Training your dog isn’t just about teaching your dog tricks or behaviors; it’s about learning how to communicate with your dog effectively. With a solid foundation of training and a proper training plan, you can efficiently communicate new behaviors and expectations to your dog. This helps make both you and your dog less frustrated during training and makes progress faster and more fun!
Do you want to train your dog, but don’t know where to start? No worries, we’ve got you covered with our printable dog training plan template! We’ll take you through how we train our dogs, as well as how to customize your training plan and increase your chances of success.
Why does having a dog training plan matter?
If you’re trying to do more than have fun with your dog, you can’t overstate the importance of a training plan. There’s no shame if you’re just here for the fun; that’s definitely important, but an appropriate training plan can take the guesswork out of training.
A well thought out training plan provides a guide to make sure that your trainings are productive and on the correct areas you want to improve. Training without a plan is like going to the gym without an idea of what you’re going to do. Sure, you can make some progress, but do you think that’s the most efficient way to hit a goal?
An appropriate training plan will help you set realistic goals for yourself and your dog. For example, if your dog has no recall in the house, trying to recall them from chasing wildlife will have no chance of working. By breaking down your training into manageable chunks (starting inside first), you can focus on one part at a time, making the process less overwhelming. This will allow you to see progress and stay consistent, which means your dog has more fun training and you’re more likely to keep doing it.
Consistency is key with dog training, and a plan can help you stay consistent in your approach. A training plan can help establish a routine, which most dogs love. Our pups catch on to patterns extremely quickly, especially if it’s something they enjoy doing. This consistency helps reinforce learned behaviors, making them more likely to stick. A training plan is not just a tool for teaching your dog; it’s a blueprint for building a strong, trusting relationship.
The components of an effective dog training plan
Now that we’ve talked about why training plans matter, let’s discuss what makes a solid plan. I think the acronym is a little overused, but your goals should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time Bound). This will ensure that you have an actual target to work toward instead of something hand-wavey, like “have my dog bark less“. I’m a little less sold on the time-bound part most of the time, but it helps sometimes.
Another important component is using appropriate training techniques. We’ll go into this more later, but if you want your dog to be calm, bringing their favorite toy (Goomba loves this Hero boomerang) is not going to encourage that. Similarly, if you want your dog to run back to you as fast as possible when you recall them, using dry kibble will not be the best option, but freeze-dried beef liver may be. There’s a lot of variance, but if you know your dog well, you can tailor your training to what they respond best to.
This is our (and our pups') favorite choice for beef liver! It's cheaper than a lot of other options and they go crazy for it! We've even used it to make a broth for frozen enrichment before and it's a hit!
Finally, your training plan should address what you want to improve or do with your dog in realistic steps. We’ll show you our dog training plan template next, but if you’re working on reactivity and aren’t doing any reactivity work, your dog isn’t going to improve. Expecting your dog to go from having a meltdown at delivery drivers to greeting them and getting treats isn’t fair to your dog. A more realistic first step with reasonable expectations will allow you to progress faster overall. Check out our Puppr app review for an example of how to break behaviors down into realistic steps.
If you’re looking for a structured approach to reactivity training, we highly recommend our friends over at Spirit Dog Training. Their Tackling Reactivity course is fantastic, and we used (and still use) their techniques to help manage fears with our dogs. Over the years, we’ve desensitized our dogs to a large variety of sounds, including vacuums, loud washers, knocking, delivery drivers, and more.
Our free dog training plan template
To simplify creating a training plan for you and your dog, we’ve developed a free dog training plan template. We’ve tried to make it easy and take the thinking out of it so it’s as easy as possible for you and your dog. It prints well in black and white, if that’s more your style!
We’ve used this template as both a monthly planner and a weekly planner and recommend using it however it best fits your life. We tend toward the weekly planner because there’s room for us to write notes or reminder cues in the boxes for the training. If we were working on a more intensive skill, then we’d use the dog training plan PDF for a monthly view of that specific skill.
For example, below is our current setup for a weekly training plan. We’re working on Do More With Your Dog’s Trick Titles, so we’re working on those with some fun training sprinkled in, too. If you like teaching your dog tricks, we highly recommend Do More With Your Dog’s resources and certifications. Both of our dogs are working on the Expert titles currently. We were surprised by how many tricks we taught our dogs over the years before even starting their certifications!
To download our free dog training plan template, click on the link above. It’s available as a PDF, which allows you to print it out and customize it. By using our template, you can take the uncertainty out of training and focus your energy on training with your pup. Having a structured approach means that you’re working on all the things that matter the most, which will help keep your training as effective as possible.
