“To have the greatest chance of success we should practice, review, and rehearse our actions mentally (internally).”
Andrew Ledford © 2000 -2009
Just before writing this blog I had the good fortunate to look through several historic photos of the early 1940s. I was amazed at the progress we have made. I was also struck by the similarities of 1940s America and 2010 China. In the 40s while America was transforming itself it was also transforming the world.
How did we do it? Did we just blunder into greatness? No! We were on a path that was accelerated by war. War created a need for production and manufacturing. Manufacturing was not done without some forethought. Each part of the manufacturing process needed to be planned. Someone needed to mentally rehearse how the process would work. Once there was a plan it needed to be tested and refined.
From America’s war time manufacturing experience came the ideas that would also turn Japan into the second largest economy in the world. The turbulent times of change we now face are placing stress on older systems much like a war would. For America to stay competitive in changing turbulent times we need to change too. How will we know what direction to go? How will we know which direction of change to take? We must see what is far off as if it was close at hand. We need to mentally rehearse the many scenarios that lie ahead of us as a nation and as world citizens.
Mental rehearsal is another skill we can learn from dog training. When training our dogs for a special task or when solving behavior problems we need to mentally rehearse the planned actions. Once we have a training plan we need to make some prediction about the future.
Going through each step in the training sequence increases the likelihood of including all the steps needed to achieve the target behavior. It can’t be stressed enough, planning and mentally rehearsing the process will help us avoid leaving out important steps in the training process. Many times if an important step is skipped the quality to the final behavior is not very good.
If you are concerned about the quality of your dog’s behavior you need a plan that also includes some form of quality control.
Wishing you the best in dog training and in life,
Andrew Ledford