Within this series of articles I have been covering the beginning
work relative to raising a competitive working dog. The goal of our foundation
work is to raise a dog that is strong and confident, active in his drives
and highly motivated.
Over most of the previous ten articles we have covered the mechanics of individual exercises. Before continuing on with additional exercises or portions of the sport of Schutzhund I feel a need to discuss the intangibles.
The intangibles are the concepts, techniques and communication skills necessary for you to fully achieve the results you desire with your dog. If you have been following along, I have touched on some of these points already. But without these concepts you can end up with a dog that knows an exercise but not reliably. A dog whose ratios of success to failure for any given exercise is weighted on the failure side. A dog who "runs out" of drive in trial. It's a situation seen frequently on any trial field on any given weekend.
Webster's defines intangible as "incapable of being defined or determined with certainty or precision." It is an appropriate word because when I try to explain these points I frequently get blank stares in return and failure to put the concepts in action while training. Thus, I assume either it is a difficult viewpoint to understand or I fail to make it comprehensible. Either way, a solid attempt will be made in this issue to do just that.
Graduate to the Next Level
When you learned math, you were first taught addition, then subtraction, onto division, multiplication, and so on. Your 4th grade math class did not cover algebra. Understandably this difficult subject was taught to you at a more advanced age and mental state. Teaching your dog is no different than teaching you. The brain, regardless of mammal species, learns in a very similar manner. There are scientifically proven neurological and chemical reasons for everything we do, experience and feel. The essential processes involved in learning new skills that are true for you are true for your dog.
The emphasis a person received as a child, the direction they were encouraged, frequently determines the path they choose as adults. The same is true for dogs. If we have raised our dogs in drive, for drive, they grow up to have drive. If we have raised our dogs to be with us, look for us, work with us they will grow up to do the same.
Dogs are not machines. They do not respond to our demands out of a mechanical reaction. They do so because we have given them a reason to respond. If your reasons tend to be corrective rather than rewarding, your dog will respond appropriately. If your training changes depending on your mood - sometimes the dog gets corrected, sometimes rewarded, sometimes nothing all for the same behavior - your dog will respond in kind.
Going back to the example of our learning path from kindergarten to university, we must also graduate our training techniques to match our dog's level of maturity and complexity
Reward Effort with Communication
Schutzhund is a graded sport not pass or fail. If a dog does an exercise, the finish for example, the dog receives points. The quality of that finish determines how many points. Our first goal when trialing should be to survive and pass. Before we can dream of V scores, we must first pass the trial. So it stands to reason that any effort the dog gives us towards our request should be rewarded.
However that reward is graded depending on the quality of performance. When the handler asks their dog to finish and the dog ends up out of position what does the handler do? Does the handler give the dog his toy? Does the handler correct the dog? Does the handler praise the dog? What is the appropriate way to respond to the dog's execution of the command?
The handler should first acknowledge the dog's effort. You do this with a kind face, a kind tone of voice and tell the dog "that's good, but you can do better." Literally. Then the handler should show the dog what perfect is with a kind face and a kind hand. Then tell the dog "that's right, this is fuss." Literally. Then you step in front of the dog and request the finish again. If the dog ends up again crooked, repeat the steps above. If the dog ends up in perfect position the dog should receive the big reward, whatever the big reward may be for your dog.
If after three or four tries to get perfect, the dog doesn't achieve it then the handler should curve the grade and reward the dog for something better than what he has been doing, even if it's not perfect.
Did I lose you on that concept? Let's back up a little, when you first teach your puppy the sit, the puppy is rewarded regardless of how he sat or how we got him to sit. We don't withhold reward from the puppy because he didn't sit fast enough or straight enough. That would be silly, he has no idea that's what we may want when he doesn't know sit to begin with. Instead as he learns we begin to ask for that straight and fast sit.
Thus if it is difficult for your dog to achieve perfect then he is not ready for it. He must first do better than what he had been doing and when he does that reliably we ask for a little bit more. And so on. Until the dog can reliably perform the request perfectly. We do not put the child in high school before he has attended junior high.
Communication
Dogs are not stupid. They just don't understand English. When you try to communicate with someone that doesn't speak English, you attempt to make your point by any means necessary. The same is true for our dogs. It is not the dog's responsibility to understand us. It is our responsibility to achieve communication with our dog. We are the one that wants to compete in this sport, under these rules, with these exercises, not the dog.
