"Come here. Sit. Lie down. Stay." How many of those doggie cues can your dog recognize? Even more important, how many of those actions will your dog perform on command?
Or what about not jumping up on everyone who comes through the front door? It may have been cute when your dog was a little puppy, but now, she's 50 pounds of canine energy that can knock Aunt Margaret clean off her feet. What can you do to stop unwanted behaviors? Is it too late for your dog to learn new tricks?
WebMD asked three expert dog trainers to explain what you should know about training your dog, no matter what stage of life it's at.
How Soon Can You Start Training Your Dog?
"One thing a lot of people don't realize," says Gail Fisher, a former member of the board of directors of the Association of Pet Dog Trainers and author of The Thinking Dog, "is that if a dog is awake, the dog is learning."
Recognized as one of the world's top lecturers on dog behavior and training, Fisher tells WebMD there is no reason not to start training your puppy the day you take it home. "As a breeder," she says, "I was able to start training puppies as young as 4 and a half to 5 weeks old. So, if they can learn that early, you can certainly start training when the puppy is 8, 9, or 11 weeks."
Fisher, who owns All Dogs Gym and Inn in Manchester, N.H., adds that a puppy will actually be learning -- whether you train it or not. "If people give in to a dog that is pestering them, the dog has learned to pester people."
Can a Dog Be Too Old to Be Trained?
"Any dog can be trained if it is sufficiently motivated, and if the trainer has the skills, knowledge, and patience," says Don Hanson, the chair of APDT and former president of the Bangor Humane Society. Hanson is also co-owner of Green Acres Kennel Shop in Bangor, Maine, where he is the director of behavior counseling and training.
Hanson tells WebMD that there is one exception to the idea that any dog can be trained. "I have two 14-year-old dogs," he says. "One of them can be trained to do something if I have a need to train her. The other has what's known as cognitive dysfunction or, less formally, doggie dementia. There's probably not a whole lot I can train her to do at this point."
As long as the dog is physically able to learn, he says, the techniques for training a dog are generally the same for any age dog. "The difference is -- the older a dog gets, the more untraining you may have to do," Hanson explains. Because dogs are always learning, they may pick up undesirable behaviors. To make changes in a dog's behavior, unlearning must be part of the process.
"Unfortunately," he says, "the vast majority of the people we see wait until their dog is 6 months to 2 years old before they start to train it. That makes the job a lot harder, and many people don't have the patience to stay with it." But with patience, he tells WebMD, and consistency, it's not an impossible task.
