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Reflecting on the past and Looking Forward to the Future We made it to the end of 2008! Hopefully you achieved your obedience goals for the year and have started planning new one for the coming year. It is a good idea to do some reflection from time to time and when better than now! It is a good idea to keep detailed records when you are competing, even at the Novice level to assist you in these reflections. You can look at what skills you failed the most often and where you consistently lost points. This does require you to stay until after the class ends to ask the judge for details. I always encourage my Novice students to get into this habit of politely asking the judge for a breakdown of their scores. Most judges are very willing to do this. Once you have this information, you can form your training strategies. I personally am very bad at keeping good records and should make this one of my many New Years Resolutions. I had to download Echo’s AKC records to see the last several months of scores while I was finishing his OTCH. I have friends who keep detailed records; information on the judges, location, hotel, heeling pattern and break down of scores, etc. I need to follow my own suggestion and do a better job at this! Once you have identified a training issue, you can begin to look for strategies to improve it. For example, say your dog does not do the drop when told on the drop on recall exercise. If this happens once at a show, I figure it is a fluke. If it happens twice at a show, I know there is a training issue. If it is happening in training consistently, I wouldn’t be showing in Open yet! The next step is to try to figure out what the issue is that is causing the dog not to drop. Examine your signal or command, which one works best; was your signal too fast; was the movement outside of your body silhouette, so the dog could see it; was your verbal too soft, too gruff compared to training; how about attention issues-did your dog look away both times when giving verbal command or signaling it to drop; has the dog been proofed prior to going into the show environment? Is the dog used to a person standing next to it or behind it like the judge does in the ring? Does the dog totally understand the exercise? These are some of the things that could make the dog fail this exercise. Once you identify the problem, then you can address it. Each one of us will be setting new goals for 2009. Sometimes the goal may be to attempt a new class, such as entering Open for the first time. Some of us will be working on improving a training issue and then testing it out in real ring conditions to see if we’ve made any progress. Whatever your goals for the new year, make them realistic and enjoyable. Remember, your dog just loves the extra attention they get from training, the extra treats and the intellectual challenges. It is your job as the trainer to make sure they have the adequate training and experiences before entering the ring. Enjoy the journey and enjoy the special time and relationship you build with your dog as your train! Happy Training and showing in 2009! |
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