Its National Train Your Dog Month!

It is officially 2020 and the month of January! The month of January, as many of you might know, is National Train Your Dog Month! This month is all about training dogs so I thought I would share three quick training tips that can help you this month while training your dog or any animal!

Tip #1: Value the Reset

The reset is when you toss a treat away from the dog so that it must go get it and come back to you. This is a good thing both for you and for the dog. The benefit of doing this is that is presents opportunities for the dog to practice the behavior as many times as possible within the allotted time limit you have set aside for training. The reset also keeps the animal engaged with you by allowing them to move around a little bit. They also get a free treat, which is always fun!

Tip #2: Mistakes Can Teach You A Lot

We all make mistakes. I have been training animals for 8 years now and I still make mistakes from time to time. But I have since come to learn that I can learn more from these moments than I often do from my successes. A fun story that I think is a good example is one time when I was training a horse. I was training the horse to touch a target with his nose, and he kept approaching the target, putting his nose about an inch from the target and stopping there. I knew he thought he was doing it right because he was consistently stopping at this distance. It was obvious it wasn’t an accident. So, I took the time to observe and figure out why the horse was getting it “wrong.” After taking time to observe, I finally noticed that the horse was blowing on the target! He thought I was clicking for him exhalating on the target, not for touching it! This was a great moment of education for me as I learned that I needed to work on my clicker timing with this specific animal! Once I learned this, he, in turn, learned behaviors much faster! This mistake looked like it was made by the animal, but it was made by me! The horse was not “wrong,” he was simply getting a different answer than I thought he was! This is why any time there is a “mistake,” the first thing you should do is observe to figure out why it is happening. Second, enjoy learning from it! Mistakes can teach you a lot! So, embrace them, enjoy them, and remember to be willing to change your behavior before you try to change the animal’s behavior.

Tip #3: Look Where you Want to Go

This is something that is probably familiar to those who ride horses. Look where you want to go, not where you don’t want to go. As anyone who has ridden a horse knows, if you look where you don’t want to go (like…the fence) that is where you will end up going (like…the fence). When training animals, it is similar. When we focus on what we are training the animal to do, it becomes easier to see it and easier to see when we are doing it correctly. It is good to know what you don’t want to do. However, keep your focus on what you do want to do and what you want the dog to do.

Keep these three tips in mind as you train your dog this month! If you want to hire a dog trainer this month, contact me and schedule a consultation!

Happy Training!