The Puppy Prep Course: Skills To Teach First

On markers, gatekeeping, and why "sit" is the wrong starting point

Most puppy training content starts with sit.

Which — fine. Sit is a useful behavior. But it's also completely the wrong starting point, and the reason it's where everyone starts is largely historical inertia, not behavioral science.

Before you can reliably teach a behavior, you need two things: a dog who understands how learning works, and a dog who wants to engage with you. Most people skip both of those steps and go straight to asking for behaviors, and then wonder why their puppy seems distracted, uninterested, or inconsistent.

What I'm about to walk you through is what I call the communication foundation. It's what I do with every puppy in week one. It's what most of the industry either doesn't know or doesn't teach, because it doesn't look like training. It looks like playing. It looks like waiting. It looks simple.

It is the opposite of simple.

A marker is a precise, consistent signal — a sound, a click, a word — that tells your puppy: that behavior, right there, right now, is what earned the reward.

Not two seconds ago. Not approximately around then. That. Right there.

The reason this matters is that behavior is happening in real time, constantly. If your puppy sits and you say "good girl" and reach into your pocket for a treat, three to five seconds have passed. In those seconds, the puppy may have shifted weight, looked away, started to sniff the floor. What did the "good girl" mark? From the puppy's perspective — genuinely unclear.

A marker collapses that window. You mark, the puppy knows, the reward arrives. Learning accelerates. The puppy isn't guessing. You've given them the answer key.

I use a clicker. Here's why I'm consistent about this:

Your voice is not a reliable marker. Not because you're doing anything wrong — but because your voice changes. It changes based on stress, energy, what you said two words before, whether you're tired. Even if you use the same word every time, the sound of it varies.

A clicker makes the exact same sound every single time. The clicker doesn't have a bad day. That consistency is the entire point.

How to charge the marker:

Before the clicker means anything, you teach the association. This takes about ten minutes across two sessions.

Treats ready. Clicker in hand. Click. Immediately deliver a treat. No behavior required from the puppy. Wait a few seconds. Click. Treat. Repeat ten to fifteen times.

That's it. You're building: click means something good is coming. Once your puppy's ears perk at the sound, or they orient toward your treat hand after the click — the marker is charged. Now it carries meaning. Now you can use it.

I also teach a verbal marker — the word "yes," said cleanly and consistently — as a backup for everyday life when you don't have the clicker on you. Same process to charge it. Both markers mean the same thing: that exact behavior just earned you something.

You may have heard of a no-reward marker — a sound or word that tells the dog "that wasn't it, try again." Something like "nope" or "try again."

In an established training relationship, this is a useful tool. With a young puppy who is just beginning to build their learning history? I leave it out.

Here's my reasoning: what we're doing in early puppyhood is teaching the puppy that training is safe. That trying things and being wrong isn't dangerous. That engaging with you is worth it. Introducing a no-reward marker before that foundation is solid can tip some puppies toward hesitation — fewer behavior offerings, more caution, less engagement.

What I do instead: I stay neutral. No click. No "nope." No visible reaction. I wait and see if the puppy can work through it.

And if the puppy averts their gaze, disengages, or starts to shut down — that's not stubbornness. That's important information. The task was too hard, the session ran too long, or the puppy hit their cognitive limit for the day.

When that happens, I get a quick win. Ask for something the puppy already knows. Mark it. Reward it big. End the session there. Then do something genuinely fun — a short walk, a sniff around the yard, a play session. A session that ends on a win is always better than one that ends on a struggle.

Build the confidence. The complexity comes later.

Setup: you and your puppy in a quiet space. Clicker in hand, treats in pocket. You do nothing. You wait.

The moment the puppy looks at your face — click, treat.

That's it. You didn't ask for anything. You just rewarded a voluntary choice.

What's actually happening: you're teaching two things simultaneously. First, eye contact with you produces good things — which means the puppy will start choosing to offer it. Second, and this is the one that matters six months from now: the puppy is learning that the way to access rewards isn't to demand them, jump for them, or spiral into arousal — it's to orient toward you calmly and offer something.

That is impulse control. Built in week one, through repetition, before you've ever asked for a formal behavior.

When this dog is eight months old and sees a squirrel across the street, the impulse to check in with you first — that pattern was laid down here. You don't teach impulse control in a crisis. You build it long before the crisis exists.

Hold your flat palm in front of the puppy's nose. Most puppies will sniff it. The instant their nose makes contact with your palm — click, treat.

This is hand targeting, and it is the beginning of every handling experience the puppy will have for the rest of their life. Vet exams. Nail trims. Grooming. Being guided gently away from something. Being moved calmly through a doorway.

What you're building is a puppy who understands that hands approaching them are good news. Not a threat. Not an unpredictable event. Information that something good is about to happen.

Make it a game. Fast, fun, brief. Your hand appears, they touch it, click, treat. Five minutes twice a day in week one is more valuable than thirty minutes of formal obedience training at month two.

Once nose-to-hand is solid, introduce paw targeting — a small object (a platform, a piece of tape on the floor, a book) that you're asking the puppy to put their front feet on.

Body awareness is not automatic. Puppies arrive largely disconnected from where their back feet are, how they fit through spaces, how to navigate novel surfaces with confidence. Targeting builds that map deliberately.

It also builds something subtler: the experience of trying something, getting it right, and being rewarded. That experience — repeated across weeks and months — produces a dog who approaches new challenges with curiosity rather than anxiety. A dog who offers behavior rather than shutting down. A dog who finds learning fun rather than stressful.

The difference between that dog and a dog who is hesitant and reactive isn't genetics in most cases. It's what their first weeks of learning looked like.

Next: the part nobody wants to hear — why you are the rate-limiting factor, and what you're probably doing that's directly affecting your puppy's behavior.