New Puppy Help

[Sam Puppy]

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My partner and I bought home a cocker spaniel puppy last week and she is adorable. I was always the one who stressed how important training was for puppy and that we had to start immediately, but my partner has had dogs before so thinks I should not worry so much about it.

Toilet training is becoming a real issue, thought I had it cracked yesterday after spending day with puppy on my own but feels back to square one today as partner is just not keeping up the training, not taking out the really high value treats (cheese) when going into garden for potty, thinking the kibble will do; not putting puppy outside immediately if she has an accident etc. I feel like giving up, can someone give me some ideas on what to do, or to reassure me it is not going to make that much difference?

Puppy has also learnt sit and come with me but partner also doesn't want to use same commands, choosing a number of different commands depending what takes the fancy at the time

 

[Mad Murphy]

Return your partner to his/her breeder for extra training...

You need to sit down and talk about the rules and training regime with your partner only when you both agree what to do will this work.

 

[JoanneF]

Toilet training is going to take longer than a week and there will of course be setbacks.

Toilet training happens when two things come together - the ABILITY to hold the toilet, along with the DESIRE to hold it in order to earn the reward for doing so. Thats why high value treats are good - maybe something she only gets for outside toilets. If you can explain to your partner that the more she wants to earn the reward, the faster she will learn to hold, and the fewer the indoor accidents. Everybody wins.

I also had trouble training my partner to use certain words as commands. So I found it easier just to use what he wanted - “wait“ instead of “stay“ for example. To a dog it's just a noise until they make the association so you could say banana if you wanted. Sometimes the line of least resistance is easiest. But whatever words you use, do try to be consistent.

 

[JudyN]

Don't lose heart. Toilet training might be a work in progress for some time (even with consistent training). But even the most poorly trained dogs usually get there in the end.

Stick either with the commands you want to use or those your partner seems to prefer. You could also use visual commands (see e.g. here: Hand Signals to Teach Your Dog) - dogs can pick them up very easily. Dogs can be 'bilingual', e.g. respond to 'come' or 'here', though of course they will respond to the one that has been trained best.

Confusion can come if one person uses 'sit' and 'down' for separate behaviours, and the other one says 'sit down' for sit, and also uses 'down' when the dog jumps up on someone....

 

[Sam Puppy]

Thanks everyone, I have spoken to partner about being consistent but he doesn't really see the need for it. I know I need to be persistent and perhaps just me being consistent will help, I just want to do the best for puppy and ensure that she grows up to be a well mannered and happy dog.
Any further advice on how to manage two different training methods would be much appreciated

 

[JudyN]

Could you persuade him to go to dog training classes with you?

Remember that years ago, most dogs had minimal and inconsistent training - the two we had when I was a child just sort of fitted in with the family and mostly it worked (like raising children really!) - and they mostly turned out happy and relatively well mannered. Focus on the really important things, like recall, not being a pest to other people & dogs, and not whining all the way through mealtimes because she gets the occasional treat from the table. If she ends up recalling much better to you than to your partner, and she pesters him for a bit of his meal but never you, maybe he will realise that your training has value after all.

 

[Biker John]

As an aside, I remember when my parents used to visit us, at meal times their dogs sat near my wife and I looking hopeful at us while our dogs did the same to them. The dogs obviously knew they stood no chance with their own but just possibly could with the other set.