Episode #257 Life Skills & Handling for Puppies — Beyond Sit & Stay

In this episode of the Puppy Training Podcast, we go beyond basic behaviors like sit and stay to focus on the life skills that truly shape a well-behaved, confident dog.

Many puppy parents work hard on cues, but struggle with everyday challenges like stressful car rides, difficult vet visits, grooming battles, noisy vacuums, or overly excited greetings with guests. 

Amy walks you through the essential “good citizen puppy” skills every dog needs, including calm car riding, positive crate training, grooming and handling tolerance, confidence around household noises, and polite behavior when visitors arrive. You’ll learn why these skills matter so much and how to start teaching them early in a positive, stress-free way.

This episode is perfect for new puppy parents or anyone looking to prevent fear, anxiety, and behavior issues before they begin — and to raise a dog who’s comfortable navigating real life.

🎄 Holiday Note: This is the final episode of the year. Amy and the BAXTER & Bella team wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! New episodes of the Puppy Training Podcast will resume in January.

Chapters

• 0:00 Beyond Sit And Stay
• 1:49 Life Skills Over Obedience Gaps
• 2:25 Car Rides Made Positive
• 3:45 Crate As A Safe Place
• 5:45 Grooming And Handling Tolerance
• 7:14 Vet Visits Without Fear
• 7:57 Confidence With Household Noise
• 9:04 Calm Greetings And Guest Manners
• 10:03 Start Early, Aim For Prepared
• 10:26 Holiday Sign-Off And Resources

