisfied silence, which can be a much more powerful way of communicating with her than screaming “Good girl!”

Treats can also be a way of rewarding good bathroom behavior, though I recommend that you wean your puppy off them once regular patterns have been established. That’s what I advised Crystal Reel to do when she took Mr. President home with her. “Cesar told me that Mr. President was very food driven so I should use that when reinforcing good housebreaking behavior. So while Mr. President was with me I made sure to have a few of Cesar’s Discipline Organic Dog Treats with Organic Beef on hand at all times. In the beginning, whenever Mr. P. would go poo or pee outside, I would praise him with a treat and my positive vibes. After a while I reduced the treats so he was just feeling my happy energy whenever he went potty outside.”

Crystal shares with us the schedule that worked for her with Mr. President, who never had an accident in her house during the week they were rooming together:

• 7:00 a.m.: Let Mr. President out of his kennel. We immediately went to the front door and outside to his designated pee spot. He would pee and I would then put on his leash and we’d walk to his favorite poo spots. He had three general areas that he liked to go poo in.

• If Mr. President didn’t go at this time, he’d go at 8:15 a.m. and vice versa.

• 8:15 to 8:30 a.m.: After Mr. President’s morning feeding I would take him out to go potty again before we got into the car for the morning commute.

• 9:00 a.m.: I’d take Mr. P. on a short walk before we entered the office. Typically he’d go pee again.

• 11:00 a.m.: Mr. P.’s first potty break of the workday (sometimes he’d go poo at this time; if not now, then at 1p.m.).

• 1:00 p.m.: Mr. P.’s second potty break (also my lunch break, so we’d get out of the office and grab a bite to eat with my coworkers and their office dogs).

• 3:30 to 4:00 p.m.: Mr. P.’s third potty break (generally he’d just want to pee about now).

• 6:00 p.m.-7:00 p.m.: I’d take Mr. P. out for a short walk before we got in the car to go home for the night. He’d generally go pee again.

• 7:30-8:30 p.m.: Mr. P. would go out again after his dinner. This is when we’d take our evening walk.

• 9:30 p.m.: He’s in his kennel for the night.

I was very impressed with Mr. President and Crystal for their consistent work during my absence. Remember, this is a three-and-a-half-month-old puppy that adapted right away to a brand-new situation. By your sharing only calm-assertive energy and a positive outlook, your puppy—like Mr. President—will be able to tune into his natural instincts and learn the lessons of housebreaking smoothly.

Keeping your puppy in the confined space or crate in which she’s assigned to stay during the times when you are unable to supervise her is also a huge boon to pain-free housebreaking. “What I try to get through to people,” says breeder and trainer Diana Foster, “is that it’s all about prevention. If you don’t give ‘em a chance to pee on the carpet, they’ll never even know what peeing on the carpet is. And if you keep that up the first few months, little by little you can start to give them more freedom. When our puppies leave our kennel, none of them ever had an accident in the house. We didn’t do anything to them. We didn’t scold them or correct them. We just never gave them a chance to make a mistake.”

BABY GATES

Angel was only eight weeks old when I adopted him and had only just begun his housebreaking experience when I brought him home from Brooke’s. During the miniature schnauzer’s first days at my home, he was a little more hyper and therefore more difficult to house-break than the laid-back Mr. President. Although he was always responsive and attentive to the behavioral cues I sent him, the new environment and all the new friends to play with were perhaps a little too much stimulation all at once for the little guy. He was especially attracted to Jack, the four-year-old Jack Russell terrier in my pack. Having just left his own extended family of miniature schnauzers at Brooke’s, Angel immediately recognized and was interested in a fellow terrier, but unfortunately, Jack is a bit too hyperactive to be an ideal role model for calm-submissive behavior. All these distractions made the normally medium-level-energy Angel a little more excitable in the early days and therefore a little less consistent with his bodily functions at first, even though he had the other dogs’ bathroom behaviors to emulate.

In addition to feeding and exercising the puppies on a regular schedule, setting up a line of baby gates in the garage pointing a clear path to the backyard was a great help in teaching Angel to go outside to pee and poop. This tool has been invaluable for me in keeping so many dogs in my house, garage, and yard. When using baby gates, it’s important to understand that puppies don’t necessarily see them as boundaries (they can be pushed over, or jumped over) unless you teach them that they are boundaries.