Customizing our dog training plan template
There’s no right or wrong way to customize our dog training plan template: you need to decide what’s most important for you and your dog. We recommend not having more than 2 in-progress goals at a time so that you can spend some time simply having fun, but still make progress. When we’ve tried to have 3 or more, we end up not making a lot of progress on anything.
Decide on your goals
The first part of customizing your dog training plan template is to decide what your goals are. This may sound trivial, but it helps guide the rest of your decisions and makes it significantly easier to stay on track with your training. There’s no right or wrong answer to this, but we recommend starting off with 2 or fewer goals at a time.
We try to work on one quality of life goal and one fun goal at a time. As of writing this, we’re currently working on 2 different goals. We’ve been working on decreasing our dogs’ reactivity to various noises (currently knocking on the door and delivery drivers) for a while, and our dogs typically enjoy the experience. Our fun goal is working on getting all the Do More With Your Dog trick certifications.
We find that working on more than 2 goals results in us not making a lot of progress in any one area. For training that requires more structure, we typically use Spirit Dog Training as our preferred resource. We’ve used multiple courses over the years, and they’ve all been great. Spirit Dog Training has a lot of free resources, too, and think they’re a great place to start off before paying for a course.
Break down your goals into realistic steps
The next step to customize your dog training plan template is to break your goals into realistic steps. If you’re using our template, the “next steps” section is what we’ll use for this.
Having your goal be attainable (the A in SMART goals), will allow you to set a realistic goal for both you and your pup. Most of us normal people don’t have the desire or willpower to work on something abstract like getting your dog to run back to you when you call. A more appropriate goal would be to have your dog run 20 ft to you in your backyard with no distractions. Check out Spirit Dog Training’s Recall Expert course if you want a step-by-step guide to teaching your dog recall.
Being able to see actual progress is a great way to help you stay motivated and feel you’re accomplishing what you’re trying to do. This task will involve some reviewing and adjusting, which is one of the main reasons we typically work off a weekly training plan. Every week, or more often if you’re making good progress, you get a chance to reflect on what the next realistic steps are for you and your dog.
Being consistent with your training
Once you’ve established your goals and the next step for your dog’s training, being consistent with your planned training is next. There’s two different areas of being consistent we wanted to touch on.
First, whatever approach you decide to use for training, we highly recommend sticking with it for a month or two. Changing your mind every week about how you’re going to train your dog is going to be inefficient at best. Think about this for a human with fitness: would you change your workout plan every week? Changing from cardio one week to powerlifting to CrossFit all in a month is not going to be the most efficient way to hit your goals. If your training plan is not working after an honest attempt, definitely adjust your training, but make sure you give it a real attempt.
Second, you’ll need to be consistent with your planned training. The best plan doesn’t matter if you don’t follow it. We have some issues with this occasionally, but with a bit of proper planning, you can minimize any friction. We found that doing the more challenging training in the front half of the day (if possible) dramatically increases our success rate. By the end of the day, we’re usually tired or want to relax, which isn’t the best time to do your hardest training.
You’ll also want to make that all family members are on the same page and using the same commands and techniques if they’ll be helping with training. Inconsistencies with expectations can confuse your dog and hinder progress, and we run into this ourselves. We find it most helpful to start training together, so you can watch each other train and agree on expectations.
We’re all human, and not everything works out perfectly, but you should be hitting 75% or more of your plan. If you’re not, reassess the customization of your dog training plan template and make it easier to start off with. You can always increase it again after you get into a nice routine and training becomes more efficient.
Using the correct rewards
We touched on this earlier, but wanted to spend a little more time explaining why it matters. Using the correct rewards can help make training significantly more efficient and effortless. If you’re teaching a behavior that you want your dog to do quickly, toys or high-value treats are the best options. These can help encourage fast movement since your dog is naturally more excited. Medium or low-value treats are best for precise or slow movements, such as a stay or other controlled movements.
Remember: these are guidelines, not rules, and even the same behavior can achieve the best results with different methods. For example, if we want Primmie to recall quickly, we can use medium-value treats or higher, and she loves them! She’s super food-motivated and would just stare at us if we waved a toy, but freeze dried beef liver works great! Goomba runs like a lunatic if he hears a squeaker or even suspects that a toy may be around. Waving cheese at him will not be nearly as effective as a toy and some of his current favorites are these Bark toys.
If you want to know more about one of our dogs’ favorite treats, check out our post “Can dogs eat beef liver?” to learn why it’s one of our favorite treats for our dogs. It’s great for dogs with allergies and is typically only a single ingredient.
The Pupsicle is one of our two favorite options for food-based enrichment and it's Prim's favorite enrichment option! It's extremely durable and lasts surprisingly long, even without using the Woof refills. We highly recommend it and think your dog will love it, too!
