Are you fed up with your dog gaily doing their own thing instead of doing what you ask?
Know you need to do more practice, but it’s so difficult because life gets in the way?
Do you struggle to find the time and enthusiasm to train?
Remember when you first connected with us?
You came because you wanted a better behaved dog and to have fun with your dog.
When you see us every week at class or when we’re seeing you 121 each week, it’s pretty easy to keep up the momentum. You get our reports and homework sheets, access to the game replays or copies of the consultation recordings to download. And we check up on you. Your dog tells us if you’ve done the work!
But once you’ve finished the course, or completed the package, things start to slide.
Unless you set up a dog training habit.
Habits are the things we do every day that we hardly even think about. Getting up, getting dressed, going to bed, driving the car, what we eat, what exercise we take, and lots more – we all have our own developed, ingrained habits.
Changing behaviours (in humans and in dogs) usually requires changing habits. But a wholesale reorganisation and broom-sweeping-clean approach simply won’t work. A slowly, slowly, catchee monkey approach is what’s needed.
Because we see so little difference in the short term if we change things– not eating chocolate for a week doesn’t mean we lose a stone; walking each day for a week doesn’t make us ready for a marathon – it’s easy to slip back into old habits. So you end up never losing weight or getting fit enough to run that marathon.
And your dog ends up never being trained.
But if you do a little bit each week you will see huge improvement over a year. Tiny changes compound.
Or if you want to stay frustrated with your dog not responding to you or doing what you ask, don’t bother.
Keep training and keep safe,
Carol