As far as training goes, start the day you bring the dog in to your house. Start on one command at a time and master it for a week. Then introduce the next command. Sit and stay are two of the most important commands to start with, sit being the first. Reward, reward, reward.
Petsmart has a great training program. You can do it with the group setting or individually (the latter which costs a bit more, but then you are one on one with the trainer and really getting the money's worth). I would try to get in there if you can.
I used to do dog training when I was married to my first husband. People used to drop their dogs off at my house for two weeks for the sit and stay and housebreaking training. Then I would train the owner to train the dog. That is the most important thing. I now know that that technique was wrong.
The dogs back then only listened to me. If you go the way of hiring a dog trainer, make sure it's one that trains YOU to train the dog. Cause otherwise, if he/she trains the dog, the dog learns to listen to them, not you. Just my nickle though.
Have fun with your training. It's great bonding time - more fun for the puppy than just cuddling.
Also, so far as great training treats go. You can buy a tub of Pup-per-roni at Petmart for like $10. What I do for training is pull out all the treat sticks (they come is long pencil shaped strips), and chop them up into really small bite sized pieces. Not too small that they don't get a good taste, but not to big that they are chewing for the next five minutes and loosing interest in the training session. Carry some of the chopped pieces with you in your pocket. Any time you give the command, you will have a treat on hand for rewarding as well as your petting. The hardest part about treat training is giving the treat the exact moment of command success. You have at most a two second window of the command being followed to give the treat for reward.
Also, with a puppy, their attention span for the training sessions only last for about ten to fifteen minutes per session. Then they will get bored or distracted. Don't force it. You want the sessions to be fun. Have two or three sessions a day if you can until they get older. Then they will be able to concentrate longer.
Again, I recommend Petsmart's training program for one-on-one sessions, unless you have trained a dog before. Just my nickle though.
