Clean Run - October 2016 - 13

Novice and Beyond- A Survival Guide: Good Contacts Gone Bad © LesLey Mattuchio, www.pbase.coM/LesLeyLou By Sandy Rogers Today I had a conversation with a student about contacts holding up in the trial environment. At my school we work hard to keep students from entering trials until their dogs are trained really well, because we want our students' dogs to have behaviors that are solid enough they won't fall apart with all the excitement and distractions that come with trialing. We also hope that the training will be able to stand up to the test of time-heck, we may want to show these dogs for eight years-a long time to maintain a behavior! The topic of the conversation was this: can contact performances be trained well enough to hold up forever in trialing? My answer is an easy, no. Every dog, in my opinion, is at risk of failing to maintain criteria, even if the dog was expertly and completely trained. "Wow, what made the difference for her this time?" "What were the influences on this incorrect rep that might have been different from the last correct rep?" It will take practice to get good at seeing or feeling those differences. The very nature of competing can, and will, erode many behaviors, not just contacts. There are ways to minimize the deterioration of the performance and there are ways to accelerate it. Let's look at how and why a 2-on/2-off contact performance can get lost in translation at trials and what to do about it. I think you will be able to translate much of what I cover here into other areas of training, even running contacts, weave poles, and turn cues. * How hard are you running? Best Bet Your best bet is to have your dog trained and proofed. If your dog makes mistakes on his contacts and you think "he knows that, he is just choosing not to do it," you are in a big pickle! While you are spending time and energy convincing yourself that your dog knows something he does not know, you're missing the point. You are not "hearing" what your dog is telling you. If he "knows" a behavior reliably on cue, he will do it reliably on cue; period. It is very common to have a situational performance (we all do from time to time), meaning the dog knows his job in many scenarios, but not all of them. Keep your head parked in "facts-land" if you can. Instead of thinking "he knows that," ask yourself questions, like October 16 | Clean Run Learn To Be Self-Aware The first step in honing this skill is to be as self-aware at possible. If you try to notice the answers to the questions listed below with each repetition you do, you will soon get clear about the elements of your successful and failed attempts. Then you can work on specific aspects of your training project. * How far off the dog and obstacle are you laterally? * How far ahead of or behind the dog are you? * Do you stop moving before the dog is supposed to stop moving? If so, are you trying to do that? * Are you always stopping at the same time the dog should be stopping? * Are you being consistent with your verbal commands? * Are you using the same voice inflection for your commands, or do they mirror your emotions? * Do you peel off as the dog is executing the obstacle, or do you attempt to maintain the same distance that you were from him when he got on the obstacle? * Where are you looking? * Are you using your hands to get the behavior (pointing, for example)? * Are you always releasing your dog from the same position, with BOTH of his front paws on the ground? * And, are all of the above intentional and desired, or not? 13 http://www.pbase.coM/LesLeyLou

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run - October 2016