Afternoons as the only dog…

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Casey depends on M.

M., for her part, seems to miss the old man sometimes – she’ll check for him outdoors, and look for him in the house. And the colder the night, the more eager she is to cuddle up with Casey.

But there’s no arguing with the way Madison shines and sparkles on those afternoons like Sunday, when she got to be the only dog in the car, at the show-n-go, in the ring. My full attention and a piece of string cheese got me her undivided attention, automatic sits, a flip finish and a rocket-launched recall.

Oh, there were plenty of no-sits, wide about turns, forges, and a lag or two. Ms. breed champion forgot that on a stand-for-exam, the point is to plant her feet and stand still. There was one brief moment when I thought she was going to happy dance herself right out of the ring – but instead, she turned and fronted when I called her back. Score one for judicious use of the appropriate electronic brain cell boosters.

Overall, a Sunday afternoon as the only dog agrees with M.

So as much as I hate leaving the old man behind (he doesn’t care; he slept peacefully all afternoon), I’ll be giving M. more one-dog afternoons. It’s time for the princess to solo. It’s been a long time since I only had one dog to pack for a show. But it’s time.

Training approaches broader than a catch-phrase

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Carol Lea Benjamin, trainer and author, once wrote in her AKC Gazette column “Dog Trainer’s Diary” that when she was stuck in a training challenge with her own dog, she’d ask herself how she would solve the problem for a paying client – someone who was expecting effective and lasting results. Benjamin continued that considering her personal dog’s training issue in that light always crystallized a solution and gave her a direction that got the job done.

That advice, a couple thousand class and kennel dogs, and two decades of work with various purebred rescue groups molded me into a solutions-focused trainer almost from the beginning. I provide skills and solutions — I show owners how to resolve/improve behavior issues, develop specific skills to raise a good canine citizen or a reliable competition performer (or both!), and make decisions about what and how to train next. When I’m directly working with a dog, I provide a language bridge through which we can each communicate. It helps to remember that dogs don’t speak human. I am always asking myself whether the information I’m giving the dog is meaningful to him.

So when another blogger asked me whether I would describe myself as more of a hierarchical/dominance trainer, or more of a positive reinforcement trainer, I had to stop and think for a couple of days. Ultimately I replied, ‘Neither.’

I have trained my own dogs to 18 titles in the US and Canada in obedience, agility and rally, pointed dogs in conformation, performed intake skill evaluations for a board-and-train business, managed a boarding kennel where I walked every dog at least three times daily and provided grooming, taught hundreds of group classes and private lessons. Five of my eight personal dogs have been what Benjamin called ‘second-hand dogs’ – two rescue dogs, two young dogs who came to me to be grown up (and never left), and a retired breed dog who’s now working on her performance skills while being my cuddle bug. My private-lesson specialty is ‘difficult’ dogs – creatures whose owners have been told by vets, kennels and groomers that their dog’s behavior is a problem. My own dogs, and many class situations, were and are training for the sheer joy of training. But I’m not afraid to admit that my name is Pat and I train dogs for money. Training for a paycheck means that my training solutons must consistently produce reliable results for which my human students are willing to spend money.

When a trainer’s priorities are effective communication, providing solutions and developing reliable skills, s/he learns to adapt many approaches in order to provide a custom solution appropriate to individual dogs, owners and situations. Characterizing those individualized solutions with a couple of tightly-focused adjectives does the entire teaching process a disservice. I can’t boil my training approach down to one adjective – or even five!

Hierarchical? Since most of my clients come to me because I’m more experienced in the training process than they are, yes – there is a hierarchy to the process of learning. Eventually, the learning process will shift from hierarchical to synergistic, as teacher and student learn from and enrich each other’s pool of experience – but it takes time to develop synergy. In my house, the hierarchy is me, the cat, the young dog, the old dog. The hierarchy shifts a bit from time to time – my young dog and my old dog having recently shifted within the hierarchy. But I’d be oblivious to reality if I didn’t recognize that there’s a pecking order in my house. And I’d be wasting a naturally occurring, elegantly effective training tool by ignoring it. By recognizing that hierarchy exists, I can use it to enhance synergy and make our days together more enjoyable.

