I devote a lot of time to a new pup as I found that reliable obedience starts with consistent early lessons. I do my best to never create a situation where the pup will be wrong for the first month or so of living here. This means that we go outside a lot for potty breaks, pup is confined to the room I am in so I can pick it up and take it outside if it starts to potty the house. Housebreaking here is usually me standing around outside telling pup to 'Park' until it pees, then we have a big praise party like he just won the national. If pup pees in the house, I'm there to catch the act, say 'Whops!' and out we go to finish the pee and have another praise party. If pup isn't being supervised and I find a mess in the house, I promptly roll up a newspaper and beat myself on the head for not watching the pup! That's about it for the first week, just build trust and convince baby that I walk on water. The room that we're confined to is usually puppy proofed with lots of toys and chewies around. If pup finds something its not to chew on (like a futon frame or wall molding..) I tell them in a calm voice, 'not yours' and hand them a chewy. Sometimes it takes me a few weeks to name a pup, so until then, all pups are named 'come' since they have to know that anyway. I always have a lot of treats handy that can be broken into micro pieces. Thompson's cheeze treats are good because you can break the things into really tiny pieces and not spoil an appetite during the training process. Anytime a get the pup's attention during the first week or so, there's a treat. During the second or third week (depending on the maturity of the pup) I start short recall work with lots of praise. During this time, I *never* scold a pup when it doesn't come, I just get into its line of sight and encourage it to come to me. Soon enough I have very enthusiastic recalls complete with a set of bruises where little ACD monsters have thrown themselves into me with enthusiastic greeting. Around 3 or 4 weeks of being here, we start really enforcing the door concept. Usually up to this point, pup is carried out the door so that they are never allowed to just go blasting out one. Door starts by putting pup in a sit position while holding onto collar, saying 'stay', opening the door, staying for a second, then 'ok'. Pup really doesnt know what's up with this at this point, but gets the picture soon enough. Trust and consistency are the key to this approach working. I found that the 8 - 12 week period is ideal for training the basics because they're so like little sponges during this time. I don't usually take baby off the property until they've had all the shots necessary including an additional Parvo shot at 20 weeks. During the first 5 months of their life, the learn a lot of things depending on the learning curve of the particular pup, I've had solid stays (sit, down and stand), instant recalls, nice retrieves, occasionally an out of sight stay, gait, etc on many pups by this time. If a pup doesn't turn out to be good enough to stay for the show ring, I find it pretty easy to place a young adult animal that has so many house manners. This also helps me run all my ACDs in a pack because they know that I make rules and rules must be followed. In the past, I've competed in obedience with my dogs and have always been in the 190s. Haven't quite hit that 200 mark yet, but I hope to one day. I've had lots of judges compliment me on the performance of my dogs and I attribute their ability to early training. I've had to take a break from the obedience ring in the last few years so I could finish my degree, but in 3 more weeks, that's accomplished and I'm already working one of my girls in utility and 2 in novice exercises, so hopefully I'll have dogs ready to go by the Detroit Kennel Club shows in March! I cant wait...conformation is ok, but I miss the obedience rings a lot.

FWIW, I can say that the door training works pretty well, when we first bought this house, the place was in need of some repair. One day, I came home to find that the side door had blown wide open. I was terrified to think that the house dogs had decided to take the opportunity to go on walkabout, but when I came up the stairs, there were 2 ACDs and an Alaskan Malamute happily waiting for me sticking their heads out the door, but no more of themselves until I said 'ok'. You can bet we had a big huge praise party that time!!

Julie Bender
Keltoi Australian Cattle Dogs