Its a learning curve

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!