(140) Practice Makes Perfect

I’ve been practicing with beeker to get him up on the bed when I call him. I’ve blogged before about how he has a learning disability when it comes to my verbal command or with a verbal command and hand gestures together. I can get him to come up on the bed if I stand next to him and gesture and command him to “bed up”, a few times. This is frustrating. I have to get up out of bed and almost cojore him to get up with us. I know he wants to be on the bed because he comes over and puts his head on the bed next to me, and looks up at me with his cute pleading eyes. Then he just looks at me when I call him!
So, I’ve been using treats and the rule of 10,000. I decided that I needed to work with Beeks like I would when I taught him to jump through the hula hoop. Or when we taught him to roll over. He is so food motivated that he will do what ever he needs to do to get the food. That makes him a fast learner. (Well, the fact that Max jumped up on the bed when I kept calling Beeker tell me that Beeker may not be that quick of a learner.) I also decided that I would have to break down the whole process into smaller increments. I got some sweet potato treats and cut them up into tiny bits. Then when Beeks wanted to get up on the bed (by looking forlorn at me) or when I wanted him to get up with the rest of the family (Chez, Max, Brad and Me), I used the same working and the same hand gesture every time I gave him the command. Every single time.

This is where the rule of 10,000 comes into play. Malcom Gladwell, suggests in his latest book, Outliers, that in order to be successful at any given action, the most successful person (or in this case dog) will be the one who repeats that action ad nausea. That is, in order to perfect something like playing concert piano or being successful like the Beetles or Bill Gates, the person will by the time they are successful, practiced their chosen art 10,000. Almost to the point that they will perform it over and over and will have become so familiar with it that it is more like a reflex. Some call it Flow, where the behavior or action just happens and is done without thinking about process. Really good tennis players will get into the flow mode and if they start thinking about their method they get all messed up and their timing gets out of sync.

Now Beeks and I have been practicing for a few days with this new method. I use the same words, in the same tone (Beeks Up), with the same hand gesture (hand coming down with open hand slapping the bed). At first he just looked at me, I then showed him the food treat, but didn’t say anything else. Then I said it again, in the same tone, with the same hand gesture, and he jumped up on the bed. I gave him the treat and praised him. Then I spent about 10 minutes getting him off the bed and back on the bed using this same method. The next day I did the same process but sometimes I didn’t give him a treat when he got up on the bed. I just praised him. I also stop working with him after he gets the jumping up on command correct a dozen or so times. The break helps cement the behavior in his mind because the next time he has to recall the whole sequence on his own. Now we only have 9,500 more times to practice before he has it perfect! It’s like my mother always told me and I told my kids… Practice Makes Perfect.