You trained the best you could. You & your dog will never be more ready. You go to your first trial and … it ends up in a complete disaster. Someone must have washed your dog’s brain – he was distracted, looking everywhere around, sniffing on the floor. He even went to say hi to the judge & the helpers. You feel humiliated … but Buddy could do it perfectly at the last training, so what went wrong?
Training with your dog is meant to be fun. However, competing can become stressful for you as well as for your dog. Do you want consistent and confident performance? A smart mental warm-up routine helps your dog deal with the stresses of competition day.
For human athletes, part of a warm-up process includes getting your head ready for the upcoming activity. Mental warm-up helps you to achieve a state of readiness to perform your best.
If it works for human athletes, why not try it for dog athletes? You might be even already doing it without being aware of it.
I was first introduced to „dog training routines“ in an on-line class from Katarina Podlipnik to improve drive and motivation of dogs in agility. Since then I have put together short mental-warm up routines for different activities of my dogs to „switch on their brain“.
Dogs thrive on a routine – they don’t have to worry about what is about to happen next. It gives them security. By performing a short mental warm up routine, your dog will immediately get the message: „I need to focus, I need to perform, I will have fun, I will get rewarded“.
Goals of the mental warm-up
Gives your dog confidence to perform at their best. Thanks to the routine your dog recognises what is going to happen next: running agility course, heeling work to music, listening to commands of the handler during Obedience, etc.
Gets your dog appropriately calm & energized. By performing certain exercises, you can achieve the necessary state of mind.
Gets your dog’s focus on you. Routine helps easily distracted dogs recognise the situation where the focus on handler is asked and will be rewarded afterwards
Creating a mental warm-up for your dog
Implement a routine you will do every single training session & competition.
Make it specific only for the trained skill – agility, obedience, etc. Don’t use this in any other situation.
Implement it into your physical warm-up routine.
Real-life examples
If you look around when on a competition, you can find inspiration in other teams.
In Rally-Obedience preparation, you can see some dog handlers put a few treats on the floor & let the dog use their nose to search for it. This helps to narrow their focus and calm down a bit.
Some handlers ask their dogs to go backwards before they release them to start at agility – this is probably the happy trick of the dog!
These are some routines that for instance work for my dogs:
Dodo
Overexcited dog who is easily distracted at the same time. First, I do physical warm-up & energy release by tugging with toys. Before each Obedience or Tricks session:
1. Prepare for fun
Bridge Game – this is something that takes him to a happy place and gets him excited for whatever is coming. He came up with this himself. He always does it when we come home. He starts to run between our legs, trying to push you up like a little pony, barking and being happy. So, I used this kind of energy he has when doing this and made it part of our „mental warm-up“ game.
2. Start to focus
I take 10 treats & clicker: I move around, I let my dog move around, as soon as Dodo makes eye contact with me, I click and reward. This takes about 15 seconds and I have his focus on me.
Focus!
Nose touch – I am using my hand as nose touch target. He loves nose touch as a trick and it makes him calm down for some reason, especially when asking to keep touching until I release with a command. This drives his full attention to me. I can use it to keep him close to me if he is distracted and pay attention.
3. Specifics
Commands for Obedience: I would do some Sit-Down-Sit Commands, followed by a few seconds of heeling. After this I let him sit next to me and repeat the 2nd exercise with 5 treats: eye contact – click, reward.
This all takes up 2-3 minutes and after this we start with training/competing.
Casper
Calm dog who needs motivation to work. First, I do physical warm-up. For him this would include always the same exercises, in training as well as in competition. This immediately makes the association with what is coming – agility. For other activity, I use different physical warm-up. Before each Agility Run:
1. Prepare for fun
I always use agility leash. I don‘t use this leash for walks, only for training and competing. I always use the toy that is currently being used in training – I never use this toy for anything else than agility.
2. Waiting to start in preparation area
I use treats to make him bark. This reduces stress and motivates him to run. I also use this routine in training before each session.
3. At the start line
I ask for 1 spin to the left and 1 spin to the right. Afterwards I tell him to wait and go to my starting spot. I release him with „OK“ and he can explode to run – I would use this routine in every training session as well as soon as he is running longer sequences and courses.
I chose spinning because this is his happy trick. He loves to spin when he is happy or excited, so I shaped it to a trick. It is also part of his physical warm-up routine.
Turn on the brain of your dog
The person who knows your dog the best is YOU. Think about what kind of state of mind you want to achieve after the mental warm up.
Do you want your dog to be calm and focused?
Do you want your dog to be energised and motivated?
