Margot Woods, a fine writer and trainer, wrote the attached piece on training a retrieve. Or the lack thereof on training a retrieve. It's a bit tongue in cheek. The pictures are a great way to make a point.
However, the point is probably not going to get across to a novice or beginning trainer. It also won't get across to trainers who allow their training standards to be sub par. The point that I got from this is that if you train an excercise to a lazy or imperfect standard, then the exercise will be performed to a lazy or imperfect standard. It's not the dog who is failing, it is the trainer if their intent is something better than what was acheived.
Why does it matter if the exercise is done in a sub par manner? Here I will differ from some trainers and say to some people with some dogs it will not matter. However, Margot trains dogs to do jobs. A dog can not do a job with a sloppy or lazy communication (ie sloppy or lazy training in the first place) from their trainer. Not everyone needs a dog that can do a job. Not everyone needs to train an aggressive or behaviorally challenged dog to a certain standard so that they are happy OR even safe in public. Many of the public either should or do, however. For those folks, it is important to know what real training consists of AND how to measure it against the standard that is being trained for.
Of course the questions being made fun in Margot's blog are all part of the training plan BEFORE your dog "knows XYZ exercise". Many owners don't get that their dog does not know the exercise if there are a list of "except fors" and "other excuses" long of why the dog won't [insert command of choice here} at a certain time. Being that this is something the owner/trainer comes in contact with fairly often, it is something that the training should have occurred in before one can call "training completed on XYZ exercise".
Hence why I am going to Kittery today to put Magoo through his exercises. I try to do a different place with different distractions everyday. Magoo is pretty close to being ready to compete in Class B Novice AKC obedience. I am so looking forward to it, and want to make sure everything is done so that I can be confident for Magoo when we go in the first few times. It's going to be hard enough without preparation.
Real life outside the ring comes with challenges for our canine companions as well. Be sure to prep your best friend before expecting them to perform or behave correctly in trying circumstances.
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