Random Thoughts

I haven’t done a random thoughts for this year, and this seems like a good time…

I judged this weekend.  8 dogs (4T, 4X).  One passed (T).  One—one dog—made us smile, starting like it came there to do the job, tracking smoothly and cleanly, nice tight turns.  It made an error, and didn’t pass. NOTE:  that was the dog we enjoyed watching.  That was the dog who arrived ready to do the job. We LOVE watching good dogs work, and we are sad when they make an error.

We got to watch one dog who tracked OK run over the glove and track the tracklayer out of the field.  The handler told us she’d hoped she’d see the glove, as she knew this was a problem for the dog.  She didn’t see it (and it was a white glove in brown grass).

We saw dogs who tracked brilliantly after they’d failed and the tracklayer was coaching.  Why does this happen?  Because, oh so often, we are inadvertently cuing the dog.  When we tell you to keep your feet still… and let the dog go a couple of body lengths down the track, or count to three before moving your feet, it is to prevent you from cuing your dog.  Cuz, when no one is going to tell you where the track is, you can spend 28 minutes on the first leg, spinning around in circles, hesitating, moving on a guess…which reinforces something that isn’t the track…. It’s incredibly hard for us to watch a dog say to the handler, “will you follow me here?  How about here?  Do you like this spot?”  The handler has trained the dog to wait for confirmation from the handler that the dog is correct.  The decision to follow the track comes from the one who CAN’T smell it, rather than from the one who can. And, a hint.  IF, as judges, we see this….we don’t move.  At all.  So now there is zero information available.

And then we saw dogs who had no idea when line tension meant go or no.  Dogs who clearly had been handled by someone who stopped the dog when they were wrong….and when they were correct.  Dogs who clearly indicated the leg, pulled into their harness, and were restrained.  So they looked somewhere else, and the same sequence occurred, except the dog’s posture was different. And, by the third or fourth time…the dog’s body changed significantly, and we could tell that he was going through the motions, but had no idea how to make his person follow him.

So, what does this all come down to?  In my opinion, it comes down to fundamentals/foundation.  The entire training rotation I developed is to keep you working on your foundation skills every single time you go out.  And, for the record, it is to work not just on the dog’s skill set, but yours as well.  I can’t speak for MAM, Jenn, or Anne…but I can tell you for certain, if Fletch has a day where he starts poorly….next time out we do starts.  Period.  I’ll insert that into the rotation—once—and then pick the rotation back up.  If his first turn sucks, next day out we do stairstep track….and then pick the rotation back up.  Do you know what’s not in the rotation?  Running an X track (or, earlier in his life, running a T track).

What about my scuff food pattern?  It’s not still Scuff 5 walk 5–I promise that.  I’ve spent a lot of time watching my dog, and studying the ground/terrain while I’m laying a track. Puddle?  Scuff and food.  Groundhog hole? Scuff and food.  Looks pretty open and benign?  Lots of walk, some scuff, occasional food.  My point—I’m always using the scuff and the food to make him better, not to keep him at the same level.  If it looks “easy” to my eye…..I’m going to augment less.  If it looks “hard” OR I am working on a specific skill, I’ll augment more.

One of the things my co-judge and I commented on this weekend was how demotivating a bad track is for the dog—how far it sets your training back. If that only happens at a test, and you have thousands of successful tracks in the dog’s repertoire….no problem.  If you set your training tracks up to “see if he can do it,” you’ve just potentially demotivated your dog.  And you are going to need all the motivation in the tank to pass a test.