To own and train a wolfdog
To own a Cs Wolfdog is not easy, some dogs are very demanding especially young males. It is therefore important for you to get a god start with training from the first day you get them. Biting, nipping and chewing are very common Cs Wolfdog behaviour among puppies up to one year of age. This behaviour is related to teething in nature, but it is very important that you as the pack leader put up boundaries and rules for how much chewing and biting you accept from your puppy.
For Cs Wolfdogs above one year of age it is not accepted at all with biting, snapping or nipping. If you don't get this behaviour under control your Cs Wolfdogs nipping might send somebody to hospital for stitches. Aggression towards humans is rare among Cs Wolfdogs but the puppies are not aware of their own size and the strength in their jaws, and might hurt somebody unintentionally while playing.
Another common problem are jumping and it is very important to not let your Wolfdog puppy jump on you or new people already from the beginning. Cs Wolfdogs grows very fast and the males can be up to 65-70cm at the height at withers already at 6-8 months and have a weight at 35-40 kg. A big lively and jumpy Cs Wolfdog can therefore hurt somebody by just jumping to say hello. If you don't have your Wolfdog puppy under full control it is important to keep it in a leash around people and animals so that the puppy doesn't hurt itself or others. But it is also important to train without leash with smaller puppies for them to learn our signals, and for us to learn theirs.
When the wolfdog reaches 15 weeks you can start to train them with easy commands like sit, lay down and the meaning of the word NO. But don't put to much pressure on the puppy when it is this young, to play and be with you and the family and learn to socialise is also training for a puppy at this age. As the puppy gets older you can demand more and more, and at an age of 10 months you can start to train harder and go courses in dressage.
If you want to train your Wolfdog to pull things like a sled or a bike you can start to train that after 10 months as well, but don't let the wolfdog pull anything heavy until the age of 1,5 year when their bone stucture is fully grown, and after having your HD and ED result.
Cs Wolfdogs are very intelligent and can be trained to do all kinds of things but it is important that you plan and vary your training well, otherwice the Wolfdog will loose interest when you repeat the same exercise over and over again. Training a Cs Wolfdog therefore demands a trainer/owner with greate patience. As long as you can keep your Wolfdog's interest it will be easy but when they loose it you will not make any progress. It is important not to loose your temper, screaming will not get your Wolfdog to understand better what you want it to do, it will only make it more reserved both now and in the future. It is better to end training if things don't work out instead of loosing your temper.
Training should be fun for the dog, if your Wolfdog don't think training is fun you will never get a welltrained Wolfdog. Always end your training with an easy exercise that you know that your Wolfdog knows well and give it a lot of credit for it and then play fore a while.
Never scream at or hit a Wolfdog or any dog, it is a language that they don't understand and it will only get them confused and even harder or impossible to train in the future.
It is better to, in a calm way, show your Wolfdog what you want it to do and give it a lot of credit when it does something god. Fore a Cs Wolfdog training must have a purpose otherwise it will not work out.
