What cues do you have in your life to encourage you to train?

Training Tuesday

I live on a farm. At any given point my day is interrupted by cow emergencies, mini donkey emergencies or the unexpected arrival of baby goats. I am also trying to balance running a non profit, completing consulting work, and training 6 dogs. I also have a husband who I like to spend time with.

If I do not either schedule my training, or put prompts into place to remind myself to train, I can very easily get wrapped up in putting out all the daily fires that happen.

As part of the SWDI - Scandinavian Working Dog Institute Master K9 Trainer program they challenged us to spend 5 minutes every day training. Of course we could spend more time training, but we had to identify a spot in our day, where we would routinely spend 5 minutes training.

I chose to identify this as after my first cup of coffee that I would train. I did pretty good until I went on a trip and got out of the habit.

I have now identified that at 11am, I will train my dogs. At least 5 days a week. I had to put a reminder on my phone so I stop whatever I'm doing, which is typically computer work, and get up and train a dog. I don't have to train ALL the dogs, just one. That one, usually leads to training three or four.

I have progression plans printed off and readily available on clip boards for the majority of my dogs. This way not only do I have a 'when' I'm training, but I also have 'what' I'm training.

What am I training? What a lot of the hunting dog people call 'yard work'. I'm working on functional obedience. Things like fast sits, downs, body awareness, walking calmly beside me, and holding positions while I dust my office. This is not the sexy stuff, but the foundational stuff that all the dogs need.

What systems do you have in place to help ensure you train?