Podcasts about akc nationals

In this episode (50:08) The AKC National Agility Championship is finally here! Whether you're a seasoned competitor or attending your first NAC, this episode is packed with last-minute insights to help you stay focused, execute with confidence, and get the most out of your experience. We'll discuss mindset, strategy for making the Finals or Challenger Round, and key mental and physical preparation tips. No matter where you finish, the trip is always worth it—let's get you in the right frame of mind to succeed! You Will Learn How to set realistic expectations and avoid the trap of thinking “If I can't make Finals, it's not worth it.” The two ways forward: making the Finals or the Challenger Round—and why you should stick around until you're absolutely sure you're out. Why clean runs matter more than ever and how to adjust your handling strategy to prioritize them. How to approach the Challenger Round and Finals strategically, including the importance of seeding, judge tendencies, and staying composed. The mental and physical preparation needed to perform your best—including rest, nutrition, visualization, and handling ring conflicts. Mentioned What Does It Take to Make Finals at AKC Nationals? How to Make the Finals at AKC Nationals Visualization and Mental Preparation Join us for the 2025 Before and After Online Course!

Kalla Robb is part owner of Mckearney Kennels located in Ludlow Vermont. Though she hasn't owned beagles for a long time and didn't grow up with them, she has made great strides in becoming a big part of the AKC large pack competition world. She and her boyfriend Matt Mckearney have finished one dog to LPFC and are working on others. Not only that she is a AKC judge and was the first female to judge in the AKC Nationals in 30 some years of its existence.  

Kalla Robb is part owner of Mckearney Kennels located in Ludlow Vermont. Though she hasn't owned beagles for a long time and didn't grow up with them, she has made great strides in becoming a big part of the AKC large pack competition world. She and her boyfriend Matt Mckearney have finished one dog to LPFC and are working on others. Not only that she is a AKC judge and was the first female to judge in the AKC Nationals in 30 some years of its existence.  

In this engaging episode, we explore the energetic world of Barb Davis, a celebrated dog agility champion from West Palm Beach, Florida, United States. With an impressive resume that includes being a 9-time National Champion and a 10-time World team member, Barb's journey in the world of dog agility is truly inspiring!Her lifelong passion for dogs began in her childhood with Terriers and Shelties in conformation and obedience competitions. However, the exciting world of agility truly captured her heart.Barb's household is a lively blend of agility champions, including two Shelties, a Border Collie, and a Border/Whippet mix. Her first significant success came in 1999 when she nailed her first National Championship! This victory was a turning point, leading her to pivot her career towards agility, dedicating her life to teaching the sport. In 2007, she made the brave decision to leave her 15-year tenure as a Mathematics Instructor at a Community College to focus full-time on agility coaching.Barb has a lot of stories to share, from agility to her career before dogs, and also something surprising for us all, so go ahead and listen to her exciting life journey and get inspired!The OneMind Dogs' very first promotion video Barb mentioned in the episode.Learn more about Barb:FacebookWeb pagesVideo of 17 obstacle course with Brewsky and Cappuccino being directed from the Pride Mobility ScooterVideo of training agility dogs Brewsky and Cappuccino and talking about Pride Mobility ScooterVideo of her BorderWhippet Cappuccino at Cynosport 2022Video of her Border Collie Flex competing at IFCS World Agility Championships 2019Video of her Sheltie Skecher winning AKC Nationals in 2013Visit OneMind Dogs and learn more about the dog's perspective!Do you have a new dog at home? Or do you want to start it all over?Start the OneMind Dogs puppy training program today and get the OneMind Dogs team's support. To get the podcast newsletter, sign up here!

This week, Jess and Scott are joined by Jess Ajoux and Perry DeWitt. Not only did Jess win the AKC Nationals with her Border Collie Hallelujah within a year of her pandemic litter, but Perry also won Westminster for the second time with her very special boy Verb. Verb happens to be Lu's father, so ‘2021 Dog of the Year' quickly evolved into “Dogs of the Year.”   How have Jess and Perry's lives looked the last few years? What is it like doing dogs and life and business 24-7? Why should we be more concerned about dog training in dog sports than physical ability?   To learn more about Perry DeWitt and Jess Ajoux's facility in PA, check out United Dog: https://www.uniteddogagility.com   To view The Quirky Dog's website and a full catalog of episodes, visit: https://www.thequirkydog.com   To work with Scott and Jess in person within their service area (Portland, ME to Boston, MA to Manchester, NH), email them at studio@thequirkydog.com   Have you ever wondered why your dog behaves a certain way? Are there things you need help with or support? Join Scott and Jess Williams each week as they explore these and other topics.   Follow and Watch Us On: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/caninehealing YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtlRQjjeIHOgEAAlgB3MviA Listen to Us On: PodBean: https://thequirkydog.podbean.com/   #ScottWilliamsDogTrainer #JessWilliamsDogTrainer #CanineHealing #TheQuirkyDog #DogTraining  

  Dog(s) of The Year   This week, Jess and Scott are joined by Jess Ajoux and Perry DeWitt. Not only did Jess win the AKC Nationals with her Border Collie Hallelujah within a year of her pandemic litter, but Perry also won Westminster for the second time with her very special boy Verb. Verb happens to be Lu's father, so ‘2021 Dog of the Year' quickly evolved into “Dogs of the Year.” How have Jess and Perry's lives looked the last few years? What is it like doing dogs and life and business 24-7? Why should we be more concerned about dog training in dog sports than physical ability?   To learn more about Perry DeWitt and Jess Ajoux's facility in PA, check out United Dog: https://www.uniteddogagility.com For more information about Scott and Jess and their strategies, please check out: https://caninehealing.com To learn more about our podcast and to keep us with our Quirky Tips, join us at: https://thequirkydogpodcast.com/support Have you ever wondered why your dog behaves a certain way? Are there things you need help with or support? Join Scott and Jess Williams each week as they explore these and other topics.   Follow and Watch Us On: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/caninehealing YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtlRQjjeIHOgEAAlgB3MviA Listen to Us On: PodBean: https://thequirkydog.podbean.com/   #ScottWilliamsDogTrainer #JessWilliamsDogTrainer #CanineHealing #TheQuirkyDog #DogTraining #Studio21PodcastCafe #UnitedPodcastNetwork

In this episode (25:48) Instructors at Bad Dog Agility have been using the Coach's Eye app to analyze maps and videos of runs for years, but no longer! Coach's Eye is being retired and users have one year of support from the company. Not to worry, Sarah has already found a replacement app, OnForm. You Will Learn What is happening with Coach's Eye. Sarah's recommended app to replace Coach's Eye. What Jennifer and Esteban think of the new app. Upgrades and differences between Coach's Eye and the new app. Mentioned Our Recommendation: OnForm An example video analysis from our archives: AKC NAC Finals Map Analysis An example of side by side analysis (at time 8:45): Did 75% of dogs go the wrong way at AKC Nationals?

Summary: Leslie graduated from Colorado State University’s Veterinary School in 2006. She completed a rotating internship in small animal medicine in Albuquerque, NM then became certified in canine rehabilitation with a focus in sports medicine. She is now a resident with the American College of Veterinary Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation. She also helped to create the Certified Canine Fitness Trainer (CCFT) program through the University of Tennessee's NorthEast Seminars and taught it for two years. Leslie is involved in the agility world; she has trained two dogs to their Agility Dog Champion title — their ADCH — and one to ADCH Bronze, an Agility Trial Champion title and a Master Agility Champion title. Multiple dogs have qualified for Cynosports, ASCA (ask-a) Agility Finals, and AKC Nationals. In 2017, she competed with Stig at European Open Tryouts. Most recently she competed with Ghost and Stig at the UKI US Open where both dogs had top ten placements. Next Episode: 2/8/2019 with Loretta Mueller

Summary: Nancy Gagliardi Little has been training dogs since the early 1980s, when she put an OTCH on her Novice A dog, a Labrador Retriever. Since then she has put many advanced obedience titles on her dogs, and multiple championships in herding and agility. Next Episode:  To be released 10/19/2018, an interview with Sara Brueske on bringing an adult dog and/or rescue into your household as a sports prospect. TRANSCRIPTION: Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports Podcast brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high-quality instruction for competitive dog sports using only the most current and progressive training methods. Today we have Nancy Gagliardi Little back on the podcast. Nancy has been training dogs since the early 1980s, when she put an OTCH on her Novice A dog, a Labrador Retriever. Since then she has put many advanced obedience titles on her dogs, and multiple championships in herding and agility. Welcome back to the podcast, Nancy! Nancy Gagliardi Little: Thanks Melissa. It’s great to be here. Melissa Breau: To start us out, can you just remind listeners a little bit about who you are and who the dogs are that you share your life with? Nancy Gagliardi Little: I’m Nancy Little and I live in Minnesota. I train in obedience and agility, but I’m competing most in agility. We have four Border Collies in the house and a Toller. The Toller is my husband’s dog. He’s a 3-year-old dog named Rugby. My dogs are all spanned out from 14 years to 10 months of age. Score is my oldest. He’s retired, obviously, he’s 14 years old. I trialed him in herding and agility. He has his herding … actually he’s very, very close to finishing his herding championship, but I never did finish it. And he has MACH …  I don’t remember how many, I think it was a MACH 2. Schema is my 10-and-a-half-year-old Border Collie, and I’m just blessed that she’s still trialing. She’s still trialing in agility, and she has a MACH 2, a PACH, which is a Preferred Agility Championship, and an ADCH from USDAA. Like I said, she’s running in Preferred. She is qualified for AKC Nationals. This is the sixth year, I think, that she’s qualified, which is amazing. I’m really proud of her accomplishments this past year. Like I say, I’m just blessed that she’s still running. She’s 10-and-a-half years old. She had an injury this year. She was out for three months with a bit of a back strain. She still ended up being the Number 3 Preferred Border Collie in the AKC Invitational rankings, which I had no plan on. I’m not doing anything in terms of Invitational rankings, because with Border Collies it’s just ridiculous. But I got notified that she was the Number 3 Preferred dog, which is amazing since she was out for three months. She’s just very consistent and she’s very fast. She also, for all breeds, there’s another ranking system called the Power 60, which is done by Bad Dog Agility for the year ending in … I guess it was the second quarter. She was the Number 1 All Breed in the 16-inch Preferred. Of course she, in June, brought me back into obedience for a little bit. Our agility club that I was on the trial committee was also hosting, besides an agility trial, we used to have a two-ring agility trial, and we put on an obedience trial as well. She’s trained in obedience, and I brought her out for the first time in Beginner Novice, and that was kind of fun to get two legs. Melissa Breau: That’s awesome. Nancy Gagliardi Little: It was fun to finish that off. Then there’s Lever. He’s 5. He just qualified for the first time for AKC Agility Nationals and he’s working on his MACH in AKC. Then I have my youngest, her name is Pose. She’s Lever’s daughter and she’s 10 months old. So that’s my group. I have a lot of fun with all of them for different reasons. Melissa Breau: It’s neat because you’ve got a wide range of skills and ages and can do lots of different stuff. I’d imagine training day at your house is probably quite the mix of things. Nancy Gagliardi Little: It is, because I still want to work … Score goes out with me and trains. He’s around when I’m training all the time. He just kind of hangs out. It gets him exercise and he enjoys being out with the other dogs. He provides a great distraction because he’s always trying to get in close to me. Melissa Breau: Since you have a young dog, what are you focusing on with her right now? What do you hope to achieve long-term? Nancy Gagliardi Little: Well, I love agility obviously a lot, so my goals are going to be, or hopefully will be, that we compete in agility. But I plan on training her in obedience and herding as well, and time will tell what I decide to do in those areas. But I absolutely love puppy training, so I’m enjoying this time with her. She’s learning lots of very important skills right now. I’m lucky that she’s able to come to work with me when I teach at the training school. Also when I’m at competition, she comes with me. She goes everywhere with me. She’s learned to be relaxed and quiet. I keep her in an X-pen when I’m teaching. Also when I’m competing with Lever and Schema, she’s crated, and she’s learning how to exist among all the chaos at the agility trials and when I’m teaching. She hears my voice and she’s super quiet. So I’m really proud of how she’s adjusted to that. She acclimates nicely when she’s crated at the trials. I really like that. She’s one of the best dogs I’ve had coming up in terms of being able to relax and chill. What she’s learning — there’s nothing really big right now. She’s 10 months old and I feel like she doesn’t know anything, but yet she does know a lot. I’ve focused a lot on toy games, tugging games, some personal play she’s really good at, and food games. We do that in different environments, and I’ve got a lot of opportunities around the school to be able to train around other dogs, also including my own dogs, which are quite the distraction for her because it gets her arousal up and some competitiveness, which is always good. So we work on things like that. I like to move her back and forth between high-arousal and low-arousal behaviors, because that’s an issue with Border Collies is that a lot of times they get that high arousal and they can’t mentally function, so just getting her to shift around from being pretty high to thinking things through has been fun. She’s done really well. She can make that shift really well. In terms of the foundation stuff I’m working on, event markers, do a lot of stuff with that, stationing, just to make sure that I have a place to start and stop and think about things, and then I also work my startlines from stations. I start that initial work, pivots, targeting, wraps around wings or cones, and the beginning of two on, two off. This is funny — I listened to Shade’s podcast, and she was talking about her puppy and the sit, and it’s like, “Oh, that’s exactly what’s going on with Pose.” I just recently started working her on her sit because I didn’t really like the way she was sitting. She was growing fast and her rear feet were all over the place. I mean, she would sit, but she’s so bendy and all over the place that I was like, “Well, I don’t think we’re going to do this right now.” I just started working on it now, and she’s really tightened up everything. It’s interesting how many people ask puppies to sit, and she just looks at them like, “What? I don’t know what that means.” So it’s surprising for them to learn that she doesn’t know how to sit. That’s the big thing we just started working on now, because I wanted to start working on her startline and her different positions — sit and down and those kinds of things. Melissa Breau: You’re talking a little bit about startlines in there. Have you started working on startlines with her yet? Nancy Gagliardi Little: Yes, she does have the beginning of a startline. The sit is not really something that I need before I start working on the beginning of a startline, and as we talk through here, you’ll see that most of it is just for her learning what the release cue is, and you can do that from any position. So she’s actually got a fairly decent and I’ll still call it beginning of a startline, so I’m happy with that. Melissa Breau: I saw a question pop up in one of the Fenzi Facebook groups the other day where a competitor mentioned her dog’s startline had eroded and she was starting to retrain it. What are some of the early signs that a dog’s startline may be beginning to or about to fall apart? Nancy Gagliardi Little: What happens is most people watch for the dog’s feet or body movement as mistakes. By doing that, you’re missing the early signs that there’s issues. So in terms of getting early signs that the startline is about to fall apart, I think it’s more important to pay attention to facial expressions and what’s going on emotionally: what is she looking at, how is she processing, how is she evaluating what’s in front of her, how is she really seeing toys as reinforcement for whatever is happening there, and then just paying attention to how she’s appearing and how she’s responding, I know whether the startline is confident and stable. Those are the early signs, and I don’t think people pay attention to that, that look on the dog’s face of “Huh?” or something’s bothering them, their head dips, there’s lip licking, ears are back, the kind of facial expression that tells you that something’s happening, That’s in the context of the startline, and once that starts happening, you’re going to start to see more movement. So it’s kind of a head issue, a mental issue, it’s just checking their emotional state. Melissa Breau: If somebody does catch it early, or they start to see some of the signs start to creep in, what is the best way to re-establish that strong startline that hopefully they had at one point? Nancy Gagliardi Little: If they had a really good startline and are catching it early, then there’s some things to keep in mind. When there’s mistakes, like I said previously, the focus should be first on the dog’s emotions, because a confident, happy dog is much more likely to be able to understand what’s being asked. It’s also going to make the trainer more aware of frustration or confusion coming from the dog, focusing on that emotional state. Like I said previously, the trainers are relying on the dog’s body movement as an indicator of an issue, and that is always too late, in my opinion. So that’s the most important step in re-establishing or maintaining a startline. The second thing would be teach a reliable release. The release cue is truly the easiest way to get a reliable startline stay. Training a strong release cue. In the world of agility, there’s so much information for the dog to process because of the atmosphere and the energy in the sport. For a dog to have a well-trained startline, the handler needs to eliminate all these extra prompts and movements that are associated with, and they also predict the release cue. Many dogs are breaking the startline because they’re frustrated, or they’re anxious or confused because the actual release cue is different than the handler is intending it to be. The other thing that can happen is the dog just can’t predict when the release cue will be given. There’s all kinds of extra motion, and they’re back there watching the handler and getting all twitchy because they’re not sure when they’re going to turn and give the release. Training a reliable release is another one of the big ones. The third one is — this is another issue, too, that I’m kind of surprised at — is startline behaviors that the dog has, or what you have to train. Make sure that the dog is trained so that they understand the criteria and the dog is in control of it. A big issue is when handlers attempt to control the stay. They physically place the dog into position, or they’re repeating the stay cue over and over, verbal … I’ll say threats like, “You stay, you stay,” or “Hey,” things like that, as the handler leaves. Another thing is facing the dog. As the handler is moving away, they’re facing the dog. All of these behaviors, these are behaviors by the handler. They’re all controlling behaviors, and it’s a sure way to create a frustrated and confused dog. Those are eventually going to break down any trained behaviors, because dogs want to be in control and they like being in control. The funny thing is, I hear this a lot, is