Welcome to Day Four!

At the risk of being a nag, how's your puppy doing making eye contact when you say her name? If you ask your puppy to do something when she isn't looking at you, and she doesn't turn around to make eye contact, there is a high probability that your puppy hasn't acknowledged or heard what you want. Eye contact may take only days to teach, but reliable eye contact takes lots of practice in many different environments before you will have consistent success with other behaviors, like "come" so keep practicing!

It's day four, and we're going to continue to build your preparatory knowledge on why your puppy thinks and behaves as she does. We want to be confident that you have a strong foundational base of your puppy's psychological behaviors before we start training the good manners, and we're only days away from those exercises! So let's get started on Day Four!

In today's Understanding Your Puppy we talk about, "Handling Exercises." Be sure to read this article and to get started today, today, today with these exercises! Your puppy needs to get used to being handled on every part of her body, like ears, nails, toes, tail, belly, muzzle, and teeth to prepare her for being touched, petted, rubbed, examined, and restrained for the rest of her life! The more you and your family handle her now, the less reactive she will be as she matures and the safer you will keep her from biting someone.

We talked in Day 3 about dominance, alpha dogs and alpha rolls. Now that you know these concepts are outdated, we'll teach you on, "How to be Your Puppy's Leader" in the Training For Success column.

Every puppy owner has lost at least one pair of shoes to chewing. Today's Perfect Puppy column, "Redirect & Replace" talks about redirecting and replacing that shoe with a toy that is more appropriate and safe for your puppy. And, of course, we also add a couple more ideas to the Socialization For Today list on "Birds/Downtown Area!"

We hope you are learning new and better ideas to teach and communicate with your puppy. Please enjoy your Day Four newsletter!

Together in success,
The staff of MyPetTrainer.com