Biggest Mistake inDistraction Training
The biggest mistake inexperienced dog trainers make when training a dog to ignore distractions is not conducting incremental training. In other words when training a puppy to stay, the inexperienced trainer walks 6 feet away for 5 minutes and bounces a ball….which is just too much at once!
The first element of difficulty that should be introduced is duration. After duration is built, then distance from the dog should be built (without duration). The third step should be to introduce distractions, but without the expectation of duration of behavior or distance from the handler. Lastly, once each element is built individually, they can be combined. At Teamworks, we offer a Distraction Proofing class that teaches owners how to introduce each element of the “3 Ds”.
The other big mistake inexperienced dog trainers make is setting a dog up to fail and punishing the dog for failure…rather than setting the dog up for success and rewarding incremental success. When you set up a training session, you should see the dog respond correctly more than 50% of the time. Any less than that, and you have made the exercise too difficult. When the success rate reaches 80%, you can make the exercise more difficult. As the famous animal trainer, Bob Bailey puts it, when you are training, you must be a “splitter, not a lumper”.
Michele Godlevski has been a Certified Behavior Consultant since 2004.
Michele Godlevski, ACDBC, CCBC-KA, CPDT-KA, CC