It takes a lot of time, dedication, and planning to create workability. Life gets busy so sometimes training gets put on the back-burner. Determination is an important factor to ensure that you are facilitating and continuing a good relationship with your dog. Sometimes you need to change your training plan to refresh and revitalize your determination. By changing up your training and trying new things, it can bring the fun make into training and bring it back to the front of your priorities.
This past week, Odin and I completed his Nose work and Rally courses. Without these courses, continuing his training will be difficult to keep up with his training will be solely up to me until his next training courses start. So, I need to enhance his at home training to cover the advanced things he would be working on in his classes. I need to ensure that these training are fun, positive, and successful in order to continue to keep up our determination.
Some of the things to think about when creating your own plan for continued training and to help increase/revitalize your determination:
- What does your dog love that you already know about?
- What are some new things to try to see if your dog loves them (new treats, new toys, new games, etc.)?
As this is the first week Odin has had without training classes, I didn’t really know where to start with his continued learning. We work on perfecting and solidifying things he already knows (sit, down, stand, back, spin, stay, etc.) daily. However, I needed to introduce new objectives into his training. So, I started thinking about the questions I listed above.
- What does your dog love that you already know about?
Odin is a jumper and he has mad hops (he can easily clear 5 feet). He loves jumping to catch his Frisbee in addition to jumping when he is excited (fortunately he jumps vertically and not on people). Since this is something he already loves doing I thought it could be something interesting to incorporate into his training.
- What are some new things to try and see if your dog loves them?
I was going through my Instagram and saw a live video of Frisbee parkour and I was inspired to try. Frisbee parkour consists of the dog jumping off the trainer to reach the Frisbee. This was something I wanted to try with Odin and decided to add it into our daily training sessions. I worked on training him to jump into my arms. We first started with him jumping into my lap while I was sitting in a chair. Once he was comfortable with that, I switched to wall squats and had him continue to jump into my lap/arms until I was fully standing. Odin was excited to use jumping in a way that was rewarded and was enthusiastic about learning the new trick. Getting him to settle down was a little challenging as he was very excited about jumping. It was very rewarding to see Odin get joy out of doing something he loved while using it in a constructive manner.
Sometimes you need to revitalize your determination and change up your training plan to ensure that training does not fall into the back-burner. If training falls onto the back-burner it can greatly affect the relationship between you and your dog. Changing up your training program can be as simple trying something new that excites both you and your dog. By using something that you already know excites them (jumping) and expanding on it (Frisbee Parkour), your training determination can be revitalized and both you and your dog will continue to have fun while training.
(Here is the link to a video of the final product of Odin jumping into my arms.)
Suburban Border Collie 