After Board & Train: Your First Week Home
Your dog has learned new skills, routines, and expectations. The first week home is about helping those habits carry over into everyday life with you.
Start the First Week GuideGive your dog time to settle back in.
Coming home can be exciting and stimulating. Keep the first few
days relatively calm and predictable, follow the handling techniques
reviewed with your trainer, and focus on consistency rather than
immediately testing every new skill in the hardest situations.
The goal is not to see how much your dog remembers. It is to help
them understand that the same expectations still apply at home.
Follow your dog’s individual training plan.
Every dog is different. Instructions provided by your trainer for your individual dog should always take priority over the general guidance on this page.
Keep the progress moving forward.
Focus on a few simple priorities rather than trying to do everything at once.
Keep the Structure
Continue the routines, boundaries, commands, and handling techniques reviewed with your trainer.
Practice the Basics
Use short, successful sessions to reinforce the skills included in your dog’s training program.
Reward the Behavior You Want
Reinforce calm behavior, responsiveness, good manners, and the choices you want your dog to repeat.
Don’t Rush Freedom
Gradually increase freedom as your dog demonstrates consistent, reliable behavior.
Keep the rules clear.
Dogs can become confused when different people use different expectations. Keep household rules as consistent as possible.
Build difficulty gradually.
Give your dog opportunities to succeed before asking for the same skills in increasingly difficult situations.
A few things to avoid.
Protect the structure your dog has learned by avoiding these common setbacks.
Too much freedom too quickly
Let reliability earn additional freedom over time.
Repeating commands over and over
Use the communication system your trainer reviewed with you.
Only practicing when there’s a problem
Reinforce skills during calm, successful moments too.
Changing the rules immediately
Keep expectations consistent with what your dog learned.
Expecting perfection
Training continues through repetition, practice, and follow-through.
Jumping into the hardest situations
Build difficulty gradually instead of setting your dog up to struggle.
First-Week Checklist
A simple way to stay focused on the things that matter most.
Contact your trainer if you’re unsure.
You do not have to guess your way through a problem.
Questions after training?
If you need help with your dog’s transition home, handling, continued practice, or next steps, reach out to the Cosmo K9 team.