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Do you feel like you’re lost when it comes to how long or how often you should be training your puppy?
You know that you need to teach her the basic commands, and you pretty much know how to do it, but you’re not really sure how training fits into your daily schedule.
If you’re like me, and you like planning and structure, you’ll love the 5x5x5 Schedule.
The 5x5x5 Schedule is this:
- 5 minutes per session
- 5 training sessions
- 5 different places
5 Minutes Per Session
As we all know, puppies don’t exactly have the longest attention spans.
Sometimes you might even feel like your puppy doesn’t realize that you’re there until he gets a whiff of the treat that’s in your hand.
By limiting each training session to just five minutes, you have a better chance of keeping your puppy’s attention the entire session.
A huge part of puppy training is reinforcing good habits, while preventing bad habits.
If your puppy starts to ignore your commands, it can easily become a bad habit.
Keeping training sessions short minimizes that risk.
5 Training Sessions
Puppies are beautiful, sweet, fluffy tornadoes.
So they need a lot of work.
Given that we can only hold their attention for about five minutes at a time, we need to train frequently.
Five training sessions per day ensure that they get enough training, while five minutes per session ensures that they don’t get too much.
5 Different Places
Training your puppy in five different places helps them in two ways:
- Puppies don’t do a great job transferring their obedience skills from one situation to another. At first, they might think that sitting is just for the house, not for outside. Training them in new places teaches them they need to be obedient everywhere.
- New environments present new distractions. If they can learn to be obedient even with new distractions, they’ll be a rockstar.
It’s important to note here that if you have a young puppy who is just getting started, you should only train them inside at first.
Outside presents too many distractions, and we don’t want to make training any harder than it already is.
For example, I live in a two bedroom apartment.
At first, we trained in:
- The kitchen
- The living room
- The bedroom
- The guest room
- The bathroom
As he started getting the hang of things inside the apartment, we started doing more sessions outside.
We started just outside our front door, which was the most familiar and least distracting place.
Then we eventually started training in more distracting places, such as the neighborhood dog park or the busy sidewalks.
Conclusion
Training too much can lead to bad habits, but following the 5x5x5 Schedule helps ensure you’re training for the appropriate amount of time.
It also helps your puppy get better at transferring their obedience skills to new situations, and practices dealing with distractions.
By following this schedule, you can ensure you’re puppy is getting the proper amount of training, and it’s enjoyable, yet challenging for both you and your pup.
Remember, the 5x5x5 Schedule is this:
- 5 minutes per session
- 5 training sessions
- 5 different places
Are you training your pup?
What does your schedule look like?
Let us know in the comments below!
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