Bringing home a puppy is exciting, exhausting and hilarious. It can also leave you wondering how something weighing 6kg has somehow managed to completely take over your life!
And with so much conflicting puppy advice online, it’s incredibly easy to feel like you’re already getting it wrong.
The good news? Your puppy doesn’t need you to be perfect.
Good puppy training isn’t about teaching twenty tricks by twelve weeks old. It’s about helping your puppy develop the skills they’ll need to cope with real life – and helping you build a relationship that will last a lifetime.
So, here are ten common puppy training mistakes – and, more importantly, what you can do instead.
Sit. Down. Stay. Leave it. Paw. Bed. Recall. Loose lead walking.
STOP!
Your puppy has only just arrived on “Planet Human”. Before worrying about how many commands they know, focus on building communication, confidence and connection.
Some of the most valuable early lessons don’t look much like traditional dog training at all.
Learning that checking in with you is worthwhile, being handled is safe, settling is rewarding and new experiences don’t need to be scary will serve your puppy far longer than a long list of tricks.
Instead: Keep training short, simple and fun. Prioritise quality over quantity and concentrate on the skills that will actually matter in everyday life.
Training doesn’t begin at your first puppy class – it starts the moment your puppy comes home.
In fact, whether you realise it or not, your puppy is learning all the time.
They’re learning what gets your attention, what happens when the lead appears, whether jumping gets a reaction, what happens when the door opens and whether choosing to come towards you results in something brilliant.
That doesn’t mean you need to schedule formal training sessions all day. Far from it.
Some of the best puppy training happens while you’re simply getting on with everyday life.
Instead: Use everyday life as your training ground. Notice and reward the small, positive choices you’d love your adult dog to repeat.
This is a BIG one.
Socialisation doesn’t mean your puppy needs to greet every dog, person and child they see.
Constantly encouraging interactions can accidentally teach your puppy that every dog and every person is something they should rush over to – and that everything in the environment is far more exciting than you are.
Good socialisation is about helping your puppy learn to feel safe and comfortable in the world around them.
Sometimes that means interacting.
Sometimes it means watching.
Sometimes it means walking past.
And sometimes it means creating a little more distance because your puppy isn’t quite ready yet.
Instead: Give your puppy lots of positive experiences without feeling they have to participate in everything. Learning to calmly watch the world go by is a hugely valuable life skill.
We all want that amazing recall, so naturally we want to practise it.
But repeatedly calling your puppy while they’re completely engrossed in something fascinating can teach them something we definitely didn’t intend:
Your recall cue is optional.
If you find yourself saying:
“Fido!”
“Fido!”
“FIDO!”
…while Fido continues investigating a particularly fascinating blade of grass, you’re probably not actually practising recall anymore. You’re practising ignoring the recall cue!
Instead: Look for Recall Windows – those little moments when your puppy is already likely to succeed. Perhaps they’ve finished sniffing, looked towards you or started moving in your direction. Build lots of successful recalls before expecting them when life gets really exciting.
One of the easiest ways to improve your puppy’s behaviour is simply to get better at noticing when they’re already doing something you like.
Lying quietly while you make a cup of tea? Lovely.
Choosing their toy instead of chewing your shoe? Excellent.
Seeing another dog and then checking back in with you? Perfect!
These little moments might not feel like “training”, but they absolutely are.
And the behaviours that get rewarded are much more likely to happen again.
Instead: Catch your puppy making good choices throughout everyday life and reward them. Training doesn’t only happen when you’re wearing a treat pouch.
Your puppy has suddenly transformed into a bitey, zooming lunatic who is ricocheting around the house and apparently incapable of making a sensible decision.
Clearly they need more exercise… right?
Quite possibly the exact opposite.
Puppies need a huge amount of sleep, and an overtired puppy can look remarkably like a puppy with far too much energy.
Adding another walk, more play or even more stimulation can simply create an even more exhausted puppy who has completely forgotten how to switch off.
Instead: Balance activity with proper downtime. Sniffing, chewing, licking and, most importantly, sleeping are valuable parts of your puppy’s day too. Rest isn’t wasted time.
Ah, puppy teeth.
Those adorable little needles attached to the cute fluffy thing you willingly invited into your home.
Puppies explore with their mouths. They also mouth and bite when they’re playing, excited, frustrated, teething or absolutely shattered.
That doesn’t mean we simply allow them to sink their teeth into our ankles indefinitely!
But simply punishing the biting doesn’t teach your puppy what they should do instead – and it doesn’t address why the biting is happening in the first place.
Instead: Ask yourself: What does my puppy need right now? Sleep? Something appropriate to chew? A toilet break? A calmer activity? Try to meet the need and redirect your puppy before the biting escalates.
That little question – “What does my puppy need right now?” – will take you a surprisingly long way in dog training.
Your puppy can sit beautifully in your kitchen.
Brilliant!
So surely they can do exactly the same thing outside the school gates while children run past, another dog appears, a delivery van reverses and somebody drops half a sausage roll nearby?
Apparently not.
Your perfectly trained puppy suddenly seems to have forgotten everything they’ve ever learned.
They haven’t.
You’ve just cranked up the difficulty.
Dogs don’t automatically understand that something they’ve learned in one situation applies everywhere else too.
Instead: Build difficulty gradually and think about the 3Ds: Distance, Duration and Distraction. Rather than increasing everything at once, make small changes and give your puppy plenty of opportunities to succeed.
“Don’t jump!”
“Don’t bite!”
“Don’t pull!”
“Don’t bark!”
We spend an enormous amount of time thinking about what we want our puppies to stop doing.
But there’s a much more useful question:
What would I like my puppy to do instead?
Don’t want jumping? Reward four paws on the floor.
Don’t want pulling? Reward walking with a loose lead.
Don’t want them charging towards another dog? Teach them that checking in with you is worthwhile.
It’s much easier to teach a puppy something to do than to give them a giant list of things they shouldn’t.
Instead: Focus your training on the behaviour you do want. It gives both you and your puppy a much clearer goal.
Learning isn’t a straight line.
Your puppy will have brilliant days when you feel like an absolute dog-training genius.
They’ll also have days when you’re reasonably convinced somebody replaced your puppy overnight with a small furry lunatic.
That’s normal.
Puppies grow, develop, become more confident, discover new distractions and eventually wander into adolescence – when life can become VERY interesting indeed.
One difficult walk doesn’t mean your training has failed.
One barking episode doesn’t mean you’ve created a reactive dog.
And one puppy-class session where your puppy apparently forgets their own name doesn’t mean everybody else’s puppy is better trained than yours.
Instead: Look at progress over weeks and months rather than judging yourself – or your puppy – on individual moments.
If there’s one thing I’d love every new puppy owner to understand, it’s this:
You aren’t just training the puppy in front of you today – you’re raising the adult dog they will become.
That means the apparently tiny things matter.
Choosing you.
Checking in.
Learning to settle.
Feeling safe in different environments.
Being able to watch exciting things without needing to interact with them.
Coming back because returning to you has always been worthwhile.
Being comfortable doing absolutely nothing.
Those foundations might not look as impressive on social media as a twelve-week-old puppy performing fifteen tricks, but they’re the skills that make everyday life together easier and more enjoyable.
So slow down.
Enjoy your puppy.
Celebrate the little wins.
And remember:
Train for real life before real life happens.
At Mojo Dogs, puppy training isn’t about creating little obedience robots.
It’s about helping you understand the puppy in front of you and building the skills you’ll actually need for everyday life together.
From recall and confidence to calmness, focus and loose lead walking, we can help you build strong foundations from the very beginning.
Train with heart. Train with joy.
