Friday, August 10, 2012

Is timing really all that important??

I am in the Chicago area helping teach a three day seminar for people doing nosework with their dogs. This is a relatively new sport where people train and trial with their pet dog to locate various (legal) odors. It is getting very popular and I particularly like that it is an outlet for dogs who would otherwise not do well in other sports.  It is probably what I would be doing with Calix if he were not a police dog.  During today's lecture I was contemplating something that has been running through my head lately.  What can I say, when I drive my mind tends to wander, unless I am driving through Chicago and then it is desperately wishing that it was someplace else....).

A common mantra in dog training is that timing is everything. Good dogs trainers have good timing etc. However IS timing really the critical element. I would propose that placement is everything. I have talked about this subject before but the more I train the more I see the extreme importance of the reward placement. Is good timing just good reward placement? I guess you could say that sometimes you have to have good timing to get the reward placed properly. However sometimes you don't. My primary goal in tracking is to let the track dog the teaching. Same with detection work. In tracking I plan my rewards (articles along the track) so that they occur in critical places along the track. I like to place them in locations where the dog is going to find them after he solves a difficult section of the track. I focus on placement a lot when training for competition obedience - I want to heavily reinforce two placement: the heel position and the front position. These are the two places that I want the dog to have a history of proper reward placement. The more I think about it the more I think that reward placement is an overlooked aspect of training and deserves as much credit and importance as good timing.

What are these people doing??
Students from the last Trainer's Course practicing their reward placement.



And jill demonstrating how she is able to take up a teeny tiny part of the hotel bed:

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