The Learning Process

It’s a lot easier to achieve some success with your training efforts if you have a little understanding of how the training process works.
Sure you can forge ahead blindly but often you inadvertently start to work against the natural process of learning and you start to try to put round pegs in square holes and the student gets confused because he doesn’t understand what you want. You get frustrated and your patience goes out the window and everything you and your student have achieved up to this point is history. So let’s back up, slow down, and see if we can make this process a little easier.
The first step is to always CLEARLY IDENTIFY WHAT IT IS THAT WE ARE GOING TO TEACH. This applies to each of your training sessions. You don’t just grab your leash, whistle up the pup, and “wing it”. If we are going to teach come and sit, we need a clear mental picture of our expectations or we won’t know if the pup is doing it right, wrong, or just different from the way he did it before. Or maybe he just doesn’t do it at all. If you are a beginning trainer it’s perfectly acceptable to write things down. Okay let’s have a go at clarifying the COME SIT. A come sit means that when given a voice command and/or a handle signal he will proceed to move directly to a position squarely in front of the handler and sit and look up for additional direction. That’s clear and simple yet it demands a certain and specific level of performance.
Now we know clearly what it is we are going to teach we BREAK IT DOWN INTO THE SMALLEST TEACHABLE AND LEARNABLE COMPONENTS. Once we have small pieces we can teach little bits at a time until our student understands and can comfortably perform the small act repeatably. Only when our student is regularly doing this step do we proceed to and introduce the next step. I’m sure that you can see that we master little steps and then proceed to the next and then when we are confident that our student has a handle on these we start to tie them together. The biggest mistake is in going ahead too quickly. Just because the student gets it “kinda right most of the time” doesn’t mean he’s ready to go to the next step. If you don’t cement these basics they will always come back to haunt you. The basics must become automatic reflex actions. If you take the time to do it properly at this stage you’ll avoid those times in the future when you encounter problems and you start looking for bigger, stronger, longer, whatever, collars, leashes, and the next “flavor of the week” training gimmick. There is never a substitute for patience, time, and happy enthusiastic repetition.
Okay, let’s get out that magic marker and give you the next “cast in stone” rule. IF THE TASK IS EASY ENOUGH AND THE MOTIVATION IS LARGE ENOUGH THE STUDENT WILL EASILY LEARN THE TASK.
At this point I like to share a game I play in the first day of my classes. In order to make this point I watch for the dog who is going to be the class clown. He’s usually about 8 or 9 months and he’s dragging the handler from one interesting thing to another. I ask this person if I can borrow the Rowdy One for a few seconds and he’s always more than happy to pass me the leash. I’ll also search the crowd for a lady who seems to have comparatively little interest in the activities and is an observer. I ask if she has ever taught a dog to come and sit and if she knows the dog in question? We already know the answer and she’s not terribly happy about being singled out. I encourage her to come out and tell her that she’s going to teach Rowdy One to come and sit in in less than a minute. Next I explain that the Come will be to move from a detached position to immediately in front of the lady and to sit squarely in front of her. I tell the lady that I’ll hold the leash which I’m leaving very loose and sloppy so I’m seen to be steering Rowdy in any way. At this point I reach in my pocket and choose a large tasty piece of nicely cooked beef. I take a small bit and wave it in front of Rowdy’s nose and open my hand and present it to him just so he knows what we have. Now I explain to the reluctant lady that she is going to teach the dog to come and sit  only two words and a simple hand signal. I explain that she only has to look toward Rowdy and beckon him toward her with a small movement like a wave from near him to a position near her knees and to say only COME as she does this. When he gets his head near her knees I tell her to move the treat from near his nose up between his ears and move the treat back near his tail and say SIT. When his butt hit’s the ground she opens her hand and gives him the treat. I have rarely had it not go as explained. Remember if the motivation is large enough and the task is small enough the student will perform the task. From here on it’s a case of repetition and positive reinforcement.
As we continue with the learning process we master this task in one ENVIRONMENT with no DISTRACTIONS. As we master the task in this environment we will gradually change environments and introduce small distractions. This means we start in a quiet part of the patio for example and maybe proceed to a spot in the yard and so on. Remember, every time you change places or introduce distractions it is natural to expect that your student may have a small set back and we may have to step back and reinforce the task by performing that with which we are both comfortable. If you can cement these few basics into your mind it becomes much easier as we progress to specifics.
More on this in a future session.