How Often Should You Train?
So how often should you train? I want to share just a few things that I think you should be doing. A great place to start with training your dog is two main sessions per day. So if you’re brand new to dog training, you’ve never done it, or you just got a new dog. I want you to commit to two sessions per day.
My recommendation here is that you should be doing those two sessions a day with your dog’s meal. Now, many folks are concerned about their dog’s nutrition and feeding the different things. I’m not going to go into too much detail.
However, it looks pretty advantageous to me to train a dog with kibble. However, with what I just said, I cannot neglect to mention that kibble by itself is probably not enough nutrition for your dog. Yes, there’s a lot of debate. That’s just my take. But I think you should train your dog for their kibble in two main sessions a day.
So here is an example. I have Jericho right now. He’s going to be an eight-month-old German Shepherd puppy. He’s a big guy at 76 pounds right now, or just about the last time I weighed him.
So he gets about four cups of kibble a day. What I would probably do is I would give him a cup and a half in our first training session and another cup and a half in the second training session, giving me three cups. Right?
What about that other cup?
Well, I would have that for impromptu moments during the day. So two main sessions and then some food inside of my treat pouch. That way, during the middle of the day, I can do that if I see an opportunity to reinforce some of the things that I want him to learn or that he already knows how to do.
So what will I suggest that you guys train with your dogs? What should you be primarily working on in those two main sessions?
I would have teaching sessions where I would teach the following three things. I would teach the dog some stay work. I’d have the dog doing heel position training, and I would also be doing recall work initially. When I train with a dog, I want to show them one fundamental skill in that individual session.
I don’t do much else. You can teach other things, and I think it’s perfectly okay. That’s not the way that I do it.
But then, once I went through maybe one or two sessions where that’s all I had shown the dog, I would begin to intermingle those three skills. I would do some stay. I would do some come. I’d do some heel. I’d try to make it as dynamic and exciting as possible with my dog.
So that way, it would stay fun and not just boring. You might be surprised at all the different ways that you can go about getting a dog to stay, to heel, and to come into variations and just the little nuances to all that. And that’s really where the fun is, at least for me, with my dogs.
Okay, so you’ve got your two main training sessions. You’ve got little mini sessions intermingled in. You’re teaching those three fundamental skills. Now you also need to teach your dog how to play.
I would have two sessions a day where I am playing with my dog, Where I’m teaching them a game. These sessions are meant to teach them how to win and how to cooperate.
I use the games of fetch and tug to do this.
Those are the two games that I’m looking to play. I do this so we can build a relationship of us cooperating and playing dynamically together, not just for food.
Now every dog is a little bit different. So to the degree that your dog is more food motivated, play some food motivated games. To the degree that your dog is toy motivated, do more toy games.
If they like both, great man! You’re in good shape because you’ve got a lot of things that you can do with your dog.
So two main training sessions. A little bit of food sprinkled throughout the day in the middle and then two play sessions are a great place to start. You should begin to notice patterns, and if you do that, you should begin to pivot and move that way as you see how your dog is progressing.
All right. Well, that’s it for this tip. Was that useful? I sure hope it was, but yeah, look, let me know if it was helpful.
Throw a thumbs up, leave a comment.
Here’s a good question. Do you have a different way to organize your training sessions with your dog? Do you practice differently?
How are your results coming? Anything you’d like to have those comments. I’d love to hear from you. Anyway, that’s it for this tip.
I’ll have another one sometime soon. But, hey, thanks so much for watching. Have a great day. And happy training.
