Finding Training Opportunities and Discovering Missed Learning
Can we take a single hide that was hard, missed or abandoned at trial and hammer out some new views on the hide problem? Is it an environment layer, pressure, perception, or a disconnect between partners that caused us to struggle?
In this hide-focused discussion, we are not criticizing COs or Judges. Rather we are looking for productive training opportunities! The goal is to look for ideas to address the challenges posed by these hides.
Hide Dissection Process
To analyze trial outcomes, we should consider a range of possible alternative outcomes. When we look back on any trial search, how likely is it that, if we had made a different choice at one or more specific moments, the outcome for a particular hide would have changed? On this day, did no team call an alert on this particular hide? That seems like a lot of armchair quarterbacking, right?
Throw a couple of passes as the armchair “quarterback” handler. If you are criticizing your choices for a particular hide placement because you called a false alert, didn’t call a hide, got hung up in trapping odor, etc. Take a moment to process the emotional response. But to get better, let's evaluate those situations a bit more dispassionately. Evaluate the alternative choices you could have made to avoid making the same mistake next time. That is critical to the post-mortem of evaluating hide placement.
When you are comfortable with a decision on each hide, even though you know there were alternatives, that is the starting point for constructive criticism. This can push your training forward.
Let’s take that hide you didn’t call in the last trial. Yep, you missed a hide. Yes, you were relatively confident the dog was in odor. Yes, you could have taken a gamble and called it, and yes, the judge could have said "No", but they also could have said "Yes."Â
Why didn’t you call that hide? There are many possibilities. You didn’t see enough to give you confidence. Maybe the dog had alerted at several areas rather than one. Perhaps the wind was pushing odor onto everything and it was just taking too long.Â
Look for the jumping-off point to funnel into your training. For instance, can we set aside time for sourcing exercises on an analogous hide where the dog is challenged to work to source in many different environments? Find these inflection points to create opportunities to push your training.
This webinar will evaluate photos or short video snippets of various hide placements. The discussion will include alternative training ideas to work on those challenging hides and near misses. Let's get working!
