Trainers and Training Plans

Many things help a dog trainer successfully teach you to train your dog or puppy. One of these things a trainer should be able to do is to let you know their plan for training. They may not know your dog yet, and may not have the specifics all in place, but they should have a general idea, theory, and knowledge of the order of a set of skills and how they are built on each other. A trainer should be aware and know the changes they will make based on the age and temperament of your dog (once they have done a consultation). Again they may change based on your dogs responses, but the generalities stay the same.

Here is an example of a twelve week training plan to teach Basic Obedience (the skill sets needed for real life, and are also transferred to AKC Novice):

Week 1: Starts an exercise called sit on the dog. You would think I was crazy if I described it, but through it's gentle and non confrontational nature, it starts the dogs (or puppies) and owners off on the right foot.
Week 2: (New Commands) Starts longe line work. The many steps of longe line work in this week are the basis for heel and recall commands. However, neither are started on this week. As the weeks progress each previous exercise has new goals and polishing. New exercises are introduced ONLY after the client has proven they have done their homework first.
Week 3: (New Commands) Heel, sit, come, and release command are started. Week 2 is a very important basis to have started the dog's (or puppies) understanding of these concepts. Puppies get worked with more voice and play, and different equipment. The understandings are primarily the same, in fact, puppies are great to do this due to their natural bonding nature. They aren't as motivated to leave their owners as yet to explore, and easily diverted back. Their body weight is less, and their nature is very malleable. There is no reason that puppies can't have a quality training plan, you just tweak it a little.
Week 4: (New Commands) Place, Sit Stay, and Stand. So far many of these commands have molding or shaping included in them. The dog or puppy is getting more and more comfortable with soft hands shaping them into movements, and becoming more pliable. A dog or puppy should always come to trust the touch of the human leader. It also helps with leadership issues later on, and makes really crazy or chaotic future events much less likely.
Week 5: Down is the only new command. Work begins being done in four different outside locations, and two different inside locations for distraction work to begin in full force.
Week 6: Begin exercises to fade out the equipment for reliable performance.
Week 7: 50% of training without equipment. Pattern exercises are being done, but a string of performance exercises is not done together as yet.
Weeks 8 & 9: Identify weaknesses and distractions. Use these to polish performance. Also identify any distractions (noise, food, stranger, et) not used as yet. May include things like recall through stayed dogs, heeling through owner/dog teams, et
Week 10 & 11: Harder exercises in distracting settings. At the beach near a volley ball tournament for instance. Doing pattern exercises and drills with light lines or no equipment.
Week 12: Test for certification of my course. Otherwise no certification is given.



The above is just a summary of some things you should expect. With puppies, I normally have the additional crate training, alert to potty and pee breaks, schedules for potty and pee breaks with feeding regimes, out and leave it commands (actually for both dogs who need it and puppies), proper equipment use and handling (for both dogs and puppies), proper body position, and proper attitude when training the dog. A dog trainer's job is to get the best possible out of both the dog and owner.

There are different methods and ways to go about things, but the basics of a training plan and the knowledge of the hows and whys of a training plan are essential knowledge that a dog trainer MUST possess. Also look for a dog trainer to be able to demonstrate these skills with their own dogs!!!! AKC titles and such are outside evidence of a trainer's skills. They are not only telling you that they know what they are doing, but a judges in an outside entity have agreed that they know how to train a dog.

The problems come into play if a trainer has only ring trained their dog, however, most owners and dogs that go through this process have pride in their accomplishments and don't want to show badly outside the ring. It's easy to identify those that do, and this is where the performance in person with a trainer and their dog can help:)