General Obedience Question (or two lol)
 

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!

I don't know that the size of the dog should matter when it comes to basic commands such as sit, etc. How did you train the bigger dogs?

(It is fun spoiling them isn't it:D)

I would be using the harness and not the collar for training. Does she love treats and or toys, if so of course those are your reward system.

Keep it short, in the beginning as puppies who lack focus and attention, just cause they are puppies we have to keep training in short bursts over the day. Here too, when you start out with an older dog ... short bursts of training.

to teach come I use a very long training lead 25 feet.

With the bigger dogs, it's easy to guide them into the position that I want them to be in after telling them once. Like, my sister's pit for example; I've been working with her, teaching her sit. I tell her once and then guide her into the position. It's easy to do cause I don't have to bend over hardly at all cause of size. Same with my german shepherd. I don't have to bend hardly at all to get him into a sit (when he's being a butthead LOL).

With Lilly... well... she's so much smaller than them XD And yes... it's so much fun spoiling her instead of teaching her manners LOL


Any time I put a leash on her, I make sure she's wearing her harness and never clip it to the collar that she wears almost 24/7. I worry too much about hurting her little neck, so she wears one of her harnesses :)

She is very food motivated and absolutely loves treats. She's not fond of toys, at least I haven't found any yet that she likes and will play with. Although she does have a tiny purple teddy bear that she sleeps with and snuggles with as if it's her baby. But, yes, she loves her some treats.

So, with her being 6 years old, I just do short training sessions? Like 5 minutes at a time? Or can I do 10 minutes at a time?

I will have to get a new long lead cause the one I used to have got chewed up by a friend's dog when I let her use it XD