08/16/2026
Teaching a skill quickly and fully training a skill are two different things.
Many skills can be taught surprisingly fast. From obedience skills like sit, down, and stand to tricks and more complex movements, I’ve spent years experimenting with ways to make that initial learning process more efficient. The way we move, how we place rewards, and the techniques we use can all help a dog understand what we’re asking much faster.
Taking a behavior from that first exciting “They got it!” moment to a reliable, finished skill requires a different kind of training. It takes planning, consistency, and practice over time.
I think there’s a lot of value in learning how to do that.
You don’t need to train everything at once, but I’d like to see you take skills from start to finish and have fun with the process.
What Do Trained Behaviors Look Like?
For our purposes, let’s call a behavior “finished” when your dog can respond to the cue the first time you ask, without seeing a treat in your hand, and can perform the behavior in different environments and around reasonable distractions. When you give the cue once, your dog will respond almost every time within 2 seconds. For example, you say sit and your dog sits.
What To Do When Your Dog Ignores You
I also want people to understand that when a dog does not respond to a cue that you trained through, it's important to give the dog space to shake off, reset, and ignore you. Yup. Your dog isn't being stubborn. If you have observed a high rate of successful responses in the past, your dog has a reason for ignoring a cue. Don't make a big deal about it. We are not machines programmed to respond 100% of the time to anything and neither are they.
How to Train a Skill From Start to Finish
Maybe the skill you choose is simple. Maybe it’s a trick like move into heel position. The particular behavior isn’t really the point.
The point is learning the process.
Once your dog understands the basic movement, what happens next?
Can you practice it in different rooms? Can you take it outside? What distractions can you gradually add? Can your dog respond when you don’t have treats visible? How do you begin phasing out a treat for every single response without losing the behavior? Can you start using other rewards, such as play, praise, access to sniffing, or something else your dog enjoys? Having an instructor can be helpful for figuring this all out.
Those are the parts of training that are easy to skip when we’re constantly moving on to the next new skill.
It’s also one of the reasons I love trick training.
Your dog doesn’t need to know a bunch of tricks. You certainly don’t need to train tricks just for the sake of checking them off a list. But trick training gives you a low-pressure way to practice the entire training process again and again.
Then, when you’re working on something that matters more in everyday life, like loose-leash walking, staying when someone comes through the door, or keeping four paws on the floor when greeting someone, you already understand the process.
The skills may look completely different, but many of the training concepts are the same.
Simplified Dog Training
Keep your training simple. Don’t try to teach everything or fix everything in one session. Having an instructor can be extremely helpful because your instructor can help you organize the process.
Pick one behavior. Start small. Then see what happens when you stick with it long enough to take it from that first exciting repetition all the way to a reliable skill.
You’ll learn a lot about training along the way.
-MJ
