Force Free Kennel Training Tips to Help with Puppy Training

For this Omaha puppy training session we worked with Blue, a 7 month-old Pomeranian who likes to steal things for attention and could benefit from some positive kennel training exercises.

Puppy Training Tips

Blue was enrolled in our puppy classes last month and that is where I first met him. He is a very determined puppy. He often barks loudly to get his guardian’s attention during the class lectures.

Blue used a similar strategy when I began this in-home session. He took things he shouldn’t have to get his guardian’s attention. In the free positive dog training video below you can see how I responded when he stole a plastic bag from the cupboard.

Many people are unaware that for dogs and puppies, any attention is validating and rewarding. So chasing your dog around when it steals things serves to only cause the dog to repeat that behavior because it works. Redirecting and keeping tempting things out of reach is a much better strategy.

Force Free Kennel Training

The guardians were using the kennel to keep him from getting into things when they were gone. But because Blue was in there more than he liked, the pup had started refusing to go into the kennel.

This often happens when people only put their puppy in the kennel when they leave. The kennel then starts to mean that the humans are leaving. This association causes many dogs and puppies to refuse to go to their kennel.

I asked the guardians to bring the kennel to the living room. I wanted to show them a force-free training exercise for puppies. You can learn how to train a puppy to go into their kennel by watching the free positive kennel training video below.

This is the same positive crate training exercise we teach in our puppy kindergarten class. But since Blue skipped puppy kindergarten, he missed that lesson. While it would have been better to do the crate training when Blue was younger, he did great with this crate game at home.

If you have a pup who doesn’t like going to the crate, you can use this same lesson. You don’t have to be a professional Pomeranian puppy trainer to teach a puppy to like going to their crate.

We shared a number of other positive puppy behavior tips in this in home Omaha puppy training session. To help the guardians remember everything, we made a roadmap to success video. You can watch it below.