Mylo's Favorites + Puppy Training Tips

Hi guys! I’m so excited to be sharing a little about our puppy training journey with Mylo! Sounds like a lot of y’all are thinking about getting a pup or just brought home a pup around the same time as us because this blog post has been HIGHLY requested!

Cort and I had been wanting a dog for a little while. Like many others, when quarantine hit in the spring of 2020, we felt that the extra time at home was the perfect opportunity to devote a lot of time to a puppy. After many months of searching and waiting, we took Mylo home in September! We knew going into it that taking care of a puppy would be a ton of work, but it definitely was even more than we anticipated… totally worth it though! Being a pup parent is seriously the best and has brought us so much happiness and laughter. I can’t imagine life without Mylo - he’s truly part of our family. That said, the first couple months are TOUGH. It took a lot of time, research, patience, consistency and discipline up front, but now at almost 7 months old, he is a happy, sweet, friendly, and (mostly) obedient puppy! Since lots of you have asked, I wanted to share a little bit on how we went about training Mylo.

Crating

Cort and I decided that we wanted to crate-train Mylo from day one. With the advice of our trainer, we purchased a size-adjustable metal crate as well as a thin, washable dog bed to go inside of it. The crate has an adjustable divider that limits the space within the crate. We learned that puppies only need enough space to stand up and turn-around in their crate, as additional space can lead to accidents. Over time, we would move back the divider to match his growth, and ultimately took it out once he was fully potty trained. This was tough for us at first, as it felt like we were confining Mylo into a small space, but the key was to make sure that he viewed his crate as a “safe place” that wasn’t associated with punishment. The size of the space doesn’t matter as much as making sure it feels safe. 

Since we wanted to begin crate training on day one, we made sure to get Mylo familiar with his crate as soon as we brought him home. We kept the door open and let him explore the crate, going in and out. We would also put some of his food in the crate as well as various toys to get him to go in on his own. We did make the mistake at first of putting his crate in the wrong place. We live in a townhome, and had initially put his crate on the bottom floor...thinking it was closest to our front door. However, after a few nights of crying and Mylo never going into his crate on his own, we realized that moving his crate into our middle floor (where we spend the most time in the day and he was most familiar) made him feel much more comfortable. 

Once Mylo was comfortable with going into his crate, we started training him on staying in his crate until he was given permission to leave (even with the door open). Based on advice from our trainer, this was an early way for us to establish boundaries and prevent him from “darting”. To do this, we would get him into his crate and then shut his crate door behind him without latching it. We would open it, and when he started to come out, we would quickly shut it on him (again without latching). We’d repeat this process several times until ultimately we opened the crate door and he would stay put and look at us for direction. At that time we used the command “okay!” and he would come out (with lots of praise from us)! It was shocking how quickly he caught on to this. I’d say it took us a week or two for him, even as a puppy, to fully master this. 

As I’m sure all puppy owners can relate, the first few nights are difficult. Mylo cried every time we put him in his crate for about a week. Cort and I had to tell each other not to give in and go get him when he cried, as much as we wanted to!  We would let him out about every 3 hours throughout the night for the first week (talk about exhausting). We would extend this by a couple hours every night until he could make it 7-8 hours with no accidents! After a few weeks of tough love, Mylo had no problem going to his crate on command and no longer cried. Even at the end of the night he would just go in on his own and fall asleep. He loves his crate now!

We decided to keep Mylo in his crate overnight and whenever we left the house until about 6 months. At that point, we tried going on a few short trips out (coffee runs, etc.) while not locking him up. We have an indoor camera, so we could watch him from afar in case he did anything while we were out. Mylo didn’t have any accidents and wasn’t chewing anything while we were out or overnight, so we have continued to not lock him up at night. If his behavior changes, we may go back to putting him in his crate, but fingers crossed he continues his good behavior!

We are so glad that we started crate-training right away, and that we stayed firm in our boundaries. It definitely paid off in the end!

Potty Training

Potty training was probably our least favorite part of the puppy phase. So many accidents! We knew it was to be expected, but I don’t think we realized how vigilant we had to be all the time!

Prior to picking up Mylo, a friend of ours gave us great advice to roll up and store all of our rugs and hide away anything on the floor that could be damaged by a bathroom accident. We are so glad we did...as Mylo had many accidents in the first few weeks (mainly pee). 

When we picked up Mylo from the breeder, we made sure to let him go to the bathroom before we got in the car. Our breeder was a couple of hours away, so we stopped halfway home to let him go to the bathroom. We did this again when we got home before taking him inside. It took a few minutes of walking around, but it definitely helped him learn early that we wanted him to go to the bathroom outside. 

