Training the Shih Tzu Trainer

If the title looks a bit confusing, it means you are ready to train your Shih Tzu with a friendly, yet professional touch. Before you start your task with her, it is better to understand certain basic steps and tricks, which will help ease your process and reduce the time involved. Before everything, you need to know about what sort of training, for which activities, and how.

Grooming and Cleaning

This is the first step. Try catching the newly brought-home puppy and grooming her! She will either resist or run away.

• Start with gentle brushing of her coat as you stroke her back and neck. This may take some time. Once she is used to your brushing, she will voluntarily want to get brushed at the schedule time.
• You could take some tips from the dog-breeder regarding cleaning. Focus on getting her used to your cleaning. Feed her with a blueberry or a piece of melon when she cooperates with your cleaning. This will slowly but naturally train her into regular cleaning tasks voluntarily.

House-breaking and Potty

You could start this exercise when she is 6 or 8 weeks old. Every time she shows the physical-urge to eliminate, you can bring her out of your home to a specific area and allow her to do so. Keep the strap at least 6-7 feet long. This will allow some freedom to her for choosing the appropriate location where she can eliminate comfortably.

• In the initial stages it may be difficult for you to detect her elimination-urges. Once you get used to it, it becomes very easy.
• It is better to adopt a friendly approach while training her. Remember, she can not only hear you, she can also observe your body-language, tone and level of friendliness while instructing and training her. Harshness or punishing nature can eventually make her repulsive and disobedient in nature.

Command-training

Initially, she will obey only rewarding commands. It could be a piece of tuna, her favorite fruit or even a gentle pat on her back or cuddle. Slowly this becomes a habitual process. Repetitive-actions can lead to quick and effortless conditioning. For this, you need to extend your own patience levels to the level at which you can bend down and reach her.

Conclusion

Once your Shih Tzu is comfortable with your training methods, she will automatically fall in line with your friendly commands voluntarily, saving your time and effort in the long run.