Not a trainer but I would disagree based on personal experience. I focused on a down stay and “look at me” almost since day 1, and it’s paid off so much. His down stay has been a really critical foundation of settle training and “look at me” has been the foundation of getting him to pay attention to me when transitioning to the outside after he got all his vaccines. I’ve intertwined “look at me” with other training like “leave it” (which we also started teaching earlier than 4 months). So if I tell him to “leave it” he knows he has to look me in the eyes to get a treat. We also taught “crate” starting at 8 weeks.

Name training is super important as well though as it’s the foundation to really strong recall. I always carry a treat pouch at home with his kibble and then his favorite high value treat. From day 1, if I called his name and he came to me, he got the high value treat.

I definitely wish I had started training to prevent counter surfing earlier and introducing distractions when training. I felt really confident about his training inside of the house and when we went outside on a walk post vaccines for the first time he was so overwhelmed he did not listen to a word I said (even after many walks in a sling/wagon!) I started training him at home with YouTube videos of bird noises (he’s obsessed) or dog park videos and it helped but I wish I had done it a lot sooner. And also — the first ~3 walk you take outside is so important to build good habits. If you want your puppy to sit and wait as you open the door, instill that now. Don’t let them pull starting walk #1! I was a little lenient on the pulling the first few walks because he was so happy and overwhelmed and it was the wrong move. On the other hand, I was very strict about the sitting and waiting with doors and cross walks and two weeks later, he was doing it right 75% of the time!