Episode #190 The Value of Building a Bond with Your Puppy and How to Cultivate It

Want to build a lasting bond with your new puppy that sets the stage for a lifetime of happiness and effective training? Imagine creating a relationship where trust, emotional connection, and obedience come naturally, making your puppy feel secure and confident. In this episode, we share our personal journey with Bella, our beloved puppy, and how focusing on the basics during those crucial first weeks helped us understand and respond to her needs more effectively.

Chapters

• 0:00 Building Bond With Puppy
• 12:21 Foundations for Successful Puppy Training

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This is the Puppy Training Podcast, episode 190, the Value of Building a Bond with your Puppy and how to Cultivate it. This podcast is designed to help you on your journey of becoming best friends through love and learning, as you train your own dog from home, and I'm here to help you every step of the way. This is the Puppy Training Podcast and I'm your host, amy Jensen. Hi and thank you for listening to the podcast today. It is so exciting when you bring a new dog into your home and family. Many people want to jump right into training, and rightfully so. They're super excited, they're eager to get going. But today I want to talk about the importance of relationship building. This is a really important first step before we stress too much about actual training we don't actually want you to stress too much anyway but before you do that, recognize that this bond is super important. It is a foundation of trust, communication and mutual understanding between you and your dog, and it significantly impacts the quality of life for the both of you. But first, I hope you're having a great summer. It's almost back to school time for our kids. Can you believe it? Summer's just fly by and that means it's time to go back to school, for our dogs too. So check out our website for upcoming classes and courses. These are all taught via zoom from the comfort of your own home, so you just bring your dog and anything you actually need for class is already at your house. That's where we're teaching you class. We have basic through advanced training courses. We have a junior training course for kids, as well as many classes on specific topics, from barking, biting, house training and leash walking and so on and so on. So if you're in need of any training answers, you have questions you want to ask our team. We have you covered. Okay, let's get started.

Speaker 1: 1:49

So why am I so passionate about building a bond with your dog? There are several good reasons. One is the emotional connection. A strong bond with your puppy creates that emotional connection that enhances your relationship. Dogs are very social animals. They love to be with their people and they feel often securely attached to their people. They experience a sense of safety and belonging. So this emotional connection is mutually beneficial. It not only fulfills the dog's need for companionship, but it also provides us with a loyal and loving friend, so that emotional connection can be super strong and important when we're working together.

Speaker 1: 2:26

The second one would be trust and obedience. Trust is at the core of any successful relationship. Think of all of the relationships you have. There's a level of trust there, and this is especially true when it comes to having a dog. A puppy that trusts its person is more likely to follow cues and behave appropriately, which makes training easier and more effective. So trust that's built through positive interactions, consistency and patience will often lead to a well-adjusted dog that can navigate the world with confidence.

Speaker 1: 2:57

We see this with our puppy, Bella. She trusts us completely. She is a happy-go-lucky little puppy at our house. She jumps in our laps, she rolls over for belly rubs, she loves to play games, she loves to train with us. But she meets a stranger. It takes her a little while to trust them. It takes her a little while to be like hmm, can I be around you, am I safe around you? And we've seen that. So, I guess, distinctly with her. Every puppy we've raised teaches me something. She's taught me the importance of trust.

Speaker 1: 3:27

Next, a well-bonded dog is typically happier and healthier. When a puppy feels safe and secure in its relationship with you, then it experiences less stress and anxiety. This can positively impact its physical health as well. So, moreover, a strong bond encourages regular physical activity, social interaction, interaction, mental stimulation, and all of these things together contribute to your dog's overall well-being. So remember that that you know. This bond is super important in just helping our dogs feel confident and relaxed. Nobody wants our dogs to be super stressed or anxious, right, okay? And then, finally, a deep bond with your puppy allows for better communication. You guys, one of my favorite things about working with dogs is that we speak different languages, yet we can understand one another. I think that's an amazing phenomenon. So a deep bond with our puppy allows for better communication. Dogs are highly intuitive. They can pick up on their person's emotions, body language, vocal cues, and when there's a strong bond, this communication becomes almost seamless, which makes it easier to understand your dog's needs and respond appropriately.

Speaker 1: 4:33

Now that we know the value of having a good bond, how do we go about building one? First would be quality time. This is the top of my list, right? The most important aspect of building a bond is spending time with your puppy. Nothing can really replace this. This can include playtime, maybe go sniff walks or simply just sitting together. Regular interaction helps your puppy get used to your presence and they learn to trust you. The more you interact with each other, the more you get to know each other, the better your communication skills become, and that just helps build this bond. So it also gives you the opportunity to learn about your puppy. You get to figure out their personality. What do they like, what do they dislike, what kind of behaviors do they freely give you? What other behaviors do we maybe need to motivate them a little more to give you as well? You just really get to learn about each other. So the more time you spend together, naturally, the stronger your bond will be.

Speaker 1: 5:24

The use of positive reinforcement techniques is also beneficial. This encourages good behavior and builds trust because we're using positive interactions, not negative. Now reward your puppy with food. All dogs have to eat. They love food, so use their food. I love praise. Good girl, good boy, yes, right. All of these happy, upbeat tones in our voice can be super helpful, or even affection. So some dogs love being touched. If they do, maybe they like belly rubs, or maybe they like their ears being rubbed or their Baxter doors, his chin being scratched. So you can use those kinds of things as well to reward your dog when they follow through with cues that you give them, or they just show you, good behavior on their own. I love it when my puppies will just choose to sit on their own or lay down at my feet and relax without being asked. Right, make sure you're rewarding those moments as well, so that they continue to do those kinds of things.

