#10 - Ignore this (just kidding!)

I’ve been spending some time lately pondering on how my use of
language has changed… or even evolved somewhat in the area of dog
training. It sounds like splitting hairs, but I do think the
specific words that I use to talk about my training or to my
students about their training… makes a difference. One of the words
I've spent some time thinking about is "ignore" and how my use of
the word has changed. By ignore, I mean when we deliberately,
intentionally disregard a behavior. Ignoring is HARD for most
trainers to swallow, and even harder to actually follow through
on... and it can sometimes be an appropriate behavior management
strategy, and sometimes it's not helpful at all! When shaping we
are taught (correctly) to focus on one criteria at a time, and
temporarily relax other criteria. For example, while focusing on
speed, we may ignore errors of precision… *temporarily*, and that’s
key. Ignoring errors of precision can be quite painful for the type
A, obsessive dog trainer, but gets easier with experience. And also
it gets easier to tell when it's appropriate to ignore minor errors
and trust that they'll come out in the wash.