Raising a confident dog comes with time, love, and patience. You’ll know a confident dog when you meet one. They’re well-behaved and will only step up an assert themselves when they are in a threatening situation. Raising a confident dog can start as soon as puppy years but can take two years to see results. 

In this blog post, we’ll share with you tips on raising a confident dog at the start of their puppy years and tips for helping your older dogs become more confident. 

Tips For How to Raise a Confident Dog

For Puppies

As already mentioned, expect 2 years of consistent training and steps to go by before your puppy shows that they are going to be a confident fur baby! Enrolling them in dog training classes can help, but consistency and duration is key here. 

Aside from puppy training, here are some other tips you can use to raise your puppy to be the confident doggo that’s waiting to be unleashed:

• Don’t reserve the vet visits just for appointments. Your dog may develop anxiety, so every now and then, make a fun visit to the veterinarian to say hello to the nice staff on location. 
• Coordinate playdates with other puppies to help socialize your fur baby.
• Love on your dog as much as possible with care to make sure you touch their ears, face, nose, etc. so that over time, they’re used to being touched and won’t panic when friends or vet doctors are handling/petting them.
• Teach your puppy how to “stay”. It is said that this training command assists with obedience and patience, and of course, utilize some sort of reward system like with treats.
• Let your puppy join you outside of the house whenever you can! The more they’re out and about seeing different faces and taking in new environments, the more likely they’ll be well-behaved in public spaces.

For Grown Dogs

For adult dogs or senior dogs, confidence building is doable but will require time and patience. A few of our favorite tips for helping your adult dog become more confident comes from Pet Central at Chewy.com. They recommend:

• Obedience training
• Agility training
• Exposure (environment) management
• Introducing new situations and new people slowly

But the last of their recommendations caught our attention. They suggest taking your dog(s) to environments where they can be successful:

This is just a sampling of tips and informational posts we offer at Joyride Harness. You can find more content including tips and tricks and how-tos for caring for your dog on our blog at this section. Feel free to leave a comment with tips you’re looking for!