[00:00:00] If you train, compete, or teach dog agility, you're in the right place. Hey there, I'm Megan Foster, creator of Fostering Excellence and Agility. Join me as I share key insights on all things related to dog agility and help find your team's path to excellence and unlock your best year yet. Let's get started.
Hey there. Let's talk about when you should stop trialing to fix a problem. First and foremost, in nearly every situation, I do not believe in trialing through a problem, uh, mostly because it's inefficient and really difficult to [00:01:00] effectively train at a competition. Even if you do have a dog that's toy motivated, you're limited in how you can reward depending on the organization, and also you're really limited on the amount of reps you're ever going to get in.
So I don't tend to start by trialing through even when I have things like for exhibition only or not for competition at my disposal. I will potentially use fix and go, and for exhibition only and not for competition when I am reintroducing a behavior into competition to try and bridge that gap that was likely created as the problem was cropping up.
So first let's talk about young dogs that are new to trialing. The [00:02:00] younger they are, the more quickly I'm going to put a pin in competition. If I start to see a problem, behavior cropping up because when they are young, they can't possibly have competition only problems. So if a problem behavior is cropping up in competition, I am definitely going to assume that there is a lack of fluency in this skill that I have not uncovered in training or there is a level of distraction or discomfort in the environment that is causing this problem behavior to crop up either way.
That's really great information for me to take a break from competition and try and fill in those gaps and then bring the dog back into competition and see where we've made progress.
I am quick to stop trialing, [00:03:00] mainly to avoid a habit, beginning to form again, especially the younger they are, they don't have trial habits, so if I can pause training and fill in any gaps in their lack of fluency or their confusion about the trial environment, then I don't have to worry about. A bad habit forming in competition, but I also do this so that I don't form a bad mindset, habit forming.
It's very easy in our human brains to have a problem. Behavior show itself maybe once, twice, and now we're thinking about it and we're overthinking it, and we're trying to change our handling to help the dog be successful. Because it feels good in this in the moment, and we want our dogs to be successful, and it's very human of us to want to help them.
But now we're creating this story around [00:04:00] this habit that, oh, he always gets it wrong in this context, and I have to do X, Y, Z things in just the right order, at just the right time to make the behavior that I want to see happen. And this mindset starts to develop around this behavior. And now we really are stuck.
Because those types of mindset habits, they very quickly become self-fulfilling prophecies. And so if we start to see a problem behavior crop up, and we are honest and curious about it, and take that pause from competition sooner, we can avoid kind of going down that mindset rabbit hole. Because sometimes overcoming the mindset habit is even harder than coming, than overcoming the original.
Training problem in the first place.
But what about more seasoned dogs? Am I as quick to take a break with them? [00:05:00] It, it depends a little bit. It gets it to be a little bit more, more nuanced because now we have a, a more robust learning history and we also have a competition history that needs to inform the decisions that we make. However, if it, this is a seasoned dog and a problem, behavior crops up really as a surprise, I am first going to make sure that that dog gets checked really well for some type of injury.
I have had really stoic dogs in the past and so anytime that a problem behavior with, especially with agility. Starts to come up that it was, it was a surprise, especially like we pull faults with really seasoned dogs of mine. I would always get them checked out physically first and nine times outta 10.
That was the problem. Now, my current dog sprint, she's not stoic at all, so [00:06:00] I can pretty much assume. I almost any type of out of the ordinary error E at any given trial, there is some mild discomfort and luckily I haven't had to deal with that a lot, but it makes it a lot easier knowing that she is a bit more sensitive and is unlikely to hide those things from me, even for the sake of agility.
So definitely if it is a surprise to you, get them checked over. Um. Make sure everything's okay before going down the path of trying to change their behavior. However, I always push my students to look deeper because it's very human of us again, to sometimes let problem behaviors grow. If they are not actively being faulted, so this is like self releasing contacts, but the dog still hit the contact, so [00:07:00] it's not a big deal leaving the start line just a little bit early.
So these things that aren't actively being faulted, but they have been kind of happening for a while. This, uh, the behavior is degrading and the problem is getting bigger. So we do have to go and look at the competition history to make sure that we're just not letting our criteria slack in those situations.
And then I can get into the nuance of what is going to be an effective way forward. Um, this is where I might attempt some four exhibition only or some fix and go things because if that has an impact. And usually if the learning history of that behavior is strong enough and you just remind the dog of the criteria, they go, oh, yep, got it.
No problem. And they go right back to doing it the way that you would like them to. And problem solved. However, when Fix and go has no impact, [00:08:00] or they can only get it right on the second or third attempt. This is not going to be a su sustainable strategy. And this is where we probably do need. To pause competition, work out a really thorough training plan, and then also a thorough re debut plan for this problem behavior, because it's likely been going on for a while.
Maybe there are some mental habits also, so seeping in, there's just a lot to tease apart, and this is a lot of what I do in my coaching program and in my one-to-one programs. And generally speaking, we do the one-to-one programs when we have to completely retrain. And I usually tell people that this is going to be a three to six month retraining process.
So three to six months of no competition, and then at least another three to six months of reintroducing that behavior into competition. So it might be that we do one [00:09:00] competition that first month and then two the second month. We just really need a lot of information. From the dog's behavior to know how to proceed, which is why I don't like to trial through things.
I want to see something, respond to it pretty quickly and try to keep my competition behaviors as solid as I possibly can. Okay, so hopefully that answers the question of do I stop trialing when I see a problem behavior crop up? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. So let me know what you think.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, I really appreciate some feedback. You can leave me a review, engage on social media or share this with a friend. I hope you'll be back to listen to my next episode. In the meantime, you can find all of my offers on my website, fx agility.com. Happy [00:10:00] training.
