February 2020 -

Start with Intention

You’re waiting to go in the ring and you’re quickly using up all your treats trying to keep your dog focused. Your gaze shifts from your dog to the ring as you see another dog take the off course tunnel. Ugh. No one is getting through this course. You think, “Should I front and try to block the off course…no, no, I should definitely rear. I walked the rear cross, but I haven’t seen anyone get through it with a rear.” As your gut twists with anxiety, you snap back into the moment to see your dog now behind you with his nose glued to the ground. You scramble to regain the lost attention as the team before you races down the end-line.
You’re up.

You’re waiting to go in the ring and you take a breath. You take a moment to review your plan while keeping your eyes on your dog. You work through your favorite three behaviors to keep him engaged. You hear the crowd groan as another team bites the off course tunnel. You take another breath, reminding yourself that, “We’ve trained that tunnel trap before and the rear cross will set the right line.” Your plan is as good as it is going to be for this run. As the team before you finishes, you take one last deep breath.
You’re up.

Which pre-run experience would you rather have?

I thought so, I like the second one better too.

The first pre-run experience is hectic; the handler’s focus is split between watching the dog, considering the potential for an off course and waffling on her chosen plan. Being caught off guard by her dog sniffing causes extra stress and re-affirms the feeling that her dog isn’t focused either. Stepping to the line distracted and doubting the handling plan, this handler is likely to make a mistake on course.

The second pre-run experience is intentional; each time this handler reviews her plan she adds a breath – deep breaths cause the body to physically calm down. She keeps her attention on her partner and engages with him. Keeping the mind occupied helps block out distractions and thoughts of self-doubt. When briefly considering the dismal Q-rate so far, she reminds herself of successful practices and stays confident in her handling choice. This handler used her pre-run routine to get in the right mental space, and is more likely to execute her plan successfully.

When used correctly, routines can enhance your focus, reduce stress and, ultimately, increase the consistency and accuracy of your performance. I can’t promise that a pre-run routine will put your Q-rate at 100%. But,I know if you’re not taking the time to be intentional about your pre-run routine, you are missing out on Q’s and the fun of stress-free runs.

As you step to the line that exhilarating wave of adrenaline rushes through you, the question is – are you prepared? It’s a fallacy to assume your plan or your dog’s skills are the only factor determining your chance for success.

The moments before your run can have a huge impact on your success too.

Want to master your own pre-run routine?
Download our free Pre-Run Checklist – a guide to creating an effective pre-run routine!

A Habit I F*ing Failed At

Diane has a goal for 2020 – stop dropping f-bombs. I was mildly intrigued, and then I heard a podcast on living more positively. The podcast interviewee pointed out that curse words by nature are negative; profanities rarely add anything positive to a moment. Since I am big on cultivating positivity, this idea really hit home and I decided to set my own goal to stop using all curse words.

I immediately became hyper aware of my cursing. Every piece of colorful language that left my lips was followed by a gut-clench of true frustration. I was constantly muttering “gosh darn it, not again.” I told my friends of my valiant pursuit to clean up my act and began dropping “fudge nuggets” and “dagnabbits” into our conversations. As you can imagine, they were quite amused. I even kept a daily, mental total of cuss words used – probably around five most days (okay, some days more like eleven).

I gave myself a pass anytime I replayed a conversation I had with my advisor about my thesis. Like, have you ever tried to explain the complexities of agility to non-dog people while editing a 100+ page paper; swearing seems downright necessary to fully express the aggravation. Regardless, I was improving at my goal of cutting back on cussing.

Well, I thought I was improving. There came a day where my allotted passes blurred together and then I couldn’t really claim that I was on this mission. It dawned on me, I straight up f*ing failed.

Yet, Diane was succeeding. F-bombs were becoming rare. Why? We basically had the same goal. We should have been equally successful at eliminating this bad habit. By comparing our experiences, I’ve gained a few insights into what made the difference.

1. My goal (stop using all curse words) and Diane’s goal (stop using one curse word) might not sound different, but my goal was too drastic to try all at once.

2. Diane actually penalized herself a dollar for each f-bomb dropped. By counting dollars in the envelope, gave her a clear number how many times she failed. Plus, she plans to buy herself a gift with the “f-bomb fund” when she finally breaks the bad habit for good. Keeping track in my head just wasn’t effective and added to my frustration.

3. My environment wasn’t ideal. During this process, the people around me brought attention to my substitutions and they continued to curse a “normal” amount. Now, let’s be clear – their actions weren’t an intentional effort to thwart my progress, but going against the status quo is difficult. Being surrounded by your bad habit makes change harder.

4. I didn’t stay set a firm boundary for consistency. By allowing myself passes when I didn’t “feel like it” or was extremely frustrated, I undermined my own efforts. Diane keeps her envelope with her every day, everywhere she goes – even on vacation – and counted every word, even when cursing silently in her head.

New habits won’t stick if we don’t construct them to be maintainable. I totally f*ing failed at this habit because I didn’t take the time to create a successful system. However, I now know how to adjust my process to reapproach my habit change.

Dog Training Team

4 Steps for Purposeful Practice

It’s not training quantity that produces success.
It is training quality.

The question for us as trainers becomes, how do we create quality in our training sessions?

We often get tricked into thinking that lots of practice hours are productive and will automatically produce results. After all, we’ve heard that practicing a skill for 10,000 hours is the pathway to mastery. Well, while skill repetition is an important part of dog training, once a team reaches a certain level of competency, repetition no longer yields the same value.

On its own, repetition of what we already know will not lead to the improvement of a skill. The quality of practice becomes a critical component to forward progress. As we strive to achieve bigger and better goals, we need to increase the amount of intention we put into our training.

After years of trial and error, we have a four-step process to help us create a purposeful practice session every time. Each session includes a purpose, a challenge, boundaries, and a review of what was accomplished.

1. Identify a Purpose

Before a training session begins, we identify what should be trained. Without a purpose, the session may just be training. Determining your topic or what for a training session is the first key element in training for quality.

Be specific. You can make it simple – write down a weak obstacle skill that you want to improve. If you’re running a practice course, are you running to push for speed, to test a new handling move or to run clean? Another example of purpose might be to improve the accuracy of your dog’s weave entry when coming from a tunnel.

2. Create the Challenge

Once we have established what skill we are going to train, we create a short training set. The training session must focus on the skill and must contain a challenge.

A challenge is a different or new situation that causes struggle or failure. This can be as simple as aiming to complete the skill with accuracy and speed. Failure and imperfection are good signs in a practice session! They indicate that we are pushing the skill to become stronger and more diverse.

A challenge can be almost anything; such as adding distance, speed, a new layout of equipment, a new location, or any number of changing variables around the equipment.

In our weave entry example, we might alter the distance from tunnel to weaves or we might alter the shape of the tunnel from a ‘C’ to straight to get more speed.

3. Set Boundaries

Keeping the focus on a specific purpose or skill throughout a training session is the whole point of quality training. It requires us to set boundaries around what to reward and what criteria to maintain.

Before entering a training session, identify what behaviors you are looking to reinforce; what will you be rewarding and how? Are you using a mark/clicker? Are you using treats or a well placed toy? A few minutes of detailed thinking improves quality!

In our weave entry example, we would reward the first pole with a clicker mark. The focus is solely on the weave entry, which eliminates training other behaviors such the send to the tunnel or a sit stay.

When training our dogs, we often encounter a “pick your battles” situation. This happens when the dog presents an undesirable behavior while completing the skill you are training.

In the weave example, the dog may break the stay or pop the last pole. Now what? It’s easy to begin training multiple skills, the stay, the weave entry and 12 pole commitment within one training session. This creates an unproductive, frustrating training session for you and your teammate.

With a known purpose and boundaries, we would reward the weave entry and eliminate or reduce other issues. A restrained send eliminates the need for a wait. Using 6 poles instead of 12 eliminates the popping at 10. Those skills can go on the list to be deliberately addressed in their own training sessions.

4. Review

After the training session has ended, we take time to review the purpose, the challenge and boundaries that were set prior to the session.

We use this check-in to decide what to practice next!

Interested in seeing this process in action?
Keep an eye on the Agility and Beyond Facebook next Tuesday (2/18) to join Kat for a training session with her up-and-coming super star, Flash!

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