New Learning:

As the semester is coming to an end my classes are getting busier, and I find myself having less time to spend training. However, I know that it is incredibly important to continue to make time. Ensuring that I make time for my dogs during busy times makes sure that their training stays consistent, and gives me a break from my busy schedule. I really enjoy spending quality time with them and I find our small training times put me in a better mood. I have come to realize that dog training is not only beneficial for the dog, but also for the owner. The excitement I feel when we accomplish something makes every moment of training worth it. This information has become increasingly important to keep in mind as my schedule continues to become busier.

With my decrease in free time, I thought the best thing to research this week was motivation. I have previously looked in to keeping my dogs motivated in their training, but I can now see that it is equally important to motivate myself as well. During my research I found the article Loosing Interest in Dog Training? How to Stay Motivated posted by the Centreville Square Animal Hospital. This article discusses ways to keep your dog motivated and engaged, but also yourself as the trainer. I decided to solely focus on the tips for the trainer, I have listed some of the strategies as well as how I used them below.

• Not taking an all or nothing approach – This is something that is difficult for me as I had set out a pretty clear plan when beginning this project. But, this week I have been sure to keep in mind that I am working with dogs, and dogs are not always the most predictable. I have worked on living in the moment with them and celebrating where they are at rather than where they could be. Even though they are not perfect in their tricks, they have been doing so well.
• Keeping track of how far we’ve come – I have been blessed to get to document this journey in my learning project blog posts, so this piece was easy for me. To stay motivated to keep moving forward I went back and re-read my previous posts. I was able to see how much actual progress we are making from the starting point. This helped to excite me in thinking about how much more progress we could make!
• Setting goals – I know this strategy seems straight forward, but it is a little different than I originally had thought. The article discusses how these goals do not need to be big ones. They can be a goal for the individual training session. I used this to keep track of where I was going in each training session, usually my goals ended up being things like “complete the trick (or stage we were working on) 10 times in this session”.

Update:

Chex: Chex has been doing quite well this week with her nose targeting. She still continues to give my palm a little lick as she touches her nose, but I have chosen to allow this. I do not see how her lick could be any different, as it’s her own interpretation of the trick. This week I have noticed some big changes in Chex as she has been quick to respond to the command “boop” as well as try to do it without prompting before taking a treat from me.

Scout: As I discussed in last week’s post, Scout had been struggling with distractions. But with the strategies I had been working on last week in combination with my new motivation training, Scout has been doing so well. This week we accomplished weaving through my legs three times in a row with continuous leads! This is a big step for Scout as we went from one weave to three.

Apollo: Apollo went outside to work on recall this week. It was his first time trying my strategies outside and he did quite well with it. We worked specifically on throwing a toy away from me and then calling him to come back. When he returned to me (whether he brought the toy or not) he received a treat. You will notice that Apollo is not in my progress update video and this is because he was becoming too distracted with someone filming. I hope to continue working on this type of recall with him so I can bring someone to record next week.

Progress Update Video: Scout and Chex

Plans for Next Week:

Next week I plan to continue working with Chex using the same strategies as I have been, as they seem to be working well. For her I think the continued consistency is the best method for success. I would like to work on connecting two weaves with one lead for Scout. And I would like to continue to work with Apollo in the yard while adding a distraction of someone video taping.