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Practice does not make perfect, Perfect Practice makes Perfect
I think most of us are familiar with the saying practice makes perfect. I would suggest that this statement is not entirely true. If I go out and practice something, even if it is for many hours each day, but I practice it incorrectly, at best I may improve a little and at worst I may not only not improve, but become WORSE. It is very unlikely I will every become excellent. This certainly applies to dog training.
What I think may be more true is that Perfect Practice makes Perfect. Or in the case of dog training Perfect Training makes Perfect. I realize the word perfect in the most literal sense may not be really possible. But you get the idea. A better word may be Excellence. So the title of this article would then read Practice does not make for excellence, Excellent Practice makes for Excellence.
As this relates to the training of dogs, excellent training will result in excellent results at events or hunting, or at least make excellent results far more likely. A big part of excellent training is consistency and having a high standard. Which to me means once the dog has been taught a skill and has proven it knows and understands the skill, to then hold the dog to a high standard when it comes to that skill. Whether that be sitting on the whistle, taking casts ( hand signals ), steadiness, handling birds, not cheating water, etc, etc.
What I see happen frequently in training is that many people train as if they were at a test. What I mean by that is that they handle the dog in training as if they were at a test. And what we do in training is often very different than what we would do at a test ( or with my philosophy it should be ). Our goal at an event is to make the dogs look as good as possible. Our goal in training, at least in my mind, is to make the dog better so at an event our chances of looking good are much better. I am of course not talking about when we are teaching a new skill. I am talking about how we train once the skill is known. When teaching a skill we do all we can to help the dog do the skill. Once they know the skill, we train to make the skill better and better, and we do that by not doing things that HELP the dog in training. And we do that by being consistent with our standards. Meaning if we are honoring in training we say no bird ( or whatever cue you use ), sit or down and then do NOT continue to whisper sit, sit, sit as the birds are going down. We instead say sit once and make the appropriate correction if the dog is disobedient to the command. The same applies to casting ( hand signals ). We give the literal cast and expect them to take it. We don't give them a helpful cast to get them to take the cast we want them to take ( like an over off a point when we want them to angle back only slightly ). Refusal to take the right cast may or may not involve a correction. We may use attrition, which means we continue to give the same cast until they take it, even if it takes calling the dog back to the position where it gave us the cast refusal. The key is to maintain a high standard, not have the dog look good to our training group.
Another example is delivering to hand. At a test we may grab the bird before the dog drops it to avoid any hassles. In training I would insist the dog deliver as it should, and to insist upon it, not try to avoid the problem by grabbing the bird before the dog drops it as we may do at an event.
The bottom line is the purpose of training is to make the dog better even if it means they don't look so good while we are striving for the better. With the idea that this striving for the better, or excellence, will greatly increase our chances of looking good at an event or hunting. Which will produce better results and more ribbons, or more birds to the bag.
So as you go forth in your training keep these ideas in mind. And don't just take my word for it. Try it and let your results speak for themselves.
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