Hitting the Wall

I’ve been stepping up the pressure on Deacon as we get closer to his certification tests. 

Deacon has got many flashes of incredible brilliance, interspersed with times of a southern California surfer dude attitude.  That’s the attitude where “I’ve worked long enough, it’s time to go home”.  Not what you want when you are in the middle of the woods, two hours into a five hour task. 

Just about every one of my dogs hits this stage in their training.  This is when training changes from fun and games into a job that has to be done. I call it hitting the wall.  The tasks move from being able to fall into a scent pool to tricky scenting conditions like swirling breezes, overlapping scent pools, buried sources and trying to extend the time between placement of source and the actual running  of the task.  I do this to start making Deacon think.  To make him start developing some problem solving ability.  I also move from just one or two sources to many multiples because, contrary to popular thinking, dogs know how to count.  And Deacon got to the point that after locating two sources, his brain went into neutral. 

There is such a thing as mental endurance, or as I read somewhere, nose time.  It is the time a dog is effectively using its nose to detect the target scent.  This also plays into the “hitting the wall” scenario.

To me, developing physical endurance is the easy part.  It's the mental endurance that is difficult.  Deacon has good physical endurance, he can run beside a bike for two miles, can hike three to fours hours or go on a fast trail ride with me on the horse for a couple of hours.  However, when I first started pushing him, he was only effectively using his nose for about 30 minutes at a time.  The 30 minute timer went off and, boom, it was like a switch got flipped off.  To the uninitiated, he continued to run around acting like he was actively searching.  To my eye, though, he really wasn’t working anymore. His whole demeanor changed.  He would work a bit manically, his nose was on the ground, snort like a pig pretending he was working, but he just wasn’t getting anywhere.  Just running around frantically, pushing his nose under this log or that clump of grass.

And that is what hitting the wall looks like.  It is messy and ugly and sometimes you just want to throw your hands up, march your dog back to the truck and head home.  The job was no longer fun or easy, it was WORK.  Almost every dog gets to this point in their career.  And almost every dog comes through the other side with a renewed devotion to the task, to the point that finding that source is the be all, end all, of their life.  It may not be “fun” anymore, but it becomes an avocation, a passion that they would rather do with their human partner under any kind of circumstance. 

This change in attitude does not come quickly nor does it come easily. It takes a dedication on the part of the human partner to remember the spark that made them pick this particular canine partner.  To remember what their tired confused canine partner was like, to coach them, and condition them. So the dog can come out the other side.  During this time is when the true partnership develops.  You see how your dog learns, and you develop training strategies that compliment his style. Your dog trusts you.

Ultimately, it is remembering how exciting this journey is going to be with your canine partner at your side.  That is what keeps you plugging away.  Through the ups and especially through the downs.  It is tedious and it is boring, this training to set a work ethic.  But, it will come.  That excitement, that joy, that devotion to the job.  We will get a partner that works WITH us, not FOR us.

By sticking with it, when it is work and not fun, showing to our dogs that we will stand with them no matter what, we get a dog that will perform in the rain, the snow, disasters, the heat, brush so thick a human couldn’t walk through it upright, all night, then all day the next day.  They want to do this with their human partner because it is the reason they live, to find the source and show it to their partner. 

And it is all the better because we are a team.