Many years ago, when Tira was just a puppy, I was teaching her to spin in a circle. I taught her both directions and gave each direction a different cue; “spin” was circle to the left and “zoom” was circle to the right. When I finally got the verbal cues trained, I very eagerly showed my wife. “Look! I have these behaviours on verbal cues only! No visual signals!”, I said and promptly demonstrated. My wife just gave me a mischievous smile. “What?”, I asked. She replied, “You’re flicking your head.”
In the process of fading out the hand signals I had taught Tira, I has apparently developed a habit of flicking my head (ever so slightly) in the direction I wanted Tira to turn. We both had a good laugh over that one and it took a few more days to make sure that Tira was responding to only verbal cues. The important lesson for me in this was that I was very capable of fooling myself!
You see, I wanted Tira to be able to do these behaviours on verbal cues only. I wanted it so badly that I failed to notice that I was giving her a subtle but noticeable physical cue. In agility, I made the same mistake by giving Tira a playful “Oohhh!” when sequences didn’t go as planned and it soon became an unintended No Reward Marker that started to demotivate her.
We can get into some sticky situations as trainers if we are not mindful of good training practices. In both of these cases, I knew better but allowed my focus on one aspect of training blind me to other things. It’s something that I still struggle with and I have to remind myself regularly to stay objective and focused when I train with my dogs.
I am reminded of a funny line from an old comic strip called “Pogo” – “We have met the enemy and he is us!”
Our training is only as good as we make it.
Eric
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