How to Make a Custom Training Plan
A guide for dog guardians who already have a solid foundation of training experience.
A well-crafted training plan makes it way more likely that you will reach your training goals by helping you keep track of all of the different elements involved and breaking them down in a way that sets your dog up to succeed. They take daunting training goals and make them achievable.
Making your own training plan is the seriously deep end of the at home dog training pool. Understanding how to manage multiple parameters, how to increase difficulty in a way that sets your dog up to succeed, how to move from heavy prompting to verbal cues, etc. takes a lot of knowledge. If you’ve been working with your dog for a while, maybe have taken a few classes, read a number of books, or participated in dog sports, you might be ready to give it a go!
Tools to Help You Make a Training Plan
We’ve created a few resources to help you craft your own training plan:
1. This guide, which has detailed instructions for each step of the process.
2. A training plan template that you can customize and fill out to make your own plan.
Quick tip on the template - To be able to save your edits to the form, I recommend downloading it first and using a program like Adobe Acrobat to fill it out rather than your web browser.
3. A video example showing how I would use the template to create a custom training plan.
Step Zero: Look For Existing Plans
I always prefer to use an existing training plan from a trusted source if I can. No need to reinvent the wheel! Especially since their’s has been probably been tested and refined. Just to double check that I really do need to make my own plan, I always check to see if I can find a plan from another trainer before making my own. Even if I end up having to adapt it, it’s still a great starting point that will save me a bunch of leg work. When I search for plans, I look for ones by veterinary behaviorists or trainers with one of these certifications: CAAB, CTC, KPA-CTP, or IAABC.
Step One: Define Your Goal Behavior
Click on this screenshot to go to 01:05 in the video to see my example.
This is what you want your dog to be able to do at the end of your training. You want to detail every aspect of the situation include where, when, for whom, with what cues, around what distractions, from what distance, etc. The more granular detail, the better!
You also may want to consider what you really need from your dog rather than making an idealized version with too many variables or too tough of criteria that might bog you down.
Step Two: Separate Your Goal Behavior into Parameters.
Make sure every element of your goal behavior is covered by a parameter to ensure you account for it in your plan.
Some Common Parameters
Intensity – How easy or advanced a version of the final physical behavior your dog is doing
Level of prompting – With heavy cheering and baby talk, on verbal cue, automatically based on environmental cues
Degree of warm up – How long into a training session will you be, does it have to be perfect on the first repetition
Latency – How long between when you give the cue and the dog does the behavior
Click on this screenshot to go to 01:43 in the video to see how I identify my parameters.
Distance – Distance from you at the start or middle of the behavior, distance from a temptation or distraction
Duration – Length of time of each repetition
Distractions – A huge category that I often break out into multiple parameters, includes where you are, who is around, how exciting your dog finds various things nearby, how long you’ve been there for your dog to acclimate or not, etc.
Write each of your parameters with a quick definition at the top of the template. Once you have them finalized, you can fill them in as the labels for the columns in your training plan.
Step Three: Figure Out Your First Step.
Your first step should be something your dog can do fairly well right off the bat. It is usually either:
A low distraction, heavy prompting version of the final behavior, like practicing “come” from 5 feet away in the living room.
The last step of a different training plan that you are using to teach foundation behaviors, like following a standard “stay” training plan and then making a custom plan to teach your dog to automatically stay every time you go to pick up a poop.
Step Four: Think Through the Flow.
Before you jump in and fill out the rest of the plan, you want to take some time to think about how to arrange things to make the plan as convenient and efficient as possible.
For instance, if your goal behavior will take place across town, you might try to get as far along the plan as you could before you had to go there. Or alternate a few steps of the plan near home then a few steps of the plan across town so you can go there for some sessions but not all.
No need to write in steps yet, just get an idea in your head of which order will make the most sense for you and your dog.
Step 4: Make One Parameter Harder at a Time.
Click here to go to 04:32 in the video to see how I make my parameters harder and choose the sequence of my steps.
For each step in the plan, you should pick one parameter to make one increment harder. It can be tempting to have fewer steps with larger increases in difficulty, but you’ll save time and get less frustrated if you err on the conservative side and have more steps in your plan.
As I start a new plan, I like to only fill in the parameter that I’m changing. It makes it easier to track how it’s changing as I rethink and revise the plan.
Here are tips on how to increase difficulty for the common parameters we mentioned:
Intensity – Sorry, not much guidance here! It will really vary depending on what you are teaching.
Level of Prompting – I generally take several steps to gradually transition from a lure or heavy coaxing to a hand signal. Once you have one cue that works, you can add new cues before existing ones. It goes new cue, two-Mississippi pause, old cue. Repeat until the dog is going on the new cue and not waiting for the old cue.
Degree of Warm Up – It’s a lot easier on you to practice in training sessions, which means your dog will be fully warmed up. So if you need your dog to do things cold, either prioritize how you use the first repetition or two in a training session or get as much done as you can before incorporating this parameter.
Latency – At the beginning of your training, this should be infinite. I would wait to add constraints on latency until you have your intensity and level of prompting where you want them.
Distance - Here’s a typical progression: one step, two steps, three steps, four steps, five steps, five steps with back turned to dog, 15 feet, 20 feet, 20 feet going out of sight, 30 feet, 40 feet, 50 feet
Distractions - This is another one that varies a ton. If you are having a hard time thinking of easier versions of a distraction, here are four ways to do it:
Allow your dog access to the distraction for a little while to make it less tempting, you can gradually decrease the amount of time they get with it.
Go farther away from the distraction.
Tire your dog out mentally and/or physically before the training.
Make another parameter easier to compensate for how much harder the distraction is.
Duration – Always save big increases in duration for as far back in the plan as you can because by its very nature, it slows you down. Here’s how you generally do it: increase by one second at a time until five seconds, then five seconds at a time until 20 seconds, then 10 seconds at a time to a minute, then 15-30 second at a time to three minutes
The notes column can help you keep track of any set up needed, any thoughts you had about which steps should go in the same training session, solutions for any potential issues you foresee, any special instructions about when to move to the next step, etc.
Optional: Convert Your Plan to Plain English.
Once you have your plan all ironed out, if you’re finding it a little confusing to read in this format, you can convert it into plain English by writing out a sentence or two for each step that incorporates all of the parameters and any notes on the training set up.
Step Five: Follow Your Training Plan.
Now that you have a well-thought out training plan, you want to move through it in an equally well-thought out way.
Train in sets of 5 repetitions of the same step.
If your dog meets the criteria you listed for all of your parameters, they earn a treat!
After each set of 5 repetitions, move ahead, stay where you are, or drop back based on these rules:
If your dog earns 4 or 5 treats, move ahead to the next step.
If your dog earns 3 treats, stay on the same step.
If your dog earns 2 treats or fewer, go back to the prior step. Quick note: If your dog is struggling and you realize early that there is no way for them to get higher than a 2, you can end the set early and drop down right away.
Sometimes, you’ll realize that two of the steps in your plan are too far apart because your dog can consistently do the easier one but every time you try the next one, things fall apart. If that happens, make a middle step to bridge the gap for your dog. You shouldn’t do this every time you need to drop down a step, only if you’ve gotten stuck between two steps.
Other tools to help you
Here’s our Training Plan Template and a guided example to help you kick that training plan’s butt!