How Often Do I Train My Dog?

You should train your dog at least 2 times a week.

Your dog is the learner, and you are the teacher.

Based on our experience and the industry standards – training your dog 2-3 times a week is the best frequency for formal dog training sessions. Ritual training for daily routines is the best for boundaries, impulse control, foundational skills, and communication.

Every interaction with your dog (especially a puppy) is a real-life training opportunity for your learner. Having realistic expectations for yourself and your learner will be your key to success, so try to only ask for behavior if you have put in the time to teach it first in a non-distracting environment because you could be setting your dog up to fail. That’s different from what good teachers do.

Remember that training your dog is a collaborative process with constant feedback for you as the teacher. The learner can provide valuable information about your communications, mechanics, choice or motivators (rewards), and environment chosen to train. Feel free to change up one of those pieces of the training puzzle if your learner struggles. Mistakes are just data for your next training session!

Every time you are working with your dog, you are not only training the behavior that you picked for the day – sit, down, walk, stay, wait, touch, place, etc. – but you are also establishing a long-time attitude towards working with you as being a time they look forward to. You can build trust by having fun training and removing corrective words and phrases like “no” or “uh-huh,” which may erode trust and break down communication if used too often. Who wants to learn something new when they’re being corrected for every mistake? No one – no dog. Reinforce what you want, and avoid correcting what you don’t, especially when teaching a new skill or advancing building one.

Your Mechanics, Training Set Up, & Rewards

Make a plan – you will get better results if you do instead of making it up as you go along.

How you are training is essential, as well as using your body, hands, tone, and choice of words. Sometimes, less is more regarding your communication with your dog. For example, your dog is likely confused with “Do you want to sit.” vs. “sit.” The easiest way is to use a no marker reward if your dog gets something wrong – that’s clear communication enough for the novice dog.

When you choose to train, find times when your dog is well-rested and calm. Avoid trying to train after a triggering event for your dog or after a stressful day. Avoid training reactively in response to a triggering event that went bad fast. This is why dogs that are so overwhelmed and unable to focus in a group class setting – will initially do better with private lessons.

Rewards are what make your training work! With the reward, your dog is likely going to respond well. Make a list of your dog’s reinforcers! It must be reinforcing to your dog to work. A reinforcer is anything your dog likes – be careful of too much touch and high-pitched praise. Challenging situations require higher-value food, shorter interactions, and sometimes more distance from whatever is causing overwhelm your dog’s focus.

Don’t show the money! This means not using the food as a bribe – so avoid holding the food in your hand showing your dog while asking for a “sit”. The food should never be seen in training and is followed AFTER you say your marker word YES or click. We only show food at the beginning stages of teaching a new behavior if we need to lure our dog into a position. That food lure fades quickly. You shouldn’t need a food lure for fluent behavior.

Training Tips To Follow

• Only train as long as your dog is able to pay attention. Puppies attention spans are short – so your lessons need to be short too.
• Once you have a win – that’s an excellent time to stop your session. Next session you may make it easy, leveling up to the most recent breakthrough quickly.
• Avoid getting “greedy” or allowing the human competitive side influence to push more for progress during one session. Take it from me, it will only lead to frustration and disappointment and it’s normal for a client to experience this firsthand.
• Using cues. Both verbal and non-verbal cues should remain consistent during training. That means selecting one word or gesture for a skill and giving that cue the same way every time. For example, if you use “come” for recall, be mindful not to say “come here” other times.
• Try to avoid repeating yourself until your dog does what you asked. Say it once.
• Timing. The more precisely we mark/reward our dog’s correct behaviors, the quicker they learn what’s right. Be mindful that the behavior you are rewarding is exactly what you seeking to reinforce!

Real Life Sessions vs. Formal Sessions

Real-Life Training Sessions

Real-life training sessions are opportunities in your daily routine, which happens every day. For example, waiting until released at the door, waiting for food, placing before meals, hopping up into the car, waiting to get out of the car, and sitting for attention or for fetch. It’s a fact that life can get crazy and busy, so being able to find easy training moments that can synch into your daily routine can help make sure training gets done. Take advantage of this real-life opportunity!

Set house rules and make sure everyone is on board! If different family members reward the wrong behavior, or differently than taught, how is your dog supposed to know what’s right?

Keeping rituals. Setting certain times for feeding, walks, bathroom breaks, and more will help your dog learn a routine using their skills. Having a schedule is great, but making sure everyone follows it is what leads to consistency; otherwise, you’re likely reinforcing behavior that you’ve spent time and money on to change.

How can you use your dog’s skills for these daily routines? Make a list!

• Meal time
• Potty time
• Playtime
• Walks
• Car rides
• Greetings
• Grooming
• Contractors or visitors at the house
• Family downtime in the evening
• Morning coffee, breakfast, work calls, nap time, cooking meals

Formal Training Sessions

Formal training sessions for 10 minutes. Every 2-3 days of training. You should train your dog without distractions and have your training rewards, clicker, training treat bag, and other training tools ready. Remember, don’t show the money having a bag of treats out! Will you focus on Duration? Distraction? Distance? Take some time to think about it – develop a training plan.

• Keep it short – 10 -15 minutes every 2-3 days.
• Revisiting the basics is suitable for formal sessions. Different environments and different stages of life can hinder the performance of previously-taught behaviors. Every time you train in a new situation, run through the primary cues to ensure your dog can perform them regardless of the environment.
• Build up the distractions very slowly. Just because your dog knows how to sit in the kitchen when nothing else is happening doesn’t mean your dog can still sit at the park when other dogs are running around, a child is approaching, and a skunk just popped out from behind a tree. That’s a sudden leap in difficulty!

