What to listen for:

What’s keeping me from training on a regular basis? What’s keeping me from unlocking my dog’s full potential? These are questions that almost every handler asks themselves at some point in their career, often many times! Today, Stacy, Robin, and Crystal unpack these common pain points on the path to progress in the K9 world by drawing on their own experiences.

Listen in as our hosts discuss why we lack purpose, consistency, and confidence. Their first and most important challenge to trainers everywhere: “If this goal is important enough to you, can you find just five minutes a day to dedicate to that goal?” Many times what’s holding us back from progress is intimidation around the amount of time and effort we need to put in to see any sort of improvement. But as our hosts remind us, five minutes a day regularly is always better than an hour irregularly.

They also explain that it’s often hard to recognize the good that we get out of the shortest of training sessions only because the gains are not immediate. But as we stay consistent with those little pockets of training time and take care to stack habits, we’ll wake up one day amazed at how much we and our dog have grown.

Our hosts assure us that these obstacles are just part of the K9 detection game. You may feel totally alone as you deal with these challenges, but know that you’re absolutely not alone! According to Stacy, “Your problems may feel huge, but they are solvable!”

Key Topics:

• Why you need to train the non-sexy stuff regularly (02:02)
• What’s keeping you from changing your unproductive habits? (07:15)
• Habit stacking and why short, frequent sessions are always better than longer, infrequent sessions (13:06)
• How doing leads to motivation (18:55)
• The importance of downtime to prevent burnout (25:31)
• Paying attention only to the person in front of you (32:52)
• The limitations of training your dog without blind hides (34:32)
• Creative ways to regularly train with blind hides (37:18)
• Lack of purpose and training just to train (41:16)
• Developing dutifulness, consistency, and confidence (47:38)
• Our challenge to listeners (52:26)
• Our takeaways (53:39)

Resources:

• OSU Dog Hip Replacement
• True Chew Natural Dog Treats
• Pure Dog Talk episode: AKC's New Genetic Testing Program to offer Expanded Insights
• SWDI 
• K9 Projekt 
• Calm the F*ck Down (book - affiliate link)
• K9 Detection Collaborative Episode 54: Canine Handler Fitness with Liz Joyce 
• K9 Detection Collaborative Episode 11: The D's of Detection Work 

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