[littledoglover]

So... in all my years of training dogs (my own dogs, friends dogs, rescue dogs) I have never, ever trained a small dog. Every dog I have ever trained have come to my knee or bigger (I'm 5'6"). I have no problem coming out and admitting that I have no clue how to even begin to go about training a small dog XD

I have had Lilly for almost 2 years (January 7th marks 2 years) and I have not done any obedience training with her. I know... bad mommy... but it has been so fun spoiling her ;_;

But now I think it's time that she start learning at least a little bit of the same manners that I usually require of all the dogs that live with me (be it forever or be they in transition from my home to their forever home).

I have never really used clicker training. I lack the coordination that clicker training seems to require. So I gave up on it. But I do use a lot of praise and treats. Besides, the couple of times that Lilly heard a clicker click, she freaked out. So using a clicker with her is out of the question anyway.

I would like to teach her the basic commands: Sit, Down, Stay, Come (especially come >.<), etc. I don't really want to try to go through the local Petco because they do use clickers and, as I said, Lilly is scared of clickers. The only other local trainer isn't going to be having any new classes until the end of February and I'd like to work on stuff with Lilly now. Besides, Lilly isn't comfortable around stranger people or strange animals/dogs, so I don't have the heart to try to force her into something she's not comfortable with and will freak out.

Anyway, my question is this... How do I go about training a 10-12 pound dog when I'm used to training much, much larger dogs? Where should I start? How should I start?

Any advice is most welcome!