Dominance-based? Absolutely. Whether in private or class lessons, my primary student is the human being, and his/her dog is my secondary student – who will learn based on how effectively I teach my primary student. To both humans and dogs, I first focus on teaching them how to learn, and then offer training in specific skills. The human student gives me money and I give him learning tools and training skills. The canine student gives me attention and I give him learning tools, some (new) reliable behaviors and a human-dog interaction from which we’ll both benefit. However, I determine the depth and scope of the relationship, whether the student is human or canine.

From the beginning, I tell students that I won’t waste their money or attention if they won’t waste learning time by ignoring what I’m teaching. I tell them that I’ll work just as hard to help them succeed as they do. I also tell my human students that I can’t work harder at training their dogs than they do because I’m not their dogs’ primary trainer. As long as the (humna) student keeps coming back, he or she has accepted that agreement.

Canine students don’t have the same choices their humans have about participating in my training. They are brought to training and they can’t leave unless their human drives them away. Dogs learn whether we’re teaching them directly or not – in my presence, my priority is to ensure that they learn what I’m teaching. Every skill we humans directly teach our canine companions involves things they wouldn’t do if they weren’t domesticated – display self-control in the face of exciting stimuli (like cats, squirrels, tennis balls, bikes, kids); control their bodily functions to times and places we direct; stay when they’d prefer to move; move (in specific directions and patterns) when they’d prefer to stay put. That our dogs continue to perform the skills we teach them means they accept that agreement.

Sure – we provide food, water, regular vet care, mental and physical stimulation. But we also use leashes, collars, crates, and regulate when things like food and water appear. Dogs aren’t in total control of the array of choices they can make – and their lack of control implies that they are submissive to the choices we make about their lives with us. If dogs are submitting to their humans’ choices for their lives, then who is dominant in the human-dog relationship?

Am I focused on positive reinforcement? Not to the exclusion of other techniques which may be more effective for that particular dog or human or training situation. Positive and negative carry the emotional baggage of “good” and “bad” (respectively) among non-trainers. But in training language, positive doesn’t mean “good” – it means doing or adding something to a situation. Negative doesn’t mean “bad” – it means not doing, or subtracting something from the situation. Taking the (human) emotional baggage out of training language frees that language to help the trainer elevate the human-to-human communication between teacher and student. It allows both trainer and student to create solutions without getting hung up on the method(s) that creates those solutions.

In the end, I’m none of hierarchical or dominant or focused on positive reinforcement. And I’m all that – and more. It’s my job as a trainer to elevate my human students’ understanding of training language and training skills by using them all correctly. By paying attention to solutions, I can most effectively help them develop better relationships with their dogs…using the method(s) that work best for each owner and dog and training situation.

Can you describe your style of dog training in one or two words? Do you focus on making your preferred method(s) produce results, or do you adjust method(s) to suit the human, the dog and/or the training situation?

The 3 things that help me take training from backyard to competition

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My name is Pat, and I train dogs for competition performance events.

No, I’m not on the Agility World Team. I don’t make the list for the annual AKC Obedience invitational. I haven’t made the Front & Finish top dog in breed rankings since Casey was in Novice obedience and agility (1999.) The last time dogs I trained made first-in-breed listings in any venue was January 1, 2005 when Casey and Reu became the first English Cocker Spaniel and Gordon Setter in the US to earn AKC Rally Novice titles.

In 2000 I actively taught and trained two dogs in three to four obedience and agility classes each week, a schedule I’d maintained since I’d started training Taryn in 1981. I showed my dogs every other weekend in some combination of breed, obedience and agility. In 2009, after an intracerebral hemorrhage (stroke) and five years of cancer diagnosis, surgeries and treatments, it’s a good day if I have enough energy left after work to take a long walk with the dogs, let alone get my dog-in-training to one regular class each week. The day after a class (when I can take a class) feels like the day after I’ve been hit by a truck. I pick one cluster to show at each month, try not to combine too many venues in the same weekend, and generally need a day off after a circuit to ‘recover’ from my dog show vacation.

