Training Diary: My Journey to Figure Out How To Put a Cone on My Dog (Intro)
Editor’s Note: Rather than a formal guide, this blog is very much in the vein of a journal entry. I may adapt the style a bit as we go, but for now, I went with providing a simple peek into my thinking.
Hi friends! I’d like to start by saying that I feel a funny mix of “let’s have some fun” and “please direct me to the nearest hole to crawl into” as I begin writing this. Why?! Well, in the process of trying to put a cone on my dog, Otis, after a surgery, I made a billion mistakes that forced me to have to do this work. And then I made a ton more mistakes. AND I am not done. So yep, that about covers it.
I’m going to do my best to share training videos and talk about what I was thinking about that led to some of my choices. Let me be clear: I didn’t always make the best choice first. I also needed help! While this journey happens to be cone related, I think a lot of the lessons can be generalized more broadly. My hope is that we can use my journey (it’s easier to pick at my own work) to help ground many of the concepts you hear us talk about in training. I REALLY want this series to be a conversation, so PLEASE ask questions, share stories, etc.
How My Journey Began to Figure Out How To Put a Cone on My Dog
Otis is the dog who turned me into a trainer. As you might suspect, I would like a re-do on a great many things. He’s a sensitive soul, and I didn’t condition a cone before he got neutered (and had a gastropexy) years ago. TIP: Absolutely condition whatever you plan to use post-surgery beforehand (don’t make my mistake)! When I picked him up from the vet, they told me they couldn’t keep a cone on him. I had no luck either (and risked him tearing all the new sutures). I tried a donut and couldn’t get within 15 feet of Otis.
Fast forward a couple of years: I started to condition the cone as a “just in case” measure. Relative to “I won’t be in the same room as a cone,” we made progress, but we always stalled out at the same point (and then I’d stop working on it). I had a “moment of clarity” last fall when I just knew I was going to regret it if I didn’t sort this out now. With much more knowledge than I had before (including the wisdom to bounce ideas off people), I got started!
Who Is This Training Diary Series For?
Anyone! While I am going to show you how I approached a specific problem/goal related to a cone, the concepts at play apply much more broadly. For example, one of the issues that led me to getting stuck at the same point every time was that I was doing something called “lumping criteria.” I had to break it down WAY more than what I was doing in order to make progress. This is a truth that applies in most every training endeavor.
