# Timeline or Stages



## Ryan Cusack (Jan 19, 2009)

I'm venturing into the general forums pretty quickly here, but it's still my first post. I _did_ search before posting.

Most of the dogs I've grown up with or worked around were beyond 6-12 months in age. I had one puppy before at 12 weeks that didn't work out because my work schedule was terrible. I shouldn't have purchased the dog in the first place and turned him over to a more suitable owner. Anyway... life has changed since then and I have a 14 week old pup at home to work with. My eventual goals for him (depending on whats compatible to him) are 1-Search and Rescue (urban, collapse, wilderness), 2-Arson Detection.

I guess what I'm looking for is a recommended timeline of when to begin different phases of general training and what to expect in general. 

Some questions that come to mind:
At what age does teething begin and puppy teeth fall out? How young can obedience training begin? What is an appropriate age to begin screening the dog's drives?

I think I have a pretty decent understanding of working with dogs, but all of my experience comes from animals who were already housebroken and obeyed simple commands such as "sit" "down" "stay", etc...

Let me know if this is too vague. I'm on the backside of a midnight shift so I wouldn't be surprised if this whole post made no sense.

-Ryan


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## Justin Gannon (Nov 17, 2008)

If you have a good working dog you can start training at 7 weeks!!! Nothing but fun stuff as they are puppies. What are you going to be doing with the dog? Sport, PPD, etc.... Please feel free to ask any questions. Most importantly what type of dog and do you know the genetic lines?


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## Konnie Hein (Jun 14, 2006)

Ryan Cusack said:


> Some questions that come to mind:
> At what age does teething begin and puppy teeth fall out? How young can obedience training begin? What is an appropriate age to begin screening the dog's drives?
> -Ryan


Hi Ryan:
Answers to your questions...

- Your pup's teeth might start to fall out as early as 4 months of age. Most pups are done by 6 months of age.
- I'm pretty sure I addressed the obedience question via PM, but let me know if you have further questions about it.
- We don't do formal screening on dogs until they are at least a year of age. However, you can see extremes (extremely bad or extremely good) in puppies much younger than that. .

Hopefully you'll be able to contact the FEMA folks I referred you to. It's not that you can't get good advice on a discussion forum, but it is so much easier to help a person out when you can work directly with them and their dog.


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## Ryan Cusack (Jan 19, 2009)

Thanks so much for the replies


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