Has anyone heard of a puppy training method that has the owner not talking to the puppy for 2 weeks?

I’m somewhat confused by your question. What exactly is this training method about, and what does it hope to achieve? The most successful puppy training programs – whether they are for socialisation, obedience, behaviour – are those that maximise interaction between owner and puppy. Any program that decreases contact between owner and puppy is probably bad news.

No- never. And I have probably read materials by all of the good dog trainers out there. I am very curious about what this is supposed to accomplish.

I have never heard of this, it sounds like a bad idea to me!
Could she be trying to train her puppy using only hand motions, or sign language perhaps? This seems really bizarre.

I gotta agree with @xxii, it is definitely better if you maximize the interaction between the pups and their owners. It’s once they’ve matured that it may be a good idea to send a misbehaving dog to a program for improvement (though I’d prefer to train them myself thus maintaining contact, and perhaps strengthening bonds, between the dog and myself, which wasn’t a brilliant move on my part when my parents and I were breeding dalmatians).

Actually, I have a lot of Deaf friends who never talk to their dogs and, taken collectively, have some of the best trained dogs I have ever seen. Not talking does not mean not interacting. It actually makes a lot of sense to me because my dogs don’t talk to me and most of my interactions with them are with hand signals. I can see how not talking to a dog (who doesn’t understand the words anyway) would create a very different appreciation of one another and a much BETTER communication.

@Kayak8 I agree, that aspect makes sense to some degree. That is why I asked about the hand signals. My dogs are trained both with key words and hand signals… and they have always understood the hand signals better.

WTF?? How can you not talk to a puppy that is in your home? What is the supposed outcome of this treatment? Would you not talk to a child who has misbehaved or misstepped for two weeks? No. That method is crazy and I would not follow it, I would demand any money back that I had paid.

@TheOnlyNeffie My dogs know both key commands and hand signals as well, but my Deaf friends shape the behavior and add the hand signals without any problem at all.

@Kayak8

While what you say has some value, it’s not to be taken to the extreme. It’s hard to teach a dog to come when called when you can’t talk to the dog :>)

@crisw I understood the question to imply that it is only for two weeks to allow bonding with the handler. A young pup will come just by you slapping your thigh and acting like you want it around—you don’t have to say a word.

@Kayak8 I don’t disagree, I think what you’re saying makes sense. But at the same time, we are talking about people that may already be accustomed to communicating without spoken word. Trying to refrain from speaking to your pet at all would be difficult for most of us, I think, if we weren’t used to it. I can’t help but wonder if that would lead to frustration on the owner’s behalf.. and confusion on the puppy’s behalf.

@TheOnlyNeffie I agree with you, if the handler is frustrated by not talking, it would be hard on the pup. But I want folks to understand that talking to a dog is certainly not essential. We are only talking about two weeks. I could easily go for two weeks without talking to a puppy but have trained a lot of dogs at this point and am not much of a talker when alone in the house with my dogs anyway.

I have used a similar technique with vicious dogs to bring them under control, but it seemss pretty extreme for a young pup. Sounds like someone has taken Cesar Milan’s theory of no talk to an extreme. Teaching hand signals is great but I do think this pup is pretty young for total immersion. That said however, it would also depend on how much physical interaction is allowed or encouraged. If it is plenty of hands on gentling then no big deal, as @Kayak8 says if a dog lives with a deaf person it may very rarely hear any spoken words. Would be interesting to know more details.

oh crap, not Milan idiocy again…

oh crap in the real world milan has saved more dogs from euthanasia than any of the phd types who write books without ever laying a hand on a dog except perhaps a drugged one in a laboratory setting….

I am so not going to get into this again! :>D

good cuz everytime you dis him and someone listens to you, that is another dog who will potentially end up in death row. Clicker, positive reinforcement, marker, it all works on some dogs but it is not the only way to train and there are a lot of hard dogs who laugh at it. I am in a class right now that only uses the soft methods, no choke chains etc. and I am saddened each week when another problem dog doesn’t show because there was no progress with the problems. I always wonder what will happen with those dogs. And I know that I could have helped them.

Update, my dil found a new training program.