If you’re trying to work on reactivity or relaxing, something that involves liking or foraging would be a better option. Primmie loves Woof Pupsicles while Goomba prefers the West Paw Toppl. Either is a great option for desensitizing your dog to scary noises (check out The Ruly Bully YouTube channel for some great videos). You’ll have to know or learn your dog’s preferences, but tailoring your rewards to your dog’s preferences is an easy way to make progress faster and have training be more fun.
Monitoring progress and adjusting your plan
Even if you use the best dog training plan template, it won’t matter if you’re not monitoring progress and adjusting based on how you and your dog do. If your dog is struggling with a specific behavior, it may be necessary to revisit your plan and break it into even smaller steps. Dogs, like humans, will have behaviors that come more naturally and ones that are more difficult, and it’s impossible to make a one size fits all plan that is perfect.
Fortunately for us, it doesn’t matter if your plan is perfect. For any behavior, there are a ton of different ways to get to the same result. For our dogs, we’re teaching beg in two completely different ways. With Primmie, we have her reach up in a sit to get the reward and work toward being balanced. Goomba doesn’t like this position because he’s concerned he will fall backward. With him, we have him do a two-footed wave, and he’s comfortable with that.
Remember, these trainings should be fun for both you and your dog. If it gets frustrating because your dog’s confused, take a step back and try later. See if there’s anything you can adjust or even a different behavior you can teach that may make the current one easier if they know it. For the vast majority of training, sessions should be short (around 10 minutes or less) and end before your dog’s exhausted or you’re frustrated or tired. Doing more frequent but shorter trainings will help you progress faster and your dog have more fun.
Record and review your training
Recording and reviewing your training sessions is a great tool to help you figure out why you’re stuck in a spot with training. I don’t enjoy watching myself on videos, but watching your training from a different point of view is an excellent way to work past times you are stuck in training. We find it most helpful to notice the specific spots where your dog is obviously confused or responding to something that you may have missed in the moment.
For example, if you’re working on reactivity training, you could feel like your dog went from pretty chill to barking with no changes in body language. If you review your training video, you could see them stiffen, sniff more frantically, or other body language changes that you missed when you were doing the training. Even if you don’t record your training every time (we don’t), it’s a nice check-in to make sure things look good from a detached point of view.
If you use a quality training service, like Spirit Dog Training, the trainer may even help you review the video and point out potential problems. We’ve done this with a few different trainers, and most are receptive, especially if they see you putting in the work to get better.
Common mistakes to avoid
Now that you have your customized dog training plan template, let’s touch on a few different areas where things go wrong.
First is inconsistency with training methods or training frequency. We discussed this earlier, but if you’re not at least mostly consistent with your training, progress is inconsistent and slow. Keep your success criteria consistent, and your dog will pick up on what you want.
Second is not making the positive training. The goal of training is to teach your dog a new behavior and make it fun for both you and your dog. Your dog will be much more likely to perform new behaviors well if both of you are having a good time. Think of it this way: are you more likely to work harder and pay attention if your boss is fantastic or horrible? It’s the same with your dog.
Finally, don’t get shiny object syndrome. It’s easy to get distracted from what you’re working toward with the next new thing. Unfortunately, there aren’t any magic ways to teach your dog to stop barking or to learn a new behavior instantly. There’s just more effective and less effective training. No magic tool is going to make your dog loose-leash walk, but with some effort and training, that can be a realistic outcome.
Additional resources
If you’re looking for additional help with training, we wanted to point out three of our favorite resources.
Spirit Dog Training is our favorite resource. Steffi and her team of trainers are fantastic and always helpful. It’s our preferred place for any behavior or skill we need or want a more structured approach to. We’ve used a bunch of classes and always find them useful.
Puppr is a freemium resource, but we find it best for teaching new tricks or behaviors to your dog. This was the first dog training app we used, and it’s been one of our favorites since. They have a wide variety of behaviors, and it’s not too expensive if you opt for the premium option. Check out our Puppr app review if you want some more information.
Our third favorite option is Do More With Your Dog (DMWYD). They offer virtual certification in a few different areas, but our favorite is the trick titles. On our dog training plan template, you can see we’re working through their expert tricks for both of our pups, and we enjoy doing them a lot. It’s a great database of tricks, whether you want to do the certification, too.
Conclusion
A well-designed dog training plan template can help make your training easier and more effective. It can help provide a clear roadmap of what the most important behavior to be working on is, as well as the next steps to make progress toward your goals. Our free dog training plan template provides the ability to do both, depending on what your goals are.
Let us know how you like our free dog training plan template and if you have any suggestions to make it better for you! We love to hear from you and are happy to help where we can. Give us a shout at Lincoln@TheRulyBully.com or on Instagram @TheRulyBully.
Have fun!