Starting when it is weaned, a puppy can learn to come, sit still, and walk with you while off the leash. Puppy obedience instruction teaches you to guide your pup with your voice instead of by wrestling. As an outcome of obedience training, you will also be able to end your puppy's undesirable habits like biting and barking. You can take your young dog to an obedience training class or train at home with a training video.

Note that these outcomes depend on you. How you act will drive the changes in your puppy's behavior. Your pet's genetic makeup has a role too, but you are the key to success.

There is a set of commands you need to learn to train your puppy. You must say the same command consistently if you want predictable behavior. The puppy learns to respond to simple instructions. Many trainers use kibble to motivate their pup at the start.

Besides using the same directions each time, you must learn to correct bad behavior. For young puppies, you give the command again as correction. Withholding a reward can also be a correction by itself. Do not be mean or loud when obedience training a young dog.

This is what you should expect out of obedience training your puppy. It is best to start training your pup as soon as you get it. Your puppy can learn the following commands as young as eight weeks.

• "Focus" - Look at you
• "Sit" - Sit and watch the trainer
• "Stand" - Standing on the ground and not standing on its hind legs
• "Stay" - Being still until released verbally
• "Down" - Laying down with head up and attentive
• "Come" - Come to the trainer
• "OK" - Ends the last order
• "No" - Cease doing what it is doing

This is a lot to learn. Do not try to teach your dog too many obedience skills quickly. Teach your pet one or two commands at one time. Just master each command before teaching more.

When your puppy has learned the basic instructions, it is time to go on to more training. These skills are more complicated to train. It will be faster and easier if you have received instruction on how to teach these skills to your dog.

• "Go" - Go where you point
• "Stop" - Stop moving
• "Off" - Get down from jumping
• "Back" - Step backwards
• "Heel" - Walk next to the trainers heel

You can teach your puppy the commands below when you are housebreaking a puppy, crate training, or when you are fixing problems such as puppy chewing.

• "Potty" - Go to the bathroom here
• "Kennel up" - Time to go into its dog crate and remain there until told to come out
• "Gentle" - Take food or an object without nipping the person's hand
• "No bite" - Stop biting or nipping
• "Drop" - Release the object that is in its mouth
• "Leave it" - Move the dogs attention back to you from another dog, person or object

Puppies love to learn. Some breeds are more inquisitive than others, and in particular, German Shepherds like to be kept busy. To keep your dog stimulated, you can go beyond obedience training. Your puppy can learn tricks like pretending to be dead, singing, and more. If you focus on obedience training a puppy, your pet will like to spend time with you, and you will take pride in your obedient dog.

In the past, most if not all training techniques treated your dog as if it was some sort of object. Something that just needed to listen to you and never be listened to. And unfortunately, the training methods associated with this mentality towards dogs are still being used today.

Which techniques am I talking about?

I'm talking about the negative punishment techniques being taught about in books and on TV which encourage punishing your dog every time it does something unwanted, like pee on your rug for example. Punishment includes yelling, scolding and even hitting. I strongly disagree with this method of dog training.

Why?

Because a dog has emotions and if you punish him or her for every single mistake, your dog is going to end up extremely depressed and hurt.

Here's what you can do instead of scolding, hitting, or yelling and works just as well if not better than negative punishment training.

I used it on my dog and it worked wonders. Within 2 weeks, my dog was fully trained using positive reinforcement training. I had started out training my dog using negative punishment training but it wasn't doing any good. In fact, my dog was acting up ever worse and had become more aggressive towards me and others.

A lot of people find their dog acting more aggressive with negative punishment training. What I recommend instead is something called positive reinforcement training. It's really simple and you'll find yourself enjoying training your dog instead of dreading it because you either have to scold, hit or yell.

What it entails is this, every time your dog does something good, you reward him or her for their action. A reward doesn't necessarily have to be a treat if you're worried about your dog becoming addicted or unhealthy. It could be as simple as a belly rub, or just playing with your dog. However you do want to interrupt any bad behavior they're doing as soon as it happens.

This is the most important part because a lot of people make this mistake. They arrive home after a hard day of work and find a puddle waiting for them in their kitchen. They look over and see their dog staring at them and they proceed to yell or scold them. The problem is the dog doesn't know what he did wrong.

In conclusion, always interrupt the behavior as soon as it happens and use positive reinforcement to train your dog instead of yelling, scolding or hitting.