5 Tips to Get the Most Out of Your Training Time

Learn to read body language

If you don’t do anything else from this list this one is most important. If you learn to read your dog, you can make their behavior predictable and predictability allows you to change the outcome. Think of seeing steam before the pot boils, when the steam starts you know what is happening next so if you didn’t want it to boil you would turn down the heat! I see my dogs excitement is building when the stranger approaches, when my dog gets really excited she jumps, I will ask the stranger to stop so that she doesn’t practice jumping.

Consistency

This also the key to all of life. What ever you put the time into is what you will (they will) get good at. Being consistent is hard, especially when our brains are wired to do the same things over and over because it is easy. So when you pick part of your dogs behavior you want to change you have to change yours too. Most of the job of a dog trainer is to make sure you are consistent.

Learn What Criteria Splitting is and Use It

Criteria is what you want your dog to do in any given situation. Learning to split that criteria into smaller pieces is very important. Think about going to the gym with a goal of a 500lb dead lift. If you walk in, never having preformed a dead lift before and try to do 500lbs best case scenario you just fail to move it worst case you end up severely hurt. Now we all know the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result so you wouldn’t keep doing that, instead you would lower the weight, learn proper form (with no weight), work on your grip strength, etc. That is criteria splitting. If your goal is loose leash walking with your dog at the park but your dog can’t even hold still when you pick up the leash at home you need to work on criteria splitting.

Flexibility

So a lot of dog training is like trying to work out in the gym. If you don’t go having the membership does you no good. If you don’t go regularly you wont see any changes either. HOWEVER with dogs. there is a big difference. If you go to the gym once and learn how to do a pushup you can then take that skill outside of the gym and also do a pushup because you can generalize new skills. Dogs aren’t as good at that. So while you may have taught your dog not to jump on people in the house when you take them for a walk they may still jump on your neighbor. This means you need to be flexible with your criteria based on your dogs learning history in each particular setting.

Remember Its Your Life, Your Dog, and Your Goals

There are a lot of pressures out there for HOW a dog should act. Cures for jumping, barking, pulling, are a dime a dozen on the internet. Hell, I have a few in this blog but at the end of the day if you don’t care (for the most part) I don’t care. There are some safety concerns but on the whole I don’t care what you require for your dog and you shouldn’t care what anyone else thinks. Management is a 1000000000000% ok solution to your problems. Don’t want your dog to jump on house guests but are OK with them jumping on you? Put them away when people come in. Don’t care if your dog is perfectly by your side when walking just want your shoulder to stay in place cool! Just like every other part of your life your goals can change as life moves and you can always teach an old dog new tricks but the longer they have been doing a behavior the harder it is to change. That is the only reason I always ask my clients will you be ok with this behavior when: they are bigger, if you have kids, when guests come over, if you move, etc. I am not judging, I just want to make sure they have thought the behavior through all the different scenarios!