Clarification During Training

[Bubitty]

When you train your dog and you achieve a desired result, do you actually clarify what you did, why you did it and why it worked? By clarification I mean ponder to yourself and confirm it with yourself not with another party.

Or do you already have a plan prior to commencing a trick, through research etc so you already know exactly what you are doing?

[Vickie]

I generally have a plan & am I'm usually doing things that I have done before with other dogs, so although I am open to experimenting, things I do are generally tried & tested. Even though things usually work, I am ALWAYS thinking about way to improve it, right down to the tiniest little detail.

I tend to clarify/consult with myself when things Don't work, rather than when they Do work.

When I am teaching, I will spend as much time explaining why things worked as why they didn't.

I train with a small group of people like minded people once a week. They are GREAT sessions & we doing a lot of talking about what worked & why & what didn't & why.

Edited June 25, 2010 by Vickie

[W Sibs]

Sometimes.

Usually when I teach one of my dogs something new, I already planned it and pictured in my head on what I want them to do and how I'm going to do it. If it doesn't work.. I will think about a different way of doing it.

Like, right now, I'm trying to get Charlie the 'shy' trick. One of the method was put sticky tape on his head so when he swipe it off, I reward him. It's not working... I can do anything to this dog and he will sit/lay there and take it. I once forgot to take the sticky tape off his head, and he walked around the house with sticky tape on his forehead for over an hour (not once complaining or tried to take it off himself) before the boyfriend took it off him. So, I'm trying to find out other ways of trying to teach him how to do it.

Edited June 25, 2010 by CW EW

[Bubitty]

CW EW Try pegs if he has long fur.

I attached a peg to Bitty’s side fur near her ears and it worked beautifully! She didn’t care about the tape! Just ran around with tape all over her nose like nothing was different!

Reason I ask is because lately I have realised I don’t think I really know or am conscious of why some things work and quite a few things I teach, she just sort of does for me and I rewarded her but retracing my footsteps I am not sure when or how she started doing it.

I think to improve my actual training ability I am going to need to start thinking a bit more!

[W Sibs]

ohh.. he use to have long fur... but the peg gave me an idea, i'm going to use one of my hair clips! thanks!

Some of the things I've taught Charlie is he did something I like, I encouraged it, and the it becomes a command.

[Agility Dogs]

I have a plan before I go out to train.

I have my toys/treats ready. I have any equipment set up. I have the other dog put away if that is what is required. Then when the trainee comes out all I have to do is play/do the session and we get maximum value from it.

If it works that's great - I go and think about next steps. If not I sit back and reflect on why and what I have to do to get it right or communicate more clearly.

[corvus]

I keep a training diary as of a few weeks ago. :D I find I'm not very good at keeping track of what I did in a session, though, so I video it as well. I love videoing it because I can look and see things that I didn't notice when I was training because I wasn't looking or wasn't conscious of what I was doing. I usually have a plan of attack for something new, but we do some spontaneous free shaping as well that sometimes we work on the next session. If it works, I wanna know why. If it didn't, I wanna know why. If it worked a little, I wanna know why. I cannot rest if I don't have a good idea of what I'm doing and why. I talk to other dog people about it to see if they think my understanding rings true. It's not good enough to think I'm right. I've got to "baptise" it, as Steven Lindsay calls it. Put it out there and see what others think.

[pipsqueak]

I tend to ponder more when things don't work out - like when I was trying to teach Stormy to "shake" and ended up accidentally teaching her to put her paw on my knee instead :D No harm done (simply put it on command and tried something different), but did make me look at what I was doing and why I got that behaviour instead of the one I *thought* I was teaching. Perhaps because I have more mistakes than successes I ponder the mistakes more.

[The Spotted Devil]

I'm always analysing what went right and wrong in my training sessions. Zig really is an experiment in progress - he's such a challenging dog to train....but as I've seen what he is capable of my expectations keep rising and thus I just tighten up whatever we are doing and ask for more. I have no benchmark to compare him against as my last dog, an ACD, was so completely different. It's lots of fun actually!!! Hopefully my next dog won't be quite so confused by me :cool: