Dogs And Gooey Cakes

Have you ever baked a cake? Pulled it out of the oven thinking it was done. Only to find out later as you see the center of the cake has slumped, and the inner core is still gooey? Either you took it out at the wrong time, or you mixed the ingredients in the wrong proportion.

You rushed it along. Now it is impossible to fix it.

When I train a dog, I don't want to end up with a gooey cake. But many training programs are out there selling gooey cakes. 

Good performance takes time for a dog to master. Same with a handler. Unfortunately, some think they can rush the process by punishing the dog. It might look like properly baked cake on the outside, but when you look closely, it has slumped, and it is gooey on the inside. Sometimes that can be fixed with a dog or handler. Sometimes the dog will never quite be as good as it could have been, or the handler still is doing things wrong and perpetuating the problems with that dog and all future dogs. 

My advice? Don't take the cake out of the oven until it is finished. Don't think you can make shortcuts by leaving out important steps along the way.

Plan accordingly.