Speaking at the British Small Animals Veterinary Association’s congress, and reported in this week’s Veterinary Record, Ms Zulch said it also had to be accepted that every puppy is an individual with its own strengths and or weeknesses

Owners should view the practice of raising puppies as educating them, rather than training them.

Puppies spend less than one per cent of their life for six weeks of their life at ‘puppy school’, and there is a risk that owners consider this is enough, said Helen Zulch, a lecturer at the University of Lincoln and consultant at the university’s veterinary behaviour clinic.

Too  much emphasis is placed on teaching puppies ‘obedience’ rather than praising good behaviour, a veterinary congress has heard.

Life Skills

No matter how popular puppy education has become, she believed it had two drawbacks: not all puppies were given the opportunity to attend training classes and it did not prevent all problems.

She felt that a different approach should be taken – using the concept of ‘life skills’ puppies needed in society. She outlined ten key skills which she felt a puppy needed to learn – confidence, self-control, tolerance of frustration, calmness, ability to listen and respond correctly, manners, tolerance of touch, understanding of rules, ability to make correct choices, and polite expression of opinion.

Loose lead walking was the key to teaching self-control, she said. Most owners use the lead as a control mechanism but ‘that is not how a lead should be used’, Miss Zulch said, but control was not the same as self-control. The lead was there to prevent the dog from getting into trouble, but the dog should be able to control its own action on the lead. “Dogs need boundaries and they need consistency in those,” she said.

Owners should concentrate on the behaviours they want rather than those they do not, she continued; a balance was needed between reinforcing what was wanted in a consistent manner and making sure that unwanted behaviours were not reinforced. They should be encouraged not to nag their puppy, as these commands might then be filtered out, but to ask it to do something only when it was important.

“A lot of the (behavioural) problems we see in dogs in practice can be related back to a lack of self-control or no tolerance of frustration,” she said. It is also crucial to remind owners that the first experience the puppy has of anything is the most important, Ms Zulch said. Owners should introduce their puppy in a positive and non-threatening way to all the situations it could possibly meet in its life, including its first experience of a veterinary surgery. The puppy should not be exposed to anything that it did not first have the skills to cope with. If a puppy wants to avoid a situation it should be respected and given the option to do so. Avoidance behaviour should never be punished; for some puppies just a ‘no’ and a tug on the lead would be enough for it to suppress a low-level behaviour.

“There is nothing that can guarantee a perfectly behaved dog,” Ms Zulch concluded. However, she hoped that if people began to see raising puppies as educating rather than training them, the focus would be on providing the puppy with appropriate skills to use throughout its life.