After observing that my dogs and I seem to move easily between dog sports, Scott asked, “Do you have a road map or mental plan for each dog to go from one activity to another?”
Plan?!
My favorite!
I love making plans. I love implementing plans. I love evaluating plans. I love revising plans.
Plans are my jam.
But no, I do not have a mental plan for a dog — I have written, detailed plans!
A plan is like a recipe. It is both important — and insufficient. After all, simply having the recipe doesn’t make the scones appear.
To make scones happen, you have to want scones (who doesn’t?!) AND you need the recipe AND you have to do the work of making and baking.
Or you can come visit me and I will make scones for you!
I have had ideas for what I want to accomplish with Starry G since she was a twinkle in my imagination. Once she arrived and I got to know her, I translated those hopes and dreams into specific goals and then created The Plan — or the recipe — for how to make it all happen.
But those early plans didn’t include mastering behaviors that a puppy might learn in a basic obedience class — not at all. In fact, I don’t like basic obedience classes for future performance dogs.
The foundational skills needed by a future multi-tasking working dog are less about specific behaviors and more about developing broad life, relational, and learning skills. These are things like confidence, task commitment (grit!), comfort with new people and new places, focused and sustained engagement, play, and an understanding of how to learn. There are more, of course, but you likely get the idea — foundational skills are what let us scaffold advanced behaviors to achieve success in dog performance events.
If The Plan is the recipe, think of foundational skills as the ingredients. It is a sad day when our dreams of warm scones comes to an abrupt halt because there is no baking soda!
To be continued…
Happy Sunday, Friends!
❤️