Speaker 1: 6:15

Sometimes it's easy to not notice the good behavior because it's often quiet and calm. The unwanted, natural dog behaviors, like the barking, the biting at our feet or nipping at our heels to try to get us to play those things cause us to often react and pay attention to our dogs, which is rewarding them in a way, even if it's kind of a negative sort of attention. But we're giving them that attention for the things we don't want them to do. I just be aware of the good things that they're doing and try to make notice of those, pay them for those, reward them well for those, so that they choose those behaviors more often. And then we'll talk about other ways we can help with this. These unwanted behaviors right, that's what our course is all about is how do we help you live well with your dog and have them behave well and interact with you in a human sort of way right, because all of these behaviors I mentioned are just natural dog behaviors, so your puppy doesn't know what else to do. If you don't show them and teach them, they're just going to resort to what they know and what they do naturally as a dog. So I'm getting off topic here, so we're going to go back, but note that we have all of these answers for you inside our program if you need help with any of those natural dog behaviors that maybe aren't our favorites.

Speaker 1: 7:26

Another thing you can do to build a bond with your dog is to use consistency and routine. Puppies thrive when they know what is expected. So that consistency and routine can really help them know what's coming Establishing somewhat of a regular schedule it doesn't have to be super precise, but in general, if a dog knows when they're getting fed, when it's walk time, when it's play time, when it's nap time okay, when it's time to settle, that really helps your puppy understand what to expect, which reduces anxiety and builds trust. Consistency and rules and boundaries also ensures that our dogs know what is expected of them, leading to better behavior and a stronger bond. So I have a child like this. She just loves to know what's happening next. If she doesn't know what's happening next, she gets anxious. You can see in her body language and in her, uh, the way she speaks, and just her overall level of nervousness increases. So if she just knows the plan for the day, she knows what to expect, she settles right down. So dogs are very similar. They just want to know kind of what's happening. The more they know what to expect, the less unknown there is then, the more calm they are.

Speaker 1: 8:38

Next let's talk about training. Training and socialization are really important. They're essential parts of building a strong bond. So we like to start with just the basics a simple stay, simple sit, simple recall, and then we gradually introduce more complex tasks. I'm all about setting your puppy up for success. You'll hear me say that a lot inside my program. We want to keep training sessions fun. We want these to be opportunities for our dogs to learn and for us to communicate with them. Now, socialization is also an important aspect of this. We like to expose our dogs to different environments people and other animals in a controlled manner to help them develop confidence and the ability to adapt to new and unknown things.

Speaker 1: 9:20

Okay, next is patience and understanding. So building a bond with your puppy takes time. Again, it's just time spent with them, so you can't do this on day one or in one half hour session. Right, this is going to be something that builds and strengthens over time. Puppies are learning about their world and their place in it and how to interact with humans, which is new to them. So it's important to be patient when they do make mistakes or they have setbacks, and to keep our expectations realistic of what it's like to have a new puppy or even just a new dog in a new home. Right, whenever we transition a dog from home to a different home, there's going to be some of these mistakes and setbacks. That's okay, understanding that our puppy might be a little bit overwhelmed or scared because they're in a new place or a new situation. That's okay. It allows us the opportunity to provide them with support and reassurance to help them feel secure, which is amazing at helping to build that bond.

Speaker 1: 10:17

Lastly, physical affection Dogs are naturally affectionate animals and oftentimes physical touch is an important part of this bonding. Now, not all dogs are super cuddly. There's going to be a spectrum of dogs, right. Some love to be snuggly, some don't really need all of that much snuggling, but you'll usually find something that your dog adores, like I mentioned, the chin scratch that Baxter just loves or you know Bella loves belly rubs. She'll flop right over for her belly to be touched, as long as it's somebody she trusts. Remember we talked about that.

Speaker 1: 10:48

So, getting to know your dog, it might evolve over time. Maybe in the beginning they're a little skeptical about you touching them all over the place. But the more we do that in a positive way, by you know, adding food as we do it, or praise while we are doing it, they come to just figure out what they like too, because they're still figuring it out as well. So as long as we're not forcing them to snuggle with us or forcing them to cuddle with us or always just picking them up and toting them around, those are pretty sure ways to get your puppy not to trust you. So we want to do the opposite. Let them come to us. We can encourage it through, like I mentioned, the use of positive associations with it, with the food, the praise, those kinds of things. But the petting, the cuddling and the gentle grooming can all strengthen the bond between you and your dog. We just want to be careful about how we go about that and make sure that they trust you and that you're not forcing them to do things, because that, again, will drive them away rather than drive them to you. So try to use these moments of closeness to help your puppy feel loved and secure. All right, you guys. That's it for today.

Speaker 1: 11:48

The takeaways today would be that building a bond with your puppy is a rewarding process, right? I love having dogs in our homes. I think they're so good for just the overall morale of the home. I think they provide absolutely wonderful therapy to everyone involved and it's awesome how it brings the family together. So this bond building is the groundwork for a lifelong relationship with our dogs. It is essential for your puppy's emotional and physical well-being, as well as for effective communication and training.

Speaker 1: 12:21

So don't be too quick to jump right into training. We want to make sure that your puppy trusts you first, that you have this good relationship. We can absolutely start with the basics in a very simple way, but we don't want to overwhelm our puppy before that trust is built. So that's good news for you guys, because that means when you bring a new dog home, you can relax, you can take a deep breath. Let your puppy take a deep breath.

Speaker 1: 12:45

You're going to be just doing basics like taking them out to go potty on a regular basis, maybe a simple sit to say, please, that's about it for the first even week or two weeks and then we can really dive into uh training aspects. But other than that you can chill out a little bit in the beginning. Just build that bond, focus on a positive relationship, build that trust and I promise the training will go so much better. You guys have a wonderful rest of your week, happy training. If you have a question about anything you heard on this podcast or any other puppy training question, visit my site BaxterandBellacom to contact me.