that handlers will label their dogs as pushy or naughty, and usually it’s the handler’s fault for not training the behavior so that the dog offers it and maintains it on their own without the handler intervening. The very last thing that is important is handler connection. The dogs do much better with startlines when the handler leads out and is super connected with their dog. Some dogs don’t have issues with a lack of connection with the handler, but lots of times the startline issues are resolved when the handler learns how to lead out and continues to stay connected with the dog. So those are four areas that I keep in mind when there’s mistakes, and those are based on if the dog had a strong startline previously. That way, when some of these things are caught early, it’s really easy to fix. Melissa Breau: I’d imagine, though, that sometimes figuring out what it is, or breaking it down, can be hard, especially if a dog doesn’t maintain their stay and you are getting some movement, and then you let them run anyway, that’s reinforcing that behavior, assuming the dog likes agility, which I think is probably a safe assumption for our audience. And if you don’t let them run, you’re increasing frustration, which might further erode the stay and have other fallout. So can you talk about that a bit, how you handle problems if they do pop up? And maybe what some of the pros and cons are of the options that competitors have in that situation? Nancy Gagliardi Little: You’re right. Every time the dog leaves before the release cue, that behavior gets stronger, and as you said, dogs love doing agility, and so it’s a really strong reinforcement to go and to run. So there’s lots of strong behavior chains that are unintentionally built into the startline routine as the dog starts a set of unwanted behaviors. Those behaviors continue to be reinforced as the handler moves forward in that routine until the dog’s running the course. So problem-solving startlines are kind of complex and they depend on the history of the issue, the dog, and the handler. The cool thing and the reason why I like this so much, this stuff, is there’s never a simple, cookie-cutter approach. But obviously the best scenario is catching it early and not allowing it to occur at the trials. Once it continues at the trials, you get a long history of that behavior, it’s a little more difficult, but you can still fix them. So I like to help handlers develop a plan for their particular situation, and they vary a lot. It would involve a training plan, handling plan or changes, and how to handle mistakes. Those are big ones because every dog is different. It’s going to vary a lot between teams. Regarding the pros and cons, that’s going to vary a lot also, depending on the situation. For instance, there can be both pros and cons leaving the ring if you actually remove a dog. Say if the dog breaks a startline, and you remove the dog or you leave the ring. Some dogs have built up such a strong reinforcement history for going before the release cue that leaving the course without running will eventually get rid of that behavior, and it’s sometimes the best way to do that. It’s also important, when you do that, that you’re not adding any more emotional baggage, that you just leave happy, because those dogs want to run, so even when the handler leaves happy and even reinforces the dog, or rewards the dog, and exits, it’s still going to positively affect that dog’s ability to focus on the release cue in the future, because that’s really what they want to do. But then there’s other dogs that are more sensitive to mistakes, and then if you remove those dogs from the course when a mistake happens, it’s going to cause a lot more anxiety and frustration. So in that situation I’m going to probably suggest running the dog, and then evaluating the training and handling plan to ensure success, because those dogs care a lot about being right, so something probably was amiss in training or handling. Melissa Breau: Let’s say, looking at it from the opposite angle, somebody has a strong startline now, and they realize that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Is simply reinforcing that stay by continuing to release the dog to play agility — is that going to be enough to maintain that behavior? Are there other things they should they be doing to maintain that behavior? Nancy Gagliardi Little: Once the dog has a lot of value for agility obstacles, and a good understanding of handling, and has a well-trained startline, then yes, I strongly believe that releasing that dog from the stay at the startline will reinforce that startline. Most dogs love agility, and they want to go, and they’re much more reinforced by going forward than having the handler return to reward them. So strong startline behaviors, they can deteriorate a lot, and I’ve seen that happen when the dogs, all they want to do, they want to go, and the handler wants to reinforce that or wants to reward that, and the behavior is interrupted by the handler returning to reward. So I really feel that if they have a strong, solid startline and they like agility, they like to play agility, then releasing them forward is a great reinforcer. Melissa Breau: I want to get into — you talked about this a little bit — the emotional component of startlines for a minute. If a dog is breaking their stay, what is that really saying about their emotional state? How does that play into that bigger game of agility? Nancy Gagliardi Little: I believe this is the area, like I said before, that most trainers miss — that emotional component. It’s about recognizing the expressions or behaviors that indicate the dog is frustrated or anxious and confused.   When they miss that, they continue on the same path in their working skills, attempting to address mistakes, and what happens is that the dog’s stress level continues to increase because they’re feeling all these emotions, And as you know, when the dog is stressed, they can be over-aroused, or they can be even under-aroused, and they can’t think or function anymore, and then any of the skills that were taught are going to deteriorate, and there’s going to be bad feelings at that startline. So when there’s a negative emotional issue at the startline, once they go, that’s carried into the performance once the dog starts running. So yeah, it’s a big deal. Melissa Breau: I’d love to talk a little bit about proofing and lead-outs. With the variety of all the different course layouts out there, and all the different options when it comes to course layouts, there’s so many different pictures that the dog has when working on their startline or when they need to maintain their startline. Do handlers … is it really just about training as many of those “pictures” as you can, or is there a better way to help a dog generalize an awesome startline to understand that no matter what obstacle or no matter what layout they see, that it’s still the same behavior? Nancy Gagliardi Little: That’s a really good question, and it might be another thing that is missed a lot. I’m pretty proud of my dogs’ lead-outs, because they’re fast and it’s always such an advantage to start out running a course being fairly far ahead, so I have some pretty nice lead-outs on my dogs. Part of it is practicing all different types of patterns. The first step is to teach them to be able to jump. Most of the startlines are either tunnels or jumps, and I practice a lot of slice jumping, so that the dogs can take a lead-out, but still take a jump at a sliced angle. Even though I’m very much in the picture, they’ll still take the line that I set, and that gives me a lot of options. Basically, you’re going to lead them at a jump at a slice, they might be facing the jump at sideways while you’ve led out. Most people, what they’ll do is they’ll face their dog straight ahead toward the jump, and then they’re at a disadvantage because the dog doesn’t really see Obstacle 1 and 2. If I can put my dog on a slice, then he or she can see Jumps 1 and 2, or Obstacles 1 and 2, and it’s an advantage for me to be able to get out a little bit further, because Jumps 1 and 2 are taken care of. So I do a lot of complicated patterns, mostly with jumps, but then I’ll add some tunnels as well in there. Because tunnels are super arousing. So those patterns are really important. The other thing I’ll work on is long lead-outs. There’s many times it’s a jump to a contact, you jump, dog walk or jump, weave, can you lead way out and way past the beginning of the contact, maybe to the end, and can your dog do that pattern. So patterns are very important, and as long as you’re consistent about the dog’s line and supporting the line, they should be able to handle that. But the other part of that question is that I’m going to also add lots of distractions to startlines because there are distractions at the trials. One way I do that is I’ll use other dogs, or people, or just set it up in a variety of environments, and then what I’ll do is I’ll execute a startline routine, which means just come into the ring, do my setup, lead out, and release, so that’s just basically … not really necessarily running a sequence. I’ll do that starting, like, with dogs maybe standing still at a distance, or then the dog is moving a little bit at a distance, or the dog is running sequences at a distance. The other thing is you add people, because there’s people at trials. They’re everywhere. They’re behind the dog at the startline, getting ready to take the leash, they’re sitting in chairs, sometimes they’re moving to set bars. You just start adding movement, decreasing distance, having a leash runner behind the dog. These are all external distractions. You don’t want to just have them happen once the dog starts trialing. You want the dog to be introduced to those things because they are a big part of the startline, and can the dog focus while those distractions are there, can the dog execute that startline routine. The other distraction I like to add is handler distractions, like, can you hold your stay while I’m disconnected, if I’m a super disconnected handler or a super over-excited handler, or I might pair some movement with a few releases, and then I go back to a clear cue release. They’re just some fun games to ensure that the dog understands the whole startline routine that I’ve set up. Melissa Breau: Of course, we’re talking about startlines because your class on the topic is running this term — so anything that we didn’t get into that might be useful for students to know, if they’re considering the class? Nancy Gagliardi Little: Lots of people ask about what type of dogs are best for this type of class. It’s one of my favorite subjects, so I love doing it because of the variety and creativity. But it’s great for young dogs because the class is basically building that startline behavior, and then also working with handlers so that things are going to be maintained properly. It’s good for dogs learning startline behaviors and it’s also good for dogs that are having issues with their understanding of it at trials. I’m working with the handlers to ensure they’re giving clear information to their dogs, because lots of times they’re not aware that some of that is actually causing the issues. Once they see that, it becomes clear. I help the handlers individually changing their behavior. And then, as I mentioned previously, there’s different strategies to change the dog’s behavior, too, and it’s going to vary with all the different types of dogs. The question, too, people have about taking it at the Bronze level, which you can’t really ask questions. You’re just going to be watching the Gold students and looking at the lectures. I’m really good about explaining to people why I’m giving certain advice for a certain dog, because I realize there are going to be Bronze students out there that are going to be wondering, Is that something I should do with my dog? I want them to understand that this is in particular what I would do with this type of dog. With this particular class, because it started — today is October 1st, so it just started — I do have a very interesting class. There’s a lot of variety in it. There’s some dogs that actually need a little more speed, and then there’s the other typical, lightning-fast dogs that just require a lead-out in the class. So there’s something for everyone. Melissa Breau: That’s awesome. I want to change topics a little bit. I know you have your open and utility problem-solving class on the calendar for December, so I just want to chat a little bit about obedience. What are some of the common problem areas when teams are competing at that level — places where the teams just seem to struggle? Nancy Gagliardi Little: For some reason, the most popular exercises seem to be signals and directed jumping, and specifically go-outs in utility. There’s a lot of that. In open it’s usually a variety of issues, lots of heeling, fronts, finishes, drop on recall, that’s more of a variety of things. But signals and directed jumping are really, really, really popular exercises to work on. That’s where people seem to struggle. Melissa Breau: It’s one of those classes where I’m sure you see the same couple of issues or common issues come up, the same exercises pop up over and over and over again, right? Nancy Gagliardi Little: It does, but interesting enough, there’s always a little bit of a difference between each of the teams because of the dog, or specifically what the issue is in each of the areas. Melissa Breau: Once a handler has identified signals or go-outs or one particular exercise as the sticking point for their particular dog, what’s involved in developing a plan for taking and saying, “OK, this is a problem. How do we improve our dog’s understanding of this exercise so that we can get it right?” Nancy Gagliardi Little: The first thing is figuring out where is the issue within the exercise. Lots of times it’s a little bit different than what might have been explained or noted by the handler. Lots of times they’re dead-on, but I might find a little detail that I think is probably going to be important to work on first. Then we find a plan together to address that particular issue, and then I try to get it so that we build that piece back into the exercise, and that’s assuming that the rest of the exercise is healthy. Making sure that the handling is in place too — that’s super important for all of the obedience exercises is to make sure that the handling is consistent and the dog is not confused. It’s not like I’m proposing certain handling of all exercises, because I’m going to work with whatever they have, and if the dog is confused, then we need to make a change. So depending on the problem, it might be teaching different skills, it might be working on handling, there’s other things too. We create a plan then to move forward. It’s much bigger than that. That’s a pretty simplified version. Melissa Breau: Well, there’s only so much you can do if it’s a six-week class to try to explain in a podcast. Nancy Gagliardi Little: Exactly. Melissa Breau: Would it be helpful to talk through an example? So maybe take one exercise and talk us through an example of a previous dog or a previous issue? Nancy Gagliardi Little: Sure. For example, utility signals seems to be a big thing. Say somebody comes in and they have issues with signals. After I look at the video, I’m going to probably first review the handler signals without the dog, to ensure that they look clear to me and they look different. I’m really picky about signals. I like them to start differently. The sooner the dog knows what that signal is going to be, the faster the response from the dog. If they have to wait until the signal is complete before they recognize a cue, then obviously the signal is going to be … or the response from the dog is going to be super slow. So then I’m going to develop a plan for handling, maybe make some … I’m not going to change everything, just the parts that I think are unclear, and usually the dog’s telling us that anyway. So I look at the dog’s response. I’m going to probably have them do verbal position changes and take a look at those, and see how the dog’s responding to the verbal cues, making sure that there’s no additional prompting occurring from the handler. If the dog can’t respond to the verbal, then I’m going to probably work on that first, rather than the signal, because signals can be a little more complicated. So get that going first, and then we also have to incorporate a good reinforcement strategy for that dog so that we can maintain that distance from the handler. And then gradually, as things improve, we build a distance with the verbal cues, and then I’m going to start to add the signals in with shorter distance, gradually increase that distance. Also, some of this I’m using props to help the dog, depending on the situation. Some dogs don’t need it; they’re doing just fine. Some might need it. The other big thing for me for signals is making sure we’re reinforcing the duration in each of the positions, that it’s not just about changing positions. So there’s a lot of different things to consider and a lot of different tangents that we can go on. Melissa Breau: Certainly makes it easy to see why it’s a sticking point. Lots of different pieces. Nancy Gagliardi Little: Right, right, right. There’s a lot of stuff going on. And the thing, too, about signals is it’s difficult for the dog too. I think one of the reasons why it can be so difficult is they’re heeling and they’re with the handler, and then all of a sudden there’s this transition to this distance work, so I think that’s really hard for some dogs, especially the Utility A dogs, or the new dogs that are trialing. Melissa Breau: Alright Nancy, I’ve got one last question here, and it’s the question I’m asking everyone now when they come on: What’s a lesson you’ve learned or been reminded of recently when it comes to dog training? Nancy Gagliardi Little: All of the podcasts I’m like, “Oh my God, I don’t know how I would answer that question, because there’s so much.” There’s so much stuff out there. But all of a sudden, when I got this question, it was like, bam, I knew exactly what I was going to say. And it might be a bit different, but I attended an event a few weeks ago, it was honoring my dad, and I was reminded of something that’s important in training dogs and life in general. He coached college football pretty successfully for 60 years, over 60 years, and he’s actually the winningest college football coach of all time. He did things unconventionally then, and it’s actually unconventional now, even. He made changes in his own program that built kindness and respect in a pretty violent sport. I think I even talked a little bit about this in the original podcast that I did with you, where he had no hitting or blocking in practice — and that was way back in the late ’50s — because he noticed that some of his best players weren’t playing in the games because they’d get hurt during practice. So instinctively it felt right to not hit in practice. That was 50 years ahead of the game. These are actually practices now that are being looked at and incorporated in some of the pro teams and big college programs today. They’re just looking at that. But he trusted his instincts and he didn’t allow any of the distractions of how things are supposed to be done to guide his decisions. This has kind of always been my thing is I think it’s really important for all of us to focus on what we believe in and to trust our instincts, because if something feels wrong, then don’t do it. If something feels right, do it. Don’t over-analyze why you should or shouldn’t do something. Trust your feelings. I don’t think we really trust our feelings enough. It might be different than what somebody else is doing, but that’s how new ideas are discovered. So you can still make detailed plans, you can still obsess about those plans, and execute those plans, and evaluate the results, and develop more plans based on the results, but be aware of your feelings as you train, and trust them, because if you’re feeling frustrated or there’s negative emotions, then something is wrong, and if you’re feeling great, then keep going, you’re on the right track. I firmly believe that emotions are going to guide you in the right direction, so trust them, and don’t be distracted with what your friends on Facebook are doing. Stay aware of those feelings. They can help you stay on track and move in the right direction, and you might discover something incredibly wonderful and different. Melissa Breau: Right. I like that. I like that a lot. Thank you so much Nancy! This has been great. Nancy Gagliardi Little: Thanks! It’s been great being here. Melissa Breau: And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. We’ll be back next week with Sara Brueske to talk about evaluating potential rescues for dog sports, fostering potential sports dogs, and more. Don’t miss it! It if you haven’t already, subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. CREDITS: Today’s show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called “Buddy.” Audio editing provided by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in -- and happy training!  

