K9 to 5: Training Your Dog is a Full-Time Job

 "Repetition builds success and consistency speeds it up." - Unknown

"Prevent what you can not control and control what you teach." - Duke Ferguson 

    In dog training, there are no "days off". Once you've committed to creating a new behavior, or ending a bad one, it’s permanent. Think of it as a contract you signed with your dog to make a rule and uphold it in a fair and consistent manner. His side of the agreement is that he will always do the best he can with the information given to him so that information has to be the same all of the time. Your dog doesn't understand why he sometimes isn't allowed in the kitchen and sometimes he is. He can't connect the dots that he's allowed to jump on some people but not others. He doesn't know why sometimes he has to walk nicely on the leash and sometimes he can pull. Just because you can rationalize when some things are allowed and when they aren't, doesn't mean he can. To be inconsistent is to be unfair.  

    In order to be as fair as possible and increase our chances of success, we have to commit to insisting on a particular behavior 100% of the time. If she's not allowed to bark at the doorbell, then she's never allowed to bark at the doorbell. It doesn't matter if it's just the mailman dropping off a package and you are in the middle of cooking dinner. No barking means no barking and you have to be prepared to insist on correctness at all times. Every single interaction you have with your dog will either train or untrain them. If you allow them to make mistakes without correction, you can lose hours of progress. Unfortunately, unlearning a skill happens much faster than learning one. 

    Now, if you know you aren't going to be in a position to train at that moment, do what you can to manage the situation to prevent the wrong thing from happening. Maybe your dog has to go outside in the yard while you are cooking and can't train right then. Maybe you leave a sign on the door asking people not to ring the doorbell and call you instead. Both of these examples are ways of managing a situation to make sure your dog only ever receives good information from you.  

    What if you are tired after a long day at work and you just want to get the dog walked so you can focus on relaxing. You put the leash on a bouncing dog, open the door and he rushes out ahead and drags you down the steps, and then proceeds to drag you around the neighborhood until you've had enough and go home. This single interaction, which could've been as short as 15 minutes, has probably undone about 2 hours of work that you had previously done. Your next walk is going to require a lot more work than it might have previously because your dog has learned that the rules aren't always going to be enforced and therefore can be tested.  

    Dog training is a lot of work and can be hard to stay committed to when it becomes inconvenient. Through situational management and perseverance, you will reach your dog training goals and come out happier on the other side.