Do You Keep A Training Diary?

[corvus]

I've always meant to keep a training diary, but never quite get around to it. It's getting to the point where it is necessary, though. I keep forgetting what tricks I'm up to with Erik. He's happiest when he gets to do a big variety of things, so I often start teaching him a trick to give him something new to do and then forget about it next training session. Erik is really easy on me because I think he remembers the criteria he's performing at better than I do, but I'm sure we'd do better if I'd written down somewhere what criteria he was last performing at so I can remember next time.

His "front leg crossovers" I was having trouble seeing well enough to click have morphed into a sideways skip. Probably because he's short. I like it! Must remember that we're now clicking for skips rather than crossovers.

Anyway, if you do keep a diary, what do you record? Do you plan training sessions? Grey Stafford says that everyone should have a training plan for every animal... and then be prepared to throw it out the window upon starting the session.

[Tiggy]

I've always meant to but still haven't . I do plan out what I'm going to do before I train.

[PAX]

Yes.

[OSoSwift]

I did try it, but I am not good at keeping any diary!

I do have a very good memory so in my mind I will have an idea of where I want to go and the next thing I want to teach. Sometimes I forget to do something ie - finishes for obedience, but on the scheme of things I remember most of it.

I always ( in the diary in my brain) have a plan I want to follow. One from lesson to lesson and all the exercises I want to learn from now to well forever I am quite often adding things as well.

[J...]

Yes, it's rough but getting better at it all the time.

I have a weekly plan for both dogs on the white board, I normally pick a few skills to work on each week.

I also have a notebook where I record what I did, what worked and what didn't - tends to be more trial based at the moment but I use the "what didn't" part to form part of the next week's training plan.

Doesn't always work as well as I'd like - but it's far better than what I ever did, which was nothing.

[TerraNik]

Not on paper... I have a 'to do' list of what I'm teaching each dog on the wall but I don't keep a formal progress diary or anything. I plan sessions before I do them, but again, not on paper.

[Tay.]

I blog But I really need to more often!

[corvus]

I got off my butt (or on it, as it happens) and made an electronic training diary for Erik. It is a spreadsheet with date, behaviour, start criteria, end criteria, cues, and future direction where I can put the aim for next session. Anything else I need?

[Pippi]

I got off my butt (or on it, as it happens) and made an electronic training diary for Erik. It is a spreadsheet with date, behaviour, start criteria, end criteria, cues, and future direction where I can put the aim for next session. Anything else I need?

For each training session I also like to add value of reinforcement, rate of reinforcement, success rate, number of repetitions. I may also add, depending on the behaviour I am teaching, detail on my dogs behaviour such as, dogs enthusiasm or lack of, drive or lack of, etc etc. As Bob Bailey says you can't have too much data when you are serious about training something. The more information I collect, the clearer I can train in the next session. Cues are not important to me until I finish teaching the behaviour to my satisfaction.

BTW I don't always go to this level of detail, depends what I am teaching...

[corvus]

Thanks Pippi! I'll add them in. I can always skip columns if it's not particularly relevant or I don't care for that one behaviour.

I want to get a chicken to train.

[Pippi]

Thanks Pippi! I'll add them in. I can always skip columns if it's not particularly relevant or I don't care for that one behaviour.

I want to get a chicken to train.

I'll lend you one, actually she's not laying - you can have her for free......

[Nic oh lah]

I've not kept a training diary as it had never occured to me to do so! Think i'll start tonight

[Primedogs]

I've not kept a training diary as it had never occured to me to do so! Think i'll start tonight

+1