What would happen if we started thinking about detection dogs as students that need essential skills to do their job?

Thoughtful Thursdays

What skills and abilities do they need to complete their assignment?

Then once they showed fluency in those specific skills and abilities in controlled environments, we moved to giving them the knowledge on how to link them all together and solve problems?

How would that change what skills and the order we teach and train those skills and abilities?

Would that change our tendency to push a dog through the acquisition of those skills? Would it give us the grace to acknowledge that we have a hole in our learner's education so we can patiently teach them what they need to know before rushing headlong into testing their skill?

Because eventually we want them to be highly fluent partners with the knowledge, skill, and ability to detect and tell us they found our odor/scent of choice.

What are some essential skills your student is working on?