What Am I Doing Here? Intentional Attention & Awareness Inspires a New Primal Game
New Ideas in Direct Perception in Dog Training and a Primal Game to Help Handler’s Figure Out What Am I Doing Here?
A Fidget is a simple hand skill with a disc. Usually consisting of some kind of butterfly or rolling movement over and around the hand, Fidgets help handlers become more familiar and comfortable... More exploring the solution space in a game of This-Wait… Next"Next" encapsulates the dog's anticipation of a forthcoming reward, sparking motivation and excitement. This expectancy creates a driving force that propels the dog through training, forming a continuous loop of engagement. When "Next"... More!~ Image by: Nancy M Walcutt
Well, I just picked up 2 key aspects to the mental game:
Intentional Attention
Unsolicited eye contact or Attention is a great way to hook up with a dog. If you have something the dog wants he should give eye contact in order to get access to... More & Intentional Awareness.
Here is my first attempt at defining them:
In dog training, marking the dog or marking the behavior is well understood.
PLAY+ uses markers at the moment of coupling (Inceptive Marking). These markers create Awareness for the handler and the dog; creating a shared awareness of what happened. Handler knows and the dog knows the handler knows. This puts us on the same page.
All competent handlers do this.
What we uncovered today in class is the idea of an intentional aspect of enriched marking, here we are not so much marking actions, but intentionally finding moments that are information rich; creating Intentional Awareness.
During our discussion, Intentional Attention popped up. One of my students was assigned a task to mark the moment she triggered the throw, largely to keep the dog honest and on task so as to not jump the gun when a flatwork skill was being adapted to a new situation, but also to disclose her own actions to herself. This is Intentional Attention: intentionally focusing on a single aspect of your actions, and it is a real skill.
This was very difficult for her, despite it simply being a matter of marking the moment the disc turned horizontal during her throwing motion; all she had to do was say,”Yes,” at the moment the disc was horizontal during her throw. Easy right?
Apparently not, she struggled mightily. 5 reps later she got it together, and with a few reps, the dog was paying attention (aka: Awareness) to the trigger as the exercise prescribed.
But something unexpected popped out of this: she could now see all kinds of things that were going on. It enhanced her Awareness. She recognized a bunch of triggers that we had discussed in the past and that she struggled to keep track of before the successful Intentional Attention.
All of a sudden she was well aware of her own actions within the environment that were highly relevant and salient to her dog. She had no problem seeing them in her minds eye and no longer had the issue of trying to keep track of the million things “she had to do“. This was clear in her explanation of what transpired.
These things were now actual affordances of actions rather than abstract ideas.
The Intentional Attention exercise halted the collapse of the environment when she tried to focus on her actions. It took a few reps, but now she’s capable of seeing things going on in the environment even while intentionally focused a skill and attending to the dog, the affordance landscape, and to making decisions.
This is a REALLY big deal for dog trainers, and for any team sport athlete. This is the mental game in a nutshell: how to keep your Awareness while you’re intentionally devoting your Attention to actions, skills, and picking up relevant information in the environment.
I’ve got a new Primal Game cooked up called: What Am I Doing Here?
Will share it soon.
Peace & Happy Jamming!
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