개 훈련에서 결과가 보이지 않나요? 학습의 레이어가 현실 세계의 성공으로 이어지는 이유 #307

play dog agility, or you might have a dog that does the bitey sports, or a dog that might use their nose or their eyes for hunting events. Lure coursing, where a dog chases a lure around a course. Fly ball, something that my dog thisy absolutely loves. So, your real world success, your vision of that may evolve. But here's the thing that I noticed when my vision of real world success evolved for my dog is this, when the layers of learning are in place, that carries over to anything that I want to do with that dog. So, what are those layers of learning? Well, we've talked about them so many times here on the podcast, but just as a reminder, I'm going to start with five C's. So, no matter what it is you want to train your dog to do, no matter what sport you're working in, no matter what behavior or trick you are trying to teach your dog, the five C's are all important. And so, it starts with connection. All dog training should start with connection. That means you have a dog who's engaged with you. They know you are going into the training den if it's a new puppy and that that's where engagement and focus begins. How do they know that? Because you've consistently played games that create that focus. You don't have to walk around telling the dog, watch me, I ease up. They know when they go into this environment, good things are happening. Now, if you're saying, yeah, but that happens in my environment, but it doesn't happen out on the street. We'll get to that. Connection, the first layer. Then we work on clarity. The clarity of the skill you want to teach. It could be a trick. It could be a skill for a sport. It could be something like loose leash walking for that amazing family pet. We then work on, we've got that dog understanding. We've got some clarity. We've got to work on the dog's confidence. You can do this for either a longer duration, a period, or you can do this with milder distractions. You can do this if I change your environment and I take you out of my training den and we go to the living room. You can do this. Pumping up that dog's confidence so that you have amazing behavior. The dog is having fun. They love the game. They're showing you how amazing they are. They've got connection with you. That's how it starts. That grows into clarity of what you want and them demonstrating it in different environments means they have confidence in the skill. Now we're going to go to the fourth C and that is challenge that dog. We're going to say, how well do you know this? I'm going to go to a brand new, I'm going outside the house. I'm going to

add new distractions. We're really going to pump up the challenge that dogs are going to be like, yeah, I got it. You taught me how to retrieve like a flying disc or a ball or whatever it is that you have thrown. And I got it. It doesn't matter where we do it. I've got it. I'm engaged. I love the game. I know it involves you. I know it goes through you. We're on it. Now you can go to the top of that 5C pyramid and add complexity. What does complexity look like? Well, maybe you're hiding something and the dog has to go find it. If we're working on finding a retrieve, maybe you are putting other obstacles out there to confuse the dog. And you might throw something that you want them to retrieve in a pile of other things that they're not sure what they are, or they might be really attracted to them. Complexity can take all different looks, sights, sounds, and smells. It's taking your distractions and amping them all the way up. All right. 5Cs. You've heard me talk about this so many times, but those 5Cs are so important because let's talk about the number one thing we really want from a dog. And that is focus. When a dog is focused on you, we would call that a connected dog, right? Now they don't have to be like riveted, their eyes staring, that you might be walking down the street. They might be looking about, but if there's a distraction, they look at you. They're like, they're connected. So, a dog that is looking to their owner, connected dog. Now the dog that you now say, we're going to do agility, or we're going to do fly ball, we're going to do obedience. And the dog immediately recognizes the antecedents that create their knowledge. They're doing something different. The connection now will go to the sport, will go to what it is you want them to be focused on. It doesn't mean they are 100% disconnected from you because if you just said their name or tapped their head or asked for a hand target, yes, I recognize the sport starts with the connection to you. And now we start to work. So, we've got the dog who's focused for their owner. That's the connected dog. Focus for work. That's the driven dog. What if the dog is now focused for distractions? What do we call that dog? Some people might call them jerks. Some people might call them playing on their own agenda. Some people might call them over the top. What if we called them things like detached? Why is that dog detached? They're detached from the work. They're detached from you. What if we called them environmentally challenged, over aroused, over excited, over stimulated,

overwhelmed by the environment they find themselves in. Remember our dogs are doing the best they can with the education they've been given in the environment they've been put in. How do we get here? How do we get to a place where I had a connected dog and now I've gone to that dog has more focus for the distractions than they do for me. They are environmentally overwhelmed. A dog can't be driven for work if they are detached from their owners. I'm going to say that again because some people have agility dogs that they're so excited that they bust out of their collar and they don't even wait at the start line. They're so excited they go. That is not a dog focused for work. That is a dog that is detached from their owners. And let me tell you, how does it happen? It happened because somewhere along the way you were willing to give up part of the five C's. You know, there's a fellow that I used to read everything he wrote when I was a young adult, a man by the name of Zig Ziglar. And he had this great quote. And that is, the biggest reason for people's lack of success in life is their willingness to give up what they want most of all for what they want right now. So, if your dog has become detached, if you had a connected dog and you maybe had a dog who was driven for work and they've turned into a detached dog, a dog who is, maybe they're doing the work. Maybe they're chasing the birds in the field, but they're chasing them on their own. They are no longer checking in. They no longer are following your guidelines. Or maybe you would just have a dog that they go out to do agility and they say, I see a pond. I'm gone. Environmentally overwhelmed or detached. You need to think of that dog with adjectives that take away blame or judgment from who that dog is. Because who they are is what we created them to be. Our dogs are a reflection of our ability to train. So, how did we get to that place? Because there's a question you need to ask yourself. And this is a question I asked myself when I went to my second go-to-ground trial with my Jack Russell. When she realized where we were and she started to do this guttural terrier scream, and she started pulling on the leash because she wanted to go to the hunt area. And the little voice in my head said to me, will this behavior I'm allowing take me closer or further away from my real life success? Remember my real life success was I wanted an amazing family pet. One I could go hiking with. But the dog that I saw at my second go-to-ground event was a dog who now said, I love it. I want some more of it. A dog who said,

