It was a really nice group of people I worked with in Denver. They pretty much took my teaching with an open mind. I’m fully aware of what a shock I can be to the system; mindful that I am a handler trainer in an age in which responsibility is typically heaped upon the shoulders of the dog. I am reminded that agility is a game we play with our dogs on the weekend in the park. This thought deserves mention because often we take it all too seriously and confer upon this activity a gravity that is out of proportion.
I’ve been running through my mind this thought of how long somebody really needs to train with me to learn my concept of fundamentals… before I can actually begin teaching the application. Well, two days is certainly not enough time. I’m thinking more on the order of, say, two years.
A system of handling has to be digested over time and practiced and, frankly, validated. Okay then, what do I mean by validation? I personally never accept a thing just because someone says so. I need to test that thing, and proof it, and finally integrate it in homogeneous fashion within my system. Frankly I don’t expect anybody to adopt those things I teach without the same scrutiny and honest.
I have a number of long time students many of whom are masters of those things that I teach. So when I get together with these people our time can be spent on strategy of attack. However I must confess that the majority of my students (on the road) every year are either first-agility-dog novices or at the very least not familiar with anything near the kind of system that I use. It’s really okay because I love working with more novice teams. It’s easier to teach a person how to do something right when they don’t have a lot of bad habits and have no real fight against muscle memory in learning that new thing.
A really basic exercise
You know, these days I put this up at about every seminar I teach. Predictably most handlers these days will try to work the simple serpentine from one side and manage without fail a fail rate somewhere between 60% and 95%. The fail rate was more at the 95% end of the scale in Denver. To determine fail rate we have to count any fault against the dog including wrong course, dropped bar, and refusal. Â
Here’s the real kicker, I can improve the success rate on the exercise in the range of 100% to 800% without teaching anybody any new movement. I simply make one suggestion. Run this again making yourself move in and out of the line of jumps, from one side to the other, with the dog.
Fast Dog Slow Dog
I begrudgingly accept certain systems of compensatory training because they are good training for the dog. I call these systems “compensatory†because they all hold as an objective to teach the dog independent performance without regard or reference to the handler. In other words, we are teaching the dog to compensate for either a counter-intuitive handling practice of no handler at all.
It’s easy to defend systems of compensatory training. For example it is highly desirable for the dog to learn the job of weaving a dozen poles without the handler having to dance alongside showing movement and direction for every bend in the poles. The trainer’s mission then is to teach the dog that the weave poles are a single obstacle and not a dozen obstacles.
In the serpentine, in order for a handler to effectively manage the dog’s movement from one side, it would be highly desirable to teach the performance as though it were a single obstacle with multiple elements, rather like the weave poles. There is a certain type of dog for whom this handling is ideal… the very fast dog. But when on course the dog should actually have a handler. That’s my observation. Â
Questions comments & impassioned speeches to Bud Houston: dogwoodbud1@earthlink.net. And Checkout my new publication the Idea Book – Agility Training for a Small Universe available at www.dogagility.org/store. Â
Re: Compensatory Training and Intuitive Handing
It is no secret that I approach the game pretty much exclusively as just "a game we play with our dogs on the weekend in the park."
Compensatory training is not even on the radar here, which means I represent another extreme, of not really doing ENOUGH training of the dog!
Though I personally enjoy understanding the game as completely as I possibly can and practising the finest execution I can muster at my place on the learning curve therein.
I don't train much, actually, we just play in fits and bursts as it suits and when the weather is not so much against us as it has been nearly ALL winter this season!
Some of that play is technical skill for the dog (at first) such as understanding a contact or weave performance, and some, a lot, is performance I have the power to create BY my movement.
It is a bad habit borne of living with working dogs whose performance in the field is fostered by excellent opportunity and proper facilitation, not training. (We can't 'train' an instinct, all we can do is provide opportunity for its expression, and shape the expression to suit the opportunities for our purpose, as in detection work. We don't 'train' the nose, but we do let it know WHAT and WHEN we want it to scent.)
Our 'training' thus, for agility, is one of facilitation.
I move with my dogs in the agility yard [we play] and reinforce the performances they offer, incrementally increasing criteria, distance, duration, accuracy and so on.
I of course, set them up to succeed at DOING the performance in the first place, so it is not totally without a 'plan!' But it is really only played on game days (weekends, say) and not a routine schedule of training. And our performance reflects that...we are not particularly competitive, but we have great fun and the hounds are very accurate!
Contemplating facilitation and this weekend game compelled me to look more carefully at the basic operant conditioning aspects of playing agility.
It occurred to me a while back, that what I have done for 25 some years with wild animals, is teach them one or two very simple behaviors (to get the game going, the "game" being the training "game" of making the animal feel it is worth his while to humor me in performance that may make little sense to him, but which is significant for health or behavioral management) and then move fairly directly to the most important or timely behavior I hope to get, and by planning the criteria to reflect as closely as possible, the final desired performance.
