We talk to a lot of puppy owners and we know that it's pretty common practice
for people to be pretty frustrated and discouraged with their puppies.
First thing in the morning, because they're excited for the day.
They're getting into a lot of mischief and we end up telling our puppies no far
more than we're telling the puppies that they're making a great choice.
So in today's video,
I'm going to share with you five super easy wins that you can have with your
puppy every single morning. I'm Kayl McCann.
This is Black Lab puppy Piper. Welcome back to McCann Dogs.
Now the very first win that you're going to have with your puppy every single
morning is avoiding your puppy having an accident in the house before you have a
chance to get them outside.
And there's a couple of things that you can do to guarantee that this happens
for you, guarantees your win. Number one, before I let my puppy out,
I'm going to make sure that I'm ready to go outside. I have my shoes on.
I'm ready to go. And I have two options to get her from the crate to outside.
And this sometimes is going to depend on the age of your puppy and the size of
your puppy.
So if I have a really brand new puppy that hasn't been home long and they're
small enough, I would encourage when you let them out of their crate,
to actually pick them up and carry them outside because they haven't quite yet
learned to hold their bladder while they're walking and moving.
The more exercise they have, the more it starts to get things moving.
And they're more likely to go to the washroom.
As the weeks go on you're obviously going to be able to transfer it to having
your puppy walk outside. But when you have the leash attached,
I can ensure that as I'm getting my coat and boots or whatever I'm doing,
I'm not distracted.
And my puppy's wandering off somewhere and having an accident.
So you need to make sure that you're ready to be efficient so that you're going
to prevent any problems that happen along the way.
So I'm going to take her outside, not outside now, and let's see what happens.
I'm going to get her leash ready.
Good girl. So good.
Now I don't want to make too big, big of a fuss with her right now,
because if I start making squeaky noises, she might want to go for a pee.
Now she's still pretty small,
so I could pick her up and I could carry her outside and then place her down
when we get outside. And again, if your puppy is too big to hold,
you're going to need to make sure that you have your leash on.
So you can go from point A to point B quickly.
Now we've successfully made it outside without any accidents.
So now we're going to place her down and wait for her to go to the washroom.
Now,
one of the techniques that you're going to think about is when you do come out
to let them outside, keep your puppy on a leash and keep things fairly neutral.
I don't want to come out and start playing with her and start engaging with her
because I don't want her to start thinking that we're going to have a playtime.
I want her to think about going to the bathroom, but by having her on a leash,
I'm also going to prevent her from wandering off and doing her own thing.
Because one of the common mistakes we find happens is when they come outside,
they don't relieve themselves completely.
And then people take their puppies inside.
They figure they've gone to the washroom and then they have an accident.
So I want to stay out here and just sort of keep things neutral.
If she starts to get distracted by leaves or dandy lions,
I'm just going to redirect her on the leash.
And I'm going to just her focus on going to the bathroom.
And having a leash on and there's a little butterfly having a leash on is going
to give you a little bit more control. Um, and then last but not least,
if you do find you come out and your puppy doesn't have to go to the washroom.
She actually wasn't out too far,
too long ago and you take them inside and you figure they haven't relieved
themselves. Completely.
Maybe bring them inside and put them in their crate for a couple of minutes and
then bring them back out to try again.
Your goal is to prevent those accidents from happening so that you can start
teaching your puppy what they should do.
Other one that you want to get every single morning is an opportunity to teach
your puppy some self-control and some manners.
And one of the greatest times of day to practices is in the morning,
when you give your dog , their breakfast.
Now I like to switch between giving their meal,
both in the crate and also just in a calm,
quiet place in the kitchen or in the house where no other animals or human
beings are going to bother the puppy. Now,
one of the reasons why we like to feed them in their crate is a great way to
build value for the crate and teach them that it's a really good thing.
But the other thing that I want her to learn is that she needs to have some
manners around these, around her bowl.
So you notice she just jumped a couple times there and I didn't really,
I just sort of ignored her and now she's offering a sit.
So because I'm getting really nice behavior, I'm going to place the bowl down.
