by Betsy Scapicchio and Linda Brennan



When you train your dog, do you have a clear idea of what the end result of the behavior that you are training should like like? In order to develop clear criteria and communicate them to your dog, your must first have the perfect picture in mind.

So how do you find your perfect picture. For those of use who have been doing this for a long time and have trained and shown many dogs, our perfect picture has evolved over time and we have a clear image of what we are striving for. For those who are newer to the sport or want to improve their level of training, you need to do a little homework. We used to recommend that our students go and watch at local shows and try to attend any tournaments that were in our area. Now, it’s a simple as watching performances on Youtube. There are many different styles of training and handling that can be successful in the ring. You need to find the picture of training that appeals to you and suits you and your dog. There are many successful trainers and competitors who have posted videos of themselves showing and training.

The AKC rulebook defines each exercise in detail. It is important to read the rulebook as well as to watch different dogs and handlers perform the exercises. Then develop your own mental picture of how the exercise should look. If you have only a vague general idea of what the exercise is, then it will be very difficult to communicate that to your dog. For example, if your picture of the drop on recall is simply that the dog comes to you, downs, comes to front, then finishes, there will be many unanswered questions when it comes to training your dog. How fast should the dog come? How should the dog execute the drop. What constitutes a good front? Our mental picture has great detail: First our dog sits attentively in perfect heel position. Then we give the wait signal and verbal and the dog continues to watch us eagerly as we walk away. Then we turn to face the dog and stand up straight with our feet together and arms by our sides. We give our recall command and the dog responds immediately and races toward us. We then give a clear and powerful down signal and the dog drops quickly in a backdrop down without any forward motion. The dog waits attentively to be called again. When we call for the second half of the recall, the dog gets up and runs in just as quickly as before. He looks up at his focal point and sits straight and tucked up in a perfect front position, where he continues to look up and wait for his finish command. On command, he jumps up and turns to sit straight in heel position for a flawless finish. As you can see, this is only one exercise, but it has many parts and each part needs to be clearly defined so that we can teach the dog to do it perfectly.

We have found over the years that many times handlers are not clear on the criteria for their dog’s behavior. If the handler isn’t sure what the dog is supposed to do, how is the poor dog to know? For example, in heeling have you clearly defined your dogs focal point and position? Have you even considered what that is? Often people expect their dogs to watch them on heeling, but haven’t even thought about exactly what the dog should be looking at. Does your dog look at your face? Your hip? Your hand? Some other target? There may be no one right answer for everyone, but everyone must have an answer. “Up” and “I don’t know” are not good answers to this question. The more clearly you can describe your dog’s job, the better you will be able to communicate that to him. Think about how you would feel if your job was only vaguely described and you found yourself getting in trouble for doing things wrong when you had no clear idea of how to do them correctly. You’d get pretty discouraged and unmotivated in a hurry!

Unfortunately, for many dogs, this is the normal state of affairs in training. Instructors need to assist their students in forming good, clear criteria for their dog’s behavior. Students need to take responsibility for making sure that they know what they are training their dogs to do before they attempt to do it. Often newer trainers don’t yet see the big picture and they therefore don’t see the value in the finer details on an exercise. Experienced trainers have probably learned the hard way how important it is to train the foundation exercises with the finished product in mind. For example, if we teach the novice stand exercise without looking to the dog’s future in utility, then we might be tempted to allow the the dog to walk forward into the stand and to look at the judge as he does the exam. Neither would necessarily cause any problems in novice; however, both would be very undesirable as foundation work for the the utility signal stand and moving stand. That is just one reason why it is so valuable to have seasoned competitors who continue to show regularly as your instructors, mentors and inspiration for the perfect picture that you aspire to emulate.

When you are training, few things are as frustrating to your dog as inconsistent criteria. Dogs need things to be as black and white as possible. The same thing cannot be wrong one time and right the next. Often, trainers either miss mistakes or ignore them. Be observant! It is much better to catch a mistake immediately before it becomes cemented into the dog’s behavior through repetition. Sometimes trainers ignore mistakes either because they don’t think it’s important at this stage or it’s “good enough” or because they are focused on other aspects of the dog’s behavior. For example, if you aren’t watching your dog closely and half of the time you don’t notice that he is glancing away while you are heeling, it will be very hard for the dog to understand why you sometimes correct him for looking away. If you think that it’s not important for your dog to watch you as you walk away on the recall, you may be very frustrated later that your dog comes to your slowly and doesn’t work his fronts. If you allow your dog to do his signals slowly because it is “good enough” and “he did it,” then when you get into the ring and he is a little more distracted and he fails to do the signals at all, don’t be surprised. If you are focused on the dog’s dumbbell retrieve and reward him despite the fact that he mouthed the dumbbell on the way back, then you are inadvertently rewarding behavior that you will probably regret later. The more consistently you apply your criteria to each and every behavior, the more consistent your dog’s performance will be. If you allow a wide range of performance in training, then you will get an even greater variety in the ring.

Although you begin each exercise with a clear picture of the desired result, when you teach it to your dog, you must break it down into smaller pieces and then gradually raise your criteria. For example, when teaching attention, you begin by rewarding the dog for one second of focus and then progressively ask for slightly longer periods of attention. Trainers sometimes get stuck at a certain level of performance because they fail to raise their criteria. Criteria can be raised in several ways. Following our example of teaching attention, the first way, as mentioned above, is to increase the duration of the behavior. We can ask for one second, then two, then three, then five, then ten, before rewarding. Another way to raise criteria is to make the behavior more difficult. In this case, we could add distractions and gradually make the distractions more challenging to the dog (for example, by bringing them closer to the dog) before rewarding. You could also raise criteria by chaining more behaviors together before rewarding. For attention work, you could ask for several seconds of stationary attention followed by a few steps of heeling before rewarding. Another way to raise criteria is by asking for more repetitions of a behavior before giving the reward. Fronts provide a good example of this. In the beginning, we might reward the dog for every straight front. As the dog gets more proficient, we begin to reward only every other or every third front and eventually we reward randomly. It is important to avoid the trap of rewarding for the same level of performance forever. If all you ever reward is three seconds of attention, then three seconds of attention is all you will ever get. When you cannot increase your criteria further, then be sure to randomize the reward.

If you and your dog are just starting out, you need to clarify your “perfect picture” so that you can set clear and achievable criteria for your dog throughout the training process. For the trained dog and seasoned competitor, it is important to continue to raise your criteria to challenge your dog and keep you both at the top of your game. No matter what level you and your do are at, take the time to consider whether you have set clear criteria that will get you to the performance you envision.

