http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbH5DkCRi-cLumping and Splitting Criteria
Find out if you are a lumper or a splitter and how if affects your dog's success in training.
Training each criterion of distance, duration (length of time), and distractions separately and breaking each one down into small steps helps the dog understand the behavior you want. This model works well with people who learn visually. Each circle, square and triangle represents a training repetition.
Examples of how to split criterion:
Distance: Horizontal distance, Height/Elevation, away from handler, away from target or object
Duration: time in seconds, minutes (adding distance also adds duration)
Distractions:
Sounds: frequency, intensity, predictability, pitch, duration, distance
Sight: movement-speed, predictability, shape, size, texture
Scent/taste: food, animal, known, unknown, air movements/currents
Touch: amount of pressure, frequency, predictability
Other Useful Criteria:
Different Surfaces (indoors, outdoors, elelvation such as on furniture)
Different Locations (indoors, private vs public)
Difficulty-how hard is the task or behavior?
Different Environments (outdoors with multiple distractions)
Different Order of Behaviors
Different Body Positions of the Handler (stand, sit, crouch, laying down, back to dog etc)
Handler Out of Sight (audible cue only)
Discrimination (visual detail, verbal cues-sound similar or different, texture, scent)
Different Times of Day