An important part of the seminar for me was that I have to be happy with “good enough” and not be quite as concerned about perfect. Apparently ‘perfect’ is unreasonable.
But “good enough” doesn’t mean accepting poor behaviors or having lower standards of performance. We need the best quality of behaviors to meet our goals and it’s a balance (Balance: another key word of the week) to have strong behaviors but not be obsessing about perfect. It’s also important to think about sequencing as a concept and separate
I have been worried about accidentally reinforcing errors that could get chained into the competition sequence (feet movement on the stand, moments of inattention in heeling). At the seminar, we discussed this as probably being more of a fear than a reality in most (not all!) situations and sometimes by trying to prevent the opportunity for that undesired behavior or by taking action to interrupt it, we may actually be reinforcing the undesired behavior than if we just let it happen.
That said, it’s important to know the dog, his tendencies, and it’s different if you are problem solving compared to addressing something when it first appears. We don’t want to be reinforcing poor behaviors. And we don’t want to have a range of standards or else there will be more variation in behavior that the dog gives.
It was interesting to see how everyone interpreted this. When watching others work on sequencing, it’s easy to say “oh yes, that’s definitely good enough!” But often the working handler would struggle a little and almost find it painful to reinforce the response. Many times things look better from the outside than it does from the handler’s perspective and it’s hard to compare what we’re getting with what we know the dog can do in other environments. My comment quickly became, “If Griffin’s stand is ‘good enough,’ THAT is ‘good enough’.”
But the other end of this is that Fanny has -much- higher standards than many do in obedience. Specific criteria on arousal and attitude. Specific pieces wanted in exactly how the dog moves or to be sure he is capable of performing under challenging standards. Her proofing is way above what I’ve typically seen in obedience classes. Accepting “good enough” is not about having low criteria!
I’m trying to accept a little more “good enough” in obedience and agility but still maintain our high standards. We’ll see how well I can hold this over time!
This week we’re doing a lot of sequencing for obedience, accepting most (but not) all behaviors that happen in the sequence. And then later sessions in the day are on fixing little portions that were weaker and working to over train those skills.