Training Session Lengths

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How long should training sessions be with my puppy? We get this question fairly regularly, so I’ll answer it here in this month’s blog. We train our young puppies only twice a day for ten minutes per session. We stop the training after only ten minutes, because that’s about all a young puppy of eight weeks old can endure at one time and we want to end on a positive note. If a puppy’s training session gets any longer than that, he will become mentally fatigued. You can tell when your puppy is getting tired when he suddenly gets distracted and can no longer follow your commands. (Sounds a lot like a human kid, right?) If you continue a training session for more than ten minutes at a time, the experience will quickly become negative. Your puppy will make more and more mistakes, you’ll get frustrated, and you’ll have to train and re-train your puppy.

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Some of you may be thinking that twenty minutes of training per day is not enough. We agree. That’s why we add two full hours of crate training between sessions. Gradually, as a puppy matures, we extend the crate training period, adding a few minutes per day until he can remain in his crate without whining or having incontinence accidents for up to eight hours overnight. (You can read more about our crate training practice and philosophy in another blog.)

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As a puppy matures, you can extend training sessions, but we seldom go over thirty minutes at a time with even a mature dog for the same reasons stated in the first paragraph. Remember, we always want to end on a positive note before a dog shows any sign of mental exhaustion or boredom. If we notice the slightest hint of fatigue or distraction after a good session that is under thirty minutes, we complete one more quick, easy command we know the dog will easily and willingly obey, reward him with kibble snacks, extra petting, and lots of verbal praise, and end the session right away. We read a dog’s cues and understand that he’s either done for that session or perhaps finished with training for the entire day. At that point, he might be crated for a crate training session or kenneled with other dogs, but pushing a dog to learn when he’s not eager to do so almost always ends in frustration and a loss of training time, so we’ve learned that it’s better to start fresh again later on after he’s had a nap or even forego training until the following day after a good night’s sleep.

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Happy training to you!

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