Guides
Dog training
Dogs are pack animals with a well-defined social order, and they will look to you for guidance until someone provides it.
Plate 30 · ClassAn obedience class at the JKC grounds — a line of handlers and dogs working, late afternoon light.
Most of what people call behaviour problems are a dog doing something perfectly sensible in a situation nobody taught it to handle.
The first six months
Socialisation matters more than obedience at this stage, and the window is genuinely narrow. A puppy should meet as many people, surfaces, noises, vehicles and well-behaved adult dogs as you can safely arrange before about sixteen weeks. A dog that missed this can be helped later, but it is remedial work rather than building.
What to teach first
- Name response — the foundation of everything else
- Recall — taught on a long line, rewarded every single time, never used to end fun
- Loose-lead walking — the skill that decides whether the dog gets walked at all
- Settle — lying quietly on a mat while life happens, which is most of what you actually need
- Handling — tolerating ears, feet, mouth and grooming, so vet visits are not a fight
Training in this climate
Work early morning or after five. Midday heat makes a dog slow, distractible and eventually unwell, and a session that ends badly because the dog was overheating teaches the wrong lesson. Keep sessions to ten or fifteen minutes and finish while the dog is still keen.
Classes at the club
The JKC runs a twelve-week obedience course at J$5,000, open to any dog whether registered or not. Group classes do something a book cannot: they teach your dog to listen to you while other dogs are nearby, which is the whole difficulty.