Training a New Puppy

By Kayla Riggs, June 26th, 2014

If you have ever owned a puppy you know that training can be quite difficult. With Tucker being half golden retriever and half poodle this makes him one of the smartest breeds and so far it hasn’t been to difficult.

To find out from another dog owners point of view, I asked Kevin Riggs a few questions about his experience trying to train his puppy. He owns a mix breed between a Shih Tzu and a Maltese. His dogs name is Macy and is 9 years old.

I first asked him how he got his puppy potty trained.

He said, "Took her outside on a routine basis and repeated ‘go potty’ until she did. Rewarded her when she went outside and told her ‘no’ and disciplined her when she went inside. When she has accidents I would say  ‘bad dog’ and show her what she did and then take her outside right away.”

I then asked him what the easiest thing to teach his dog was and he simply said “how to sit.” This was interesting because I found that that was the easiest thing to teach Tucker as well.

With this being my first time owning a puppy I thought the training would go on for about a year, but after asking Kevin how long it took him to train his puppy it gave me hope that it wouldn’t take that long.

He said, “It took me about a month to get her potty trained and a couple moths longer to teach her tricks.”

The last thing I asked Kevin was what is the best piece of advice you could give to a new puppy owner?

His exact words were, “make sure you don’t leave them alone till they are out of the chewing phase, or make sure they are kenneled and use Bitter Apple spray on woodwork to keep him from chewing. This will save you a lot of money.”

Kevin's wasn't happy about the woodwork getting distroyed but his wife, Missy Riggs says,"Puppies are a lot of responsibility and you have to understand that they will do some damage and they will get into things they aren't suppose to. That's what puppies do!"

Kevin and Missy plan on looking into adopting another puppy soon because they know Macy, their current puppy, is getting old and they feel as though they need something to keep them busy since both their kids are grown and out of the house.

Feel free to see the CONTACT US page with my email link on it to send us some questions. I’d be glad to help!