“He did, She did”

We are two weeks into class…..and I’ve heard one of my least favorite phrases already.

“I did an article track, he just blew by the articles.” “She loves to track and just ignores the articles.”

Let’s take a look at that. WHO is in charge of the training? Do you actually expect the dog to stop and indicate just because it’s there? The entire purpose of an article track is to train articles. Train. Not test. Your dog is track happy? Hooray, that’s wonderful. And the judges will simply write “failed, missed article” on their chart. They won’t write “lovely track happy dog.”

Failure to indicate the article is not the dog’s fault. It’s a reflection of your training. Therefore, the phrase is, “WE missed the article.” WE ignored the article. You are a TEAM, the dog isn’t your minion being ordered to do your bidding!!!

Hannah just posted this question in our obedience class: “If the goal for this session is to set yourself up for a really great next training session, what would that look like?” I love this: rather than ending your session telling yourself what didn’t go well and therefore what you’re going to work on….start this session so that your dog actually learns the thing, which means the next training session (perhaps working on something else) will be GREAT.

Another “Hannah-ism” from this week: Rather than thinking of your training session as a staircase (as trainers traditionally do), think of it as a circular staircase, with the things you’re training in boxes in the middle of the staircase. So you might catch the edge of the “start”box, the middle of “turns” and maybe the corner of articles. Further up the staircase, you might catch the middle of starts, the edge of turns, and maybe a small hunk of articles. Can you picture this? In every training session (for any sport), the behaviors can’t be completely isolated from one another. Figure out which one is the focus for this training session. The others matter—you will make sure the dog is successful—but you are only fully focused on training one thing.

Behavior is dynamic, it is always either getting weaker or stronger (it’s never fixed). See if thinking of your training as a spiral staircase helps you to recognize the need to address several behaviors, but set priorities for each one for this session. Next session? Different priorities—you’re further up the staircase!