COMMUNICATING LIMITS

With Angel, I set up the gates, then stood on the other side of them and waited for him to try to follow me. I used my body language—stepping forward strongly, putting out my hand, and most important, projecting a blocking energy—to communicate to the puppy that he should not cross the threshold of the gates. When he tried to nudge the gate in order to push it over, I moved toward him even more assertively, establishing an invisible frontier between him and the gates on both sides. With this motion and this energy, I am very clearly communicating to him that he is not allowed to get too close to the gate, even on his side.

I repeated this exercise several times, even though Angel is an amazingly quick study, and I continued to reinforce it again over the next several days. Within three days, Angel totally respected my concept of a borderline that he could not cross. Dogs naturally respect “invisible boundaries”—much more so than man-made ones. They set invisible limitations for one another all the time by using energy and body language. But you must take the time and patience to reinforce the rules until your puppy internalizes them.

 

Cesar using baby gates to set boundaries

ROLE MODELS

One of the best ways to teach a puppy about proper bathroom etiquette is to let an older dog lead by example. When Junior first arrived at our home, he immediately learned the good habits of the smaller dogs living at our home back then—Coco the Chihuahua, Molly the dachshund, Sid the French bulldog, and Minnie the Chihuahua-terrier mix. That’s also how he learned to use wee-wee pads right away—a big help to me for when I wanted to bring my handsome new pit bull on the road with me and the Dog Whisperer crew. When Blizzard came along, Junior was able to impart his good manners to the new little yellow Lab puppy in the family, who in turn was able to influence Angel and Mr. President, both of whom were perfectly housebroken within a couple of weeks. That’s a beautiful thing—generation after generation of dogs, all teaching one another to be balanced.

WEE-WEE PADS

Many puppy owners, particularly puppy owners who live in cities, don’t want to go through the chore of taking a puppy outdoors five or six times a day, so they choose to use wee-wee pads as a shortcut to housebreaking their dog. Though wee-wee pads are a wonderful invention and my dogs use them all the time when we travel, it’s very important that puppies learn to eliminate outdoors as well as behind walls. Your home becomes a big “den” to your dog, and it’s not natural for them to eliminate inside the confines of their own personal nesting space. Conditioning a dog to eliminate only inside the house goes against your puppy’s inborn nature. That’s why puppy mill puppies like Georgia Peaches continue to have accidents throughout their life span. Often when people start by conditioning puppies to depend on wee-wee pads alone, they are shocked when the dog won’t eliminate outdoors. The truth is, you the owner have created the situation by stifling the puppy’s own natural instinct not to eliminate where he lives.

The best way to incorporate wee-wee pads into your housebreaking routine is to set them out only at times when you won’t be able to supervise. Set out four pads at first, in order to zero in on exactly the part of the pad where the puppy will relieve himself. As the puppy begins to use them correctly and to refine and mature his behavior, you can remove the pads until there is only one left, at exactly the spot where he will go every time.

In order to attract the puppy to the pad, find a piece of grass or dirt with the scent of urine or feces from another dog on it and place it on the pad. This may sound distasteful to you, but the presence of another dog’s excrement will stimulate your puppy’s brain to pee right over it. Eventually you won’t need to do this, once the puppy is conditioned to the pads.

In the area of my house or hotel room where I keep the wee-wee pads, I always use an air filter to make sure the scent doesn’t travel, and I make sure to give the dogs a place to sleep that is far away from the pads, since dogs, like humans, like their bedroom and their bathroom to be in distinct locations. As soon as I get up, I roll up the used pads and immediately mop up the floor beneath the pads so there is no more scent. This is a must for using pads, newspapers, or anything you put on the floor for the puppy to relieve himself on: always replace the used pad immediately and clean up the floor underneath, because a dog doesn’t want to pee on a place where he himself has already peed. In addition to helping train your puppy to use that spot again, you will be keeping your own environment clean and sanitary.

