Ok ok not horse related but training related so bear with
me.
My new job involves working with a dog. Pretty cool huh? I
thought it was perfect but it has been quite an adjustment however. It is
one thing to work with animals as a hobby and quite another to to rely on one
for your livelihood
Ok so I actually have two working dogs. One well trained dog
that has been doing the job for several years and one green dog literally
straight from the farm. I call him my not so working working dog (or NWWD for non-working working dog).The
NWWD has had to go back to kindergarten so to speak. He came to me with the
appearance of knowing absolutely nothing.
It has been a frustrating experience for me and I felt like
I was getting nowhere with him. So I started a training spread sheet (I know I am a serious nerd). It includes
the date, how long we work, what we work on and where we work. I also rate the
session from 1-10 on our performance. This process has really given me great
prospective on the learning process! I highly recommend starting your own
spread sheet if you feel overwhelmed, plateaued, or stuck. If anyone is
interested in talking spread sheets or wants help tracking their work with their
horse let me know. I happen to really enjoy designing this sort of thing. My
email is Phillips.map@gmail.com
So I have made a graph here of our session dates and the
ratings I have given each session a 1-10 rating with 1 being 100% distracted and 0 response to cues and 10 being 100% correct response. Does the pattern look familiar (see the
graph above of a textbook learning process graph)? I have only just started
this documentation process I look forward to having several months of data so
we can really see the learning process in action!! SO Cool!
