17/08/2016
Many years ago, I attended a seminar by Patricia McConnell, PhD. If you don't know her name, you are missing out on some seriously great stuff. Her books and lectures were integral to my understanding of training and behavior when I was first starting out.
But I remember being shocked at one seminar when she said something along the lines of the concept in the image (it was over 10 years ago, so I won't even try to directly quote her). I mean, she's a PHD! What could she possibly not know about dogs???
Now I know what she was saying. Now I say the same thing.
When new trainers start out, they go through several phases of learning.
The first is the common sense/personal belief phase. The "I've had dogs all my life and know what I'm doing" phase. I call it the Dog Park Behaviorist Phase.
The second phase comes after learning "new" technique. The revelation that there is another way to teach behavior. This is the Recipe Phase. When a trainer begins to learn specific protocols for certain behaviors and follows them like a recipe.
There are pros and cons to this phase. The pros are obvious. The trainer becomes more skilled, having new and (hopefully) better ways to teach dogs and change behavior. They also pass that knowledge on to others.
Now, for the con: It is not uncommon for new trainers to fall into the trap of believing that those protocols are solutions. Without the experience of applying those protocols to a wide variety of dogs, they aren't aware of the many variables that can cause a protocol to fail.
I once took a class with my dog where we were asked to follow a specific protocol. When it was clear my dog was struggling, the trainer's advice was "Just keep trying." They didn't have any other options for us. Eventually, I dropped the class.
It is only through experience that we learn that protocols are helpful guidelines but not solutions. Protocols are like paper maps. They tell us how to get from Point A to Point B. What they can't do is tell us what to do when we get lost.
There were two dogs that made that gap in my knowledge very clear to me about 10 years ago. One a Wolf/Malamute, the other a street dog from the Philippines. Neither of them were very forgiving of my ignorance.
This was when I entered a third phase, when I realized that learning a protocol wasn't enough and that even seemingly simple concepts like "positive reinforcement" are complex, and able to be broken down, analyzed, and applied with varying degrees of proficiency.
This is a permanent phase, because this is the point when we recognize that our success at training the animal in front of us is based on nothing but our knowledge and skill. That failure is a reflection on the trainer, not the animal. This is the point we start taking video of our training sessions, watch to analyze our technique, and make adjustments. Applied behavior analysis beats protocols any day.
But while I constantly strive to improve myself in this phase, I'm also just entering another phase. The biology of learning phase. This is neuroscience and genetics and epigenetics. It is understanding learning at a level that makes us realize how little we know.
I struggle with it because the concepts don't come easily for me. I'm lucky to have a colleague and friend who can help break it down in ways that are easier for me to understand, but I'll never be a neuroscientist. Even if I were, researchers are constantly learning new things about the brain. Even if I knew all there was to know today, there's still so much we don't know that has yet to be discovered.
It is these last two phases that have completely changed me as a trainer.
I encourage those who are new to the world of training to never accept what you know on any subject as all there is to know. Keep learning. Keep practicing. Get your hands on as many dogs as possible before opening a training business. Walk dogs. Volunteer at your local shelter (be sure to help out with laundry and other neglected tasks, too). Because shelter dogs are great at emphasizing the flaws in protocol-based training.
Above all, recognize what you don't know. That's where the learning happens.
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