DON’T TAKE IT PERSONALLY

Housebreaking is not rocket science, but if an accident does happen, it’s important not to get upset or frustrated. A dog isn’t wetting on the floor to hurt your feelings, to get even with you, or because he’s angry at you, nor is he telling you that all your previous housebreaking efforts are failing and that you have to go all the way back to step one. Early on, accidents are a part of the process, and the only correct response from you is patience. Repeatedly making a big deal out of a housebreaking mishap is one of the worst things you can do, because you will be teaching your puppy that if he pees, he can produce a certain response in you. No matter how young or how old your dog is, he is always reading your emotional state and energy and constantly updating himself about exactly what makes you tick. When your puppy does something that triggers a negative emotion in you, it makes you weak in his eyes, so the puppy learns, “Hey, this is an easy way to control this human!” Later, if the puppy is bored or lonely or has nothing else to do, he can just pee, and you’ll provide him with a little gratuitous entertainment. Just like kids, dogs will sometimes choose negative attention over no attention at all.

And never, ever correct or punish! Don’t buy into the old-school notion that you should push a puppy’s nose into his excrement or hit him if he happens to go in the house. This makes absolutely no sense to him. Instead, remain calm and assertive, and immediately bring the puppy outside to where he is supposed to relieve himself (or to the puppy pad, if that is the only option at the time). If you catch a puppy in the act, use a light touch or a sound simply to distract or snap him out of it, then remove him to his spot outside and wait until he relaxes and finishes his business. You are using the opportunity of your puppy’s making a mistake as a chance to reinforce the behavior that you do want from him. That way you are telling the puppy, “It doesn’t matter what you do. In every situation, I will always have the right answer and I will always share a calm energy.” That kind of neutral but reliable response is the nature of true leadership.

Done correctly, housebreaking should not be a turbulent production but just a matter of putting a little extra work into getting your puppy on a schedule during the first few weeks after he arrives at your home. Don’t let unnecessary stress over this very natural, uncomplicated process taint any of the joy surrounding your new dog’s puppyhood.

DOS AND DON’TS OF HOUSEBREAKING

1. DO bring the puppy outside first thing in the morning, immediately after eating each meal, after he awakens from a nap, and after long play sessions.

2. DO bring the puppy to the same general area outdoors each time.

3. DO supervise your puppy closely! You are investing a lot of time in these first months to establish a lifetime of good behaviors. Keep your puppy with you as much as possible. If you can’t be with him, put him in a safe, enclosed area or in his crate. If you think you might forget about your puppy’s “call of nature,” set a timer to remind yourself.

4. DO remain consistent! Daily consistency is the key to good habits. Feed and walk your puppy at around the same time every day. Remember, dogs don’t understand the concept of weekends or holidays. If you want to sleep late on a Sunday, take your puppy out first, then go back to bed.

5. DON’T punish a puppy for an accident or do anything to create a negative association with his bodily functions! Stay calm and assertive and quietly remove the puppy to the place where you want him to go.

6. DON’T potty-train a puppy on wee-wee pads alone. It’s not natural for a dog to relieve himself inside his “den.” Make sure you alternate between outdoor and indoor bathroom habits.

SETTING RULES, BOUNDARIES, AND LIMITATIONS

Many owners will be all too tempted to shower their puppy or new dog with toys, petting, and nonstop attention; to give her table scraps or treats whenever she begs; and to give her the run of the house right away. To our human minds, this is what we do to show a dog that we “love” her. The problem is, your new puppy is coming directly from her first family—her mother and littermates—where “love” equaled order and organization. If she was also raised by a conscientious breeder, she has probably already begun to learn and internalize her very first set of human regulations. “The dog already knows it needs to live with rules and boundaries, as this is all it has known since birth,” Diana Foster explains. “This dog is very content, secure, and conditioned to living with certain rules and restrictions.”

Now this same dog that equated leadership with her mother’s and breeder’s calm-assertive energy suddenly finds herself surrounded by unstable, excited energy and humans who either don’t set any limits or are mostly inconsistent with the ones they do set. The dog, formerly just one member of a cohesive, well-behaved pack, suddenly sees that all the focus, all the attention, is on her—except when she’s expected to be alone. In the brochure that she gives out when a new owner purchases one of her Thinschmidt German shepherds, Diana Foster describes the likely outcome of this situation:

The dog enters a new home, and this family hugs him, pets him, and talks to him without him having to do anything to earn it. He is given lots of attention, and is barely alone for even a few minutes. … Later it is time for bed and the family finally puts the puppy in his crate for the night. So now he has gone from almost non-stop attention to absolute isolation. This is too much of an extreme for any dog, and causes total stress and anxiety. Now you have a puppy who is barking and whining in his crate. Why? He has already made the association that being in your house means freedom to walk around freely and having people with him. Where are all the people? Where is all the attention? The pup wants more of what he had earlier. You have just set yourself up, and you need to ask if it was worth it?

