Blogging as a Dog Training Tool
A question posed by a behaviorist that I talk to — how do you keep track of your progress when you’re training? There are better days and worse days. There are improvements and setbacks. Most people can keep a general sort of ‘tab’ on their progress just by feelings alone — am I happy and is the dog happy? If so, training is working. If not, re-evaluate.
For people who are into sports and running, there’s statistics to track like how far you’ve run, what your heart rate is when you’re cycling, and how fast you’re going. With dog training, there’s the same kind of metrics (”How fast does the dog respond to my commands?” “How reliable is my dog’s recall in the yard?” “How many times do I need to correct leash walking behavior?” “How long can I be out of the house without the dog panicking?” “How many reactions does the dog have to X stimulus in the course of a walk?”), but in the few training classes I’ve been in with the behaviourists that I have access to in my area, I haven’t seen any efforts made to track metrics.
The behaviorist that I’m working with now is encouraging me to blog daily as a tool to track progress, which I’ve been trying to do every time after we do a training walk. I’ve also been keeping track of a couple of metrics at Daytum, like the fights that Eo picks with Henry and the circumstances around them and how many times Eowyn reacts to particular stimuli on our walks. After a week of doing it so far, I’ve decided it’s important to track positive metrics as well as negative metrics… I’m planning to add counters for how many times the dogs DON’T jump up and rush to the front of the house when the dog next door barks, and how many times they sit or otherwise respond immediately without a clear and present reward.
I think blogging — and being able to go over the blog with the behaviorist — is going to be a great tool in the long run. In fact, I might just start blogging in other places that I’m trying to change my life, too…