Recently I went to a four day doggy conference in Nottingham.
It was great, but I really missed Gus.
And Himself, of course.
Before I went I gave Himself instructions about how to keep the household going while I was away.
I had carefully listed all the things I needed Himself to do. I wrote down what he needed to do and why it was needed. Himself prides himself on being a logical character, pedantic to a fault. So, I thought, giving him good reasons for things that needed done would help.
Accordingly, I prepared several sheets of notes so I’d remember what I had to tell Himself to do. I took a deep breath and started my lecture.
As I ran through my list of instructions, carefully detailing the what and why of each item, I realised Himself might not be drinking in my every word.
He stood leaning slightly away from me and he wasn’t looking directly at me. He shut his eyes for some of the time and even when they were open they seemed glazed. I got the impression his attention was far away from the here-and-now in our kitchen. But he was nodding his head, so I thought he must be hearing me.
“Hm”, I thought, “I’ll test him.” So instead of reiterating the instructions for feeding the birds, I talked about how he needed to feed the pink elephants in the garden every day.
Himself just carried on nodding away.
I paused.
He finally looked at me.
“Did you say something?” he enquired, “I was just thinking about when I could wash my car.”
We’ll draw a veil over what happened next…
In my determination to make sure nothing catastrophic would happen while I was away, I had forgotten one key fact – if you want people to do something, keep your instructions simple.
Himself didn’t need to hear all the justification I’d so lovingly prepared. While I had verbal diarrhoea, he just tuned out. He just required his instructions – he didn’t need all the other information.
We try to get this right in training classes. It’s very tempting to give out lots of information and sometimes the instructions can get a bit lost in all the other words.
We’ve been rewriting the prompt sheets for all the games in our Perfect Pet course. This will help us make sure we’re giving you just the key information and be clear about the instructions we give you too.
And you need to be clear to your dog about what you want him to do. Give him clear cues by using his name then your cue word, as in “Fido, sit”. He doesn’t need any more information.
Clarity and simplicity.
Keep training,
Carol