Creating a Vision and Planning to Get There
How to get from Point A to B and how to know where Point B is
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Last week I asked for topic suggestions on my FB page, and boy did you guys deliver! This one is an amalgamation of several themes I heard from you all, so thanks for your input and keep those suggestions coming!
If you know me, you probably know that I am a Planner. That’s right, planner with a capital “P”. I’ve got contingencies for my contingencies, and then I prioritize those contingencies lol. But what if you aren’t a planner? Or what if you are, but just have no idea where to start when it comes to Agility? Well, read on, as I lay out “Grace’s Tried and True Method for Agility Planning”.
The Vision
Every great plan starts with a goal. After all, if you don’t know what the target is, how can you possibly know where to aim? This is true of plans big and small, from simply shaping a new behavior, to setting competition goals that will define your whole season. But for the purposes of this blog post, let’s think about the example of training a new behavior, say 2 on 2 off contact behavior. When setting my goals, I like to visualize not just the behavior itself, but in detail what that behavior will look like. For a 2 on 2 off, we expect our dogs to stop at the bottom of a contact with rear feet on and front feet off the contact. But I like to take this deeper. What will the approach to the end of the contact look like? I want speed and clarity, so I want my dog driving to the end and slamming on the brakes. That means I want the dog looking down and focused forward, not staring at me or looking at that off course tunnel option. When do I want this behavior to occur? Under every scenario of handling, so me behind the dog, me racing ahead, me peeling off laterally. When I peel away laterally, do I want my dog to pivot around and orient towards me, or stay forward and exit the end of the contact as if he were going straight ahead (probably the latter). So really I’m not just setting a goal here, I’m crafting a vision in my mind, and once I have it set, I usually write it down with all these glorious details. You’ll constantly come back and compare performance to this Vision, so it’s good to have a written frame of reference.
Deconstructing the Behavior
Once my Vision is set, I look at all the Behavioral Elements that create it. For our case we have the following:
Rear feet on contact, front feet off contact
Driving to target
Focus Forward
Stay behavior on contact
Impulse control under various stimuli
Each of these Behavioral Elements is too big to address or train in a single training session, so we need to further break them down into small Training Elements. Let’s take #1 “Rear Feet on Front Feet off” as an example. To train this, I would shape foot placement on a board or bowl or other raised item. So for my shaping sessions, I will break things down as follows:
Shape interaction with board or bowl
Shape any foot interaction
Shape back foot interaction
Add speed
Add distance
Add handler motion
I may mix the bottom 3 up, one day working speed, the next working motion, the next going back to distance, but 1-3 are sequential and must build on one another. Additionally, 4 - 6 should not be combined (i.e. speed + distance) until each can be performed individually. Think about it, if you can’t jump rope, and you can’t do long division, why would we ask you to jump rope and do long division simultaneously? We’re just setting ourselves up for failure.
So I break each of the larger Behavioral Elements into these smaller Training Elements. I recognize which are sequential, and which are discrete and can be intermixed. I then prioritize the sequential behaviors (i.e. 1, then 2, then 3, before doing any of 4-5).
Creating a Feedback Loop
Now this is all well and good, but how will you ever know you are on the right track? I like to do near continuous check-ins with my Vision. The more frequently you check-in, the closer to target you will stay. I’m sure we’ve all experienced a case where we told someone to do something, they said “sure, sure” and came back 3 months later with something so off track you don’t even know where that idea came from. We could have prevented that by checking in with them, maybe weekly, to see their progress and provide direction. I’m doing the same thing here.
First, I video my practice sessions (yes all of them). I’ve found my emotions and feelings can greatly color what actually happened in a session, not to mention it shows you a lot about your own training habits (are you marking too late? repeating a pattern too often? sound like a robot?). After each session, I hold my Vision in my mind, and watch my practice session. I then evaluate my session against my Vision. Did the dog creep slowly down the contact to a 2 on 2 off? How does that stack against my Vision of driving to the end, and what does it tell me about where we are in our training? In this instance, it tells me the dog likely does not understand the end behavior (confused that it means 2 feet on 2 feet off, so slowing and stopping sporadically to see where you look pleased), or I have not built enough drive to target. I’ll then think about how I’d like to modify my next training session to address these issues. Maybe I’ll go back to simple 2 on 2 off shaping as a refresher, or I’ll play some forward drive games, or maybe introduce a more exciting toy / reward to get more drive.
Adding Timelines
The last step of any plan is to add a timeline. After all a goal without a deadline is just a wish. The act of breaking everything down to Training Elements usually gives you a pretty good idea of how much work is ahead of you. The rest is about knowing you and knowing your dog. I know if my mechanics are sharp, I can usually shape a behavior like #1 in 4 sessions, and I like to keep shaping sessions short and sweet (3 - 4 mins max). I also like to give my dogs time to digest and sleep on the things we trained, so I’d break each of those sessions out onto a different day. So there I have 4 days worth just on Behavioral Element #1. The next 4 elements can be more challenging to train, so I’d expect them to take 2 - 3 weeks to master. The last step is to put the obstacle into sequence, then put under trial stress. So all told, I’m probably looking at 3 months of training, every single day, to get this behavior to where I want it to be. And that assumes everything goes smoothly. Side note - I DO NOT train my dogs every day. I work full time and ain’t no one got time for that. I train at most 3 - 4 times per week, sometimes only once a week, so don’t feel pressured to drill every day.
Mix It Up
One thing to note though, is that you don’t necessarily need to train your Behavioral Elements in order. They are each independent elements, and so can be worked on concurrently. So one day I may shape my 2 on 2 off, then switch and work on drive to target games. This way I combine something with a lot of thinking with something that is usually more fun and more physical. This helps keep your dogs from burning out, and also provides variety. No one wants to come in and drill on the same thing day in and day out. The other key here is to mix up the level of difficulty. Don’t just consistently make the skills harder; throw your dog a bone (pun intended) and sometimes give them a freebie. If I’m teaching you long division, and every time you get an answer right I make the problem harder how will you feel? Likely demoralized and run down. But what about if after every hard question I give you an easy one, or a few easy ones? You’ll think you’re a boss (and you are!). The same idea applies to our dogs. Mix up the difficulty, mix up the training skills, mix up your handling, just mix it all up!
When Good is Enough
My final thought here is that your Vision doesn’t need to be accomplished. In fact, often times we fall short of our Vision, but it gives us a good place to strive for. Also, I’m constantly evaluating this little Vision against my big Vision (for Agility and life in general). Case and point. I am currently working on 2 on 2 off for my teeter. I am also trialing my dog. You could see how this might be mutually exclusive (i.e. if teeter criteria are not competition ready why am I competing my dog). Well I have a different Vision. One where I need to learn how to make course plans, run a course clean, and learn how trial 2 dogs simultaneously. So with that Vision in mind, I’m out competing with an unfinished teeter. AND THAT’S OK! As long as I am clear about my expectations for each run (i.e. non-complete teeters) then I’m still getting value out of running my dog. Now you might be asking “Aren’t you worried about each lapsed teeter performance building reinforcement for poor performance?” and that’s a valid question. However, my dog will see a teeter 2 maybe 3 times per trial. He gets 20+ reps in a single training session, so those 20+ reps should outweigh those 2 - 3 competition runs. But this is something I would keep an eye on. If I see the trial performances building and outweighing my training performances then I would definitely stop trialing (or only enter classes without a teeter).
I know this was a long one, but hopefully it gives you all an idea for how to get started setting goals and making plans! Let me know your thoughts over on my FB page.