What Is A Training Threshold?

In this article, we are going to talk about training thresholds. Understanding thresholds will help you make progress in training your dog, regardless of the dog’s age and skill level. It can be especially helpful in helping your dog understand the world through socialization.

Let’s start with the question – what is a training threshold? It is the distance, time, and exposure that your dog can withstand before they are overwhelmed and they react. Usually, when the threshold is breached, the dog can no longer focus and work through the issues at hand. Imagine there is a dome that emanates from your dog with the dog at the center; the threshold is the edge of that dome, and the size is determined by your dog’s tolerance to their environment.

Environment

From the moment your dog comes into your life, they are learning from you what things are acceptable or not, what is scary or not, and what is dangerous or not. It’s our responsibility to socialize them and show them how to react when they are unsure or scared. So, we expose them to as much as possible and find the things that we need to work on.

For example, we discover that your dog is freaked out by trashcans. Now we can work to minimize or eliminate that fear. We start by finding the threshold. We determine the threshold is about 15ft. Now that we found the threshold, we work the dog at 16ft, and when the dog does well at that distance, we can move a little closer. Now at 15ft they are doing well, so we decrease again to 14ft, and so on until we have minimized the distance. Once we get close enough, we can start to encourage the dog to interact and examine the trashcan. Typically, once the dog gets close enough, they realize it is just another object in their environment. This can take some time to work, so try not to rush it. It is way easier to get it right the first time than rushing and making things worse.

Working through issues

Working through the issues is teaching your dog to focus more on you than the things around you. One of the best things you can teach your dog is to ignore the things around them. Threshold also comes into play with distance, duration, and distractions. Distractions include other people, dogs, squirrels, odor/scents, etc. – these are examples of what you may be competing against. No matter how far your dog is from these distractions, can your dog still focus on you? Again, we need to find the edge of the threshold. Once we find it, we work to shrink it. This establishes that you – as their handler – is more rewarding than the distractions.

Building confidence

Working through things will help build your dog’s confidence in every environment and situation. There are many ways to build confidence, such as by allowing your dog to explore and try new things and new environments, and interact with new people and new dogs. I try my best to have a certain amount of control when exposing a dog to new things. For initial introductions, I avoid places like dog parks (for many reasons), large crowds, wild animals and so on. After the initial introduction, then I will start to allow for more distractions. I can introduce things like agility, teaching tricks, working obedience, and doing things that will build on the trust and confidence we already established.

Duration

There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. There is a threshold of duration when it comes to training sessions. When we start to see progress, we like to keep going, and we can go a little overboard. Then we get stuck in a loop of trying to end on a good note – but the dog is struggling because we pushed for too long. There have been many sessions where I have seen more progress in 15 minutes than in a full hour. It is a gentle balance of getting progress and knowing when a good stopping point arises. Even taking a break during a session can keep the dog buying in and getting value out of training.

In conclusion

What is a training threshold? It is the distance, time, and exposure that your dog can withstand before they are overwhelmed and they react. There are many factors that come into play including (but not limited to) environment, duration of sessions, distance from distractions, and building confidence and trust.

We can work through almost anything with patience and consistency while building a healthy relationship with your dog. Socialization and confidence are important for your dog’s long term stability in all environments and situations.