Stepping out of the frame - seeing the bigger picture
If you're involved in dog training, you have probably heard about training behaviours, and proofing them in different environments (and around distractions). After doing this, we can often expect a certain outcome. When it doesn't occur, we can sometimes think we have a training 'issue' - something that needs to be 'fixed'. The truth is, there is so much more at play than that, and we need to look at the bigger picture to fully understand what can influence our dog's decision making (looking a bit further than reinforcers/reinforcement history, environmental stimulation, etc). Without doing so, we can sometimes overlook factors that are crucial to the dogs involved. Despite often having the best of intentions with our methods and beliefs...we are still human. We can still see things in a negative way, and see things that need to be fixed - rather than just being able to 'see'. We spot a behaviour, we quickly come to a conclusion about the behaviour,