Summary: Amy Johnson is the owner of Great Dane Photos and teaches the dog photography classes offered through FDSA. She is also the official show photographer for many of the premier agility events in the United States, including the AKC National Agility Championships, AKC Agility Invitational, USDAA Cynosport World Games, and NADAC Championships, as well as numerous local trials, regional events, and breed national specialties. She has photographed a wide variety of dog sports, including agility, obedience, rally, and conformation, and dog events, including FDSA camp.   Her start in professional photography came by taking pictures of her friends' dogs at conformation shows, and quickly grew to outpace her interest in showing her own dog -- and today she's here to talk to us about the reason a great number of people use the internet each day -- dog photos!   Links www.greatdanephotos.com Next Episode:  To be released 5/18/2018, featuring Sara Brueske, the benefits of teaching tricks … and a little bit about disc dog! TRANSCRIPTION: Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports Podcast brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high-quality instruction for competitive dog sports using only the most current and progressive training methods. Today we'll be talking to Amy Johnson. Amy is the owner of Great Dane Photos and teaches the dog photography classes offered through FDSA. She is also the official show photographer for many of the premier agility events in the United States, including the AKC National Agility Championships, AKC Agility Invitational, USDAA Cynosport World Games, and NADAC Championships, as well as numerous local trials, regional events, and breed national specialties. She has photographed a wide variety of dog sports, including agility, obedience, rally, and conformation, and dog events, including FDSA camp.   Her start in professional photography came by taking pictures of her friends' dogs at conformation shows, and quickly grew to outpace her interest in showing her own dog -- and today she's here to talk to us about the reason a great number of people use the internet each day -- dog photos!   Hi Amy, welcome back to the podcast! Amy Johnson: Thank you so much for having me back. Melissa Breau: I'm excited to talk about this stuff today. I know we want to chat about the behind the scenes stuff, but to start us out, can you share a little bit about some of the big events you've covered recently? What kind of events were they and what did they involve, a little bit of background? Amy Johnson: Sure. The most recent one I covered was actually just this past weekend. I was the show photographer for the AKC World Team Tryouts. While that's not one of the biggest events that I do, since it's a relatively small number of competitors, it still is really high profile. AKC sends all of their big guns to the show to be involved. It's not just a local trial. It definitely is a national-level event. I did AKC's National Agility Championships in March, those were held in Reno, Nevada, and I've got several more nationals coming up for later in 2018. Melissa Breau: As somebody who covers those kind of big events, how much traveling are you doing, how much travel is involved? Are you often on the road for this stuff, and how much of a factor is distance in whether or not you take a job? Can you share a little bit? Amy Johnson: I do a lot of traveling. There are times when my family wonders if I'm actually part of the family anymore, I think. Modern technology of texting and that stuff has been very good for that. For the local weekend trials — I say local, but the one that's closest to me is an hour away, but most of them are in the Twin Cities, which is about three-and-a-half hours south of me, the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area — I travel even to just do smaller trials, the normal weekend trials. But those are just in Minnesota. I leave home on the day before, so if it's a three-day trial, if it's a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I head to the cities on Thursday, usually set up on Thursday night at wherever the show is, and then shoot Friday and Saturday and run the booth on Sunday, and then I head home Sunday night and get home usually between 8 and 10 at night. The national events definitely are something that take me out of state and I'm gone a lot longer, but they're also much larger in terms of the number of competitors. The amount of business that I do at those is significantly larger than the amount of business I do at a local trial, so it's worth the extra distance and it's worth the extra staff I bring in. So I will travel out of state. All the nationals that I do other than World Team Tryouts this year were in Minneapolis, so that was a nice, close event. That was easy. AKC Nationals in March was in Reno. I'm going to Arizona, I'm going to Tennessee, I'm going to Orlando, so I get kind of coast to coast over the course of a year or two. Melissa Breau: That's pretty awesome. That's getting to see a lot of awesome places. Amy Johnson: Yeah, I do, and I drive everywhere because I am the person who has all of the gear. I have all the photography gear, but I also have all of the sales booth gear, so that doesn't pack up and ship very well. It certainly doesn't fit on a plane. I have a pickup truck and I fill it from tip to tail with everything I need and drive across the country, so not only do I see the places I'm going to, I also see everywhere in between, which sometimes is not very interesting. My dad's a retired geography teacher, so I think part of my desire to travel came from him instilling a love for the land that we live in, so being able to drive it rather than fly over it has been part of the appeal of the job itself, which is kind of weird, but what it is, it's a good part. Melissa Breau: That's kind of neat. I'm getting ready to do a crazy road trip myself, and there is something to be said for driving a long distance and having that time to explore on your own a little bit. I'd imagine you're working on a lot more of a deadline, so it may be a little more intense. Amy Johnson: Now that my kids are older I can extend my travel time by a little bit. I've never driven through the night. I need my sleep too much. I'll drive all day, but I've started to add an extra day or day-and-a-half so I can stop somewhere and do a little birding, see a local landmark or something. I'm actually starting to get off the Interstate and be able to have some time to explore places along the road, which has been fun. Melissa Breau: I'd imagine that makes it a lot more fun. You mentioned going all over the place, and I'd imagine that that comes with its own challenges. How do you prep for some of these big shows? What do you need to think through, especially if it's a facility maybe you've never been there before? What do you do? Amy Johnson: The national events or the events where I'm going somewhere where I've never been before is a little scary. My biggest concern, and the one that I can't do anything about to prep for, is the light in the place. A lot of the big events are held in state fairgrounds, coliseums, horse arenas, and they're generally fairly well lit, but for the human eye and even for video. But for photography, for still photography, to stop the motion of these dogs that are moving so incredibly fast, you need a lot of light, or you need a camera that can handle the relatively low amount of light that is found in these places. My stomach used to be tied up in knots when I would get to a place before I walked in the door and just go, Please let there be enough light, please let there be enough light. In fact, ten, maybe twelve years ago I walked into a horse barn, a horse arena, where a championships was going to be held and I almost — I had just driven for a day-and-a-half to get there — almost got back in my car and turned around and went home because it was so badly lit. I didn't, I've never done that, but the thought crossed my mind because it was just so incredibly dim. I pushed through and I did it, and the thing that I consoled myself with was, if I'm having this much trouble photographing in here, nobody else is going to be able to do any better. In fact, I'm going to do OK because nobody can photograph anything in here unless they have the kind of gear that I have. So I did OK. People were appreciative of the fact that I was there and stuck it out, and they understood the difficulties that I had getting images and that they just weren't up to my normal standards, but that was as good as anybody could have done in those conditions. The nice thing is, going back to that place after a couple of years, they had swapped out the lights, they had put in new lights, and it was about four times brighter than it was the first time I went in there. So I don't mind going there anymore, but it was terrifying the first time. So that's always my biggest concern. In terms of prepping, I have to arrange housing, I have to make sure I've got my contracts signed with the organization that's putting on the event, I have to line up my staff. These days I have a bunch of photographers that come and work for me, and then I also bring in a sales staff that works at my booth. So it's gone from me, myself, and I, or me and my husband, because in the early days he would come with, and he'd be in the booth and I would be shooting, and now it's evolved into I have some events where I bring in ten to twelve people — four to five other photographers, and then five to six booth staff. There's a lot of logistics involved with that. They come from all over the country. I have photographers coming sometimes from the East Coast and some from the West Coast and everywhere in between. A lot of my sales staff comes from the Minneapolis area because they are customers who have become friends who have become loyal salespeople for me. They know my product, they believe in me and what I do, and that makes them really good at selling the images. Melissa Breau: That's awesome. That sounds like a huge team. That's phenomenal that you've grown to that point where you're bringing in that many people. Amy Johnson: It's fun. It used to be that I would go to these big events and there would be two different photography outfits there, me and somebody else. We'd divide up the rings. I've always worked really well with other photographers. I enjoy talking to them, and the last thing I want to do is be snotty about “Why are you here?” or anything like that. There's enough room for both of us to play in this. But over the years I've been able to bring more and more photographers, and the organizations I work with have liked having only one point of only one photographer or company that is there, and so I've pretty much gone to being the exclusive photographer at all these big events. But part of the deal is if I'm going to do that, then I make sure I bring enough photographers and enough booth staff to fully staff that whole thing. We cover all the rings. I don't bring two other photographers and let two of the rings go without any pictures. If there are five rings, I have five of us. It's complicated, but it's worth it. Melissa Breau: Most of our listeners probably primarily compete rather than work at the events, and I'm sure that working at an event is super-different from being on the competitor side. I'd love to hear a little bit about how you balance things like trying to be in the right spot to capture that perfect image, but at the same time you don't want to be “in the way” or in a spot where you may be distracting for the dogs. How do you manage to blend into the background? How do you manage to set up in a way that allows you to accomplish both ends? Amy Johnson: One of my favorite compliments, it's a weird one, but one of my favorites is when somebody will come up to me and say, “I didn't even know you were here.” It's not that they didn't know that I had a vendor booth, and it's not that they didn't know there was a photographer, but if they don't see me in the ring that they were running in, that means I've really done my job well. It's one of those backhanded, weird compliments, but I always appreciate hearing it because then I know I didn't distract anybody. Making sure that I'm in a place — me and my other shooters, of course — that is always right at the forefront of my mind. I think at most events we're outside of the ring. There have been a few events where the boundaries of the ring are … at World Team Tryouts, it was held at a soccer arena, and so the boards that are the boundaries of the soccer field and there was netting above those — we can't shoot through that. I can't see through walls, and to put a net in front of the lens would be kind of a problem as well. So we do sit inside, but we keep our backs to the wall, just like a bar setter would. We try and make ourselves as small as possible. So we're outside of the ring in general. I'm always looking at the equipment and which direction they're taking the jump, or which end of the tunnel they're coming out of. I'm looking to see where  — and when I'm talking about “they,” the dog — I'm thinking about where the dog's sightline is going to move. If they come over a jump, will they see me as they're turning their head to look at the next obstacle that they're going to, or as they're turning their head from one thing to the thing that they're going to take that's close to me, are they going to look at me and find me to be a distraction? If they're far enough away, it's usually not a problem. They're so engaged in what they're doing, especially at national events, the level of competition is so high, these dogs are so accomplished, they're so prepared, the handlers have done such an amazing job of getting them ready that it's generally not a problem. But I still am really paying attention to the line that the dog will take and making sure that I'm not going to be something that will catch their eye and cause them to misstep, or to miss something, or to not pay attention to their handler. I try not to move very much, so if the dog is taking a jump and it's coming directly over the jump towards me, I've got my shot lined up, all I'm moving is my shutter button, and I wait until that dog has moved past me, or moved through that obstacle and a little bit beyond, before I move to set up my next shot, rather than click and then move while they still might be able to see me, because movement catches our eye. If you think about if you're watching something and there's just a little bit of movement inside of a bigger area of things that aren't moving, you're going to see that movement really fast, so that will grab your attention. So my goal is to not be the one moving thing in the dog's line of sight. Not being a distraction is a really, really high priority for me. Then, of course, the flipside of that is we have to get good shots. So I look at the course. Usually I manage to get hold of a course map so that I know what direction everybody's going and what the order of things is. So we're looking at … I know that I want to get a jump picture, I'm always prioritizing contact obstacles, so the A-frame, the dog walk, the teeter, if it's that type of a course. If it's a jumpers course, those won't be there of course. I want to make sure we get contacts. I want to make sure we get a good variety of jumps, not just straight-on but also maybe coming across at a bit of an angle. I'm looking at where the dog is coming from, the obstacle I want, and then I'm looking at where the dog is going next, because it's not just about, Oh, if I set up right in front of this jump, they're going to come right at me. They may not. If they're coming from the left out of a tunnel and then they're going to move to the right and then take the A-frame — I'm making this all up — if they're moving from left to right, then I have to make sure that I know where that dog is going to be looking, how the dog is going to be positioned over the jump when it takes it, and then set up my shot so that I make sure that the dog is sharp in focus when they are over the jump. Tunnels, it always helps to set up with them coming a little more straight out towards you, because then you can see them coming and take the shot at the right moment. There's all sorts of angles and lines, and even knowing the handler moves. I will watch the walkthroughs because I need to know if maybe a jump that I've picked out is going to give me a beautiful shot, except all the handlers are doing a front cross in front of it, so they literally are putting themselves in between me and the dog coming over the jump because that's the best way to handle the course. So it doesn't help me, I can't take that jump shot if I can't see the dog, so I'll watch the walkthrough and see how the handlers are thinking about handling it. And it might set up a really nice team shot where I can see both the dog and the handler in the shot at the same time, the kind where the dog's going one direction and the handler's already moving on to the next thing, going the other direction, and you get this real interesting dynamic and action shot that people seem to really like. Melissa Breau: Is it really possible to be in one spot and be able to capture multiple obstacles like that? How do you figure that out? Amy Johnson: Going back to the whole distraction thing, we don't move around the ring while we're shooting. The thing that takes so long for us to set up our shots is that — I'm saying “our” because I'm thinking of the big national events where there's five or six of us shooting — and usually it's a whole conversation of, “Did you see this?” and “Did you see that?” and “What about this?” and “Should we try that?” So it is a “we.” It's not just me being royalty here, even though I am kind of the queen! We plant ourselves in one spot for any given course, and once you're there, you're not moving. You're swiveling in your chair back and forth. The camera's on a monopod so you can swivel around it. The monopod's holding the weight of the camera so you're not carrying that the whole time. But we're sitting in a chair and don't move. If I find that the spot is just terrible because there's a judge in the way or a handler in the way — nothing against them, they're just doing their job — but I didn't anticipate something about the way that course was going to run, I may pick up after four dogs and move over or somewhere else that I find that I got better shots. But in general we are planted in one spot and don't move for the duration of that course. These dogs are on course for about 30 seconds, so I would die to have them on course for a minute-and-a-half, although I'm not sure how interesting that would be because that would mean the dog was really not having a good day. So a jumper's course generally is in the neighborhood of 30 seconds. The standard course where you get the contacts sometimes will go to 45, and that's for the big dogs. The littler dogs, you're talking 35 - 40 seconds for the jumpers and maybe 45 - 55 for the standard courses. But it's definitely, for the dogs that are doing what they're supposed to and not messing up, it's under a minute. So the trick is find a spot where you can get at least three solid shots. There are some courses where I can get five or six, and those always make me really happy. I get done shooting those courses and I'm kind of floating because I'm like, “Yeah, that was great!” It's like someone coming off the course saying, “That run, ooh, it just all came together, it really clicked, and it was amazing.” That's how I feel if I get a course where I can get five or six really solid shots. Oh, there's nothing like it. Four shots is a really good number. If we can get — again going back to a standard course — if we can get a jump, a contact, the weave, or maybe two jumps, a contact obstacle, and the weaves, that would be great because then we've got a little variety. Generally we will see the dogs more than once. I may not, I may not see any jump height more than once, but over the course of a weekend, since we are covering all the rings, then that means we'll see the dogs three or four times, maybe five if they get into the finals. So that means we've got plenty of opportunities, hopefully, to get a wide variety of different types of shots. The preparation, the knowing where the dog's going to go, I don't know all the fancy names of all the new moves that people do. I know basically what a front cross is, I know what a blind cross is, I know what a rear cross is when I see it. I couldn't do it, don't ask me to try to do it, but I could probably, if you showed me a video, I could probably name those crosses. I can't name all the other fancy stuff, but I pay attention to it because it helps me know how the dog is going to take an obstacle, if I know how the handler is going to direct the dog to take that obstacle. As a team we're always looking at the course and deciding, “What kind of thing do you think they're going to do?” Because I haven't actually ever run agility, then that means I'm at a slight disadvantage to a few of the other photographers that work for me. Two of them have run dogs, and so they are very valuable to me in terms of being able to say, “For this thing they're going to do this, so we'll want to consider moving to a different spot.” It's a group effort when we're talking about where we go, where we plant ourselves for any course. Melissa Breau: How much do you really need to know about the sport you're photographing to be able to make informed, intelligent decisions? I'd imagine that that's been a learning curve. Amy Johnson: I shot my first agility trial knowing nothing about the sport, so it is possible to do it. I shot a lot of jumps because those are obvious. It makes sense. The dog is going to go over the bar, and you can follow the numbers and you can figure out where they're going to go. In the most basic sense, it is absolutely entirely possible to photograph agility or any other dog sport without knowing anything about it. Now, does that mean that's the best way? Probably not. I know that I can get shots these days that I never could have anticipated 18 years ago when I started in this. I know that my reaction time is faster, my ability to visualize how the shot's going to look before the shot even happens is much better than it was 18 years ago. The more you know about your subject — and this applies to any type of photography; this doesn't just apply to dog agility photography — anything you can know about your subject, if it's something that's alive, if you know more about its behavior, if you know more about its environment, if you know more about its habitat — I'm thinking about birds or wildlife — the more you know about your subject, the more you can predict what might happen, the better you're going to be able to capture that moment that you want. I also do bird photography, as all of my students know. One of the things that I've really worked hard on, especially this past winter, was getting some flight shots of a Great Grey Owl. I've been watching these birds for several years, and I'm starting to pick up on the really subtle signals that they give before they take off to fly. There's the not subtle one of they tend to poop before they fly. That's the one that everybody jokes about, “Oh, the bird just pooped, it's getting ready to fly.” But they don't always do that, so it's not always that obvious. They start to shift around on their perch a little bit, they might fluff their wings out a little bit, they turn their head, or you notice that something catches their attention. All these little body movements are giving you a clue that the bird is about to take off, so make sure that you have your shot lined up for the bird taking off. Same thing with agility. If I know where the dog's coming from, I know where the dog's going to, and I know basically how the handlers are going to be handling the course, I can generally predict exactly how those photos are going to look within a range. There are always outliers, and unfortunately, if a dog does something really unexpected, we might miss that one jump shot if they jumped really high, or they crashed the bar, or if they don't even take the obstacle, or they do something weird to mess up their timing. So the outliers create problems for us, but for the most part, as long as we have a sense of the rhythm and the flow of the course and understand what the dog's going to do, then that greatly increases the likelihood that we're going to get a good shot. Melissa Breau: You mentioned earlier the idea of getting a couple of different obstacles, maybe setting up so that you can get a shot of the dog and the handler. Are there types of pictures that competitors seem more likely to buy? Are there things that they are looking for? Are those what drives you to get those specific shots, or is it more about what shots you can get that are going to be good shots? Amy Johnson: I mentioned I've been doing this for 18 years, and for every trial I've been to, if I had only taken the shots that I thought people would buy, then I would have been wrong for at least one or two people at every single trial I've ever shot. Just like with anything, people have a huge variety of opinions. Some people really like the jump shots where the dog is coming right towards you. Some people really like the jump shots where the dog is kind of slicing the jump and taking it at an angle. Some people hate the pictures on the contact obstacles. Some people love them. It is across the board. Anything I get, I can get a person who loves it and a person who hates it. My goal, because of that, is to try and get the biggest variety possible. So we try and make sure that there's some sort of teamwork shot in the mix. We want to make sure that we hit all the contact obstacles. Now, we aren't always successful, because we're restricted to what sides of each ring we're allowed to be in. For instance, at Nationals in Reno in March, they had three rings running in the main arena, and then one ring was off in another section. Well, those three rings were touching in the middle, so to speak, so we could access the backside of all three rings, we could access the side of Ring 1 and the opposite side of Ring 2 — excuse me, Ring 3 — but all we could access on the middle ring was the backside. If the course isn't set up where I can get a shot of an A-frame from that side of the ring for the whole weekend, like, I never get that shot, then those dogs that ran in that ring, maybe we don't have A-frames for that jump height. The goal is always to get that variety working within the boundaries of the courses and the way they're laid out, and again working with that idea that we don't want to be a distraction. I have passed up shots that would be awesome shots, but I can see that where we're sitting is too close to another obstacle. Even if we're not trying to shoot that obstacle, but it's the end of the weave poles and where I want to be puts me too close to the end of the weave poles, I won't set up there because I know weave poles are a touchy obstacle. Not every dog is as solid on the weaves as they maybe would be on a jump or a tunnel. The last thing I want is for a handler to come off the course and say, “Man, if that photographer hadn't been there.” We're great scapegoats. That is the one thing that I hear that makes me want to cry, but it also drives a lot of what I do. I don't want to be a scapegoat. I don't want to be the reason why someone thinks their run didn't go well. Even if I didn't have anything to do with it, I