11/10/2025
Such wonderful advice and well written. I had to share and will definitely be using this concept from here on out!
The Rubber Band Theory: Mental Resilience and How to Build It
We've all been there: you're at a trial with your dog, halfway through your run. You've been having a good run or maybe even a great one, and suddenly, out of the blue, your commands start to stall out. Your dog hesitates, ignores, or even does the opposite of what you tell them. Sometimes it's like a switch has gone off--suddenly, there's nothing there and you're left frustrated, or discouraged, as your dog does his own thing, OR you fight your way through the rest of the run, getting your course done through sheer determination and some yelling.
What causes that crash - That lapse in concentration. Is it stubbornness from your dog? Did they suddenly just stop hearing you? Is there a "dead" spot on the field? Well, maybe...but I think some or maybe most of the time what we're experiencing is actually the end of the dog's mental reserves: their mental resilience for taking command pressure has run dry. They just don't have any more to give.
This happens so much more commonly at trials than it does at home. At home the stock are familiar, the environment and terrain are familiar, the patterns of command are familiar. At a trial, so many things change: stock are lighter or heavier (more exciting), terrain is unfamiliar (disorienting), patterns of command change (they have to change because the stock is different)...and all of these things drain your dog's mental resources unless you prepare them by building their reserves.
Mental resilience is one of those things that can be built. Some dogs just have more mental reserves than others naturally. Other dogs are "hot heads" that drain their own reserves, just by their very personality. These "hot heads" make it so that it's even more important to build mental resilience but even the "cool headed" dogs can benefit from having their mental resilience built.
Let's look at things that drain mental reserves first. These things are:
-Lots of commands
-Commands given fast
-Coursework
-Precision
-Difficult sheep or cattle - either challenging the dog directly or through a hard draw
-Environmental Heat
-Being Out of Shape
-Dogs who are fast and sharp by nature - the hot heads
-Distance
-Pressures in a field
-Different stock
-Different environment
-A different handler than the one they are used to working with
The Rubber Band Theory:
We have to learn to build mental resilience in our dogs in order to combat all the things that drain it. I think of mental resilience like an internal rubber band that the dog has--taking a dog to a trial is like stretching that rubber band to its limits and then loosening it and stretching it again repeatedly. With repeated stretching, the rubber band weakens and sometimes breaks. The more mental resilience you have built in the dog, the thicker the rubber band is. If the rubber band is thicker it can be stretched and stretched and stretched over and over again, without as much risk of breaking. If it's very thin, you might stretch it to its limits for three or four minutes before it just snaps.
The longer and more intensive the course is, the thicker this rubber band needs to be. I want my dogs' rubber bands to be thick enough that I can stretch and stretch them for 20-30 minutes, in the heat of the day, to make it through a double lift course without breaking. If your dog's band is breaking during a 3-5 minute arena course, mental resilience training might help.
Building mental resilience starts with understanding that we need to simulate the elements that the dog FEELS from a trial or from difficult work and build up our dogs' tolerance for them.
Here are ways I feel that can be done:
1. Build Tolerance for Command Pressure: If you mostly let your dog work on its own at home, then get to a trial where lots of commands are needed because the stock are challenging, your dog's mental resilience for taking so many commands will likely not be where it needs to be. Mixing up more natural work with periods where commands come rapid fire and building up how many minutes your dog can take these rapid fire commands is a great way to prepare them. I would like my dog to go back to working on his own if I don't say anything, but be able to override his own ideas when I take over, for as long as I need to. So I work on building both of those elements at home: his tolerance for me giving commands one right after the other, and his ability to be left alone and make decisions.
2. Build Tolerance for Environmental Difficulty: As I've worked dogs, I've discovered that there are always "Ghost Spots" in the field. These are spots where the dog just seems to feel weird pressure systems from the stock. In my home field there are two corners, where it seems all my dogs either want to scoop the sheep off the fence instead of walking into them or they start blowing off flanks for some reason, or they look back at me as if they can't hear. Nowhere else in the field do we have this problem. This is less a hearing issue than it is an issue that the dog is saying "My sheepdog senses for the pressures I'm feeling are overriding my ability to listen to you". I crave and look for these areas to work and when I find a new one, I rejoice. I work every dog into those corners until they will flank and push exactly where I want, right into the middle of the corner without deciding to scoop sheep off the fence, or flipping around to bring them back. Once the dog has mastered that "Ghost Spot", I go on the hunt for another one.
3. Build Tolerance for Physical Challenge: Your dog's mental resilience is directly proportional to how fit they are. If the dog runs out of physical fitness, their mental will be gone too. Spending time cross training them is more than valuable--it's essential. If your dog needs to be able to run a 20-30 minute double lift course, they need to be fighting fit. You can't JUST focus on physical fitness in order to build mental resiliency though and sometimes physical fitness without training the rest of the mental line- up is a double edged sword. Some hot headed dogs will seem worse the more fit they are--this is just due to the fact that you can't "run them down" as easily. Those dogs need to be taught to think THROUGH their keenness, not kept unfit so that they can be "run down" and more easily controlled.
