Awareness
Awareness is a key ingredient in dog training. When training a dog the handler needs to be aware of what the dog is doing and what they are doing. It’s also important for the handler to be aware of the surroundings. It’s undesirable to step in front of a moving car while training your dog. I have also seen people who are concentrating on their dogs so intensely that they walk right into sign posts and trees. During dog training sessions develop and practice environmental awareness.
The first area of training awareness mentioned is very important, be aware of your dog. There are exercises to help the novice acquire dog awareness. In other areas of our lives we need to develop this same kind of awareness. It may be while driving or performing a work related task. When working, do you go blindly ahead without noticing cues from your coworkers and the environment?
When working with others are you aware of how much to realistically expect from them? When you partner is a working dog you’re expected to know you dog’s strengths and limitations. What I’ve seen is that many handlers do not see the weaknesses in their own dogs. I imagine this can be true with people on a team as well. I believe we have a hard time seeing weakness in those we have an emotional attachment to. That emotional attachment could only be that they’re on Our Team. I tend to give all people a chance to perform within acceptable limits. I’ve found that people are usually better than they think they are or can do better than they think they can. However it’s important to recognize a person’s limitations.
This goes for dogs as well. I help many people who have dogs that are not what they fully expected the dog to be. These people were dreaming of a dog that differs significantly from the dog they got. In this unfortunate scenario there are several choices that can be made. The first choice is just get rid of the dog and get another one. The get another dog choice is becoming quite Unpopular as we look at our pets more and more like family members. Pets are now treated much like not-quite-human children.
The next choice is to become determined to change the dog into what the owner wants. This is a good choice provided the owner accepts the dog’s true nature. With hard work most dogs can be made to fit into a household with some limitations. If you can’t accept the limitations you will always be unhappy with the dog.
Choice number three is to accept the dog for who it is and arrange the environment to compensate for the dogs shortcomings. This is sometimes resource intensive and takes a bit of dedication. Without commitment it can be hard to put out the extra effort to constantly manage the environment.
There may be more than three approaches to managing insufficiencies based on personality traits, but these are the ones I most often recommend. The methods I most use are a combination of choices two and three. I like to use determination to follow a plan to change behavior (training) and environmental control (system design) to manage the behavior. It must be remembered that changing behavior that’s based on a personality trait is going to take a lot of effort. Even with much effort there’s a good chance you’ll not chance the individual’s core personality. It’s best to fill our lives with others who have personalities that do not clash with our own.
Wishing you the very best in dog training and in life,
Andrew Ledford