Decision Making

If you correct a dog for “thinking” about making a wrong decision, you have basically taken all decision making away from the dog. Instead, you need to give your dog time to think.

Give him the opportunity to arrive at the desired decision...without your help. If he makes a wrong decision, help him to be correct. When he makes the correct decision by himself, make sure you tell him how wonderful he is. Do not put pressure on him while he’s thinking. Just wait.

Dogs fail in the ring (and in life) because their owners micromanage them. They are never allowed the opportunity to think for themselves and to arrive at the correct conclusion. So, when you are unable to help them, they start to flounder.

Practice putting your dog in positions where he needs to make decisions. In competition, this can be accomplished through proofing. The intent of proofing is to help solidify the correct behavior in your dog under more difficult circumstances. Good proofing will increase your dog’s confidence and his understanding of each exercise. Bad proofing, on the other hand, can destroy a dog’s confidence.

Does this mean that I only proof my dog on what I KNOW he will do correctly? No. While I’m not going to set him to fail, I will make some of my proofing more difficult on purpose. In these scenarios, I will help him make the correct decision before asking him to do it by himself.

It may make you feel better to micromanage every detail of your dog’s life (in and out of the ring), but give them a little credit. Nothing makes me happier than to see my dog actually make a conscious decision to correct his behavior. When you see the little lightbulb come on and the dog shows you that they know what the correct behavior should be. For me, that is one of the true joys of training dogs.

Train hard. Play harder.
Shannon