Michele Pouliot seminar: Achieving Maximum Performance with your Dog

Last weekend we had a working spot in another seminar. Michele Pouliot is a successful freestyle competitor and instructor, and her specialty is using platforms to jump-start behaviors. In fact, something she emphasized over and over during the seminar was setting up the environment/training session so that the dog could quickly figure out the correct behavior and get lots of successful reps in right away. She also emphasized what she calls "clean training" -- having your treats already broken up into small pieces, having them hidden in your pocket and not in an obvious bait bag, having a plan of action before you start, and getting everything else that's needed (ie platforms, targets, music) set up before you start. Have a clear cue that tells the dog when he's working and when he's not. Afterwards do a self-assessment and figure out if you need to improve your handling, mechanical skills, or plan of action. And, of course, have fun!

The working dogs got to spend plenty of time on the floor. I found that initially Dragon would turn to me and happily do a few behaviors, but after a few minutes he started getting more distracted. That tells me that when we're out and about, we need to keep our sessions short, but as time goes on I need to start pushing his limits a bit. Right now, if we're in a highly distracting environment such as the dog park or the woods, I only ask for 1-5 behaviors at a time. Each training moment only lasts up to 20 seconds. Asking him to work for 5-10 minutes among a number of other dogs and handlers was too much of a challenge, even when it was interspersed with breaks to let him look around. That said, he didn't shut down or blow me off, he was just not 100% focused and frequently looked away and had to be called back. Overall it was a good experience for him, but in the future I'll be more careful to not push him that much so we can really build on success.

We spent most of Saturday talking about the basics of good training, which I found very helpful to review. For example, I may have taught Dragon a number of tricks, but most of them have clear contextual clues, and very few (possibly even none) are truly on a verbal cue. It's something that I've neglected to work on, and I hadn't even realized it. Oops!

We talked about using the leash as a positive training tool -- teaching the dog to move away from the pressure when he feels a light tension from the leash or light pressure from a hand. These can be used to guide a dog into position. She has a cool way to use light lines draped across a dog's sides to cue side passes and other complex movements.

At the beginning of the day Dragon whined in his crate for a minute or so when he was put away, but by the end he was tired and would just go to sleep. The same thing happened on the second day. I didn't cover his crate this time since my chair was close to it.

We discussed teaching attention as a behavior in itself, and not a criteria of something else such as heeling. There are two schools of thought on this. Denise Fenzi doesn't teach a "watch" cue because dogs naturally tend to watch their handlers if the training is fun and engaging for the dog. Michele teaches it and practices just getting attention in many environments, believing that a behavior that is fluent at home will be just as fluent in a distracting environment if the dog is able to focus and watch his handler. Personally I have decided to teach Dragon to watch me. Today we were practicing heeling after my rally class was over. At the end I had him sit at heel for a while, and I realized that he rarely looked up at me to check in. If I had moved forward he would have started heeling with me, but with a delayed response. Does this mean that the training session was simply not fun enough for him, or the distraction level was too high? Perhaps, but I feel that spending some time reinforcing attention will help him be more successful, and it certainly can't hurt. I will split teaching attention with the "give me a break" and "look at that" games from Control Unleashed so that he has a chance to check out his environment without conflict.

We moved on to Michele's signature platform training. For Tiny Dog, my platform size has very little wiggle room -- it needs to be just wide enough for him to comfortably stand on it with all four feet, but only when he's aligned straight on it. Today I made one by cutting up an old phone book and wrapping it in duct tape. His default behavior is to stand on it and look at me. Later I will make a separate, more square platform of a different color for which the default behavior will be sitting in a tuck sit.

I was impressed by all the behaviors that can be jump-started with a platform. The dog can line up in heel or side position with the handler already standing straight, with their arm along their stomach -- no need to twist around to lure the dog into position, which turns the shoulders the wrong way. The dog can also line up in front and get reinforcement with the correct head-on alignment. Along the same line as that, you can have the dog wait across the room or at a funny angle and then call them into heel or side or front, and they'll figure out how to twist their bodies to line up properly on the platform and along your side. They can be used to teach very tight spins, and paw waves without moving forward. (We worked on paw waves at the seminar, and Dragon made very quick progress!) They allow rapid distance training, such as for a go out in obedience, or doing freestyle tricks across the ring. Two platforms on either side can be used to teach the dog to pass in front or behind you or between your legs to switch sides. Another neat freestyle move is teaching the dog to line up in front, but facing away from you. Okay, okay, this list is long enough. I'm sold on the idea; platforms can be extremely useful!

At the end of the day we had some extra time for Michele to talk about anything the audience wanted, and someone asked about a clicker-trained retrieve. She said that in her experience many dogs do not like retrieving a dumbbell even if it was positively trained, and some stress when they are asked to take something into their mouth. Ding-ding-ding, bells went off in my head. So I'm not crazy or doing anything horribly wrong when I'm seeing Dragon shut down when trying to teach him to take and hold! That took such a weight off my shoulders. That doesn't meant that we can't work through the issue, but I'm relieved that even someone as successful as Michele has seen this happen with dogs she's trained. (By the way, so far my tactic of delaying the lowering of my hand is helping.)

We moved on to the topic of getting ring-ready, and Michele stressed the importance of practicing your ring entry routine. Jackpot your dog right at the start of your routine, to classically condition the ring entry as an exciting moment. Routines that start poorly rarely get better as the performance continues. Also make sure to prepare your dog for the audience bursting into applause at the end or even during your routine.

There was another papillon at the workshop and Dragon was super distracted every time he caught sight of it. Otherwise he didn't try to greet the other dogs too much. He's not usually allowed to do so when he's on leash, and my consistency with this allowed us to move through tight hallways without him stopping to try to sniff butts. What a good boy.

If you enjoy teaching tricks and want to get a positive-training perspective on preparing for competition (in any sport), I highly recommend Michele Pouliot's seminars.