Are you busy in your training or are you productive?

With the weather being so cold a couple of weeks ago I found myself sitting at my computer without very much to show for it. I spent quite a few hours trying to learn a some new way to do recordings, which was frustrating, and pretty much spinning my wheels on several fronts, but trying to convince myself since I was sitting in front of my computer that I was being productive.

I would have been much more productive if I had shut it down and walked away for

several days to clear my head. I have actually done that and went and trained dogs for a few days, recentered and am now sitting down to write this particular Thoughtful Thursday before going out to train.

When I train, I have goals in mind. Criteria that I'm shifting to help create clarity for my dog, to build a skill or to generalize a behavior. If I find myself stewing in a particular behavioral place to long I have no problem putting up the dog, or slicing down the behavior to get us out of that place.

When I find myself doing a lot of busy work, or productive procrastination, and not handling some of the bigger things that need to get done, I realize I have to take a hard look at what is holding me in the place where I'm at. In dog training, it's usually a skill or behavior that I don't like training. This then results in not much progress or inconsistent progress being made.

Last year it was teaching blind send outs to my dogs. Now I love teaching them because I have focused on it for a few months and am seeing huge progress.

With Niko, I had a problem with his out, that was my primary goal this winter. Now we have huge progress, at least for us.

I'm still working on heeling.

So one of the things to ask yourself in your training, are you just busy training or are you productively training?

Now I'm off to productively do some computer work so I can reinforce myself by training!

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