TRAINING and GROOMING

Shih tzu will require a year of your diligence for potty training and following the space and management rules to prevent reverting back to accidents. If you want less work get one over 3 years old.

Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast .... slow your roll, baby steps

What you release (reward) is what you teach

What is practiced will be repeated - for better or worse

K.I.S.S. = keep it simple & short, silly

If you don't want a grown dog doing the behavior, then don't let the puppy do the behavior. If they don't know it's a possibility they won't miss it.

My favorite kind of "training" with these guys is games with plain cheerios. Not the honey variety due to excess calories, 4 plain cheerios is 1 calorie. This is a better option for you to have fun, you get to treat your pup and you avoid table food which is actually harmful for them with spices and excess calories. Keep them thin and they live 2 more years, feed them one overly fatty meal and get pancreatitis and potentially diabetes with daily shots for life. Half a cup is an adult shih tzu daily food amount, for the entire day. puppies in the 4-8 month range get twice that but only for the growth spurt. Making them fat is not kindness and makes more vet bills for life.

So, the "training" is games like hungry hungry hippo if you have more than one dog, 52 cheerio pick-up if it's just one (maybe not 52 at one time). Training is calling their name then giving them one cheerio, seeing them go in their crate and give them a cheerio, stand on two legs - Cheerio! They sit and look at you - Cheerio! Anything cute - Cheerio! Now everyone feels good. You got to shower them with treats and do training at the same time all from your chair. Now the excitement for cheerios is built up by the hippo or 52 pick up. You are not going to get a down stay with cheerios. That's when you get to give them steak the size of a tiny green pea. Also they love raw vegetable trimmings cut into, you guessed it, pieces the size of a pea. Asparagus ends too tough to eat in your meal, celery, green peppers, cucumbers, etc. Onions and Garlic family foods are bad and make tummy upset. Don't give them big pieces and think they can just chew it like a dog - your memory of a big dog with powerful jaws. Why create choking hazards, why? Just cut small as you would for a baby, like the baby they are.

 Never overdo training. 5 minutes is enough for a session if you want them to maintain interest and always ending on a good note... don't do one last repetition as it is greedy and asking for a bad note. You can do 2 or 3 sessions per day if you insist, 30 minutes is pushing your luck, and an hour is begging to end on a bad note. What is practiced will be repeated. Reward well and often in the beginning, real meat or cheese has the most value and the freeze dried meat products are good also, not a dog biscuit for the shih's - tell the banks and tellers to save their treat as they will just spit it out. Carrots, cucumbers, melon, etc. are good value also. NO GRAPES or RAISINS or CAFFINE or CHOCOLATE or XYLITOL and can lead to kidney or liver failure. High fat and spices can cause pancreatitis that can lead to diabetes requiring insulin injections daily or a spleen rupture.

Potty Training mostly for shih's (dal's are easy): It causes less confusion if you just train to outside. I do not as puppies and dogs in hair shall never touch wet ground with debris or I have to wash, blow out, brush the entire group and I have spinal arthritis so - no. Show coat is inside or on special ground to maintain coat. The small ones, even adult small ones, have smaller bladder capacity and require every 4 hours or potty pads, I do train the pups to the brilliant pad system of potty pads. I have a 10% discount code if you want. If you are gone many hours it isn't fair not to give them an option to potty every 4 hours as an adult, definitely a puppy needs more frequent access. If you see them run back and forth in a zig zag or pounce and stand on the fence with their front paws or spin in circles they are about to do their business. Just run, pick up dog and take them outside and wait and watch. Don't let them convince you that it was a false alarm, they just forgot for a second up to 15 minutes, sit out there with them and enjoy the scenery. Have patience and limit distractions so they can remember. Play time in the early months is for like 10 minutes then potty option for 3 minutes, 10 more minutes, are they sniffing in a corner - potty option now. After 30 minutes of this they need a nap, put them down for a nap in their play pen with potty pad or crate for 2 hours with a good chew toy. Rinse, repeat. Multiple animals in the same space cause distraction accidents. The younger they are the sooner they need to go outside after a meal and if you want them to crate for 3+ hours then take up the food 3hrs prior. Never do you leave them to roam your huge house without being watched like a hawk for the first year, they are so short it's hard to tell when they are peeing vs. sitting. The second you have an accident then you know you allowed too much square footage too soon. Puppies NEED NAPS, downtime and a break from you so don't feel guilty about crating. Also, you must use enzyme cleaner to remove potty accident smells. You can try a home mixture recommended by Dr. Marty Greer DVM: 1 small bottle peroxide with 1 small box baking soda and 2 tablespoons DAWN dish soap, mix / use / avoid eyes. Rinse 5 times longer than you think because dish soap doesn't rinse out the same as shampoo. Use immediately, it doesn't save well. This mixture is the solution to skunk smell also - not tomato juice as the old tale goes.

