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The 5 Minute Dog by Personable Pets Dog Training
Practical dog training advice in under 5 minutes. 5 New episodes uploaded every Monday.
WIth over 20 years of Family Dog training experience, our podcast includes tips, tricks, and explanations, so you can better understand why your dog does what he does. We also provide dog training scenarios to help you curb any unwanted behaviors.
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The 5 Minute Dog by Personable Pets Dog Training
#125 Breaking Old Habits
Training new cues is easy, but using them consistently in real-life situations presents a significant challenge. Understanding why this happens can help us be more patient with ourselves and our dogs as we work through the learning process.
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Welcome to the 5-Minute Dog, the mini-podcast that delivers practical training advice in less than 5 minutes. When you start training, learning a new cue is one thing. Using that cue naturally in real life it's a whole different ballgame. Naturally, in real life it's a whole different ballgame. So let's chat about why it is so hard and why you shouldn't be discouraged if it feels awkward. First you need to understand that habits are powerful. The way you interact with your dog today, what words you say, the tone you use, even your body language, has been repeated hundreds, maybe thousands of times. So when you learn a new, cleaner cue like come instead of come here now, hurry up, it's not just learning something new, it's unlearning years of automatic behavior. It's unlearning years of automatic behavior, and unlearning takes longer than learning.
Speaker 1:Second, emotions get involved. Training sessions are calm, they're structured, they're focused, but real life, real life is messy. You're frustrated, you're rushing, you're embarrassed that your dog just jumped on a neighbor. In those moments your brain defaults to old habits because it's trying to solve the problem fast. It pulls up whatever is most familiar, not necessarily what you just practiced yesterday.
Speaker 1:Third, context matters for our dogs. Dogs don't automatically generalize Just because they learn. Sit in the living room doesn't mean they know. Sit at the park or at the campsite or on a sidewalk full of squirrels. You may feel like you're using the cue, but your dog doesn't recognize it yet outside of the training context. And that mismatch can make you second guess yourself, leading you to fall back on old words or ineffective habits. And fourth, consistency feels boring, but it's crucial.
Speaker 1:In training we repeat the same words, the same gestures, the same timing over and over. In real life we tend to get creative without realizing it. We say come on, buddy. Instead of that new, sharp come, we mix signals and this inconsistency slows down how quickly the dog connects the dots. And it frustrates us when we don't see results, making us even more likely to revert to old communication styles.
Speaker 1:And finally, change takes time. Research shows that on average, it takes anywhere from 18 to 254 days to fully form a new habit, depending on the person and the complexity of the behavior. So if it feels hard to replace your old ways of talking to your dog with the new training cues, that's normal. You're working against muscle memory, emotional reflexes, environmental distractions and the brain's natural resistance to change. And the brain's natural resistance to change. But the good news. Every time you pause, take a breath and use the new cue, even if it feels clunky, you are rewiring both your brain and your dog's brain and over time it gets smoother, until one day you realize using the new cue feels natural and better, yet your dog is responding to it automatically. So keep practicing. Progress hides in the little moments.