It may seem odd that a person who now trains mainly for her personal satisfaction actually considers herself competitive. Then again, you’ve probably never seen me cook – put me in the kitchen and I’ll trash-talk you all the way to the first-place ribbon. Yes, when it comes to certain things I’ve got a serious competitive streak. Where that shows up in my dog training is that I want my dogs to do their best, to improve every time we go in the ring. Our ‘bests’ may not lead to first place ribbons every time, but I don’t need more flat sateen ribbons. What I’m looking for are titles, letters after their names which tell the whole world that they are trained companions who work for a living.

How do I get my dog to a title when I can’t manage a class? Maybe even more important, how did I manage to teach skills to my dog when I spent the better part of 2008 on the couch recovering from either a surgery, a chemo infusion, or both?

The answer lies in keeping my training organized, but simple. During my recuperation, I made use of the three things that have always helped me understand where each of my dogs is along his individual training continuum:

1) A training log: This blog is an extension of the pen-and-spiral-notebook that I keep in the basket on my coffee table (you know the place–mine is where I corral the remote controls, pens, back issues of Clean Run and the spill-free zone where I set my coffee mug.) In a simple Dollar-Store notebook I jot down in my personal shorthand the results of each day’s training session, no matter how short or small. Even if all we did was practice a down-stay while I made my breakfast protein shake, I write it down. Which dog(s). Where. How long. What position. In or out of sight. If outdoors, what weather. Whenever an exercise doesn’t seem to be making progress or seems to break down for no reason, a quick check of my log lets me know whether I’ve been devoting enough attention to that skill.

2) An exercise binder: The hardest thing to do when energy is at a premium is create a practice on the fly. I save every course map (agility and rally.) I save copies of exercises from the ‘net and from issues of performance magazines like Clean Run and Front & Finish. I have every curriculum I’ve every written, every instructing and seminar handout I’ve ever received. They’re filed in the binder by venue and class. When I don’t have the energy to practice, I read through my saved courses and plans, and flag the ones I want to try next (Post-it notes are my friends.) Later, when I do have the energy to practice, I can quickly find something to work on in my files.

3) A calendar: The toughest thing about being out of dog-showing in any venue is getting back onto the superintendent’s mailing lists and into the swing of which show(s) are on which weekends when you decide to come back. My calendar is pretty low-tech — a two-year paper monthly vest pocket calendar with a separate notes section. It’s in the same plastic cover with a telephone/address section saved from an earlier organizer. I keep closing and circuit dates in the calendar, and update it regularly from the AKC website and various online agility calendars. I make notes about each run in the calendar’s notes section. I keep notes about judges in the telephone/address section (that section stays with the planner; the two-year calendar and notes sections come out and are stored in my office file cabinet.) By knowing when the shows are, I can plan my entries, evaluate where my dog is in ring-readiness, and get a reality check by looking at my notes about individual show/run results. My notes in the show calendar help drive my practices.

A really organized person would probably keep all three of these elements in a single binder — but I like them to be more flexible. I also like them to be closest to the spot where they’ll be needed, or where I’ll be likely to fill them in with notes. For now, the training log lives on the coffee table, where it’s most likely to be completed after a training session or class. The calendar lives in my purse, so that it follows me to work (where I make entries) and to shows (where I make notes about judges and runs.) The binder of courses lives on the lower shelf of my coffee table, with the current issues of magazines — ready to review and flag new courses and exercises to practice.

Sure, there are a bunch of other things I do to keep my dogs working when I’m laid up, but these three items — training log, reference binder and calendar — are the three things without which I would never get my backyard-trained dog into the ring.

What are your strategies for training when you can’t take a dog to classes? How do you keep your dog(s) in training when their training is limited by your own physical condition? Please share your ideas!

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