Aside from teaching the pup it's name and house training, probably the first thing that you will want to teach the pup is the sit.
Sounds simple, you give the command, (and / or hand signal) puppy looks @ you lovingly and places bum on floor in a dignified, but elegant manner, in a near instantaneous demonstration of the harmony between man and beast.
In reality, you, in your eagerness to get the pup to sit, give 3 or 4 commands (the pup's name is a command as well) and at this point the kids also probably chime in as well.
"Harvey, sit down, Harvey, sit down, good boy"
The pup looks confused, circles around a bit, pees in the corner, licks it's bits and if you are very lucky and the owner of a Cocker, hovers; it's bum about 3 inches off the floor! Dog looks pleased with itself (I'm ready to be made up Dad), owner looks frustrated or embarrassed, depending if you have an audience or not!
What's gone wrong? Dog training is not difficult. There are plenty of people who will tell you that it is, and charge you a great deal of money for it, but like anything it's easier if you are in the know. It also helps if you can think like a dog - see things from the dog’s perspective.
Here is my tip of the day: ONE MASTER, ONE COMMAND
A dog can only have one master. There is only one alpha dog in a pack; and until a younger, stronger dog bests it, that's the way it is going to be. A dog cannot work effectively for you and your partner. You will command in a slightly different way to each other and that is confusing for the dog. Likewise you cannot take it in turns to be the pack leader. In the dog's eye's, you each have a different place in the hierarchy of the family pack. So if you want an effective working dog, one boss and one boss only.
Dogs do not understand complex sentences! The most intelligent mutt on the planet probably has a vocabulary of understanding of approximately 30 separate command words. The guys that we deal with are likely to have a vocab of less than 20. So no matter how much you think your dog understands you when you talk to it; IT DOESN'T! It is responding to a complex mixture of emotional perception, body language, eye contact and the one command word that it understands out of the sentence;
"Now Harvey be a good boy and sit down please and mummy will give you a nice treat"
What the dog hopefully hears is "sit" the rest is just verbal redundancy. The more words you use, the less likely the dog is going to hear the one word it understands! Everything just gets lost in the noise.
If you have more than one dog, you will have to get the attention of the particular dog whom you are commanding. The easiest way to do this is to say its name, followed by the single word command;
"Harvey. Sit."
If you have only one dog, "sit" will do very well indeed.
Let me give you an example of how human speech patterns can be the downfall of a dog. A couple of years ago, I was part of a syndicate on a local shoot. This was what is known as a "walk one, stand one" where two teams of guns take turns to beat and shoot for each other. In addition, the beating line is normally supplemented by local ner-do-wells masquerading as beaters (this is normally me by the way!). The team that are shooting rely on the good will of the team that are beating to do an effective job, which will then be repaid on the next drive when the former shooters beat for the former beaters (confused??). What normally happens is everyone wants to shoot, nobody really wants to beat because that's the hard part, so the beating is rushed and the quality of the shooting is crap. Oh well at least it's cheap shooting.
On this particular shoot, there was a huge black lab called Jonah, who was handled by a father and son team. You couldn't have made a good one out of both of them put together. Talk about thick - thank god they didn't shoot! This poor dog was the laughing stock of the shoot. On a local shoot around here, you need a pretty thick skin, as the banter flies thick and fast, and as they say, if you can't take it, you shouldn't give it. Jonah was considered to be the most useless dog on the shoot. What he did retrieve, he mostly ate on the way back, and he was more interested in sex (not necessarily with other dogs) than the task in hand. Looking at this dog from an impartial training perspective, it was easy to see why Jonah was so useless; it wasn't Jonah, it was Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dummer, who were the downfall of the dog. No sooner had Jonah been cast off in the beating line, one of the idiots would call him back and cast him off in the other direction. By the time he had got 20 yards out, the other partner in crime would pull him back and send him off again in the opposite direction.
