The first 18 months are the most critical for your puppy. The lessons learned during this year and a half will help set the temperament, disposition and behavior of your puppy for years to come. Here is the fourth age-level period and some helpful tips regarding development.
8 to 12 Weeks
Basic Needs: Removed from littermates and mother influence. Needs supervised human socialization, love, and security.
Mental Capacity: Brainwaves can be recorded. Ability to establish permanent bond in human-dog relationship.
Trainability: Capable of handling simple behavioral responses - come, stay, sit, no.
Special Notes: Minimize loud noises and scary interactions.
Going home
This is of course the time puppies go to their forever homes. Like Christmas morning or a milestone birthday, it can be one of the best days ever!! It is also the most important time as families help their new puppy adjust to it's new home and family. Be sure to check out our other blog post on Picking up your puppy and first steps in a new home.
The Fear Period
Many call this stage (8-10 weeks, especially) the "Fear Period." The puppy is highly impressionable, and interactions, whether positive or negative, will last a life-time. Fostering as many positive interactions as possible should be the goal during this stage. Positive discipline (affirmation, reward) goes a long way to establish healthy dog-human relationships. Many varied experiences with life activities and other (carefully supervised) human interactions will benefit the puppy in the long term. Take your puppy to work, on an errand to the store, to a kid's sports activity. Allow them to meet other humans in a positive environment. The more the better. (Parvo alert... Do not allow your puppy near dog parks and other unknowns dogs until your Vet says it's ok.)
It's also important to minimize adverse conditioning... negative, scary, or painful experiences. Loud, jarring noises (e.g. vacuums, loud autos) as well as harsh discipline should be avoided. And the semi-negative experiences that are necessary, like shots at the vet, can be turned into opportunities for positive interactions (lots of praise for good behavior, etc.).
If you are training your dog to be around loud noises (such as hunting where shotguns are being discharged), between 10 and 12 weeks is the best time to start exposing your puppy to these noises. For instance, for hunting, take the puppy to a shooting range and stay at a distance from the discharging guns. On subsequent visits bring the puppy closer. He/she will gradually get used to it. We did this with our puppies (our sons did competitive shotgun shooting), and it paid off in other ways... none of our dogs are afraid of thunder, fireworks, etc.
Play is the best!
Your puppy at this age will learn most of his life lessons through play. They want to chew on things, jump on people, run around and have fun. It is helpful to start working on the following behaviors to help minimize frustrations for both humans and puppy. There are a ton of resources online for positive training tips and guidance. Avoid the negative punitive training techniques as these will breakdown the trust needed for more fruitful relationship with your puppy.
Potty training. Be consistent and patient. Take the puppy out often to use the restroom. A rule of thumb is... the pup can hold it as long as its age. So, at 3 months, they can hold it for 3 hours. 4 months, 4 hours. And so on.
Biting. Having a quick-immediate response to 'bad' biting (humans, furniture, etc) needs to include diversions with permissible biting (chew toys, bones, etc). Be prepared... Goldens are retrievers by nature, so they will likely find and bring you all kinds of things - shoes, sticks, socks - all with the intention to show you how wonderful they are. Lol. Having a diversion toy will help keep it positive while training them what's best to chew on.
Name recognition. Work with treats to get your puppy to look at you when you call her/his name.
Basic commands. Sit, Stay, Come, No are the foundational commands for dog behavior. Goldens are exceptional at learning, so there may not be much effort needed, but keep working on it, so later you can build on it.
Train while playing. Make training a fun time for your puppy, but also randomly incorporate your training into your play.
Training - Start Now!
Training will be an ongoing component in your new life with the puppy. We highly recommend beginning some teaching/training as soon as you get home with your new puppy while continuing with formal training as appropriate.
An excellent resource on how dogs learn with training tips is on the Golden Retriever Club of America (GRCA) website. Click HERE to visit. Or you can read these specific articles...
In addition, Zak George's Dog Training Revolution YouTube channel provides helpful videos for specific behaviors.
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