By introducing your puppy to your home on your terms, by crate-training early, and by restricting her territory to a safe, limited area for her first weeks or months at home, you are creating the rules, boundaries, and limitations that will provide the framework for her secure, happy future.

EXPRESSING DISAGREEMENT

Puppies are hungry for direction and are receptive to any limits you might want to set. But how do you express those limits kindly, fairly, and in a language the puppy will understand? A mother dog does not bribe with treats or petting to get good behavior (although she does sometimes reward submissive behavior after the fact with licking and grooming). She does not whine or cajole with her voice. She corrects the behavior of her offspring using calm-assertive energy: body language, eye contact, and touch. The pups always understand exactly what she wants, and she rarely has to correct the same blunder more than once. On the other hand, most humans correct a puppy using frustrated, anxious, or angry energy; jerky movements (such as pulling a hand or an object away, or moving their bodies away); and loud sounds—“No!” “Stop it!” “Bad dog!” You’ll hear such humans repeating their admonishments over and over and over again; then they throw up their hands in amazement that their puppy doesn’t obey them.

I believe we can help our dogs understand us better by trying to speak with them in their own language. That means I will address an unwanted behavior in a more canine style, using one or a combination of techniques I refer to as “corrections”:

1. By using my energy and intention to communicate that I don’t agree with a behavior, while never taking the dog’s actions personally and always remaining calm and unruffled (what I call calm-assertive energy)

2. By using eye contact to communicate my energy and intention

3. By using my body and body language to own my space and to block an unwanted behavior (for instance, stepping forward purposefully into a puppy’s space to “own” it, or firmly nudging away a puppy that is trying to climb on my leg)

4. By using touch to communicate displeasure or snap a dog out of an escalating behavior:

• “Touch” never, ever means “hit”! Puppies and most dogs are very responsive to touch at the level of the kind of light tap you might use to get a friend’s attention in a darkened movie theater.

• Touch a puppy on the side of its neck or on the side of its hindquarters.

• Use a claw-shaped hand, which mimics a mother’s bite on the side of the neck, on the muscle, not the throat. This hand doesn’t “pinch;” it is firm, but it doesn’t have to use much pressure. The pressure should be proportionate to the level of the behavior (for instance, an adult dog that has escalated into a red zone will need more pressure than a puppy that has just begun chewing a shoe, which will need only a light touch). All dogs recognize this sensation from their early puppyhood and respond in a primal way.

• The timing of a touch correction is crucial; it has to take place at the exact moment of the transgression and end the moment the puppy relaxes and changes her behavior. Waiting until after the behavior is over doesn’t make sense to a dog, because dogs live in the moment. Cause and effect have to match in their minds.

• One firm touch is effective; half a dozen small pushes, pinches, or tweaks can make the situation worse.

A mother dog or other adult dog will also sometimes emit a low growl from time to time, using sound to convey disagreement with a pup’s behavior. All it takes is the hint of a growl from Daddy to send Junior, Blizzard, Angel, and Mr. President into “Daddy-pleasing” mode—he commands that much respect from all his adopted “grandkids.” As an adolescent, Junior has learned to mimic this growl and that’s how he keeps the younger puppies respectful of his role as a “big brother.” Taking a page from this section of the canine dictionary, I advise clients to create a simple sound that their dog will associate with the thought “I don’t agree with that behavior.” Choose another sound that means “Yes,” “Come,” or “I like that behavior.”

• I use the “tssst” sound to represent displeasure.

• I use a “kissing” sound to represent a positive action or a call to follow or pay attention to me.

• The specific sound you choose doesn’t matter at all! (There is no magic to the sound “tssst.”) It’s the calm-assertive energy and the intention behind the sound that carry the communication. Just make sure you use the same, simple sound every time.

Hand correction on Mr. President

• Timing of the sound is essential. It’s best to use it early in the escalation of an unwanted behavior. With a positive sound, don’t repeat the sound unless your dog is already giving you the positive behavior that you desire. This way, the sound reinforces the action.

• Don’t use a dog’s name to correct her. Like the positive sound, use her name only when she is giving you a positive response.