Helpful Training Rules When Training Your Dog

1. Find the personal reinforcement for your efforts in your dog’s training success. Set a goal or two – and make a plan!
2. Avoid getting greedy (we will repeat it).
3. Once you have a breakthrough – that’s an excellent time to stop your session.
4. Tell your dog the session is over with a verbal phrase like “All Done,” and always toss out a few free treats to end on a positive note; this makes a difference in keeping your dog motivated by not disappointing or creating a negative pattern suddenly ended the fun training session. When dogs are aware of the stopping point – they’re less anxious.
5. During your session – if you notice a rise in your dog’s stress, take note and try to lower that intensity with slower movements or less valuable rewards. Motivation is good, but not frantic motivation.
6. Practice skills in a non-distracting environment first before around distractions is a common mistake that can easily set you up for disappointment. For example, teach “leave it” with non-enticing objects before adding in the shoes and socks!

3 Biggest Mistakes When Training Your Dog

1. Using a Skill Before Your Dog Knows It Well

Don’t expect your dog to walk nicely on the leash if you only practice when you’re actually on your dog’s daily walk! You have to start in a distraction-free environment and graduate from that onto the outside. And if you must, start off training the moment you put the leash on and step out the door with several food rewards you know your dog cannot resist. As a result, you end up doing what’s called reactive training. Training in response to bad behavior, so don’t only do it when needed! We call that “reactive training,” you want to be “proactive training.” Avoid this pitfall if you can because it’s frustrating for everyone.

2. Reinforcing The Behavior You Are Trying To Change

You’re not using tools for management in situations, and the behavior you’re trying to change is getting reinforced. Management is anything that can be used to prevent a dog from practicing or rehearsing a behavior, like jumping on guests. Examples of management include closing your blinds to prevent barking at people walking by if your dog is reactive and is a constant barker, crating your puppy to prevent them from chewing wires or having potty accidents, using gates, crates, food puzzles/enrichment, and leashes to prevent annoying greetings and jumping. More mistakes are not having your dog on a leash when the door opens if they try to “escape,” leaving a television on with animals if they’re reactive to any dog, and not putting the toys or food away if you have a resource guarder.

3. Lack of Consistency

You may notice that suddenly your dog doesn’t do what you asked but they’ve known it in the past– or the behavior you’ve been trying to change is back again. This is from lack of consistency, underlying emotions, or your dog is being accidentally reinforced for a behavior you’re been trying to change. Suppose there’s no underlying emotional or physical reason. In that case, This is often from lack of management of anticipation of needing to train in a real-life moment, other household members not following the training plan, and/or lack of novel successful training opportunities outside the home. The great news is that behavior is constantly changing and can be transformed back to what you want from your dog – so you can start from the basics and level up quickly in a training session.

Training Opportunities with Fetch Worthy Dog Training

Consistent Training gives the Best Results!

Fetch Worthy Dog Training with Shelly Haines VSA-CDT, is located in and serves the Austin area. Here are some dog training options we currently offer. If you are not in the Austin area but need a virtual or emergency virtual consultation please book one here!

1. Day Training Program (waitlisted for now) South Austin will help you increase consistency by providing professional training support, or if there’s a lack of time to train – Fetch Worthy is thrilled to fill in the training gap. This program looks like your trainer working 1:1 with your dog for 50-60 min. Sessions M-F in South Austin over 2 weeks, providing videos on YouTube. Returning Day Training clients receive 10% off of $449. You do not need to be home! It’s like a “training boost,” and the results are effective!
2. Classes are an excellent way to keep yourself accountable for dedicated training time. However, adjust your expectations if the practice outside class is lacking. Set your expectations to learn what you can and not be disappointed in your dog’s performance. We are only human, not perfect, and neither are dogs. They require lots of hours of practice broken down into small digestible sessions with leveling up to build fluency.
3. Puppy Training Programs (NEW) and training packages where you will have follow-up work and one on one time with your trainer to ask questions and practice your skills. Puppy training is the most essential training, including socialization, to prevent behavior problems in the future. Our Puppy Raiser Program is exclusively for puppies between 8 weeks and 2 years old.
4. Maintenance Private Training Plan (NEW) Book 4 at-home private lessons in advance to save money and maintain your training investment purchased after your training package. The 4 lessons are completed in 2 months, with 4 lessons bi-weekly for $496.
5. Training Check In’s are complimentary (NEW) 30. min. Virtual calls with your training to troubleshoot – ask questions and provide feedback. Training doesn’t work without input from your training plan. Every case is different, and taking notes, asking questions, and taking videos are excellent dog training practices to help you achieve your goal.

Your Dog Is Doing Their Best

While we think dogs are highly intelligent and know what we ask, their intellect is comparable to a 2-year-old toddler. Never take it personally or out on your dog – behavior outcomes will fluctuate, so remember to reinforce what you want to see more of and practice in those real-life training moments. They’re trying to figure out how to do what you want – but need sound guidance, structure, kind boundaries, clear communication, and have their natural canine needs met.

Continuing training in your adult dog’s various stages of life is also critical for your relationship, their safety, and well-being. Speaking from personal experience, having a senior dog comes with new behaviors and mobility changes, so having established training provides an easier transition into teaching valuable skills later, like canine exercises, cooperative care for medical treatments, better communication when sight and hearing loss occurs, and applying skills learned that can reduce anxiety.

Our Commitment To You

If you’re committed to your dog’s training success, then so is Fetch Worthy, which will provide the most efficient, up-to-date professional dog training programs available in Texas.

Schedule Here