Choosing your training priorities

The early stages of training can feel tricky and frustrating, because you really have to be willing to choose your battles. If you try to address everything your dog is doing “wrong” at once, it can be completely overwhelming!

Here’s a training session with Inertia where you can see lots of examples of me being tolerant of “bad” behavior, and choosing which things to ignore for now and which things to focus on.

In this case, if I tried to correct everything, we wouldn’t get anywhere on this walk! And that’s fine when your goal is a training walk, but in this video, my main goal was giving Inertia exposure to new experiences during this critical time in her socialization while she is still young.

When your dog is still in training, you really need to prioritize what is important to you and your specific situation with your dog, and understand that you’ll make progress faster by thoughtfully choosing what to focus on and what to temporarily ignore and save for future training sessions.

What are your highest training priorities with your dog right now?

Keep your dog’s safety and comfort covered while you choose what to practice.

If training feels overwhelming right now, start here.

Originally shared November 5, 2019. Original post.