Training Plan

I had a bit of a rant yesterday about pushy / ill timed advice and bad dog trainers. Today I’ll tell you a bit about my training plan. I had been thinking along these lines for months, but it didn’t come together as a fully formed idea until I was hit by an inspiration particle* at tracking the beginning of May.

This idea still wasn’t a plan, it was just an idea. I ran it past some people on the CU_Support forum and writing the e-mail helped clarify my thoughts a lot. The feedback was encouraging too. I then spent some time writing it out as a detailed, step by step plan. I put each step on the left side of the page, with space for notes on the right. I ended up with 34 steps and a better idea of how to implement training and the ability to track progress. It will also get modified as I go and see how Amika is doing.

The goal I was thinking of when I created the plan was getting Amika to the start of a track (at tracking training) in a controlled fashion. At the moment she gets so anxious knowing that there is a track out there -waiting- that she wears herself out and looses her ability to think clearly between the car and the start flag. She also tows me around and completely ignores me, which I don’t like.

In writing up the plan, I had to deal with the usual problematic distractions (namely the environment and people) and her lack of self control and escalating anxiety / excitement in the face of something she wants and gets excited about. These are our fundamental problems. So focusing on training for this one task at tracking directly addresses all of the biggest issues in our lives except other dogs. It indirectly addresses dogs because self control / anxiety / excitement is part of her problem with them.

The plan itself is based mostly on stuff in the book “Control Unleashed” by Leslie McDevitt. It centres around mat games and targeting, on / off switch games and more. It isn’t a simple plan, but rather an amalgamation of half a dozen individual training ‘games’ into a series of steps. The idea is to introduce Amika to some new games with a set rule structure. Once she knows the game, it gets more challenging as well as more rewarding and fun. Then we gradually bring in more and more distractions. The end goal is a dog working alongside former distractions in a focussed manner.

We’re up to step 10, which is where she can run to find her mat at the park, wait there for a reward, stay there while I do stuff for seconds on end and then come back, call her to heel off the mat for several steps at a time, handle her harness and lead (which is dragging) while she waits and then send her back to the mat (or the car) again. In the midst of this stuff, I’ll tell her to take sniff break and I’ll run off with her mat- which gets her back into playing straight away!

So we’re still just starting out with this plan of attack, but it is working well so far. I have a responsive, attentive dog at our quiet little training park. The game we’re playing has us working on recalls, targeting, getting excited and then calming down (off switch) and just generally being focused. And a big bonus for me is that I’m enthusiastic to try it all out and see what happens. I now have a plan I can follow and can apply all my creativity to solving problems along the way and modifying the plan as needed.

And if it doesn’t work out, I’ll seek advice from more experts.

(*From a Terry Pratchet Discworld book.)