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

It's easy when we get a puppy to focus only on the basics like sit, down, stay, or come. But we don't want to forget other important behaviors like being able to go to the vet's office for a visit or riding in the car or being calm at home. So today let's talk about some of those other things that sometimes get overlooked when it comes to training a new dog. Welcome to the Puppy Training Podcast. I'm Amy Jensen, founder of Baxter and Fella, the online puppy school. Here we are all about helping you create the best possible experience raising a puppy. From training tips to practical tricks, all aimed at fostering a happy, well-behaved dog who truly feels like part of the family. So if you are ready to enjoy the journey and strengthen the bond with your dog, let's get started. Hello and welcome back to the Puppy Training Podcast. My name is Amy Jensen. I'm owner of Baxter Umbella, and I'm so happy you're here. If you're listening today, chances are you are doing your very best to raise a happy, well-behaved puppy, and that already puts you ahead of the game. So good job. Now, today's episode is one I'm especially passionate about because it talks about something that often gets overlooked in puppy training. We're talking about life skills and handling, the skills that go far beyond just the basics of sit, stay, come, which are, again, all things we want our dogs to do, but let's not overlook these other things as well. Because here's the truth a puppy who knows how to sit on cue, but panics in the car or hates getting their nails trimmed or isn't fully prepared for real life. So today let's talk about how to raise a good citizen puppy, one who can handle everyday experiences with confidence and calm. Most puppy handlers start training with cues, and that makes sense. Sit and stay feel measurable. They feel like progress. But the challenge families struggle with most often aren't cue related. They're things like my puppy cries in the car, we can't trim his nails, she loses her mind when the vacuum comes out, or our dog is jumping all over guests. These aren't obedience problems, they're life skill gaps. Now, life skills teach puppies how to feel in the world, not just what to do. And when we teach them early using positive reinforcement, we can prevent fear, anxiety, and reactivity down the road. Let's start with car rides. Puppies can struggle with cars for different reasons. Some might feel a little nauseous or motion sickness when they're in one. Others might just be associating the car with, say, like a vet visit, something that's not super positive in their eyes. So we want to make car rides enjoyable for your dog. Here's how. We can do this slowly and positively. Let's start with just sitting in a parked car with your puppy and giving them food rewards. Maybe that's where chew time happens today. We just sit in the backseat of the car and offer our dog a chew while I read a book. Maybe then we turn the engine on and we reward calm behavior. Then maybe we escalate that to let's just take really short trips, but we come back home and we go play our puppy's favorite game. So that the car is associated then with, oh, this is my favorite game. We get to go play now that we're back home. Now, as your puppy gets older and they're fully vaccinated, then we can start to pair those car rides with play dates at a friend's house, or we could uh associate that with we're driving to the park and you get to get out and go explore. Um, but for now, before they're fully vaccinated, definitely pair it with food rewards and make it a positive place. Remember to always secure your puppy safely with a crate or a harness. And then our goal isn't excitement in the car necessarily, it's just helping our puppies feel calm and at peace while they're in a car. Okay, let's talk about crate training. So here at Baxter and Bella, we talk a lot about this and it's for a good reason. Management and training go hand in hand. We're going to need both, especially with these young puppies that aren't fully house trained yet. So a crate isn't just for potty training, it is also helping our dog understand that they have a safe space to go to whenever needed. So your puppy's going to spend time in a crate if they're at the vet's office, uh, maybe during travel, in times of emergency, if they go to a groomer down the road, um, if they're recovering from, say, an accident like a surgery or something. So crates are going to be necessary at some point. Let's do your puppy a favor and introduce them positively to it early on. And it does help with house training. So here's how you can do that. We can feed our puppy their meals in the crate. We can toss food rewards in and just let our puppy go in on their own and just let them come right back out on their own. Going in the crate doesn't always have to mean the door closes and we leave for an hour or two. That's a sure way to help your puppy not like the crate. So play some crate games where they run in and then maybe that running in starts their favorite game of I toss the toy down the hallway and they get to go chase it. How do we get to play again? The puppy runs in the crate, we toss the toy again. So keep these sessions when you are shutting the door uh short in the beginning. And I like to stay by my puppy while they're in the crate for that, those first few days home, especially while their stress levels are high and I'm just helping them feel safe in their new environment. So, for example, when I'm cooking dinner the first day and my puppies just come home, I'll have one of my kids sit by the crate, or I'll put that crate right by my feet in the kitchen so that at least I'm super close. I don't use the crate as punishment, but we do absolutely use it as management. And that's where my puppy's favorite things happen. That's where I'm feeding them their meals, that's where the chew toys come out, that's where the good things happen and my dogs know it. So we want the crate to feel like a safe, calm resting place. Life skill number three, I would say, is grooming and handling tolerance. This one is really big. Every dog is going to need nail trims, brushing, ear checks, and vet exams. But puppies aren't born loving these things, especially when a stranger is doing it. They learn to tolerate them, though, through positive exposure. So here's what you can do: you can practice handling every day. Gently touch your puppy's paws, their ears, their tail. You can lift their lips and look at their teeth or take your finger, put a little bit of dog toothpaste on that and rub their gums and their teeth. When I say dog toothpaste, it's usually like liver flavored or poultry flavored and they actually like it. Um, you can practice just really softly brushing those gums using a little finger toothbrush is a great easy way to do it for a young puppy. And then we can introduce nail clippers without actually trimming it first. Let your puppy see the clippers, feed a food reward. They see the clippers, feed a food reward. Maybe we touch their nail with the clipper, but we don't actually clip, and we feed a food reward. And we don't have to get to clipping that first day. Maybe we just do that for a few weeks and then we get to I'm gonna clip one nail, okay, let's go play your favorite game. Tomorrow we'll clip another nail, let's go play your favorite game. So we can do this very slowly rather than okay, here we go. We're gonna clip clip all your nails and we're gonna do it in one session. I don't recommend that. So pair all handling with food and price. Five seconds of daily handling prevents years of struggle. It is so worth it. Okay, up next, life skill number four would be preparing for vet visits. So instead of waiting until your puppy is sick or um something's going on with them, prepare ahead of time. Maybe you could do a little mock vet exam at home. You could gently hold your puppy while rewarding calm behavior, or have a friend come over and have strangers practice petting your puppy with food rewards, right? So visiting the vet, we can just go and say hello. We can just drop in and kind of get them used to the smells and the actual location of it. Maybe they'll the staff there will be willing to offer your puppy some food rewards and then you can go back home. So we want the vet to be a neutral or even positive, not a scary place that they associate with fear. All right, life skill number five is household noise confidence. Vacuums, blenders, hairdryers, think of all the things in your house that make noise. And these can be overwhelming if a puppy isn't introduced properly. So here's the key distance and rewards. Uh, start with the noise far away, right? Especially if you notice your puppy's startling at something. If they're not startling, no big deal. You don't need to really work on this. But let's say they hear the garage door opening and they kind of panic. They do this little startle reaction. Then you understand, okay, we need to work on that, but let's not take them right out to the garage and open the garage door. Let's work on that while we're inside the house, the door is shut, and they're hearing it from a distance. And then we pair that with food or play. You guys, play is so powerful. We use it a lot in our program. Pull out a little squeaky toy, pull out a little tug toy. They hear the sound and immediately start to play with them, help them to have fun because that's going to help them feel good. And then they're going to associate what they just heard with, oh, it follows, it's followed by fun. Okay. And we want to keep these sessions short and then just gradually move closer as our puppy is staying relaxed. We never ever want to force our puppy to face a fear. Confidence is going to grow through allowing them choice and positive experiences. All right, life number or life skill number six is calm greetings and guest manners. Sometimes our dogs tend to jump or bark or they're overly excited. Usually this behavior starts in puppyhood. So we can teach our puppy that four paws on the floor earns attention. We can teach that calm behavior is what gets rewarded, and that guests are boring until you're calm. Now that's the people part. It's a little bit harder, in my opinion, training people than puppies. It's teaching the guests to ignore your puppy until they are calm. We can use a little management there. We could keep our puppy on a leash. We could also keep our puppy behind a baby gate or an exercise pen just to help our guests be able to walk in and then they can wait for that puppy to calm down behind the barrier, which sets our puppy up for success because they're not actually jumping on the person. And then once the puppy calms down, the guests can say hello if they want to. Now, when should you start all of this? Right away. As soon as your puppy comes home. Puppies are most open to learning between eight and 16 weeks. So short, positive sessions, just a few minutes a day, makes a lifelong difference. Now, this isn't about perfection. No dog is perfect. I don't expect my dogs to be perfect. It's about preparation. So remember, you guys, cues are important, behaviors are important. The basics sit, stay, come. We teach you all of those in our program, and yes, we want your dog to learn those, but don't overlook or forget about life skills. Now, before we wrap up today, I want to take a moment to thank each of you for being part of our puppy training podcast community this year. I so appreciate that you listen. From all of us here at Baxter and Bella, we wish you a very Merry Christmas and a happy new year. We'll be taking a short break and new podcast episodes will resume in January. Until then, enjoy the holidays. Give your puppy an extra high five from me, and remember, you're probably doing better than you think. Thanks for listening. Happy training. Thanks for tuning in to the Puppy Training Podcast. I hope today's tips help you feel more confident and excited about raising your dog. Remember, with a little patience and consistency, you can create a loving bond and a well-behaved pup who's a joy to have in your family. If you found this episode helpful, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with fellow puppy parents. For more resources, visit Baxter and Bella online. Until next time, happy training.