“The Training Session” is a deep dive into how to harness the power of effective positive reinforcement training while learning how to utilize the most important 5-20 minutes of a puppy or dog’s day: the training session. It is during the training session that the trainer has the opportunity for in-depth reinforcement for those behaviors that a trainer wants from his puppy so that those things will become habit and be integrated into the puppy’s daily life.
This book teaches how to conduct a training session that uses in-depth science-based force-free methods for building a strong foundation for a puppy or dog of any age over 6 weeks. It works well for preparing puppies and dogs for any dog sport including AKC Obedience and Rally. It also builds a good obedience foundation for therapy or service dog work or even for a well-mannered stable family pet.
The first section of this book is chocked full of educational principles and training techniques for using positive reinforcement training effectively. If you have a dog who you think is stubborn or unwilling to comply, give the techniques in this book a chance! One of the strengths of the method presented here is its ability to build motivation to please and a love of working with a person.
The second section applies these principles and techniques to the teaching of behaviors that build a good solid foundation. As readers learn to apply these principles to these foundational behaviors, they’ll be learning and practicing training skills that can be applied to the training of any other behavior for the life of the puppy.
The book focuses on training three very important behaviors. These behaviors are sitting with eye contact, the down/stay, and heeling off-leash. You’ll learn in this book how to apply effective positive reinforcement principles and techniques to training these three foundational behaviors.
Though it may not sound like training three behaviors could be a book’s worth of material, there is more training necessary than a cursory glance would indicate. We break these behaviors down into the skills necessary for the behavior. Then we break the skills down into steps. What you end up with is a throughly trained behavior down to every detail. In addition, the reader will have gained the knowledge necessary to apply the same principles to training many other behaviors for the life of the dog.
Foundational Beliefs
Our training philosophy is built on these foundational beliefs.
- The most effective and efficient training comes from breaking behaviors down into their simplest, most trainable pieces. Then pieces should be well-trained before the pieces are put back together and the puppy is expected to perform the behavior as a whole. This practice creates clarity, understanding, and solid learning.
- It is more important to build internal qualities than to have instant outward behavioral changes. These inward qualities include confidence, self-control, focus, resilience, and a motivation to work for and please a handler.
- Transfer of focus from food to the work should occur as soon as possible. We begin this work in our very first training session.
- Positive reinforcement works best when you use training tools that encourage work focus instead of food or toy focus. These tools include marker training and shaping. We will be talking extensively about these tools throughout this book. Don’t worry if you aren’t familiar with these terms. The only thing you need to know about them for now is that they facilitate the process of shifting the dog’s focus from food to the work and that they are tools that work best when behaviors are broken down into manageable pieces.
- Luring and other food focused techniques should be used minimally. When these techniques are used, they should be faded as quickly as possible.
- When lack of motivation is the problem, we don’t see it as the dog’s fault. Instead, we see it as an indication of something lacking in our training. We’ll change the training to better motivate the puppy to want to work instead of making him work out of fear of a correction.
- Both the dog’s body and his mind need training. We’ll be talking more about this throughout the book.
- We believe that training should be structured and science-based while at the same time being game-based and fun.
- Dogs and puppies should be set up for success.
- A strong foundation is the key to success even at the highest levels of training. Our program spends considerably more time building a solid foundation of the basics before we begin building on that foundation. Initial results may appear slow, but once the foundation is solidly built, the progress is exponential.
Results with Puppies Using this Method
We have used the principles and techniques taught in this book to train over 150 puppies starting when they were barely 6 weeks of age. All of them could give solid eye contact while sitting, could perform a solid down/stay even under distractions,, and could heel better off-leash than most dogs I’ve seen at the novice levels at competitive obedience trials. All of this was accomplished before puppies were ten to eleven weeks of age!
See the results on our YouTube channel with puppies that are between 8 and 11 weeks of age.
Results with Adult Dogs Using this Method
Not only have we trained a large number of puppies with these methods, Jenna and I have trained or taught others to train dozens [Jenna, How many have we actually trained? Dozens may be an exaggeration. If so, let’s just leave out the word breeds. We have taught at least 24 adult dogs, but maybe not at least 24 different breeds.] of different breeds of adult dogs with good success.
In addition, I(Karen) have had considerable success in competitive obedience with the method, techniques, and principles taught in this book. I do not use corrections at all. I exclusively use the positive reinforcement principles, techniques, and methods taught here.
In regular obedience, I’ve earned two OTCH’s (Obedience Trial Champion), UD titles on four dogs, over a dozen High in Trial awards (highest scoring dog in the whole trial) and over a dozen High Combined awards (highest combined score out of the two classes where you compete for championship points). One of these high combined awards was at the 2023 [Confirm this year] Southeastern Regional Championship. I’ve qualified one dog three times for the Westminster Masters Obedience championship, and once for the National Obedience Championship, not to mention qualifications on numerous dogs for the Obedience Classic.
In AKC Rally Obedience, I’ve earned RACH’s (Rally Obedience Champion) on three different dogs. One of them earned 3 RACHs, over 60 High Combined awards, over 60 Triple High Combined awards, and a seventh place in the championship class at the 2024 Rally National Competition where there were over 800 dogs competing. Another RACH dog finished her RACH loosing only 6 master’s points in a total of 20 master’s runs. That’s an average score of over 99 1/2 out of 100 possible points in 20 master’s runs.
Most importantly and what I’m most proud of is the happy working attitude in my dogs in spite of the fact that none of my dogs have been by nature the high drive confident dogs that typically do well in competitive obedience. I’ve built a love of working with a person and vastly increased the focus, confidence, self-control, resilience, and motivation in over a dozen competitive obedience or rally dogs.
The Time in Between Training Sessions
If you’re raising a puppy, this book is not an all-inclusive puppy raising book. It does a fantastic job of teaching you to conduct a training session. However, it does not cover all the time in between the training sessions. You’ll need to add a good reinforcement-based puppy management program to the information taught in this book for a comprehensive puppy raising program. [Once Jenna gets a substantial amount of information on her podcast, you can put a plug in for that here.]
However, as your puppy becomes more proficient with the skills learned here, you can begin incorporating these particular skills into the everyday life of your puppy. The last few chapters give tips as to just how to do this.