And I want her to wait for me to give her permission.
Now she doesn't know how to do this.
So I'm going to show you the steps that you're going to use to train it.
So I'm going to place the bowl down and if she goes to get up,
I'm just going to lift the bowl up and then I'm going to try it again.
Good. Good girl.
Good. So she's trying.
Yeah.
Girl, she's trying a few different things.
So me putting the bowl all the way down on the floor is actually proving. Yes.
Good girl. To be too challenging.
So I'm just going to go a little increments now.
Yes. Good. I'm going to try a little bit lower. Yes.
Good girl. Good girl.
Yes. Okay. Okay.
Good. Yeah.
Well,
so she was literally the perfect little demo dog there.
She was excited to get her meals. She was jumping a little bit there.
She made lots of mistakes, but because I was able to break it down.
If I practice this, you know, every morning for a couple of days,
this is why our house line's good because I can stop you from eating the bowl,
you little Turkey. But if I'm able to practice this for a couple of mornings,
every single week,
I'm going to find that the routine is going to be that she holds that sit until
she's ready to be released. Now,
this is just a great way to instill some manners and some self control for my
puppy.
It's also a great way for her to realize that I'm the bearer of food that makes
me more important and more exciting in her life.
This is also a really awesome exercise to get your family involved in.
Once your puppy understands how to play this game,
have your kids play this with your puppy.
And it helps elevate everybody in the household as well.
That was a pretty good little win there pup. Now,
once you've fed your puppy breakfast, you're gonna need to take them outside.
And here's where you can get your next win.
Now we love to instill from an early age manners around the door.
The last thing that I want her to learn is to jump up and scratch the door or
worse yet when a door's open to see that and race out and be in an
unsafe situation. So we're going to just take five, little seconds here,
and we're going to train Piper, how to have more manners around the door.
So I have my little bait bags, uh,
attached here so I can have great timing with my rewarding.
I'm just going to get her up into little sit here.
I'm going to reward her first and I'm just going to begin by simply opening the
door.
Yes. Good girl.
Now, if she maintains the sit as I opened the door, yes. Good girl.
I'm going to yes. And reward. Yes. I see a little tail wiggling. Good girl.
Now,
one of the ways that I can sort of instill more manners and leadership is for me
to walk through the door first. So I'm going to walk through the door. Oh.
Such a good girl.
And I need to come back and reward her. That was incredible.
Good girl. Good girl. Good. Whoops.
Now, if she gets up, I'm going to just going to bring her back here.
Sit good girl. I'm not going to reward her quite yet.
I'm going to have her hold position a little longer before she gets a treat.
Yes. There's a little treat.
What I don't want to do is reward her for getting up.
I want to reward her for holding position. Yes. Good girl.
Okay I need to quit while I'm ahead here? Because she's doing it.
So well. Okay. Okay.
Now you're probably pretty amazed at how quickly Piper was able to maintain a
sit as I opened that door,
but I'm going to let you in on a little secret Piper and I have actually already
trained together. And it was about seven days ago.
So I haven't seen her in a whole week.
We actually used her as a demo dog for our last video about manners about coming
in and out of a crate. So I spent about five minutes last week,
teaching her not to barge out of the crate door until she heard the word. Okay.
What I think is so incredibly amazing about these methods of training is it only
took about five minutes of positive reinforcement and letting her know what I
wanted her to do.
And that literally carried over to this exercise a whole week later,
she doesn't belong to me. We borrowed her for somebody to use as a demo dog.
And she was able to put two and two together because she's learning that making
these choices earn good rewards.
So these types of exercises do not require a lot of repetition.
They just need great timing.
They need clear information and a lot of positive reinforcement.
And you're going to find that your puppy is able to catch on just as quickly as
little Piper here. The next win has to do with management.
And this might seem like a bit of a weird one,
but we want you to set up your morning,
having more opportunities to tell your puppy they're right,
rather than they're wrong.
So there's a couple of things that we recommend that you do to help set you up
for success. So say for example, you're in the kitchen in the morning,
you're making your tea, you're making your breakfast, whatever it might be.
