Help. My dog isn't making any progress.

Look for progress, not perfection.

Dog training is a never ending process, we can ALWAYS improve!

One of the biggest mistakes we make in training our dogs is focusing on our end goal, rather than noticing and rewarding the little wins our dog has been making in front of us! Training is a never ending process - there are ALWAYS things we can improve!Here are 3 little tips to keep you achieving and acknowledging your success:

📝 Goal setting

Set realistic expectations for you and your dog - every dog is different! Record videos of where your dog started and take videos as time goes on. Write down what you want to achieve by the end of a session, day, or week. This keeps you aware of your goals and be able to look back and see your success!

✨ Repetition

Repetitions of behaviours while increasing distance, time, distractions in small increments breeds success! We can’t expect our dogs to completely understand a behaviour by doing it once or twice and not very often. A perfect recall will not happen when he’s never been taught what ‘come’ means without competing smells, animals, and sounds. We need to build communication with our dogs and part of that is reinforcing the behaviours we like to see with their motivators in low distraction environments. Your words are just sounds to your dog, until you give them meaning!

🧠 Understand why

Dogs have off days just like us. They’re more reactive on their walk today? Maybe the delivery man at the front door was too much for him this morning, and then there was a thunderstorm. Triggers can cause a dog to stay at a high-arousal level for the whole day and even the next. Therefore, he is more likely to react to things he would normally walk straight past. Take a step back - if your dog has had a particularly stressful day, swap his walk for some training or games inside that day! A step back, doesn’t mean you can’t take 2 steps forward tomorrow