A is for Attitude

Yesterday I posed these two questions about matches and run thru’s to The Edge group:

• What are your goals when doing matches and/or more formal run thru's?

• How do they support your training?

I appreciate the diversity of responses received; sharing our thoughts gets them out of our head, and invites others to help us refine and shape them.

Some of you may remember last Specialty when I was trying to decide whether to show Claire in Novice B obedience — this was happening literally at ringside. She was entered but not ready to show, in my opinion. I was teaching her a “finish” as we waited through the long class, for heaven’s sake.

I know how to have fun with my dog in a ring and do not suffer from Ring Nerves. Therefore, I decided — what the heck?! I would have fun and make it a great experience for her. Basically, I decided to treat it like a match or a run thru.

My version having fun with an unprepared dog was this: Claire was second in a class of something like 50 dogs, behind her Uncle Tristan who went High in Trial. She lost two points for her no-sit finish and still scored a 196.

And most important— we had a blast.

Had I seen one iota of stress in my dog, I would have excused us immediately — rehearsing undesired attitude in any kind of a ring is a Bad Idea.

If a dog is stressed in a match, she has practiced being stressed.

If a dog is worried in a run thru, he has rehearsed being worried.

Attitude is the foundation of focus — if you lose the confident attitude of a dog, you can kiss focus good-bye.

Therefore, attitude — not stress or worry or even actual skills — is what most needs to be practiced in matches and run thru’s.

“Working through” the concerns or worries is actually not what we want — it still brings the worries and concerns into the ring, and risks teaching the dog Learned Helplessness, which is a real buzzkill.

Most people can teach the dog skills — that is the easy part. The hard part, evidenced by the number of dogs being shown that look like they would rather be anywhere but a ring, is teaching and maintaining attitude.

Don’t risk poisoning the well. Once poisoned, it is tough to get right again (but it is possible!).

We all have different goals for our dogs. I would hope, however, that we share a commitment to ensuring our dogs have what they need to be happy and successful in whatever we ask of them.

And that, my Friends, means training skills and attitude to fluency before stepping in a ring setting — and then only doing what the dog can and will do in that ring while maintaining attitude.

For some dogs, that could mean a match in which we do two steps of heeling and then a toy is tossed before we happily leave the ring.

For Claire last year — it was the entire Novice ring exercises.

I have not shown Claire in obedience since the 2019 Specialty. When she enters the obedience ring again this Spring, my primary objective will not be about scores or ribbons or even what anyone else thinks about our performance. Rather, I will consider the runs successful if my dog maintains her pizzazz and attitude because that is, after all, the most challenging of training skills.

Game On.

Berners with The Edge, Week Two

Most of the over two dozen people working together in our online community want to improve aspects of both human and dog performance when training and/or showing. This is excellent because those two things are intricately related.

We began by establishing a long-term goal and then thinking through a couple of intermediate goals that could be addressed over the next 12 or so weeks. Yesterday I introduced the idea of Least Trainable Units, or micro skills, to get us all thinking about our tendencies to “clump train” dogs.

Today I want to do three things: 1) Discuss micro-sessions; 2) Continue the micro-skills conversation; and, 3) Challenge assumption-based training. Specific assignments — “Invitations” — related to each are included in this post.

A micro-session is a tiny amount of training time that when utilized over the course of a day, can add up to impressive skills.

I keep a bag of Charlee Bears handy and do these all day long.

I have never “formally” trained signals to Claire, for example, but she knows them all because of micro-sessions. She learned “stay” in micro-sessions —including micro-group stays…

Claire and Daisy — and a look at our new floor.

I could go on and on — I cannot say enough about the value of these tiny training sessions both for learning AND maintaining a happy attitude about “work.”

Thirty seconds is plenty of time — when you start the microwave, think micro-skill in a micro-training session and you will be on your way to big things.

This is a (narrated) VIDEO of a quick micro-session on a walk with Claire, and it brings me to micro skills again.

Claire’s sit in the video is not quite what I want — I prefer that she bring her rear end forward into the sit rather than pop up with her front end.

I say nothing about that to Claire — instead, I appreciate that in spite of being in “drive” because of the ball, she is quickly responding to cues. In other words, she is demonstrating knowledge of the cues AND doing that in an environment that is “tough.” For that, she earns the ball toss — and I have good info to tuck away under “What I Need to Train.”

I will work on improving those sits — a micro skill — in micro-sessions this week.

Invitation: Identify one micro-skill that you can work on in micro-sessions this week.

Let’s switch gears and discuss the human side of all this dog training stuff.

You will hear this from me over and over — thoughts are the driver of both feelings and behavior.

We are going to spend time unpacking all that but to begin, I want to ask you to reflect about assumptions you make when training dogs, and how those assumptions drive both training behavior and feelings.

“The dog is blowing me off” is a common belief/thought and so let’s start with that.

What people will say to justify a belief that the dog is choosing to — with malice, no doubt — “blow me off” is this: “She does it perfectly at home.”

Ponder this, if you would — you are to give a speech. You practice it at home and are perfect when delivering it in the shower, in front of your partner, while cooking dinner, and so on.

Does that mean you are equally ready to deliver said speech in a competition with an audience of 50 strangers, many holding up signs that read things like, “A bomb is about to go off” and “The end is near” and “Beware of Lions” and “DANGER AHEAD!”??

Dogs are non-verbal communicators and read humans like we read signs. The stress and anxiety FELT BY HUMANS are clear danger signs to dogs, and set off their Danger Scanners — it is hard to focus on heeling when you are trying to figure out where exactly the lions, tigers, and bears are hiding.

This is why it is so hard to change ring performance by trying to “fix” the dog — because the problem is not the dog. Even if the issue is a knowledge/skills deficit and not just smelly stress hormones flooding the dog — well, whose fault is that?

Invitation: Assume good intentions of your dog. Take responsibility for any/all gaps in training and performance — not to flog yourself, but simply as Helpful Feedback about what needs work.

You are, after all, only human.

Ready, Set — micro train.