Field Guide · Glossary
The three D's
Learning scienceDistance, duration and distraction: the three dimensions along which a behavior can be made harder.
How it works
They give a vocabulary for difficulty, which turns a vague problem into a specific one. A dog who fails a stay has not necessarily failed at staying: they may have failed at staying while the handler walks away, or for that long, or with a person passing. Naming which dimension broke tells a handler exactly what to adjust. They are also raised one at a time, because increasing two together makes it impossible to tell which one caused the failure.
What it looks like
A dog holds a stay for thirty seconds with the handler standing beside them. When the handler walks ten paces away, the stay breaks at four seconds. Duration was not the problem. Distance was, and duration is reduced while distance is rebuilt.
Commonly confused with
- Proofing
- Proofing is the process of testing a behavior against real difficulty. The three Ds are the vocabulary describing what that difficulty is made of, and which part to change next.
Related terms