A few months ago, one of my training partners asked our class to think about the cross-training we do with our dogs and how that affects what they (and we) do. Personally, I train both dogs in multiple sports: Jake currently participates in tracking, nose work, obedience, and rally; Mollie in agility, obedience, rally, and general “life” skills.
Both of my dogs are operantly conditioned, which means I’ve trained them with clickers and marker words to offer me behaviors in exchange for a paycheck. That pay could be treats, praise, or playing tug with a toy. This leads to the dog actually thinking about what behavior might elicit that paycheck. They will keep trying until I give them the click or the “YES” and produce the reward. Some of you have been in classes where I show you this with either Mollie or Jake. Both are equally animated about it but in different ways.
This makes training so much fun! And now that Mollie is maturing a bit, her true talents are beginning to emerge. She’s showing more of an interest in working with me. She’s a great demo dog for beginning agility because she offers so many behaviors. But I digress…
I’m starting to really appreciate how cross-training in multiple sports can help your dog generalize what behaviors are expected of them. An (important) caveat: as handlers, we MUST BE CONSISTENT. In our expectations. In our criteria. In our reward system. In our positive attitude. In our words and our actions.
By doing this over the last 3 months, I have watched Mollie blossom. When Jake and I participated in the NoseWork seminar in July, I worked quite a bit outside of the session with our presenter, Karen Shivers. Not in NoseWork, but in other general training. We both worked our dogs and she helped me transform how I was handling Mollie. I was being unclear in my communications with her and that was causing her self-confidence to erode. BAD HANDLER. Karen patiently showed me how to better use my markers
for correct and “let’s try that again” behaviors.
Then, another of my training partners helped me in the art of reinforcement with correct timing and randomization.
Finally, my training partner mentioned in the opening of this blog reminded me to stick to my criteria.
And so here’s where the cross training example will hopefully make sense to you.
As I have mentioned, Jake is my nose guy. He’s excellent in all things smelly. Truly. Mollie is really athletic and loves agility or things where she can run and jump. Not so much into the smelly. Until…
I’ve been working really hard with her in agility to build her confidence. I’ve employed all the techniques mentioned above. She’s not afraid to try most things nor to offer behaviors that might payout. So, a couple of weeks ago, I decided to try her in NoseWork. She’s never attempted it before. On goes the harness, the line is tied to her and the scent is placed. I had no idea what to expect. We got her amped up, I asked her to “Search” and she went about her job like a little pro. Stuck her nose in the drawers and when she found the scent container, she inhaled deeply and stuck her paw on it. I paid her handsomely. We did it a couple more times and then called it a day.
A week or so later, I let her try again. Even bigger enthusiasm and terrific (albeit a bit too assertive) indication of finding the smelly thing. A couple of times she false alerted, and I waited her out to offer the correct behavior – and she rose to the occasion. I was truly humbled.
The moral of the story: all the hard work and long hours I put into training in other sports and aspects of her life gave her the confidence and skills to try a new activity that’s also a ton of fun for her. So if you are working with your dog on an obedience skill, before you start training for the day, think about how that skill – or your process for training that skill – could be used for something else. For example, asking your dog to “sit” politely before their dinner is presented can then be transferred to the training ring. Your dog is offering you a very nice behavior, you are providing a paycheck…and I’m willing to wager it will translate into a strong, fun work ethic.
Stay Paw-sitive!
