071 Three Places for Improved Clarity in Your Training
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[00:00:00] If you train, compete, teach, or simply love the sport of dog agility, you're in the right place. Hey there, I'm Megan Foster, creator of Fostering Excellence and Agility. Join me as we explore training, communication, handling, mindset, and all the little details that help build stronger and more confident teams both in and out of the ring.
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Hey there. Welcome back to the podcast. Today on episode 71, I want to talk about three places where we can improve clarity in our training. All month long in my coaching pro- program, Train with Excellence, I have been encouraging members to look at their videos and observe these three things when they're watching.
Observing these things in their [00:01:00] videos trains their eye so that they are better able to see these moments during the training session and make adjustments as they go when they are necessary.
So these three things, obviously we want to be paying attention to them pretty much in equal value. But to train your eye, I first start with one thing, get them really comfortable reviewing that for a week, and then we add a second thing, and so on, so that hopefully by the end of the month, looking for these things becomes kind of second nature and something that is easy to do.
And again, we start to see it during the training sessions. So the first thing is to observe how long it takes your dog to reset for another rep after they have collected reinforcement. So in foundations, when I am teaching my [00:02:00] location-specific marker cues, anytime the dog has consumed their food reward or returned their toy reward to me, they should then default back into what I call standby.
And this is standing in front of me, offering me their eye contact. And so observing how long it takes for them to do that gives me a lot of information about their headspace. If they are consuming their food and then sniffing around, or they drop their toy at my feet and they are looking around for people to visit, or they are unable to mentally let go of the toy that they've returned to me, all of that is information that maybe they are fatigued, maybe they are confused, maybe they are reaching an arousal state in which they are no longer able to give me the quality performance that I'm [00:03:00] looking for.
Because this is one of the very first things that my dogs learn to do, I can pretty confidently use this ability to reset and to standby as an opt-in for more training. So if I start to see that they are slower to return or cannot return, they are telling me that they cannot continue or that they do not want to continue.
This can also give me really valuable insight into if I'm using the right reward or if my reward delivery or reward type is actually kind-- is, is not working for this task. It could be that I'm-- my reward delivery is encouraging the dog to engage in unwanted behaviors. It could be that the reward that I've chosen is not all that motivating for the task that I'm training.[00:04:00]
So first, getting really good at observing how long it takes for the dog to reset or if you're having to help the dog, coax the dog into coming back to you after reinforcement is collected, is really valuable information
So the first thing to improve clarity would be to teach the automatic reset if you have not already done so. And then if you have, and you can rely on that really quick reset, then when you start noticing any sort of latency, you will adjust the training task as needed. So if you think that there is latency in returning because the motivator is the wrong one, the next time you train that task, you can use a different motivator and see if that latency improves.
The second thing that [00:05:00] we're observing is our reward mechanics. So when you are delivering that reinforcer, are you clearly separating the marker cue, which is typically a verbal, from the physical movement needed to deliver that reward? So what tends to happen, it, it's very human, uh, it happens in stopped contacts, it happens in start lines, and it happens in our location-specific reward markers, that we are reaching into our pocket the same time that we are marking, or we are tossing that cookie at the same time that we're giving our verbal marker.
And what this creates chronically over time is that the dog focuses in on the physical movement, and then it can build, a lot of unnecessary handler focus into the behaviors we're trying to train. So if your dog is checking in with you [00:06:00] while they're running down a line of jumps, they could be looking to see if you're going to give that physical cue that reinforcement is coming.
If your dog is running down their contact with their head turned back to you, same thing. They're looking to see if you're gonna reach into your pocket or not. If your dog is popping out of the weave poles early, it could be that, you know, just you running next to them and starting to signal the next jump looks really similarly to you pulling out the toy to ask them to tug.
So taking a really good look at your reward mechanics to make sure that your reward delivery isn't actually becoming part of the cue that you're using Generally, pre-placed rewards tend to be easier for this because we don't have to physically move in order to produce the reward. We can usually maintain whatever physical cues that we're doing at the same time that we give [00:07:00] the verbal reward marker.
However, this ability to use pre-placed and available rewards anywhere on the course does take a little bit more time and training before we can use them reliably
The third thing that I am observing both in my videos and trying to observe in the moment is my dog's response to cues that I give. So is my cue a green light for them to snap into action or do they have a question mark over their head? Are you offering multiple cues or adding physical help in order to get the correct response?
I want all of the information I give my dog in a training session to result in a pretty specific behavior. I want them to understand the cues that I'm giving and view them as green light behav- for action. Green lights for action. I want them to hear those cues or see those [00:08:00] cues and immediately snap to whatever I'm asking them to do.
And so I want to notice if my dog is not responding to cues or if in, in the middle of the sequence and I give an obstacle cue and that causes them to look at me or run toward me or offer a behavior that I don't want to see, does it cause them to sniff? Does it cause them to visit? I want to know what my cues mean to my dog, and I want to pay attention to those and get curious about that.
Especially if I'm starting from stationary, if my dog doesn't move when I give one of these cues, usually a verbal cue, I want to be sure that I'm not inadvertently baking cue escalation into my training. And cue escalation is repeating the cue multiple times, kind of nagging them [00:09:00] into going, or adding physical help that you don't ultimately want to have to give in order to get the correct response.
It might be okay once or twice in the moment, but you do need to be paying attention that you're not developing this habit of always having to give this escalated version of your cue in order to get the correct response. High latency by itself typically means that they just don't understand the cue.
It's maybe not generalized enough, hasn't been rewarded enough, and you just need to stay in that acquisition phase for a little bit longer. However, high latency for the cue plus high latency for the reset after reinforcement typically means they're upset about something, which is exactly why I observe the resets of reinforcement first Okay?
Observing these three areas allows you to provide more [00:10:00] clarity throughout your training session and better understand what your dog knows and how they feel about that specific training task. What do you notice when you review your training sessions? I'd love to know, so join me in the Fans of FX Agility community to talk it out.
The link will be in the show notes
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Remember, excellent agility is built one training session at a time, and every small step forward matters. Until next time, happy training
