18/12/2025
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17fdyLh25o/
Great article by Megan Foster
When is it ok for dogs to fail? I do not believe that learners need to fail to learn and progress, however, if we are pushing ourselves to improve, we will get a mistake. After all, we are human and dogs aren't machines, so mistakes are in the fine print!
How I respond to errors is such a nuanced topic and so many trainers rely on "train the dog in front of you".... but what does that mean? I'm going to try to outline some of the things I'm thinking about when planning my sessions and responding to errors in the moment, and I invite you to add to the discussion!
How I respond to errors is such a nuanced topic and so many trainers rely on "train the dog in front of you".... but what does that mean? I'm going to try and outline some of the things I'm thinking about when planning my sessions and responding to errors in the moment:
What part of the learning process are you in?
If I am in the acquisition phase of a behavior, I feel full responsibility for setting the session up to avoid errors because I don't expect the dog to pull a new behavior out of thin air. If I don't see the behavior I want, I immediately change the context/setup in order to get success and keep success.
When I'm later in the teaching process and adding in challenges, I am examining what type of error just happened:
😁 Error of enthusiasm? Generally the dog understands how to do the task but hasn't figured out how to do it at the speed/excitement level. The dog tends to think they got it right and are anticipating reward.
🙁 Error of confusion? Generally the dog has a very clear question mark over their head and is guessing. They tend to be slower at trying or frantically throwing themself at the behavior.
😝 Error of misunderstanding? You can just see it in the dog, they know what they were supposed to do, but it just didn't happen. These dogs are racing back to try it again because they know how to do it right.
Any type of dog can experience any type of error, and how I respond depends more on the type of error and less on the type of dog I have.
A dog that has two errors in a row, but the errors were different, I can see that the dog is puzzling out how to make this happen, and I might let that dog try a third time without me changing anything. But I won't do that unless the history of winning the game is strong enough to support this potential burst of reps that aren't being reinforced.
I also love using reward systems in way that tells the dog that a lot of what they're doing is correct, but they haven't quite landed on the whole answer.
But if a dog has a question mark over their head or are starting to experience frustration, they should not be left to puzzle it out.
In order to progress training, you must bump up against failure. Our job is to constantly be observing their behavior throughout a session and change things in a way that challenges their understanding but is still possible for them to succeed. I am constantly looking for any pre-error behaviors, like latency, decrease in speed, or increase in frantic behavior. When I see that - I know I'm bumping up against what's possible and that's where I stay. That's where progress is made, because the next training session, that won't be a challenge and I can introduce something new.
Got questions? Drop 'em in the comments!
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