have to avoid that perception. I've passed up shots because I don't want to even have a hint of being in a place where someone could say, “Well, if that photographer hadn't been there, then we would have qualified.” But going back to the idea of the variety, it's all over the board, and I wish that there was a way to narrow it down to, “Oh, people only like jump shots.” “Well, great then, we'll just take the jump shots.” But you know what? That just is never going to happen. And actually I think I would get a little bored, too, if all I did was the jumps. So yeah, yeah, so it works for everybody. Melissa Breau: We've talked before, I think you actually included it in one of the webinars you did, about the challenges of capturing black dogs in particular. I'm assuming you don't have a ton of time between competitors at some of these events, so how do you work with the variety of the dogs you may see in the ring, both based on color and size and what have you? How do you have to adapt to that? Amy Johnson: The one thing we do at the national events … generally the light in these arenas, especially these days with modern LEDs and the modern fluorescents that don't have the same kind of patchy flicker … older lights are a nightmare to deal with, but the newer lights are quite nice. So we set our exposure for each ring. Like at Nationals, where we had three rings in the main arena, the exposure settings were the same for all three of those rings. We had different exposure settings for the fourth ring that was out in another section, but we set the exposure settings and then leave them alone. I don't try and adjust for a black dog and a white dog, and the biggest reason I don't is because I will screw it up. Like you said, we've got so little time, and if I'm trying to make adjustments because, oh, I see it's a black dog coming up — and I can't always actually see the start line very well from where I am, depending on where I'm shooting — so if I'm trying to adjust that and I say, “Oh, it's a black dog, let me adjust my settings,” great, shoot the black dog, looks wonderful. Then a white dog comes to the line and I forget that I've adjusted for the black dog, then I shoot the white dog at the black dog's settings, and I've screwed them both up, or I've screwed up the white dog. So I prefer to find that middle ground. The way I set the cameras is that we shoot in RAW, which is a file type that is very easily manipulated in Lightroom and Photoshop, so I can brighten the dark dogs and I can darken the light-colored dogs, because it isn't really off by that much. It's much better to pick that middle ground, because I have other things I would much rather put my brain power to, like making sure I get all the shots I want, and making sure I know what dog is in the ring, because we do a lot of data collection, and we can get to that in a bit. I don't worry so much about the color of the dog. What I do worry about — you mentioned the height of the dog and I'll mention the way a dog runs. The heights at a national event are nice because I may only see one jump height for most of the day, or half the day at least, so I might only have the 16-inch dogs. All of those dogs are jumping, they're very similar height, which means if I am visualizing things correctly, then that shot I've got is going to work for all the dogs I'm going to see. Little dogs, we can line things up. We can use a longer lens for a ring that has just little dogs in it, and shoot much tighter, rather than having to worry about using a lens that's going to work for everything from the 4-inch dogs all the way up to the 24-inch dogs. That's one of the things that's very nice about a national event versus a regular local event. When I'm setting up shots for my local events, I have to accommodate all the different jump heights. Sometimes at a walkthrough I'll go grab a different lens, but usually I can do everything with the same lens. The last piece of this, though, with the variety of dogs, goes back to understanding your subject, and that is, I need to understand how different breeds run and how different breeds take obstacles. What I mean is, if you put a Border Collie on the course, they run very efficiently. They run low to the ground, they come in really tight to those weave poles, and they just skim right over the top of the jump bars. They come tight up to the jump standards. They run very small, and I don't know if that makes sense, but they're very efficient, they're very compact in that respect. Then you put a Doberman out on the course. They run very upright, so you've got long legs. If they have cropped ears, you've got to make sure you're incorporating that into the frame. They take up a lot more vertical space in an image than a Border Collie. So even though they may be jumping the same jump height, I have to frame the shot completely differently for a Doberman than I do for a Border Collie. Now, there are exceptions. There's a Doberman in the Minneapolis area that runs like a Border Collie, and when he comes to the line — I am not joking, this dog is phenomenal — when he comes to the line I have to literally tell my brain, This is a Border Collie, this is a Border Collie, this is a Border Collie, because if I shoot him like a Doberman, he's only going to be taking up about the bottom third of the frame because I added extra space to treat him like a Doberman. I can't shoot him like a Doberman. I have to shoot him like a Border Collie. Poodles are another one that run very upright. Great Danes, the few of them that are out there running, run very upright, and I have to make sure I have enough vertical space for them. The little dogs, there's less variety in that way. Of course there's always the Jack Russell Terriers that think they should be jumping 20 inches, even though they only jump 8 or 12. There's an advantage that my local clients have that my national clients don't, because I know my local people. I know how their dogs run. I know the little dogs that run as if they're 20-inch dogs, and so I can be set up for that. I have pictures where all I have are toes in the frame because the top of the dog is cut off at the top because it jumped so high. I have the jump bar in there, and then I have about 8 inches of space, and then I have toes. Sometimes those are really funny shots and the people really like them, but not at a national so much. Understanding the breed, and even if it's a mixed breed, you still can see, you watch the dog go over the first jump and you have a clue about how they're going to run the course. That's another part of knowing your subject. You've got to understand how the different dogs run, and that's just something you learn after observing dog after dog after dog after dog. Melissa Breau: Can you walk me through what a typical day looks like at one of these major events from your perspective? Amy Johnson: One of the things I always want to know is what time does the building open, because I want to be there as early as I possibly can. The reason for that is I want to have as much time as I can to see the course, to look at the different angles, to look at the way it's going to run. If there's a course map, if there are multiple courses in the day, hopefully they put out course maps that are for everything, and so then I can start looking ahead. If we're going to have a course change in the day, I can also start looking ahead for the second half of the day, when you need to switch, consider this, this, and this, so I can prep my team for what they're going to be looking for midday. I get there, and usually a couple of my team of my photographers will be there that early with me, and we look at the courses and start thinking about what shots will work. Once everybody gets there, we make sure everybody's got their chairs, everybody's got the right lens, because if they've got little dogs, they might need a 400mm, if they're shooting things that are all the way across the ring, they might need a 400mm lens, if they're shooting things that are closer, they probably need a 300mm. Everybody keeps track of their own camera body for the week, but we swap the lenses around, depending on what jump height and where the obstacles are physically located in the ring, compared to where you're sitting. There's a lot of … you've got to make sure your cards are formatted. One of the things that is key to the way I do business is that we keep track of what image numbers belong to which dog. The way we do that is we have the running list loaded into a spreadsheet on an iPad, and as you're shooting, you're looking in the back of the camera and recording the image numbers that correspond, the last image number that corresponds to the dog that just ran. We've got data collection that goes on as you're shooting, so we've got to make sure that the iPads are charged, that camera batteries are charged, cards are formatted, cards are loaded in the camera. I have sat down — because I'm trying to get everybody else situated — sat down and realized I don't have any cards in my camera, so then it's a quick scramble. Once the shooting starts, then things settle into a rhythm, and time just becomes weird, and you keep going and you fall in to … your muscle memory takes over. After four or five dogs, you have the pattern, and you don't have to think so hard about I'm going here, oh wait, then I've got to go there. You just settle in. The day … you are always happy to get a break, but they're never very long. We'll shoot from probably 8 o'clock in the morning — earlier on … some nationals start the day even earlier than that — 8 o'clock and sometimes we'll go on until 4 or 5. We've even gone until 6. In fact, World Team Tryouts started shooting on Saturday morning at 7:30 and finished that night at 7. That's a little bit of an extreme, but ten hours of shooting isn't … eight to ten isn't out of the realm of normal. But then the day doesn't end, so we've got to go back to the house and download images, and I have some data stuff, so I suck into my computer the spreadsheets and everybody's images, and through the magic of the scripts that my husband has written for me, we come out on the other side with images that are sorted into directories named with the dog's name. So if I click on Ace Smith, then inside of that folder are all of the pictures that are of Ace Smith — or we hope so, if we've done the data entry correctly. Then we take the time to edit the photos, and editing meaning deciding which ones to keep and which ones to delete, not post-processing in Photoshop or Lightroom. None of that happens. We go through and delete all the bad ones, because there are bad ones. There are lots of bad ones. Keeper rate is probably about 25 to 30 percent of the images are kept. On an eight- to ten-hour day I probably shoot minimum 5000 images, probably closer to 6 or 7. On a day where I've got one of those courses where I've got six shots and they all work really well, I can get up to 8000 images, and then we go through and delete the junk, because there's always junk. I don't want my customers to see the junk. Some stuff does slip through that I would probably prefer not be out there, but for the most part we get rid of a lot of things that just don't need to be seen by anybody. We keep the best of the best, and that's part of what keeps people coming back for more. So the day starts really early. I have trained my booth staff to do editing so we can distribute the images, so I may not have to do all my images. I can split mine between me and someone else. All my photographers, we generally can split so they're only doing half and then one of my booth staff is doing the other half, and that's made a huge difference in how early we can get to bed, because we've divided that work so much. For Nationals I was in bed by 10 or 10:30, but there are times when I've been up until midnight or 1:00 and then had to get up at 4 or 5. You just run on adrenalin at that point, there's not a lot else. And coffee, lots of coffee. I often wish that I could sit ringside and just have a caffeine drip, but nobody's offered to do that for me yet. So adrenalin and coffee. Now, those are the days where all we're doing is shooting, like on the first day of the event. On the Saturday and Sunday of an event, I also have to make sure that the booth gets up and running. Not only am I trying to look at courses and get everybody set, I'm also trying to get the booth. My staff is really good about doing most of it, but there's still some of the computer stuff that is really just me, so I have to make sure that's all working properly. I also have two of my photographers who have become regulars know how to set up the shots the way I want them. I'm getting much better at delegating. It's very hard, but I'm getting better at it, delegate that stuff, getting the shots set up, to them, and then I concentrate on getting the booth up and running, and then hopefully they've even found a spot for me, so I just sit down and start shooting and hope that they did their job well, which they always have. Melissa Breau: That's important. Having good people is an important piece of the process. Having photos available next day for competitors — you mentioned that's not the norm, that's not standard. What led you to make the decision to do that? You talked about being up really, really late the night before, so I'd love to hear what led you down that path. Amy Johnson: There's a lot of things that I do that are not standard. Being willing to stay up late and edit pictures until all hours of the night is the biggest one, I guess. Sorting by dog name is a really big thing to me, and it's not something that most other agility photographers have done. The ones that I've trained are doing it, and it's a very small number, but it's growing. Usually it's sorted by jump height or by group or by arm band number, something. The decision to do that is based on I want my customers to spend their money, not spend their time hunting for their dog. I want them to be able to find their pictures within 30 seconds of walking up to one of my viewing stations. In that 30 seconds they're just typing in their name is all they're doing. And it should — if all their data is correct — it should pull up their dog's pictures as soon as they hit the login button. That makes them feel important, too, because we took the time to know who they are and who their dog is, and to find a way to match those up and to not waste their time with, “Well, here's all 500 20-inch dogs that ran yesterday. Go ahead and look through them and see if you can find your Golden in amongst the 500 other Goldens.” I think that's not respectful of their time as a competitor, and it's certainly not respectful of my sales booth time for my employees to be looking for … to help these people find their pictures, because by the time they find their pictures, then they're exhausted — “Oh, well, here they are. Now I have to decide what to do with them? Really? Oh.” They've made decisions all week or all weekend. They're trying to decide how to handle their dog, they're trying to decide what to do that is best for their dog. I don't want to add to that mental load by making them hunt for their pictures. That's the motivation for me is I think it's a better use of all of our time if they can find that stuff really quick. A lot of agility photographers or dog event photographers will actually find a way to have images up within even on the same day, but the editing piece for me is too important, and so I want the chance to see all the images, or to have a photographer look at all the images, before they go in front of my customers. I sometimes talk about this whole organization is kind of like I'm the chef, and all of the food that comes out of my kitchen has to taste like my food. Even if I'm not the one who actually cooked it, it's still my food. It's still got to taste like my food. So my photos need to look like my photos, whether or not I was the one who actually clicked the button. I'm kind of a control freak. “Kind of” — yeah, right. I'm a total control freak and my students know that. It's the whole premise of how I teach photography is, “You can be a control freak, too, and take better pictures because of it.” Anyway, I don't want to rush through the editing process. I would much rather save it for the evening, and then we get it done and we get it done well, and then my customers are only seeing the best images. Those two pieces: the sorting by dog and then the edit at night and don't have things available until the next day. For day three, if we're shooting on a Sunday, that makes things a little bit complicated, but we've found ways to help people, “Well, I know I want to buy a collage, but I haven't seen all the pictures yet,” we have ways to work around that. Melissa Breau: I'd imagine that at some of these big events, things are pretty high stakes and pretty high pressure. You joked earlier about slipping a memory card in last-minute, but have you ever had something just go totally wrong, and if so, will you share? Amy Johnson: Sure. There's always things. And there are so many moving parts to this that it's amazing in some ways that there aren't more things that go wrong. There are a couple of things that come to mind immediately because they're the most stressful to me. There's a lot of things that could go wrong, but I have learned to just let it roll off me, not a big deal. But the two things that could go wrong are if a camera breaks or if my software in the booth goes a little wonky. I did actually have a camera break. My camera, the one I was using, suddenly quit working in the middle of the last day of Cynosport last year in Tennessee. Literally it just … and found out later, after I sent it in for repair, the whole mirror assembly inside of the camera just came apart. I don't have any explanation for it, but it wouldn't focus, the shutter button couldn't make the camera take a picture anymore. Well, I'm a huge believer in backups, and that applies to both computers and it applies to cameras. So I had a backup camera. I called up to my booth, and one of the guys came down with the backup camera. I probably missed maybe ten or fifteen dogs, I mean it felt like forever, but it wasn't. It just felt like, Oh my god, there's another dog that went, oh my god, there's another dog that went. So I missed dogs and that about killed me, but we made it through. I had a camera up and running again in probably ten or fifteen dogs, finished out the day, no problem. That is the only time it's ever happened. Oh no, I take that back. It did happen with actually a rental camera just was not working right at another show many years ago. So that doesn't happen a lot, but I do have backup gear. I can't come to one of these events and say, “Oh, I'm sorry, we can't shoot that ring because we don't have enough cameras because one broke.” That's just not acceptable. It's not like we have double the number of cameras, but we certainly have, even if everybody's shooting, there's always at least one backup. My software that is running in the booth is actually custom software that my husband wrote because he's brilliant. So we have this point of sale software, and because it's custom, it's also a little bit … it's not finicky, but I'm the only one at the show who knows all of the idiosyncrasies and all the ins and outs. If something happens, if it's not just the wireless network going down or the printer not responding, if it's anything more than that, then it usually involves me having to go up there and fix it. Both at the Nationals both this year and a year ago, I had one of my booth staff come down and hover behind me and say, “Amy, the pictures aren't coming up. What do we do?” Thankfully, this year, one of the other rings was idle, and so the shooter for one of the rings came over and he took over for me, and I was able to go up to the booth and fix it. Those are the two things that stress me out the most: if the software goes wonky or if a camera breaks. There are other little things. Someone's camera wasn't set up with the right file format, and there are ways to work around that. We've never lost images because of it. I don't know. There's always weird things going on, but the major things are if gear goes down or if software goes down.Melissa Breau: What other behind-the-scenes things are there that competitors or novice photographers might not have thought about? Any advice for others who are interested in getting involved in this stuff? Amy Johnson: The first thing I'll say, the behind-the-scenes, it is fun, it's really fun, because I always get there a day early to set up the booth, so I'm kind of in on the setup. I'm watching, whether it's USDAA or AKC or NADAC, I get to see some of their behind-the-scenes stuff as well. The people that I work with in each of these organizations are amazing, and we have a really good working relationship, and it's always, “Oh, it's so good to see you again.” The thing that impresses me is how much they are as concerned about making sure they do what's best for the dogs as the handlers are concerned about doing what's best for the dogs. Not everybody agrees with every decision that an agility organization makes, but the message that I keep seeing over and over and over every time I work with them is that they're in this for the same reasons. I hope that comes through to exhibitors, but I know that that can get lost in the chaos sometimes. My photographers and I live and die on those courses with all the dogs. We sit there and see every single dog that runs. We see everything that happens, and we rejoice in the great runs and we are destroyed a little bit with every run that doesn't go quite as planned. We feel bad, and if we could get the dog through the course ourselves, we could probably just will it to happen, because we are your silent cheering squad, whether you know it or not. If there's a photographer, one of my photographers, at your ring, they are cheering for you silently, because we don't want to distract the dog. We are thrilled when you do well, and we love watching your runs, and we love watching the cool things that happen, the relationships that we see when it all comes together, or you get to the end of your run and it went well or it didn't go well and it doesn't matter and you're having a good time with your dog. You will always have at least a cheering squad of one when we're there. A weird thing that I'll throw out there — this doesn't happen so much at a national, but at my local shows I've had people approach me and say, “Can you just sit there and take pictures and let me get my dog used to the click of the camera?” I would just say that I love that, because rather than being a scapegoat — we talked about that earlier — this is someone being proactive and saying, “I want to help my dog work through this,” and I am thrilled to death to be able to help with that. We're not scary people, even though we have these big, giant pieces of metal and glass in our hands. We're really not scary people, so come and ask us to help, and we're happy to do so. Novice photographers, the biggest thing you can do is learn how your camera works, like, really well. Not just where the shutter button is, and not where the auto mode is, but learn how it works. Learn about exposure, learn about how to capture motion, and learn about the behavior of your subject. Make sure you know your subject. If you're thinking about going into dog events, don't feel like you have to know it all at the very beginning. Yes, you need to know how to take good pictures, but in terms of actually doing the business side of it, make sure you do all the things that you have to do from the legal standpoint of course — register as a business and sales tax and all that good stuff. But you don't have to have a full booth. You don't have to have twenty-five different products. Just start somewhere. Go take pictures, try things out, see what works, see what doesn't, and then the next time you go do a trial, you do a little bit better. And eventually, 18 years later, you find yourself at a national event managing eleven other people and you wonder how it happened. But start with baby steps. Everything I've done in this business has been very incremental. I didn't suddenly go from just me to having a staff of twelve or thirteen. It's been very gradual and very incremental all along the way. Melissa Breau: To round things out, where can people go to learn a little bit more about this stuff? Amy Johnson: Isn't it amazing, but FDSA offers photography classes! Melissa Breau: Imagine that! Amy Johnson: Imagine that! If you don't know anything about photography, I will say Shoot The Dog, which is my beginner intro course, is coming up in June. That's a great place to start. If you know a little bit, just enough to be dangerous, then you might consider doing Chase The Dog, which is my course on how to photograph dogs in motion. If you don't want to take courses through FDSA, that's fine, or if you feel like you're beyond that, that's fine as well. I do offer mentorships on an informal basis, but I have had students come through my classes who are now working for me. The way that happens is they take my classes, they do well — these are Gold students; you can't do this at Bronze because I have to be able to see your work. But if you think you want to do this, frankly, the best way to get on my radar as someone who has the chops to do this is to be a Gold student and to come through that way. I have students who came through all my courses and came to a national event and shot the event but didn't have their images included for sale. It was still just me, or still just my regular staff. But then I got to see the images and we could evaluate. The next time it's now you'll be double-covering a ring and you just are responsible for getting one or two shots, as opposed to the normal four to five shots that a full-fledged photographer would do. It's something that has worked really well for several of my students. I'm on … I think number three is working with me now. So it's a really good way to get into the business. It won't help you develop a clientele locally, but it will let you see an event photography business from the inside, and you can decide if you don't want to edit photos at night in terms of when you do your own business, you can see what pieces of my ideas you would want to retain and what pieces you maybe aren't interested in doing. It doesn't hurt me. You have to build your business the way you want to build your own business. But that is something that I've slowly been offering on a very limited basis to students that have expressed that interest. That's kind of the advanced level of stuff, but definitely if you are interested in photography, start with Shoot The Dog, and then Chase the Dog definitely is the one where we really work seriously on the dogs in motion. And not just for agility. We try and cover all sorts of different types of motion. Melissa Breau: Awesome. Thank you so much for coming back on the podcast, Amy! Amy Johnson: It was great fun. Thanks for having me. Melissa Breau: It was so interesting to learn a little bit about behind-the-scenes stuff. That was awesome. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in and joining us for that! We'll be back next week with Sara Brueske. We'll be chatting about the benefits of teaching tricks … and a little bit about disc dog! If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. CREDITS: Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called “Buddy.” Audio editing provided by Chris Lang.

