To think or not think...

...that is the question of the day. 

In my opinion dogs come in 3 varieties, thinkers, doers, and, thinking doers :-) 

The thinkers have a tendency to be a bit slow to turn on from a speed standpoint, this makes perfect sense when you think about the fact that they are so busy thinking that they cannot possibly run! Each piece of every puzzle must be thoroughly thought out, all of the addition done, i's dotted, t's crossed, etc.. 

The beautiful thing is that once all of this has been done and the dog truly understands what the job is they will do it with gusto and precision more often than not.

You must, however, be patient and not get frustrated with the process. Some of you that know me, and, know that I have one of the most thoughtful dogs on the planet are probably at this moment either rolling on the ground laughing, rolling your eyes, storing this info to feed back to me at a moments notice, or, all of the above!

Trust me I have not lost sight of what I have gone through training this dog, or what I still have to do to keep it the most upbeat, awesome experience imaginable every time we train. The really good news is that when I said that the ultimate outcome has the potential to be fantastic and that it will all be worth it I could not have been more right.

Although there was a supreme level of frustration at times, some serious tears sometimes and thoughts revolving around who would be my next agility dog because obviously it was not going to be "this" dog, well "this" dog is not only my heart and soul but one of the greatest agility dogs I have ever had the pleasure of running and I have had the pleasure of running MANY incredible dogs! Jack, Secret, Buzz, Rumor and Able would definitely kick my butt if I did not mention their greatness and incredibleness :-)

However, this thinker that I refer to is of course Wally :-)

Let's see, if I was to classify the above mentioned dogs into one of the 3 categories I described it would read like this: Jack (doer), Secret (thinking doer), Buzz (thinker), Rumor (thinking doer), Able (doer). The list continues with SoBe (thinking doer), and, Merger (doer).

There is a bit more to these labels and how I go about classifying the dogs, Wally is not just a thinker but VERY sensitive which is a tremendously difficult combination that would test any trainer. 

Able is a problem solver, but, it was always much harder to get behaviors initially solidified with him because doing always came first.

So, with the doer, speed and drive are not an issue they are always there, but, if it was necessary to choose between thinking through a choice or just running, running always wins.

Although you have the instant gratification of speed with a doer, the thinker will generally learn things faster and retain the information better right out of the box, because it is of course impossible to learn something at full speed it is just that nobody told the doer that! 

The necessity for breakdown of behaviors into even smaller increments for the doer becomes obvious as they are whizzing around freelancing on all of the obstacles while you stand stupefied.

This is not to say that the thinkers do not need behaviors broken down, they just need them broken down for different reasons. The thinker will be easily overwhelmed with large chunks of information, it is way too hard to do the charts and graphs on huge behavior chunks.

If I had to choose between a thinker and a doer I would choose, drumroll please..., a thinker! OK, stop laughing, I really would!

HOWEVER, my first choice if I actually got one would be the thinking doer. They are wonderful little speed demons with awesome processing skills. I will go about the training of these dogs the exact same way as I would for either of the above but you can count on greater level of understanding at a greater rate of speed much sooner! 

Please do not read more into this than I mean, there is still an incredible amount of training involved, just as much training as a matter of fact. 

You cannot avoid training if you want to succeed at anything you do, but, with these dog's it is just more fun! Yes, I said it, it is more fun! 

The fact remains that we do not have a choice, we get the pup we get and it is our job to train them to be what we want, regardless of their predisposition towards any of the above types.

What brought all of this on you ask? Well, I was working Merger again today and it occurred to me that this dog just does not think, now, I could allow this to frustrate me, or, I can realize what I am dealing with and be very careful to set him up for success when ever we are working on something new.

To expect Merger to read the situation and think through the problem to come up with the right response without a tremendous amount of guidance would be a futile gesture :-) I know this sounds harsh but it is true. 

I think I have already mentioned that Merger is a voracious tugger and that he has a brilliant 2on/2off behavior that is so solid no amount of proofing foils him, however, he will not tug on the end of the board while in a 2on/2off position. 

Trust me we are working on this because I fully intend to teach him to do both things at once. At this point it is just beyond his capabilities because he is working so hard to wrap his mind around the bottom behavior that he could not possibly think about tugging "and" holding position!

Merger is brilliant at offering the last behavior that you ask for because it is right there in the front of his brain, if you try to change it without clearly setting up the new behavior he will just bounce around like a goof ball, he understands that I no longer want the previous behavior but he cannot stop and think about what I may want instead. So, I show him :-)

It will never be a problem to teach Merger new behaviors, the part that will always be the most work is putting more than 1 behavior together.

The good news is that I not only have tons of experience with this type of dog but I also believe that it will be worth it in the end and it will help me to become a better trainer just like every new dog does.

In this video clip I was working on entries with Merger, what you cannot see is that when I am setting Merger up in his heel or side position, (my dogs always start every exercise in a position parallel to me), Merger was all amp'd up about doing the weaves, which is great, but, since we have only done them with a straight send or very slightly offset send he was having a very hard time honoring the parallel position and wanted to just wrap around me and get to the poles, on the second attempt he chose to jump the little gate I use as a guide so on the next attempt I stepped into his path to a greater degree to make the task easier so he essentially could not fail.

If I had not done that Merger would most likely continue to try to jump the gate, he is not "thinking" about how to alter his behavior, he is simply "doing" something the way he has done it in the past because he enjoyed it and was rewarded for it.

Of course I withhold reward for not offering the correct behavior and I reward handsomely for ultimately choosing the correct behavior but with a doer it would be more failures than successes to get to that point and that is not how I train my dogs.

It makes far more sense to Merger and to me to simply make the exercise a bit easier, help him be successful,and, reward for that success. 

Even if I make an exercise easier it is still a notch up from the last rep so there is incremental increase in the level of difficulty and therefore forward progress.

Dogs are so much fun!!!

In this video Merger and I are working on a modified version of Rachel Sanders box method for the A-frame. Merger has already learned to go to the box on the flat :-) I am also breaking this down into bunches of pieces to keep it simple but still encourage learning!

I also threw in a video of the Merge doing the plank, it is hysterical because his huge size is bouncing the plank all over the place. I was very impressed that he was not the least bit put off by the movement of the plank.

Today Vandal learned that there is a food that is truly worth working for, chicken livers! We used these new found treasures to learn to pounce on the hit it board with 2 front feet and to start perch work :-) We also had lots of toy time, worked on heel and side and played the cone game. Oh, yea and decided that the teeter board hitting the floor is sort of scary, of course it was not scary yesterday but that of course was yesterday for god's sake!

So, the chicken livers came into play again and the "work" session ended when Vandal could put 2 feet on the teeter board and keep them there without bouncing off like he had just put his feet on a hot stovetop :-) Then we played...

Wally was simply brilliant and SoBe was very angry that it was never her turn!!!