Different Every Day
- judisedwards
- Feb 19
- 3 min read
If anyone follow’s Ralph’s blog, you know that we are working on Millie’s article indication, and Ralph’s consistency in training it. This brings me to what I think of as one of the most important concepts in dog training—not just tracking, but all training.
Fact: Adding variability, such that the dog can still solve the problem, but the conditions are different (not harder—different), makes a behavior stronger. Traditionally, dog trainers have trained a behavior to a high degree of precision, and then added variables (we call this proofing). Sadly, the conditions in which we train a behavior are part of the behavior. If I train Fletch to walk on a loose leash in the driveway, he doesn’t learn loose leash walking, he learns loose leash walking on the gravel driveway with woods all around and the house at one end, etc. If I train that to perfection at home, and then take it to Kara’s house to ‘proof’ it, he will fail. I have not trained him to offer loose leash walking at her house, with her environmental conditions—it’s not the same behavior to him, because the environmental conditions are built into the training.
Similarly, if I establish any pattern while training, that pattern becomes part of the behavior. If I always give Fletch a treat for entering the ring, it’s reasonable that he will not perform if I fail to do that—because that treat is part of what I trained (official term is cue contingencies).
Yesterday, we changed how Heather and Wren work the article. They’d been trying the same approach for a couple of months without noticeable change in behavior. Heather did have a brilliant insight that we are playing with. BUT, the point I want you to realize is that for your articles, for your tracks—change one thing each outing. It might be a new site. It might be a new location within a known site. It could be tracks running in a different direction at the same site and location that you’ve been using. For your articles—use a big glove, a small one, a leather one, a fabric one, a sock, a bandana, a leather wallet, a fabric wallet, a hat, a sweatband, a belt….the behavior we want is “I smell this stinky human odor and offer behavior X.” Please don’t fall for the trap of “my dog needs to indicate a glove.” NO. Your dog needs to indicate an article, which will be (for TD) a cloth or leather, glove or wallet. That’s 4 options right there—so go ahead and train 20!
Obvs, I am bringing this up for articles, BUT I also want you to think about it for tracking locations. I encourage you to look at Andrea’s blog—we have her doing very short tracks in the grassy strips at shopping centers. This is an easy way to add a ton of novel locations to your dog’s repertoire without much effort. Please DO notice how she lays the tracks—this is unpredictably harder, so we have made the tracks as easy as we possibly can so Otter can learn the simple skill of tracking anywhere, with the cues for tracking being harness, flag, start article….not X location, hang in car for X number of minutes etc.
The snow is falling….please tell us below how you can change one thing each time you train so that your dog starts to clearly identify the target behavior!
I have a dog that is not very food motivated. So I have found that changing up the treats has helped. Either on the same track or between practices. He never knows what he is going to get!
A couple things I try to keep varied as much as possible is the location and the times of day I practice with Wren. Having owned a dog that was very used to 'this time of the day, we never train' I want Wren to not really care if it's 6am or 11pm when we play article games/track/or do other exercises.
Dewey has the cue contingency that after tracking along for 100 yards or so there should be a treat. So I need to increase the yardage before the treat but the trick is to increase in a way that maintains his enthusiasm. Trying variable distances, hard-easy-hard days until we can get down 4 -5 legs with no treat enthusiastically.
Here’s an easy one: I try to vary the angle at which we approach the start flag & article. Different angles both left & right, sometimes straight on, occasionally even at an acute angle. And, I know not everyone does this, but I expect the same behavior at the start article as at any other on the track.