Hindsight is a wonderful thing!

We’re only human, and we all make decisions we wish we could go back on, especially when raising a puppy. It's easy to get overwhelmed with advice from all directions and not all of it is helpful (some of it is downright harmful).

While it’s not realistic to prevent every issue, there’s a lot you can do early on to make life easier for both you and your puppy. That way, you can spend more time enjoying the fun parts like playing, bonding and teaching cool tricks and less time trying to undo unwanted behaviours. The bonus? Good management strategies actually make your training more effective. It’s a win-win situation.

The patterns I see

My work mainly focuses on young puppies and adolescent dogs and I’ve noticed a clear pattern. Small issues during puppyhood can snowball into much bigger challenges during adolescence. By the time I’m called in to help adult dogs with ingrained behaviour problems, things have often become emotionally difficult for both the dog and their humans. When the problem has been repeating itself for many weeks or even months; it’s so much more difficult to unpick it all and reach a resolution.

Let me be clear: not all behaviour problems can be prevented. Genetics, early experiences and plain old bad luck can all play a part. Sometimes dogs have bad experiences that their owners had no control over. This article isn’t about those exceptional cases. It’s about the common, preventable ones I see every day, such as:

🐾 Stealing and learning to guard items
🐾 Avoiding having the harness put on (running away or growling)
🐾 Mouthing and grabbing which continues into adolescence andadulthood
🐾 Reactivity (usually driven by fear or frustration)
🐾 Intense lead pulling
🐾 Not coming back when called, and actively avoiding!
🐾 Overexcited and sometimes rude behaviour with other dogs
🐾 Growling or snapping during handling (by owners, vets or groomers)
🐾 Attention barking
🐾 Counter surfing (stealing food from surfaces)
🐾 Jumping up at visitors
🐾 Trouble settling down when the household relaxes
🐾 Chasing cats or other pets
🐾 Struggling with being left alone

Dogs are learning all the time

Here’s something I wish more people knew. Dogs are learning every moment they’re awake and this is especially prevalent for puppies, whose brains are like little sponges soaking up new information. Your puppy is simply going about their day and learning what’s fun and what isn’t. If they find something fun; they will do it again, this is often the stuff you don’t want them learning!

Ignoring a problem doesn’t make it go away. If a behaviour keeps happening, it’s being self-reinforced somehow, either by providing relief or enjoyment for your dog. You may find it frustrating but that doesn’t change the reason why it’s happening or help to change things.

By the time people reach out to me, they often say they hoped their dog would "grow out of it." But dogs usually grow into their behaviour and they get better at it.

My number one piece of advice? prevent the rehearsal

That doesn’t mean punishing your dog or constantly correcting them. It means changing the situation so the unwanted behaviour doesn’t keep happening in the first place. I’ll explain a common scenario:

Example: the sock thief

Let’s say your puppy keeps stealing socks from the laundry basket. To your puppy, this is great fun and completely normal behaviour; and not bad at all, it’s just not what you want them doing. Puppies naturally explore the world with their mouths. It’s a healthy, necessary part of their development. But if your response is to chase them down every time, you’re likely making this much worse for yourself in the long run. Actually by taking items away we can accidentally increase their value from your puppy’s perspective, it has now become a forbidden item, or an item that makes humans pay attention to them!

Over time, this can lead to issues like:

🐾 Resource guarding: growling or snapping to keep items (by snatching that sock away from them, they are simply learning that you take things from them, not that they shouldn’t have the sock in the first place)
🐾 Pica (the swallowing of non-food objects)
🐾 Attention-seeking (stealing things just to get a reaction or to elicit play)
🐾 Avoidance (learning how not to get caught, doing the sock stealing when nobody is looking, taking the sock somewhere to enjoy in secret)

🐾 Actively searching for socks to steal rather than just doing so in an opportunistic manner. This can also spread to other items

None of the above is your puppy being “naughty”. Puppies don’t have morals. They simply do what works to meet their own needs. They have no idea what you want them to do. They’re just learning from experience.

This is just one example of how a behaviour problem can be prevented from developing, and hopefully it explains my point so that you can apply it to other situations.

So how could this sock this problem have been prevented?

Management and Prevention: Puppy-Proofing

Think of puppy-proofing like toddler-proofing. We do not expect our human children to understand that the cleaning cupboard contains dangerous items, or that the oven is hot and we shouldn't expect our dogs to understand that either. Before your pup comes home, set up the environment to prevent access to things you don’t want them to have. That might mean using baby gates, playpens, stacking boxes, or keeping tempting items like shoes or remotes well out of reach.

Just as important, provide plenty of things your puppy can have. Chew toys, stuffed animals, squeaky toys, and safe natural chews. That way, they’ll naturally gravitate towards the items you want them to use, because the ones you don’t want them to have are unavailable.

You can also offer destructible items like cardboard boxes, toilet rolls or egg cartons (always supervised).Hide a few treats inside and let them have a great time foraging and ripping things up. It’s a great mental workout and channels their natural urge to shred and chew. The bonus is that your puppy will think you are brilliant for providing this activity. It helps with your bond, which in turn helps make your training easier. Another win!

Teaching Them What’s Theirs

It’s not enough to simply remove the off-limits stuff. Your puppy needs the opportunity to learn what the best things to chew and play with actually are.

Each time they choose one of their toys, celebrate it. Praise them. Engage with them. Let them know that chewing a toy gets your attention. If the only time you react is when they do something you don’t like, guess what they’ll keep doing?

Training is Easier When You’ve Managed the Environment.

Once you’ve put good management in place and your puppy’s needs are being met, training becomes much more effective, as they’re not repeating the unwanted behaviour all the time.

Teach them that good things happen when they give up items, using reward-based methods like swapping for a treat and introducing a fun "drop it" cue during toy play. (I teach both of these things in my Puppy School 6-week course!)

Leave  hem alone while they’re eating or enjoying a chew so they learn to trust that things won’t always be taken away. This builds confidence and trust in you, rather than creating conflict or avoidance.

This is just one example of how thoughtful management and prevention can shape a well-behaved, happy dog. You can apply these same principles to almost any situation, not just sock stealing.

It’s not about being perfect. It’s about giving your puppy the best possible chance to succeed, and that’s what puppy raising is all about.

Blog written by Claire Mcknespiey of Educating Paws

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