How To Train A Pug Puppy – The Ultimate Guide

We told you Pugs are clever, didn’t we? But they can also get lazy. Especially if training gets boring and they are doing the same thing repeatedly. 

Avoiding boredom and frustration will lead to better and faster results – as in the human world, right? We’ll be using the ‘Push Drop Stick’ strategy to increase the difficulty of exercises gradually.

The ‘Push Drop Stick’ strategy is when you do the same thing 5 times with your pup. This is how it works: If they get all 5 right, you push up to the next level of difficulty (push). If they get 3 or 4 right, you should stick to the same level. If they only get 1 or 2 right, it’s better to drop down a notch and try to ace an easier version of the exercise (drop).

Pugs are companion dogs. They will want to be with you. Have a crate or bed next to your bed for at least the first few weeks while you get them into a Puppy night-time routine. By then end, you’ll be able to tell if they need the toilet, and they can come and give you a push for a cuddle of reassurance in the middle of the night. Here is how to get a puppy to sleep through the night.

Teaching your Pug puppy that they can be totally fine being left alone can be done with stuffed chew toys, time and patience. It’s worth doing alone puppy training from that first week, but do it in stages without rush, so they have time to grasp it and not flip completely out about it. Pugs can find being alone really hard, so you’ll want to start this as soon as possible. Remember to do it slowly to avoid any stress!

Practically every website you read may tell you that Toilet training your Pug puppy can be a challenge. It’s half true. With a good puppy toilet training guide like ours and keeping your eyes peeled, you’ll manage to prevent accidents indoors in no time.  As with alone training, start sooner rather than later. You’ll thank us later for this too.

In the first week, we’ll put all our eggs on getting your Pug puppy used to their new home. We’ll start with puppy socialisation exercises such as:

• Exploring the garden: Showing your puppy where the toilet area is will be one of the first things you’ll have to do –  especially in this first week! Of course, if they run into any birds, butterflies and hear planes flying over, it will be great for them to get acquainted already.
• Walking on different surfaces – Confidence is one of the best things we want for your puppy in all senses, but in this case, it’s all about when it comes to walking on different surfaces. Have fun gathering surfaces with different textures for them to explore, like synthetic grass, tiles, and soil. Use treats!

Let’s start off with some basic training for your Pug puppy. Remember to use lots of treats and praise when training. They love making your tail wag!

• Teach your Pug their name – It’s important that your Pug puppy knows their name and can respond to it quickly. Otherwise, you’ll be calling their name out into the wind helplessly. Repeat their name to them a lot in the first week, so it really starts to click.
• Teach your Pug puppy to sit -It’s a lovely way to start teaching your puppy some manners as if they’re sitting, they can’t be jumping on people! It also looks too cute when they’re looking up adoringly with those big googly eyes.
• Recall – How to teach your Pug puppy to come back when called – This is important for safety. Pugs generally stay close, but they can be very friendly and want to run up to people and other dogs for a bit of a cuddle, so a good recall will always help. 
• Retrieve/fetch – Pugs aren’t going to run the length of a football pitch to retrieve a ball. I can’t even picture that. But they can enjoy fetch games on a smaller scale, get on the floor and interact and play with your Pug puppy to learn what they enjoy.

It’s important to teach your Pug puppy that giving up stuff will bring about fabulous rewards. This will help to avoid resource guarding.

Sometimes when Pugs have something, they often don’t want to let go of it, particularly if it makes you chase them, what a good game!

Always do lots and lots of swaps so that they learn that you’ll trade them for whatever they have. Everything they find will likely go in their mouth as they don’t have hands to explore things, the temptation can be to grab things from their mouths, but try to always do the swap.

Pugs love affection but should be handled with care. Be mindful to not treat them like toys. Not going to blame children to think they are toys though – the resemblance is uncanny. This first week we’ll be focussing on handling:

• Handling your puppy – Your Pug puppy will need their ears cleaned quite regularly, their claws trimmed, and sometimes their bottoms wiped! Yep, we’re not joking. To do this we want to teach them that hands will do nice things to them so use plenty of treats when handling your puppy.

It’s important to get your Pug puppy used to novelty, interesting sounds and going in and out of the car while they’re young and in their socialisation period. 

Try these socialisation and habituation exercises with your Pug puppy this week.

