I once confidently stated things like ‘I’ll teach Laika to roll herself up in a blanket within 3 days,’ but recently, I’ve adopted a more ‘consistently improving’ mindset. When it comes to dog training, I’ve come to realize there’s no perfect timeline for everything; we work with what we have. I feel like I’ve finally understood the importance of patience in dog training. Some skills are learned quickly, while others take time.
Don’t misunderstand me—having goals is good and helps a lot in getting things done. But when it comes to dog training? I don’t like setting strict time limits because they often backfire. Usually, I end up repeating meaningless things to my dog over and over, hoping for a miracle. But such repetition is useless without comprehension. And do you know how I learned that lesson? From a French teacher I had in college.
Repeating Constantly: Will It Eventually Make Sense?
In college, I had a French teacher whom I would describe as having very little patience. It was a beginner’s French class, and from the first day, she had a ‘no English allowed’ rule in class. I was confused by 99% of what she said, but I decided to give it a try. I was excited when we started learning numbers and the alphabet, which I could easily follow, but when it came to forming phrases? I was completely lost.
My teacher came up to me and said ‘quel est votre passe-temps favori?’ which sounded like total nonsense to me. I knew she was asking a question, but I had no idea what it was. So I said ‘I’m sorry I don’t understand.’ Well, that broke the no-English rule in class, so I just froze because I didn’t have the slightest idea how to apologize in French.
So what did she do? Did she move on to a student who might know the answer? No. She kept getting closer and closer to me, repeating ‘quel est votre passe-temps favori?’ over and over, each time a little louder. It was as if I had a hearing problem, rather than a complete lack of understanding.
I often think about that class and how terrible it feels to have no idea what someone is asking of you. I really felt hopeless, and the laughter from the other students didn’t help. It’s not that she was a bad teacher; she just had very little patience for students (like me) who didn’t catch on immediately. Instead of staying in a class where I wasn’t comfortable, I ended up switching to Spanish, and I’m happy to say things went much more smoothly there.
I later learned that ‘quel est votre passe-temps favori?’ is asking ‘what is your favorite hobby?’, and if I had been smarter, I would have smugly replied ‘learning Spanish.’
This is Laika when she has no clue what I’m saying. She’s such a good sport 🙂
Repetition Is Useless Without Understanding
So what does all this have to do with dog training? Well, it taught me to be much more patient with Laika when she’s learning new things. And words are pointless when they don’t have meaning—no matter how many times you repeat them. If she doesn’t understand something the first time, I look back and try to figure out what she’s struggling with instead of just repeating it over and over, louder and louder, hoping for a miracle.
When we work on a new command, I take it slow and try to make sure she understands exactly what I want. Just repeating ‘go get your glow ball and bring it to me’ over and over is pretty useless when we’re still struggling with what ‘bring it to me’ really means. (No, Laika, it doesn’t mean bring it close to me and then run away.)
There are many parts to the language we use, especially when training commands with more than one part. I imagine we sound a lot like the adults in Charlie Brown when we’re trying to teach our dogs new things—wah, wah, wah. New words don’t make any sense without the right context, whether you’re a dog or a human. So instead of just repeating nonsense to Laika over and over, I try to make sure each word has some meaning. And if it doesn’t? Well, we go back until it does.
Some commands can be taught quickly, and others take time. And since I don’t want my dog to be like the awkward kid in class who has no idea what’s going on, I keep that memory of French class in mind. (I doubt that repeating things to your own dog makes them feel as awkward as I did in French class, but the point that repeating gibberish over and over is rather useless still stands.)
I don’t want my dog to feel discouraged; I want her to enjoy learning new things. The last thing I want is for either of us to get frustrated with each other during training. So I don’t speak loudly to her or repeat myself in frustration when she just doesn’t ‘get it.’ I go back and figure out how I can help her understand and give meaning to my requests. Repeating things over and over is only good when someone knows what on earth you’re saying in the first place.
The Positive Pet Training blog hop focuses on sharing positive pet training stories. This month’s theme is “Training Tools,” but you can share any positive pet training story!
