Saturday, March 26, 2011

Summarizing a Week of Training


Last week I recorded here what I typically record elsewhere....

I found:
Blaze had ten sessions, mostly heeling and tracking.
Luna had twelve sessions; walking, recall, and tricks.
Griffin had forty two sessions, and a lot of different things, mostly obedience skills.

What was good: I do give my dogs opportunities to work on most days. And on times where it doesn't go well (like Griffin before class on Thursday), we adjust and sometimes don't even work then. We saw improvement in many areas, and for the most part we did have those themes on behaviors and I wasn't jumping around completely.

What was not so good: They all could use more work. I could be more efficient with my sessions. Many times, I had a good plan but then didn't follow it, instead I did run through or worked on maintenance more than training an improved behavior. While both of those things have a time and a place, there is no excuse for the amount of sessions I spent NOT actively training skills.

How I will utilize this over the next few weeks: Before I start training, I will literally write down a few words and hopefully that will keep me on track. I'll try to do more sessions spread thought the day, but especially early on in the day. By the evening I get tired, and especially after work I'm less likely to do good training.

Was this a typical week? For the most part, yes. I usually will take Blaze or Luna to work at least once, and I typically work Griffin before and after the Friday class. But in other ways and number of sessions it was fairly typical.

2 comments:

Megan said...

That is a lot of training! A good example--we can do a lot of training in not a lot of time.

I want more Luna pictures!

Kristen said...

It doesn't really seem like a lot though, I definitely could have been more efficient.

Come take more Luna pictures!