Training Your Toy Breed

Socializing is the process of becoming comfortable and feeling safe with many people, animals, and places. Socializing your toy breed is absolutely critical to their quality of life and your sanity.

Training is teaching the dog to respond in the way you want to a verbal or physical cue. (I.e. "sit" means put your butt on the ground).

Training is a great idea also. It is not going to make or break anything, but toy breeds love to do tricks such as “sit”, “shake”, “dance”, “spin”, etc. And many are successful in agility. They naturally “heel” and “come”, so those are yours to lose. (I will create some videos to show you how to keep their natural abilities). 

At Winona’s Legacy in keeping with the Puppy Culture approach, we begin training “sit” for a treat as soon as the puppy shows interest in food. This can REALLY help the transition home to have a familiar game that they already like. 

As someone who has made a successful living for the last 18 years in the dog behavior world, and written many a curriculum and taught many family dog classes, I can tell you group puppy classes are designed for larger breed puppies since that is where the market is. 

So I would suggest skipping those in favor of YouTube or a knowledgeable private trainer. Even then, keep in mind toy breeds are the lowest demographic for seeking training so many reputable trainers are not experienced with toy breeds, who's brains and bodies work very differently from other groups. 

If you wish to enroll your toy breed in an agility class and the facility’s policy is that the dog must complete their obedience series first, work with a private trainer to obtain the needed skills or find a place that doesn’t require it.

If the facility offers “teacup” agility that is preferable as the obstacles are smaller and the instructor is likely more knowledgeable and experienced in the intricacies of training toy breeds. If “teacup” is not available in your area a regular class is fine provided it is under control so larger dogs do not overwhelm your toy breed. (Your toy breed can live, play, and interact with large breed dogs. But there is a right way and a wrong way to do it. And large breeds being overly excited on leash, as they are in most classes, is the absolute WRONG way.)