• Fireworks – With your phone, start playing firework sounds at a low volume – low enough that they can simply ignore them and don’t react to them as asteroids falling from the sky. You can use treats every now and then to distract them off if needed. 
• Watch the world go by – For the first week, help your Pug integrate into the world by sitting them in front of your house and letting them see the cars, neighbours, pigeons, and other sounds go past them. They’ll soon realise that none of it is a big deal. Remember to hold your Pug in your arms if they aren’t fully vaccinated yet!
• Play dress-up – You’ll be the one dressing up this time. Wear your collection of hats, sunglasses, or funky wigs, so your puppy gets exposed to new things and isn’t so surprised when they see so many different-looking people on the street. 
• Sit in the car – Treats will be handy to teach your puppy that the car is simply a wonderful place to be. You won’t need to go anywhere yet. It’s already great if they sniff around and take a look over the seats.

We’ll get some training this week. Don’t worry. We’ll take it nice and easy – nothing to freak out about. Yet.  

• Alone training – If only the world were made for you to spend time with your Pug puppy all day. Until the world adapts to our needs, we’ll need to do some work on teaching how to be home alone and sane at the same time. 
• Crate Training -Crates are wonderful things for getting your puppy to calm down. Crates can also become a safe space for puppies; for example, when people come around, they get a chance to have some peace and quiet. 
• Teach them their name in the garden – Puppies need to know their name for so many different reasons. Doing this in the garden will be helpful for your puppy to start reacting to you wherever you are. It’ll be good practice for when you’re somewhere with plenty of distractions! 
• Recall training: This time, you’ll yell (nicely) a cue word like “come”, as well as the actual instruction for them to ‘come’ to you.
• Fetch and drop – Finally! Some good games. For this, you’ll want to teach them how to actually drop the toy in the end. Otherwise, it’s kind of pointless, right? 
• Introduce lead walking training – Before you go ahead and go for a harness, we’re going to practise lead walking around the house and in the garden. Pugs are chunky, but are eager to rush on ahead in the search for adventures…and can be weirdly and surprisingly strong. Make sure to spend some time on this to make walks in the park as nice as can be. 

Brushing your puppy – Most Pug puppies love to be pampered. Using a slicker like the Zoom Groom or the furminator brush will help to pull dead hair out while giving them a nice massage to enjoy while they’re at it.  too. Although their coat is short, they are prolific shedders so it’s worth getting all of the dead hair out to keep their coat and skin healthy.

• Scent trails – Their noses are pressed on to their faces – sure. But they’re mighty and always happy to sniff down a scent trail. It’s really quite simple – setting a few treats on the floor to make a trail will be enough for your puppy to follow them. 
• Invite friends over – We’re sure you want to show off your Pug to everyone you know. That’s fine, but try not to rush them or do too much picking up when they meet each other!
• Go for a drive with your Pug puppy – Thinking about going on trips, are you? You’ll want to keep them strapped in and safe.  For adventurous Pugs, they’ll enjoy a  booster seat to see out of the window too! 
• Write a puppy socialisation checklist for your puppy: Think about what things are important for your lifestyle and what your Pug puppy will need to be exposed to in your world. You want to make their experience of the world as positive as possible so that when they’re older, they’ll have no trouble facing anything that comes at them.

• Recall: Recall is one of the most important skills you’ll teach your puppy. You’ll see this especially when you’re outside and a whiff of tasty food floats by from a nearby restaurant – you’ll want to avoid chaos from happening there. 
• Stop your puppy jumping up: Remember – puppies jumping is a sign of friendliness. But unfortunately, that kind of love language is not really understood in the human world.  Let’s get your puppy to say hello politely without too much chance for disaster.. 
• Generalisation: Your puppy will have to be able to do everything they learn anywhere they go – only doing so at home won’t really do the trick, right? Practise training in 5 different locations around your home to get on the generalisation train.
• Teach your Pug puppy to lie down – If a puppy can lie down and settle easily, they’ll make life easier. It will make you able to take them down to the pub, and watch telly without a wagging tail blocking your screen. 
• Alone training – Keep focusing on alone training – how are they getting on? Have they started talking to themselves yet?

• Choosing a harness for a Pug puppy. There are a lot of harnesses on the market; with so many options, it’s not hard to feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of them. But some will be better than others for your Pugs shape. They do have quite a unique body, don’t they? 

