You and your dog have completed a training program and she passed with flying colors. Now your sweet pup is trained and you don’t ever have to worry about doing more training with her. Right? Not so much!

Did you take a class in high school for a skill you don’t use now, maybe a foreign language like French? You took it for four years and got great grades. Fast forward ten years and you meet someone from France, you go to strike up a conversation in French and realize your vocabulary is gone and forget about verb tenses. Yikes! The skills that were once so easy and fluid are now rusty. Training for your dog is no different.

The skills that you and your dog practice and reinforce every day, like leash walking, or maybe waiting for the food bowl to be set down before running over to start eating, are easy for both you and your dog. But if you don’t use that recall, or stay, frequently in different situations it’s going to get rusty, just like those skills you learned in high school.

Good news is that you don’t have to do all the things all the days to keep your dog’s skills on point. But do make a point to carve out maybe 5 minutes a day with your dog to work on training. Keep it varied and keep it fun. Maybe you play recall games with your dog on Mondays and on Tuesdays you and he work on place. Wednesdays could be eye contact day, etc. That way when you need your dog to come back to you, or to stay on his bed when guests come over, you and he don’t have to struggle to figure out how to make it happen. Those skills come easily to both you and your dog.

If you need help coming up with fun ways to incorporate training into your everyday schedule, let us know. And if you’ve completed one of our training programs you can always stop by Polishing Class to work on keeping your skills fresh. No matter where you are on your training journey, we are here to help you and your dog.

Canine Sports Dog Training