Hey everyone. Welcome to Fostering Excellence in Agility, the podcast. I'm your host, competitor, coach, and mentor Megan Foster. I help agility enthusiasts focus on the small details of training and behavior while still having a clear understanding of their big picture goals. Join me as I take you through key elements of dog agility training, competing and teaching, and how you can take action today to start improving your skills within the sport.
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Hey everyone. Today I want to talk about the phrase, but they know better. I hear this a lot in training and in competition where a handler will assume that a mistake is a hundred percent the dog's fault. They know this and they should know better, and they should perform to criteria no matter what. And I think we do need to spend some time unpacking this idea just to make sure that we are staying in check with ourselves and our training values and our competition values.
So first we have to break down who should know? , is it the dog's responsibility to perform to criteria no matter what, or is it the handler's responsibility to uphold criteria no matter what? I don't think you can have one without the other, and that's really what we need to take a really hard look at and be honest with ourselves.
I 100. Accept responsibility for maintaining criteria, which means that I also have to take 100% responsibility for the times that I do not maintain criteria. I am 100% owning that there will be times in my dog's career that I will choose to priorit. The instant win over the long term gains. This means that at some point in my dog's career, I will ignore a self-released start line, or I will ignore a dropped bar in competition, or I will ignore self rereleasing off of a stopped contact.
Any of those things that you may normally. Maintain criteria in training. There are going to be times where you let that go in competition, and I think this is what we have to be really honest with ourselves about in order to stay within our values and not be upset with the dog when they find that hole in our ability to maintain cri.
and they go there because everything that a dog does is based on their reinforcement history. So if sometimes you do not maintain the criteria of the start line, the dog is going to look for those context clues again in order to determine is this the moment that they are going to. maintain criteria or is this the moment where it's going to be okay?
It's going to be reinforced if I leave early. And the issue with this is, is that dogs are brilliant and they will be able to pick up on the difference, but they will also guess which means. , you are likely to be put into a situation where you're going to be surprised by this. You're maybe going to react in a way that you wouldn't normally react.
You are then more likely to start changing the way you behave when it's really important to you that they stay. And now we start to get into this cycle of escalating the queue. if you normally lead out and you're not looking at them, but now you've slacked on criteria just a little bit, and now you're starting to watch them more closely, and now they're more able to anticipate when you're going to release.
And now you are seeing them be a little pushy on the start line and you are releasing them before they break because this run is really important to you. And then it just kind of snowballs into. , you don't have a start line either in a specific organization because we are different depending on what organization we're running in just our mental state.
Generally speaking, it might get attached to the venue that you're in, so a specific facility might tell the dog, okay, this is when my person acts weird, and I can be without a start line this time. and so on. So when is it okay to loosen this criteria? And I believe that this needs to be in relation to where you are in your periodization of your year.
So if I am in spring training, I am very unlike. to loosen any criteria. My spring training is when I am pushing the limits and taking risks and testing where my training is holding up and where it's not holding up. But I still want to bring in my good training habits into competition and build on that consistency.
I want to make sure that I'm performing the same way in competi. as in training, and I want to make that clear to my dog so that my dog is able to access the same behaviors in competition that she has in training. And then when I move into my regular season where I am campaigning and trying to qualify for whatever my post season or big event is, or the next event on my calendar is, have a limited amount of time and a limited amount of runs in which I can get those qualifiers, and I do that on purpose.
So that means I am more likely to relax that criteria if necessary. And here's where we have to be really honest, is that if the skill is well trained and well generalized and well. This should not be a problem lacking criteria for a short amount of time in your year, and it's not happening very frequently.
Like even though you, in your head, you may be thinking it's going to be okay if they release off their contact early, I'm just going to ignore it. That doesn't mean it should be happening. So if that was my plan and I noticed that it was happening in every single. , I have some big decisions to make and that is going to speak to, do I put a pin in this regular season and risk not qualifying for the big event so that I can fix this problem that I didn't know that I had, or do I let this go for the rest of the regular season and hope that I have enough time to fix this problem before the post-season big event.
So that is the gamble that I'm taking, but I don't think it's fair to either myself or the dog to have different criteria based on each run, because I feel like that is what leads to that QEs escalation and that overall frustration and confusion. If in the first run of the day you are always maintaining criteria and you're taking them.
Having them do it again with fix and go or removing them from the course, but in the very next run, it's important to you that you run the course no matter what, so you don't fix it. I think that that back and forth within the same day or the same weekend, provides more confusion than more clarity, especially if you're going in with the idea that you're going to run no matter what.
but then you do notice that you've faulted and your positioning changes after a fault. This also creates those same issues of q escalation or a change in your mindset. I just don't think we're making the point as clear as we could be then if we split it based on where we are in our competitive journey for that.
So for me, when I'm looking at who should know better, it always comes back to me. , I should know better. I should know better when to loosen criteria and when to tighten criteria so that I am maintaining excellence throughout the cues that I. and I'm able to easily track the performance that I'm getting from my dog in response to those cues.
I understand that there's always going to be those times where it's a surprise, even in spring training, where I am committed to using fix and go accordingly and making it look exactly like. and there's still gonna be those times where it was a surprise and it, and it gets let go. Or those moments where they self-release maybe just a millisecond and now it's kind of too late to respond the same that's going to happen because we're human and our dogs are not machines.
But it still needs to be noted in the post-trial. Kind of debrief and wrap up so that you can. quality time in training into enhancing that skill even more. So what I want you to do when you are next looking at your competition calendar is to take a look at the competitions and decide which ones mean what to you, which competition's coming.
are more in that spring training category where you need to be on your A game with maintaining criteria and which competitions are really important, that you are campaigning for the event that you're trying to qualify for, and that those scores are really important and that you're going to give yourself a set zone where you are loosening up criteria, but you are paying attention that you are not.
Inadvertently breaking it. Okay, so when I mean, when I say loosen criteria, it means that if the dog self-release or knocks a bar or does something that I would normally fix in training and in competition with the use of fix, a go fix and go, those things I'm just not fixing. If there are small mistakes in them, I am running according to the plan.
Putting that money in the bank for producing as many clean rounds as possible, or clean that rounds that are as close to clean as possible. Because practicing running through mistakes is also very important because if you are only used to going back and fixing everything, you then won't have the skill to continue through small blunders in your.
So you need both. I'm just saying you need to pick which times during the year is which one. Right? So getting really clear on which run means what and how you are going to be responding to your dog's behavior based on where you are in your competitive year. By loosen criteria, I do not mean release your dog early off.
contacts and start lines. It does not mean that I actively try and break the criteria. My goal is that I don't need to loosen the criteria at all. It just means that I am accepting the fact that these types of mistakes are normal and it's my responsibility to be clear in the communication and it's my responsibility to, in training, fill in any gaps in my dog's understanding.
So I would love to hear how you get on about applying this inform. Or if you have experiences that are different than mine and what I've talked about today or anything else that is in your head after listening to this, and I will talk to you more next week. Thanks for listening. If you enjoy this episode, there are several ways you can leave me positive reinforcement.
One, leave me a five star review. Two, share with your fellow agility nerds. Or three, share your thoughts with me on social media. Be sure to follow at FX agility on Facebook or Instagram.