Canines communicate by body posture, physical cues and gestures as well as sounds. To communicate with your dog you must do the same in addition to speaking English. If you want your dog to be happy and in drive, YOU must be happy and in drive. A stick in the mud handler will have a stick in the mud dog.
Now this does not necessarily mean you have to run and jump around all the time. That's not acceptable behavior from the handler during a trial. But it does mean when you train your dog you the handler learn, foster and teach effective communication graduating to means you can use in trial. If I smile at my puppy he has no concept of what that behavior means. But when I train my young dog and I praise him and play with him and talk to him, I smile. And when I trial my adult dog and I smile after his excellent retrieve he knows what I mean. He knows I am pleased.
And he has learned through the graded system of teaching that if I am pleased he will get his reward. And he has learned through the graded system of teaching that if he keeps trying, keeps working he will get his reward.
Driving the Handler
The dog learns to keep trying, to keep working to earn his reward by driving the handler. This is not a new idea and certainly not an original thought of mine. It is the concept missing from 95% of the performances in obedience.
The most common picture seen on the obedience training field is the handler trying to keep the dog up and in drive. The handler makes noises while heeling, walks very fast, and handles the dog in a hectic manner. Frequently the handler also gets the toy out, usually something on a rope, and continues this hectic behavior. Making the dog miss most of the time and even when the dog finally is allowed to catch his toy the fact that it's on a rope makes it very difficult.
The dog's response, and more to the point a Rottweiler's response, to this handling technique is to lose focus within the first 20 steps of heeling and to not care if he gets his toy or not. And who can blame the dog?
If you can't heel 5 paces without doing something to keep your dog's attention you sure as heck aren't going to be heeling in drive for the entire routine. Basically your dog does not understand the concept of heeling in drive. If you make your dog work and work and work and then make him work some more just to get his reward, he will stop working. You know what days you get paid, you know how to deposit that check. Give your dog the same peace of mind.
We must graduate our training in relation to the maturity and level of experience of the dog in addition to the difficulty of the exercise being taught. The first day we heel with our dog we don't do 40 paces - we heel one step. One simple step with attention and correct position. Then we reward the dog, allow the dog his paycheck. One hundred times of one step fuss, reward. One step fuss, reward. When you take two steps fuss the dog is conditioned to believe his reward will be there. And through that conditioning we've gained some level of trust from the dog. Trust that the reward will come. Trust that he can easily cash his paycheck. The fact that we add an extra step in is not noticed by the dog based on this level of expectation and conditioning we've developed.
But at five steps fuss the dog wonders if he's working overtime. Our response must be four steps fuss, reward. It must be to continue building the dog's conditioned response. If instead you do ten steps fuss - the dog will go on strike and we will lose the trust we had been carefully building. And it will take twice as long and be twice as hard to rebuild to the same level we just lost.
Using the same concept applied to the practical exercise of heeling in the group. Attention is very important and key to the dog's performance in the group. It is natural for all dogs to look at and investigate the people however. When teaching heeling in the group we must again build the dog's level of expectation and conditioned response to working for his reward. Start small and build slowly upwards. As you heel towards the group before your dog looks away he is rewarded. Over and over and over again. Count your steps and know at what point you're paying the dog. As that becomes conditioned heel a few more steps towards the group and then pay your dog. Over and over again. We continue this method until we can heel into the group, perform our two turns, halt and heel out. We train towards that final goal one step at a time. Only after many times of heeling into the group, performing our two turns, a halt and heeling out with reward would we be begin to proof the dog's understanding of the exercise. You can't prove an understanding if there is no concept first learned. And you can't correct a dog for something he does not know. After sessions of proofing you return to your foundation and reward the dog as you approach the group. By these means you build drive through the exercises, the group becomes a possible location of reward to the dog. And in trial he will increase his drive based on that expectation of conditioned response we have built.
Because we have also taught the dog that we appreciate his efforts, that we reward based on performance level he will continue to work in drive. Even though we have not been able to give him his big reward during our trial performance, we have been able to communicate our pleasure in his work. And we have taught our dog what those simple communications mean in our training. All these points add together resulting in a dog that drives the handler. A dog that never "runs out" of drive. A dog who continues to show his best effort because he believes that his efforts will be rewarded. A dog who clearly understands his exercises to the best of our abilities in teaching them. A dog whose ratio of success to failure is weighted on the side of success.