All you could hear was "Get on Jonah, Come back Jonah, Get on Jonah!" The poor bugger literally didn't know if he was coming or going. Everyone on that shoot thought that Jonah was the worst dog they had ever seen. He wasn't - he may have been the most confused dog we had ever seen, but he was being pole-axed by his incompetent and stupid handlers @ every turn. Needless to say the two "handlers" were thrown off the shoot, along with poor old Jonah, never to be seen again, but not before the younger partner in crime had been dragged off a fence by the dog, in an area of the shoot he was specifically told he could not go, catching his wedding tackle on a couple of strands of barbed wire in the process. Rarely have I heard someone scream that much. Cue ambulance! Some would say.................. revenge of Jonah.
Command once, let the dog do his thing, correct if you need to. Confusing and contradictory commands, lead to a confused & contradictory dog.
I suppose I also should say something about naming your pup, if you are going to command by name. In general, pups names should be short, ideally a maximum of two syllables. Names should not sound similar to commands that you are potentially going to use later on. Also, unless you take a delight in being embarrassed in public, names should be something that you are comfortable with. There seems to be a trend @ the moment for giving dogs human names; in the end it's whatever you are happy with, but calling a dog "Dave" seems a bit strange to me. Once you have decided on a name - stick with it. If possible tell the breeder as soon as you can, so they can start using the pup's name. If at all possible, don't give the pup a secondary "pet name" - although, it's almost impossible if you have kids. My chocolate bitch Ripley is Rips, Rippers and Rippy-dip (!!!!!) to various members of my family. However, she does also answer to the universal dog name "You brown (insert your dog's colour here) B*******D!"
OK enough of ramblings, back to getting the pup to sit. As I said this is probably the first real bit of training that you will do with the pup. Remember, keep it fun. You are aiming for a positive association between your action (verbal or hand) and the dogs' reaction.
Firstly decide what voice command you are going to use. Traditionally in shooting circles, "Sit" for labradors and "Hup" for spaniels, all of which is a bit up it's own backside in my opinion, however, if you are a stickler for tradition "Hup" it is. Whilst there are many theories as to the origins of the using Hup as a sit command, the most likely comes from the time before driven or battue shooting had been invented. A group of posh blokes, with spaniels and muzzle loading shotguns, walked up a piece of rough cover, the spaniels flushed the birds, guns were discharged and the process repeated. I don't know if you have every fired a muzzle loader, but it takes about a minute to reload it, so the line had to be halted, whilst the previous shooter reloaded. "Hold up" was the call to hold the line, which was shortened to Hup. As the dogs needed to sit whilst reloading took place, Hup was used as a verbal sit command.
You may also want to combine a voice command with a hand signal. I use this, as it reinforces the command, and there are some circumstances where you need the dog to sit, but can't bellow @ the top of your voice at it. The generally accepted sit signal is your hand in the air, palm open, facing the dog. If you are going to use hand signals, make them bold and clear. Don't mince around! The clearer you are, the better chance your dog has of understanding what you want. Again, look at how Field Trial handlers use hand signals. When directing a dog to go left or right, they even lean their body in the direction they want the dog to go as well as using an outstreched hand! I'm not suggesting that you want to do this in the beating line, unless you're prepared for a lot of mickey taking! But the general principle is sound.
If you are going to use combined commands, in the beginning, always use both together. You can separate them later, when the pup is rock solid on sitting, but in the beginning consistency is everything.
It's useful to have the pup on a lead when teaching sit. The pup should be comfortable on the lead if you are going to do this, otherwise it will just be a distraction. Give the command, and gently push the pup’s bum to the floor, where you can hold it there for a couple of seconds. Give lavish praise and repeat a couple of times. That's enough for your first session. Maybe end with a small retrieve - try a rolled up sock. If the pup brings it back to you (which is great!!!) don't take it off them immediately, let it run about with it for a little while, before bringing the pup to you and removing the sock. I like to reinforce the delivery with a verbal command "Thank you", but whatever works for you is just fine.
You can reinforce the sit outside of a "formal" training session, when you are feeding the pup. Most pups feed little and often, so you probably will be feeding 3 or 4 times a day. By now the pup knows what its feed bowl is for and should make strong eye contact with the bowl when you produce it. If you lift the bowl above the pups head before feeding and give the sit command, chances are the dog will look up and backside should contact the floor without you having to push it down. Try this every time you feed and the pup will soon get the idea. Just remember lavish praise and keep it fun.