I don’t know about you, but I’ve always associated the Domino Effect with catastrophe or something bad. You topple the first domino and the rest fall in a catastrophic manner. I just learned Eisenhower coined the term Domino Theory in a speech in 1954 describing the potential threat of spreading communism. I didn’t know that until researching to write this, but now I understand from where my association comes, even though that was a bit before I was born.
But what if we look at it differently — as the concept in holism instead, where the total effectiveness of a group of things each interacting with one another is greater than their effectiveness when acting in isolation from one another. You know, the whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts.
You’ve probably seen videos of elaborate layouts made up of thousands of dominos falling in perfect choreographed order. They are works of kinetic art — not catastrophe. But what happens when you remove just one domino? It fails. All the planning, effort, and time only to discover one measly domino was missing. Now that’s catastrophic — and that’s how I want you to consider this theory with Rally Obedience.
We all have the vision of our perfect dog, our perfect performance resulting in the perfect score. But it can only happen if all the dominos are perfectly situated and working in perfect harmony. You leave one thing out and that vision becomes, maybe not catastrophic but certainly not the vision you had hoped.
Here’s my list of what I consider to be the primary dominos for Rally, without any one of them you are setting yourself up for less-than-ideal performance. This is incredibly simplified, there are many pieces other than those described below. Some have tributaries streams of dominos, and some are distributaries. The descriptions here are just scratching the surface — "The Checklist” in My Rally Coach is the outline for this article and App subscribers to "Hints and Rally School" will find more detailed explanations of each — they are the foundation of the app.
Except for the first domino, this list is not in any particular order. How you place them doesn’t matter as long as you include ALL of them, as they are all needed to create kinetic art or in this case, the perfect Rally performance.
The king of all dominos is Acclimation, (or acclimatization if you prefer). Omitting this one will have you set up for failure — without it, the other dominos cannot not fall. Your dog must feel safe, they must feel comfortable and ideally be confident in the environment you are training or trialing. Looking confident and being confident are not the same. Just because your dog’s tail is up, and wagging doesn’t mean they're confident. There can be subtle signs indicating they are merely tolerating the situation, or just not freaking out. Learning how to acclimatize to achieve confidence should always be a very high priority.
Building duration of focus with delayed reward is one of the most ignored things. Too many people go from working with treats in their pockets, in their hands — luring and bribing their dog through training sessions, only to show up at a trial and go in the ring with nothing. Leaving their dog wondering WTF just happened? They might trick their dog a few times but soon enough they get wise and start shutting down. A considerable amount of time should be spent building your dog’s ability to focus and it should be done with behaviors that are easy before presenting challenges — and always with a lot of play.
Giving your dog a proper warm-up — physically and mentally. Dogs are not equipped with on/off switches, so this is important to get them “ready” to engage. If we find ourselves prompting our dog for attention — they are not ready, or they have not been acclimated adequately.
Then a pre-run, pre-training engagement routine to establish the perfect arousal/energy/drive state. Many dogs don’t engage very well at their baseline state of arousal.
The domino everyone loves to focus on is training specific behaviors and tricks to perform signs. It is a very important link, but it is not nearly as valuable without the others.
Make everything fun. Our dogs don’t give one thought as to what initials are attached to their name. Too many of us humans, want them for our own ego and vanity, not our dog’s. Use the quest for titles to create structure for the time you spend training. But embrace the journey — enjoy the fun times being with, training and playing with your dog. The initials are validation of time well spent. Too many people take dog sports and Rally seriously. Remember why you have a dog in the first place — because they're awesome and fun!
Be your dog’s emotional support human. If we covet titles, we put our dog into situations (the ring) way before they're ready. Don’t rush, enjoy the journey.
Know the signs, know them well and practice them WITHOUT your dog. Be fluent. Get to know the course, and know it well, so you don’t have to think. A Rally course is a choreographed performance, so you must know your part. Is there anyone on Dancing with The Stars who doesn’t learn the music, their steps, the dance, or their role with their partner before joining them in performance on stage?
Part of teaching our dog Rally (or any) behaviors is making sure they clearly understand the behaviors, and that we clearly and consistently communicate so they know exactly what we’re asking. Just because your dog sits in front on a call-front sign, doesn't mean they know what “front” means. Any confusion leaves them guessing and if they guess wrong, it usually leads to our disapproval — our fault, not theirs.
Breaking focus. Once you are engaged to train or trial, don’t break focus. Every time you checkout, (even to think about a sign on the course), your dog probably will checkout too. You need to be on autopilot so you and your dog can flow through the course.
To me the above are foundation dominos. There may be others that I haven't discovered yet, but right now that's the foundation I teach. Leave any of them out and you’re not going to have the same success as you would if they are all in place.
Sure there’s a lot more to it than that, but hopefully this will give you something to consider. In the mean time, when you watch a team putting it all together, you'll see it's a work of kinetic performance art — the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts.
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