The 3 D’s

When training a dog, we always want to set them up for success, not failure. If we set them up to fail, everyone gets frustrated and there are no rewards given to the dog, therefore we don’t reinforce any behaviours or create motivation to do more.

When setting your dog up to do a skill or behaviour, take into consideration the ‘3 D’S’ of training:

• – DISTANCE
• – DISTRACTION
• – DURATION

If you are teaching a ‘stay’ for example, you wouldn’t want to ask them to stay in the middle of a field while a football match is on, for 10 minutes, whilst you walk to the other side of the field – that’s bound to go wrong if they’ve never worked on distance, distraction or duration in a stay. 

Take training slowly, at your dogs pace and build on each element as they get better. 

For example, you may start doing a stay for 10 seconds whilst you stand right next to them and in your living room where there are limited distractions. Once they’re able to do this you may increase the duration to 20 seconds. After this, you may do 10 seconds and take one step away from them. Then 20 seconds one step away. Can they now do 20 seconds whilst you’re one step away and someone making a noise in another room…? Build it up slowly and set solid foundations for each behaviour.