Dalmatian Puppy Training

Alfie's training began as soon as he came to live with us and began with toilet training. We have used a crate from the beginning and this has made life very easy. Within a week he was having only the occasional accident in the house and that was only because we missed his signal (crying) that he needed to go outside.

It took Alfie a week to learn to sit, 2 weeks to lie down and come when called and at 13 Weeks he can walk to heel, stay and wait for short periods and is trying to understand the stand command.

Our challenge now is to lengthen the periods he can stay, wait and heel and increase the distance at which he will obey the come command.

He began to confuse the sit and lie down commands when excited at around 13 weeks and tried to "rush us" sometimes on the wait and stay commands. He sometimes tried to get away with sitting momentarily instead of waiting for the release command, so the next few weeks were about solidifying his performance!!

At 20 weeks he walks without pulling on the lead, about 90% of the time, and as long as there are no distractions! He is trying not to learn the instant down command, but we are determined that we'll win. Alfie is great at wait, ok at stay and trying to perfect stand.

Alfie loves his weekly obedience class and is a real show off!! He has now attended two ringcraft classes and we're hoping he's going to get the hang of what's required, but it seems we need to understand it before he does!!!

He's very intelligent, but we do have a battle of wills at times, particularly if he thinks there's no point in obeying a command or can see a quicker way of achieving his goal !!

Having read up on Dalmatian training, it seems that this is not unusual and that patience is the key.

We spend about 30 minutes a day training Alfie, but also try to incorporate the training in his daily activities, around the house and when we are out and about....

Update

At 16 weeks, Alfie attended his first dog training club and really did us proud: he performed "sit stay", "lie down stay",
and "wait come", perfectly and almost managed a complicated "leave"
(weaving in and out of food and 6 other dogs). He can walk to heel
and stop really well too, but we haven't mastered left and right
turns yet! or completely eliminated pulling on the lead.