A Training Challenge/A Human Challenge

A friend sent me this quote a few months ago…

Violence is a loaded word. Nobody wants to say their dog training involves violence. The term, however, is defined as actions that are designed to hurt.

Humans are Story Tellers. We are masterful weavers of narratives that match what we want to believe about ourselves and others. We use words to create realities that allow us to exist with dissonance, that tension between things that do not fit or match each other.

“I am a nice person who is good to my dog AND I hurt my dog when training.”

How can those things all be true?

When tension exists, we rewrite the story to make it all somehow fit together. Actually, we say, those things do not hurt the dog or we create justifications about not having a choice or the nature of the dog or so on and so forth.

So many excuses. So many justifications. So much cruelty.

Hey Sparkle — does a prong collar hurt?

Hey, Sparkle — would you mind if I just shocked you a bit when you don’t do what I want?

Hey Sparkle — how would you feel if I choke you to tell you I did not like something? The blood will come back to your brain eventually.

If you woke up tomorrow and were incapable of doing anything the dog found unpleasant or discouraging in training — what would be different?

If you could not yell or say harsh words or choke, pinch, shock or strike a dog — what would you do instead?

You would think creatively about how to achieve desired results in new ways. In other words, you would simply train your dog.

I challenge you to do that — to imagine you are no longer capable of training a dog in ways that are hurtful or discouraging.

Never, ever mistake a forgiving nature as permission to hurt another.

Micro(wave) Training Sessions

I was pleasantly surprised by Daisy’s “stay” yesterday when I was doing photos in the arena…

That is our only relatively close neighbor’s house in the background.

Because I have been busy with the Specialty-bound dogs — and I was waiting for Spring to start on her agility training — Daisy has not been the recipient of any formal training time. But I do this kind of thing every day…

That photo, not the best as I just grabbed my phone, shows a micro training session as I was making my coffee.

A micro training session is a tiny unit of time, usually under a minute, in which I work one or two behaviors. I have cookies on the microwave and while I am waiting for something, I train. The dogs love this.

These micro sessions are effective. Daisy has learned both “down” and “stay” in small, regular micro sessions. Further, she was able to take the skills she learned and transfer them to the arena, staying perfectly while I went considerable distance from her.

What occurred to me is that we are doing micro training sessions all the time. However, we are likely not training with intention in these little sessions and therefore, we may well be training the wrong things.

Every interaction with a dog is a micro training session, truth be told. And so the dog’s behavior is nothing more than the result of our training, intentional or not.

This is yet another reason it is grossly unfair to a dog — and bad training — to blame the dog for undesired responses/behaviors. The reality is YOU likely trained that exact behavior. Congratulations!

The solution is not to “correct” the dog or even to beat yourself up (ouch!) but rather to take a step back and deconstruct how and what you have trained. Doing this allows us to make a new plan, proceeding with clarity and purpose towards desired results.

One intentional micro session at a time.

Micro(wave) training — the secret to Sparkle’s excellent “hold.”

Meant To Be

Dear Husband and I heard a Big Crash yesterday. Uh oh. It is that time of year again.

Baby birds, although made for flying, are not very good at it yet and have a tendency to crash into our house during Spring. That small friend knocked herself out on a window.

We provided moral support and protection from cats as she slowly came back around.

She attempted to fly again, crashed once more and then attached herself to my leg!

YIKES!

It was quite the adventure but eventually she was off, doing that thing birds are meant to do: Fly.

It is easy to know what a bird is meant to do but not always so easy to know that about ourselves - or a dog.

I almost pulled Claire from Novice B obedience at the Specialty because — like the baby bird — she was not actually ready for full flight.

I mean it! (Dianne is rolling her eyes!).

She could have just as easily jumped on the stewards or grabbed her leash and raced around the ring with it trailing behind like a black leather banner.

Instead, Claire flew and it was awesome. Beautiful. Fun.

But like that baby bird, I know her soaring performance does not mean she is anywhere near ready for migration into Novice B.

Nope — we had a lucky day without any obvious places to crash, and that is how her very novice skill set earned us a lovely score and second place in a class of over 50. It was, in fact, the Lucky Socks.

But the experience was revealing — I learned what Claire is meant to do: Obedience.

She will still do other things, of course, but Claire declared her Super Power — and it isn’t just swimming.

Do you watch for messages from your dog about what she is meant to do — or just assume that what you want to do is what your dog should do?

And do you ever consider what you are meant to do — and be? I think we get messages about that as well — if we listen.