How to Give a New Puppy Rules and Boundaries in the Home

In this Omaha puppy training session we worked with Eddie, a five-month-old Havanese who needed help learning rules, boundaries and potty training.

After I arrived I gave Eddie a bully stick and he quickly laid down and started to chew on it. Giving your puppy items that you won’t them to chew on such as bully sticks, marrow bones and Kongs are great ways to prevent them from chewing on your furniture or other objects around the home.

I chatted with the guardians about their main puppy behavior concerns and their primary worry was potty training and helping Eddie learn rules and boundaries. I gave them some great tips on using positive reinforcement to encourage Eddie to potty outside. To help Eddie learn rules and structure I used our Leadership Exercise to train Eddie on how to respect invisible boundaries. To see how I accomplished this watch the video below.

As you can see at first Eddie thought this was a fun game and tried to temp me into a game of chase. But as we practiced he started to get better and better at this exercise. Additional rules that the guardians can add to Eddie’s daily life are: sitting before going outside, sitting before getting attention aka manding, structured eating and no furniture.

By the end of the session Eddie was learning how to listen to his guardians when they communicated with him and was receiving positive reinforcement for going potty outside. I want to encourage the guardians to get a puppy play pen to help restrict Eddie’s freedom while they are in the potty training stage until he gains more self control. We wrapped up this puppy behavior session with Eddie’s Roadmap to Success, which you can watch below.