There is one more way dogs correct one another, and that is by ignoring. If an unwanted behavior remains at a fairly low level of escalation—especially if the behavior is designed to gain attention—ignoring can be just as effective as a touch or sound correction. A puppy’s littermate may turn and ignore her if she starts to play too roughly. If the first puppy still wants to play, she’s got to figure out a more appropriate way of getting the other puppy to give her what she wants. In much the same way, blocking and then turning away and ignoring a puppy that jumps up on you when you come through the door can be effective, if the intensity of the jumping isn’t too high yet.

The action you take to correct a behavior should always be proportionate in intensity to the level of the behavior that prompted it. The great thing about puppies is that if you supervise them closely in the beginning, you need never let any unwanted behavior escalate to the point where much correction is needed.

REDIRECTING AND REWARDING

It’s simple enough to block or correct a dog or a puppy when she is making a basic mistake, but that only stops the behavior; it doesn’t change it. In most situations, we also have to offer an alternative behavior. For instance, if a dog is play-biting, a claw hand to the neck can correct the behavior, but a chew toy redirects it. If a dog is trying to jump onto something, we can physically step in between and block the behavior, but if we insist that the dog sit after she has submitted, we have redirected the energy and provided an alternative solution. Once a puppy has agreed to do it our way, then we can reward and reinforce with petting or a treat or a toy, the way a mother dog sometimes rewards with licking and grooming. Reinforcing with something pleasant is a good strategy, but the reward or affection won’t be effective unless it’s offered after the behavior has changed and the dog is in the ideal calm-submissive state of mind. Affection should always come after exercise and discipline. I’ll talk more in Chapter 7 about how to use rewards to communicate with a dog and help condition her behavior.

ENFORCING THE RULES

These are the basic skills everyone in the family needs to master in order to manage a puppy’s behavior:

1. Have a picture in your mind of the behavior you desire.

2. Clearly and consistently communicate that desired behavior. In this communication, energy, intention, and body language are more important (and more easily comprehended by your puppy) than verbal commands.

3. Ignore very mild misbehaviors using the no-touch, no-talk, no-eye-contact rule (they usually correct themselves when they aren’t reinforced).

4. Immediately and consistently give corrections to more obvious misbehaviors.

5. Always apply corrections with calm-assertive energy—never take your puppy’s misbehavior personally!

6. Always give your puppy an alternative acceptable behavior every time you correct an unwanted one.

7. Reward good behaviors—with affection, treats, praise—or simply your silent joy and approval, which your puppy immediately senses and understands.

Whatever rules, boundaries, and limitations you decide on setting for your dog, they have to be enforced from the moment the puppy enters your home for the first time, and they have to be reinforced consistently by all pack leaders in the family. Your dog needs to know where she stands from the very start, how the routine is going to flow, and what is and isn’t acceptable with her new pack. By being clear about those rules from day one, you set her up to succeed as a member of her new pack, which is what you want for her—and what she really wants for herself.

PREVENTING SEPARATION ANXIETY

The skills you’ve mastered in communicating limits to your puppy or new dog will never come in more handy than when you are tackling this very important issue that occurs in every dog’s life—separation anxiety. The leash, the rollover, the sit, getting your slippers—whatever behaviors you wish your dog to learn in the future—are all a piece of cake for her compared to being left on her own. This is a very common problem and is to be expected. Dogs are not programmed to live by themselves. In nature, the constant presence of the pack is what shapes their identities. The only time they have to learn to be alone is when they live among humans. We shouldn’t be surprised that they are distressed by it. But even though we are asking them to do something unnatural, we can’t feel bad about it or stress out about it, because this is the reality of how we live today.

Our modern lives make it next to impossible that our dogs are with us 24/7. But there’s a reason dogs as a species have survived millions of years of evolution in just about every environment imaginable, in every corner of the globe. They are among the most adaptable mammals nature ever created. A dog, and especially a puppy, can adjust to this new style of life with very little difficulty, if we help her to do it in stages, and if we stay calm and unemotional about it. That’s what we want to communicate to her—to relax.

The puppies I raised for this book lived at my house and were with my pack almost constantly. But they will all eventually find loving adoptive families, and at some point in all their lives they may have to spend time alone. Even Junior, who will always be my dog, will travel with me and, like Daddy before him, may end up spending hours alone in a hotel room while I go to a business meeting or a restaurant. I owe it to all these puppies to begin taking certain steps from day one, in order for them to always feel comfortable being alone and behind walls when I am gone.

