Obedience 101
Obedience 101 consists of the five basic behaviors that most pet owners would consider sufficient to qualify your foster pup as a "well-trained dog": Sit, Stay, Down, Come (recall), and loose-leash walking. If you can add Housebreaking and one or two cute Tricks to the dog's repertoire, congratulations! Your foster pup has graduated from canine finishing school and is well equipped to make her new family proud.
In my experience, it takes about four to six weeks for most dogs to learn the Obedience 101 curriculum and proof it to a level that allows them to perform the cues more-or-less reliably in new environments with new handlers. Generally I work through the list by teaching one behavior every few days, then continuing to refine and proof that behavior while teaching the next one.
I usually start with Sit, since it's the easiest behavior on the list to teach and it forms the basis of the Nothing in Life is Free protocol. You can take them in any order, though, depending on which comes most naturally to your foster dog and which seems most urgently needed.
Petfinder.com has a great set of short, easy training videos that explains how to teach several of these behaviors:
Kikopup, a wonderful trainer who has made many free instructional videos available on Youtube, has several helpful tutorials:
- Loose Leash Walking
- Kikopup's Loose Leash demo with untrained dogs
- [www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk4PPcE1CqY| Position training and advanced Stays]
While it's probable that the more difficult Stays are too much to ask of a foster dog in the limited time you'll have to work with her, it can't hurt to learn and practice the techniques.
