When the training plan changes

Originally shared October 22, 2019. Original post.

Today I took Inertia to a park that she’s been to many times before, planning to practice some training with her.

Turns out, they’re doing construction and a whole bunch of other things that are extremely interesting (to Inertia 😝), and even after spending a lot of time there she was still struggling to stay focused on me.

So, our training session became a sniff, explore, take in the world session instead!

Meanwhile, Bree is watching some footage today of one of our past training sessions where I took Inertia to a brand new park in a new city, on our trip to Atlanta a little while ago.

On that day, I expected Inertia to be totally distracted and pretty unresponsive to training in the new place, especially because she wasn’t even 4 months old yet at the time. I had planned to just let her explore, but, after a few minutes of sniffing around she got so into me that I managed to do her very FIRST frisbee training session ever, while we were in a brand new environment 🤯

The moral is, when you’re training your dog, BE FLEXIBLE! Be patient and pay attention to your dog, and work with what is inspiring THEM!

When you see that little spark of interest, do what you can to fan it into a beautiful flame 🔥 Just remember, it takes time!!

Follow Inertia’s series, or read When training feels overwhelming.