Following on from last week, this is another post inspired by the recent Tracy Sklenar seminar. Today’s post focuses on what to do what to do when your dog makes a mistake in training.
One of the difficulties of agility training is that it’s not always clear whose fault a mistake is. Sometimes your sloppy handling will cause your dog to run past a jump he was supposed to take. Next time, maybe your dog is so fixated on an incorrect obstacle that he forgets to check in with you for directions. In that split second after your dog has sailed over the hurdle, you don’t always know whether your handling was right or if he has an “excuse” for the mistake.
Our dogs are generally pretty good at following our bodies. This means that the human teammate is at least partially at fault most of the time. It’s generally safe to assume that your poor handling caused the mistake unless you have compelling evidence to the contrary. Obviously it’s not fair to punish your dog for something that might be your fault – so what do you do?
Some handlers give their dogs “guilt cookies” (or “guilt tuggies”) to apologise for letting the team down. Others withhold rewards from the dog because he didn’t do the right thing, even though they also accept their part of the blame.
Tracy had an intriguing take on this, one that I will be applying to my own training from now on. She reminded us that refusing is never the right answer, and therefore it should never be rewarded with guilt cookies. Instead, if your dog goes round something or hesitates, you should put the dog at that obstacle again and then reward.
On the other hand, taking an obstacle is always the right answer. Even if your handling is a bit ambiguous, you want to encourage your dog to be brave and commit to an obstacle anyway. This means that you should reward your dog if he takes any obstacle despite your poor handling, even if it’s the wrong one. Sometimes it will be the wrong one, and it’ll be your fault … but sometimes it’ll be the right one, and your dog will have saved you from yourself.
With this in mind, I can see how my training practices may have contributed to commitment issues with two of my dogs. When the wheels fall off in training I usually stop, go back a couple of obstacles, and try again. I don’t usually have any toys or treats on me, so I don’t think I have ever given out a guilt cookie in my life. My dogs’ biggest reward is the chance to move on to the next obstacle and ultimately to the toy lying after the last jump – and every time I stop and reset, I am delaying that reward. As a result, I have dogs that like to be Really Really Sure that it’s the right obstacle before they jump it, so that they avoid unnecessary redos.
Last night I awarded Rik my first ever guilt ball after I completely forgot to tell her to come through the gap between two hurdles. After her fifteen seconds of fun, we tried again and we were both perfect. Hopefully this new policy will help in my efforts to make her more confident when I can’t be there to hold her paw.
There are a couple of special cases where I think a different policy might be more appropriate though:
- When doing skill work with one or two jumps, particularly when working on verbal cues. For example, if I’m working on a pull-through with two jumps and I give the verbal cue to come through the gap, I’m not going to reward anything else. These exercises take place in the ideal world where you’re always in the right place, quite unlike a real course.
- When you find it challenging to keep your dog engaged on course. This dog needs the encouragement of frequent rewards while he learns what a fun game agility is. I still wouldn’t reward him for refusing an obstacle – but I would get him to do some tricks and reward that before our next attempt.
- When working with a dog that has very little focus on its handler. This is the dog that only does agility at top speed, and that continues forward for multiple obstacles after its handler has stopped. These dogs are rare and they are almost the reverse of a “normal” dog – they need an incentive to keep tabs on what their handler is up to. My last dog Spring was one of these, and I don’t think that rewarding her for charging off on me would have helped…