Planning to Fail

The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry...

One of the most important factors in dog training is failure. We use failure as a way for our dogs to learn, not only the behaviours themselves but how to RECOVER from failure - that failure itself is not a downer, it's just a chance to try again until you get it right.

However, putting it into practice in your training can be tricky. When deciding to work on a particular behaviour, I often think through the steps I will take to train it and what I expect the finished product to look like. However, I spend considerably less time thinking 'But what if THIS happens?' or 'What if THAT doesn't work?' So sometimes when a training session doesn't go as planned I don't have an immediate response to something the dog has thrown at me.

I should point out here that the dogs are much better at working through failure than I - I myself am much more likely to be disappointed and/or frustrated at things not going as I thought they would. I think this is even MORE so because I know it is pretty much always my own fault. Then I get cross at myself and the whole thing basically falls apart as I put the dog away and then put myself away until I am in a calmer and more objective state of mind.

Case in point is the session I had the other night with Billie - having decided to start her 2x2 training in earnest I pulled the good ol' weave poles out, set up two in the backyard, chose a high value toy and off we went. We had already had a good session earlier in the day so I went in feeling pretty confident all would go well.

However, in hindsight (isn't that a wonderful thing?) there were quite a few factors I hadn't taken into account. Firstly, I was doing this late in the evening, and was a little tired and looking forward to snuggling into my warm bed and relaxing, so planned this as just a quick session. Secondly, this was dinner time for the dogs, and they knew it - I just figured this would be another good incentive. Thirdly, I hadn't planned what I would do if things DIDN'T go to plan.

So, the 'training' session went like this. Start with crate games, release from the crate to me. Offer the tuggy (Billie is usually quite enthusiastic at tug games). Nope, she didn't want that. She was hyperactively jumping around, moving away from me presumably to check where her dinner bowl was (I hadn't even brought it outside) and generally totally distracted. So, the ONE smart thing I did was realise that trying to do any 2x2 work was useless, and we decided to focus just on getting some tugging. Nope, she wasn't having much of that - Trying to get her excited about the tug by dragging it around and jazzing her up only led to an even more hyperactive dog jumping and pawing at me (but not tugging). The closest we would get is a quick mouth on the tug and then back to jumping at me or looking back at the verandah in the hopes of getting her dinner. By this point, having already spent longer than I planned to, and already feeling tired to begin with, I began to get frustrated. The ability to make good decisions went downhill from here. Perhaps I could use IYC to get some better tugging. So I went and retrieved two bowls, split the dinner between them and place them at opposite ends of the yard. Billie is quite good at IYC, but bear in mind by now she too was very frustrated, hungry and somewhat frenzied. So I went back to trying to get some tugging. However what I hadn't done is specified my exact criteria - which, given the high distraction and previous failures, should have been considerably less than it usually is. So it was hardly surprising that, after a few tries at tugging and not getting anywhere, the lure of the food bowl was too much and she decided to help herself, at which point I corrected her and took the food away. So now I have a cross and frustrated trainer, a stressed and confused dog, and a 'training' session that has gone on way too long, not to mention the use of a correction which I do not want to use in my training. Finally recognising that there was little to be salvaged, I moved a good distance away from the food, offered the tug again and then released her to the first bowl after a very quick tug; same again with the other food bowl.

Having spent quite a bit of time thinking about this in the last couple of days, it reminded me of a story Lynda Orton-Hill told during one of her workshops, about some of their students trialling their young dogs for the first time. She mentioned the importance of them knowing what to do when the dog DIDN'T do what they wanted - i.e. what if the dog came off a contact or popped the weavers in the ring? How would they handle that?

The same is true in training. There should always be a plan of what you set out to do - but there ALSO be a plan of what to do if things go wrong.

Looking back now, before I started that training session I should have had two plans.

When working out an initial training plan, I should ask myself things such as:
Am I using a high value reward? (Or is it just the reward *I* prefer to use?)
What are my criteria for a correct response? (i.e. dog enters between the two poles from the correct side)
Where will I be positioned?
Where will the dog be positioned?
Where will the treats/toy be positioned?
How will I start the session? (i.e. will I release the dog from the crate, play tug to the training area, do a recall to the training areas etc)
How will I end the session? (i.e. how long will it run/how many repetitions will we do?)
What equipment do I need? (Toy/treats, weave pole spikes, poles, collar, leash, crate etc)
What distractions are in the areas an how will I use/manage them?
Am *I* in the right frame of mind do do a training session? (Am I tired/sick/in a bad mood?)

However after taking into account all of the above, I should also have planned for potential failure in any of these areas, i.e.
What if she doesn't go between the poles?
What if she goes the wrong way through the poles?
What is she repeatedly offers the wrong behaviour?
What if she stops offering behaviours?
What if she gets distracted by something else in the training area?
What if she chooses to leave the training area?
What if she doesn't want the reward?
What if *I* get frustrated?

Hopefully, many of these will have been avoided by careful planning in the first place, however even if I'd considered them only in passing, I believe I could have had a much better training session. As part of my FUTURE training plans I will make these lists required reading before I do anything!

And just to finish on something fun, here is a little vid of Billie playing IYC with a bag of food treats, and some of Billie and Josh playing with balloons :)