Train your puppy to come to you with him ON A LEASH. In a pleasant voice, call your puppy and, with the leash, immediately draw him to you. When he gets there, praise him lavishly and sometimes reward him with a little food treat. What he learns in this exercise is that it was a fun, happy experience to come to you. Always make it pleasant for your puppy to come to you.
Alternatively, if you call your puppy when he is off leash, he may or may not come to you. If he chooses not to come to you, you have no way to make him do it. What he learns in this scenario is that he doesn't have to come to you. Congratulations, you have trained your puppy that it's his decision whether to come when called or not.
This rule applies to all other commands you might give your dog. Don't tell your puppy to sit if he's 10' away from you. What if he doesn't sit? Again, you will have taught him that obedience is optional. Teach him to sit when he's ON A LEASH. If he's on a leash, he'll be close enough to you that you can make him comply with your command.
If you command your puppy to sit, make him sit. If you told him to get off the sofa, make him get off the sofa. If you don't, what he'll learn from the experience is that what you say is irrelevant. He'll learn that if he ignores your commands he can keep doing whatever he wants.
Give all your commands in a pleasant, but firm tone. Remember that you are in charge. These are your commands to your puppy, not requests. You don't need to shout, you don't need to be a drill sergeant, but don't be a wimp. You are the leader of you puppy's pack, so sound like a leader.
Give your command ONCE in a voice loud enough that you can be sure that your puppy heard you, then make him comply with the command.
Do not give a command over and over hoping that the puppy will comply. All he will learn from this is that you didn't really mean it the first time . . . or the second time . . . or the third time.
The exception to this rule is that when teaching the stay it is often good to repeat the command gently along with verbal praise while the puppy is staying. This helps keep the puppy calm and reassures him that by doing nothing he is, in fact, doing what you commanded.
Remember that dogs don't speak English. They don't understand grammar or syntax or complex sentences or multiple words for the same idea. They learn a few sounds and that's it. "No" and "Stop" and "Don't" are three totally different things to your dog. "No pull" and "Stop pulling" won't get the same response at all from your dog. "Wanna go for a walk?" is about as long a sentence as a dog will learn, and all he really hears is 'go' and 'walk'. "Pick up your toys" and "Don't you ever poop on my lawn again" are too long and complex and, well, negative.
If he's not in your completely fenced backyard or securely in your house, your puppy belongs ON A LEASH. Almost no dogs are backed-over by cars, run-over in the street or knock children off bicycles when those dogs are ON A LEASH. No few joyous moments of freedom are worth the chance that your puppy will have his guts squished out in the street. Do I make myself clear? He can have his joyous romps in the backyard. My dogs have been through years of obedience training, but they are still ON A LEASH whenever we go out. Even if we are just going from the front door to the car, they are ON A LEASH. They're just dogs, after all. They can only hold one thought in their head at a time and it just takes one whiff of a cat for the thought 'Chase the cat!' to drive out the thought you gave her, like 'Heel' or 'Stay'.
Especially with young puppies, it is important to keep practice sessions short. It is better to practice 5-10 minutes in the morning and 5-10 minutes in the evening than to do 20 minutes straight. As your puppy grows into a dog he'll be able to work longer, but start him out with short, happy practice sessions.
I sometimes use the "Ursa Major Lazy-Boy" system. There you are, crashed-out in front of the TV. Your puppy is at your feet. When the commercials come on, you and your puppy practice sits or downs or stays or something. When the show comes back on, you're done. Commercial breaks are usually about 2 minutes long. Any puppy can practice for 2 minutes without getting bored. At the next commercial break practice some more. Even PBS has breaks between shows. Do three or four of these sessions in an evening. If you plan it right, you won't even have to get out of your chair. You won't be able to do all your training this way, but for those occasional evenings when you're almost too tired to move it can be great.
Never hit your puppy. Never hit your dog. I know it is tempting sometimes. He's just chewed up the remote for the VCR and left the crushed debris, along with a quart of slobber, on your brand-new satin sheets, but do not hit your puppy.
Hitting a puppy or dog is counterproductive. Puppies and dogs are living creatures with parts that can be damaged by hitting. Think of what a dope you'll feel like if you spank your puppy and he ends up with an arthritic hip because of it. He gets to limp for the rest of his life because you were mad that he was on the sofa or something.
