Practice practicing
Kay Laurence
August 2008
This has been an extraordinary week for Team GB at the Olympics with the level of success surpassing expectations. The noticeable difference between 12 years ago and today is the amount of funding in the sports. A sceptic estimated the £m spent to gain each gold, but direct funding does allow each athlete to be able to spend more hours practicing, in addition to more specialised coaching, physiotherapy, equipment etc.
Our classes come by on a weekly or monthly basis and regular participants can be separated into two distinct groups: those who practice and those who don’t. Very often our class participants are coming for a day of quality time spent with their dog, or exploring new skills or just a social event with people of similar interests. Or they are coming to learn new skills, have personal ambitions and goals, or are really hooked on training their dog. The danger comes when the first group think they deserve the results of the second group. This pressure can often force them to seek short cuts, or last minute training to avoid embarrassment.
You may regard practicing as a necessary evil. Too often our childhood is littered with tight lipped teachers demonstrating frustration at our lack of practice. Of course it could never have been “enough”. I think this negative association needs to be turned around – you can shape your view of practice quite easily, and certainly practicing with the dog is one of the most motivating, breathtaking experiences you can enjoy with them.
On TV recently there was a series “The Making of Me”. This followed three celebrities: John Barrowman (Entertainer) , Colin Jackson (Olympic Hurdler), Vanessa Mae (Concert Violinist) looking at the components that contributed to their success. This included genetic elements, the question of nurture vs nature, personalities, brain functions and some wonderful myths! Interestingly the nurture element featured more highly than either Colin or Vanessa has previously credited. Dispelling the myth that the talent was “God given” or they were born with it. What did emerge was their passion for practice, and very possibly whatever they had applied this passion to they would have exceed average and excelled in that field. I was astonished that Vanessa, as a 6 year old, practiced 6-8 hours a day, because she wanted to. Not the average 6 year old.
Over thirty years in the dog business has given me the view on many different types of trainers. Surprisingly the most successful, either in multiple dogs, high sports achievement or harmonious living have come from not from the gifted trainers, but the trainers who had a passion for practice. The gifted trainer, lacking this discipline to practice will often not enjoy success.
I would like to light the passion for practice in everyone that enjoys dog time. You may need to practice your own skills, or take the dog through practice sessions to build their skills. Sometimes you can set up both together. If a person has a history of positive practice experience they will bring that to dog training. We have people with backgrounds in music, playing an instrument, art, singing, sports, crafts etc., and their ability to practice is a noticeable, and generalising skill. The dog moves forward very quickly, and they are aware of the discipline it takes to improve.
The Facts of Practice
- It needs to be done regularly as brushing your teeth. There is no substitute for daily practice.
- Good focus is essential.
- You need a plan.
- You need to keep records of progress.
- Good energy.
1. Regular practice
Think of all the tasks that you perform on a daily basis – and have done for most of your adult life. Simple skills like filling the kettle, doing up your coat, feeding the dogs, getting in and out of the car. These have become competent and to the point that you no longer give them conscious brain space. Your muscle movements have become clustered into patterns, you have the ability for fine precision. It only takes one element to be different for the whole pattern to become disturbed: the coat buttons the opposite way, the cold water tap has changed, you get in and out of the opposite door of the car.
Many skills and interactions we want the dogs to have need to become patterned in the same way: the ability to respond without hesitation, to ignore what is not life threatening, to keep focus in tricky situations. These skills can only emerge from regular practice of the smaller components.
You cannot make up time on practice. If you are required to invest in 3 hours per week, that needs to be 30 minute per day with one day off (the day of the lesson) you cannot get the same result with 3 hours on the day before the lesson. The brain and the body does not function on long intense learning, it succeeds on repetitions of small patterns that cluster into larger collections.
Budget your training to what you know you can achieve for 6 of your 7 days a week. If you only have 10 minutes of one or tow days, then make sure you have that time every day. Work to the minimal, regularly guaranteed time allowance.
2. Good focus
If you only apply half your mind to the training/practice you are very likely to get poor results or inadvertently reinforce errors. Then you need to spend that same amount of time undoing the error, and the same amount of time teaching the correct skill, and even then there is always the inclination to return to first learning. Now your practice has taken on a prevention flavour, not a teaching flavour.
The dog will always detect your focus. If you are only running on 70% because today’s work is impinging on your concentration, or the family demands are hammering away, then the dog will learn to recognise the symptoms of your slow response to their effort or error.
The skill, your learning, and both you and the dog deserve 100% concentration by the removal of distraction and the mental discipline to get into the lesson.
I would suggest that if you cannot deliver that, then do not practice. But learning to practice IS learning to focus for the duration, I would only advise you skip practice in the event of major disasters. Use the opportunity to learn your mental discipline. Once this skill is established a practice session can deliver a great break from every day stresses and leave you refreshed. If it is a challenge to learn this discipline take on easy tasks, such as tossing treat games to engage you.
