Friday, November 18, 2011

Foundation training for everyone!

I just spent the last 10 days on the road teaching. I did 4 days of private lessons with folks in Virginia, a combination of drive/motivation issues, reactivity problems or helping people/dogs improve their tracking skills. I then conducted a tracking clinic in South Carolina working with a group of novice but very enthusiastic dogs and handlers who have made great progress since my visit in the Spring (I have high expectations for them this spring too!).

The people were all receptive and interested in learning and everyone had things that they were working on that I felt very confident could be improved. I always worry about getting the dog that makes me go "holy $%^&, what do I do with this?". Kind of like how I felt when I picked Calix up many years ago!

So my students fell into one of the following categories:
a) wanting to improve their dogs drive/motivation
b) wanting the dog to not get stressed/stay focused in trial situations
c) wanting the dog to not be reactive in new situations/around other dogs/ or other triggers
d) wanting the dog to be more focused on the handler
e) wanting the dog to have more advanced tracking skills

Overall whatever the goal was, it was quite common to see the handler making big jumps in the dog's skill set/coping ability without laying a solid enough foundation. I am as guilty as anyone else of this (and it is good to hear myself remind so many people because it also makes me look at my own training). We all underestimate the necessity of rehearsal. The dog performs the exercise a few times, it looks great, so we think they know it and are ready to take it on the road. Unfortunately the dog does not know the exercise well enough for it to hold up under distraction or stressful situations or when things are drastically different from what they are used to.

I use the example of learning to play a song on the piano, even a simple one. Practice it at home until you know it pretty well and can make it through without any major mistakes. Now I will pull in about 5,000 people to listen to you. Who thinks they need to practice a bit more?

The foundation behaviors have to be solid so that the dog (to steal Dawn Neff's wording which I like) has to "own the exercise". To ask them to perform otherwise isn't fair to the dog and no fun for him or the handler.


The dog has to own the behavior....

...before adding distractions.

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