Today's Cloud

Today we've been training distance targeting, which is a struggle for me. I find myself expecting Monster to more or less think like a human, and I can't seem to snap out of it. I know dogs don't generalize things the same way we do, but I can't seem to wrap my head around it in this particular exercise.

I keep telling people she's stupid, maybe now you'll believe me...

We're working with a mouse pad as a paw target. I put it down, Monster steps on it, click, treat. No problem. I move the target so he'll have to walk away from me to target it - he has no idea what to do. He starts experimenting with anything else he can find and completely ignores the mouse pad. We move closer to it again, Monster targets, click, treat. I leave the target where it is and walk away myself to create distance. If I move more than three steps away (give or take), Monster again has no clue what to do. We move back to the mouse pad, I begin sloooowly moving it, just a few inches between each repetition (which is of course what I should have done from the start, but as I say I seem to have some sort of weird, unshakable expectation Monster'll think like a human in this exercise), which goes fine. Until, that is, we reach an invisible border where Monster yet again can not figure out what the exercise is about. I try waiting him out - eventually he'll stumble on the target if he keeps trying anything he can spot, right. Oh, he does. He does indeed... He focuses on the mouse pad, makes the connection that this is an item to be targeted, picks it up with his mouth, carries it back to where it was when we started, puts it down, and proudly, with great emphasis, targets it...

Done! Fork over the goodies!

The thing is, this is kind of brilliant in its own way, right? It's just not what you'd expect - or at least not what I'd expect. And it's not at all the result I'm going for. It's not right, sure, but it's also not exactly wrong. He is targeting it, after all.

Exactly! I earned this carrot.

Now, my point isn't "Oh, woe is me, I have such a stooopid dog!". No, Monster is just fine - the cloud this post is about is my stubborn difficulty to understand that Monster can't think of things the way I do. I keep getting surprised when "problems" like this turn up, and I can't figure out why that is. Why do I expect him to think of the target the same way when it's in a different place, or when we're approaching it from a different angle or distance? What else am I looking at this way without even being aware of it...?