Successful puppy training principles can be equally well applied in the training of partners.

Puppies and people are in some respects similar. Both are easy to fall in love with quickly. However when you first bring them home there are negotiations that need to occur. If the small smelly messes aren’t cleaned up properly things can fester rather than flow.

It takes time to learn to live together but the lessons occur from the outset. The first thing to learn is to spend time and pay close attention to your new friends needs. If puppies don’t have their needs met they will find ways to meet them that may not suit you. If you don’t take them walking they may jump the fence.

Close attention is the foundation of a trusting relationship. When puppies and partners have a sense of the loving interest you have for them they are vastly more likely to see and respond to your needs. Regular playtime is the best place to make this space.

With this mutual bond of trust and respect in place and maintained most learning can occur with an effortless ease. You can use rewards as positive reinforcement, but ultimately it is the reward of your approval that will hit the mark for years.

Where a puppy’s behaviour is problematic it remains best to wield this bond of affirmation and love to change it. Negative reinforcements like punishment, anger and aggression don’t work well. It may gain compliance through fear but it also grows resistance and distrust.

Puppies and partners need information about what you don’t like combined with information and inducement towards doing what you do like. Just saying no fails to acknowledge the need behind the behaviour.

Better still that this information is provided in a concise and consistent fashion. If your assertion is brief it seems less like nagging. When offered consistently there is a greater take up of the idea and the point of conflict can more quickly resolve.

Don’t let their cuteness beguile you. With proper training from the outset puppies and partners can be a constant source of joy.

Martin Hunter Jones is an honorary life member of the Australian Counselling Association. He has a practice on the Northern Beaches. Phone 9973 4997.