For the third day in a row, I was standing in the yard in my pajamas with my young puppy, wondering what I was going to do with her that day. A smart, and schedule driven puppy, she knew that every morning started with a potty break, followed by a training session. And the potty break was over. She started at me, then bumped me with her nose, then started to chew and pull on my sleeves and pants, anxious to get started so she could access the rewards she knew I had on me. My attempts to fend her off only encouraged her, so for the third day in a row, I decided that we would practice some heeling. I stumbled through a few repatitions of decent heeling, and rewarded her, wondering what I was going to do next. Had we practiced positions this week already? What about leave it? Again, my puppy was hassling me to get going, but I couldn't remember what it was I'd wanted to do today. Was it touchpads? Eventually, I gave up trying to remember and just picked a familiar behavior at random to proof. We made it through the session, and went back inside.
Does that sound like it was a productive training session? Let me tell you, it wasn't. Trying to remember what we had done in the past few sessions so I could decide what to work on in that session was incredibly unproductive. It frustrated me, it frustrated my dog, and it really slowed down her learning process. I was not planning out what I wanted to work on, I was not keeping track of what we had recently worked on, or how it went. But I was still expecting to see progress with training. I still wanted to be getting better with each session. And with nothing to look back on to see how we did, or even what we did, I was ending each session more and more discouraged. Which made me less interested in planning what I was going to do next.
What finally got me out of this rut, and really started moving my training forward was making a training plan. I made a master list of all the things I wanted to teach my dog, so I could see what I was working toward. I started making weekly plans with my sessions outlined so I could see what we were working on at a glance. I started to reflect in writing what we had done, what had gone well, what needed improvement, and if I deviated from the plan
(becuse who can follow a plan all the time?). Suddenly, I could easily see not only the things that we had practiced each day, but the things that were consistently improving. It made me feel like we were finally getting somewhere, not like we we were stuck at some mid point, not really getting better or worse. I could also spot things that were stagnated, and adjust my training to try and move them forward, instead of wondering why we weren't making progress.
How To Plan A Training Session
Now that we've talked about how important it is to plan our sessions, how do you go about it? It is easy to say "plan your session" but what does that really mean. Well, there is no one right way to train your dog and there is not one right way to run your session, but I will share with you how I do it. First, I decide on the goal of the session. Even if there are several things I want to do, I pick one main thing to focus on and build the entire session around that goal. Then I break the session up into three parts; warm up, new concepts, and familiar concepts and I have one or two exercises for each segment. Each segment is only a few minutes long, and diffrent from the others. This keeps training interesting, and prevents the dog (or the person) from getting bored in the session, allows you to practice multiple things, and helps you feel successful even if one part does not go as well as you'd hoped. I also like to record the session whenever I can, because sometime things go better than you realzied in the moment.
The Warm Up
The goal of the warm up is to get the dog having fun, and also get them focused and ready to learn, but it should also be fairly quick, no more than a minute or two. Whatever activity you pick should reflect those ideas. For me, most of the time, I play some engagement games, like the get it game, or the circle game, or practice well known behaviors that can be done with speed and have a high rate of reward. I always relate the activities I do for the warm up to the overall goall of the session. The warm up segment always includes movement, and rewards, which will get the dog engaged in process, and interested in what is coming next.
New Concepts
This is where we really get into the heart of the training session, and addressing the main goal. If your goal was to teach the dog something new, this is where to do it. Be prepared to break down whatever you're trying to teaach into smaller steps to help you dog understand what you want from them. For example, don't tell your dog to stay for the first time ever and then try to walk ten feet away. Your dog will follow you, or get up and wander off. Instead, introduce the idea of stay with you nearby, and slowly add time to the stay and distance from you as the dog is successful. Whatever your main goal for the session is, this is the time to get down to it. When you are planning, think of how you want to teach this new thing, and consider what steps might be involved in getting your dog to learn it. This is the longest part of the session, but still should not be over five minutes or so. Do your best to end this segment on a high note.
Familiar Concepts
This is the end of the session, and the dog has spent some mental and physical energy in the first two segments, so now is the time to practice some things the dog knows, but has not perfected yet. This is the ideal time for what is known as "proofing", which just means that you practice things the dog knows in new environments, with distractions, or from farther away from the dog. This is the time to practice skills the dog needs work on, but things that are not totally new. If this can work into your overall session goal, that's great, but sometimes this will actually be separate or have its own goal.
There's not getting around it: dog training takes time. And planning your sessions, and reflecting on them takes time. The good new though, is that it doesn't take as much time as you think. I spend about twenty minutes a week planning sessions, and less than five minutes a day reflecting. And if you'd like to plan your sessions like I do, and if you would like to see your training sessions go from frustrating to fulfilling, we've got a something here to help you get started. Click the link bellow, and we will send you our training planning guide right to your inbox. Use it to plan your own training sessions, and see how much faster you progresss in your training.
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