It's often tempting to think that you need to put aside say an hour to train your dog to do something. Which usually means that it gets forgotten, shoved to the side for something more pressing or you don't have the energy to do it.
Which is why I recommend that you try to incorporate dog training into your everyday life, make it a part of playtime or out on a walk. Don't think that you need to put big chunks of time aside. Dogs especially young dogs have short attention spans. If you try and do too much, they will lose interest and you will become fustrated.
For example, if you were training your dog to learn the command 'sit' then I would spend say 5 minutes on this around meal time. Or when getting ready to go out for a walk. You don't need hours of time but you do need patience and consistency. If you are tired, annoyed or can't really be bothered then I'd suggest leaving training for that day.
Rosie and Daisy are desperate to get out for a walk, perfect time to incorporate some training too
You need to do it at a time when you are full of beans and so is your dog. You also need to set your dog up to succeed because if it does this, both of you get excited and end the session on a good note. Which is why sessions should be short bursts to ensure that it ends with an achievement rather than you getting hacked off and thinking that the dog isn't capable.
Dogs do something called latent learning, rather like us, where after being shown something the brain needs time to process it. So if you want to teach something, do a short session teaching it then have a few hours break, then come back to it. You will find that given some time off to relax, your dog's brain will remember what you were trying to teach and go back to where you were the last time. And improve.
The moral of the story is, don't fall into the trap of not having enough time, use any time you spend with your dog to teach the behaviour you want.
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