This is a question that I and many other trainers have asked ourselves many times over the years. You will find many different answers to this question as always. The simple answer is, why do you not want to train?

Remember, you and your dog are a team. One of the hard parts about the human-dog team is that you cannot explain things to your dogs, such as how you feel or what your thinking, and the best what you meant. Your dog gets this information from your cues, your demeanor, tone of voice and other indicators. With this being the case there is a lot of room for misinterpretation.

I can illustrate this question with two incidents from my training background. The first was at Schutzhund Training one night. I had a particularly bad day at work and was more stressed than usual. In fact, my mind was constantly on my work issues. I had a “sour” stomach and was generally “jittery”, such as one would get when overly stressed. This was an uncommon state for me, but it was training night, and by golly, I was going to train. Training was a disaster! Poot Syn was trying to please but in my agitated state, every mistake was amplified which had a snowball effect. I finally put Syn up and brooded on the sidelines about how horrible work and my training was. I spent weeks fixing MY mistakes from that night.

The second example was I was again at Schutzhund and was again feeling agitated. I was all ready to go out onto the field when I stopped and asked myself, “what am I going to accomplish tonight. ” Syn was all primed and ready to go, so I took her out and played tug. No training, just played a few minutes and put her up. The result of that night was no harm was done. Our training was not set back, then later in the week we did not have to “fix” anything, but continued on with our mission.

Syn and I trialing

My point in this article is not the “oh I just don’t feel like training” blues, but to have yourself look into how you are mentally to lead your team. Yes, I have had the feeling of “I just don’t feel like going” blues and have made myself get up and go train. Usually, once I get there I am glad I did. But if you are distracted, or us just……..Mad, that is when you need to ask yourself if you will do more harm than good. As a training director many times I asked folks, #1 what is your goal in training today, and #2 are you sure your up to training today, with #2 sometimes being the more important question.

You being the leader of your team are the only one that can make the decision. This also goes for when you’re not feeling well due to illness. Be sure you take care of yourself, and your dogs by taking your state of mind and body into account before going to training.