It’s easy to get bogged down by training. When you make the decision to train a service dog, your whole world changes. Everything you do becomes a training experience for the dog. You feel immense pressure to get things done, and to get them done right. At times, you may forget to stop and admire how far you and your dog have come together.
Set Goals That are Reachable & Can Be Expanded Over Time
A reachable goal is one that is possible for you and your dog to achieve. You can have big goals that represent where you want to end up, and small goals that will help your team reach the bigger goals. If you just started working on Sit with Lucky, your goal for the first month is getting Lucky to where he hears the word Sit, and plops his butt down into sit. That is a small goal. The big goal would be that in a few months, Lucky would perform Sit in any place, and hold it for several minutes, with people passing by, you stepping away for a moment, or even if another dog ran up!
A goal that wouldn’t be attainable just yet would be starting to teach sit at home and expecting to go to the park at the end of the first month and do sit there. That’s a goal that will come later, for sure, but first it’s up to you to help Lucky learn how to sit, what the word means, how to do it around low level distractions, how to hold sit for longer than 1-2s, and more before asking him to sit in a location with lots of new smells, sounds, distractions, etc.
I like to keep a running list of goals for my dog. Once we reach one, I write a new goal to expand on the first one. I ask myself, how can we make this harder? How can we give this command or action a new challenge so that my boy will become better at it? Looking back at goal lists can also be invaluable tools for days when you aren’t sure what to work on, or you need a little boost to remind yourself that your team is making progress.
Celebrate the Small Things in Order to See the Big Picture
By remembering to take the time to celebrate all the little things you and your dog accomplish together, you can remind yourself of the bigger picture. Your dog is being trained. Your dog is making progress. Your dog is learning. And so are you.
Every day becomes a mission to work on perfecting sit or teaching the dog to open doors or fixing their heel. The bad days are especially rough because chances are, your condition makes you feel guilty for not training enough or for stopping early. Maybe your dog is having a bad day too and they seem to have forgotten what “sit” means. You feel as if your whole world is crashing down on you.
What? Sit is gone!!! He knows sit. I know that he knows sit. Why isn’t he doing it?? It isn’t nearly as hard as other things he needs to learn. Gosh if he can’t even do sit reliably, maybe I should just
give up. He will never be a service dog…
It’s a never-ending internal conversation that will always rear its ugly head on the days when nothing goes right and you feel at your lowest. Ignore the voices that say you and your dog can’t do this. Accept that you and your dog will have bad training days. On those days, take a break. Snuggle in bed, open your training journal, and read through everything that your dog has accomplished in training. Think about everything you have learned from your dog. Think about where you guys were the first month into training, and where you are now. I’m willing to bet that you’ve come a lot farther than you think.
Part of training means being able to look at your work both in detail and on a comprehensive scale. If your dog has never actually learned sit, or other basic commands, has reactivity issues, doesn’t like certain people, has no drive to work or be with you every second, and other disqualifying traits, then maybe they don’t have what it takes. But having one or two bad days amongst hundreds of good ones is very normal, and to be expected. Your dog will tell you if they aren’t cut out for this life.
You can do this. Believe in your team. Remember to track the good things with the bad things, the progress with the setbacks, and imagine reaching your goals together.
To help you get started, here is a free worksheet you can use to track your team’s goals & accomplishments (not for resale). They are the same, but one is formatted for printing, the other for digital use.
