Why It's Important To Focus On The Steps, And Not The Goal In Dog Training
On the latest episode of The Family Pupz Podcast, we discussed the importance of focusing on the steps in dog training, rather than the goal, with the founder of Positive Partners Dog Training LLC, Brianne Harris, as focusing on the goal too deeply, like trying to get your dog to stop demand barking for a specific duration or by a specific date, can be counterproductive to the actual achievement of those goals.
Check out her answer above!
To listen to the rest of the conversation with Brianne, check out the podcast episode below:
[TRANSCRIPT BELOW]
Brianne Harris: It's important to think about the steps and not necessarily the goal.
So one of my - I don’t know if she’s exactly a mentor - but one of the trainers I follow is actually an alpaca trainer.
We've done workshops with her. I've done two weekend long workshops. And her name is Marty McGee Bennett. And she like, literally wrote the book on like positive reinforcement alpaca training.
Like she is the lady. It's called CAMELIDynamics.
And she talks about when you're going out and training your alpacas. And for context, alpacas are very sensitive. You are not going to force them to do anything. If you try to force them, you are spring loading them for an absolute panic attack, because they are a prey animal.
So it really puts you in tune with what you're doing with your body and how much pressure are applying.
But she talks about how it's important to make a plan, rather than focusing on your goals.
I mean, we all have goals that we want to achieve with our dogs or with our alpacas. And we want to keep those in mind.
But if my goal is just to stop my dog from demand marking, and if I'm not seeing success fast enough to what I think I should, then I get frustrated that I'm not meeting my goal. And I might push harder. And I might put our training back 10 steps because I'm just trying to meet my goal. If I just want my dog to lay on his bed for 30 seconds without barking today, that's my only goal, and he can't do that. Then I can get frustrated and I can keep trying and then everybody gets frustrated.
But if I'm focusing on the steps to get there, then I just have to do step one.
“Oh, we did step one. Alright.”
“What's step two today?”
“What's step three?”
“And then step three didn't work. Okay, what’s step two and a half?”
And then it just takes the pressure off of everything. And it makes it bite sized pieces.
If I'm trying to get to 30 seconds today, what do I need to do to get there? And it just, it makes it so much easier.
And it's like one of the most useful things I've heard from another trainer is focusing on the steps, not on the goals, because then you can be flexible and then you can pivot when you need to.