Abstract
Despite the fact that most domestic dogs receive some kind of training, surprisingly few studies have been undertaken to analyze the process in detail, e.g. the question of how often training should be done has not been investigated in dogs. According to the Danish animal protection law, laboratory animals, including laboratory dogs, must be habituated to personnel and laboratory procedures before experimentation. In order for the law to be implemented, however, better knowledge about the effect of different training schedules on the learning performance of dogs is needed, something that is also of interest for owners and trainers of family dogs as well as working type dogs. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of two different training schedules on the number of training sessions required to reach a certain training level. Using shaping and clicker training, 18 laboratory Beagles were trained to perform a target response. Nine dogs were trained once a week and nine dogs were trained five times a week. The results of the study show that dogs trained once a week learned the shaping exercise in significantly fewer training sessions than dogs trained five times a week. In addition, weekly trained dogs tended to have higher success rates at the different steps of the shaping exercise than the dogs trained five times a week. The dogs trained five times a week completed the shaping exercise in significantly fewer days than the weekly trained dogs. It is concluded that for dogs learning a given skill, weekly training results in better learning performance than training five times a week, when performance is measured in the number of training sessions required to reach a certain training level.

Does the article mention somewhere how long they are trained for during each training session? I think this would probably have a big bearing on the amount of learning a dog could do too.

You're right in that it's usually the ppl that need the training habit not the dog!!

Basically when introducing a new behaviour it is a short time approx 3 minutes maybe once or twice a day and sometimes it's certainly not every day! Trying to introduce only one new behaviour at a time/week. Reviewing how learning went each session. Aiming for small errorless learning steps with pos reinforcement.

Sometimes it is the steps on the way to learning a behaviour that are too big that cause problems together with too long a training session.

When I do give clients stronger recommendations on how much they should train, I find it more helpful to advise them on the number of repetitions to do (which they can do easily by counting out that number of treats beforehand), rather than a duration, because there is obviously great variation in how many reps different ppl will do in the same amount of time.

How many reps is one of the things we discussed on our course. Steve Austin aims for 10 out of 10 reps with 100% attitude in a 10 step plan (sounds like AA!). He works on the basis that it can be 10 reps over any amount of time depending on the task being learnt but it's important not to fatigue the dog's willingness to learn!

Of course being human we always want to know "how many, how much" (exercise plans particularly come to mind)!

Another instructor...after a "bad" session he may just walk the dog back to say the car with little interaction to let the dog think about what happened.

Now have to put my money where my mouth is, because just realised that this what I have to do for another assessment - set up a training program for a client!

most ppl training their ordinary pooch would possibly find it a bit too much detail.

Do you have someone lined up? Is it a one-one problem-solving or general training program that you need to do?