It's been my experience that less time training, but with more frequency is a better approach, then long periods of training time at one shot. When teaching a new command, I've never spent more then 5 mins at a time, but I do train every day. That way they're getting the repetition to learn something, but we're stopping before either one of us can get frustrated or bored. Training always ends on a high that way and becomes fun.

Once they have a command, I just integrate that into everyday life. So for example, once they know what "Sit" means, I'll have them "Sit" before they go outside or "Sit" before they get their dinner. This just takes consistency, not time. It only takes a couple of seconds to say "Sit" and have them do it, before you place their dinner down.

I've been working with my Collie, Gull to learn to weave through weave poles. It's a complex behavior for a dog to learn. I've been in agility classes, where I've found that quite a few ppl train this like 30 mins at a time and they were quite surprised to learn that I only trained this task for around minute a day.

Gull did not pick up this behavior as quickly as my first Collie, Oz and I have to admit I had momentary thoughts that he's just not going to get this. But I stuck to my training philosophy, practice everyday, but only 1 minute. After about a week, out of nowhere, I noticed the lightbulb went on for him. He got the concept. We still have a ways to go to fade out the lure, but I've no doubt he'll get there. And on the plus side, he does it with joy and speed, because of short training times, it's viewed as fun vs a chore.

Anywho, I think people have this wrong view that you have to train for excruciately long periods to get anywhere and I think that actually has the opposite effect. Train everyday, keep it short and fun. You'll be amazed at the results.

Par...