We recently got a 9-week old "golden doodle" (standard poodle sire, golden retriever dam).
We named him Cash, after Johnny Cash, of course.
If we are going to have a dog, it is going to be a well-trained dog, or at least we will make the attempt to have him well-behaved.
This means there is a lot to learn, fast.
The first thing we did was decide to Crate Train as a method of housebreaking and reducing the number of inside accidents.
The idea is that if the dog spends most of his time in his crate and is taking outside immediately after getting out of his crate, he'll learn to relieve himself outside and associate outside with where you eliminate.
This works because dogs instinctually won't mess in their own den and it will take a while for him to think of the whole house as his den, but will get the crate immediately, given the crate is not too large for him.
The crate also becomes a safe place for him to sleep at night. Safe for him as well as for our furniture!
Lastly, he will have a place to retreat to if things scare or startle him.
There is a lot of different crate training advice on the internet and it's all pretty much the same and for the most part is what we followed.
Two aspects that we haven't followed is the idea of never forcing him in and never using the create as punishment.
We have certainly forced him to go in. It's not a violent shoving but we initially had to coax him in with some gentle pushing.
Also, when he starts getting wild, or biting on too many things, he gets a timeout in his crate to settle down. We don't make a big deal about it but do pull him over by his collar and tell him to get in.
It has worked great.
So far we have been teaching him:
- Sit
- Down
- Stay
- Leave It
- Come
- Heel
He has all of these commands down somewhat. Of course being 14 weeks old he is still easily distracted. He is probably best at Sit and Leave It. Come works best if he thinks you are about to play with him or he isn't interested in something else, like a leaf.