WHILE YOU’RE TRAINING HER.
QUESTION – If you were to attribute your own dog’s progress through the Levels to one single thing, what would that be?
Constant attention to the bottom line. The dog must be IN THE GAME to train your dog. I don’t work agility if the dog isn’t In The Game, don’t work obedience, don’t work Levels, don’t work for Target – if the dog isn’t In The Game, I make it simpler and simpler and simpler until she IS.
If I have 10 goals for the day and don’t accomplish anything at all except spending 5 minutes with the dog In The Game, it was a good day.
When this happens consistently, the dog begins to arrive in any situation In The Game and ready to work or learn.
Train for 5 minutes
A “training session” isn’t an hour long. Most pups have an attention span of about 15 seconds – which is fine because I’ve found that trainers have an average attention span of about 18 seconds! When you’re training, TRAIN. When you’re not training, have the courtesy to tell your dog that you’re not training.
That means when you’re working with your dog, you should be concentrating on each other, focused on each other.
Don’t lose your focus on her
When you start to think about your grocery list, you’re no longer focused on your dog, no longer concentrating on her, and if you’re still asking her to focus on you, you’re not going to get the behavior you want. Go for 15 seconds, stop. Relax. Think. Take a deep breath. Go for another 15 seconds.
You don’t have to count seconds, of course. Try counting out 10 treats. When those 10 are gone, it’s time to sit back and take that breath and think about what just happened. When you’ve worked through 5 sets of 10, that’s probably enough for right now.
When I’m excited about something, I tend to do that something – and nothing but that something. Unfortunately, that’s a formula for burn-out, for you AND for your dog.
Raising a puppy means ALWAYS thinking about what the dog is learning because the puppy is ALWAYS learning. If you thought about things ahead of time and your setting factors are right, she’s learning what you want her to learn.
If you turned her loose in your house without thought, you’re allowing her to learn things you REALLY don’t want her to know – things like how to dump the trash out of every basket in the house, how to unroll toilet paper, and how to poop on your pillow.
Still, raising a puppy doesn’t mean you have to ALWAYS be in training mode. If the pup has just peed and pooped outside, is confined to the living room, and has a decent quantity of acceptable toys to play with, you can take some time off for a soap opera.
No matter what you’re working on with your dog, the 5 minutes before each meal are precious minutes. The dog is hungry, her body has been getting ready to do whatever it has to do to get food, and she’s ready to pay attention (if she’s not, you haven’t paid enough attention to setting factors). If you don’t train the dog any other time, don’t waste those precious minutes before her meals!
