I briefly touched on this the other day, how taking pictures can help you to become a better teacher to your dog. Since it's something that I do on an almost daily basis, I thought I would delve a little more into the topic. After all, who doesn't want to get great pictures of their dog doing stuff and who doesn't want to improve their timing?

The ability to clearly see and react to the exact moment a behavior is happening is the single biggest factor that separates the best trainers from the new and inexperienced ones. We can have philosophical, moral and practical discussions about shaping vs. molding vs. correcting, and there are many strong feelings about these things, but none of these methods work well at all without good timing. Some absolutely do far more harm than others if one's timing is crap, but for excellent results, one needs to be able to mark what one wants with accuracy.

Which is where taking pictures comes in. Low stress, low stakes, at worst you end up with a whole lot of blurry bad images to delete, at best you've got some amazing portraits of your dog(s) to show off. And while you're getting good at taking pictures and improving your timing, your dog is learning to work with new distractions, a fairly distracted handler, and having a good time doing it.

Pick a number of behaviors your dog knows well, this is not the time to be teaching something new. If you're not used to juggling multiple things in your hands, you might want to practice holding treats and your phone or camera at the same time before trying to work with your dog. I keep my treats in the hand I use to hit the shutter, that way I don't accidentally squish a handful of soft treats into my phone or camera. I can just hold the treats in my palm and use a finger to take the picture.

Start with the easiest behavior. In my first example, my goal was to take a picture the exact moment all four dogs were released from their sit. This doesn't seem like much of a training exercise, and it's not. We start easy. It still requires that all the dogs understand that releasing on cue is non-optional, no one is supposed to remain seated, and that they should not just go off and wander, but should come check in with me to find out what's next. But still, not terribly difficult.

When that kind of picture is easy, start asking for simple tricks. I did some 'funny face' pictures with Know Me this morning, trying to capture the exact moment he made the face. This is something he and I are working on a lot right now, so it's where I want to put my training time.

Switching dogs, I asked Gimli for a quick tongue out.

There are so many fun ways to play this game. Ask for a wave and challenge yourself to get the picture when the paw is passing a specific height. Ask for a roll over and capture a specific part of the roll. Every picture is a click toward better timing. And along the way you'll have a wonderful collection of photographs of your dog doing so many amazing things.

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