FOLLOW UP SESSIONS

Once your initial training session has been completed, there are follow up sessions that you can participate in! These are incredibly useful sessions for clients, as we can accomplish a lot to support the training process. Follow up sessions are scheduled at your digression. Generally, clients like to meet weekly for a month, once the following month, and then monthly from there on out. Others like to focus on one behavior at a time and have a follow up to be refreshed on the next behavior to work on. Others will schedule when they feel stuck or are seeing behaviors that were not anticipated.

Follow up sessions are to support you and your training, as well as to ask questions. Your trainer is always available through email for when you have questions, but some questions are best discussed in person or with demonstrations that cannot be replicated through email easily. If you feel like you are set after the initial session since you are given everything you need to be successful, then a follow up session doesn’t have to be scheduled ever. Fluff and Feathers does recommend at least one follow up session to be sure you are on the right track.

Here are a few things we can do and accomplish during these sessions:

~ We can do live training on the video call. This allow for your trainer to give you critiques on your training technique and timing in order to have the best success when training, as well as speed up the training process. Sometimes, live training can kind of be a lot to juggle. Between your animal, yourself, possible training aids, The device with your trainer, so on and so forth, it can be a lot! We offer the ability for you to send us video recordings of your training sessions in order to review during the call. This will still allow for the critiques to be made, but it allows for you to focus better! Your trainer can pause the video and say “that right there” for the clearest communication.

~ Follow up sessions can hold you accountable to staying motivated to continue the training. Fluff and Feathers believes in educating the animal’s caretaker to change the behaviors rather than the trainer doing all the work. This is for better long-term success, as you will become more educated in the behaviors and how to manage them with training. This means that you need to do all the training sessions. This can be hard for some people to stick with. But, meeting face-to-face with their trainer can help motivate them to continue the training consistently for better reports back! Your trainer can also help motivate you if you are struggling by finding methods that work best for you, as well as breaking down the behaviors and progress into more manageable amounts. We are here to support you in the ways we can!

~ We can amend the training plan. Our trainers are incredibly knowledgeable and experienced working with a wide range of species. Most of the time, the plan that is recommended and formulated works perfectly to meet behavior goals! But, we are also not fortune tellers that can see into the future unfortunately, which means that a training plan may not be the best fit. This can be for many reasons. Either the animal is not responding as anticipated, and smaller approximations need to be used, or a different method entirely. It could be that it doesn’t work for the caretaker for any reason; if it doesn’t work for the caretaker, being the primary trainer, then it won’t work for the animal either! Or, it doesn’t work for the environment. We can meet back up and make the changes that works for everyone effectively.

~It is a good time to catch up. Sometimes, chatting about struggles and progress can be reassuring and helps with motivation. Having that support can be very inspiring to keep up with the training, and knowing that you are on the right track!