In this episode (39:45) In this episode, 2018 American Kennel Club National Agility Champion (16″) Jennifer Crank joins Sarah and Esteban for the AKC Nationals Wrap Up. You Will Learn The qualifying rates for both the Challenger and Finals rounds over the past 3 years. What competitors thought of the courses and surface. What happened when the timer malfunctioned during Jennifer’s winning run in the Finals. About birds that stick together. Mentioned/Related The AKC Nationals Maps and Results

SUMMARY: Nancy Gagliardi Little comes back on the podcast — Nancy has been training dogs since the early 1980's when she put an OTCH on her Novice A dog, a Labrador Retriever. Since then she has put many advanced obedience titles on her dogs, including 4 AKC OTCH titles, 6 UD titles, 3 UDX titles, and multiple championships in herding and agility. Today, she joins me to talk startline stays in agility. Links Nancy Gigliardi Little's Website Next Episode:  To be released 12/15/2017, featuring Mariah Hinds. We'll be chatting about proofing and building reliably, ring-ready behaviors! TRANSCRIPTION: Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports Podcast brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high-quality instruction for competitive dog sports using only the most current and progressive training methods. Today we have Nancy Gagliardi Little back on the podcast — Nancy has been training dogs since the early 1980's when she put an OTCH on her Novice A dog, a Labrador Retriever. Since then she has put many advanced obedience titles on her dogs, including 4 AKC OTCH titles, 6 UD titles, 3 UDX titles, and multiple championships in herding and agility. Welcome back to the podcast, Nancy! Nancy Gagliardi Little: Thanks, Melissa. Thanks for having me. Melissa Breau: The last time we talked a little bit about obedience. Today we're talking a little bit about agility. To start us out, do you want to just remind listeners who you are and share a little about the dogs you share your life with? Nancy Gagliardi Little: Sure. Who I am … I guess I'm still discovering that, but I live in Minnesota, about 45 minutes north of the Twin Cities, and I compete mostly in agility, AKC mostly, but also USDAA and UKI. I still train my dogs in obedience, I just don't compete in obedience anymore. I have aspirations of doing that again, but we'll see. I teach agility and obedience online classes with FDSA, and I teach agility and obedience lessons and classes at a local center here in Minnesota. I did judge obedience, AKC obedience, for about twenty years, and I judged around the country in all classes and also in some national events. So that's about me. And then my dogs. I've had border collies since the mid-'80s, and I love everything about the breed, including their quirkiness and their sensitivity. My dogs are Score, a border collie, 13. He's retired, obviously. He did agility and herding. And Schema is 9 years old. She's currently my competition dog doing agility. She is competing at AKC Nationals this year in 2018, and I think that's the fifth time she's qualified. She's also competed at Cynosport. And then I have Lever. He's 4, and he is competing in agility. I train him and Schema too, both in obedience. He's kind of the up-and-coming guy, I guess. And then my husband has a toller and his name is Rugby. He's 2, and he trains in agility and obedience. Melissa Breau: That's your crew, and we were talking a little bit before I hit “record” that hopefully there'll be one more joining the family early next year, right? Nancy Gagliardi Little: Correct. I think they're supposed to be born in early December. It's one of Lever's puppies. Melissa Breau: I look forward to lots of puppy pictures. Nancy Gagliardi Little: Yeah. That will be exciting. Melissa Breau: I mentioned in the intro that last time you were on we really talked obedience, but today we're going to talk agility, so specifically we're diving into start line stays. So, I wanted to start with how they're different from a stay in any other sport, something like obedience, for example. Nancy Gagliardi Little: They are quite a bit different in the agility environment. Agility is very high-energy, and the environment itself is fairly unpredictable, and that makes for difficult conditions for dogs that are trying to perform these skills that they learned at home and in class, especially the start lines. That's kind of the transitional exercise into the course. And then of course most dogs love agility, and it's pretty reinforcing for them to go. In obedience the stays are very predictable, well, in actually all the exercises are fairly predictable. They're patterns. Dogs learn those patterns, and that gives them pretty clear information when exercises start and end. Even in obedience, dogs can make mistakes. They might read a pattern and anticipate the finish of an exercise, especially the stay, and it's probably just when the judge says, “Exercise finished,” so they're pretty much done anyway. So it's just much more predictable. Melissa Breau: Why is it so important that people actually have a good start line stay in agility? What benefits does it offer if they put in the work and they get there? Nancy Gagliardi Little: Well, agility is pretty much all about speed, and most people have dogs that are much faster than they can run. I know I do, and most of the people do, and if they don't, they want that. Being able to lead out gives you an advantage, especially with a fast dog, and actually on many courses it can be difficult to start without a lead out with a super-fast dog. Going into the sequence, you just can't get where you need to be to cue something. So yes, it's quite an advantage having that. It gets you ahead. It might even keep you ahead throughout the course. And without that, you're going to be behind, which isn't all that bad if you want to do rear crosses throughout the course. Some people are very good at that. I have some students without start lines just because they came to me after their dog was a little bit older and we just decided we weren't going to teach the dogs the stay. And there are definitely some sequences that they just can't … or courses with starts that they just can't do, or they just have issues with it, so it does put them at a disadvantage. Melissa Breau: You mentioned that you decided just not to bother with it. Why do people struggle with it? Why is it something that's hard to teach? I think a lot of people think a stay is a stay is a stay, right? Nancy Gagliardi Little: Right, right. Well, there's just so many variations, but it could be that there's holes in training or holes in generalization. There's a lot of that that happens. And lots of times handlers try to control the dog's behavior instead of training, so that would be like a hole in training. It could also be the training sessions are handled differently than the handling at the trials, and there's a lot of that that's due to handling. Another thing I see contributing to the start line is — this is interesting — but the handler's own increased arousal level. And this happens in obedience, you see that too, but in agility it's pretty much, it's a big contributing factor where the handlers are too hurried, they're un-confident and disconnected when they enter the ring, and then, at the beginning of the run, they're thinking more about the course and they just don't stay connected and focused on the dog. The dogs sense that, and that can cause — in the dogs we're talking about, probably the dogs that have increased arousal level — that causes stress and also increased arousal, and that's never good at the start line. Especially the dogs start reading a disconnected handler, and they start losing the ability to think, and then you have a break. A lot of times there are small issues that crop up along the way and they aren't noticed by the trainer until it becomes a big problem. And that happens a lot. There's little things, you know, little things that they just aren't seeing, or they aren't aware of, and then they don't know how they got there. Melissa Breau: Do you mean on the day of the trial or do you mean … Nancy Gagliardi Little: I just mean in general kind of building up to that, but it will happen at the trials usually because that's where the ultimate differences are between the training and the trials. Melissa Breau: Little stuff like creeping, or what do you mean? Nancy Gagliardi Little: Well, it would be mostly handling. Some of it would be handling. The dogs start getting a little more and more aroused because they maybe can't predict when the handler's going to release them. That causes … and it depends on the dog. It could be that this dog, this particular dog, responds to arousal and stress by creeping forward, or they stand up, or even just a glazed look in their eyes. It just keeps changing until there's actually just an outright break. And that's when the handler notices that there's an issue, but it's actually happened long before that. Melissa Breau: I know we talked about this a little bit just now, but I think a lot of people attribute start line problems to poor impulse control. The person just didn't work it enough, or didn't do it right, or something. Nancy Gagliardi Little: Right. Melissa Breau: Can you talk a little bit about the role that impulse control actually does play in a good start line stay? Nancy Gagliardi Little: I hear that a lot. People think their dogs are pushy or have impulse control issues. But I've seen more over-arousal issues or frustration issues than impulse control issues. And frustration and over-arousal, they can be caused by lack of clarity, unpredictable cues, and then, like I said before, handlers that aren't connected with their dogs. The dogs really want that. And impulse control skills, they're just a part of the foundation of training a start line, and it should be fun for the dog. Some of the issues with start lines might be due to poor impulse control training, but there's a lot more at play here than that. And actually I've seen plenty of dogs that really have great impulse control, but they can't hold a stay at the start line, and a lot of that is due to just their arousal state. They can't think. People just call that “impulse control issue,” and really it's something quite different. Melissa Breau: That's really interesting. You commented that you've seen a lot of dogs with great impulse control who really struggle with this particular skill. I think that's something a lot of people don't think about. Nancy Gagliardi Little: Yeah, exactly. Melissa Breau: I'd imagine … I don't do agility, but I'd imagine that part of what often goes wrong with a start line is simply that the dog breaks their stay in a trial situation and people just start the run. And they do that over and over again, and the dog figures out, “Well, we're just going to go.” Nancy Gagliardi Little: They're so smart! Melissa Breau: Is there a better way to handle that? Nancy Gagliardi Little: That's a really good question and it's a complicated one, too. I think it's one of those things that's hard to answer, but it's part of what goes wrong. Usually there's an issue, like I said before, that's starting to manifest long before the dog even breaks the start line, and the handler isn't recognizing it until the dog finally leaves before that release cue, and it's actually usually in a really important run for them, so they're like, “Oh my god.” And a lot of times this has been happening for a while. The dog's been breaking it, but the handler doesn't really notice it because they might be just turning back and releasing, and this time they turn back and they don't release and the dog goes. Something like that. And like you say, the more a dog breaks the start line in a trial, the more it becomes a pattern or a habit, and actually it's very, very reinforcing to the dog because they love — most of them love — agility and they want to go. So in terms of a way to handle it once they go, I'm not a big fan of removing the dog for breaking the start line. If you watch some handlers, a lot of times they remove the dog, and the dog's already taken a few obstacles by the time he realizes that he's being taken off course, so he's probably not even going to associate breaking the start line with that removal. And that not understanding why he's being removed is going to cause more stress and frustration for the dog, and that makes the start line area even more frustrating, and then that causes more mistakes, so how do you handle it? Again, it's very complicated, and it also depends on the dog and the handler. Lots of times when we decide this with students, I come up with a plan, depending on the dog, the sensitivity of the dog, the experience of the dog, making sure the handler's being clear, all those things come into play for that. It's mainly just making sure that the handling is clear. I'll give you some examples. Melissa Breau: That would be great. Nancy Gagliardi Little: And I'll just use my own dogs because their start lines are very good, but Schema, both of them, have broken their start lines. Schema, so she's been running about seven-and-a-half years. When she was maybe 4 or 5 years old, it was in a two-ring soccer arena with lots of activity behind and around, and as I'm leading out, I was watching her and she left before I gave her the release cue. But I was watching her, I saw her expression, and she looked the same as she always does. There was no twitching or any odd behavior. I just let her run. I just went on because that's just the way I feel. It's like, I'll look at this later, we'll deal with this later, and one mistake is not going to affect anything. I looked at the video and I obsessed on it, and then I went to the practice jump between runs, and I tested her with some games, and she was solid, like I figured she would be, and she never broke the rest of the weekend or any time after that run. So I suspect she just heard someone else at the practice jump behind her give the same release cue and truly thought I had released her. So if I would have removed her for that, or done anything but just run her, that would have been very confusing to her, so she never really knew. An example I have with Lever is he's got some arousal issues, increased arousal issues, I've been working on a lot over the years. He has some great skills but has issues where he's really gotten, he's really improved, but his start lines were a little … I guess there's lots of arousal there, and they've gotten better. What I do at the start line is I ask him how aroused he is. I know that sounds funny, but I basically just pause briefly before I leave him, and if he can look at me before I lead out — I step lateral and then wait for him to look at me. It just takes a brief moment. If he looks at me, his arousal level is under control. There was a time when he couldn't even look at me, and that told me that his arousal level is high. That didn't mean I was going to do anything different. I just needed to know that. I just would stay super-connected with him as I led out and just be a little bit more focused on him. So about six months ago I waited a little bit too long to see if he could look at me, and that was me trying to control him, a little bit of control. It was too long, and once I decided to leave, he broke. I realized what I was doing at that time and I just went on. I just kept going. And he actually knew right away he made a mistake, and that was not my intention to make him think he made a mistake, because I knew in his case it was arousal. But he did have a really nice run after that. So if I would have pulled him off for that, or handled it in any different way, it would have affected him, and I want him to be very confident in himself at the start line. His start lines have improved dramatically just by me being super-connected to him and just knowing that they're a work in progress. So those are a couple of examples. There's so many different ones, and it really just depends on the team, and the experience of the dog, and what kind of things they're training for start lines, but they are all very different how you would handle it. The main thing is just ensuring that it's handled the same in practice as it would be in trials. Melissa Breau: I was going to say that it sounds like you don't necessarily have to worry about it a ton until it happens that first time, and then after that first time you want a plan in place in case it happens again. Nancy Gagliardi Little: Right, you really do, because the first time it happens, you want to go back and make sure that it's not handling. People don't realize how much in agility people work hard on handling, but there's a lot of handling that goes into start lines and the whole routine with start lines. There's a lot of handling, and if you don't, if your handling's not clear to the dog, there's going to be issues. Melissa Breau: Now that we've talked a little about problem solving, I want to take a little of a step back and talk about how you actually teach a start line stay. Is there anything special you do during the foundation stages? Nancy Gagliardi Little: I probably teach it the same way most people do, but I do a lot of Zen games, I think some people call it “It's your choice.” I do lots of that, and on the flat, and my young dogs wanted to stay by, they make a choice not to go, and then that decision brings reinforcement. I do lots and lots of games away from equipment, starting without handler motion and then adding more and more motion. It's the motion that can really, or even the anticipation of handler motion, that can actually cause issues with the dogs, so adding that is important in agility. And then lots of behaviors to train in the start line routine: entering the ring, moving to the start line area or the area you're going to set them up, the position of the dog, what position are they going to be in, a sit, a down, a stand, whatever, between your legs, setups, or how they're going to line up, and I guess that has more to do with going between your legs, or if they're going to go to the left side, or the right side, or some handlers stand in front of the dog and position them kind of like a front, and the stay, there's an actual stay, which isn't really a big deal, the release is the big deal, there's a lead out, and then there's handling and training involved in all those areas. So all of them are worked on separately, and then we gradually put them together as each area is mastered. So it's like a lot of flat work and fun stuff so dogs don't even know that we're working towards a start line. Melissa Breau: I think that a lot of people probably just think about the stay itself, and they leave out all those other pieces you just mentioned about entering the ring and setting up. Nancy Gagliardi Little: Right. And what happens is then they try to control the behavior instead of asking the dog to do the behavior, and then that creates more stress and more issues there, and the dogs don't want to stay at the start line because they're never right, they're always being controlled. So that contributes to it too. Melissa Breau: So once you've gotten the stay that you want, and the entrance that you want, and you're trialing, what do you do to maintain that stay? How often do you train it, how do you approach it, what do you do to make sure that it doesn't erode or doesn't disappear over time? Nancy Gagliardi Little: I don't think about it that much, but I guess when I think about it, I do it all the time without even thinking. I'm always looking at videos of my runs, or of training, and I'm always checking to see if the dog … how's the start line. It's just maintaining it. It happens by keeping the handling clear and the cues clean. When I talk about the cues clean, I'm talking about making sure that it's not being any of the cues being paired with any extra motion or movement, because that's a big deal in agility. Well, it's a big deal in any sport. And it's also ensuring that my dogs are going to be able to predict when the release is coming. That's what people don't pay attention to, and then the dogs are sitting back there watching the handlers lead out and just arousal level's going up, like, “When are they going to release me?” They don't know, they can't predict, and so I try to create a predictor that is easy for the dog to read. So I'm watching videos of my runs, and I evaluate my dog's start lines just as much as the rest of the run. I'm always looking to see did the dog release on my cue, or was there any twitching, or whatever. It's just really important to know what to look for, and that's I think what people are missing. They don't know what to look for. They're just looking to see if the dog stayed and not looking at a lot of other things, which is a lot of handling. So my start lines are really important to me because my dogs are very fast. But I find them very easy to maintain if my dogs understand the routine. And whenever I lead out, I'm just always checking to see that my dog has made the choice to stay, and if I'm always doing that, then my dog has always made that choice to stay because the release cue is very reinforcing to my dogs. They get to go, and so they learn to choose to stay because that's what leads them to go. They love that. Melissa Breau: For people out there who are listening to this and going, “All right, that's awesome,” but they are in that position where they taught their dog a stay initially and it disappeared after they started running more regularly. How would you handle that? Would you just look at it as a poisoned cue and start over with a new cue? Would you retrain it with their existing cue? How would you approach it? Nancy Gagliardi Little: That's a really good question too. I think the first thing that I'd recommend to people in that situation is to make sure that they're videotaping their training, the dog in training. And also making sure that they're in that videotape as well, and also in the trial, and then really look at those two sessions and see if the handling is identical. It really needs to be. It's important for the dogs. Dogs need to see the same thing. It needs to be clear to the dog. Cues need to be clear and clean. And then also the connection to the dog is super-important to the dog in agility, very, very important, and that's at the start line, not just during the run. So the questions to ask are, does the dog understand all of the little parts of his job at the start line, or is the handler trying to control the dog, like leading out and telling them to stay constantly. That's going to be the beginning of a break because it's going to stress the dog up, and there's many reasons why that's going to cause a break. So any type of controlling rather than training is going to make that experience stressful for the dog, so it's better to take the time to teach those behaviors for the start line routine. So if that's the case, we look at that. You really take a look at that picture of the start line. Are all those behaviors trained, and is the dog confident in all those little areas? That's going to make that whole experience very, very easy for the dog. And then, in terms of whether a new cue or a new setup routine needs to be trained, that just really depends on the dog and the situation. If it's been going on for a long time, it might be wise to change the position. If the dog was doing a sit and he's breaking, maybe you just start him in a down. I don't really think the cue is usually the issue, because probably most likely the dogs are not even reading that cue. They're probably reading some type of incidental cue or signal or motion from the handler that's being paired with that. So it's not even probably an issue, but yet it can make the handler feel better changing the cue, and it might still be the case that we'd want to change it. But it's just one of those, again, creative processes you have to go through with each individual team. It just depends. Melissa Breau: I know that, to mention FDSA, again here at the end, but I know you have a class on this subject running – and it's supposed to start literally the day this airs, but registration is still open! — can you share a little bit about what the class does or doesn't cover, and the kind of dog-handler team that might benefit most from taking it? Nancy Gagliardi Little: Sure. Like I said before, I'm pretty excited about this class. At one time I had another class that was pretty popular that covered agility, start lines, stopped contacts on the table, and that was just filled with a lot of information, probably too much. So I felt it was important to make the subject of start lines into its own class. So this class is perfect for young dogs starting to train or even getting ready to trial. I think that's a perfect area for these type of dogs. But it's also a good class for dogs that are already trialing. I just ask, if they're going to take the class, to make sure that they stop trialing during this retraining period because that's really important for the dogs, because we do really want to make the trial and the training the same, otherwise they just become different. What it's not going to cover is how to address over-arousal issues, or environmental issues at the start line, and that subject's covered in other FDSA classes. So in this class we're going to work extensively on creating handling and training skills that will help predict the release. That's the main thing I want people to be aware of is how much your dogs depend on predictability for start lines. It's amazing, once you clear that up, it just creates a whole different world for the dogs. So with these consistent predictors the dogs are going to get more confident and adapt much easier in different environments, and that's hugely important in agility. Melissa Breau: Awesome. Well, thank you so much Nancy -- it sounds like a great class. Nancy Gagliardi Little: Yeah, I'm really excited. Melissa Breau: I can see why. And thank you again for coming back on the podcast! I'm glad that you did and I'm glad we got a chance to talk about some of this stuff. Nancy Gagliardi Little: It was great. Thanks for having me. Melissa Breau: Absolutely. And thanks to our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week with Mariah Hinds to talk about proofing and building reliable, ring-ready behaviors. Don't miss it! It if you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in itunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. CREDITS: Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called “Buddy.” Audio editing provided by Chris Lang.

