Training our border puppies.

As each of our borders come home for the first time, as puppies, we first take them from the car to the garden and straight onto the grass, most already know what grass is but in Ziggy’s case this was all new and something she would explore after she’d recovered from her long journey (ps. she would not come inside after discovering it and finding out how nice it was and all the different possibilities grass can present). All the family comes outside, we show them the water bowls, so they know where they get water from. We then bring out our other borders, so they can all meet each other, we stay with them and make sure that they all get along and no one bothers each other too much (Shaggy being too pushy). After a while we encourage our puppy to follow us and come into the house (we let them walk so that they know the way inside and outside) and show them where their food bowl is and maybe give them a small amount of food incase they hadn’t eaten in a while, we make sure that they sit before they eat so they already know the routine. We encourage our puppy to go to each room in the house, getting them to know the house and to settle in.

We make a bed in a box, big enough with room for a puppy  (no crate training at all) and big enough to play in and pull apart when bored. Inside the box we place newspaper puppies (crunched up newspaper pages into balls and we call them newspaper puppies), every single dog we have owned has either cuddled with these newspaper puppies (depending on weather or course) or they will tear them apart and play with them (Shaggy did this quite a lot, Scooby use to play with them and tear them up slightly but Shaggy just takes the cake on tearing them and playing with them, ps Shaggy is toy driven). We take our puppy into the skullery at night to sleep, this does not work with every puppy we have had, they cry, so we always end up bringing them into our bedroom to sleep with the other dogs and once doing that that is where they sleep nightly, while they are still young and going through their chewing everything phase, we keep the bedroom door closed on a night so they do not wander and cause unknown mischief, once passed this stage we open the door and they can wonder if they want but most stay in the room and sleep (Shaggy wanders and checks on everyone). Every dog has their own blankets in spaces in the bedroom for them. Not that they sleep on their own blankets and tend to move around them and sleep where they want to, some even throw tantrums when others are on their blanket (cough cough Shaggy).

We make a huge fuss of our puppies as well as our other dogs, so no dogs feel left out with having a new puppy around, we also encourage them to play with each other and not be rough in the lounge as things can get broken in the lounge, outside is play time.

If they cry at night to go outside, someone will get up and take them outside, if one dog goes out, they all go out. Never had problems with puppies weeing in the house, within a day or so they know the way out and come and ask or go to the door and cry. We find that border puppies train very fast to go outside to do their business, we have had 5 puppies over many years and they have all been the same. We have never owned a crate and the thought of putting a dog into a crate does not sound right to us, we believe they can have a safe space without needing a crate. Puppies need freedom to be puppies and have fun.

We have found all our puppies dig. They just love gardening. A tap and being told off does not help as they just go back and dig anyway. Everything we have done over the years to stop digging has to this day semi worked, depends on the dog and how they feel each day, some like Shaggy only dig on occasion, others like Ziggy dig every opportunity she can especially at night when crickets go under the grass and she tries to chase them and get them out (the grass belongs to her and not them, of course).

Each puppy we have had has their own personality and goes through all the puppy stages differently, Ziggy is our puppy currently and she is definitely going through the biting and chewing phase (passed the teething phase, thankfully), will add more as she grows and experiences more things.

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