What came to my mind when reading this article was, what if you’re training for fun, not for efficiency? In my dog’s case, training is one of his favorite parts of the day. He gets to eat delicious treats and have my undivided attention. Most nights I make up a throw-away shaping game like putting his paws up on a particular armchair, or crawling under the coffee table. The mental exercise tires him out and improves his learning rate for tasks I care about, like learning to step into his new harness and stand still while I buckle it. I also try to develop new ways of learning; it took him over a week of nightly training sessions to figure out that I was rewarding him for occupying the space in the middle of a hula hoop, not for touching the hula hoop itself.

So thanks again for a great article, and if my dog got to answer the question “How often should you train your dog?”, he would say, “whenever I’m starting to get bored or hungry!”