How to Increase Duration in Your Training

Teaching your dog how to do something for a second or two is one thing. Teaching them to do it for longer stretches can get a lot trickier! This guide walks you through the process of increasing duration when training all kinds of skills.

Kona relaxes on her mat while camping by the Yellowstone River.

When you are trying to increase the amount of time that your dog can do any skill, this is the general process. I’ll walk you through each phase and share some tips below.

Phase -1: Save duration for last.

You’ll want to be as far along in your training plan as possible before increasing duration. The longer the duration of each repetition, the fewer repetitions you can do in the same amount of training time. So always save duration until the very end of the training process. 

We actually have a whole guide to creating a training plan, so that could be a good one for you to check out as well!

Phase 1: Start super easy.

Gracie can sit pretty for 5 seconds. We started at a half second.

Once it is time to increase duration, you will start with just one second. If that’s hard for your dog, which it certainly can be, sometimes you need to do a half second. I know this might be disappointing, but if things go smoothly, you can build up to 10 seconds within a few minutes and you’ll be working from a really solid foundation to make faster progress after that. Trying to go straight to 10 seconds will set your dog up to fail and slow down your entire training process.

TIP: It can be tempting to try to “save” a repetition by rewarding your dog if they are about to fail just before the end of the interval. But don’t do it! One failed repetition now will not screw you up nearly as much as inadvertently teaching your dog that breaking the behavior is what gets rewarded.

Once things are going well for 1 seconds, do 3 seconds, then 5 seconds, and then 10 seconds. Don’t be afraid to drop back to an easier step if your dog starts to struggle! If you aren’t sure how to know when your dog is ready to move up a step or if you should be dropping down a step, our list of tips to train like a professional walks through that process.

TIP: If you want your dog to do something for an extended duration, you probably don’t want to have to stare at them, hold a hand signal, or chant a verbal cue the entire time. So, it’s best to practice that way now, when you are still working on one second of duration. Give hand signals and verbal cues one time.

If you use a no-reward marker in your training, speedy timing with that can make a big difference in these early repetitions.

Phase 2: Give your dog easy wins as you ramp up quickly.

Here’s how I generally progress at this stage: 15 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds, 45, 60, 90, and finally 120. I don’t know that I’ve ever been in a situation where I felt that I needed each repetition to be longer than 2 minutes.

Once you get past 10 seconds, you get to a point where many dogs will decide it’s just not worth it anymore. There is a limit to how much patience they will have for a single treat. To keep that from happening, you’ll need to mix in easier repetitions. If you keep the mix of easy and hard repetitions random, your dog will be like a person playing a slot machine, always thinking that the jackpot could come any second now.

Tip: Humans stink at being random, we fall into patterns and habits unless we work really hard at it. So, whenever it’s feasible, I have a pre-set list of repetitions on my phone or a sheet of paper.

While you will still reward your dog for every successful repetition, whether a full-length one or not, only the full-length ones figure into your decision about when to make things harder. For instance, if Gracie and I are working relaxing on a mat for 15 seconds between treats, I might reward her for 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 3 seconds, 15 seconds, 5 seconds, 5 seconds. While she would get a treat for all 7 repetitions, I would only count the 15-second ones when deciding if she was ready for me to make it harder.

TIP: It can also be tempting to go off book and increase the duration more than what the plan says. There is a tendency to try to get as much out of each repetition as you can. This is not a good idea for two main reasons.

1. You will be more likely to reward your dog for breaking, because you are trying to push as long as possible.

2. You might slow down your rewards too quickly and lose your dog’s interest.

If you have a young dog, you are new to training together, or there are distractions around, start by planning your easier repetitions so you average 6 treats per minute, which should be enough to keep them in the game. As your dog’s skills get stronger, you can decrease your average rate of reinforcement (the number of rewards your dog gets per minute) as you increase the duration of your repetitions.

Tip: Even as your long repetitions get longer and longer, keeping some of your short ones super short can keep your dog more invested in the training process.

Maintaining your skills in the real world

Keeping up long-duration skills can be a little tricky. Here are the three main areas that cause people trouble:

Gracie and Kona can hold a stand-stay to pose for photos for 10-20 seconds at a time, depending on what’s going on around us.

1.     The short repetitions aren’t short enough, so the dog briefly spaces out after getting a reward. They may check back in once they think the treats could start to flow again.

2.     Since they aren’t thinking about it as carefully anymore, the human stops being random, and the dog figures out a pattern to when the long repetitions are, so they opt out of those repetitions.

3.     In more distracting situations, the human doesn’t lower their expectations enough and increase the rate of reinforcement enough.

Conclusion

I know this was a ton of information! Hopefully it helps you and your dog conquer your training goal. Happy training!