How to live your life and train your dog, simultaneously

Ask me what I’m doing at any point, on any given day and I’ll answer the same: I’m training my dog.. 

So what do I mean and how do I dedicate all of the hours in a day to training my three dogs? How do I seriously get work done from home, clean the house and manage puppy coaching programs while simultaneously training my dogs?

Like you, I never want to leave them. They’re my whole life (and then some, they help me train your puppies and teach them things that I, a human, can’t.) On the other hand I really don’t want to live with dogs who are super attached to me and fall apart without my presence. You know, the dogs who you can’t actually leave alone or have them go to a crate. Life becomes pretty constricting for both you and your dog at this point.

I want to help my dogs grow to be individuals, independent thinkers who are capable of making their own decisions and choices.

Guided by me, as needed. Each dog is their own unique being. I can’t make them fit into a mould. That would be time consuming: so I just help shape them to make the right choices, and trust that they’ll do so as and when they need to, or I need them to.

As I write this I have three dogs laying in different areas of the home: one on the couch, on her blanket, one on a dog bed in the living room, and the third dog is laying at my feet. He stays closest to me because he still needs help making the right choices. He’s tethered to a built-in shelf and gets the option to lay on the cool floor, or his bed. What he doesn’t get the option to do is mess around: I’ve set him up for success by removing all toys, creating a calm environment and taking breaks with him playing ball outside. When we come back in, he’s back on his cozy bed and I’m back to rationing his daily meal allowance into a kong for him.


This is what living with your dog and training looks like. 

We don’t stop to do controlled training sessions with a bowl of cookies anymore (that’s for baby dogs, not the grown-ass dog.) Now, by tethering him to the shelf I control the area he gets access to. Again, setting him up for success. My desk has moved spaces so now he has to learn how to exist in a much bigger space. This is natural reaction stuff. This calm behavior on his bed, otherwise known as a ‘place’ command transfers to me cooking dinner and not having him underfoot. While I’m cutting up dinner I might walk over quickly and reinforce what he’s doing. I tell him I like what he’s doing and give him some chicken for making the choice to stay where I’ve asked him to stay. I do the same when company comes over. He’s calm, I reward it. 

He sniffs the counter and stays off of it? I reward him “yes, off!” I let him think and be a dog instead of thinking for him (most of the time, that is.) Every time he lays down calmly: I reward. Everytime he sniffs and doesn’t snatch, reward. Turns his head to the window to look at the vehicle driving past, or kids walking home from school? I reward, because he’s not barking at them and he hasn’t got up. I don’t make a big deal about these things.


If nothing happens, then nothing happens. 

When I come home from work.. He sits in his crate for 10 minutes, quietly. (that’s nothing happening #1). After 10 minutes, I open his crate door. He sits, and stays. He hasn’t been released. He’s not anxiously shaking or screaming at me to get let out (that’s nothing happening #2, I didn’t make a big deal of coming home, so he in turn didn’t care to make a fuss to get out of his crate.)

He’s training right now and learning to recognize my new patterns of working from home, as so many of us are re-building our career wheel working from home.. It’s important we train throughout this process so we don’t end up with an anxious dog to live with who’s always jumping on our desk or barking through our Zoom video conferences with our clients. He still has a daily routine, structure and boundaries at home and especially outside of the home.

This dog is just short of 2 now and offers me a lot of good behaviours: and for that, I constantly reward him for it. It’s spontaneous, sometimes it’s a treat, a toy, a pat on the head always with a verbal “yes”. Our daily hikes are too a training opportunity. Sometimes we pass dogs, other times he’s laying off to the side when the path is too narrow, or the incoming dog is reactive or excitable. He doesn’t even LOOK at them. I reward this.


Lifestyle training for your dog.. 

I personally practice what I preach: this transfers to my clients’ puppies who are here for lifestyle training as well. If I wanted Fury to go kayaking with me, or boating, we would train for that too at every opportunity. Make rewarding your dog second nature and first train your brain to see the good things your dog is doing. The rest will come naturally, and you too will constantly be training your dog every second of every day, while going through your daily routine.

What would it look like for you, or incorporate training into your daily life? 

Does it look like playing games with your dog? 

Do you turn heads in public with how well trained your dog is? I do. Anytime you’re training, you have to know your end goal. 

What does it look like for you, to have your dog trained during your daily routine? 

What would it look like having your dog trained to fit your lifestyle?

This is how I live life with my three dogs, while training them, simultaneously.

Every minute is an opportunity you can turn into training.