Performance goals? Chances are you’ve put a lot of thought into helping your dog reach fluency with their skills and preparing them for the competition setting. Oh, I just said “dog” – but this applies regardless of the species! We often put a lot of work into “distraction training,” teaching our learners to focus on the cues we want them to respond to and to regard other stimuli as “furniture,” as Hannah Branigan aptly puts it. 

But what about you, the trainer, the other half of the performance team? What skills do you need to perform successfully? And what does “success” even look like? Part of that journey involves figuring out what serves as “distractions” to your own behavior.

In the video, you’ll see me working on a sequence of tricks for a freestyle routine. My husband, Anders, is filming and my daughter, Diana, walks in a circle around us, altering her distance. Their presence could easily distract Tessa, who is used to training one-on-one with me. She is not accustomed to me splitting focus when family is around and also expects to interact with them (thus expecting other types of reinforcement). Interestingly, family members are more distracting to Tessa than random strangers. But I digress—this is really about me, the trainer. What might distract my behavior?

Here are a few possibilities:

• My thoughts. I’m filming this to share at ClickerExpo LIVE, and I’m on a deadline. I’m not controlling the video camera—Anders is—and Diana has her own approach to following instructions.     
• Tessa’s behavior. I need to respond to her in the moment, not just do what I planned.
• The environment. You can’t see it in the video, but there are rabbits in the bushes and traffic on the road behind us. 

So, how do I handle this, so that I become a solid performance partner for my dog? That’s exactly what we’ll be exploring at ClickerExpo LIVE in January! We’ll dive into skills and fluency, clever training setups, and structures to help us build and maintain our own skills. As I prepare to return to the ring in a sport I haven’t trialed in for nearly 19 years (freestyle) while also devoting time to a sport I’m completely new to (field trials), this topic feels especially relevant to me right now!