Training a dog is a big challenge, a project rather a task. And because time for most of us is always at a premium, if you want a better behaved dog, it’s important to make a plan.
Today, I’m going to help you make your own, personalized, training plan that will work for you and your dog.
The purpose of the plan is to break your training down into stages or levels, and to break those levels down into achievable, bite-sized chunks.
That way, you and your dog will keep your motivation high, and not get bored. You’ll also be able to train in the gaps that we all have each day when finishing one task and before moving on to another.
Keep it short and sweet
Training should not take hours out of your day. It’s astonishing how much you can achieve in just two or three minutes, provided you do it most every day. And I think that recognising this is critical.
So often we put things off simply because we think they will take too long.
Most of us are pretty willing to try something new if it takes less than five minutes a day. And with game-based training that’s an achievable aim.
Training levels
Training levels are simply levels of difficulty. Specifically how difficult it is for your dog to give the correct response to your cues. Each level marks a milestone on your journey to a fully trained dog.
Following a route with well marked milestones helps us to own responsibility for the dog training process. This is important because you have total control over your own part in this process. It’s also one of the things that separates modern training from traditional training.
Following the traditional path tends to place more responsibility on the dog, which can produce feelings of frustration and helplessness in both the dog and their trainer.
We often tend to think of a dog that ignores a cue as disobedient. I find it helps to think of disobedience as a failure in training. Rather than inherent naughtiness in the dog.
The reality is that dogs can be taught to give the correct response to a cue in almost any situation provided they have enough practice, and enough experience at ‘winning’ in the context in which you give them that cue. The only things we cannot train for are experiences that are very rare or irregular.
A training level introduces new contexts at each subsequent level so that you and your dog can practice those correct responses and make them a thoroughly ingrained habit.
Multiple skills? Or one at a time?
Within each training level you can include multiple skills. We do this with our Core Skills course, where we show you how to work at a single level for several different skills, bring them all up to the standard for that level, then move onto the next level
I know that some of you prefer to work on one thing at a time. And I’m actually a big fan of that approach. My next course ‘Stay’ which is about control skills, takes this approach. And I think it’s a good approach for anyone making a training plan for their own dog for the first time.
With the single skill approach, you would pick a skill – recall for example – and work wholly on that for a few days or even a few weeks.
Once you have decided on the skill you want to tackle first you need to think about the training levels within it. Starting with the easiest level, and working up to the hardest. Let’s use recall as an example.
Recall training levels
There are infinite number of ways to divide recall training into ‘levels’. You could just have two levels for example (I don’t recommend this)
- Level 1: Dog recalls indoors
- Level 2: Dog recalls outdoors
This is not going to work very well because it ignores the most important influences on recall, and that’s other dogs, and if you exercise your dog in open spaces, it may well include wildlife
On the other hand you could have fifty levels. In fact I could probably think of a hundred different levels of recall, starting with a recall in your kitchen with no distractions and finishing with a recall away from a running rabbit or squirrel.
But of course a hundred levels is too daunting and demotivating. It makes the training journey seem long and hard. So we need to find a balance
I find it’s usually simplest to have somewhere between five to ten levels. With recall this might be
- Level 1: Dog recalls indoors with no distractions
- Level 2: Dog recalls away from food indoors
- Level 3: Dog recalls in yard or garden with no distractions
- Level 4: Dog recalls away from food and people, indoors and in garden
- Level 5: Dog recalls away from other dogs at home
- Level 6: Dog recalls at the dog park
If you are training a hunting companion or you live in a rural area as I do, you might want to add a level where the dog recalls away from livestock or poultry. For example:
- Level 7: Dog recalls alongside a chicken pen
These levels are broad dividers. The main thing they have in common is that if you don’t complete them, you won’t succeed at the next level. You must build up your training gradually in stages.
And you must reward yourself for completing each level so that you are motivated to move onto the next one.
Important: Your rewards needs to be part of your plan and written down or you won’t do it! Rewards work on us too!
The next task is to divide each level up into five to ten achievable goals
Goals within the level
Take my example of a level 7 recall goal: Dog recalls alongside a chicken pen (or even inside it) You are not going to get there in one session. You’ll need to divide your target into mini goals.
- Goal 1: Dog recalls parallel to the chicken run and fifty yards away
- Goal 2: Dog recalls parallel to the chicken run and thirty yards away
And so on.
A simpler example might be teaching your dog to lie down and stay. Just like recall your first level, or several levels, will be indoors where you have maximum control over the distractions around you.
Perhaps at Level 3 you’ll plan to start moving outside and teaching your dog to lie down in your back yard. The first two goals in that level might look like this:
- Goal 1: Dog lies down for ten seconds next to me
- Goal 2: Dog lies down and stays there while I walk ten paces away
You’ll increase time and distances in Goals 3 and beyond as you work your way up to a one minute down stay at twenty paces, and then move on to Level 4 where you introduce distractions.
You don’t just do this with your more challenging levels. Each level has goals within it.
So now a basic four level plan might look like this:
- Level 1
- Goal 1
- Goal 2
- Goal 3
- Goal 4
- Level 2
- Goal 1
- Goal 2
- Goal 3
- Goal 4
- Level 3
- Goal 1
- Goal 2
- Goal 3
- Goal 4
- Level 4
- Goal 1
- Goal 2
- Goal 3
- Goal 4
Remember, if you start with an easier goal, and build the training levels for that, you can always add more levels on later.
Planning your games
To reach each of the goals you have set, you can play a series of simple games. There are various ways of doing this. In Core Skills each lesson represents one of the goals in our training level. And we have several games in each lesson. Like this
- Level 1
- Goal 1
- Game 1
- Game 2
- Goal 1
With my more recent courses I tend to break it down even further so that there is just one game for each goal and more goals in each level. Students tell me they find this helpful.
Example:
- Level 1 – Dog stays on a bed for four seconds
- Goal 1- Dog places all four paws on the bed
- Game – Four On The Bed
- Goal 2- Dog returns to the bed after every treat
- Game – Return To The Bed
- Goal 1- Dog places all four paws on the bed
My aim is usually to produce a game that many dogs will complete in one or two sessions. So that most days, you can move on to a new game and a new goal. This helps to keep your motivation high.
Once you have planned your games you are nearly there. Now all you need to do is set out the game steps.
The best way to explain this is to give you another example.
Example:
- Level 1 – Dog stays on a bed for four seconds
- Goal 1- Dog places all four paws on the bed
- Game – Four On The Bed
- Step 1: Mark & reward for one paw on the bed
- Step 2: Mark & reward for two paws on the bed
- Step 3: Mark & reward for three paws on the bed.
- Game – Four On The Bed
- Goal 1- Dog places all four paws on the bed
Of course, you need to know how to get your dog through each step, but these are things you will learn as you go. And the great thing about dog training is that once you have played a few games designed by someone else, it becomes easier and easier to design your own.
If you want to have a better understanding of how this process works I recommend my Foundation Skills course. But I want to stress that no-one should feel they have to take a course in order to train a dog!
The information you need is all there, much of it on this website and other good dog training websites, entirely free of charge.
Whatever you decide to do, make a plan, I promise it will help.
And enjoy your training!
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