Context, Context: Prepared For Anything - a podcast by Ty Brown

Today I want to write a little bit about context, an important element of training that a lot of owners simply don’t consider at all.

Let me illustrate this concept with a very easy example: a dog that sits. A lot of people come to us and say “My dog’s trained, he knows how to sit.” So we tell him to sit, and he won’t. The reason is simple. The dog will only sit under contexts A, B, C, and D.

Context A might be the dog sitting in the living room with a treat. Context B is the dog in the backyard with a treat. Context C is the dog in the living room with no treat. Context D is the dog on a walk with no distractions. These are all of the contexts in which the dog can obey the “sit” command. When you’re on context R, however—perhaps inside a strange training facility that’s full of distractions—then the dog won’t do it.

This is the reality behind most training that I see. Owners make the mistake of only training for a few contexts. They don’t teach their dog what I call “functional obedience”: the ability to obey commands in the real world. It’s important that as owners we look at may different contexts.

It’s impossible to cover every possible context, but it’s good to hit as many as you can. If you make those contexts as challenging as possible during training, then unexpected events in your dog’s day become very easy to handle.

That’s why my company does a lot of group sessions. In these gatherings, we might ask some dogs to lie down while the rest of the dogs walk over them. That’s something that may not happen in the real world, but the more you vary the context then the easier it will be when you take your dog to the coffee shop and someone carrying a baby steps over them. This is the type of training we always recommend: think of everything that might happen, and plan for it. Plan weird stuff too, so that you can work the dog through those challenges.

A good trainer recognizes context. Understand that a dog who isn’t obedient under most contexts isn’t actually a trained dog. If your dog is only rained in a few contexts, it won’t make your life any easier. You need to train for just about anything you can think of. Only then will your dog

Further episodes of Ty the Dog Guy on the Daily

Further podcasts by Ty Brown

Website of Ty Brown