diff --git a/src/axolotl/utils/data/sft.py b/src/axolotl/utils/data/sft.py
index ce01b4409..ec17fb9c2 100644
--- a/src/axolotl/utils/data/sft.py
+++ b/src/axolotl/utils/data/sft.py
@@ -2,9 +2,11 @@
 
 import functools
 import logging
+import time
 from pathlib import Path
 from typing import List, Optional, Tuple, Union
 
+import requests
 from datasets import (
     Dataset,
     DatasetDict,
@@ -53,6 +55,28 @@ from axolotl.utils.trainer import (
 LOG = logging.getLogger("axolotl")
 
 
+def retry_on_request_exceptions(max_retries=3, delay=1):
+    def decorator(func):
+        @functools.wraps(func)
+        def wrapper(*args, **kwargs):  # pylint: disable=inconsistent-return-statements
+            for attempt in range(max_retries):
+                try:
+                    return func(*args, **kwargs)
+                except (
+                    requests.exceptions.ReadTimeout,
+                    requests.exceptions.ConnectionError,
+                ) as exc:
+                    if attempt < max_retries - 1:
+                        time.sleep(delay)
+                    else:
+                        raise exc
+
+        return wrapper
+
+    return decorator
+
+
+@retry_on_request_exceptions(max_retries=3, delay=5)
 def prepare_dataset(cfg, tokenizer, processor=None):
     prompters = []
     if not cfg.pretraining_dataset: