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Puppies learn constantly from their environment. They learn things we teach them, as well as a lot of learning on their own. The more we control their environment and supervise the puppy – the more control we have over their learning process, to channel it toward desirable directions. Learning is most easily done on a "clean slate" – this process is much easier than "unlearning" things through previous experience, although it is important to remember that the canine brain is prepared to learn different things at different ages. That said, as well as remembering that dogs are a neotenic species (that is, they retain some juvenile and adolescent behaviors into maturity), it is possible, and vital, to keep learning a game for both dog and human, in order for the dog to remain motivated to learn. When teaching dogs, several points are crucial to keep in mind, in order to prevent communication errors. One of them is the mistake of anthropomorphism ("humanizing" the dog's point of view). The webinar lists such common errors and the ways to avoid them. Socialization is a widespread yet often misused term. During this session, we clarify the term and explain the ways and ages to socialize puppies – including enrollment in puppy classes (goals, implementation, mistakes and problems to avoid).
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