One of my favorite notes I took from a seminar this year. As in the typical seminar (or training class) way, everyone loves to ask “What if…” When given a response, they typically say “But, what if THEN….” and it goes on for quite a while. Guy Penning gives a great response and up front just says “This is a problem I would not have.”
And it’s true. A lot of the challenges that a more novice trainer has are things that an experienced trainer just completely avoids. They see the early signs of a problem developing and address it then. Or more often, they anticipate the possibility of that type of error occurring and so create training plans for the problem to not even be able to happen.
The whole benefit of experience is being able to learn from mistakes (or “less desirable choices”). Lucky people can learn from the mistakes of others. And everyone wants to prevent others from learning from those same painful mistakes. It’s important for instructors to point out that given a fresh start, the preferred option would be to do XYZ, but given that the problem already exists, a different training plan may need to be utilized.
Example 1: “My dog is stealing food off the table!”
My advice: You have a lot of options. Dog with a busy toy during meals. Gated out of the room. Crated. Tethered. One family member practicing stays with the dog on his mat, then switch off who gets to train and who is eating.
Example 2: My dog is always missing his contacts on the first try, but when I put him back on he gets it right!””In my home: Puppies or new dogs don’t get attention for jumping. I guard my food so they can’t steal it or knock my plate off the table. If I get up, I take my plate. Dogs that are lying down quietly get tossed a crumb. All my dogs learn to lie under the table staring at me while I eat, and I’m very okay with that. Some dog owners wouldn’t like that, and it’s okay. We can train our dogs to live in our different types of households.
My advice: We go back and review the training process and look for any holes. We stop doing sequences and the whole obstacle. We never give second tries or fixes. We completely rebuild the behavior, being very aware it could break down if we are not careful.
With my dog: I wouldn’t let that pattern of fixing-things start. Not with contacts. Not with crooked sits or poor heel position or anything else. Part of the training process is teaching the dog to do the correct response on the first attempt. Not to say the dogs never make mistakes, they do, but I am very aware that an occasional mistake is very different than the dangerous behavior chain of “make a mistake then fix it right away.”
Every training plan and every lesson plan I write now has a section for “What errors do I anticipate” and then I spend some time coming up with ways to prevent those errors from happening. This doesn’t avoid every problem, but it has decreased the number of errors! The errors I have with my own dogs and in classes are from not having specific experiences yet, so I make notes and learn from every error that occurs.