When you teach your pup his name, thoroughly and properly, from day one, you will enjoy his immediate attention, on command, right through your dog obedience training experience.
Through your dog's life, there are going to be many times when you need to call your dog and get his immediate attention.
If you fail in this basic area of training you could very well experience some problems in your dog's later training program.
I am a strong believer in this exercises ability to be a major help in sorting out some bad behaviour issues such as aggression and shadow chasing amongst many similar issues.
This training system can be started from the day you bring your pup home.
You do not need to use a clicker but I recommend you do.
So you need a clicker and a bowl of very tiny tasty treats such as chicken chunkers, cooked chicken or sausage, broken into tiny pieces.
You need to take the pup to a quite room in the house.
The bathroom is a good place.
Close the door and let the pup sniff around.
You should be sitting down - on the floor if necessary.
Call the pup's name.
If he so much as turns an eye towards you, you click and treat this.
Keep repeating this in short 5 minute sessions.
Let him out of the room after each session.
Keep repeating these short sessions until, when you call his name, the pup actually runs to you.
You can distract the pup by throwing a toy away from you and then calling him.
When you call him you get the pup coming to you, take the pup out of the room into the house and call his name.
Once again, you reward the dog for looking at you and keep repeating the exercise until the pup is running to you when you call him.
Please note, this is not a recall exercise.
The recall is taught separately and includes other elements that you will learn when you get to teaching the recall.
We are only teaching your puppy his name and that this means I want you to immediately focus on me when he hears his name.
You could be watching TV or he might be eating his super.
Call his name and if he looks at you toss him a tasty treat.
As soon as you are confident your dog will look at you and come to you when you call his name, take the exercise into the yard and you start at the beginning again and progress until he runs to you when he hears you call him.
You can take the exercise to the park, the club grounds or the beach when you have confidence in the strength of your progress.
Keep him on lead for now, but call his name and click and treat for him looking at you.
Allow him to be distracted by other dogs, squirrels, people or whatever and call his name.
As always, when he looks at you, click and treat.
You have progressed too quickly and need to go back a couple of steps, if at any stage the dog fails to look at you immediately.
Maintaining his understanding that calling his name means I want you to immediately focus on me is incredibly important.
At every opportunity, you need to call, click and treat.
If you are in the middle of a training set when his excitement level is high, call his name.
When he is around other excited dogs, call his name.
Whilst waiting for your turn to do an exercise, call his name.
Don't forget to reward him every time he responds to his name.
Working hard on this you will ensure that if your dog looks like he wants to attack another dog, chase a cat, or bark at the postman, you can have instant focus back on you, allowing you to cool the situation down.
Teaching your pup his name with this system, and when you do get to working through dog obedience training exercises such as the recall, you will have a powerful tool that will help you master training quickly and easily.