Training Two Dogs

[alycia.ammar]

Hello!

We currently have 2 dogs - Nova, a husky/shepherd mix who is 14 months and Cooper, a lab mix who is approx 7 months we just rescued a month ago.

I'm just wondering what duration and number of training sessions works best for this program! The only times I can really train them separately is when the other goes outside for a few minutes, so I maybe get 15 minutes a day alone with each spread out through the day. Is this enough? I am worried they are not learning much! Can the games be played with two dogs at once?

 

Thank you!

[Adrienne Farricelli]

Hello, and welcome!

There are ultimately no exact general rules of thumb when it comes to how long to train dogs per session and how many sessions to do a day. There are many variables at play such as the age of the dogs, breed, energy levels, health, the experience of the person training, current mindset of the dog, whether the dog was ever trained before etc. It's often a matter of personally gauging how things are going and keeping an eye out for signs of tiring. Some dogs can get tired after just 5 minutes of training others can go on for 15 minutes at a time. Watch for signs of frustration, stress or tiring under the form of yawning, a sudden itch, walking away, loss of interest etc. You want to avoid getting to this point. To play it safe, best to keep sessions short and sweet at first, always ending on a positive note.

 

As for quantity, again, there are variables. After testing the waters with a few brief sessions, you can eventually progress and try as many as you can fit in a day without the dogs getting bored or uninterested. You may find that you can train more and longer on some days, while some days less. Just like us dog may have more productive days than others. Three 10 minute sessions sound reasonable as a goal for dogs of this age, but you may find that you may have to build up to that initially. You might also find it helpful to just randomly ask your dog to perform the new behaviour throughout the day, as one or two repetitions. Some of my busy clients like to use television commercial breaks for training.

 

Whether your dogs can be trained together really also depends on various factors and your individual situation. I would encourage training one dog at a time at first just because in the initial stages of training, you want one-on-one attention without too many distractions going on.

For example, if your dogs are prone to barking/alerting to stimuli, they will also likely feed off each others' moods which negatively interferes with training creating disruptions. If they have had little training before they will also likely want to play with each other rather than pay attention to you. You also don't want one dog getting in the middle because he smells treats. In these cases, one-on-one training can be easier in the initial stages until you have better control over both dogs. If you need more time alone, you can always crate a dog with a stuffed Kong to keep occupied until it's his turn and then swap.

 

The great news is that once both dogs are getting more and more fluent in performing the desired behaviors, you can get them to perform the behaviors they were taught together, which works great as part of the proofing process (dogs responding nicely despite the distraction of each others' presence).

 

Now, when it comes to brain games, there are some that can potentially be played together, while others may not be too practical because it would involve too much multi-tasking on your part. Also, if your dogs have a tendency to resource guard, you may want to avoid having them play games where food is scattered around as that may lead to squabbles.

Edited October 10, 2018 by Adrienne Farricelli

[alycia.ammar]

Great, thank you so much!