The Katzke Dog Diary

You know, I don’t know if I’ve seen this in any of the books I’ve read recently, but I’ve been experimenting with lots of LITTLE training sessions. Eowyn needs work on her food aggression, reactivity, and resource guarding. Henry needs work on his anxiety and is, unfortunately, picking up Eowyn’s reactivity. Every book I’ve managed to beg, borrow, or steal on the subject stresses over and over not to make training sessions longer than 10 minutes and not to allow the dog to get bored… but they dont mention how much time should be between sessions.

I’m mowing the lawn right now. Eo’s in the backyard, and every time she doesn’t react to a dog or bicycle going by she gets a treat. Henry’s inside while I mow in his crate, and every 5-10 minutes I’ll come in and give him a treat. Before I went outside, Eo and I did a ‘attentiveness’ clicker training session in front of the big front picture window.

It’s kind of like my day to day need to get back into shape. Instead of joining a gym, I started walking miles and miles with the dogs every night. Every now and then at work when I get bored or frustrated I’ll stop and go up and down a few flights of stairs, or I’ll drop and give myself 20 pushups. Much better to integrate the physical and emotional training into life than it is to make a special time with other artificial constraints.