What tricks, commands, toys or situations help your dog to be in this specific state of mind? Now put it all together into a short routine. Implement this into your training and start using this in competitions as well.
Don´t let your dog become „The dog who can do it at home“. Teach them to warm up their brain. Make them „the dog, who will perform with great consistence & confidence“.
Mental Warm-Up: Turn on your dog’s brain
You trained the best you could. You & your dog will never be more ready. You go to your first trial and … it ends up in a complete disaster.
Someone must have washed your dog’s brain – he was distracted, looking everywhere around, sniffing on the floor. He even went to say hi to the judge & the helpers. You feel humiliated … but Buddy could do it perfectly at the last training, so what went wrong?
Training with your dog is meant to be fun. However, competing can become stressful for you as well as for your dog. Do you want consistent and confident performance? A smart mental warm-up routine helps your dog deal with the stresses of competition day.
For human athletes, part of a warm-up process includes getting your head ready for the upcoming activity. Mental warm-up helps you to achieve a state of readiness to perform your best.
If it works for human athletes, why not try it for dog athletes? You might be even already doing it without being aware of it.
I was first introduced to „dog training routines“ in an on-line class from Katarina Podlipnik to improve drive and motivation of dogs in agility. Since then I have put together short mental-warm up routines for different activities of my dogs to „switch on their brain“.
Dogs thrive on a routine – they don’t have to worry about what is about to happen next. It gives them security. By performing a short mental warm up routine, your dog will immediately get the message: „I need to focus, I need to perform, I will have fun, I will get rewarded“.
Goals of the mental warm-up
Creating a mental warm-up for your dog
Real-life examples
If you look around when on a competition, you can find inspiration in other teams.
In Rally-Obedience preparation, you can see some dog handlers put a few treats on the floor & let the dog use their nose to search for it. This helps to narrow their focus and calm down a bit.
Some handlers ask their dogs to go backwards before they release them to start at agility – this is probably the happy trick of the dog!
These are some routines that for instance work for my dogs:
Dodo
Overexcited dog who is easily distracted at the same time. First, I do physical warm-up & energy release by tugging with toys. Before each Obedience or Tricks session:
1. Prepare for fun
Bridge Game – this is something that takes him to a happy place and gets him excited for whatever is coming. He came up with this himself. He always does it when we come home. He starts to run between our legs, trying to push you up like a little pony, barking and being happy. So, I used this kind of energy he has when doing this and made it part of our „mental warm-up“ game.
2. Start to focus
I take 10 treats & clicker: I move around, I let my dog move around, as soon as Dodo makes eye contact with me, I click and reward. This takes about 15 seconds and I have his focus on me.
Focus!
Nose touch – I am using my hand as nose touch target. He loves nose touch as a trick and it makes him calm down for some reason, especially when asking to keep touching until I release with a command. This drives his full attention to me. I can use it to keep him close to me if he is distracted and pay attention.
3. Specifics
Commands for Obedience: I would do some Sit-Down-Sit Commands, followed by a few seconds of heeling. After this I let him sit next to me and repeat the 2nd exercise with 5 treats: eye contact – click, reward.
This all takes up 2-3 minutes and after this we start with training/competing.
Casper
Calm dog who needs motivation to work. First, I do physical warm-up. For him this would include always the same exercises, in training as well as in competition. This immediately makes the association with what is coming – agility. For other activity, I use different physical warm-up. Before each Agility Run:
1. Prepare for fun
I always use agility leash. I don‘t use this leash for walks, only for training and competing. I always use the toy that is currently being used in training – I never use this toy for anything else than agility.
2. Waiting to start in preparation area
I use treats to make him bark. This reduces stress and motivates him to run. I also use this routine in training before each session.
3. At the start line
I ask for 1 spin to the left and 1 spin to the right. Afterwards I tell him to wait and go to my starting spot. I release him with „OK“ and he can explode to run – I would use this routine in every training session as well as soon as he is running longer sequences and courses.
I chose spinning because this is his happy trick. He loves to spin when he is happy or excited, so I shaped it to a trick. It is also part of his physical warm-up routine.
Turn on the brain of your dog
The person who knows your dog the best is YOU. Think about what kind of state of mind you want to achieve after the mental warm up.
What tricks, commands, toys or situations help your dog to be in this specific state of mind? Now put it all together into a short routine. Implement this into your training and start using this in competitions as well.
Don´t let your dog become „The dog who can do it at home“. Teach them to warm up their brain. Make them „the dog, who will perform with great consistence & confidence“.
Happy training!
Martina