Boredom and Monotony in Training

My training style tends to be a little bit slower than I think most of my clients prefer. I like working on commands and proofing* before moving onto more complicated things. I think what this process does is equips the dog owner with the knowledge to train commands on their own because I will not always be there. Regardless of my justification, and regardless of how well trained my client’s dogs end up being, I still receive complaints of boredom. And understandably so. Clients don’t want to work on loose leash walking by standing still in their house, then at their front door, then one step at a time, then a few steps at a time. It can be legitimately monotonous to wait up to 4 weeks to walk a dog five steps of loose leash.

*Proofing a command or behavior means working on it in a way that makes it so the dog will perform under any circumstance and level of distraction.

Here’s my justification for boredom and monotony in training and what I have clients do when they express concerns.

I want dogs to not only learn a command. I want them to learn how to learn. This to me is the mark of a good dog trainer. When we teach a dog to learn how to learn then we make it easier and faster to train dogs. The grunt work for this process is not easy or fast though, and that is one of the reasons why it feels boring. It takes a lot to lay the foundation, but once it is there learning happens rapidly.

Another way I justify the boredom in training is that in order to train well, we have to repeat the same stuff all the time. And repeating stuff is boring. There’s nothing to do about that. It’s unfortunate, but it’s a fact of life and of dog training. For the sake of our dog’s and our own quality of life, I think it is necessary to suck it up from time to time. More often than not, training sessions don’t last for longer than 15 minutes anyway.

I cannot prevent boredom for my clients. It’s such an individual and subjective thing. My go-to for helping alleviate boredom is simple trick training. For this, I do not give much direction to my clients. It’s their time to figure out what works and what does not. I’ll tell to try to teach their dog how to shake, roll over, nose their hand, or any number of easy, one-step procedures.

What we get with these easy commands is something new with a quickly achievable goal. Getting a dog to shake is not a month long process. This takes a week at most (generally). The sense of satisfaction that comes with teaching a new command fuels the training for the seemingly less glorious things.

Not only is it boosting morale, it also gets my clients more involved and into dog training, and thus builds a better relationship for the client and their dog. It all comes back to family oriented training. Everyone gets to be together under positive pretenses and everyone feels closer and more connected.

If you have anything you’d like to add to the conversation, leave me a comment here, on my Facebook, or shoot me an email at Michael@concentricdog.com.