It’s Time for a Change

Training a dog takes time.  Sometimes Spot seems to grasp a new concept quickly, but then you find he does not understand as well as you thought when you place that job in a different context.  Sometimes Spot seems to lack the required intelligence or desire or talent to get the job.  I’ve despaired of a dog ever becoming merely competent at a certain task, only to have them become quite expert over time such that I’d completely forgotten the early struggles. 

Though training a dog takes time, you should see progress.  It may be slow progress, but it must be real progress, not wishfully imagined.  If you can’t look back to a week or two ago and see you have made some measurable progress then you need to change your training picture.  The young dog is still very tough to stop, sometimes blowing past you to the stock, but two weeks ago you had him on a long line with the sheep behind you in a corner and had work to get him stopped and caught as he tried to dart past you.  Maybe the other dog you started at the same time is now stopping well on the back side of the sheep and beginning to learn his sides, but this young dog that is still tough to control has made measurable progress. 

If you are not making real progress then you need to change your training picture.  Some ideas:

1.       Train more often, short sessions-more often.  With hot dogs your first session(s) of the day are often just working the edge.  If you can get several sessions in a day the edge will diminish and learning will take its place.

2.       Make the job simpler.  If you can’t stop the dog well, then keep the job to very small and simple gathers with one criteria – stop, now, always immediately enforced.  The more criteria on the table at one time the more difficult the task even if you are in a small pen with quiet sheep.  If the dog is struggling to improve, don’t be working flanks, stops, sides, pace all at the same time.  I’m not saying forgive any behavior, but setup your exercises to keep focused on the main problem.

3.       If you can’t stop your dog without a fuss, fix that first before you do anything else.  You can’t much help a dog that you can’t control.  Yes, working on the stop is boring, but a requirement for all other work.

4.       Pay attention to yourself.  Are you enforcing your requirements immediately and consistently?  If not, fix your own responses. 

5.       Just as important, are you taking the pressure off the moment the dog complies?  Continuing to harass a dog that has complied with the requirements is just that, harassment.  Your dog learns what is wanted by the moment you release the pressure.  If you do not release the pressure when the dog gets it right then you just lost the opportunity to show the dog what you want. 

6.       Does your voice come back to normal after correcting a dog?  If you find you are tense and grumpy, in particular even after the dog has fixed whatever you just corrected, then quit the session.   It is easy to let frustration corrode your training when your dog is not making progress. Temper will only take your training backwards.

7.       Still getting nowhere?  Spend some time thinking about the problem.  Not while you are on the field with the dog, but while driving to work, feeding the sheep, whatever.  Really think about it.  Look for the pattern of when things go wrong and that may help you come up with a new training picture.

8.       If a dog fails an exercise over and over and over again for heaven’s sake change the exercise.  Make it smaller, shorter, simpler in some way.  I aim for about an 80% success rate.  Success is defined according to what I can expect from that particular dog at its current level of training.  More experienced and established partners can tolerate a higher failure rate, but repeated failures are not teaching the dog what is right. 

9.       Try another training environment.  A new field, different sheep.  If you don’t have anything yourself, find someone else.  In particular with green dogs if your stock is difficult or the field challenging they may need a simpler environment to get their understanding of a concept down before they can apply it in all situations.

10.   Get help.  Another set of eyes, preferably very experienced eyes, may see your dog a whole different way and offer a much better approach.  Even if you are an experienced trainer, get help.

Don’t keep slogging on the training treadmill.  Constantly evaluate if you are making real progress.  It does not need to be fast progress, but it needs to be clear progress.  If you are standing still, make a change.