- Location
- East Sussex
I've just read this book and found it very helpful. It is primarily intended for people who wish to train their dogs for competitions / sports, but I think the principles are valid for all dog training. The author describes ways for you to make judgements about your dog's innate personality and preferences and then discusses how this should effect your approach to training. I'm going to re-read and think in more detail about how Molly fits into some of the categories, as on first reading I found myself frequently thinking, 'Well, it depends...' (which actually the author then in the last chapter says she expects.)
However I did find one section immediately very useful. Denise Fenzi describes two characteristics that she calls 'The Learner' and 'The Performer'.
"The learner loves to use his brain, but once he’s learned something, he’s ready to move on to something new. These dogs find doing many repetitions to be boring, and may choose to opt out the tenth time you ask him to do the same thing."
"The performing dog really enjoys knowing what’s going to happen in advance. These dogs love to heel for long stretches at a time and are just as happy the tenth time they do something as the first."
I decided that Molly is in the 'learner' category. And as I had booked an hour at an indoor riding school yesterday I used Fenzi's outline to plan my session. Fenzi suggest that for these dogs you make a circuit of training activities and only do 3 repetitions before moving on. Then cycle back to them. Getting Molly to maintain engagement/ concentration on rally exercises has been a struggle but using this approach we had a marvellous training session yesterday. I actually wrote down my lesson plan in advance which was something like:
Time for acclimatisation (although she's familiar with this place lots of other dogs use it so she needs time to go round off-lead sniffing)
Play catch the ball x3
Hold up rally numbers and show collar - run to treat pot x3 (this is for rallyonline - you can now do the identity procedure at the end of the course so I want Molly to learn this is the last thing before she gets her treats)
Anti-clockwise pivots x3
Call front, then side-step x3
Recall over jump x3
Molly was so engaged it was lovely. She was skipping along beside me, occasionally bopping my hand with her nose (which of course in some ways is undesirable, but in her case I was looking for more animation so I was pleased.) On the second cycle she rejected the 'play ball' (by allowing it to hit her on the nose! - it was very soft) and running back to the rally signs. She can be very determined to get what she wants. So I went straight on to the next activity and she was great. I also called it a day after 40 minutes as I felt she would wane if we went on longer. Having paid for an hour I had to stifle my inclination to stay for the whole time!
I found it quite hard to do only three repetitions of each activity. I'm learning the clarinet and my learning style is to pick out bars or intervals that I find difficult and to practise them over and over until I'm confident I can play them well, so it means I need to adapt my natural inclinations when working with Molly.
It does perhaps explain why we had success at real-life shows this year (Molly was very engaged at these and was placed in each one) as on arrival I let her have as much time as she needed to walk around the venue sniffing, then we did a very short (less than a minute) warm-up before our round, did our round, immediately rushed outside for lots of treats and a tug game with a new toy, and then I took her right out of the show grounds for a relaxing walk in the country. Back to the car for a snack and a snooze and then repeated it all for our second round in the afternoon.
Anyway, definitely recommend the book. Mine is on Kindle so sorry I can't pass my copy on.
However I did find one section immediately very useful. Denise Fenzi describes two characteristics that she calls 'The Learner' and 'The Performer'.
"The learner loves to use his brain, but once he’s learned something, he’s ready to move on to something new. These dogs find doing many repetitions to be boring, and may choose to opt out the tenth time you ask him to do the same thing."
"The performing dog really enjoys knowing what’s going to happen in advance. These dogs love to heel for long stretches at a time and are just as happy the tenth time they do something as the first."
I decided that Molly is in the 'learner' category. And as I had booked an hour at an indoor riding school yesterday I used Fenzi's outline to plan my session. Fenzi suggest that for these dogs you make a circuit of training activities and only do 3 repetitions before moving on. Then cycle back to them. Getting Molly to maintain engagement/ concentration on rally exercises has been a struggle but using this approach we had a marvellous training session yesterday. I actually wrote down my lesson plan in advance which was something like:
Time for acclimatisation (although she's familiar with this place lots of other dogs use it so she needs time to go round off-lead sniffing)
Play catch the ball x3
Hold up rally numbers and show collar - run to treat pot x3 (this is for rallyonline - you can now do the identity procedure at the end of the course so I want Molly to learn this is the last thing before she gets her treats)
Anti-clockwise pivots x3
Call front, then side-step x3
Recall over jump x3
Molly was so engaged it was lovely. She was skipping along beside me, occasionally bopping my hand with her nose (which of course in some ways is undesirable, but in her case I was looking for more animation so I was pleased.) On the second cycle she rejected the 'play ball' (by allowing it to hit her on the nose! - it was very soft) and running back to the rally signs. She can be very determined to get what she wants. So I went straight on to the next activity and she was great. I also called it a day after 40 minutes as I felt she would wane if we went on longer. Having paid for an hour I had to stifle my inclination to stay for the whole time!
I found it quite hard to do only three repetitions of each activity. I'm learning the clarinet and my learning style is to pick out bars or intervals that I find difficult and to practise them over and over until I'm confident I can play them well, so it means I need to adapt my natural inclinations when working with Molly.
It does perhaps explain why we had success at real-life shows this year (Molly was very engaged at these and was placed in each one) as on arrival I let her have as much time as she needed to walk around the venue sniffing, then we did a very short (less than a minute) warm-up before our round, did our round, immediately rushed outside for lots of treats and a tug game with a new toy, and then I took her right out of the show grounds for a relaxing walk in the country. Back to the car for a snack and a snooze and then repeated it all for our second round in the afternoon.
Anyway, definitely recommend the book. Mine is on Kindle so sorry I can't pass my copy on.
There are still a few enigmas I'd like to puzzle out, and it sounds like this book may help point towards some answers.