When to Book a Follow Up Session With Your Trainer

I have had an exciting week doing a lot of follow up sessions with clients. In follow up sessions, we work on anything that you feel we need to work on. We can do live training, we can watch training recordings to critique, and even amending the training plan to make it even more effective to reaching your goals. They are wonderful support sessions to be sure that your training is progressing as we hope!

I leave scheduling follow up sessions up to my clients. Why? Because they are sessions FOR THEM! Though some clients appreciate a schedule of once a week for the first month, once every other week the next, then once a month there after, some clients like a more relaxed schedule of see me when they need to! Both are okay! As long as you are being successful, that is all that matters, not seeing me. After all, I am rooting for your success, not draining your bank account.

Follow up sessions can be helpful for me as the behaviorist because I can get a lot of great information from you about how your animal is responding to the training, as well as how you are doing throughout the training process. It is wonderful to get that antidotal feedback to help support the training methods I choose to help other animals in the future with similar behaviors. It helps me see what is successful, and what is not. It also allows me to point out any possible inconsistencies or mistakes being made with the training so your training progresses faster towards your goal.

When you do not keep me updated on how the training is going, even a short one liner if all is going smoothly, then if something is not right, or you are not seeing results, I am not caught off guard. I always assume if I have not heard from a client that all is well! So, if you book a follow up session, and you are explaining how things are not working, I likely do not have the materials ready to help you in the best ways that I can. Usually, I get quite a bit of information from clients before the session to best prepare, but sometimes you do not always remember everything until I start asking you questions, or maybe you did not think that part was significant. I always want my clients to get the most out of their time with me, so keeping me updated helps me help you the best I can!

Sending an update about once a week helps me understand how you are doing, especially for my online clients where there is no way for me to be there with you or meet for an in-person meeting. Emails are free, and explaining what is going on does not always mean I am going to reply “we need to have a follow up session.” With most questions or concerns, I can explain it through email, or we have a short phone call, where I can give you that education or advice that you can immediately implement. As you can assume, there definitely are topics that we would need to have a session on for various reasons. Like I said above, I do try to help and not drain your bank accounts.

Taking off my animal trainer hat, I also am an animal mom. I love hearing about your animals and the progress being made. It genuinely makes me happy to see a picture of your bird foraging when they used to fear toys, a bird on a perch they would never go on, your bird’s first step up on your hand, your dog heeling, so much more. I give a lot of myself to my business and clients, so having these little moments hearing your success helps drive me to continue the work I do.

So, when do you schedule a follow up session? Here are some common reasons clients schedule a follow up session with me:

· You are struggling with the training

· Behaviors are not progressing/amending the training plan

· You need reassurance that you are training to the best of your abilities

· You have a few questions

· You have mastered a behavior on your training plan, and want to meet back up to learn the next one

· You are looking to work with your animal on a new behavior

· You need to talk some things out like managing expectations, your personal struggles with training, time management with the training, etc.

If you are ready for a follow up session, or you would like to send me an update on your training, be sure to contact me! Happy training!