Rather than letting your puppy wander off to the rest of the household and get
into mischief.
If there's a couple of things you can do to contain them in the area that you're
in that's going to allow you to supervise them more easily and catch them if
they happen to, you know, steer the wrong direction.
So the first thing I've done here is put a baby gate up so that she can't leave
the kitchen and go into the other room.
I might close the door to the sunroom so that she can't sneak out there.
And then last but not least when she does come out of her crate,
I'm going to attach this little house line.
And this is just something that she can drag around the house so that if she
decides to pick up something she's not supposed to or chew on the cupboard or
whatever it might be. I'm ready to redirect her,
which means I can teach her and show her what she should be doing successfully.
Good girl. Good girl. So when the line goes on,
good girl, where's your little clip here babe. Go girl. When her line goes on,
then I could probably give her a little toy to play with. Here's something fun.
Here we go. Give her something to do.
And then I can go on with whatever I need to do with my morning,
but I can make sure that I'm keeping my eye on her. So she does anything wrong.
I can redirect her. So she's actually sniffing the little carpet there,
and then I might just let her do that.
But if I see that she's starting to chew it,
it's so easy for me to get my line this way pup redirect her.
Good girl and get her doing something that's right. Now,
the next one that we're going to talk about is a word that everybody uses on a
regular basis. Morning, afternoon, evening, all of the time. And, um,
the win that we're talking about is the puppy's ability to respond to their
name. Whenever we call them. Now,
people probably underestimate this one a little bit.
They feel that their puppy knows their name inside out and backwards,
no matter what, but we want to really get you to have a much higher expectation.
When we call our puppy's name, we expect them to learn,
to turn away from whatever they're paying attention to and check in with us.
And when we have a puppy who's very easily distracted that sometimes doesn't
happen and a common thing that people do that kind of wrecked their wind is they
say the puppy's name again. And then again, and maybe a little louder.
And then they add a little snap and point to it.
And the puppy's just doing their own thing.
So to teach our puppies that they need to turn every single time we need to set
them up to be successful.
So I'm actually going to create a distraction with Piper here so that she is not
paying attention. And I want to show you how I get that win,
how I get her to turn on her name every single time.
So we're really in a teaching phase rather than a testing phase.
So I have her bag of breakfast here,
and I'm just going to toss it over on the floor. Let her investigate. Now,
if I was to call her name right now,
there's a likelihood that she wouldn't turn around when I asked her to.
So instead, what I'm going to do is I'm going to take some higher value treats.
I have some chicken wieners and some liver here disgusting,
but delicious for her.
I'm going to call her name and then I'm going to automatically show her how to
turn. Hey Piper what's this? So I'm going to distract her.
Now your puppy might be naturally distracted in the kitchen or do you smell the
goodies? What's this looking at? Stick your head in there. Oh, good. Okay.
So I'm going to the food on her nose.
Piper? Yes. Good girl. So I said her name.
I pulled her attention towards me. Yes. And then I'm going to reward her.
Let's try that again. Good.
Girl. I'm going to just be neutral here.
See if she goes to check out that distraction.
Yeah. You can check it out. What's this Piper?
Yes. Good, good girl. So I'm not giving this puppy.
An opportunity to hear her name and then ignore me. I'm.
Teaching her. Yes. Good girl. That turning and responding.
To me is the best thing that I can do. So again.
I'm telling Piper she's right, rather than calling her.
A million times,
and then getting angry and frustrated with her when she doesn't respond.
Knowing that she's a puppy and she needs hundreds of repititions.
Of learning how to do this before I can really test her.
That was pretty darn great there pup.
Now that you have some great ideas for what you should do with your puppy in the
morning, you're probably wondering what you should do for the rest of the day.
We have a great video that gives you an example of a 24 hour schedule.
And to check that video out, check that card right here. Now,
if you'd like our professional trainers,
to answer your questions and give you daily feedback on your puppy,
make sure you check out our online course called Puppy Essentials.
The link for that is in the description below on that note. I'm Kayl.
This is little Piper, Happy Training.