• Meeting another dog: When your puppy sees another of his kind, his mind will go into full party mode. Because of that, let’s first introduce them to a nice, calm older dog who isn’t too grumpy to make the process of making friends nice and smooth.
• Find a puppy class: Lots of new puppies to meet means a lot of excitement, and lots of distractions. The Association of Pet Dog Trainers, The COAPE Association of Pet Behaviourists and trainers or members from the UK Dog Training and Behaviour Charter have great options for finding a good puppy class to get you through it all.

• Settle on a mat: As we said before, teaching your puppy how to lie down will make everyone’s life easier. We know you love going to the pub, so having them settle on a mat will be perfect for outings like this…at the very least, you’ll be able to take them out to places without any trouble. You’ll want to take a  stuffed chew toy with you to keep your puppy focused on eating rather than up to something that will end up in you getting kicked out. A comfortable piece of vet bed or a memory foam travel mat to settle on will also help them stay calm as they’ll be more comfortable. 
• Lead walking: Happy to hear it’s going well in the lead walking department! Use your new harness and practice to walk your puppy around the garden for now. Don’t let their small size fool you – they’re determined and strong-willed. The trick about this is to teach them that being next to you is a lot more fun than anywhere else when being outside. 
• Recall games – Playing tennis with your puppy is a great way of teaching them about recall. It’s pretty easy to play – let your puppy run for the attention of being called between people, for all good things like treats, cuddles and praise.

• Grooming a puppy – focusing on sensitive areas. For a Pug puppy, that place will be eyes and ears. Pugs have a lot of wrinkles on their face, so you’ll want to get them used to being wiped with clean cotton pads. You can do this best by treating them like there’s no tomorrow. Grooming time means endless treats. Those ears catch a lot of dirt too. Try using dry cotton wool pads for a few days, treating your puppy frequently as you do it, then moisten the pad with some special ear cleaner like Epi-Otic ear cleaner to give them a thorough cleanse. 

Nothing worse than squirting something in your puppy’s ears by the way. Not only will they hate it, but you’ll forever struggle to clean their ears after that ever again.

• Go to the pub or a dog-friendly café – Good job – you deserve a pint after all this hard work. And as you may expect, everyone will surround your puppy in hopes to get a big, friendly hello back. At the same time, keep in mind that not everyone is fond of dogs and that you might not want an audience around you when you’re chatting with friends. Before you get to the pub, decide in advance whether you mind if people come over or whether you’d prefer your puppy to remain undisturbed and follow your decision all the way through.

• Tick 3 things off your personal socialisation checklist – Will you take your puppy for a trip on a boat or for a sandy adventure at the beach?

• Alone training: This week, you’ll want to focus on increasing the time your puppy spends alone. Maybe try to leave the house for a couple of minutes or gradually increase the time you are away. Not all at once – don’t want to traumatise the poor thing. 

• Recall: Let’s practice your recall outside, in your garden or the park. Make sure to choose a quiet area and keep them on the lead while stepping a few steps backwards, so your puppy has to walk a bit further towards you. Long recall leads are also great for this exercise to give your puppy a bit more freedom but remain manageable. Of course, treats and toys will definitely help you make it a lot quicker. Remember, the stinkier treats and toys your puppy holds close to heart will always work the best.  

• Lead walking: Let us help you get through this one. Instead of thinking you’re going on a walk, shift it to saying you’re going on a training walk. Let’s face it – at this point, it’s still pretty tricky to actually go on a nice, smooth walk.  As you’re practising, you’ll find it useful to walk along the same road up and down several times. That way, your Pug can sniff away until nothing stands out anymore and can focus on getting the lead walking part right.   

• Push/drop/stick on known exercises – Have you introduced a verbal cue yet for a ‘sit’? Can they manage to keep their bum on the ground for three seconds? Now is probably a good time to think of creative ways to push up a level of difficulty, don’t you think?

• Pretend to clip your dog’s nails: Can’t blame them – it can be quite uncomfortable to get all those strange tools so close to their fingers. To help them through it, get your Pug puppy used to having hands in between their toes so we can ensure nail clipping won’t be something they fear later on. As always, use your treats and have your claw clippers around them. Whenever the clippers make an appearance, give them a treat, so they start to  understand that good things happen when the clippers come out.  
• Grooming your Pug puppy: Continue doing a good job of brushing and cleaning their ears and face each week. So scrunchy, aren’t they?

• Tick 3 more items off your socialisation checklist – how about taking your Pug puppy on a bus? or train? Visit different busy and quiet places to get them used to different environments. 

