CRITERIA

Setting, and moving, criteria

Over the course of this class, you’ve probably heard, and perhaps been frustrated, by me changing criteria. As an animal trainer, perhaps one of the hardest concepts to grasp is that of slippery (?oily?) criteria. What is best for the animal’s learning today, might be the wrong thing tomorrow. Examples? A big one is having the dog ‘take you’ down the track. At some level, we want the dog to be in control, and we’d like him to have enough confidence to pull you—in the correct direction—when you are unsure and perhaps unwilling to go. A dog who isn’t sure, shouldn’t be asked to pull…if we ask them to pull when they are unsure, they learn the game is pulling, not tracking. Or, if they are a softer dog, they may just quit—you’ve set the bar too high, they can’t figure out how to get you to move, and so they just lie down. How do we train confident pulling? How about this—the dog is happily (picture- body relaxed, head down, tail softly wagging or relaxed), moving down a straight leg. You will—briefly (milliseconds), add pressure to the line while continuing to follow. You see the dog dig in very slightly….you then step up, reverting to your ‘pre pressure’ contact. This is done through elasticity in your elbow more than changing pace. And it certainly doesn’t mean asking the dog to drag you for a step or two….it’s subtle (if you do it well the dog won’t even notice), and short. Over weeks and months you will build it—always on the straight line—until you start to see the dog actively dig in when you apply pressure. Note: can you appreciate why this is best done on tracks you laid, so you know precisely where the track is?

Another example—use of food in articles. We start with food in the article, then we remove it and have it come from you. Does that mean the articles should never have food in them? Does that mean you should feed the dog from your person after every article? The answer to both questions is no. Occasionally the start article might have food in it, sometimes you will feed the dog for indicating the start article, and sometimes you will just have him start tracking. Once you have a reasonable article indication, it’s fine, and even advisable, to sometimes put a jackpot (or breakfast) in the end article. Remember, the goal is to make the articles something the dog WANTS TO FIND. The article needs to be a goal for the dog. All the wind we’ve had the last couple of days? It blows articles off the track….and your dog still needs to look for it and find it. Think it through—if you are, for example, practicing starts one day, that might be a perfect time to jackpot all end articles. See if that makes the dog drive through the track with more intensity. Would I do that every time I work starts? Of course not!! But it’s in my head as a way to improve drive and motivation.

There are hundreds of dog training books that show a staircase as the way we train dogs—we train a skill, then step up and train the next step of that skill. That mental image couldn’t be more wrong. Instead of stairs, think of an ascending sine wave—yes, we raise criteria, we also go back and reinforce old criteria. Have you ever gone back and asked your dog to do something they learned a long time ago, something they are totally fluent in? Most dogs exhibit something I could only call joy when asked to do something they are confident in—so when you let them surprise find food in the start article, there’s likely to be an increase in energy when they start tracking. That’s a plus for us….for this session. Next time, put that food somewhere else!!

If you find yourself doing the same patterns every time, you are training the dog to that pattern. When the pattern changes, the behavior (correctly) will disappear (the new pattern isn’t what you trained). Behavior matters!!!!! This is why I wean food the way I do—the pattern consistently changes, in small increments, so the dog doesn’t learn to anticipate food always at step 25. As humans, that IS what we will do, consciously or unconsciously, because we ‘like’ patterns. And we make patterns without thinking about it.

And so the challenge in training any animal (and humans are animals, just to be clear….). Train the animal in front of you. The goal you set for a given session might not be the one the animal is prepared to learn today…and you have to flex in real time to make this session work. Set a goal, have a plan…and be prepared to change it if suddenly the dog on the end of the leash isn’t the one you had last time. You can’t change the track you are running, but you CAN change how you react to the animal you are training.