Doing It All: How Do I Fix This? What’s Really Happening

Doing It All: How Do I Fix This? What’s Really Happening

In a previous article, I addressed relationships between handler and dog and especially how amazing it is to read dogs and figure out what is influencing their performances. In this article, I am excited to share two recent examples of handlers fixing problems simply by changing their response to the dogs’ problems.

My first encounter occurred at a tracking camp I coordinated with three of my best tracking friends* where our goal was to help tracking teams solve problems in preparation for entering and passing a TDX test. In a second adventure, I spent time field training dogs in the South working with a troubled dog/handler team. Both of these examples demonstrate how dogs respond to and perform based on our emotional states. Sometimes improving performance is more about changing a handler than changing the dog. I have now learned when asked to help someone with a problem, not only to ask the obvious questions but also, “How are YOU feeling when the problem occurs?”

At Camp X, our tracking camp, one handler explained to me that the problem she was having with her dog was that the dog gets lost on her track and quits, saying, “She loses confidence, searching everywhere and asking me for help, then quits.” So, I laid a nice challenging unmarked TDX track for her and her dog so that I could watch for the described behavior and analyze what was happening. The dog started very well and progressed through the first half of the track nicely. When she got to a left turn at the top of a hill, she struggled, searching everywhere for the turn. She did start down the leg twice, but the handler did not go along. The dog was confused and searched in the opposite direction, which the handler decided to follow.

The dog didn’t go very far since it was incorrect, coming back to search some more. As the handler reported, the dog did quit, sitting as if at a loss. I then stopped the handler who was trying to get the dog to go back to work. She confirmed to me that this was the behavior she had complained about. I asked her how she was feeling, which she described as frustrated and a little angry. BINGO! I explained to her how the dog had found and started down the next leg correctly twice, but the handler didn’t follow. I also pointed out that I thought her emotions were having an effect on the dog’s confidence. I then changed the tone of the environment with upbeat and happy talk to encourage the dog to find her track. In short order, the dog’s mood changed.

She went back to work and successfully found the next leg and continued the rest of the track. She was not perfect beyond that point, searching off track in another place, but this time she didn’t quit as her handler followed her as she searched. She succeeded, finishing the track and finding her last two articles. Her handler was amazed, especially after I explained to her that she had gotten off track in a couple other spots, but rather than quit, she continued to search until she found each leg and her articles. Lesson: Change your own feelings of frustration or anger, as these feelings impair the dog’s ability to function at its happiest, most competent state.

In the field training group, one gentleman was trying to learn how to handle his talented, high-strung Labrador Retriever at the Master level, the hardest level to learn. This dog was trained professionally, so he was very capable of doing the work well. This gentleman had never handled a dog before at an advanced level, so this was a bigger undertaking than he realized. He had watched the dog work nicely for a professional trainer and admired his dog’s work. But doing the handling himself made him very nervous. Unlike when he was with the professional handler, this dog became vocal and restless as he waited his turn to retrieve.

When it was his turn, the handler and dog did the marked retrieves pretty well, but as the owner tried to do the blind retrieves, the dog virtually ignored him, not sitting to the whistle command nor taking the correct casts the gentleman gave him. He then became frustrated and angry, which only worsened the dog’s performance. The following day, the gentleman admitted that he was ill-equipped to handle his dog as well as he needed to for any Master hunt test and made the decision to turn the dog back over to the professional trainer. The trainer ran him that day and found the dog to be less restless, steadier, and much quieter. He seemed more focused and responsive to whistle commands and casts, although he was not perfect. In this case, removing the nervous and then angry handler helped this dog improve his behavior and performance.

Lesson: Again, emotional expressions such as nervousness or anger interfere with a dogs’ ability to perform optimally, creating a dilemma for the working dog. He must decide how to proceed, which in this case was to ignore the owner and his feelings, take over, and get the job done. Great solution for the dog, but dogs that perform this way at hunt tests fail. Here’s where dog psychology comes into play. In a dog pack, leadership is projected onto the most confident member, so any emotional expression such as nervousness communicates weakness of that pack member. Since survival of the pack is the key goal, such weakness is a detriment and is not followed and often eradicated.

In this case, this young, confident dog sensed his owner’s feelings which he interpreted as weakness, giving him justification for taking over the hunt which is why he ignored whistles and hunted for himself. This situation was one in which changing the handler’s emotional state was not an easy fix such that changing handlers was more effective.In closing, we all get frustrated sometimes with our dogs’ performances, but if we can sit back and analyze what’s going on, we have better chances of changing something (maybe ourselves) so that we do better in the future.

Do you have any examples of changes you have made to impact outcomes at performance events? Care to share?

*Michelle Cullen, Penny Kurz & Sarah Cunningham*