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Writer's pictureJessica Palmer

Train As You Live Your Life

Do you ever hear yourself or a family member saying “I just don’t have time to train my dog."??? Can you imagine someone saying “I know I had a kid, but I just don’t have time to raise them.”? Sounds crazy right? Well, I’m here to tell you that just like we don’t set aside hours of our day at a time to "train" our kids to be productive members of society, we shouldn’t have to take hours out of our day to train our dog(s) either. Today we are going to talk about how you can AND SHOULD train as you live your life.


Ok, I know during that intro you could probably all think of THAT family member. Whether with their dogs OR their kids. However, this idea that it takes sooooo much time and energy to train your dog is what makes people not even want to try it. Even if someone is so gung-ho in the beginning and sign up for a puppy class at Pet Smart, they probably go to 1 or two classes, don’t see the results they are looking for and stop. I mean, they drove all the way to the pet store, sat through an hour long training session, drove all the way home and the dog STILL didn’t even seem any better.


Imagine this same scenario with a child…. Like if there were “child rearing classes” at your local mall or something. So, once a week you bring your infant there. Now, they start as babies sooo You work on basic stuff, walking, talking etc. things to help you communicate effectively with your child and make sure they are developing properly. Great! But then you take them home, do none of the exercises from class, leave them to their own devises 90% of the day and just provide the most basics of care. Feed them, make sure they have a clean place to go potty and they have a safe place to live/sleep. How fast/ well do you think THAT child is going to develop and function in society. Probably not too well at all.


Another scenario you might hear is, "they only listen in class” or “only when I get the treat pouch out” or "only when they have their leash on" etc. etc.. My guess is, these people either didn’t do anything between classes with their dogs OR set aside a certain time every day to train their dog. So, every day at 4:30 they went and got their treat pouch on and got the dog on a leash and brought it to the same room in their house and practiced the same commands, in the same order, and then release the dog to do whatever it wants the rest of the day/night. It's no wonder why their dog doesn’t do what they ask when they are out at the park or over at grandma’s house or at the hardware store. Because they haven’t trained through real life scenarios. THESE PEOPLE feel like that have "put in all this time and effort" but they haven’t put in the RIGHT kind of time and effort.


Again, imagine doing this with a child. You take them to a 1 hour class once a week to teach them how to listen to you, do what you say, and how to physically do certain things like crawling, walking, sitting up straight. You take them home, you do 2-3 ten minute sessions with them a day as the instructor asked of you. But you do it at the same time, in the same room, with the same clothes on, using the same chair to pull up on, the same carpet to crawl on. Everything is set up JUST SO with little to no distractions around to ensure success. Your kid might understand things a little better than the child in the first scenario but what happens when asked to do the same tasks in a different environment, with different equipment than they are used to and different things around to distract them? A lot of that work is going to fall by the way side. Not to mention after your 6 week course is up, even the daily routine sessions stop because "you have been doing this for 6 weeks already, they should know it by now."

But we don’t do that with our kids do we? No, we are consistently talking to them, playing with them, teaching them right from wrong FOR THEIR ENTIRE LIFE! (or at least the rest of ours.) Training is a lifestyle, if done properly, it’s never “done” I don’t know a single dog trainer that does NO training with their personal dogs. They are constantly reinforcing what they have learned or teaching them something new. We should always be training our dogs, just like we are ALWAYS training our kids. Even the lack of training is a form of training. So my point is, training doesn’t happen for 15 minutes 2-3 times a day or at a 1 hour lesson with a trainer. It is constantly happening whether you are aware of it or not. So, be intensional about training your dog as you live your life, you will see huge improvements much faster this way rather than setting aside a few hours a week to “train”.


Thanks for reading. As always, You can find me everywhere on social media @motherofdog.jp. If you have questions or want more information, You can message me on FB, Instagram or Tiktok or email me at motherofdog.jp@gmail.com. I look forward to hearing from you all. Thanks again for reading everyone!!! See you next time




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