Training Your German Shepherd Puppy
During the first eight weeks of life your little German Shepherd is very impressionable. This is the time when your dog’s natural personality is affected most by its surroundings. If the dog is abused it will grow up with fear and psychological damage. If not exposed to many people the puppy might grow up afraid to be around strangers. Knowing how to train your German Shepherd Puppy properly can make all of the difference in the world.
Like anything done well you have to have a plan. If you are going to have a litter of puppies then their first 8 or 9 weeks must be purposeful and beneficial. The breeders who take this approach, and put this extra effort into the German Shepherds that they raise soon get such a reputation for raising the best most well rounded and best behaved dogs, they have waiting lists for the puppies when they are old enough to sell. Some of the best breeders I have known have their German Shepherd puppies sold several litters in advance.
For additional resources to learn dog training try these links:
- Training German Shepherds
- How To Train A German Shepherd To Roll Over
- Methods Of German Shepherd Training
Stimuli Puppy Training Experiment
German Shepherds are a very intelligent animal. They are great companions as well. The better start we give them in the formative weeks the better companions they will be. I once trained a litter of German Shepherd puppies from the 4th to 9th weeks of their life. We started out just playing with them while exposing them to a lot of different children and adults. And while this fun was going on clanging noises would happen and sometimes bright lights. We had prepared the human visitors as to what we were doing so that they would not react when these things happened. We even occasionally had loud thunder or gun like noises happen on a random basis. These things did not happen all the time either. We made them happen for a couple of hours every day during different times of the day.
Exposing your puppy to lots loud noises, bright lights and other things that often scare dogs is important in these early weeks as long as this can be kept fun and positive. This is how you develop a dog that just doesn’t get bothered by much, except what it is trained to be concerned with. This is also a good time to expose it to strange dogs or cats if you want your dog to get along well with other house animals. But again the most important thing is to keep these experiences positive and fun for your German Shepherd. That is how we handled things with this litter as well.
As the puppies got a bit older we began ever so gradually teaching them simple behaviors. It started out with coaxing them to us with bits of treats as we called them. As their attention span and comprehension improved we worked on things like sitting and staying. These were all fun and gentle playful training times doing our best to make them looked forward to by the dogs. The only punishment was ignoring the dog and withholding the treat until it performed the requested behavior. How to train your German Shepherd puppy is a knowledge worth possessing.
German Shepherd Training Experiment Concludes
By the time this litter of puppies reached 9 weeks old and we started preparing to find them homes they could sit, stay, heal, lay down and come when called. They were comfortable in just about every situation and as people came into look at them they were greeted with the most friendly and well behaved puppies they had ever seen. We received so may compliments on the dogs and it was very gratifying to see the final results. We also had several request from customers wanting to enroll in classes with us so we could teach them how to train their German Shepherds.
The moral of the story is;
- Know what you are doing.
- Start with and follow a plan.
- Be consistent.
- Make it fun.
If you do that you will have a much better chance for success. I hope that this article has been beneficial. I love German Shepherds especially, but all animals. They are worth taking time to train properly. Not only will you enjoy them better, they will be much more content and happy as well.