@gordon63 This is a puppy development chart for your reference.
It is not exactly what you are looking for, but the scenarios between a puppy and a baby are a bit different. With puppies, you are completely turning their instincts on their heads and applying a lot of rules to things that normally would not have rules if they were left completely to their own devices. Obedience training is more inline with schooling or education than infant development.
There are very few 'rules' in regards to where you should be in training at any given point. The best measure of success is moving at your puppy's pace and never asking them for more than you KNOW they can handle. For example, if you just learned sit with a lure in the kitchen - they are probably not going to sit when you verbally cue them in the yard. It takes time to build up the 3 areas of a skill- duration, distance and distraction - beyond learning the skill, itself.
The "Core" set of skills for a brand new puppy are:
- Potty training (your method is just fine - we have no fence either and trained on a lead)
- Loose leash walking / leash skills
- Bite Inhibition
- Crate Training (optional but recommended)
- Resource Guarding Prevention (hand feeding, handling while feeding, taking and giving toys, etc)
- Handling desensitization (toes, ears, butt, legs, face, etc - also includes basic grooming like brushing and ear cleaning)
- Name / "look at me" / focus
- Sit
- Down
- Wait
Those are really be base skills for many other skills a dog will learn and, if you do NOTHING else, you can have a relatively well trained dog with just those 10 behaviors. In addition to those obedience items
Socialization will be critical. Get your puppy into kindergarten class as soon as possible (all vaccinations are not necessary - just be sure you go to a reputable club that requires proof of vaccination records) and get them used to everything you can in life as soon as you can. This includes: noises, smells, sights, sensations, different animals and people, different environments and being handled in different ways by different people. Introducing your puppy to as much of the world as you can in a positive way can help mitigate anxiety, fearfulness, reactivity and other behavioral issues to certain 'scary' stimuli.
Avoid places like dog parks, heavy dog traffic areas and pet stores until all vaccinations are UTD - these are NOT good places for socializing a very young puppy!
That being said - this is where "moving at your puppy's pace" comes into play. Some puppies will excel at the base skills which will allow you to move more quickly, others may struggle, be very unfocused (which is normal!) or still too distracted by their new environment to make much progress at all. Pay attention to your puppy's needs, be consistent with training - but don't push something if it isn't coming right away.
For us, our puppy FLEW through most basics obedience. One skill we struggled on was 'down', however. It took us a WEEK to even get him into a reliable position while training sit took about 15 minutes. Now, if he is ever confused about what he should be doing, he lays down by default :| We also did some trick training as we have a breed that is generally a very quick study and needs a lot of mental stimulation (Pembroke Welsh Corgi) so we integrated in some tricks like 'high five' and 'turn', did some practical skill application like 'sitting at the door before it opens' and 'waiting before taking food'. This was not all in the first week, mind you, but it was within the first month or so.
'waiting at doors' and 'waiting for food' are not REQUIRED behaviors, but they can be very helpful. If a pup is used to sitting next to an open door until cued otherwise, you have a pretty good chance of reducing door bolting. Waiting for food and handling the food while they eat (hand feeding a young puppy is great!) can help with resource guarding and using a gentle mouth when taking food from humans. We were very very diligent with hand feeding our corgi as a puppy, now - you would think he is taking food from an infant with how delicate he is taking treats.
Be patient, be consistent, spend a lot of time with your core skills and proof them anywhere and everywhere you can (again, building on distance, duration and distraction - all need to be worked on separately to a reliable level before you can start to combine). Your puppy may be a wiz at basic obedience in a few months or it may take the full first year - it really depends on your puppy, how much time you spend working on skills and the actual focus and motivation of your puppy.
What training goals do you have? Do you want to get the CGC? Compete in obedience? Agility? Do something else? Just have a pet dog? Establishing your expectations now can really help make training easier as you move forward. If you want a therapy dog, for example, you will need to really focus on drilling CGC required skills and do TONS of socialization. If you are looking to compete in obedience or agility - really nailing down and building up focus and desire to work will be awesome (as well as doing a lot of foundation work).
Get involved at a club early with puppy kindergarten and explore your other training options. I would encourage you to do at least 1 or 2 higher level obedience classes in addition to kindergarten at a minimum. If taken seriously, this will give your dog a pretty awesome foundation to build up to nearly any skill you want them to (if anything).
Don't worry too much about meeting deadlines or fitting within time frames - if you push your puppy too hard, everyone is just going to get frustrated. Move at their pace, slowly build up skills and add new ones in as your puppy starts to get the hand of things. Try to avoid throwing your puppy into a situation where they are likely to fail (it can build a bad reaction to that incident in the future, make training more difficult and frustrate everyone). Once you have a good 'bag of tricks' built up - proof, proof, proof! Keep adding in new skills to keep things fresh if your puppy starts to get bored.
Good luck! If you need additional help, these are all good places to go:
