Today I decided to work on TEAM three with Brito. I worked on every exercise except for the stay while moving equipment. Can you see it – all of the small pieces that were addressed? The video below is the unedited end result.
Some of the session went well and plenty went wrong. That’s okay because the nature of dog training and learning involve both success and failure! There is nothing to worry about unless either the dog or handler become distressed.
If you watch with care, you’ll see what +r trainers mean when we say “proofing” exercises. Note that I don’t use any hand signals and that I’m asking him to perform “out of context” (for example to go around a cone from front position). That is because I’m working to improve his verbal responses. Note that he struggles! Sometimes struggle is part of learning. On the other hand, I know that when I reincorporate hand signals, then the exercise will feel far easier for him than it did before we worked on this skill.
A couple of times he disengaged. That’s fine too! It’s up to me to look at what happened before that, and make appropriate changes so that I can minimize those events in the future.
While not shown in this video, Brito’s next session in the evening was set up to be an easy one. Asked to differentiate between only four verbal cues from random positions and out of various patterns, his success rate was about 95% (Fly, heel, come, side). What should we do next?
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