What commands to teach a puppy?

[Mamabear12]

Our beautiful puppy is now almost 15 weeks old. We had her since 8 weeks and I can not believe how fast she has grown! She is very smart and easy going dog. We have so far taught her the following commands: pee when we are outside, come, sit, down. The next one I plan to teach is drop (I suspect this will be a difficult one!). She has learned sit and down very easily, within me telling her 3 to 4 times. What other important commands should be taught? Also, what age do they start getting to old to learn new commands?

I don’t teach leave it, I instead work on the idea that if I don’t explicitly give them something it isn’t for them. It saves me panicking that they might pick something dangerous up when I’m not watching.

I like a place command, ie go lie on the mat. It means when I’m cooking I know where the dogs are and that it isn’t immediately behind me when I’m holding a hot pan/full plate/whatever.

Whatever I teach I then work on three d’s (distance, duration, distraction) gradually increasing all three.

I’d also think about socialisation. Expose pup to everything you can think of.

See I like leave because it works for the more ambiguous things... I mean the cat sometimes does like being licked, but she’s a cat, so she doesn’t tell him whether she’s up for it or not in way he understands, that onion does indeed look like a ball and I had no objection to him being near the chiminea while I got ash out of it, I just didn’t need his head inside it, lol.

I use a leave command. It works for loads of different things that a recall command wouldn't.

When we're ambling along with her on the lead and she's sniffing stuff, leave it works for things like cat poo and inappropriate bits of food that people have dropped. I try to watch everything she sniffs but it's not always possible to know what's she got her nose into. If I see her going for a pick up I can say leave it and she's won't pick it up.

As pp said it's no good recalling her when she's walking next to me.

I've also used 'leave it' for a cat issue that developed a while ago. Now we can walk past most cats without any impolite behaviour - we're still perfecting it - but again as she's walking on the lead when this behaviour occurred leave it is the only way to deal with it.

We use wait a lot. It's very useful when you open a door, or more importantly the boot of the car.

Yeah, wait is another one I use. I tend to use that when we're getting out the car or before going into the house when I need to wipe her paws.

Actually we have lots of different instructions that she understands. She knows to offer each paw when told for them to be wiped and then to turn round so I can get to her back paws.

As she gets older - she's 7 years old now - I find our 'commands' are no longer that, they are more requests from me to do something and we sort of work as a team.

Puppies are cute and lovely, but a dog you've trained that you've got to know and understand, that understands and knows you is a joy to be around and a wonderful companion.