When you train your dog, you probably have one main goal, for them to learn something. Sometimes it is hard to find a way to train your dog where they will get a lot out of the session. You might wonder about the length, rewards, importance of timing and more.
We will be sharing our top 3 recommendations to get the most out of your training session and also some dog training tips that you can use every time you train your dog.
Contents
- Length Of The Session; Recognising the importance of how long your training session goes for.
- Rewards; Looking at the different types of rewards that can be used when training
- Timing; Broken up into two parts: 1. Looking at the best times to give different rewards and praise 2. Seeing the importance of the timing of each individual treat
Length Of The Session
Dogs do not have as long of an attention span as humans, so they could get bored and distracted pretty quickly. Making sure you are keeping an eye on the length of your training session is a good idea. Every session should be no longer than 15 mins. Some dogs will be even happy to finish at 5 minutes.
Of course, this time will depend on the dog you are training. Something to consider would be is your dog tired, playful, chill or excited at that moment? If they are tired then a long training session probably wouldn’t be the best choice that time and 5 minutes would do. If your dog has quite a lot of energy then you might train them for longer with some agility.
Even a dog that enjoys training so much may not have the attention span one day for a 15 minute training session! Another reason to make sure you don’t train them for too long at once is because they could eventually become frustrated and this would most likely turn training into a bad experience that your dog doesn’t want to participate in.
Rewards
When training your dog, there are multiple different types of rewards that you can choose from to use. There are treats, toys and praise for the main ones. The most common rewards used are treats and praise. Treats may vary from actual store bought dog treats, bits of sausage, cheese, carrot or some other foods that dogs can have occasionally for rewards.
Toys would be dog toys that your dog finds fun and engaging. This wouldn’t mean buying a new toy for every command your dog gets right – that would just be expensive! This means having a fun engaging 10 – 15 seconds of fun exciting play for their reward. This might just be having a short tug-of-war, throwing the toy to fetch once or even just moving the toy around and making it exciting.
A reward is basically something that makes training a good experience. It associates the command your dog is learning with ‘fun’ and something good might happen if I do this.
Remember that it is not always the right time to give a reward, even when your dog does a command right! Too many rewards can be a bit problematic so make sure you learn about the timing to give them!
Timing
As stated above, it is very important to know when the right time to reward your dog is. Rewarding your dog too frequently could end up in your dog expecting a treat every time they do something correctly, but rewarding not enough can result them not learning the correct behaviour.
When your dog does the right command, you need to have a reward handy. It is especially hard to get this aspect right with the most common rewards used: treats and praise. You might think that it is really easy handing treats out and talking to your dog very encouragingly, but it can actually be hard knowing when the timing is right to do these, and actually knowing when you are performing verbal praise.
There are probably two main things that you are doing in your training: If your dog does the command right then you reward them with a treat. If they don’t do the command correctly, you verbally tell them that it was done wrong.
But thats where you might see a problem. Listen to how you are telling your dog that they did the command wrong. Don’t accidentally praise them for it but you also don’t want to create training into a bad experience. If you are saying something on the lines of ‘Let’s try again’ in a tone where it is praising them (usually a high tone) then you might want to change your approach.
We recommend, you simply use the word ‘No’. Do not shout it at your dog or say it too harshly as this can create a bad experience. Try saying ‘no’ in a serious tone and then move on. They will then associate this with them doing the wrong command but getting to try again soon.
But what if you are saying nothing when they do the command wrong? You want to make sure you are not saying nothing as this could make your dog confused. If you just ignored the mistake and moved on to the next command then they could just think that it was fine and you are just not rewarding them with treats for the command.
Now lets focus on when to reward your dog with treats. It is not necessarily always the time to give your dog a treat when they do the right command. If they have learnt a command really well (Let’s say ‘sit’), then you don’t need to reward them every time for this. It doesn’t mean, you should be ignoring their ‘sit’ some of the time, just give verbal praise instead (with occasionally a treat). This lets them know to not expect a treat every time, and to do it even when there is not food rewards involved. Verbal praise, can easily be enough to encourage these commands that your dog knows well.
For a command they are still learning however, do praise them really well and give a treat each time so that your dog can learn it. Then, once they have ‘mastered’ the command, you can slowly ease the amount of treats you give them for it to about half the time.
Timing when handling treats:
We have looked at timing in general about when you should give your dog treats. However, you also need to know the importance of timing with every individual treat you give.
Here is an example: You ask your dog to sit, they sit, then you grab a piece of cheese from the table next to you, break it up into a smaller piece and then hand it to your dog. In this situation, from the time your dog has obediently followed your command to the time you have rewarded them, there has probably been a few seconds interval. This is the problem.
Between those few seconds, whilst you are focused on grabbing the treat and breaking it up, your dog is probably doing their own thing; then without you knowing, you have just rewarded a totally different behaviour than ‘sit’.
So what do you actually want to be doing? You want to be prepared with treats, have them in easy reach and already in the reward size you wish. Then when your dog has done the command, you just grab one of those treats, hand it to your dog and you have just rewarded their ‘sit’!
There are a few things you could use and do to put this into action. Firstly, it would be very useful to invest in a dog treat pouch. These are generally pouches that can hold treats and clip to your pants as a ‘big extra pocket’. In this treat pouch, make sure you always already have the rewards cut up into the right size.
You can also do an exercise that practices the motion of giving treats to your dog. Stand next to a lower platform (e.g. table or chair about the height your dog will be at) and just reach into your treat pouch, grab one treat and place this on the table. Do this repetitively trying to be accurate, consistent and fast.
This may seem like an unnecessary exercise to perform when training your dog, it is actually very useful and important to be efficient at this motion so that you are not dropping treats or even being too slow when grabbing them.
Overview
These are the top 3 things we recommend you keep in mind and practice for your training sessions. The length of the session and rewards is something you can consider before starting. Timing and the concept of what rewards you are giving is something to keep in mind whilst training.