Of course I missed the dogs so much but now I am home and although it is awesome to be back, SoBe is in standing heat and the boys are literally beside themselves, not fun!
OK, the quiz...
1. if I asked you whether I used more verbal cues with a young dog than an older dog what would you answer?
2. If you are working on a sequence with your dog and he/she is not listening would your first response be to offer a verbal cue such as here or to say nothing the next time around?
3. If you are trying to keep, maintain or motivate your dog and he/she makes a mistake would your first response be to reinforce the dog with a verbal or tangible reward or would you simply ignore the mistake and try again?
4. If the dog corrected the issue and was successful the next time would you stop and reward or would you continue on with the next obstacle in the sequence?
These types of questions could go on and on and although I am very confident in my responses, I am equally confident in what the majority of handlers responses would be as well.
The interesting part being my responses would most likely be the direct opposite of the responses of most people.
Does this fact make me right and others wrong?
Not at all!
I am just completely committed to a common sense, dog responsibility vs. handler responsibility, training the thinking dog concept of training and handling.
The answers you give regarding the questions should be thought out in this regard.
Let's break it down:
Answer 1: 90% of my students believe, (before I set them straight, of course:-), that the correct answer is to "help" those younger dogs and offer verbal assistance. I use very little, if any verbiage with my young dogs when we begin to sequence obstacles, I have several reasons for this starting with the fact that my baby dogs have not had much time to learn the value of the verbal cues which I teach more often than not on singular obstacles not within sequences, and, secondly, verbal cues are and should always be secondary in the whole handling process.
Therefore, I am going to be from the get go, fostering the attention that I have worked so hard to create from the very beginning of our training program. At the same time I will be continuing to build my dogs awareness of my physical cues as well as perfecting my own timing of said physical cues.
Is the "common sense" part of this showing? If I am continuously talking to my dogs I am in theory allowing the dog not to pay attention and potentially creating a very serious white noise problem effectively nullifying a good portion of the attention and body language work I have done thus far. I would also be doing a huge disservice to my thinking dog and would be taking away a large part of that thinking process.
It is ultimately going to be the dogs responsibility to offer the behaviors that I suggest with immediacy and precision.
Answer 2: I think this answer is pretty obvious after question no. 1 :-) Most would immediately want to offer a verbal here or dogs name to get their dogs to pay attention.
I, of course, would do the direct opposite I would repeat the exercise in question and say absolutely nothing. I would simply offer the cues necessary to get the dog to go through or over the desired obstacles and offer a complete stop prior to the point at which the dog had chosen to ignore me, saying nothing.
This puts the responsibility of attention on the dog. it is the dogs job to pay attention to me, not my job to get the dog to pay attention.
Answer 3: In an effort to keep a non-motivated dog motivated, or, to encourage motivation, handlers have a tendency to verbally and in some cases even tangibly reinforce their dog when they make a mistake. You have to be thinking about what you are rewarding when you are using these measures to keep the dog happy :-)
Although the intentions are noble what the handler is really telling the dog is that the wrong behavior that they just offered is actually correct.
It is preferable to just ignore the incorrect behavior and try again. When you try again and the dog is successful it is incredibly important to reinforce this, the "correct" behavior with all of the praise and rewards that were previously offered as motivational aids.
You should also notice that we have successfully answered 4 as well. Although we the handlers are reinforced for a dogs success by continuing on, this does nothing to mark the desired behavior and we are not any more likely to see success then next time. It is so very important to "mark" behaviors that we want to continue and reward them handsomely, it will certainly make training easier! I want a teammate, a thinking partner in this game we call agility!
2 comments:
Quizzes are just mean...
Very sound advice, that I often find hard to follow when human competitive juices get flowing. "Sally & Fluffy did this sequence, and my dog is way smarter than Fluffy so we MUST be able to do this too!!!"
At least it was an open book quiz. :-)
When in doubt, do the opposite of what your think you should do.
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