I thought it might be hard so…….

When do you back up an add more food? How do you do it? How should you think about it? If you are heading towards a challenge….should you change your S/W/F pattern? Let’s investigate.

I have become pretty hardcore on the need for a pattern when you track. I’d like to tell you that it’s super well thought out, but it’s not. It is based on the science for the best way to train duration….because in the end, going from food every 2 steps to no food is an exercise in training duration. But let me be honest. It’s also because I’ve watched way too many students struggle, and even fail, because their decisions were flawed. This class has progressed better, with far more impressive tracking, than any class I have taught. Perhaps you guys are awesome trainers—you are—and maybe I’m better understanding the process. Regardless, the progress you are making is amazing, and is making me think-hard-about how we train.

So you put a track in for your dog, and they have a really hard time. We, the human, panic. We’ve ruined our dog. It’ll never track again. OK, head’s up….this is an instinctive behavior for the dog. Instinct is it’s own reward. As a result, this behavior is far more resilient than say, heeling or contacts. This is a super bad time to just throw more food down!!!! We will never know why the dog had a bad day. I think you’ve all come to appreciate, I dislike handlers telling me ‘why’ the dog had difficulty. Reality—we can’t do this, and we can never know. We undermine our dogs brilliance at this when we try to interpret it for them.

Rule #1: If you had a bad day, make the next track short. Put in a short, easy track. Same food pattern, but add 2 food drops in a row (so food at steps 5 &6, for example) then none until next scheduled food drop. Make all scheduled food drops 2 food drops, one step apart. Does that get the dog back into the game? So all we have done is slightly increase the reinforcement, without decreasing the amount of work between drops. This is part of the reason that L start tracks show up as a regular part of your training pattern—it helps prevent you from making this too hard, too many times. Sometime, ask me how I really did ruin my first TDX dog…..and how long it took to fix her.

Rule #2: It’s never correct to just drop more food. Oh @&@#$, the track had to cross a driveway/ditch/hedgerow/ whatever. Step back to a different S/W/F pattern to help the dog be correct, and reinforce them for making good decisions, note it on your map. At the next turn, go back to the pattern you started with. you have reinforced the dog for working out the challenge, it’s over, move on. NOW, next time you track, don’t assume they “know” this challenge—but rather pick a slightly longer S/W/F pattern. YOu don’t have to do this challenge every time out…just keep track of what it was, and how you laid it, so you can, slowly and thoughtfully, build the S/W/F pattern until it’s the same as the rest of the track.

Does this make sense?