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1) When bringing your new dog home for the first time make sure that he/she has plenty of time to explore their new home, also try to make sure that all family members are present and introduced to your new pet, this is especially important for the older dog. A dog is a territorial animal and the guarding instinct can be very strong and new faces appearing can lead to some confusion - it is better to get everyone introduced straight off, this establishes all the new pack members.

2) Don't play rough or encourage aggression or play biting, this is especially important if you have children in the house for two reasons the first being that very young children are obviously at risk from injury even from a well intentioned but overly boisterous dog used to rougher play and the second is that older children could well be the ones playing rough with your new pet and inadvertently encourage the wrong behaviour or at worst put themselves at risk, in this case both pet and child need to be trained.

3) Never physically punish you're pet to force compliance to your commands, this will lead to a fearful dog and potentially aggressive animal - dogs work on association and will associate physical punishment with your commands and as he does not want to be punished he will avoid you, therefore defeating any training efforts.

4) Training needs to be consistent - this is very important and sometimes very difficult to maintain, your commands must always be the same e.g.: when you want your dog to come to you, you could say either come or here, the trick is to decide which command you are going to use and stick with it As I say this can sometimes be harder than it looks even the most experienced dog handler will sometimes slip up and issue a different command, the important thing is to remember not to chastise your dog for your mistake, after all he does not know you are talking to him when you issue a different command he is not used to.

5) Related to the above, if there are certain places in your home off limits to your pet make sure from the very beginning that your pet is aware of them eg: not welcome in the bathroom, on the couch or on your bed. It is also wise to make sure that all family members are aware of these restrictions as well and stick to them, if your children or spouse are happy for your dog to sit on the couch , but you are not, then you poor dog is getting very mixed signals and does not know what he should do, but he knows one thing that couch sure is comfortable.

6) Punishment must always be when your dog is caught in the act, unlike you or me, a dog will not associate punishment with something he did earlier in the day that you have just discovered the best example being when you get home to find dog mess on the floor or your favourite shoes now chewed to destruction, if you now go into a rage and punish him now, he will associate you coming home as punishment time and will likely hide away when you get home rather than being happy and pleased to see you. This is sometimes the hardest thing to achieve and naturally a dog that persistently offends whether it is messing the floor or being destructive can be very frustrating and frustrated people can get very angry, but it is important to remember how your dog thinks and behave accordingly.

7) Praise him, praise him and praise him again - this is your best tool when training your new dog, whenever he does what you want praise him, if he does it again praise him and keep on praising him, he wants you to be pleased with and lavishing attention on him. As a tool though it is invaluable, again a dog's mind works on association if you lavish praise on him when he does something like doing his business in the garden or whilst out on a walk rather than in the house, he will quickly pick up on the fact that you like him doing this and he will keep on with this pattern of behaviour and in no time at all this training job is done very nicely thank you very much.

I hope this is helpful, I could have listed more tips but these are the ones I consider essential and many others are just variations of the above.