Teaching: course memorization 101

I will get to the tiling wrap up (finished added shoe molding, pained and caulked, don't want to let dogs in the beautiful sparkle room), but first a little about course memorization. Reading a great book, Embracing the Wide Sky by Daniel Tammet. He is autistic savant, with an amazing memory.
His website does a better job describing it than I would:
"Tammet explains that the differences between savant and non-savant minds have been exaggerated; his astonishing capacities in memory, math and language are neither due to a cerebral supercomputer nor any genetic quirk, but are rather the results of a highly rich and complex associative form of thinking and imagination."

He references lots of scientific studies and and it's more readable than some other I have tried to plow through lately. Just getting into it, but this part about memorization immediately caught my eye - Short term memory generally can capture between 5 and 9 "chunks" of information. So the magic number is 7 +/- 2. This was known in 1956 - and I am just catching up now.

And in agility, course memorization is all about short-term memory. So this is why trying to remember a 18 obstacle sequence as Jump #1, jump #2, Tunnel #3, Jump #4...Jump #18 doesn't work well!

But we can combine individual obstacles into groups, jump-jump-tunnel for instance, that will leave us with that 5 to 9 things to memorize, not 18!

For example:

This course could be broken down:
1. Tire-weaves
2. Tunnel-jump-tunnel
3. Curving line of 4 jumps back to the weaves
4. Jump-tunnel-jump-tunnel
5. Line of jumps out
which gives us five chunks.

It's helpful if you can think about something like section 3, as a long line of jumps, rather than thinking #7, #8, #9 triple, #10.

Of course you still need to remember which ends of tunnels and so on, but it makes sense

He also mentions the effectiveness of visualization. I have students close their eyes and tell me the course as they visualize running it. It's a great way to check if you know the course.
Visualization is hugely powerful.

Course memorization is really important - stopping because the handler is confused tends to seriously demotivates their dog when the handler disconnects to look around for the next obstacle. I have students immediately reward their dog if they get lost, and then find the course.
But with a couple of handlers who frequently get lost, I am going to have them do a "spot-check" before they start running ("close your eyes and tell me the course"). Especially as they are at the trialling/about to trial point.

Being able to remember your course is every bit as important as your dog being able to do a tunnel, and finding ways to help my students with that is something I need to work at more...


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Ramblings: Tiling the dog Room

So the most improved room in my house is the "dog room". It's and emthy room that some of the dogs stay in when I am not at home (the ones that can't be trust not to raid the fridge or throw wild parties).

I painted a few months back - it started out battleship gray and is now a soft mustard yellow.

As the dogs were abusing the linoleum, I decided to tile the floor. This was my first room-size tile project.

Started out by getting down to the bare concrete.

It had taken me forever to pick out the tile. I finally had decided on a redder ceramic. It's a cheap tile, but I actually really prefer it to the more expensive ones I looked at.


We snapped chalk lines (you can just see them in this pic), and I started laying the tile. Of couse the room is not square, and the tile had to be cut.

Cathy Cox's husband Sonny, was great and brought his brother in law's tile cutter by - and then proceeded to cut all the tile for me. :) I am not the sort that is going to object to getting helped out!
And it was very helpful, as rental of a tile cutter almost equaled cost of the tile.

So after that it was just a manner of laying more tile...


Keeping the tile even failed a bit on one side, but still beats torn-up linoleum. Did a couple squares at a time, and got better and better at putting down the tile adhesive/thin-set (I got the pre-mixed stuff). I tend to learn while doing, and this was no exception!

I will finish up with the last row and half in the morning, and grout on Monday.


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Link - How to tell a student/client they have a potential problem

Good post from Patricia McConnell's blog on how to communicate to clients when you see a potential problem.

I have to get visuals of stressed/or fearful dogs like these posters. Does anyone have a better reference?

I am really hoping I have time over Christmas to do the all the write-ups I need and want to get done! I need handout os reactivity, stress, shaping, getting your dog motivated, and more - ARUGH!
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Class Course: WOOFS Nov 17 AG 4/Jumpers

Here is the beginning of my post. And here is the rest of it.
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Teaching: When to talk and when to listen

"When someone is drowning, that's not the time to give them swimming lessons".

I love this quote. It's from "How to Listen So Kids will Learn". I read education books, trying to improve my teaching skills, and I think this one has some valuable stuff for agility instructors.

A little background: my students aren't the ones out there with their 3rd agility-bred BCs. For the vast majority, this is the first dog they have trained in agility (or any dog sport). So this is all new to them, and I think it's especially important that they not just get the information, but that I increase their understanding of dogs, dog training and I don't discourage them from continuing.

As an instructor, I feel it's my job to give advice and impart knowledge And it's easy to make that more important than the three things I listed above. But the book makes a good point that you need a student that is in a place where they are able to take in that information.

And to get them to that place I need to listen to them. I need to hear their concerns and questions. If they don't see a reason to train a stop, take the extra pounds off or stop luring, they aren't going to do it.

It's really tempting as an instructor when you meet resistance just to push harder. Insist on the importance of it, keep pushing, giving examples, illustrating your arguments...
And it's probably counter-productive. I need to step back and ask my students what they think about it. I think it's so much easier to accept things and listen when you feel your opinions are being heard.

An example - last night in a lesson, a dog wasn't bringing his toy back to his owner. I gave her how to train him to do that is a quick nutshell, but then backed off and listened to her - and she knew how to train it, it wasn't bothering her much right then, and she wanted to spend her time elsewhere. So I dropped it.

Why is that so hard sometime? I tend to push rather than letting things go, I focus on what I think is important rather than listening to the student's concerns, I don't get outside my own mental space. I have certainly seen it from the other side of the fence too!

We are being ask for our information and opinions - so it is finding that magic line between not directing the students development clearly, and running a rigid program where the conversation is totally one-sided.

So I keep reading these books and reminding myself to LISTEN, not just TALK.

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