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If after watching the
communication trinity section,
you're thinking it looks
great, but you'll never
have the time to actually
teach each puppy,
we have good news for you.
It literally only takes a minute
to teach a puppy something new.
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Puppies learn most
rapidly when they're
given short training sessions
with rest periods in between.
This is known as
distributed learning,
and the scientific
principles behind it
are the same for all
dogs of all ages,
from puppy to senior citizen.
Here's how it works.
In many ways, brains
are like computers.
Think of every response
that earns a puppy
a reward as a one
and every response
that does not earn
a reward as a zero.
As a training
session progresses,
the puppy starts accumulating
ones and zeros in his brain,
but things are
happening too fast
for him to fully sort it out.
Much of what he experiences is
set aside and spooled in memory
to be fully processed when his
brain has the leisure to do so.
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When the puppy's allowed to
rest after a learning session,
his brain has a chance
to do some housekeeping.
First, the data in his
brain is all sorted out.
The one responses, the responses
that earned him a reward,
tend to be given a permanent
place in the brain,
while the zeros, the responses
that did not earn a reward,
tend to be swept out of memory.
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Second, the neural
pathways in his brain
rewire themselves to accommodate
this new information,
making him able to recall and
apply it when he needs it.
After a good rest
session, your puppy
emerges with a nice,
tidied-up brain,
and you'll often notice
that he begins a new session
with significantly
better performance
than he ended the
previous session.
This is the science behind the
old adage of sleeping on it.
It may seem like the puppy
read a training manual
while he's napping,
but really, it's
just his brain having a
chance to get organized.
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The optimum length of training
session and rest period
will depend on the
age, development,
and previous training
of the individual dog.
But as a guideline,
we limit our puppies
under 12 weeks
old to six minutes
of total training with
approximately a half
hour of rest in between.
Although these are
outside limits,
we find between one- and
three-minute training sessions
with at least 15 minutes
of rest in between
to be optimal for puppies
under five months of age.
Even with our adult dogs,
we see amazing results
with two-minute power
training sessions.
If you try to do longer
training sessions,
you might notice that the puppy
will at first have increasing
correct responses, but as the
training session drags on,
he may actually get worse and
offer more and more incorrect
responses.
This is known as
response fatigue.
The neurons that have to fire
off in order for the puppy
to respond correctly
literally get tired,
and the puppy's performance
starts declining.
Shorter sessions, therefore,
are more efficient
and arguably more motivational.
Yeah, good girlie.
Wow.
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