When your child helps raise your puppy, both your child and puppy learn how to be well-behaved around each other. This can include having your child help with hand-feeding, name recognition training, games like hide-and-seek, and body handling exercises. However, it’s important that you guide your child through these exercises; otherwise, their excitement can accidentally reinforce unwanted behaviors. Your child can encourage this by laughing when the puppy jumps on them, or playfully running after your puppy playfully nips at their ankles. In this blog, we will show you how to include children in puppy raising. Let’s start by first discussing hand feeding exercises.
Hand feeding
Having your child hand-feed your puppy is a great bonding activity because it encourages a positive association with your child. You can feed your puppy their meals or provide them with high-value treats.
Hand feeding exercises are especially useful for children who are shy around the puppy or who are too rough during play. This is because handfeeding teaches your puppy and child to be gentle around each other. While also giving your child a lesson on how much slobber and drool a puppy can make. Now, let’s move on to a training exercise your child can help with.
Name recognition
Your child can help teach your puppy their name through positive reinforcement. Have your child call out the puppy’s name and then give them a treat when they respond. Just make sure that you have all agreed on a name, or you may find that your puppy has started to respond to being called “Fish” instead of “Archie”. Now that your puppy has learned their name, you can start more advanced exercises such as Hide-and-seek.
Hide-and-seek
Did you know that you can teach your puppy to play hide-and-seek? Puppies and children can be fairly unsubtle, so you’ll quickly find out how skilled (or unskilled) your puppy is at finding your giggling child. Now that your puppy recognizes their name, you can follow these steps to play hide-and-seek:
- Have your child (or whoever wants to be found) call out their name. When your puppy finds them, give them a treat and praise.
- Avoid calling out their name too much, as it can discourage them from responding the first time. If they don’t respond to being called, try being closer to them or using a higher value treat as a reward.
Hide-and-seek is a fun way to practice recall with a puppy, which will be useful to keep your puppy from wandering off when distracted. Let’s now move on to body handling exercises, which can help reduce touch sensitivity behaviors.
Body handling exercises
Many children need to learn to be gentle with a puppy, including not pulling on their ears or stepping on their tail. You can teach them proper handling methods through body handling exercises. This will encourage your puppy to be comfortable with being handled. This can help your puppy feel comfortable during veterinary exams and grooming appointments.
To start this exercise, have your child pick up one of their paws and then give them a treat. Have them repeat this by picking up their ears, tail, touching their belly, neck, and other areas. If your puppy is sensitive about particular areas being touched, you can have an adult work on these areas until they are more comfortable. Within a few weeks, your puppy should be more comfortable with being handled and ready for your child to dress them up or paint their nails.
We are here to help
Do you have any questions about introducing a puppy to the home, training a puppy, or have any behavioral concerns? Beyond the Dog offers virtual training and Board and Train programs nationwide with our co-founders Dr; Kristyn Echterling-Savage and Sean Savage, along with personalized one-on-one training in Houston, Kansas City, Dallas, Tampa Bay, and Sarasota. For more informative articles, we have published puppy training blogs and dog training guides on our website.
For more informative articles, we have published puppy training blogs and dog-friendly guides on our website. You can contact our Pet Behavior Team for a free consultation.
