Category: Getting Started ¤
  Author: Dani Weinberg ¤
   Title: How Long a Session? How Many a Day? ¤

Harriet, welcome to clicker training!  You ask:

>>What would be the average length of time for a clicker session...we 
are just beginning...doing ok.
And, how many sessions a day would be right.>>

Short and sweet is the rule!  When you're starting a new dog or puppy 
that doesn't yet know the clicker game, I'd limit a training session to a 
maximum of 5 minutes, with 2-3 minutes being more desirable.  You want to 
stop *before* your dog (or you!) gets bored, frustated, stuffed with 
treats, tired, stressed, etc.  So you have to know your own dog and read 
him/her carefully.  I advise my beginning students to train for about 15 
minutes total per day - but to spread that out into at least 3 separate 
short sessions and a few more if possible.  

Lots of my own best training is what I call "kitchen training" - at odd 
moments, while I'm getting our human dinner ready or after I've fed the 
dogs one of their 2 meals a day, or when I'm just hanging out, between 
things.  I'll do just a few quick clickable repetitions of a behavior 
(for more advanced dogs:  a few reps of each of a few different 
behaviors).  I've found that I'm able to work on specific problems this 
way - IOW, I work on whatever it is I happen to be teaching new or trying 
to refine/perfect.  So, for example, right now my 8-month-old pup is 
working on Finish and Stand in the kitchen, after several weeks of 
concentrating on Fronts and Recalls.

Hope this give you some idea!  If you haven't already seen it, check out 
the Keeper Page that contains *lots* of useful information:  
http://www.phys.unm.edu/~helix/Keeper

Dani


Dani Weinberg
Albuquerque, NM