Hitting makes a dog "hand shy." Do you want your dog to pull back every time you reach out your hand? Of course not. Well then don't give him any reason to fear your hand.
The days of smacking the dog with a rolled-up newspaper are over. I use crate training to housebreak puppies. I strongly suggest that you participate in a puppy socialization class and dog obedience classes, but be sure they are classes that are based on positive reenforcement. Proper corrections with leash and collar are not abuse, but hitting is abuse.
Most commands used by experienced dog trainers are single syllable words that do not sound like any other commands. "Sit" means sit and "Down" means to lie down. Do not say "Sit Down." This is confusing to your puppy. Do not say "Lie Down." When training your puppy to lie down, use the single syllable, simple command "Down."
Use a single command exclusively for a single action. For instance, the command "Down" is used only for commanding the puppy to put his body in contact with the surface he was standing upon. I've seen so many people who use "Down" when they want the puppy to stop jumping on them and when they want him to get off the furniture and when they want him to lie down on the floor. Teach the puppy that "Off" means to get off of something. I read once in a dog training book about a golden retriever that was having trouble in obedience classes. The 16yr old handler complained the dog never followed commands. When asked to demonstrate for the trainer/book author, the boy shouted at his dog, "Come on, Shadow, sit down!" The trainer was astonished to see the dog respond by crawling on his belly towards the boy, then the trainer burst out laughing as he realized what the dog was doing. The boy had inadvertantly given the dog three different commands - come, sit, and down, and the poor dog was trying his best to do all three at once! Moral of the story - don't confuse your dog.
When commanding my dogs, I like to use the dog's name and then the command. For instance, I say "Brannock, Heel." I think it's only fair that I let Brannock know that I'm talking to him. Some dogs are so keyed up that they move on the first thing you say. With those dogs you may not be able to use the dog's name first, but with Bullmastiffs this has never been a problem.
Also, be careful that the call name of your puppy doesn't sound like any of the traditional dog training commands. Stacey is a great name for a person, but way too close to "Stay" to be a good dog name. Another bad choice is Neil... too close to "Heel." Training a puppy is enough work without this kind of added confusion.
There is no point in scolding your puppy after the transgression. He won't know what you're mad about, he'll just know that you're mad. Corrections have to be made that the time of the misbehavior.
You went to the store for just a minute. When you come back, your dog has chewed up the Kleenex box and peed on the floor. You're mad, and rightly so. However, you must contain your anger. Scolding the dog won't help. All he will take away from that experience will be that when you came home you weren't nice. You might want to scold yourself for leaving the Kleenex where the dog could get it and for not crating a dog that isn't housebroken, but don't scold the dog. If your dog does something wrong, it's because you didn't teach her right.
On the other hand, if your puppy steals the Kleenex and you catch him at it, that's the time for a good verbal correction. Remember, no hitting.
Inadvertent praise means praising some behavior you really don't want to encourage. If your puppy is at you feet barking at something, don't reach down and pet him. This just teaches him that barking gets him petted. When crate training, your puppy will whine and bark because he wants to get out. If you let him out, he will learn that whining and barking will get you to let him out of his crate. Don't reward behavior you don't like.
Bear in mind when choosing an obedience school, and when reading training books, that traditional American dog training methods were developed by the military in WW1 to train army dogs. Training tecniques developed with a military mindset - command, compulsion, shame, punishment. Bullmastiffs do not respond well to these traditional techniques. I doubt any dogs really do. Modern dog training techniques are moving away from the harsh punishment aspects and towards gentle persuasion and positive reinforcement techniques. Bullmastiffs, being sensitive, intelligent creatures, do much better with these systems. Prong and choke collars are not in themselves overly harsh and they may be necessary with large strong dogs. But shouting, beating, yanking, throwing, kicking and dragging are all no-nos. I've actually heard of a trainer that will swing a dog in the air by its choke collar as punishment for not obeying a command. If you encounter a trainer that does any of these things, move away, very fast, and don't go back. Your dog deserves better than that.
On the other hand don't go too far the other way. Dogs are pack animals and require a clear, strong leader. That had better be you. If not, the dog will take charge, and no one will be happy. Especially with the giant breeds like these guys, you must take charge right away before the dog outgrows you, and a Bullmastiff will be somewhere around 100 lbs of muscle by her first birthday. For the most part, Bullmastiffs are happy to accept you as their leader. Even if you never do get around to obedience school the above training tips will help establish you as the leader.