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INTRODUCTION

Puppies! We all love them, but along with those cute faces and wiggly tails comes a whole host of challenges that make raising a puppy as overwhelming as it is joyful. With so much available but conflicting information out there, it can be very hard for pet parents to know what advice to follow. Where should I get my puppy from? How will I get him to sleep through the night? How long does it take to toilet train my puppy? What is the difference between puppy nipping and biting? How can I successfully introduce a new pup to my kids?

I answer these questions and many more throughout this book, but I also focus on something that is just as important. I call it the how and the why. Understanding how your puppy experiences the world and why she behaves in a certain way will help you raise her correctly. So while this book is a practical support system and a goto source of information when you are up in the middle of the night wondering how to get your whining puppy to go to sleep or when you are on your knees cleaning up the latest accident, it also helps you understand just how incredible your puppy is. Yes, raising a puppy is challenging, but these challenges are worth it when you hold that bundle of energy in your arms and feel such love that your heart might explode. The Ultimate Guide to Raising a Puppy is with you every step of the way.

My Story

I have a passion for dogs and have always been fascinated by their behavior. As a member of an enormous international dog-loving club, I live with and celebrate these incredible animals every day. I am constantly amazed by the fact that dogs are the most successful domestic species on the planet and have successfully evolved with humans over thousands of years. This is an incredible achievement on both sides. Humans have adapted to having dogs in their lives, and we have honed the skills of these effective predators in many different ways. But while we congratulate ourselves for making such a beneficial alliance, we also need to respect the journey made by the dog, which is nothing short of remarkable. Dogs have gone from hunting and fending for themselves to sharing our beds and eating our food. They don’t speak our language or understand most of our rules, but they still manage to adapt to our complicated lives. Humans are not easy to live with, but dogs, for the most part, successfully negotiate the challenges we give them.

I have been a dog trainer and behavior consultant for twenty years, starting out in some of what I still believe are the toughest environments for dogs to live in—the cities of London and New York. Relocating to the United States from the UK was a big leap for me in many respects, but the challenges I faced training puppies and adult dogs in a city that only allows dogs off leash in cramped dog runs or in Central Park before 9 a.m. meant that I worked with dogs that not only were incredibly frustrated and reactive, but had developed a whole host of anxieties exacerbated by city living: noise phobias, space issues, separation distress, aggressive behavior toward people and other dogs, touch sensitivities, destructive chewing, and incessant barking, to name but a few.

But for all its faults, Manhattan can also be the best place to have a dog. The city might be an overwhelming assault on all the senses, but it’s a delicious smorgasbord of ever-changing smells that provide countless hours of wonder for nose-driven dogs. Teaching dogs to focus on streets crowded with people, sirens and horns blaring every few minutes, and a myriad of distracting smells from garbage, human waste, and city rats, taught me to be very patient and provided ample opportunity to work with many different and complex canine behavior issues in an unforgiving environment.

I loved the challenge of working with my canine and human clients in the city, but because of the difficult environment we all lived in, I focused a lot of my time on teaching methods that would prevent behavior problems from occurring in the first place. Techniques designed to instill coping skills and therefore confidence in adults could also be used to great effectiveness with puppies. New Yorkers don’t worry about the size of their living spaces, and Great Danes live as comfortably in one-bedroom apartments as pugs and Yorkshire terriers. These dogs benefit from a lot more attention, it seems, than dogs in the suburbs, because at a minimum, their human caregivers have to take them outside to toilet three to four times a day. It was easy for my puppy clients to become housetrained quickly with well-crafted schedules and diligent care. These puppies didn’t seem to mind the hustle and bustle of a busy city and enjoyed the constant attention received from inquisitive dogs and passersby. The city itself seemed to offer the perfect stress inoculation, with daily exposure that naturally taught the pups to cope well in social situations. Raising a puppy in New York City was not as difficult as I had first feared.

In late 2004, I created a TV show called It’s Me or the Dog that became very popular around the world and took over my life for eight seasons, filmed over ten years. Because of the success of the show and the subsequent platform it provided, I was able to get the message out about a more humane way of teaching puppies and dogs of all breeds, drives, and with all kinds of behavior problems.

Then a chance meeting with an experienced K9 handler from the Gwinnett County Sheriff’s K9 unit in Georgia led me into the world of police K9. I had already worked with accelerant detection canines, or arson dogs, for the State Farm Arson Dog program but wanted to understand more about the lives of police dogs and their handlers. Having spent a few months attending training seminars and reading all I could about the subject, I started developing a successful web series called Guardians of the Night. The show was initially conceived to explore the state of police dog training in the United States, but it turned into much more. To understand the experience of handlers and their dogs, I had to experience it for myself, and the five years of being immersed in the daily lives of these brave officers and their dogs gave me a new perspective and appreciation for the work they do.

I still work with police and other working dogs, following their growth from lanky adolescents to courageous adults, and my experience in the working and companion dog world has proven to me that there is no difference in the way a working dog or a pet dog can and should be taught. They both have the same desires, they learn in the same way and have the same need to feel safe and secure. Whatever role your puppy fulfills in your life, never forget that you are a team and the learning is the same. Different jobs obviously require different skills, but most dogs have bionic noses whether we hone their sniffy skills to detect the odor of narcotics or to play scent games at home. Puppy raising follows similar guidelines for all dogs in whatever roles they eventually serve.

I love working with puppies. These little bundles of energy are blank slates that are eager to lap up and experience anything they can. Their vitality and energy for life fills me with hope and happiness, and I consider it a privilege to help guide pups and their people through the first part of life because early guidance determines a puppy’s ultimate success.