Passion and Performance

Disc dogger’s have a problem. We all want to play this game so darned much that it’s hard to remain consequent and focused on the component skills that build our game.

Once your dogs start to approach the realm of performance potential, it becomes hard to balance the success of your dog with your expectations and the performance requirements of the game. Performance requirements overwhelm you. This is classic putting the cart before the horse behavior and can be very detrimental to a team’s long term potential.

This problem really shows itself with Type A people – goal setters, achievers, overachievers, highly competitive folk… Process or, “How is it happening? What do I need to do to make it better?” often gets overwhelmed by performance, “It’s Happening! It’s Happening! More! What’s next?”

Performance of a skill does not mean understanding. Skills can be performed without the dog or handler understanding them. Most behaviors in dog sports happen this way. It isn’t until we push the limits of the dog and handler’s understanding with performance requirements or new situations that we find the weak links of the behavior chain.

False Security of Plan B

Many handler’s try to smooth this lack of foundational understanding over with a Plan B or a stop gap measure. It happened this weekend with a super awesome disc dogger who was working with us during a B&B Day Pass. He was experiencing some problems with the juggle behavior (it’s an amazing juggle sequence – sheesh!) and was getting very frustrated.

It was pretty obvious to me that he and the dog were performing the skill historically, but the dog and the team didn’t really understand it. The dog refused to drop. A couple of reps and some visible frustration, and he changed tack and cued,”Wait!” between the catches and it worked. “Done Deal,” is what his body language and demeanor said.

The performance of the juggling skill with the Wait cue happened. Performance requirements were met. But the success and understanding, and future success and understanding of the dog was hampered. The desired behavior was performed, but at what degree of competence and at what expense?

The Wait cue was polluted by using it as a band-aid for the problem of the dog not complying with the Drop or Give cue. The whole operation was about muscling the behavior to hit competitive performance requirements. This leaves the dog and the team not really understanding the skill and leaves the skill looking shaky. To the experienced judges eye, the dog didn’t know the Drop cue, so the whole sequence suffers. In the eyes of an experienced trainer, the skill is likely to deteriorate and will not be sustained.

A Slippery Slope

This kind of capitulation to performance requirements create a slippery slope. What happens when the wait stops working? What behavior will be sacrificed next to hit those performance requirements? This happens all the time.

As dog sport handlers, we need to put our dogs success and understanding above the performance requirements of the handler and the performance requirements of the competitive game. Professional athletes do much more than scrimmage.

It’s much better to learn and apply this lesson early when you’re dialing a new dog in or climbing up the competitive ranks than it is to try to learn and apply it when you’re a threat to win it all. Speaking from experience, it’s a painful lesson.

Toss and Fetch: A Typical Example

Tell someone to practice toss and fetch with 2 discs and the immediate refutation is that “But Toss and Fetch is only done with 1 disc.” Tell them to wait and freeshape a drop (allow the dog to drop it on their own without a cue) and the response will be,”But We only have 1 Minute!” Tell them to cue a drop on the way back and they really have problems,”But the dog has to bring it to me.” Tell someone to do a live drill using 30 discs and they say,”But I can only use 10 in my routine!”. And on and on.

Each of these suggestions are about setting up your dog for success and  understanding, and they work – well. But they are frequently written off as nonsense or “too risky” because they don’t fit the performance requirements of the actual contest or the final version of the behavior being worked.

A Successful Dog Is Your Solution

The performance requirements of your end product and your finalized behavior are often distractions. Tear the behavior apart. Find out where the problem is. Figure out a way to make your dog do it successfully. Great performances can’t happen without tons of success and solid understanding.

When you’re experiencing trouble teaching a skill or working on a new trick or sequence, or when you are losing the solid performance of a skill and you don’t know why, reduce your criteria or isolate the trouble and make your dog successful. You can ride that wave of  success to the behavior you want instead of settling or bargaining for whatever behavior you can get.unlocking easily with can operating those Run iphone 3g unlock every is guide and solution free the use

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