Old vs New Dog Training

I get repeat students. I might have trained a dog for them more than a decade ago, then that dog passes away, and they schedule lessons with the new puppy. They like how the first dog turned out, so they want a good result for the next dog.

I think they are sometimes surprised that the way I train today is different than the way we trained back then. I have to start them from scratch with the new methods.

It reminds me of a story I heard about Benny Goodman, the clarinet player. He was at the peak of his career, but he wanted to learn from another player (I think it was Reginald Kell). The person he wanted to learn from kept turning him away. The reason given? Because he would have to start him all over again from scratch and he wasn't sure that Benny Goodman would want to do that. Eventually, he agreed to work with Benny Goodman. 

In 1949 he studied with clarinetist Reginald Kell, requiring a change in technique: "instead of holding the mouthpiece between his front teeth and lower lip, as he had done since he first took a clarinet in hand 30 years earlier, Goodman learned to adjust his embouchure to the use of both lips and even to use new fingering techniques. He had his old finger calluses removed and started to learn how to play his clarinet again—almost from scratch."

Think of that. Here Benny Goodman is considered one of the finest swing clarinet players in the world, and he was willing to start all over again because he saw the benefits. Not everyone is willing to take chances like that with their careers. 

I have taken leaps like that in my profession. When I started out, I was a traditional dog trainer. That was how I was introduced to dog training, so that is what I did. I eventually found a mentor, and that changed everything. I continued to study after that. But, especially in the past 3 years or so, I started attending more seminars from my mentor, and that changed me again. Not only had he more fully developed what he had been doing, and that was obvious in the high quality of what he was teaching, but it took me to another level. I purchased a ton of textbooks and studies, and got to work. (Try reading every day until you are so full that you can't look at a book any more, but then you pick it up the next day and do it again... day after day for months, moving from one expert to the next). I developed new ways of doing things, and created new methods for myself, and what I do now isn't the same as what I did a decade ago. I can train dogs faster, and with better and smarter results. 

It isn't good to get stuck in your ways. 

Have you ever read that study on the 10,000 hours to become an expert? Well, I did. It wasn't the 10,000 hours that made people better. 10,000 hours of doing the same thing over and over again doesn't magically make you better. What impressed me was that all these experts had, on average, at least 4 mentors along the way. Often these mentors never got the fame of the experts we now are so aware of, in fields as far apart as physics and music. The study confirmed my observations that experts, such as Albert Einstein, didn't just one day, out of thin air, become experts. They had help along the way, and they wanted that help. 

What is one clue that you need to find a mentor and do more study? Those feelings of Impostor Syndrome. Everyone has felt that going up the ladder. But it also means that whatever you know isn't "yours" yet, and you know you aren't keeping up with what you know you need to know.

So, think of it this way. Your current ways are now the old ways. How are you going to get to the next level?

Plan accordingly.