It is good to learn your dog to relax. You should be the one who determines when to relax and when to practice. Often just ignoring your dog is the right way to make him to do so. If your dog likes practicing it can easily happen that he will require more and more of it. Nevertheless, day-to-day physical and psychical activity should be in balance. Simply, it should be reasonable: "I have been giving you my attention for two hours, now you should relax and we can go outside again in the evening."

Alternatives: you can get a cage in which dog gets used to be calm and relaxing. It is not meant to close your dog there for the whole day. It would be just dog´s place where he could relax without being disturbed. Another way to do it is learning your dog to rest in your arms (you can finely calm him, sometimes even a dog lair is not enough). It means that when you come back home after walking a dog you can play and train with him, however, after that it is time for sleeping. Take your dog to your arms or close him in his cage and learn him to relax. In our opinion the best choice is just to ignore him. Your doggy will get it over time.

It takes a lot of time to learn a doggy to come when called. It is one of the most difficult, but on the other hand one of the most important orders which, ideally, every dog should know. There are several options how you can learn your doggy to do it. You can find more information about particular methods in lesson about come when called. You may have these questions...

How you will call your dog (choose one order, if you plan to train your dog for obedience I do not reccomend using: "Come!" because in this case dog should come and precisely sit. If you do not surely plan to train your dog for these sports, you can also use this order). Then decide what you want your dog to do after calling your order (just come to you, sit by you, heel, etc.). When coming to you after calling praise your doggy and be happy as if he were a champion.

Training leash is not necessary, I have never used it with Merlin and he knows the order "come" perfectly. The training leash just makes the dog to come. It is also not necessary to pull the dog (it is punishment for him - he sees something on the ground, by pulling I am taking it away from him and becoming the "punishment"). Conversely, try to catch dogs attention by doing funny staff, having something yummy, dog toys...

It is important to learn your dog the order "come" step-by-step in different places and search for that places where you want to have your dog under control. So if you want to master the order "come" there is only one way to achieve it and it is visiting dog parks or dog events several times a week.

NEVER EVER punish your dog when comes to you (where were you, what was it, etc.). He would not know why you are punishing him when he came as you wanted.

It is important to catch your dog "in the act". It is not necessary to use physical punishment, it is enough to take him by surprise (e.g. a loud clap). When you find out that your dog peed or you find a poo somewhere in your apartment and you do not catch him in the act, then punishment is meaningless.

It´s better to catch your dog, take him out and praise him that he peed outside. Then I recommend to spray the dogs urine with vinegar. You can wash the dog bed in vinegar too. It smells bad to dogs and it is more intensive than the smell of urine. Your dog should stop doing it.

Approximately till 5th month of life a puppy is not able to control its pooping so it is nonsense to punish a puppy younger than this for peeing at home. You should try to train it, often go out and praise him a lot. By doing this your puppy will understand it earlier. Surely avoid punishment 🙂

For puppy, this is natural behaviour, its changing teeth, it needs to bite. This behaviour should end by 6th month and you can do nothing with it but wait. You don´t have to preach your puppy for this behaviour. When you consider a pack of wolf, the little ones bite the older ones a play with each other. If your puppy bites into something, you can "foist" him a dog toy to bite into.

All you want to save from your puppies should be kept out of their reach 🙂

 A dog is able to learn new things regardless his age.

It may not be so fast learning older dog new things as it would be in the case of puppy, however, if you are patient it is possible to do so. Some older dogs love to train and some do not and want to live calmly. It depends on your lovely dog and his will to train.

No, you do not have to. Clicker is an aid which helps you to mark the order in the right moment. Because of this your dog understands faster what you want him to do and knows exactly what you have praised him for. Usually when you praise your dog verbally he starts doing something else before you even manage to do so. Then he does not know what he was praised for. Instead of clicker you can use a short expressive word which you usually do not use and mark the right moment the same way as with clicker.

If you have not found an answer to your question here you can ask us in Facebook group or right here in the course, however we react to your questions faster in Facebook group. 🙂