Of all the puppies in this book, Angel had the hardest time with separation anxiety. I first noticed that if he was outside in the backyard and the rest of the dogs had wandered back into the house without his noticing, he would look into the window, whine, and bark. Sometimes he’d jump up and scratch at the sliding glass door or the screen. When Melissa took Angel for his little adventure away from home, the only time he whined at all was when she took his crate down to her car, right before he was to come home to me. She left him in the apartment with her husband, John, for a few minutes, and right after she left with the crate, he started to cry and run from window to window, trying to find her. John made the typical human mistake—he went to Angel and starting cooing, “It’s okay, it’s okay.” When a human does this, he is essentially saying to the dog, “Your separation anxiety is okay. I agree with how you are reacting.” You are reinforcing the behavior you want to change, and you are not offering leadership, which is the very thing that anxious dog is seeking at that moment.

Angel’s behavior illustrates something important for us to understand about separation anxiety—it’s in a dog’s nature to try to come to get us when we leave. Dogs are programmed to want to be with the pack, to follow the pack, and to try to reunite the pack when separated. If they can’t follow the pack, they’ll try to call them back with their voice. Much of the time, they succeed in bringing people back this way. What’s more, they bring them back upset or feeling sorry for the dog and guilty about leaving. Often the people they bring back also bring them treats. So the message they get is, “They’re not here to stop my anxiety, they’re here to reward my anxiety.” We can’t take our dogs’ separation anxiety personally or feel that we are doing something awful to them, to “make” them feel this way.

If they don’t succeed in bringing us back, it’s a logical next step for them to try to dig themselves out from behind walls if they can’t find us any other way. In Marley and Me, John Grogan wrote that Marley’s separation anxiety and fear during thunderstorms became so extreme that he actually made holes in the drywall, digging until his paws bled, trying to get out and find his pack again. The problem was, the Grogans let Marley’s anxiety escalate to the point of no return. You don’t want to wait until your neighbors are calling the apartment manager or homeowners’ association, saying, “That dog’s got to go.” Instead, prepare your dog for such situations by setting up the separation in stages, so it never turns into full-blown anxiety.

To condition Angel out of his separation anxiety, I would practice putting the other dogs in the garage or in the house, leaving him outside alone. Then I’d hide just out of his sight. It would take him a few minutes, but eventually he would start crying. If I waited too much longer, the crying would become screaming, and I didn’t want it to go that far. Instead, I would come back from my hiding place and immediately address his behavior. I stood as far away from him as possible, since eventually I want to be able to be miles away from him, and had a conversation using my “tssst” sound, my body language, and my energy to communicate to him “I don’t agree with your behavior. I want you to relax.” One finger up means “Sit,” and when Angel complied, I would check his energy. At first, even though he was sitting, I saw that he was still in an alert state, yawning. Many people make the mistake of thinking yawning means a dog is relaxed, but puppies often yawn when they are anxious or frustrated by a situation they can’t figure out. I could tell by Angel’s anxious eye contact and his stiff body that he hadn’t relaxed yet, so I stayed where I was until he went into the relaxed state I was seeking. About thirty seconds later, he moved away. I would then go and hide again.

The second time I left Angel alone, after a minute or two he started pacing. Then he started darting to the side of the house. This is typical—he was trying to find a way out. That’s the part of his survival programming that says, “I need to find a way to be part of my family again.” This is why we have to be very patient, and this is why we have to prepare for separation in stages. In this case, I came back out, addressed Angel again, waited, then hid. Each time, I tried to stand a little farther away when I addressed him. Each time I did the exercise, Angel would stay calm a little longer before he became anxious.

I knew I was making progress with Angel after the third time I corrected him. After waiting several minutes and not hearing any whining, I sneaked back into the room and crept toward the window. There was my little schnauzer, stretched out on the patio, resting in the sun with his eyes closed. This was exactly what I wanted. There was no need to get all excited and no need to reward him, because his behavior—being over his anxiety—was a reward in itself. What I do instead when I see such progress in my dogs is to silently thank God for helping me to teach them that I mean no harm when I leave, that it’s not a bad thing, it’s just how we live. For me, prayer increases my own relaxation, so my energy creates a more relaxing environment for my dogs and for my family.

Cesar Millan