Taking on the responsibility of raising a couple of puppies can be a great (albeit complicated) adventure. It requires structure, patience, and consistency in your training plan to help each puppy become a well-balanced, independent, and stable dog.
Even if your puppies are siblings of the same litter, or you’ve adopted them at a young enough age (6-8 weeks), they all need structured, individualized attention throughout their training process. You need a mix of individual and group training sessions so that your puppies don’t get confused or fight over your attention.
Begin Teaching Your Puppy as soon as Possible.
Your puppies will begin forming good or bad habits based on their environment the day they arrive at their new home, so it’s important to ensure they are trained properly from the day you receive them. The first few weeks after bringing a puppy into your home can be some of the most important times to train them, as these formative weeks will establish the foundation of their training. Some of the primary training tasks that should begin during these early weeks include:
- Responding to their name,
- Coming when called by their name,
- Sitting quietly,
- Walking politely on a leash,
- Being able to be handled and groomed with ease.
Beginning training as soon as possible helps build your puppy’s confidence and teaches them that training can be a positive experience.
Train puppies individually before training them in a group
Individual training provides an ideal environment for siblings to grow together before being introduced into group settings. With the focus on only their sibling(s), the puppies, when finished with individual training, will have developed a strong sense of individuality.
Why You Should Train Your Puppies Individually
Training puppies individually will create:
- An individual focused interest for each owner, rather than sharing the bond with siblings
- The ability to develop confidence in yourself and rely less on your siblings
- Personal focus without distractions while learning to follow commands
- Establish a strong relationship between a puppy owner and their puppy
Training each puppy individually will create distinct relationships and bond with you, the puppy owner, and train your puppies individually. You will have the opportunity to evaluate your puppies individually and learn how best to train each puppy based on their unique learning styles. An individual puppy training session can provide tremendous benefits for every puppy.
Group Training When Each Puppy Gets Individual Group Training
After training each puppy with basic commands (sit, stay, lie down), it is now possible to incorporate group training sessions. These sessions will train them to respond to commands around distractions and prepare them to meet other dogs during walks or visits to the vet.
Choose Easy Exercises First
The easiest way to train your puppy in groups is to practice simple exercises that you have already taught them individually (sitting, lying, and staying) during their first few lessons. This ensures your puppies will understand the exercises during group sessions, and as their attention spans grow, the exercises can gradually increase in difficulty.
Start Training Name Recognition
One of the most important things to do when training multiple puppies is to teach them name recognition. It is essential that your pups know to pay attention to you when their name is called.
Create Individual Responses
To teach your puppies their names, you will need to call each of them when they are in different areas. This way, they will always have your attention, and you can offer them praise or a treat when they come to you. This will help them learn the skill of responding only to their name when called and ignoring the other names. This skill will also be valuable during group training sessions, as well as for families who have more than one pet.
Establish Consistent Rules
Training consistency is vital for all dogs, but especially so for multiple puppies. If there are frequent changes between training and if there is inconsistency in training between multiple family members, then it can create confusion for the puppy(s). As an example, if a puppy is allowed to jump on people sometimes and not at other times, the puppy will have difficulty determining what its owners want from it. By establishing clear, consistent training rules, all dogs and their owners can avoid frustration and allow puppies to learn more effectively.
Avoid Competing for Resources During Training
When training, there is the potential for puppies to develop competitive attitudes regarding toys, attention, and rewards. Puppies may compete for:
Resource Guarding: Some puppies will exhibit a protective nature when there are competing puppies present, over their toys, food, and other items used to reward them (e.g., training rewards).
Pushing and Disrupting: Generally, the more confining puppy(s) will push their way through or disrupt the other puppy(s) during training exercises.
Distractions: The puppy(s) may focus more on what their partner(s) are doing than on anything that the trainer may be saying to them.
Create Separate Training Stations
Separate areas for training mean puppies can concentrate more on training and less on distractions. Each puppy should have a place to practice commands without interference from another puppy. The individual areas encourage puppies to be independent as they learn patience and self-control, waiting their turn. Puppies learn over time to work closely together without getting overstimulated or distracted by each other.
Socialization Focus
Socialization is especially critical in the development of multiple puppies at once. Puppies that are together most of the time can become very dependent on each other for their socialization.
Encouraging Independent Experiences
Each puppy should be given the opportunity to:
- Make new friends
- Discover new locations
- Registers in a training course
- Be separated from their litter mates for brief periods of time
All of these experiences will contribute to increasing the puppies’ confidence levels and reducing the extreme dependency they have on each other. This helps puppies to become well-adjusted adult dogs.
Energy Level Management
Many puppies tend to be very active and have difficulty concentrating while training when they become hyperactive, excited, or full of energy. To help puppies before starting training, allow the puppy enough exercise and any needed mental stimulation to improve the puppy’s ability to concentrate.
As a way to decrease excess energy and to improve focus of the puppy before training, allow for supervised play, short walks, puzzles, exploring, etc., before training. However, it is also important not to overly tire a puppy immediately before training, as tired puppies have difficulty learning, too. Therefore, it is important to be able to balance the energy of your puppy with exhaustion so that both are present during the training sessions.
Patience When Teaching Some Puppies to Learn at Different Rates
Every puppy learns at a different rate and, therefore, may require different amounts of guidance until he learns a command. For instance, some puppies may learn a command after a few repetitions, whereas other puppies may take longer to learn a command. Placing unrealistic expectations on one or more puppies can create unnecessary frustration for both the owner and the puppies.
Instead of expecting puppies to compare with one another in how long it takes to learn a command, the owner should focus on the individual progress of each puppy. Individual small successes will help keep the owner and puppy motivated and develop a positive atmosphere for training.
Get the Whole Family Involved
When multiple family members are involved in the training of a puppy, it is important for everyone to communicate with one another and use the same commands, use the same type of rewards, and set the same expectations for the puppy, regardless of whose turn it is to train the puppy. All family members should have a clear understanding of how to communicate the expectations for the Puppy through a standardized method (a command).
Family training goal meetings keep everyone informed on the puppy’s progress and provide a starting point for training and working together towards a final goal. The result of a combination will create a more positive and faster method of training multiple puppies simultaneously when everyone in the same household uses the same methods of training.
Conclusions
To successfully train multiple puppies at the same time, an owner must take into account planning, patience, and consistency. The best results from training multiple puppies simultaneously will occur when training individually, and working together will produce a well-rounded behaviour set for the puppies when they are older and a well-adjusted dog.
Each dog needs to spend time training on their own to experience new environments and to build their own confidence. At the same time, by training and working in a group, the puppies learn to be focused and learn social behaviours. Set clear rules, provide short methods of training for each puppy, and provide balanced attention to each puppy to be sure that they will become well-adjusted adult dogs.