Stop training

Once and awhile you need to stop working and leave trainer “mode”. It is easy to stay sucked into the role of always working on your dog, always perfecting, always practicing. But, sometimes, once and awhile, it is good to stop and check where you are at on the different pendulums of training. These pendulums may be different for everyone, though some are common themes between teams.

One side of my pendulum is drive, energy and exuberance. The other side is precision and detail. Can you have both? Absolutely, but they need to be balanced. Too much focus on precision and detail can result in lower energy and flatness. Most dogs do not like being drilled on details over and over again. Things like fronts and finishes are extremely important, especially in advanced classes, but drilling them is not always effective. Drilling fronts with my German Shepherd would have dramatically reduced her speed coming into front position, something we struggled with towards the end of her show career. Does that mean we didn’t work on them? Absolutely not. But only a few a session. She had to have more drive building, more encouragement, more energy.

My Springer on the other hand, exudes energy. He needs to be reminded that precision is critical. He works on fronts and rear end awareness almost every single day. He needs to be reminded that, while animated heeling is beautiful, he is also required to stay straight, sit quickly and not lose attention. Sometimes, however, I fall too far on one side of the pendulum and get out of sync. I’m working too hard on precision and I lose sight of the overall picture. All of a sudden, my dog's heeling has flattened out and I’ve lost the “look” that I want. Once I bring his pendulum back into balance, I’ve got what I want.

I’m fortunate to have some fabulous training friends that I meet with at least monthly to work through issues. However, I train by myself the majority of the time. This works for me because I like to take my time, working through my problems and trying different approaches to solve them. If I trained with a group every day, I would not accomplish near as much with my dog and our training would suffer. However, I can tell when we need to be reinvigorated by a training group. Sometimes, it just takes a weekend dog show to put the balance back. But, sometimes, it takes a few hours of talking and working through problems with like-minded friends.

It is natural for the pendulums to be continually swinging back and forth. But, the more you practice evaluating where you and your dog are at on “your” pendulums, the easier you will find it to stay in balance. And, when you find that “sweet spot”, there is nothing better. :)

Train hard. Play harder.
Shannon