What Age Should You Start Training a Puppy?

Start the day you bring him home, which is usually eight weeks old. The old advice to wait until six months came from an era of heavy handed methods that genuinely were not appropriate for a baby dog. Modern training is not, and eight to sixteen weeks is the most valuable learning window your dog will ever have.

Waiting until six months means arriving after the socialization window has closed and after four months of habits have formed. You are not starting fresh at six months. You are starting behind.

8 to 10 weeks: name, potty, crate, handling

Sessions are two to four minutes, four or five times a day. That is your dog's actual attention span and pushing past it produces nothing.

Priorities in order:

Name response. Say his name once, and when he looks, mark and pay. Thirty reps a day. This is the foundation of every recall you will ever build.

Potty training. Out every 45 to 60 minutes while awake, plus immediately after waking, eating, and playing. Same door, same spot, pay within two seconds of finishing. Not after coming back inside.

Crate comfort. Feed every meal in the crate with the door open for the first three days. Then close the door for the meal and open it after. Build to short naps.

Handling. Touch paws, ears, mouth, tail, collar. One second, feed, release. Twenty reps a day. Ten minutes a week here saves you years of grooming and vet drama.

Bite inhibition. Puppies bite. When teeth get sharp, redirect to a toy. If it escalates, calmly leave the area for 20 seconds. Do not yelp dramatically, it excites many puppies.

Do not worry about sit and down yet. They are easy and they can wait. The four things above are time sensitive.

8 to 16 weeks: the socialization window, and it does not come back

This is the highest priority item on this entire page. Between roughly three and sixteen weeks, your puppy's brain is unusually open to accepting new things as normal. After that window closes, novelty gets processed with more suspicion.

What you do here shapes the next decade.

Quality over quantity. One calm, positive exposure beats five overwhelming ones. A puppy who is scared at a busy farmers market is not being socialized, he is being sensitized.

Aim for variety. Surfaces like grass, gravel, metal grates, wet tile, stairs. Sounds like traffic, vacuums, thunderstorm recordings, sirens. People wearing hats, sunglasses, high vis vests, uniforms, using canes and wheelchairs. Men with beards and deep voices, which is a documented gap in many dogs. Children of different ages, from a distance first.

Watch the body language, not the checklist. Loose body, willing to eat, willing to move toward the thing on his own. If he is frozen, hiding, or refusing food, you are too close. Increase distance.

Vaccination reality. Talk to your vet. The general approach most veterinary behaviorists endorse is to socialize carefully while avoiding high risk areas like dog parks and places with unknown dog traffic. Carry him, use a car, use friends' healthy vaccinated dogs and clean private yards. The risk of a poorly socialized adult dog is, statistically, a much larger threat to a dog's life than parvo, because behavior problems are a leading reason dogs are surrendered.

10 to 16 weeks: add obedience

Sessions go to five minutes, three times a day.

Sit, down, and a hand target. Easy wins, and hand targeting becomes your emergency recall and your handling tool.

Recall on a long line. Fifteen foot line in the yard. Twenty reps a day, always paid, never used to end fun.

Leash introduction. Indoors first. Let him drag it. Then reward being at your side. Do not go for walks yet in the traditional sense.

Place or settle. Thirty seconds building to two minutes.

Alone time. Ten minutes a day where he is confined and you are out of sight. This is preventive separation anxiety work and it is far easier now than later.

4 to 6 months: proofing and teething

Sessions to 10 minutes, two or three times a day.

Teething runs roughly 16 to 28 weeks. Expect chewing to spike. Rotate six to eight chew options, freeze some of them, and puppy proof rather than trying to supervise perfectly.

Start generalizing everything to new environments. The obedience he has works in the kitchen and nowhere else, and that gap needs 20 to 30 sessions in different places to close.

Continue socialization. The critical window closes, but exposure still matters, and dogs who stop going places at 16 weeks often narrow again by a year.

6 to 14 months: expect the regression

Around seven to ten months your beautifully trained puppy will appear to forget everything. Recall gets unreliable, he becomes selectively deaf, and he tests rules he has followed for months.

This is normal adolescence. It is hormonal and neurological. The owners who keep training through it get a great adult dog. The owners who conclude that training failed and quit end up with the dog they were afraid of.

Do not stop. Go back to the long line, raise your reinforcement rate, and hold the standard.

What to do first, today

If your puppy came home this week: name response, potty schedule, crate feeding, and handling. Everything else can wait a week.

My free First 7 Days blueprint lays out the exact first week schedule, hour by hour, including the potty timing and crate introduction. Download the First 7 Days blueprint.

Ready to train your dog?

Every drill in this article comes from the WorldWide K9 Academy course library. If you want the full step by step system, start with the $5 intro course.