Training a Puppy to Wear a Collar in One Week

Puppies aren’t born wearing collars, so when a collar is first fastened around a puppy’s little neck, it can feel strange for her. Most puppies will bite, scratch, turn circles or refuse to walk while wearing a collar. This is totally normal behavior. As pet owners, it’s our job to train a puppy to wear a collar.

How to Teach Your Puppy to Wear a Collar

Once your puppy is home, it’s time to teach her that wearing a puppy training collar makes good things happen. Move slowly and reward your puppy often while she’s wearing a collar.

Choose the Right Puppy Collar

Puppies should wear an expandable flat buckle collar without tags at first. ID tags can be a bit distracting, as most puppies will mouth or paw at the dangling bits of metal clanging under their chins. They’re simply too distracting for an inquisitive puppy. After a week of your puppy successfully wearing her collar, then you can add ID tags.

Puppies, or all dogs really, shouldn’t wear choke chains, cloth slip collars or prong collars. They need a flat buckle collar. Harnesses are OK too, but make sure the straps don’t rub against your puppy’s skin, apply pressure to your puppy’s neck or restrict her movement.

Give Her a Food Stuffed Toy

Before introducing a collar or harness to your puppy, fill a toy with food and freeze overnight. Now, fasten your puppy’s collar in place and immediately give her the food stuffed toy to enjoy while she’s wearing her collar.

Once she’s emptied all the food from the toy, remove her collar and toy and place both up high, so she can’t reach it. Practice this several times a day. Feel free to stuff your puppy’s regular meals inside of a food toy for additional practice sessions. By pairing good things with the sensation of wearing a collar, your puppy learns that collars are harmless and pretty darn fun.

Puppy Doesn’t Like Her Collar?

If your puppy starts pawing or scratching her collar, distract her by playing a 1-2 minute game of “touch.” Distracting her without saying “stop” or “no” gives your puppy something else to do instead of worrying about the collar on her neck.

Learn how to teach the “touch” behavior in the video below. This dog training game is easy to teach and extremely useful in many different situations. The “touch” behavior is vital—so much so that it’s the first behavior I teach during dog training classes or private lessons.

WATCH: Teach Your Puppy the “Touch” Cue

https://youtu.be/d-spTywRXEo

Teach Collar Pressure = Treats

Once your puppy is completely comfortable with the sensation of a collar, it’s time to teach her that collar pressure makes treats happen. Collar pressure can cause a puppy to freak out because she may not be used to feeling pressure against her neck, which limits her movement.

Collars can scare puppies so much that they will usually hop, buck, or “pancake” on the ground and refuse to move forward. If this happens, immediately stop the pressure by walking over to your puppy or letting go of her collar, and practice the collar pressure game.

When teaching collar pressure, you’re not pulling against your puppy. Instead, you’re holding your puppy’s collar in place while your puppy pulls against it. The moment your puppy stops pulling against the collar, you click and reward your puppy.

Pulling against pressure is a natural reaction to restraint; it’s called opposition reflex. Your goal is to teach your puppy to move with pressure. This is the first step when teaching loose leashing walking and teaching your dog to walk with you while touching her collar. Plus, every time your puppy pulls against her collar, it increases her chances of injury in her neck area.

Practice this dog training behavior several times a day with super yummy treats. If your puppy balks when you reach for her collar, take a step back and teach her that collar touches are a good thing.

WATCH: Dog Training Tip: Teach Collar Pressure

https://youtu.be/I39BE4xOnLY

Attach a Leash

Always teach your puppy how to wear a collar first, then master the collar pressure game before attaching a leash to her collar. On average, it takes about a week for a puppy to feel comfortable wearing a collar and respond well to collar pressure. Attaching a leash to your puppy’s collar is a completely different lesson.  Check out this article on teaching a puppy to walk on leash for additional details.

Puppies are tiny little sponges. Take advantage and teach them that the world is full of fun!