What I learned about Cairn Terriers though is that they pick up on things around them very quickly. They are like highly absorbing sponges that want to learn and learning is fun for them. It gives them something to do and challenges that they enjoy.

"Hehe ... it's great fun when my Mommy whispers in my ear. I never know what she's going to say. I especially like it when she whispers, "Ready to go for a walk?""   Happy Jack Nearly everything my Cairn Terriers were trained to do was with the use of a clicker. Molly was trained a great deal with the clicker. Jack was not simply because during the time he became part of our family I was busy working on special projects with my work at home job. But even so, Jack quickly picked up much of the training Molly knows simply by watching her.

The only training that did not work with treats and the clicker with Molly was housebreaking. In a previous article I wrote why the process of housebreaking Molly was slower than usual. It was in fact partly my fault and you can learn about it in my articles, "Nature's Miracle" and "Housebreaking a Cairn Terrier".

All of things I trained Molly to do worked best with the use of Pro-Treat's Freeze Dried Training Treats. Since she was a young pup (9 weeks old) when I started working with her, I diced up each freeze dried cube into 5 or 8 pieces. They training treats should be very small. In this way you are not over feeding your Cairn.

I started out working with her a couple minutes at a time about two or three times a day. The attention span of a puppy is very short and in this way she was getting several sessions a day with repeated training over and over again. Once she successfully learned exactly what I wanted her to do, she got a jackpot of training treats fed to her quickly one at a time. She then knew that what she just did was exactly what I wanted her to do.

I go into far more detail about clicker training with mini treats in my article, "Clicker Training".

Other treats I tried before purchasing the Pro-Treat's Freeze Dried Training Treats were tiny slices of hot dog, tiny bits of cheddar cheese, tiny bits of thoroughly cooked chicken breasts, tiny pieces of dog jerky treats, and tiny slices of cold cuts. None of these worked as well as the Pro-Treat's Freeze Dried Training Treats for my dogs. I'm not sure why but I'm glad they did because the training was well worth it.

Your Cairn Terrier pup may respond well to other treats. The trick is to find which treat works best for your dog. Remember that the treats must be very small or the pup will get full and not respond as well to your commands. Feeding too large of treats or too often may also spoil them and they won't eat their puppy food as well.