(In agility, a good example might be the difference between teaching weave pole performance with gates or wires or teaching them beginning with two poles at a time or channeled etc, the former being most closely resembling the final performance the dog will feel, that of six poles in line.)
Say we want a young antelope to step up on a rubber-lined aluminum slat ramp (eventually into stocks for medical exam), it is best scenario if I actually START with a piece of aluminum, as opposed to plastic or wood or some other material.
Aluminum and rubber might be more scary than a piece of wood, but the final performance will be very reliable if the animal's early experience begins with this more difficult material. All of his associations with the performance are THERE, in that aluminum ramp, and I won't have to RE-TEACH the behavior from a wood ramp to the scary aluminum one.
This has much to do with how animals form memory 'pictures' of each sensory component of their environment, but that is a whole 'nother topic, though perfectly applicable to HOW we teach agility performances too.
I may have to do some initial habituation with aluminum, which I may not have to do with wood because it is more pervasively natural to the antelope, and which typically has a better smell and visual aspect than aluminum, at least to most hoofstock!
So I am doing a little experiment, related, actually, to the other post on tandem turns and layered tandems.
I kept wondering whether a dog could rather naturally (from my movement) learn the turn away from me as easily as we can teach the turn to me, and that it might BE easier for the dog to learn this more "challenging" turn BEFORE having practised the body memory from a hundred front crosses.
Since dogs naturally turn TOWARD us during movement of counter rotation, even fairly poor counter rotation, it is an easy 'first behavior' to teach and master. (The dogs alwasy get it long before us, eh?!)
By the time we ask the dog to turn away, he has had hundreds of reps of turning toward, so his first response may simply be to spin around, and we use a lure or prompt to then reshape that turn away.
So I set up some nice open space and a couple jumps or tire and tunnel, and before 6 month Qwick has seen many front crosses, we do a couple jumps and I turn the corner without much ado, and he turns away and is now on my opposite lead hand and we go on. He thinks this is exactly how to move in a tandem turn (it is) because I moved well enough for him to 'get it' repeat it a few times.
He is so keen to the movement, it is not long before I can layer the obstacles, and here he is learning some distance work by default, not because I have been intending to train for it at this point, it just happens to be his experience while we mess around playing with the tandem turns and 'not training' per se.
I also find I am more cognisant of actually making a square corner, actually TURNING the corner, not some waffling interpretation of turning the corner, so it is good practise for me!
I find in a proofing step, say with a flip or front cross, my best bet is to give him a little lateral distance to start, and without any fanfare (no screeching "here!" or calling his name), I just DO the turn, front cross, say, and he comes along toward me, even if we have just patterned ten tandems away.
More is less, is a common mantra in behavior training circles...and my movement seems to work best if I manage to leave my voice or other fanfare (no hand signals yet either) out of it so the dog is not distracted and can just do what dogs do, which is from the Laws of Dog in Motion, that tendency to move when we move in path parallel to the handler.
After this initial experience has a bit of body memory with it ("a tandem turn feels like this; a front cross feels like that"), NOW I can increase speed or accuracy with a little voice to quicken the turn that is already following the path of my movement, or call the dog's name to encourage quick handler focus in a movement of counter rotation, perhaps to tighten his wrap around a jump or something.
I had just wondered what would happen if I exposed the pup to the more 'difficult' aspects first, a kind of back chaining, in essence, and happen to have a naive pup to try it with at this time!
But 'difficult' is relative. Without the body memory of conditioned reflex to turn toward me in front crosses (he has probably only seen a dozen FC so far in his life!), turning away, when my movement and timing is superb, comes quite easily without prompting with a lure. (I love lure training, btw, and use it in a lot of training as it suits, so this is not an attempt to avoid that!)
In short, I wanted to see what would happen if he learned to turn away, go out, and work at some distance first, before I start turning him in and teaching handler focus and lure hand, especially since all my dogs already KNOW lure hand, as they get fed treats from day one, just for being cute. They know what that lure hand looks like and what to do when they see it!
I haven't had the opportunity to try this with other dogs or handlers, but I will when I get the chance! And I wonder the possible benefits to the beginner handler as well, getting one traditionally-considered more difficult turn under their belt...maybe we would see a slew of handlers who can actually turn a corner! ???
And would we, gosh forbid...see less velcro dogs created by their velcro handler who feels hovering on the dog is what creates the performance?!
Or, perhaps such endeavor would be akin to asking for the sit-stay before the dog knows how to sit on cue. Even a complete novice can see the immediate effects of their rudimentary attempt at a front cross in turning the dog in toward them. There is a reason this is a 'foundation' exercise!
If most or many dogs would not really get the tandem turns easily on first tries, it could certainly be a counter productive choice!
But I am going to continue to play in my own strange way, and I am enjoying this weekend game with this pup who really only seems to need a little facilitation on my part to get good obstacle performance. The rest is all about my movement, and his mileage in 'reading' me, despite all my handling errors!
Barbara and The Symphony of Hounds (even the little black and white furry one!)