Should Training Look Like Work?

I’ve been thinking about how different training can be from the work we’re supposedly preparing to do.

Training is often easier than work. It’s usually more controlled, less stressful and more predictable. We might add a difficult hide, make the search area bigger or go somewhere new, but we still tend to leave out some of the hardest parts of real work. The uncertainty. The equipment. The other people. The decisions we have to make. The possibility that the dog may work well and still not make a find.

So, how much does our training actually look like our work? And how would we know?

I think this matters for both the dog and the handler. Our dogs are paying attention to the differences, whether we mean to teach those differences or not. In training, there is usually something to find, someone knows where it is and the dog receives a really good reward. Work may ask the dog to search longer, work through a much more complicated odor picture and finish without a find. Sometimes work simply pays less than training.

Could our dogs learn that distinction? Could they work harder in training because experience has taught them that training is more likely to pay? I don’t know, but I think we should be willing to ask.

The same is true for handlers. If I’m going to carry certain equipment in the field, I should probably train with it. If I’m expected to navigate, communicate, watch my dog and adjust my search plan at the same time, I need practice doing all of that together. Knowing how to do each thing separately is not the same as being able to manage all of it while I’m working my dog.

Then there are blanks. Most of us agree that blank searches matter, but how often do we actually train them?

Maybe we worry about not paying the dog. Maybe we aren’t quite sure what to do at the end of a blank. A find gives us a trained response, a reward and a clear ending. A blank asks more of us. We have to evaluate the quality of the search without a find telling us we were right, and we have to decide when the work is complete.

It may be that we need to develop a better range of ways to reward our dogs. What does your dog value, from the absolute best reward down to something that still matters? It might be a tug toy, possessing the ball, really great food, regular food, praise or getting to do something else the dog enjoys. Not every reward has to be equal. In fact, it probably shouldn’t be. But we need to understand what our dogs value and practice using those rewards before we need them.

I also wonder whether we avoid blanks because we don’t like them. They may not match our own reasons for training. We like watching our dogs find source. We like rewarding them. We like knowing that the problem worked. If we truly believed blank searches made us better prepared for the field, would we train them more often? If not, why not?

There may be another, more uncomfortable reason our training doesn’t always look like our work: Some of us don’t deploy often enough to really know what the work looks like.

That’s hard. People have invested years in this work, and nobody wants to feel that the investment somehow counts less because operational opportunities are limited. It doesn’t. But there is a difference between imagining the field and repeatedly working in it. If we don’t have much field experience, it may be difficult to recognize which details matter enough to bring back into training.

We can still learn. We can pay close attention when we do work, participate in thoughtful exercises, listen to experienced teams and have honest conversations after deployments. We can ask what surprised us, what got in the way and what we wish we had practiced beforehand. But first, we may have to admit what we genuinely don’t know.

Perhaps a useful place to begin is by looking at the work through five questions.

What are you and your dog being asked to accomplish? What does the assignment actually require? Which parts require handler skills beyond working the dog? What could you practice before you arrive, and where might you need help from someone else?

What conditions commonly shape the work? Think about the terrain, weather, access, duration, distractions, other personnel and the ways odor may move through that environment. Which conditions can you anticipate? How might they affect the dog, the handler or the search plan? Which pieces could safely become part of your training?

What might you genuinely not know? What information can you ask for before arriving? What will remain unknown until the work begins? Some things cannot be recreated in training, but we can practice working without having every answer.

What judgments will the handler need to make? Which decisions could have criteria established ahead of time, and which can only be made in the moment? If we expect handlers to make good decisions during a deployment, where are they getting the opportunity to practice making them?

How will you decide the work is done, with or without a find? Who makes that decision? What criteria support it? How do you finish responsibly when there is no find to give the search a clear ending?

Making training look more like work doesn’t mean every problem needs to be longer, harder or more complicated. That can become its own distraction. The point is to understand what our work actually asks of the dog and the handler, then decide which pieces need to show up more often in training.

So maybe the better question isn’t, “How can I make this training harder?” Maybe it’s, “What will the work ask of us, and have we practiced that together?”

Here’s to the dogs who keep us honest, and the questions that keep us learning.

– Janie