For a very good guide to all sorts of dog training processes and dog behavior challenges, I use and recommend Clickertraining ...that link goes to the description of this terrific ebook you download immediately, wherever you are! -- Rosana

“Dog training tips” is one of the phrases that bring people to this website. So I’m going to do a weekly series, here in the blog, on all sorts of tips for dog training. My plan is to post a tip once a week, and do at least one other dog-related article each week. The tips will usually have suggested actions along with them.

If you have topics that you’d like to see covered in this series, please post them in the comments below. If you’d like to keep up with this series, just subscribe to my weekly Tuesday morning dog training newsletter, which lists all the new articles in the blog. (It also gets you a free copy of my ebook, Seven Steps to Clicker Training Success with Your Dog.)

Today’s dog training tip is so simple that it almost sounds idiotic, but it’s the basis for everything else.

DO find time for dog training, on a regular basis. For some of my regular readers, I know this is a no-brainer… I think some of them are better at this than I am! But for so many people today, there are so many activities that we have to do or really want to do, that time  to train or play with our dogs can slide down off the to-do list.

This happened to me recently, when my husband and I made a two-week trip to California. It took a good bit of the two weeks beforehand to get ready, and most of the two weeks after to get back to our normal routines. Total dog training time in that six weeks: 0.

So here’s the suggested action: think about when you are going to do some dog training. It can be 5 minutes a day… really, that will make a good difference over time. It can be two sessions a week. Only you know what you can commit to with a realistic chance of doing it. Write it down someplace. In your planner, if you use one. On something attached to your refrigerator. Writing it down makes it more likely that you will do it– that’s a scientific fact! And putting the plan where you can see it also improves your odds.

What are you going to train? Maybe you know right off, or you may want to think about that. It never hurts to start out with a review of what the dog already knows.

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When do YOU train your dog or dogs? Do you have a regular routine? Please post a comment below; I’m sure it would help others to make their own choices.

Every now and then I go take a look at the statistics about who is viewing this website. It’s kind of a one-way street, to write websites and blogs, so it’s fun to see some evidence that there really ARE people out there reading this site and training their dogs, people who are interested in the better ways of training that aren’t based on pain and fear.

Recently I checked my stats and found that by far the majority of the people reading this site in the past month are Americans, as I am. Next came Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Ireland… all English-speaking countries and to be expected.

But then the list begins to move all over our planet. The Philippines, India, Mexico.

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One evening recently, my husband and I happened to watch a BBC documentary on dogs detecting cancer. The program described some small studies and some experiences of dog owners. Most interesting to me was that clicker training was used to teach the dogs to detect cancer.

Here is how they did it in a study in the UK:

First, they showed a professional dog trainer teaching an exuberant dog to sit with the clicker. This was basic clicker training, very much like I describe it in my free ebook, Seven Steps to Clicker Training Success with Your Dog — the man clicked when the dog sat and then immediately gave her praise and a small tasty reward.

Next, they used an apparatus on the floor,

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