Summary: In 2004 Barbara Currier and her husband Michael were relocated to Richmond, VA, where she began teaching agility at All Dog Adventures. It was there that Barbara was introduced to Susan Garrett and her amazing foundation-based training, centered around impulse control and relationship building with your dog.   She continues to train with some of the best handlers in the world and has implemented what she has learned from each of them into her training program. She became heavily involved in the OneMind Dogs handling method in 2014. She has successfully competed in agility with over 10 different breeds of dogs. Along the way, she started her own in home training and behavioral rehabilitation business. She was the trainer for Richmond Boxer Rescue and also assisted Southeastern Virginia Golden Retriever Rescue in assessing some of their dogs. Over the years, Barbara has worked extensively with many rescue organizations in numerous states. Barbara has also worked as an animal wrangler for Marvel's Ant-Man, 90 Minutes in Heaven, the TV series Satisfaction and various commercials. Today Barbara is the head dog trainer for the F.I.D.O Program run at Georgia Tech which creates wearable computing for military, SAR and service dogs. Links Party of 2 (PO2) - Barbara's Website F.I.D.O at Georgia Tech Next Episode:  To be released 10/13/2017, featuring Loretta Mueller to talk about managing a multi-dog household. TRANSCRIPTION: Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau, and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports podcast, brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high quality instruction for competitive dog sports, using only the most current and progressive training methods. Today I'll be talking to Barbara Currier. In 2004, Barbara and her husband, Michael, were relocated to Richmond, VA, where she began teaching agility at All Dog Adventures. It was there that Barbara was introduced to Susan Garrett and her amazing foundation based training centered around impulse control and relationship building with your dog. She continues to train with some of the best handlers in the world and has implemented what she has learned, from each of them, into her training program. She became heavily involved in the OneMind Dogs handling method, in 2014. She successfully competed in agility with over ten different breeds of dogs. Along the way, she started her own in-home training and behavioral rehabilitation business. She was the trainer for Richmond Boxer Rescue, and also assisted Southeastern Virginia Golden Retriever Rescue and assessing some of their dogs. Over the years, Barbara has worked extensively with many rescue organizations in numerous states. Barbara has also worked as an animal wrangler for Marvel's Ant-Man, 90 Minutes in Heaven, the TV series, Satisfaction, and various commercials. Today Barbara is the head dog trainer for the FIDO Program, run at Georgia Tech, which creates wearable computing for military search and rescue service dogs. Hi, Barbara. Welcome to the podcast. Barbara Currier: Thanks for having me, Melissa. I'm really happy to be here. Melissa Breau: As a new FDSA instructor, I'm looking forward to getting to know you a little bit. Barbara Currier: Thank you. Melissa Breau: To start us out, do you want to just tell us a little bit about the dogs that you have now and what you're working on with them? Barbara Currier: Sure. I have four dogs, currently, two Border Collies, a Parson Russell Terrier, and a Miniature Poodle. My oldest is Piper. She is the Parson Russell Terrier. She's 8 years old. I got her when she was 2 years old. She belonged to a friend of mine, who passed away unexpectedly. We tried agility with her, but she didn't love it. She loved it when there was cheese around, but the moment the treats went away, it was more of, okay, I'll do it, but the love clearly wasn't there. She's also built like a typical terrier, so she's very front-end heavy. She's really straight in the shoulder, and I really struggled with keeping her sound. I specifically thought, when we would work weave poles and when we would do A-frame stuff, she was constantly coming up lame, and so I decided since she didn't particularly love it, and I, you know, didn't want to keep injuring her, that I would just find something else that she would like better, so one of the things that she's always loved is swimming, so I decided to try dock diving with her, and that is, truly, her love. We don't need to have cheese, or any type of treat, within a 50-mile radius and she will happily do her dock diving all day long, so that's been really fun. I have a Border Collie, Brazen. I have two Border Collies. Brazen is the oldest of the two, by a few months. She's 8 years old. I got her from a breeder, in Virginia, when she was 8 weeks old. Unfortunately, she has a lot of health problems, so she has not really been able to do any type of sport. She has some minor brain damage. The best way to describe her is, basically, she's like autistic. She doesn't deal well with any types of changes in her environment. She tends to be a self-mutilator, so when anything changes, like my neighbor parks his truck in a different part of his driveway, she'll rip the hair out of her body, so we've gotten that under control. It was really bad, when she was a puppy, but we've gotten it under control, but she doesn't handle any types of changes well, so she's happiest when she can just be at home, on the property, so we let her just do that. She also has a very severe case of Border Collie collapse, so she passes out whenever she has any type of hard exercise, even just playing frisbee, so we have to, kind of, keep that managed too, so unfortunately, she never really got to do any type of performance, but she's happy being at home and chilling and getting out and playing. We have five acres, completely fenced, so she gets plenty of room to run around, so that's, kind of, what she does. Blitz is my other Border Collie. He is also 8. I adopted him from Bimmer's Border Collie Rescue, in Virginia, when he was 10 months old. He just recently retired from agility due to, at 7, he tore his psoas and we rehabbed that for a year, and then, when he came back, he was sound for about two months, and then he injured his flexor tendon, and I felt like we were having progressive injuries, and that was not the way I wanted him to be in his later years. I wanted him to be able to enjoy life and do all of the things that he loves to do without constant rehabbing, so I made the decision to retire him from agility, about three months ago. It just seemed like that was the thing that kept injuring him, but everything else, in life, wasn't, so it just seemed like it was the right choice, and he's loving retirement. He's doing dock diving now. He's also my service dog. I am hypoglycemic, and he actually detects it about 30 minutes before I know anything is going to happen, and if I eat, then I don't have any episodes, so he is, kind of, my other half. He's just amazing.   Then my youngest is Miso. She is a Miniature Poodle. She is 3 years old, and I got her from a breeder in Florida, when she was 8 weeks, and actually waited for 10 years to get a puppy from her line, and she was worth every year I waited because she has been perfect since the moment she came home. She's been competing for about a year and a half now, in agility, and in her first year, of competing, she actually qualified for AKC Nationals, and she's, actually, the seventh ranking dog in the 12-inch division, in the country, and she's already been to two world team tryouts, and won round one of the FCI World Team tryout. She's already qualified for her second AKC Nationals. She's qualified for USDAA Cynosport, and she is one double q away from her MACH, and at this point she's only been trialing a year and a half, and I actually only trial about once a month because I am so busy, so she is pretty remarkable. Melissa Breau: Wow. That's impressive. Barbara Currier: Yeah. Yes. She is a super impressive little girl, so she's been really, really fun and we have a new puppy coming, in the fall, hopefully. Melissa Breau: Fingers crossed. Barbara Currier: Yeah. Yeah. It's all good. Melissa Breau: Yeah. So, how did you originally get started in all of this, in dog training and agility. I mentioned a little bit, kind of in the bio, I think 2004, right, so what kind of kicked things off? Barbara Currier: Well, in the late ‘90s, I adopted a 9 month old Chihuahua, named Cabal, from Chihuahua Rescue, and he was my first dog, as an adult, you know, we had dogs growing up, but he was my very first dog, and at the time I was technician at a veterinarian hospital and one of the technicians that I worked with, there, she bred and trained Belgian Tervurens and competed them in obedience and tracking, and so she started working with me on training dogs, and training for obedience and tracking, and I started, kind of, assisting with her and learning, kind of, the trade, and during our training we discovered that Cabal had a chemical imbalance, which made him, sort of, a challenge to train, so I'm kind of obsessive in anything I do, and I have to learn everything I can and be the best at everything I can, and so I became obsessive on learning about behavior training and how everything I could do to make him have the happiest, most well rounded, stable life, which we were quite successful at. He went on to compete in agility, and he did obedience and carting and climbed mountains all over the White Mountains, in New Hampshire, and taught me so much about dog training, and he really is what opened up the whole world of dog sports for me. Melissa Breau: So, what got you started, kind of, training positively? Was it that way from the beginning? What got you started on that part of your journey? Barbara Currier: Well, again, it kind of stemmed back to Cabal. When I started training him, it was, kind of, the old school method of the collar corrections, and there was always this nagging, in the back of my head of, you know, I'm collar correcting a six-pound Chihuahua. There's got to be a better way, and my background is in equestrian show jumping, and I trained horses for many years, and I was never a harsh physical trainer with my horses either, and I feel like training dogs and training horses is not entirely different, and agility and show jumping are not a lot different, in the way things need to be trained except agility is far less dangerous than show jumping, so that's always fun. So, I've always, kind of, wanted to have a bond with my animals and train my animals through trust and mutual respect. I don't want a relationship built out of fear and pain, so that's when I started looking into, you know, there's got to be more positive ways that I can train this dog without having to collar correct and do those types of physical corrections. Melissa Breau: How would you describe your training philosophy these days? Barbara Currier: I really like for my dogs to think of training as lots of games. So, again, I want my relationship to be, with them, a partnership that's based completely on trust, and so I want them to understand that, you know, if they get something wrong, not to shut down. You know, a mistake is just that didn't work, try something else, and so, to them, it's just a big puzzle that they're trying to figure out, so they never have a fear of, I'm going to be angry, or you know, they're going to get hurt in any way. It's just a big game, and it's a puzzle they're trying to figure out with lots of rewards throughout it. You know, every time I bring them out for any type of training, they're just all thinking that it's the most wonderful thing in the world, and that's how, I think, it should be, with any animal that you're training.    Melissa Breau: So, I have to say, kind of working on your bio, it seems like you've had the opportunity to do lots of different really interesting things, in the world of dogs, from animal wrangling to working on wearable computing, so I wanted to ask a little more about what you do now. Can you tell us just a little bit about the FIDO Program there, at Georgia Tech, and what you're working on with the dogs there? Barbara Currier: Sure. So, FIDO stands for Facilitating Interactions for Dogs with Occupations. My best friend, Dr. Melody Jackson, she's a professor there, at Georgia Tech, and she runs the brain lab and the animal computer interaction lab. She came up with the idea of creating wearable computing for service dogs, military dogs, police, search and rescue, any type of working dog, and she asked me to come on to oversee the dog training aspects of the work. Within the last year, I've been really busy with travel, and so I, actually, haven't been working a lot with them, on the project, and she's actually taking over most of the dog training aspect, the pilot testing, with her dog, but up to this point, a lot of the stuff that they've created, it's kind of funny, when I tell people what I do there, the team that creates all the stuff, it's Melody Jackson and her lab partner Thad Starner, they're brilliant people, and the students that all work there are super brilliant. I am not a techy person. I'm lucky if I can turn my computer on, I just train dogs, so I kind of compare it to like the big bang theory, and I'm Penny amongst all of these brilliant people, and they just say stuff and I'm like, that's great, just tell me what you want the dogs to do. That's, kind of, where my expertise is, and I don't have any idea what the technical aspect of it is, but we've, actually, created some really cool things. They've created a vest that a service dog is trained to activate that has a tug sensor on it, and so we had a woman come to us that had a speech problem where she doesn't have, she can't project her voice out very loudly, and she's also wheelchair bound, and she was at the dog park, one day, with her dog, and her wheelchair got stuck in some mud, and she couldn't holler to anybody because her voice just didn't project like that, and she really needed, like, a way that she could send her service dog to get help to come back, and you know, but a dog running up to somebody, at a dog park, barking, nobody is going to think that's anything unusual. So, they created a vest that has a computer on it, and the dog has a tug sensor, on the vest, so she can direct the dog to go to somebody, and the dog can go up and it will pull a tug sensor and the vest will actually say, excuse me, my handler needs assistance, please follow me, and the dog can bring that person back to the handler.   Melissa Breau: That's pretty cool. Barbara Currier: Yeah. It's super cool. So, my dog, Blitz, my Border Collie, Blitz, and Melody's Border Collie, Sky, are the two main test subjects for all of the stuff that we create. We have a few other dogs that we use consistently, but most of these things, like, we just bring in random people, and their dogs, to train everything, but Sky and Blitz, kind of, go through everything first, and we work all the bugs out on them. They've created a haptic bodysuit that allows handlers to communicate with SAR dogs from a distance, so, for instance, if a SAR dog is looking for a child with down syndrome, or autism, where they may be afraid of dogs, so a lot of times the SAR dogs will work at a very far distance from the handler, and they don't want the dogs to scare the person into running more. So, the SAR dogs can have like a camera on their vest, so when they find, whatever they're looking for, we have a computer that's on their vest that they can activate their GPS, so it sends out exactly where their location is, but then the owner can give the dog commands through this haptic vest that has vibrating sensors, in different parts of the dog's bodies, and each sensor vibrating, on a certain part of the body, means something, so, like, when the sensor vibrates on the back, that means lie down, so the handler can then vibrate the back sensor that tells the dog to lie down and stay, but the handler can be, you know, 20, 30, 40 feet away, so that's been really fun to work with that. We've taught dogs how to use large touchscreens, so for like hearing dogs, in the house, a lot of times, they don't wear vests, and so when a hearing dog hears something, they just go to their handler and they need to take them to the source of the sound, but sometimes we don't want them to take them to the source of the sound, like a tornado siren or a fire alarm, so we've created a large touchscreen that the dogs can differentiate the sounds, and they can actually go to the touch screen and detect fire alarm, and hit that, and like if the handler is wearing something that's called Google Glass, it will show up in the Google Glass that the fire alarm is going off, or if the doorbell is ringing, maybe the handler just doesn't want to get up and answer it, so the dog can actually differentiate the sounds and tell them, by using, it's like a giant iPad, exactly what sensor is going off. Melissa Breau: Interesting. Barbara Currier: Yeah. It's been really fun to watch the dogs be able to do all of these amazing things, and it's been really fun to watch the students say, do you think a dog can do this? I'm like, sure they can, and they do. I mean, it's just amazing what dogs can do. Melissa Breau: So, what about your experience animal wrangling? Do you want to share a little bit about that work? Barbara Currier: Yeah. I don't do it anymore. It's, honestly, not as glamourous as it sounds. Some of it's fun, some of it, not so much. It depends on, you know, the set you're working on, like the TV series, Satisfaction was super fun to work on, the people were really great. That was with my friend's dog. The producers were really great, but like the movies aren't always so fun to work on because the days are really, really long, and a lot of these people have no idea what it means to train animals, and so they, kind of, think that they're little computers and you can just program in whatever you want, and just change it, on the fly, and the dogs should just automatically know how to do it. It just can be a little frustrating sometimes, and so I did it for about two years and got burned out pretty quickly. Melissa Breau: Fair enough. Now I know that, I kind of mentioned, in the bio, a little bit about Susan Garrett, and I know that you have been able to work with a lot of different excellent handlers, in the agility world, so I wanted to ask a little bit about how working with those professionals has experienced and shaped your training. Barbara Currier: Well I have been lucky to work with some of the most amazing dog trainers, in the world, and I have to say, I've learned something from every trainer I've ever worked with. I'm a firm believer that there's always somebody out there that can teach us something, and the day that we feel that people don't know more than we do, then our education stops, and so I, for one, always want to keep learning and evolving, in my dog training, so even if I go and I take away one thing, from a weekend seminar, well that's one thing that I didn't have going into it, so, to me, it's just worth it. Melissa Breau: For those not familiar with OneMind Dog handling, specifically, do you mind just briefly, kind of, explaining what it is? Barbara Currier: Sure. The OneMind Dog handling, it's a handling method that's based on how dogs naturally respond to our physical cues, and what works best, from the dog's perspective, so it basically teaches us to speak the dog language instead of trying to force dogs to understand us, so a lot of the handling comes very, very natural to the dogs and takes little to no training. It's mostly just training the humans to learn how to speak to the dog, but the dog's, right from the beginning, really understand it quite well. I love when I'm working with a student, and I tell them to do something, and they're like, I don't think my dog's going to do that, and I say, if you do this, they will, and then the dogs do, and they're like, wow. I didn't know my dog could do that. Melissa Breau: So, the real question is, who's harder to train, the students or the dogs? Barbara Currier: Always the students. The dogs are easy. Melissa Breau: What was it that, kind of, originally attracted you to OMD? Barbara Currier: Well Blitz was 4 years old, when I got introduced to OneMind, and I was really struggling with Blitz, and I was having a very hard time. Our cue rate was extremely low. He was a very, very fast dog. He was very obstacle focused, and I just was really, really struggling with him, and I had never had a dog that I struggled that hard with. I've always been a very successful agility handler, and I was just really starting to doubt myself, and then I was introduced, I went to a seminar, I was introduced into the OneMind system, and immediately it was like Blitz was saying, oh, thank you. Finally, somebody is going to help her. It kind of just like came into place, and after one seminar, I went to a trial, that weekend, wear we hadn't cued in months, I think we came home with four cues, in one weekend, which was unheard of, for us, and that was after one seminar, so then I was really hooked, and then Jaakko and Janita, who are the founders, of OneMind, they did a tour, in the United States, a few years back, and they asked to come to my school, and so we hosted them, and they ended up staying with us. We hosted them for a weekend, and then they had like three weeks off between our place and where they were going next, and so we said, why don't you just stay here, and we'll show you around Georgia, and take you hiking, so they stayed and insisted on working with us every day to thank us for our hospitality, and so having three weeks of pure immersion into the OneMind system, I was completely hooked, and the difference that it made, in Blitz, was just out of control, and Miso is the first dog I've ever had that was trained, from day one, with the OneMind handling system, and the difference in her skill level, going out to start competing and the difference in any dog that I've ever had, has been night and day, and so I just was hook, line, and sinker sucked in. Melissa Breau: So, I want to talk a little bit about the class you have coming up, that kind of include some of those handling methods, so it's called Making It Easy, 12 Commonly Used OneMind