Training Without Obedience Drills For Puppies

For a long time we have had the expectation to attend puppy school with our fresh, new, 8 week old puppy, and follow the standard sit, down, come and stay. It works for a little while and then all of a sudden, even by the time our puppies are turning 4-5 months of age sometimes, we can see all of our hard work begin to fall apart. It's not that your puppy doesn't understand what is being taught, they are questioning why it should be of value to them over other things in their environment. Surprisingly, what I don't hear being mentioned enough to new dog owners until they are calling in trainers for their unruly teens, is the magic word, ENGAGEMENT. Puppyhood is about establishing a bond with their new family unit (you) and adolescence, much like ours, is about testing the boundaries and constraints of the world their family unit has introduced to them. If we focus only on sterile obedience drills without building in any value or meaning to these drills to our dogs, once our puppies begin to mature, they rather rightfully question why they should be doing it at all. I have a young Belgian Malinois. Of course they come with a reputation that doesn't require much explanation, but despite his intelligence and willingness to learn, puppyhood hasn't been a time where I have worried about how well my dog understands the word SIT. Instead, I have been placing heavy focus on play, play techniques, and making the movements of our obedience drills feel natural and familiar to him by LURING these behaviours in all different kinds of environments. Regardless of where I am, whether dogs are barking at him or people are calling his name to take his attention away from me, the months we have spent building engagement has gotten my dear Mal to the point where he chooses me over competing stimuli in his environment. Why? Because the outside world isn't a great mystery to him. Focusing on socialisation, I have taken him to as many different places as I can think of and encouraged him to explore. I have put limited parameters on his exploration while he is young and made recall a fun game stocked with high value rewards that he seeks out the opportunity to play the recall game with me. (This is quite literally, running a distance, turning around and staring at me in the hopes I will yell "COME!") Now as my malinois reaches adolescence, I am able to begin to place labels on the different movements we had been luring, as it is easier for my puppy to win the game by only having to focus on a new word association, rather than the movement itself on top of that. I am able to begin layering obedience drills into games already of value to my dog so I can in turn, make his obedience drills fun, and have my dog see a level of value and purpose in these drills for him too. I have spent puppyhood building the biggest reserve I can for my dog's focus, engagement and value in me as a handler. By making my reserve as big as possible, I take less from his reserves when I ask for engagement in distracting environments, compared to the puppy who was taught obedience drills without meaning and has been on dry, unexciting walks around the block without the freedom to investigate in ways that make the most sense to dogs. Things can be taught simultaneously, and that is what I have done here, but if I was to focus solely on one skill during my puppy's first ten months of life, it would be that magic word, ENGAGEMENT.