Episode Details

Vicky Darnell did not want the puppy. The plan was to get herself trained up first and then bring another dog into the house, and that is not how it worked out. Tiz came home early. Three weeks later Vicky was sitting in her first Chicken Workshop. What she carried back to Chicagoland was not a chicken trick. It was timing, criteria, rate of reinforcement, and the nerve to stop a session that is going sideways instead of hoping it comes around. Tiz started trialing shortly after she turned six months old, the youngest age a dog can compete in UKC Nosework, and finished her Grand Champion at eleven months.

Kirsten Kraljevic and Dr. Bob Bailey talk with Vicky about what actually transferred from the bird room to the trial floor. Vicky has run dog sporting events for thirteen years and has taken the discrimination class twice, and she still describes the workshop the way everyone does once they have been through it: you cannot comprehend it until you are standing there. Bob puts the principle plainly. You get what you reinforce, not what you want. Kirsten tells on Vicky for walking the hallway between the classroom and the bird room muttering seven seconds to herself, then watched her run that same clock at a nosework trial months later.

3 Key Takeaways

1. Stop bad training instead of riding it out.

Vicky credits the workshop with giving her permission to interrupt. The instinct in most training halls is to push on and tell yourself you will get there eventually. What you are actually doing is paying for the wrong behavior while you wait. Interrupt it, rethink what you are asking for, and go again.

2. Seven seconds is the clock.

If what you are doing is not working inside about seven seconds, change something. Vicky said it out loud to herself carrying a bird across the hall until it stuck, and she was still running that clock when Kirsten watched her compete. It is the smallest, most portable thing in this episode and you can use it in your next session.

3. You get what you reinforce, not what you want.

Dr. Bob Bailey's point is that precision is available to anyone willing to ask for it, and that data gathered and used properly speeds training up rather than slowing it down. Reinforce sloppy work and sloppy work is what you have trained.

Quick Training Lessons From The Episode

Here are the wrap-up lessons that Kirsten wanted listeners to remember from this episode:

1. Set a goal that is a little past your reach. Vicky picked a title most people would call impossible for a puppy, then went and got it. The goal is what organizes every session that comes after it.

2. Skills transfer. Species do not matter. Timing, criteria, and rate of reinforcement work the same on a chicken, on a Labrador, and on whatever animal and discipline you care about most.

3. The chicken is the most honest coach you will ever have, and the kindest. It is not about training a chicken. It is that the exercises Bob and Marian Breland curated put you and that bird through something that shows you exactly what you need to work on, with no opinion about you attached.

4. Go back even when you are good at this. Vicky runs trials for a living and got whipped by a chicken. Thirteen years in the ring is not the same as five seconds behind a bird.

5. Do the repetitions and measure them. Bob's case for data is that measuring gets you there faster, not slower.