At all costs avoid training where you are self conscious of other people watching you. This can seriously affect your behaviour, and become a major disruptor of your patterns. Do not set yourself up to train if you are conscious of judgemental spectators. When you have the self confidence in what you have trained you will want to practice the end results for all to see. Beat that! It is an excellent measure of “job done”.
3. You need a plan.
Without a plan you can become a time waster. In your fixed time allowed, schedule what you know you can achieve, a warm up time (physical and mental), break down the elements in the components of the behaviour, the skills (of both you and the dog), and the cool down time. I can plan a one hour session in the Barn or a ten minute session in the kitchen with all those elements.
4. You need to keep records of progress.
I can be training up to 5 dogs a week. Each have their own training plans. Before the session begins I refresh what I am going to be working on, and at the end of every element I make notes of the level of success (I use marks out of 10), anything I particularly need to watch for on the next session. My overall plan gives me the route, but my daily report shows me the surface of the road, and passing scenery. I will often notice the behaviour going off track and make a note that it may lead to another new behaviour.
5. Good energy.
Back to the myths and rules of dog training: “always finish a session on a good note”. Bah! Why should there ever have been a “bad note” in the session? Back to the days of punishment, conflict, mis-communication. Practice sessions, or training as we call it, should be 100% “good notes”. If bad notes occur they are only accidents, and a dog with a history of good notes will quickly forgive error.
If your mental mood is not what it should be – then focus, clean up, and get your mind into gear. This IS the key to successful practice. If you feel a lethargy towards practice talk yourself out of it. Whatever prevents you from spending those ultra-quality minutes with your dog, kick it out, it ain’t more important! (And you can quote me to the spouse, teenage child, work demands, garden demands, personal guilt fest – “Your dog deserves your time”)
Session Samples from this week
Speck. Currently building a new routine for HTM competition. 3 years old, extensive repertoire. Good energy for food, established behaviours and very intense response for toys.
Kitchen Session: (15 minutes)
Warm Up:
Repetitions of spin and turn moves to relevant heel positions, getting faster over a couple of minutes: reinforcement from every one to one in five.
Teaching moving backwards into the heel position:
Covering the gap between the cooker and the cupboard door, about 3 feet/1m: showing some wobble, straight line and confidence still needed. Stronger on left than right. Maybe something around the cooker?
100 a day: left paw wave right paw wave:
Discriminating between the two, avoiding anticipation, adding the verbal cues. Old cue still needed, plenty R+ for waiting for cue.
Cool down:
Hair around feet trimming.
Barn Session (1 hour)
My skills:
Moving to music, learning step patterns and planning choreography. Practicing props handling.
Warm Up:
favourite behaviours using excess opening energy.
High energy movements around room, focusing on snatched cues for changes.
Low energy behaviours – reinforcing stillness and self control
Kitchen session of L & R paws.
Extending generalisation of backing to heel position around different locations.
Playing with toy and music. Experimenting with choreography.
Cool down:
Settled by side whilst writing notes. (10 minutes).
Flink: 2 year old. Learning Wag-Agility and play control. Maintains excellent focus and even energy.
Field Session on Equipment: 20 minutes.
Warm up: Walk down to field, hanging out whilst equipment set up.
Food training on walkovers. Stopping and cueing my response.
Cavaletti teaching “go ahead” cue.
100 a day: Weave channel repetition with very slight dodge movement.
Toy for self control and focus.
Cool Down: Field walk.
This is a snapshot of these dogs’ sessions for this week. In two weeks you would see their progress by the change in behaviours trained, or the linking together of behaviours.
Learning what you need to include, to what standard and how to generalise is part of your tuition. Your coach or teacher should identify what needs to be focussed on, and you need to find an overall balance between sports skills, internal skills (such as impulse control) and life skills that need regular time.
Course and classes run at Wag More will introduce an Expected Time Investment element to let you know what is expected to be able to gain the full benefit of any course, class or workshop.
I personally found piano practice tedious; it interrupted my very important social life. But training a dog guarantees results. I have never seen dog training not give a high return on the investment. Not only do the dogs blossom from the time you spend with them, but the behaviours and skills shoot forward and their progress will never let you down. THEY love practice!
Before you start to get hot under the collar about the variation in spelling of “practice” and “practise”, THE correct spelling in UK English that differentiates between the noun: “a practice”, such as a medical surgery, and the verb: “to practise”. But quite frankly this sailed over my head 30 years ago, and I do not think using the variations in any way helps communication in our limited world of dog training. You do not have to email me to notify me of my error. I am making a stand for standardisation.
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