• Following on walks – Off-lead walking can be such a scary thought. But trust us – when they finally get the hang of it, it’s such a wonderful way to enjoy a walk together.  The trick is to get your Pug puppy excited about staying next to you when they’re off lead by frequently calling them, and as you may imagine, giving them tons of treats for choosing the right place to be. Food always does the trick, doesn’t it?
• Push/drop/stick – By now, you can feel free to do this for any of the cues your puppy is already starting to polish up. We can raise the difficulty bar by having them practice in a distracting area or getting them to hold behaviours for longer.

• Start checking your puppy’s mouth and teeth. It’s worth checking your Pug puppies teeth; their skull shape means they can be bunched up and misaligned. With a flat face, you could probably expect that, right? You’ll also want to check that they have lost their puppy teeth and that their adult teeth aren’t coming through over the top or in front of their baby teeth. Don’t want to miss an opportunity to call the puppy tooth fairy.
• With your gentle hands (we’ve heard good things about them), see if they let you lift their lip. Don’t forget to treat them! Then, while you give them lots of verbal praise, try to gradually open their mouth a little more. Let’s *flat* face it: none of us like people looking in our mouths, so we need to at least teach your puppy that although unpleasant, it’s quite normal.

• Have a go at puppy agility – Don’t let anyone tell you that Pugs can’t do things! Pugs can be quick and really game for some fun agility, though some might just prefer the more laid back life. It really depends on your Pug’s personality – they’re one of a kind.

• Tick 3 things off your personal socialisation checklist – maybe go to the agility club and just let them have a watch of what the other dogs do?

• Teach your Pug puppy to stay. Teaching your puppy to stay will come in handy on multiple occasions. For instance, when you want them to stay at the front door while you grab a towel to wipe their paws off so that they don’t decorate your carpet with mud. It’s also a great self-control exercise too. 
• Go for a walk with a friend’s dog – We know you’ve been dreaming of waltzing through the park with your friends and your dog friends as an unstoppable squad. Your puppy will probably be excited, too, so use lots of treats for both dogs so that they’re able to follow along calmly yet happily. 
• Recall – off the lead.Drumroll. But there’s really nothing to worry about – you’ve done such a fantastic training job for these past weeks that the reinforcement history you’ve made will be difficult to tear down. Let us remind you as well – you’ve done such a wonderful job at building a strong bond between the two of you. But alright, if you do get worried, you can always switch to using a recall line…no one will judge you.
• Push/drop/stick on known exercises – Let’s do this for recall, shall we?

• Pretend ear drops – Those ears are funnels for dirt. Prevention is always better than a cure, but sometimes even keeping your Pug’s ears squeaky clean may not be enough, and they’ll need drops. Let’s teach them that even though it feels awkward, they’ll make their lives much better. They’ll call you a hear-o after this, that’s for sure. Pretend to put the drops in their ear with the bottle with the lid still on, and then give them a treat. Let’s keep it short; if they walk off, it’s no problem. You can go back to it later.

• Joggers and Cyclists – All dogs regardless of the breed have what’s known as a prey drive. Yes, even Pugs! Anything fast-moving can trigger the need to chase, particularly joggers and cyclists. Remember to take lots of treats out with you! Pop them a treat whenever they focus on you, do some sits, downs, or are simply being nice and calm. It’ll register as good behaviour for them.
• Tick 3 things off your socialisation checklist – Their socialisation window will be closing by now, but it’s still important to introduce them to new things. Gotta keep that brain working!

• Practice exercises in different locations: Some dog-friendly places sound like a terrific idea.
• Teach a hand target  –  Pugs love to play a good game. On the plus side, this works great as a recall training opportunity. Actually, targeting is often the basis of many trick behaviours too, and we know how much you don’t want to miss a chance to teach your puppy some ‘party tricks’ to show off to your friends.
• Introducing nose work to your puppy: Their nose may be small but mighty! See if you can hide their toys and then get them to ‘find them’ by scent alone.

• Trim your Pug puppy’s claws: We’re doing the real thing this week.  If you do them regularly, you’ll end up only having to snip the very ends off. Be careful, though – if your Pug puppy has dark nails, the Quick can be difficult to see, and you may risk cutting it. The Quick is that little blood vessel that runs almost to the end. The dewclaws (those silly toes that would have otherwise been thumbs) don’t touch the floor so that they can get quite sharp. Let’s do one or two claws at a time and then take a break. Aaand of course. Treats will always work. A  lickimat is a great solution to take their attention away from those horrible tools as well.