How to Play with a Puppy

By eHow Pets Editor

Instructions

Step 1:
Play tug of war with the puppy, but establish yourself as the one in charge. Tug of war can trigger aggressive tendancies in puppies, but it can also allow you to establish a dominant role in your relationship with your dog. Initiate play, let the dog tug, but keep a hand on the toy. When play is over, put the toy away where the dog cannot get it.
Step 2:
Initiate fetch with the dog. Fetch is a great interactive game between you and your dog allowing you to bond and use up some of the dog's excess energy. As long as you initiate fetch and teach the dog to promptly return the ball to you, fetch will make your dog more obedient.
Step 3:
Be gentle when playing. Pet the dog nicely and softly. Wrestling encourages aggression, because it is a competitive activity.
Step 4:
Stop play if the puppy begins to bite. The puppy's favorite thing to do is play, and if you stop when she bites or growls she'll learn to stop the inappropriate behavior so she can continue to play.
Step 5:
Use obedience training and tricks as part of your regular play. In addition to games such as fetch and tug of war, teach the puppy tricks during playtime. The puppy enjoys spending time with you, pleasing you and being rewarded with treats and affection.

More Puppy Pages

How to Stop Your Puppy From Biting

For young puppies, nipping, biting and "mouthing" are normal behaviors and rarely cause serious harm. But it's important to stop these behaviors before your dog reaches adulthood, when a bite could inflict serious injury.

Mouthing and biting are common, normal behaviors for puppies. Puppies explore their world by trying things out in their mouth. They also bite and mouth when they play with each other. However, you must teach a puppy what is appropriate to bite and what...

Hi! I’m Melanie McLeroy with Taurus Training for Expert Village and today we’re going to talk about puppies. So let’s talk about how to teach your puppy how to fetch and to drop and about tug of war. Tug of war is not a good game to...

How to train your rottweiler puppy with simple commands

Despite a bad reputation, Rottweilers were bred as all-around working farm dogs and are a joy to train. You have to be consistent, patient and honest and your Rottweiler puppy will quickly learn all the simple, basic commands.

For a puppy, biting is part of play, and even painful bites are rarely meant maliciously. The problem is that people have thinner skin than dogs, so your puppy needs to learn to be gentle. Showing him that his bites hurt is usually enough to get him to...