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I Don’t Care If You Practice

Training Philosophy

I Don’t Care If You Practice

It seems to be rather common in dog training for trainers to slightly (or not so slightly) reprimand their clients for not practicing sufficiently at home. Mostly they are unhappy not so much with the quality of the training, but the sheer quantity: not enough minutes per day, not enough days per week, not enough long-term commitment.

Time spent training has never been something that I try to enforce in clients, or even care about. Yes, that’s right: I don’t care about how much you train (or if you do it at all).

You didn’t practice all week and instead went on a hike? Fantastic.

The majority of the dogs I train with do not have issues that need an urgent solution. The time-sensitive cases are few and far between. Nearly everyone else has some annoying behaviors such as pulling on leash, jumping up incessantly at strangers, not coming when called etc. Simple management can deal with these dogs until a training solution is implemented (such as being in a different room when visitors come over or just not being off-leash in non-fenced areas for the time being). Apart from the owner’s own desire to train the dog, there is no urgency and it does not matter to be a bit slow with training.

You didn’t practice all week and instead decorated for Christmas with your dog? Sweet.

This is where my own ambivalence comes into play.

Personally, my life pretty much evolves around dogs. They are my hobby, they are my job and they are my best friends. I get up early in the morning for them and every day I am looking for and trying out new ideas to train or play together.

Doing what I like doing the most – every day, all day.

For most of my clients, this is not the case however. They have other jobs, they have other hobbies, they have other pets and other friends, they maybe have sick family members to care for or perhaps they just want to binge watch a show on Netflix for a week. While they love and care for their dogs, the dogs might not be a #1 priority in their lives, and that’s ok.

When I give someone a training plan, I don’t give them the training plan I would personally use, because it is most likely just not compatible with their lives and interest in dog training. I give them the training plan that to me seems doable for their situation and dog. When we meet again, we revisit how doable it actually was – sometimes it was still too much. Sometimes it was too little. Sometimes it was alright, but the week was busy and the client didn’t get to train at all.
These are all fair outcomes – I don’t judge them in any way beyond what I could change to make the plan more compatible.

You didn’t practice because we were busy having fun? That’s cool.

I have myself hired professionals of other fields to give me plans to improve in this or that area (from music lessons to personal fitness training). I know what it feels like to be the student who finds the training plan overwhelming, who finds training at home sometimes just not as exciting and who decides to ditch the training and instead do something that seems more fun. It doesn’t feel good to come back to the lesson the next week and be somewhat shamed for not practicing enough. If anything, the most likely outcome is that this demotivates the student and makes training even more rare.

My clients come to me in their spare time, often after a long day at work. They have enough things on their to-do list that need to be done. I want to make their class as welcoming and fun as possible, and nagging for not training has no place in that.

It is not helpful to train a dog while in a bad mood. Training a dog while one’s thoughts are elsewhere is not helpful, and probably more damaging than just not training. If you have a busy week and don’t train, that’s cool. If you have a stressful month and don’t train, that’s cool. I’ll be there when things calm down and you feel like training again. Until then we can likely manage the dog’s behavior with some simple adjustments to your setup.

I am not the dog training police. I am the one who helps you train when time and life allows.

This is another reason why I like the online class system so much – everyone can train whenever they feel like it. Sometimes students take a 3 month break and then return to the exercises.
(Check them out: Online Classes )

You DID practice? Also good.

Happy Training, or non-Training!