Music Lessons and Dog Training: Repetitions and Repeat Again

While Chunk and I were out on our walk this morning I was reminded of a music lesson I had when I was first learning to play the banjo. My assignment for the week had been to work on a few exercises in the lesson book and practice them over and over, which I thought I had done.

When I showed up for my next lesson, thinking I was prepared, it turned out I was not. I played the exercises for my instructor who stopped me, shook his head and commented on how I hadn't practiced enough. He pointed to the end of the bar where there was a "repeat" symbol with the number 1000 after it. He asked me what I thought it meant. I replied it meant to play the exercise several times. He said no, it means to play it one thousand times. If it says one thousand, you play it one thousand times. That is how you will learn to play these well and without effort when called upon to do it. He was right.

Several years later when we were first training the "whoa" command to our two setter pups, what Laurie and I had done was to attach a check cord to the dog's collar and half hitch it around the flank. Then we would walk around the yard with the dog close to our side, say "whoa" and give a gentle tug on the hitch to stop the dog.

We would try to get in 100 times a day, gradually lengthening out the check cord until the dogs could do this out at full length. Then we could let them off leash, start them in close and extend them out until they would do it no matter how far they were from us. (We didn't invent this, it was shown to us).

Once the command was done well in the yard, we moved to a couple of local ball parks to teach them there. Then eventually we moved out to the field. The reason for these repetitions was, just like with my music lessons, the dogs needed to have these commands well ingrained so as to prepare them for the steadying work that lied ahead.

Which brings us to Chunk. My homework assignments for this past fall and winter were two in number. The first was to get Chunk into as many birds as I could during the hunting season; birds, birds, birds, which I think we did well with. The second was to really work on "Hup", make him do it as many times as I can; do it before he goes out, before he comes in, out in the yard and on our walks. As trainer Steve Church explained to me, the first year was all about building the fire in Chunk, get him patterning, get lots of birds shot over him, lot of retrieves, etc. This year we'll begin the steadying process and to do that Chunk will have to have Hup well ingrained.

I'll be finding out soon how well I did with my homework...

Enjoy your dogs!

Ken