Dog Inspired Techniques. Can you just share a little bit about what you will cover in that class? Barbara Currier: Sure. So, the OneMind handling system has 30 different handling techniques, and for the average person, who does AKC, USDAA, you're not going to use all 30 handling techniques. You'll use a lot more as you start getting into the international type handling, but this course will cover the 12 most commonly used techniques that people are going to use weekend to weekend, at their local trials. Melissa Breau: So, what are some of the, I guess, the common sticking points, for handlers, looking to teach those skills. How do you problem solve for some of those issues? Barbara Currier: Basically, one of the things that I see handlers struggle with the most is maintaining connection with their dogs while looking where they need to be going. So, dogs seek out connection with our face, when we're running, and if they can't find that connection, with our face, depending on the dog, they can have different reactions. Some dogs will just stop running through the obstacles and just try to drive around and curl in front of you, to search for your face, some will start dropping bars, some will just find a line and take it, so if we're not connected with our dogs, we also can't see whether they're committing to the correct obstacles and when we need to execute their turn signals, but our body wants us to, through self-preservation, look where we're going, so the hardest thing, for students, is to learn how to run forward, with your head looking back, and be connected with your dog, and see where you're going out of your peripheral vision, so I teach my students to basically go out and get used to running a course while looking behind you, and using your peripheral vision, because everybody has it, but again, it's kind of a brain training thing that the more you use it, the stronger it gets. When I first started doing it, I kind of saw blurry objects, in my peripheral, but I was never comfortable to run a whole course that way, where the more I went out and just practiced running a course, without my dog, and the stronger my peripheral vision got, so I can run full courses now and not worry about running into things, while staying strongly connected to my dogs, so that's probably the thing that I see most people struggle with, and my little games that I've created to help that seems to really help them with that. Melissa Breau: Do you want to talk just, maybe, a little more about which of the OneMind Dog handling techniques are, kind of, included in your class? I know you said the 12 most commonly used ones, but what are some of those? Barbara Currier: So, in the first week, we're going to start off with the most common handling technique that everybody knows, but a lot of people, actually, execute incorrectly, which is the front cross, so everybody probably knows that, but it's also one of the most commonly misused and done incorrectly, so we're tackling that right off the bat, and then we'll move into the forced front cross. Then, into week two, we address the Jaakko Turn and the reverse spin. Melissa Breau: So, for somebody not agility, like, savvy, what is that, the Jaakko turn? Barbara Currier: The Jaakko turn kind of takes the place of the traditional Post Turn, so in the traditional Post Turn as we're rotating around. Our chest laser is opened up to tall of these obstacles that we don't want our dog to take, so as we're rotating our dog, saying, is it that obstacle, is it that obstacle, is it that obstacle, and it's not until we actually get to where we want to go that we say, no, no, it's this one. Where the Jaakko Turn, we get the collection, at the jump, but the dog actually goes around behind our back, so our chest never opens up to all the obstacles we don't want, it's only going to be driving straight to the one obstacle we do want, so it's a really good technique for dogs that are super obstacle focused and really like to scope out lines on their own.   Then the next technique we'll tackle, in week two, is the Reverse Spin, which is, basically, it, sort of, looks like a Jaakko, but it doesn't get you as tight collection as a Jaakko. Your exit line is different, but it's a really good handling move to use if you, say your dog is on a pinwheel, and you want the first and the third jump but not the second jump, out on the pinwheel. By doing a reverse spin, you're going to change the dog's exit line and it's going to create collection for the dog, so you will not get that jump out on their natural path because you created a turn with more collection. It's kind of hard to explain without looking at a map, but. Melissa Breau: Yeah, but still. Barbara Currier: Then, in week three, we're going to look at the Reverse Wrap, which is a tight turn off of the backside of a jump, and Rear Cross, which is another one most everybody is familiar with but often done incorrectly. Week four we will look at a Lap Turn, which is a U-shaped turn that the dog turn happens on the flat, and I use Lap Turns so often, in pulling my dog to, if we're on a course, and the course is sending the dog to the tunnel, but the judge has nicely picked the offside tunnel, for the opening, Lap Turns work so great for that. I also, often, Lap Turn my dog into weave poles, on AKC courses, so that's a great one, and then we're going to move into the Double Lap, which is a Lap Turn to a Front Cross, and create the very tight O-shape turn, on a wing, for a dog. Week five we'll look at the Whisky Turn, which is a very shallow Rear Cross, and we are going to work on the Blind Cross, which I think is one of the most fantastic moves ever, for so many people, especially people that have knee issues because you don't have to deal with rotation, and it keeps you going forward on the line, but there are appropriate places to put Blind Crosses and places where a Front Cross would be a better choice, but not a lot of people understand. Then, week six, we'll work on the German Turn, which is a backside, it's a little hard to explain, it's a backside, almost like to a Serpentine into a Blind Cross, and that's a really fun one to do, and I actually use that one quite a bit, in premiere courses, and kind of the tournament classes in the USDAA classes. Then the Tandem Turn, which is a turn away from the handler, for the dog, on the flat, and that's a really good turn to have if you are on a straightway and you're having trouble getting down, in front of your dog, to do a turn, a Tandem Turn is a really, really handy move to have, especially when it's a straight line to a back side and you just know you're not beating your dog down that line. Melissa Breau: So, it sounds like you're definitely going to cover, kind of, the how to do all of these things. Are you also talking a little bit about when to use each of them, in the course? Barbara Currier: Yes. So, the course will be broken down to, step by step, how to train, on one jump, and then I'm giving them short sequences of three to eight obstacles, where they're going to see where this could fit into a course. Melissa Breau: Is there anything else you think the students, who are kind of trying to decide their classes, because this will go out during October registration, so anything else that students should, maybe, know if they're considering the class? Barbara Currier: Well I think it's important that, you know, and I put in there the pre-requisite for Loretta's class, because this isn't going to be the class where you are going to learn how to sequence one or two obstacles. The dogs, coming in, should know how to do, you know, at least eight obstacles in a row, just meaning jumps and a tunnel, so as long as they have a firm understanding of that, and I would assume that, coming in, they know what a Front Cross is and they know what a Rear Cross is. Beyond that, the other ones are all, you know, not ones that I would expect them to know coming in. Some people may know them, the other stuff, but I would, kind of, hope that everybody knows what a Front Cross and a Rear Cross is because those are the basics and everything, kind of, builds off of those. Melissa Breau: Okay. Excellent. We're getting close to, kind of, the end here, so I want to ask you the three questions that I always as, at the end of an interview. The first one, and I think some of my guests would say this is, probably, the hardest question, but what is the dog related accomplishment that you are proudest of? Barbara Currier: You know, I'm probably proudest of my school, Party of 2. I have a really large student base, here in Georgia, and I am so lucky to have the best students. They are just the greatest group of people, and they always want to push themselves to be better. I throw the craziest stuff at them. If I find a comfort level, I'm always looking how to push people out of it, and they are always willing to rise to the challenge, and they are so supportive of each other. We're like a big, giant family, and everybody is always willing to help anyone out, and I just love it. I'm just super proud of all of my students, at my school. Melissa Breau: Excellent. What is the best piece of training advice that you've ever heard? Barbara Currier: Oh, that's easy. Comparison is the thief of joy, is the best training advice I have ever had, and I remind myself that often. So, basically, not compare yourself to other dog trainers, your dog to other dogs, your dog to your dog's litter mates, or your friend's dog, or your trainer's dogs because, then, it overshadows any progress or triumphs that you made because you're always comparing it to somebody else, and it never feels like enough. Melissa Breau: Then, our last one, here, is who is someone else, in the dog world, that you look up to? Barbara Currier: That's a tough one. I'm not sure I can only pick one. I've have the longest training relationship with my mentor and coach, Tracy Sklenar. She's been my coach for over 10 years, but since I've become involved with OneMind, Jen Pinder and Mary Ellen Barry have been instrumental in my progression and mastering the OneMind handling system, so I would have to say it would be those three amazing, talented ladies that are at the top of my list. Melissa Breau:  Fair enough. Well thank you, so much, for coming on the podcast, Barbara. This has been great. Barbara Currier: Thank you, so much, for having me. I really enjoyed myself. Melissa Breau: Good. Thank you, so much, to our listeners, for tuning in. We'll be back next week, with Loretta Mueller to talk about managing a multi-dog household. As someone who just brought home dog number two, I'm looking forward to talking about skills we can learn and teach our dogs to make life go a little smoother. Don't miss it. If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in iTunes, or the podcast app of your choice, to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone, as soon as it becomes available. CREDITS: Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called “Buddy.” Audio editing provided by Chris Lang and transcription written by CLK Transcription Services.

Summary: Amy is the owner of Great Dane Photos and teaches the dog photography classes offered through FDSA. She is the also official show photographer for many of the premier agility events in the United States, including the AKC National Agility Championships, AKC Agility Invitational, USDAA Cynosport World Games, and NADAC Championships, as well as numerous local trials, regional events, and breed national specialties.  She has photographed a wide variety of dog sports, including agility, obedience, rally, and conformation, and dog events, including FDSA camp.   Her start in professional photography came by taking pictures of her friends' dogs at conformation shows, and quickly grew to outpace her interest in showing her own dog -- and today she's here to talk to us about the reason a great number of people use the internet each day -- dog photos!   Links mentioned: Great Dane Photos Next Episode:  To be released 8/11/2017, featuring Kamal Fernandez talking about FCI heeling and balancing motivation and control.  TRANSCRIPTION: Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy Podcast brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high quality instruction for competitive dog sport using only the most current and progressive training methods. Today we'll be talking to Amy Johnson. Amy is the owner of Great Dane Photos and teaches the dog photography classes offered through FDSA. She is also the official show photographer for many of the premiere agility events in the United States including the AKC National Agility Championships, the AKC Agility Invitational, the USDAA Cynosports World Games, and the NADAC Championships, as well as numerous local tryouts, regional events, and breed national specialties. She has photographed a wide variety of dog sport including agility, obedience, rally and conformation, and dog events including the FDSA's Camp. Her start in professional photography came by taking pictures of her friend's dogs at conformation shows, and it quickly grew to outpace her interest in showing her on dog, and today she's here to talk to us about the reason a great number of people use the internet each day, dog photos. Hi, Amy, welcome to the podcast. Amy Johnson: Hi, Melissa. Thanks so much for having me on. Melissa Breau: I'm excited to chat. Amy Johnson: I am too. Melissa Breau: So to kind of start us out, do you want to just tell us a little bit about the dogs you have, who they are, and what you're working on with them? Amy Johnson: Sure. I have two dogs and one of them is here in my office with me, and well, if he makes any noise, but his name is Costner, as in Kevin, and so he is a Great Dane, a Fawn Great Dane, if anybody is interested in those details. He's about 39 inches at the shoulder, about 190 pounds, and that is ribs still visible kind of. That's just how big he is. so he's kind of a goof. We joke that he just has 3 neurons, he can eat, sleep and poop, and you know, he's just a really good hang out around the house dog. And then our other dog is a 60-pound Yellow Lab mix and her name is Dora. We don't do a lot with our dogs. They are companions, they like to go on walks, they like to go for hikes in the woods, they like to just be near us, and so they don't have any real special skills. Melissa Breau: I assume they can pose. Amy Johnson: They can pose. Although Costner is…if I try and put a camera in his face he generally kind of backs off and is like, what's that? So his actual special skill is that he is an AKC Breed Champion, and I cannot take any credit for that because we got him after his championship was finished from a friend of ours who were involved in the breeding of him, so he can look really pretty, so that's his special skill. He just doesn't really enjoy looking pretty, so what gets posted online of him are funny things where he's got drool or his lips are spread out on the floor where he's lying down, or you know, he's massive, and he takes up huge amounts of space, and so the pictures that I take are the ones that are just trying to show that and communicate that. We joke that he's a house pony, you know, he's not even really a dog, he's horse size, and then Dora…it's funny because she's the small dog in the house that people look at me and suddenly say we have a 60-pound dog that's considered the small dog, and then they, you know, okay, but she's got a few more brain cells in there. I do joke that I have to have dogs in my house that are dumber than me, so to call Costner not that smart is really, in our house, it's not an insult. That's just my reality. I admire the people who have the Border Collies, and the Jack Russells, and the Shih Tzus, and all those really, really smart dogs. That is not who I am and what I want to live with, so we have just dogs that are really good dog citizens and they know the routines. Costner knows that he has to sit before he gets his food. Sometimes he just stays sitting, even after I put his food down, but so we have our routines, but basically, we just want our dogs to be good citizens, and I think we've kind of got a good balance of that, so. Melissa Breau: Fair enough. So I mentioned in your bio that you got your start taking photos at conformation events. Was that kind of where your interest in photography started? Where did kind of you get started just in photography in general? Amy Johnson: In general, I got started back in junior high. My dad had a Minolta film camera, SLR camera, manual focus, and he taught me the basics of photography, the basics of exposures. So he taught me about shutter speed, and aperture, and at that point it was called film speed, now it's called ISO, but he taught me the basics of the exposure triangle, as it's called, and how to focus a manual focus camera, and how to set my exposure so that I expose the film properly. I never did any dark room work. It was always take the 35mm film canister to the WalMart, or wherever, and get it developed, so I'm not quite that much of a purist, but my beginnings definitely were in film, and with my dad, and we would vacation on the North Shore of Lake Superior here in Minnesota, and so he would take pictures, and then he would show me how to take pictures, and so kind of that father-daughter bond was really enhanced by our experience with him teaching me how to use a camera, and how to take pictures, so I kind of babbled with it throughout the years as I was growing up. I was given by my brother and my parents one year for my birthday they gave me a film Sor of my own, and this was a little more advanced. It was a Canon EOS Elan II, I think, and it had autofocus, so I didn't have to do the manual focus thing anymore, which you know, there's a little skill involved in manual focus, and I admired the photographers who could do it, and do it well. It's not my thing, but I understand the appeal of it. It kind of forces you to slow down and really takes things in, but so I had a film Sor that I, again, just kind of kept babbling, and various things, and then I got into dog shows, and that's a whole long story that we could talk about some other time, but I was showing my second Great Dane, her name was McKenzie, I was showing her in conformation. I was terrible, awful. She didn't have the temperament for it. I didn't have the skills for it. We tried for about a year and didn't really get anywhere other than I made a lot of friends, and really enjoyed learning about the conformation world, and understanding even just the rhythm of a conformation show, and understanding okay, these dogs are going in the ring, and then they're coming out, and then they're going back in, and so you know, it's very confusing at first, and then you kind of figure out oh, okay, I know what's going on, those dogs aren't going back in, and yeah. So I learned a lot about dog shows, and I learned a lot about the people who breed dogs, and that was fascinating to me. I was taking a camera to most shows that I went to and just taking pictures of my friends, and then one time, and this was actually with a digital camera, one of the very, very early digital cameras that actually use the three and a quarter inch floppy disks in it, so not even memory cards. These were, you know, not the five and a quarter, but I think they're three and a half inch floppy disks, and that was your memory card, so and that didn't respond very fast to a dog moving across the ring, you know, you'd hit the shutter button and about two seconds later it would actually take the picture. Well, there's no more dog left in the frame if it takes that long to take the picture, so one time I brought my film camera with me and really enjoyed the success I had with getting dogs moving in the ring, rather than just the ones where they were stacked. So then my vet invited me to photograph her club's agility trial, and that's where it really kind of took off for me, so I really enjoyed the different games, I think it was a USDAA trial, but I'm not 100 percent sure, but the different games were, you know, some were all jumps, and some where you didn't know where the dog was going to go, which I know now are gamblers, and again, that camaraderie around the ring, of all the people and their dogs, was really intriguing to me, and just was very welcoming and fun, and there was a market for the photos there. There was nearly no market back in ‘99, 2000 for candid photos ringside at conformation shows. Nobody was doing them, nobody knew what those were, you know, but agility trials, on the other hand, there was a market for that, people understood what that was, people likes pictures of their dog doing agility, so there was a market there for it being a business, not just a, you know, I'm going to show up and have fun. So I did one agility trial with a film camera, and then quickly realized that I would go broke on film and processing, and then digital SLR's were just coming out, so this was in 2000, and I convinced my poor husband to let me buy a digital SLR, the Canon D30, and as he's hitting submit order on B&H's website he's looking at me saying, "just promise me you'll try and make some money from this," and the camera paid for itself in I think two shows. We realized we had kind of a winning formula there, and so I never have even thought about going back to film, of course, and digital cameras have gotten amazingly good, and amazingly fast, and responsive, and make my job easier with every new camera that I get, so. Melissa Breau: Can you show a little more about how you went kind of from that stage of your business to where you are now, because now you do really, really, big shows, and I mean, just kind of interesting evolution. Amy Johnson: Right. Yeah. It started out as me and the camera, and sometimes my husband would come. My first national event was actually in 2001, and you know, I look back on this and I really had no business doing it, but I was invited, again, so the social aspect of it, I had made friends, and they said will you come, and I said okay, sure. So 2001 they'd have championships and it was in Minnesota, it was in Mankato, which is about, I think, five hours south of me, and so it wasn't like going out of state, and I made the leap. Now, the only really interesting part of this was I had a five-week-old baby at that point, so it was me, and a camera, and