4. Build Tolerance for Hard Stock: Our dogs are familiar with their stock at home. You can't do anything about that, but we need to be conscious of building our dogs' resilience for continuing to remain flexible when the stock are exciting, or triggering. You can always change something: put sheep into a pen and work another set around them so that the pressure and the draw is different. Work a single so that the tension in the stock increases. Change where the main flock is bedded down so that the draw becomes harder and in a different direction. Of course it's always beneficial to go to new places and work different stock whenever you get the chance, especially if you have one of those dogs where that is very triggering.
5. Build Tolerance for Heat: The more environmental heat there is, the faster your dog will run out of mental energy, especially if you haven't built up tolerance for it. It's a fact of life that if you compete, you will deal with your run being in the heat at some point. If your dog is going to be asked to deal with heat on a field course, this becomes a major consideration and I spend time during the summer training for heat tolerance, building SLOWLY so as not to overheat my dogs. Hot headed dogs overheat even faster in the heat and even MORE consideration and thought needs to go into their heat tolerance training. BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL when building heat tolerance as heat can be exceptionally dangerous and you can kill your dog with bad judgement.
6. For the "Hot Heads": Dogs with busy minds, and hot heads can expend their mental reserves THEMSELVES before you can say ten commands to them at a trial. They need MORE mental training than more cool headed dogs. Their mental reserves have to be built to a higher level than other dogs because you're dealing with a personality that naturally drains the tank. Spending a considerable amount of time at home changing between slow work and fast, frequent, rapidfire commands will help them learn to keep working and remain flexible when things are fast and adrenaline is high. These are the dogs that benefit the most from using "ghost spot" training. I start with slow commands into a "hard" spot, and then work towards rapidfire flanks and stops on that same spot. These tend to be the dogs that you feel like you're always fighting against their ideas until they build up enough mental reserves that they can both deal with what they're feeling AND listen to you. They will become more and more open to your suggestion the thicker their rubber band gets.
7. Build Tolerance for DISTANCE: Probably what drains mental resilience the fastest is distance from the handler. This is what makes field trials at big distances so challenging. The father away you are from the dog, the faster the mental tank gets drained. Therefore, I spend a considerable amount of energy slowly building my dogs' tolerance for this. It has to be done carefully and at the dog's individual speed. Some welsh lines of collies are endlessly tolerant of distance work and are easily built up to it (they are being selected for this). Other lines take much longer. To each dog, give the time it takes. It's also important to remember that tolerance for distance isn't a one time fix. I routinely have to re-build this in younger dogs in the springtime because it's like a muscle--it will get weaker if not used. Even my open dogs need to have their distance muscle rebuilt at the end of a long period of working fairly close, although it only takes a few times for them and much less time than a pup.
8. Build Tolerance for Coursework: It should be fairly obvious that if you want your dog to be a consistent listener away from home on courses, you need to build their ability to do courses. If I'm going to a trial where I know the course will be 3-5 minutes (as in an arena trial where all of it is precision and coursework), I try to do courses that are 10 minutes long, so that my dog is used to listening to precise, rapidfire commands for twice the amount of time I'm expecting. If I'm going to a field trial where the course will be 10-12 minutes (no double lift), I try to do paced coursework for 25-30 minutes. If my dog can't continue to do coursework for 25-30 minutes, I do coursework until I see their mental reserves running out, then push for one or two more minutes and quit. That way I can build them up to the time I want.
9. Build Tolerance for Stock Pressure: Stock that put pressure on the dog, either through looking at them, or pushing toward a draw, always drain the dog's mental reserves. You can see this particularly on difficult range ewes when there is a stallout and the sheep are directly challenging the dog or on cattle when the dog needs to stand there and hold the pressure. Some dogs will be okay if the stock challenge them one or two times, but by the third time their patience is expended and they launch in there and bite. I try to build up the amount of time my dogs will hold this pressure without losing their cool. Some dogs need it more than others, but I think all dogs benefit.
10. Build Tolerance for Adrenaline: Last but not least, maybe the most important of all, is that all dogs feel an increase in excitement or even adrenaline when they get to a trial or a place that is away from home. Therefore the amount of drive and keenness you are working through increases. You can simulate and train for this at home by sending your dog on very fast speedy flanks and then seeing if you can get a crisp stop and change of direction. I work my way up to several minutes of this and feel that it helps to replicate the drive and adrenaline the dog feels at a trial. If you work them slow at home, always, they never get the chance to figure out how to work through their excitement. But simulate that excitement and then help them figure out how to control it, and trial adrenaline becomes a lot more familiar to both of you. In the beginning your dog may not listen very well when you ask for lots of speed and then precision, but they will get better and better at it. It's a learned skill.
Trying to anticipate what your dog is feeling at a trial and help them build their mental tolerance for it is a skill that I feel every trainer needs to learn to be successful. I'm not always 100% successful at mentally preparing my dogs, but these are some of the things that I feel help a lot. If I have a dog whose rubber band breaks on me during a trial, these are the things I take a hard and honest look at whether I've put in enough time to build. You can't make it perfect all the time, but you can make it better and each dog is different. Think about what you want your dog to be able to do, and then go to work helping them build!
Photo credit: Andrea Layne Photography
