Puppy skills planning, is setting up a pathway to success for our puppies. When we first got our puppy, we simply followed along in our puppy classes, while diligently doing our homework between sessions. We didn’t actually have any specific direction that we were following. We did know that there were some things though that we felt were important to accomplish with her sooner than later. It was not an easy journey through the being alone skill but through planning and persistence we were able to achieve it.
One of the most important activities we did in our puppy skills planning, was to prioritize the skills that we wanted her to learn. We think first of all about the ones that caused us the most stress. Our list looked something like this. And through patience and persistence, we were able to accomplish all of them. Of course we do think about them at times and it is hard to not think we need to work on more, but we are happy about how the plan is going at now 1 year and 4 months old.
Rylee Skills
- Able to be alone
- Able to be in the car alone
- Able to be in the house while we go outside for a minute
- Able to focus on us by looking at us
- Able to Loos Leash Walk
- Able to walk without her lunging at distractions
- Able to greet guests at the door
- Able to sit and wait at the door for the OK to go in
- Able to drop something when we ask
- Able to relax on her mat
- Able to quiet when we ask
- Able to leave it when asked
- Able to sit and stay
- Able to relax on her bed
- Able to relax when we are at a friends home visiting
- Able to greet people on the street without jumping up or barking
- Able to refrain from barking when we have guests that she wants attention from
- Able to refrain from vocalizing in the morning to wake us up
- Able to refrain from barking at people passing by our house
- Able to maintain her arousal level
A list such as this one can be intimidating. What can be useful is to find times when you are with your dog to train while walking for example. Being able to use every day events for training opportunities in our puppy skills planning, will allow you to train without specifically training.
There are also some other ones that we work on with a mix of fun and useful skills:
- Tuck (for when she is nervous or scared while we are out)
- Touch (can be used for a variety of skills)
- Roll Over (just fun)
- Crawl (just fun)
- Weave (just fun)
- Shake A Paw (just fun)
- High five (we use it when we are done training)
We are fortunate to have the time to dedicate to our dog’s training. At 16 months old, we can confidently say that she is doing well on most and doing ok on all of them. There is of course more for us to work on but we feel like if we spend the time and focus on them without over coaching her, we will have success for all of us.
Puppy Skills Planning Practice Cards
One thing that has helped us is to have training cards. They ae basically pieces of paper that have 5 skills on them. We have 4 which we chose from for when we are doing training sessions. As a puppy, we tried to have 2 10 minute sessions per day. This very useful as we moved through her adolescence because we were able to avoid many of the setbacks that families can experience with their pup. The cards might look something like this:
We designed them because we wanted to do 10 minutes of coaching per day for our puppy skills planning, but were often at a loss as to what to do. This gave us something to work with that we could expand on. We tried to put skills such as touch on all of the cards so that she is keeping a solid grasp on the ones that we might need to draw on for redirection while we are on a walk for example.
I have found when working on some of the skills more than others, I needed to use some mental skills like emotional control. This heled to keep me calm during the execution of the skill. We often think of what the dog has to do for success and forget about what we have to do depending on the complexity of the skill. If we are working on a skill that includes arousal for example, like the door greeting, I need to be calm as I am guiding our pup through the process so that she can learn without having to figure out what I want as I am moving frantically to get her to her holding place.
This information is relevant for any age dog who is learning new skills or refining old ones. The concepts are the same. Just as in planning for athletes, I believe that planning for our dog’s / puppy’s success is knowing what we want to do, how we are going to do it and the variables that are going to impact the process.
Following is some good information on essential dog skills from the American Kennel Club
