5 Minutes is Easier to Find Than 30

Yadi laying down behind me while I work

Hello, I hope everyone is doing well today.  If you have ever been in class with me you have heard me say… “Don’t try to train for 30 whole minutes”.  I don’t know about you but my life is very hectic.  I have a 17-year-old stepson (Connor), a 4-year-old son (Ian), &  year old Corgi pup (Yadi).  Between our jobs, housework, laundry… oh my word at the laundry…  trying to find 30 minutes a day to train my puppy is just insanity.  Even if I could find those 30 golden minutes, my puppy wouldn’t have the attention span to focus on me the whole time.

So here is what I do instead.  While typing this blog post, my puppy Yadi is chasing the Ian who is running through the house laughing and teasing Yadi with a toy to get him to follow him.  Every few minutes I call Yadi to me and reward him for coming and then release him to go play.  This looks a little like this:

• I say “Yadi”
• When I hear him turning towards me I say “Yadi Come”
• When he gets to me, I reward him with a treat from a pile of treats on my desk
• I pet him and scratch his back and then tell him “go play”

Now we are practicing this because as of the last couple of weeks he seems to think that

A pile of treats on my desk for random training.

"Come" means, run away from mom because she is going to pick me up and put me in the kennel.  We also need to work on going into the kennel on cue as well.

By me practicing this every few minutes while I’m working, he is getting so many more repetitions than he would if I were standing somewhere in the house calling him.  He would realize I have treats and not move away again.  This way it’s also a “real world” setting.  He is learning to call out of play to come to me, which is very important for a herding dog that can get overstimulated really quick.  I NEED to have the ability to call him to me no matter what is going on and he must know, “I need to go see what mom needs”