Grooming Appointment for shih's:  Make it a short happy appointment the first few times. Schedule early before they need it because the groomer might be booked out a month or more. The distance from the matt to skin is the length your groomer will shave them down to. Detangling tight mats is just ripping the hair from the skin causing bloody spots, conditioner isn't going to fix that. Comb, comb, comb - not brush. If you neglect even for a week or put outfits or collars on and a matt has already developed If you don't want the groomer to shave down you have to put in the 3 -5 hours before you take them. Always hold the hair and comb to prevent pulling and ripping. If the matting is extensive and to the skin it will be unfair to brush that out, they will bleed where you are ripping out the hair, shave down and do better next time. Try using Ice on Ice ultra dematting spray and thinning/chunking/blending shears for cutting out matts without scissor lines showing. Don't pull knot up while cutting because skin is loose and will easily pull into the scissor or clipper causing cuts and abrasions. Excess ear wax is probably earmites, the flea meds from your vet likely fix this. Do know that all medications for ears among others cause birth defects so we, as breeders, can't use them in our house. So if your baby has come home with excess ear wax this is not neglect but a lack of medications that may be used on mothers, fathers' sperm is also affected, and young pups. By the time you get them it's safe to use these medications and flea and tick treatments that are more potent and take care of more bugs.

Grooming for Dal's: slicker stones work really well, like for horse grooming. Their hair is like horse hair, a rubber nubby glove works wonders also. Do nails often and early with a grinder. Sometimes they shake and flop their head too much and cause a hematoma in the tips of the ears. If you see blood on their head, face, or chin this is what has likely happened. These need medical attention if inside the ear canal as scarring can cause cauliflower ear. The tips of the ears need a stypic product with numby stuff in it because stypic stings. Wraps and bandages are pulled off and liquid bandaid doesn't cut it. A stypic powder, cream, or gel is needed. The animal section usually has analgesic included in the formula.

Puppy Class: Find a puppy class and go play, be okay with being an under achiever as these concepts are to teach you more than the dog in the first year or two. Many professional dog people don't bother with specific training until much older, they wait for maturity. Don't let the pressure of being in class make you push your dog past their limit, recognize their stress before the bad association or melt down and quietly step away and probably be done for the day. Classes of one hour make people happy but aren't best for the puppy, you did get your monies worth even if you only participated for 20 minutes, crate your dog and watch the rest of the class if possible. Instructors are sometimes volunteers from clubs and may not be practiced enough to be attuned to your needs in every instance when in a group class. Be your own advocate without shame of disrupting the class or offending the instructor, this is common practice in the dog world. There is no shame in taking a bow for the day before you lose your cool or ruin months of progress. Keep it positive for the dog to keep them motivated to play the game with you.

Load a recall immediately and often: Use your preferred call command and reward with a food treat. Again and again. If you do nothing in your first year but this then you are still on a good trajectory.

Leash Walking: Dalmatians must be leash trained early before they are strong, every time they pull you change direction, you will get dizzy but hang in there. I personally don't worry about leash training until much older for shih tzu, but you do you. Maturity fixes so many things if you are patient. Don't drag but reward the moment they move forward of their own choice. We are not doing "heeling" work in the first year unless you are really doing this training thing for sport. The second they get to pulling you around change direction in a 90* turn or 180* about face direction. Don't fuss at them, just stay interesting by being unpredictable, jumping jacks if you have lost their interest, get creative. A session only needs to last 5 minutes once a day for a week to make progress. Most important is not to practice being dragged because what you practice will be repeated. So, if you walk more obviously you can't allow them to be a bull, but you will have this under control even sooner.

Sometimes others ruin or wear out your command words so you must pick unique commands and not tell others who don't understand not to wear out the command to extinction.  The person who says their name repeatedly and gives no treat are making your command useless.