Our trainer told us that puppies can only hold their bladders during the day for as many hours as they are months old (ex. 3 month old puppy can last 3 hours). We also learned that it’s better to take them out more often than you think they need! Basically if you think to yourself, “should I take my dog out?”, you probably should. So we were constantly taking Mylo outside… side note, SO glad we got Mylo when it was warm out so this process wasn’t miserable. I’m writing this in February and so glad our dog doesn’t need to go outside every couple hours now ;)  We also learned to pick up on Mylo’s “signs” that he needs to go to the bathroom (sniffing, going into a corner, etc). When Mylo did have an accident inside, we would quickly say “NO!” in a loud enough voice that he would look at us. Not screaming, but just enough to get his attention. Then immediately pick him up and take him outside, even if he already finished going to the bathroom. We were told to never yell his name or never scold him harshly for going to the bathroom inside, as we didn’t want him to think it was bad to go potty in general, but we always took him out right after an accident to train him that it was good to go outside. We also installed a bell next to our front door, and taught him to ring it if he had to go to the bathroom. Early on, when going outside we would take his paw and ring the bell for him...but eventually he caught on and would ring it on his own.

It took lots of consistent watching, trips outside (during the day and night), and cleaning supplies...but eventually Mylo was fully potty trained by about 5 months old. He has been fantastic ever since!

Chewing + Biting

Although we were told that most puppies chew and nip early on as they are teething, it seemed like Mylo REALLY liked to nip. Though never malicious or harmful, Mylo seemed to love biting on our hands, my hair and clothes as a way to play and say hello. Early on it was super cute, but we knew that if we allowed it from the start it would be difficult to correct down the road. 

To work on this, we never let Mylo chew on our hands, fingers, clothes, or any piece of furniture. We would quickly say “No!” and sometimes couple it with softly holding his mouth shut for split second...to let him know this wasn’t behavior we wanted. We also made sure to give him LOTS of toys and were constantly buying new toys to give him various textures and keep his interest. When he would bite or nip, we would try to immediately give him a toy instead to chew on. Mylo picked up on this after a month or two with Cort and me, but the hardest part was training him on this around guests. Many of our friends and family would come over to meet Mylo as a puppy and would play with him on the ground, where he would start to chew on their clothes and hands. Often times, these people wouldn’t mind the biting, thinking it was cute and playful. Regardless, we tried asking our friends to not let him bite on them. This was difficult, but well worth it in the end! Same thing goes for Mylo chewing on shoes, blankets, furniture, etc. We would always try to catch him in the act and say “NO!” to get his attention, and then give him a toy as a replacement to chew on. Thankfully, he’s never destroyed anything important… the most damage he’s done was chewing up a wicker basket. I can handle that ;)

Introducing to People

As just mentioned, introducing Mylo to our friends and family was so much fun...but probably the most challenging part of training. Puppies get so excited meeting new people, and feed off of the excitement that these new people have when meeting them. Mylo loved to jump on people, bite on their hands, and be quite hyper. He would sometimes get so excited that he would pee when meeting someone new. Though natural, we tried working on this right away. When someone was coming over to meet Mylo, we would ask them ahead of time to ignore him when they first arrived...so that Mylo could first calm down and learn to not associate new people with overwhelming excitement. After a few minutes, Mylo would calm down and we would let our friends/family say hello. Again, this is super hard...especially with a cute new puppy! But it made future interactions with people, especially people who don’t like dogs as much, a whole lot easier.

Introducing to Other Dogs

We are lucky that Mylo LOVES other dogs. Whenever we are on a walk and another dog comes by, he always wants to say hello. Our trainer encouraged us that early socialization is extremely important, but also needs to be handled delicately for a few reasons. First, for health purposes, Mylo wasn’t done with his puppy vaccinations until about 6 months old...so any dog introductions had to be around dogs that were fully vaccinated. Second, for safety and training purposes, we only introduced Mylo to dogs who were a (relatively) similar size and were decently well behaved. We were advised not to introduce Mylo early on to dogs with bad habits (hyper, jumping, biting, rough playing) so that he didn’t associate that as normal social behavior. To do this, we tried setting a few early (and brief) play dates with some of our friends’ dogs that we knew were well trained, vaccinated, and around the same size. Over time, we became more lax on introductions...but were very careful and intentional early on.

These are the main areas where we had to train Mylo and I can say that consistency EARLY on is totally worth it. It’s annoying and a lot of hard work, but I’d rather be more strict at the beginning and instill good habits instead of backtracking down the road and try to retrain bad habits. Basically anything that you want to train your dog on, just tell yourself “better now than later” and it’ll get easier as it goes on. I also want to say that for about a month before getting our pup, I listened to Playtime Paws, Your New Puppy Podcast. The episodes are short and I just listened as I would get ready in the morning and I learned SO much! She covers all of these topics in more depth. We also Hired Jamie from Sit Spot Stay for a few training sessions. We did 1 FaceTime call before bringing our dog home and then 2 in-person training sessions once we brought Mylo home! It was super helpful to ask her how to handle accidents, crate training, biting, etc! Hope this was helpful! I’ll link up all of our puppy must-haves below!

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