Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Correct errors by requiring more effort

Competition obedience training is difficult, especially when done properly. Dogs do not naturally walk around with their undivided attention on you, all while staying perfectly straight in heel position. They do not naturally retrieve an object while doing a perfectly straight front, with their head up and their eyes on you. 

We’ve all heard the statement “make the right thing easy and wrong thing difficult”. But what happens in our world of competition obedience, when the right thing is already hard? You will hear me talk a lot about effort. If the dog does not put forth enough effort during training, I immediately stop working on what I’m doing and go back and work effort. I put a lot of myself into my training, and I expect my dog to do the same. My dog quickly learns that if he would have done the exercise correctly the first time, it would be a lot easier. This doesn’t mean my definition of “correctly”, is without effort, it just means that if he doesn’t do it correctly, he’s going to have to work MUCH harder. 

Let me give you a few examples...

1) I send my dog to the article pile. He finds the correct article, picks it up and trots back. “Oops, good find it, but you didn’t ‘hurry’!” I require that my dog runs back to me in practice, every time if possible. At this time, I may require that he do a couple of hand touches or bounces, something to give me extra effort. I then set up and do it again. If he runs on the next article, I may break off during his run back and give him some cookies. Notice, that I said I break off “during his run back”. Why not wait until he got to front? Because I want to reward the RUNNING. How does he know which part I’m rewarding if I wait for him to get to front. Worse yet, say his front isn’t perfect and I have to ask him to work harder on his front. I’ve now lost the opportunity to reward the run entirely!

2) My dog adjusts the glove in his mouth when he’s coming back to me on the Directed Retrieve and the glove falls out of his mouth. I say “Oops!” and I quickly walk out to get the glove. I hold my dog’s buckle collar with one hand, while my other hand holds the glove. I tell him to “get it”, as I’m keeping the glove just out of his reach (picture me spinning in a circle). Only when he’s really driving to get to the glove, do I let him jump up and get it. I do not force fetch him to the glove, that’s an “easy” correction in my opinion. Anyone can force a dog’s nose down to the glove and make him pick it up, but YOU are doing all the work. My correction gets the DOG to give the effort. The only way he is going to stop chasing the glove around in circles is if he really runs to get it. As soon as he grabs the glove, I praise heavily and tell him how smart he is.

3) During heeling, my dog is crabbing slightly or not working his rear on left turns. If that left turn is too difficult for him to put in effort, my dog will now be required to do left about turns, left 270 turns, he will be asked to spin in the middle of his left turn, etc. Anything that requires more effort. 

Don’t fall into a habit of simply “correcting” your dog for an error. What are you teaching your dog? Not much, except for maybe how to avoid a collar correction. Instead, step back and think about how you can require more effort from your dog. Trust me, after a bunch of left about turns, that 90 degree left turn will be much easier for your dog. 

Train hard. Play harder.
Shannon