Making Mistakes During Training

Thoughtful Thursday

Contrary to what people might think, all my training is not sunshine and unicorns. I set up problems that are above my dogs skill level, odor does not perform as I expect, something happens and the whole things goes south really quickly.

Of course, I learn from setting up these mistakes.

The most important things I have learned are the following:

Know when to pull the plug and put the dog in the car. The dog does not NEED to end on a good note with every training session. If the problem requires to much assistance from me to solve, the last thing I want to do is teach handler dependance.

Know when to push the dog through for resiliency sake but balance that with NOT creating handler dependance.

Know WHEN and HOW to use body pressure to get the result I want. If that is possible with the hot mess I created.

Know when to treat it as a blank search AND put the dog back in the car.

The most important thing to safeguard the chain of search/locate/report. I want nothing to degrade this chain. No distractions or unproductive sniffing. No chance of putting my influence into the chain.

Tell me about a problem you set up and what you learned from your mistake! Let's celebrate it!

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