I write a personal training diary of our mantrailing training since the very beginning. Those who know me also know that I’m a very detail-oriented person and I like to plan ahead. This attitude of mine reflects in how I train my dog, too.
Our first training was on the 20th of March 2017. I remember it very well. We had been doing a 101 course at the dog school where we went at that time. After a little hide-and-seek at the school our homework was to try a short trail with a family member. Rosie’s first trail was about 50m, consisting of 3 very short tracks at the backyard of my family’s house. My mother was the runner. It was pure fun, and accidentally it happened to become what I learned later: a fence ID. Up to date we have had exactly 104 trainings and I have a written record of each and every one of it.
The importance of writing
A training diary probably is one of the most important tools in my toolbox. It was extremely useful in many cases, of which I give a few examples:
There was a period with one particular trainer when we usually trained in the woods. After a while I recognized that I lost focus on my primary goal, namely to socialize my dog in various environments by motivational runs. I started to focus on applying for trainings in urban settings. It turned out to be a good idea.
My dog has a fearful reactivity to people, so mantrailing for us is a positive activity by which I can socialize my dog and teach her to co-operate with people. Besides socialization to different environmental stimuli, this is my other main goal in mantrailing. When we learn a new technique or the environment has certain difficulties, I always need familiar trail layers to avoid trigger stacking and a possible act of aggressivity. It is also important to keep a balance between learning new things and maintaining the focus on socialization with people. In the latter case I work with runners who are strangers to my dog and we always run only short motivational trails. Without a training diary it would be impossible for me to follow our progress. Our minds can play tricks, too, when it comes to memory and remembering past events.
When my dog first showed signs of stress at a find (slapping her ears back, panting), she was trying to tell me that she was not comfortable. I didn’t understand her why she was doing this. Mistakes can be rarely seen immediately. They will show up only later in various forms and shapes. It is almost impossible to discover the root causes. Mantrailing is more complex than that and what people usually do, they restart building the foundations. Without knowing the mistake, unfortunately there is a risk that it will show up again. In this particular case, I supposed that Rosie’s behavior was only a symptom of frustrating events in the past. I needed to think through what had happened during the previous mantrailing sessions. It turned out to be a series of small frustrating events that affected my dog and resulted in avoidance and demotivation. The devil is in the detail. Videos were also really helpful to review our training. I have about 70 of them.
10 reasons to write a training diary
Overall, my training diary have helped me several ways:
- follow our progress
- keep focus on goals
- structure the training and plan ahead
- keep it objective as possible
- observe patterns and performance trends
- discover what works
- recover from mistakes
- share knowledge and experience with trainers and fellow sports pals
- motivate and inspire myself
- boost confidence
The elements of my training diary
My training diary is a simple Google Spreadsheet – an excellent online collaboration tool. Personally, I found these elements useful to keep a record of:
- date
- place
- trainer
- environment (location and difficulties [eg. wheather conditions])
- start type
- training type
- familiarity with the trail layer
- overall feeling of the training
- goal of the training
- general description
- lessons learned
A few of these viewpoints are important for me, because I practice mantrailing as rehabilitation for my fearful reactive dog. For others other things will be important. It is purely up to the dog handler.
I encourage everyone who seriously train their dog to write a training diary. Let it be an excel sheet, a hand-written bullet journal, or a plain text, it doesn’t matter, just do it, keep it simple and consistent. I have seen its benefits many times. It is not a duty, it is a pleasure – eventually, keeping it joyful and motivating is our purpose in training, and in writing a training diary, too.
First of all, I took Rosie to the shop, because I wanted to try the size before purchasing it. She could smell it and get to know it before I put it on her. While trying it, I was giving her lots of treats and praise. I was really happy and enthusiastic about the whole thing, indeed! Really, I like Julius-K9’s stuff, and the shop assistant was nice and helpful, so the whole atmosphere was exciting. (They, too, have a blog post about the topic 
When we first met, you were a 6-month old, frightened, little creature rescued a month before. I was told later that I had been the first person you didn’t bark at, and now I can value how much that means. It was strange, so many things were swirling through my mind. I had never had an own dog before, I was a know-nothing at that time, but I didn’t have the chance to hesitate, it was time to take action.
You were already one year old when I finally found a community of experienced and helpful behaviourists and positive trainers who changed the way we live. After a dozen hours of rehabilitation we could finally go to regular dog school. Your rehabilitation continued by mantrailing and we have just started protection work for therapy. Teaching you obedience is an everyday routine for us. I accept that you might never chase butterflies, but I’m sure our hearts’ desire will guide us to damn good places.