my focus for you has now gone to be focused for what I want. And if I said, oh, I love that my dog love this stuff now. And I just let her pull me in, there would have been established a time when what you want has nothing to do with me. And that is a slippery slope to not having success in the real world. So, what did I do? I took her back towards the car and I asked her to play some games with me. Eventually I got to a place where all of my terriers and I did trial, I actually was the U.S. national go-to-ground champion with one of my terriers. They had to walk in heel position. Now I probably could have even said, you have to be quiet. You couldn't make those terrier screams. I wasn't willing to go that far. I said, you had to walk in heel position. You had to sit. I had to unclip your leash and you had to hold that position. Then you were allowed to do what you wanted to do. Then I had a dog that was no longer detached. I then had part of the process. What you love most of all, going down that hole to find the rats. You get through me. I'm part of this. I'm not a boat anchor that's holding you back from getting there as fast as you'd like to get there. And so, if your dog is not listening in agility, they are not holding their position at the start line, they won't come back to you, that didn't happen overnight. That happened in small little releases on your part, small releases of the connection that you allowed to go because you fell in love with seeing your dog do the thing. I don't care if the thing is biting a sleeve. I don't care if the thing is hunting ducks. I don't care if the thing is herding sheep. I don't care if the thing is jumping over sticks and going through tunnels. You relinquished you as part of the process of doing the thing. Now you are more of an anchor to a wall at the thing. You are more what unclips the leash to allow the dog to do the thing. You are not part of the thing. The value the dog has for the thing is no longer going through you. So, when I play agility and my dog's finished the last jump, they don't run off and try to herd the other dog. They don't circle the ring, but nor do they try to get out of the collar so fast so that they can take the first jump. Why? Because the five C's dictated that everything starts with connection. And that the clarity of what I expect at the start line, it starts with the dog sitting up straight somewhere in the first, I don't know, few repetitions of them doing a sequence with a border collie. It wants to be slinking and pulsing so that they can leave. That's not

the clarity that I had in mind. So, that little voice in my head comes back. Is the behavior I'm seeing going to hurt or contribute to my vision of what real life success looks like for us? And it will happen so small the first time. It might be you ask your dog to sit and instead of their feet together, their feet split apart. It might be that the dog stands up and instead of coming back and playing a few games to restart them, you just stood back at the first jump and say, Hey, Hey, Hey, sit. Why did you do that? Because the enjoyment or the reinforcement you get for watching the dog do the things was more important than seeing the dog do the start line correctly. You were willing to give up what you want most of all, and that is connection to the dog while you did the thing. You were willing to give that up for what you wanted right now, which was seeing your dog do a sequence or watching your dog chase a lure or watching your dog focus in on a bird or a sleeve. It doesn't happen overnight, but when it starts happening, the dogs who are brilliant at patterns of reinforcement, those dogs start changing another boundary and another boundary and another boundary. So, how do you get it back? In our Connected Dog series that we ran last week, there were so many people that asked this question, What game do I have to play to get my dog to stop? Boom. There were so many fill in the blanks. What game do I have to play to get my dog to stop reacting at other dogs on leash? What game do I have to play to get my dog to stop jumping on my mother-in-law when she comes to the door? No single game is a panacea to anything. It's layers of learning. Every game, starting with probably crate games and it's your choice. Every game has the five C's baked into the recipe and you keep and rework those five C's. So, no matter what it is, you are part of the thing. Because what we're ultimately doing is building an amazing relationship with our dogs. Because we want them to work with us. We want to be connected. We want them to be focused and driven for work, but not at the expense of the detachment from us. Relationships take time. They start with one layer. Then that one layer is in our world, is it the first game? It's your choice, crate games. And then it goes to the next layer. In our world, probably collar grab. It goes to the next layer. We keep building until I'm competing at the world championships with my dogs because of all those intentional layers that were built in. I know it sounds easy from where I'm sitting, but it sounds easy because I've

made sure I continue to ask that question. Will this behavior hurt or contribute to my idea of what real life success looks like? It works for dogs. Heck, it might even work for a spouse. I don't know. Those of you whose partner have a thing they love like fishing or golf, see if you can't be part of that process instead of maybe getting on their back when they come back from golf. Like why haven't you done this? And I'm waiting for you to do that. Be part of the reinforcement that they find in the sport. I don't know. Just spitballing ideas with you. Whether it's working with a partner, whether it's working with a child or an adolescent, or you're working with your dog, it's all just behavior. And the five C's will have an amazing impact on any behavior if you're intentionally applying them. I'll see you next time right here on Shaved by Dog.