Ragnar Training Update

I have been very quiet about Ragnar over the last few years as we have been treading water and I was struggling to find a way forward with his training.

I had manged to create frustration which was expressed as noise.  Initially this started as a small amount of whining, and then began to escalate to barking, not releasing dummies and then to chomping dummies when he was retrieving.

Ragnar could hunt really well, stop to shot and fall, stop to flush.  Handle well on a retrieve, do blinds and water retrieves but gradually the over-arousal was taking over and the execution of the behaviours started to deteriorate.

I knew that the problem was over-arousal but I was struggling to understand how to ‘fix’ the problem.

Over the last few years, I have been concentrating more on creating the right headspace for him to be able to manage himself.

I realised that the noise was his way of telling me that he was struggling to cope.

I was recently listening to a great Podcast by Lockie Phillips, a horse trainer, and he said something along the lines of Operant Conditioning is all about getting an animal to comply with doing a task when we ask for it.  This is true whichever quadrant that we are dealing with.  It is all about focusing on Tasks with no consideration given to how the animal is feeling and how emotions contribute to the execution of a task.

This really resonated with my change in thinking; we need to focus more on teaching a dog to BE before we teach them to DO.  If a dog cannot be emotionally regulated when they are just hanging out in an environment, there is no way that their brain is in a good place to learn and process extra information.

What I had done with Ragnar is taken his coping mechanisms and used them as long term strategies.  I didn’t realise the significance of the small bits of feedback that he was giving me.  I dealt with the noise as a behaviour to change rather than understanding that he was telling me that he couldn’t cope emotionally.

He was having to try so very hard to achieve what I was asking.  I was giving him very valuable rewards, so he was motivated to try very hard, but ultimately his coping mechanisms failed and everything fell apart.

I didn’t have enough information to help him through it back then, but now I do have a much better, and growing understanding of how to help him.

I have now radically changed how I approach training; I focus on finding ways to help dogs to be in a much more robust headspace before having a conversation with them about what it is that they can learn or do that day.

I am bringing more patience and a keener observational eye to all training situations.  As a result, the dogs are learning things with fewer repetitions and are much more robust with their learning.

Yesterday I took Ragnar to a friend’s training venue.  We did some work on helping him to move into a more relaxed headspace, previous training had helped him to lose his mind before he even got started because of his anticipation of the exciting things that we were going to be doing.  Once we had done that, he did one retrieve which went really well.  No noise on set up, or send out.  He delivered to hand without holding on and without chomping the dummy when he was returning.  He only had a tiny squeak as he delivered instead of a loud bark which had been happening.

He then had some time away in the van whilst I worked my other dog and then we got him back out and spent time walking him to and through the area that we would be hunting through with pheasant everywhere!  It took him a bit of time to get his head in the right place but then he hunted really well.

He was a bit untidy and rangy initially but soon settled to working a nice pattern and listening to his cues.  For me, the best part that showed how much progress he had made was then fact that there was no noise from him at all through the 15 min session that he hunted.  He stopped, walked to heel, cast off again and waited patiently whilst we took a short break in the hunting, all without any noise.

To say that I was thrilled to bits is an understatement!  He has been noisy for every cast, stop and waiting period for years.

We have a lot more work to do to help him to be able to carry this headspace through into all his work, but I now have the blueprint to hopeful be able to work towards him being able to fully demonstrate his capabilities without him shouting about it all the time!!!

I just thought I would share this with you in case any of you are struggling with a problem that you don’t think that you can solve.  If we keep on learning and trying different things we can ultimately find a solution that works for the dog.

I will keep you updated as training progresses.

I have just finished writing my new book which covers the journey that I have taken so far to radically change how I approach training dogs.  If you are interested in finding out more and when it will be available to buy please feel free to sign up for email alerts here