Ben, my husband, and Mika, our five-week-old baby, who made the trip down to Mankato, and I had told my friends who were in charge of the show, I had said if this isn't working for me with having a baby here we're going to just have to cut and run at some point, and they were like, that's fine, you know, you do what you need to do, but it all worked, and we had an amazing time, and I got an exposure to what a national events was, and there's a lot of adrenaline that comes with that. In 2007, I was invited to AKC Agility Nationals, so from 2001 to 2007 I was just mostly doing weekend stuff, 07 was AKC Nationals, and again, it was still just me and Ben. Ben was in the booth running the sales side of things, I was taking pictures. Gradually, over the years, I've added photographers, and over the past two years, maybe two and a half, when I go to a national event I've really tried to make sure I had a photographer in every ring, and then also increase the size of my booth staff so that if someone comes through the booth and wants to look at pictures they don't have to wait to get some help to do that. So the whole business has been a very gradual…well, let's try this now, and let's add this now, and what if we do this, or what if we change this. I've never taken out huge loans for the business. It's always just kind of grown under its own as it can support more, you know, I'll put a little more money out, and then it's just been a very gradual, making sure everything still feels as comfortable as it can be when you're running your own business. Melissa Breau: You started to talk for a minute there just about having a photographer on each ring and things like that. What's that process, like you mentioned, you know, having a booth, and then having people shooting photos. I mean, how do you get from one to the other and handle all of that in the midst of a big show going on? Amy Johnson: A lot of deep breaths and a lot of screaming in my head that I don't let come out of my mouth. No, it's all good. I think if I had tried to go from me, and a camera, and my husband to covering six rings, and having six staff in the booth, you know, and the funny thing, I would have probably decided it was crazy and I was never going to do that again, but it went from…so one of the early AKC Nationals that I did probably in 08 or 09, there was me that was there, Great Dane photos was there, plus another photography vendor was there, so we just very amicably divided it. Well, okay, I'll take these rings on these days, and you take those rings on those days, and so there were two photographers there, and each of us had, I think, at least two photographers that we could cover all the rings, but it was between two different companies, and so that's okay. I can manage a few people in the booth and a few people out shooting for me, and then it's just gradually shifted to where AKC and these different agility organizations have said, you know, I mean, if you can cover the whole thing we're happy to allow you to do that, and so if It was a sudden transition I would've probably not managed it, but just gradually adding more and more. It's like anything, once you are comfortable at one level of participation you kind of go oh, let's see, how else could I get involved, or what more can I add onto my plate, and you know, at some point you may go oh, that's too much, but adding photographers has been kind of just word of mouth, and knowing people from other events. One photographer who had shot for me I had seen his work from a previous special event, and he did a really nice job, and so I invited him to come and work for me, and that's actually happened a couple of times. One of my photographers is someone who approached me at a trial here in Minnesota, and said you know, I'm really interested in this, do you want to just take a peek at what I've done, and she lived close enough to me that she could come to a lot of my different local shows, and I could mentor her, and well, okay, that shot didn't work so well, so what could we do differently, or oh, well, that's a great one, if you get a chance to do that kind of a shot again, go for it, so I think that's the beginnings of the education peaks, you know, I really enjoyed that mentoring process, and she now shoots…I mean, our styles are very similar, and so it makes it really easy to have her in the booth or as a photographer because the experience for the customer is that's a Great Dane photoist's photo, not that's Amy's, and that's so and so's, and oh, that's another person. It's all very cohesive and that's really important to me that the experience is one of I can go in any ring and get a good photo, not oh, shoot, I'm not in that ring today, so I'm not sure what I'm going to get, so yeah. Melissa Breau: So I'd imagine that there are probably more than a handful of unique challenges that come with photographing dogs, especially sorts dogs, compared to people, or other common photography subjects. Do you mind just talking about what some of those challenges are and how you guys deal with them? Amy Johnson: Sure. The most unique challenges really do come with the dog sports, especially…it all comes down to speed. You can have an Olympic sprinter in an Olympic stadium doing their race, and I can track that with a camera really easily. Cameras have been tuned to recognize the human form and whatever algorithms are built into their little tiny brains these days. Well, and if you think about it, so many cameras have facial recognition, well, how does it know what a face is and what is a face? Well, it's not looking for dog faces, it's looking for human faces, so there's something about the human from that a camera has been tuned to identify, and prioritize, and its ability to focus. So I'm constantly fighting against some of those things that are engineered into the cameras, so fast, black dogs in bad light are like my nemesis. They are, and the smaller they are, and the fuzzier they are, the worse it gets, but I've taken that on as a challenge. Okay, so that is my hardest subject, fast, tiny, fuzzy, black dogs in bare light, so what I do is make sure that my film and my gear is all prioritizing being able to take a picture of that worst-case dog, and it's nothing against black dogs, believe me, but they are just the hardest thing to photograph, and there's nothing like that in the human sports, or even cars, or you know, whatever. There's nothing like it out there, and so that's the most unique challenge I think, and so every time a new camera comes out I'm always hoping for some feature that makes my job of photographing a small, fuzzy, black dog in bad light a little bit easier, but even just the typical dog, you know, they do move very fast, they can move in very unexpected directions, they have really good reflexes, and so tracking that motion can be very difficult. They don't speak English, so if you want to tell them hey, pose for me, you got to figure out what that word is, you know, is it treat, or is it go for a ride, or is it are you ready. Figure out what the trigger word is to make their ears go up, and their mouth close, and their eyes kind of get a little brighter and go oh, oh, something's going to happen, and then that's the moment you click, as opposed to a human where you just say okay, look at the camera, and then you say cheese, right, and everybody follows directions. Now, when you get a teenager who's really not into this you might still get some not so great results, but at least you can speak to them in a common language. Well, and the other challenge I'm fighting that is actually fascinating to me is as people work on their relationship with their dog, which is a fabulous thing, and that's one of my favorite things about going to a dog show and seeing those relationships, but as they do that it makes it really hard for me if I'm trying to do a picture of the human, and the dog, and a ribbon, the dog is gazing adoringly at the human, and I can't get them to look at the camera. I don't care what word I throw out. There are times where the dog won't look at me because they are so engaged with their human, and that's a lovely thing, and generally, it's not been a problem, you know, the person is generally okay with that, but still, if you want to get the dog it's kind of a funny, you know, it's a good thing that the dog is so engaged with their person, but it makes my job just a little bit harder, so it's those weird things.   Melissa Breau: You mentioned kind of following gear, and new things coming out, and things like that, so I was curious what equipment you use and you know, you kind of got a little bit into the why there, but if there's more you want to elaborate on? Amy Johnson: Sure. No, and oh man, I could talk gear for hours. I love gear. I love camera gear, and it's a really good thing I have a job that lets me write it off because otherwise, that would be a problem. So I shoot canon, primarily, and I have canon's top of the line sports camera. It's called the 1D X Mark II. It is their latest and greatest and it shoots 14 frames a second. It has a really high ISO rating or can shoot at a really high ISO, which is the piece that's critical in shooting in the really bad lighting, and actually, my definition of bad lighting is somewhat different than the average Joe Shmoe on the street, you know, a camera needs a descent amount of light to shoot in, and our eyes are amazing, our eyes can really come in the huge range of lighting conditions, and cameras aren't quite to that point yet, so I need to high ISO so that I can have a high shutter speed so I can stop the motion of my small, fuzzy, black dog in bad light. A Canon Body is the best that money can buy, at least in terms of an SLR. I use what's called fast glass, and that means that it's a lens with a really big opening for the light, it's a big aperture, and so my favorite lens for shooting agility is a 400mm F2.8, as my husband says, it just means is has a really big light bucket so it can collect a lot of light, and make sure I'm getting enough light to again, get that fast shutter speed so that I can stop motion. I also have a Nikon camera, and I bought that about six months ago, primarily, because I felt like I needed to learn Nikon camera bodies for my students. I am able to give really specific advice and troubleshooting information about Canons, and I was not able to give that same level of troubleshooting advice for Nikons, so I got a Nikon D500, which is not quite the top of the line, but it's a really good performance camera for wildlife, and I got a big lens for it, and I use that for a lot of my bird photography these days. So learning the other major brand of camera has been a really good experience for me. It's given me a new appreciation for oh, yeah, this is what it's like to open up a camera that you've never had your hands on before, and be a little overwhelmed by all those buttons, and dials, and menu items, and all that, but yeah. So my equipment, I tend to get the best I can, which is easier for me to justify, again, because it's a business, as opposed to just a hobby, you know, you got to be a little more careful about how you spend that money, but I do love gear. You know, there's also of course, all these accessories. There's monopods and tripods, you know, there's more lenses than just that 400mm, and that could be a whole other podcast episode. Melissa Breau: It's really kind of awesome that you are able to provide that kind of support in a class or to a student when you're talking about a Nikon versus a Canon. I would love to dive a little more into what you cover in your classes at FDSA. What are some of the skills you teach? I know right now I think there are two classes... Are there more than that on the calendar?     Amy Johnson: Right now, what's coming up in August are two classes. One of them is my foundation class called Shoot the Dog, and in that class, we really just start from assuming people are starting from ground zero. We learn the basics of exposure, we talk about shutter speed, we talk about aperture, we talk about ISO, we talk about the effects that each of those has on the way a photo looks, as well as just the technical details of, what does it mean to have a fast shutter speed, or what does it mean to have a wide open aperture versus a closed down aperture, and then what does ISO mean? We don't delve too deeply into the uber techie stuff, but we do talk about that a bit, but really, it comes down to if I change the shutter speed how does that change how my photo looks? If I change the aperture how does that change how my photo looks? When should I care most about aperture, and when should I care the most about shutter speed, and we really work on kind of creating photos that communicate to a broader audience than just you yourself. So one of my students used the phrase that she had read somewhere, and I don't where, but the difference in doing an emotional portrait and a photograph, and we kind of laughed about it at first, but the more I think about it I think that's an important distinction. If I take a quick snapshot of my dog and it's not really in focus, and the light's really not that great, but there is something in that expression that just screams oh, that's my dog, that's like the essence of my dog. It doesn't matter about the technical bits. It doesn't matter if it's not quite as sharp as I would want it to be. It's an emotional portrait. I have an emotional connection to that. Now, if I post that online my friends are probably going to say oh, that's great, yes, that looks like Costner, that is so Costner, that's wonderful, but if I post it to a photography site in general, they're going to think I'm crazy because they can't see that emotion, they don't know my dog, they don't understand that, that is his quick, essential, expression. They think I can't really see what's going on in his face because the photo's a little dark, and I can't see his eyes all that well because it's really not that in focus, so what I really want students to do is to be able to conquer those technical bits, the sharpness, and the exposure so that they can make the soul of the photo really come through, and be obvious to anybody, rather than have all the technical stuff be in the way and mask the true soul of that photo, the true meaning of that photo. So that's a hard thing for people to do because it takes stepping back and really applying a critical eye to your photos and saying oh, yeah, I see how I can see the dog's expression, but I can see how someone else wouldn't be able to see it and read it as clearly as I can, because they don't have the emotional connection to the dog, to the subject that I do. So that's something that really has started to be a common thread in all of my classes. We want to move beyond the emotional portraits, and believe me, they have their place, you know, I don't have any beef with them, but in my classes I want to move beyond that and into something that can speak to a broader audience, and get that emotional connection across. Melissa Breau: So in August you're teaching a foundational class, and what's the other class that you're offering? Amy Johnson: The other class is called Chase the Dog, and this is kind of my wheelhouse, and that is dogs motion, so we'll talk about…I kind of break it down into two different kinds of motion. There's motion that's predictable, and motion that's unpredictable, so the prime example of motion that's predictable is agility, and you know, in general, there are always exceptions, but in general, the dog will go where it's supposed to go. There's a pre-established path, their obstacles are numbered. You do this one, and then you do that one, and then so I know when I can anticipate where the dog is going to be at any point in that run, so I can do things differently with that than if I'm just photographing a dog that is having a good romp in the field for play time, so that would be the unpredictable motion. So you let your dog out and you want to take pictures of it just playing around. Well, unless you set up some sort of fencing it just portions the dog's path, you know, you have no idea where that dog's going to go, so tracking that…camera's, you know, there's a limit to how fast they can track that motion, and then there's a limit of how fast I physically can track that motion, and this is where our fast dogs…you know, this is tough, there's a lot of skills, and a lot of practice that just has to happen of getting that muscle memory in you, and once you can track your own dog really well that doesn't necessarily mean you can track another dog, because all the dogs have a different rhythm, they all have their own unique characteristics about how they move. So the class is really about offering some skills for how to do both predictable and unpredictable motion, but it's also about setting some realistic expectations of what can I expect to get out of, you know, a 10 minute photo session with a dog just running and playing in the field? Well, you're not going to end of with every photo being perfectly in sharp, or perfectly in focus, and you know, a true winner. You're going to get a lot of junk, and that's okay, and that process of being okay with the junk is really hard, and take someone like me saying it's okay, I have those too, and what students in the class are going to see are a lot of my…you know, rather than just the edited versions, here are the ones that I kept, they're going to see well, here was a whole series that I shot, and notice how many of those were actually good photos, and notice how many of those were not so great. Here's my junk. They're going to get to see my junk photos. Okay, well, I better be a little more careful here. They're going to get to see my junk photos, and I think that's a really important process to understand that there's no camera in the world good enough to capture everything, so let's talk about what's realistic, let's talk about what you can expect, let's talk about ways to increase the percentage of those keepers, but let's also become comfortable with the idea that you're going to have some clunkers in there. Melissa Breau: Now I wanted to ask if there's one piece of advice that you can give listeners, something they can start working on today or tomorrow, to help them take better photos of their dogs, what would that be? Amy Johnson: The first piece of advice I give everyone who asks me that question is to get down to the dog's level, and it's really easy, and it's really basic, and it does not matter what kind of camera you have, but if you change your perspective instead of shooting the photo from your standing height and looking down on the dog, get down to their level. You know, if you've got a tiny little dog it may mean that you are on your belly in the grass taking a picture of that dog, but you will be amazed at how much of a difference that makes in the photo of your dog. If you don't want to get down to their level then bring them up to your level, so if you have a grooming table throw a nice tablecloth over it and put the dog up on the grooming table. Bring the dog up to your level. Just be on the same level as the dog that you're trying to take a picture of and it transforms the whole thing, so that's my go to piece of advice for anybody. Melissa Breau: That's great because that's something that people can really just go do. Amy Johnson: Yeah. Exactly. Melissa Breau: I know that we're talking about kind of a little bit of a different subject than we usually do here on the podcast, but I still wanted to ask you those key questions that I always ask at the end of an episode, because I'm going to let you go into photography related stuff if you so choose. So to start, what's the dog or photography related accomplishment that you are proudest of? Amy Johnson: There's the experience of going to the national and that's huge, that's great, and there's a feeling of kind of I've arrived with that, but the most recent thing that I'm proudest of is actually my experience at camp. I had five of my students that came and were my minions, as I called them, and they were the ones who actually did all of the photography for the events at camp, and being able to stand back and watch them in action I was really proud of them, and that was a more of a feeling of accomplishment than going to a national. Don't get me wrong, I love going to nationals, I love interacting with people, I love watching a great run, and then being able to find them later and say I saw that run and that was phenomenal, and it was beautiful, and I was so happy I was able to capture that for you, but working with students and then watching them take the skills they've learned in my classes and do that for others, you know, capture those moments, that was cool, that was really hard to beat. And now to extend on that, one of my sons is showing interest in photography, and he was able to shoot the jumpers courses at AKC trial that I had shot last weekend, and so again, when I had a break I went over to his ring and just stood back and watched, and seeing the next generation whether it's, you know, the literal next generation or just a new group of photographers that have come through my courses, being able to pass that information on has been really an amazing experience.   Melissa Breau: That's really cool because it's something that you managed to learn from your father and now you're passing it on to others. Amy Johnson: Exactly. Yeah. Melissa Breau: What is the best piece of advice, and this can be either production or photography, that you've ever heard, and bonus points if it applies to both, but it doesn't have to. Amy Johnson: The best thing that I've learned to do over the years, and I don't know that it's ever been told to me exclusively, but it's the thing that I have learned to do is to slow down, and to think, and to just breath, and so that is the thing that I try and tell my students all the time because there's this urge to…the action in front of me is happening really fast and so that means I have to grab my camera fast, and throw it up to my face, and press the shutter, and get the picture really fast, and it doesn't work that way, or it doesn't work well that way. So taking a moment to make sure your camera is set correctly for the situation you're trying to photograph, making sure that you understand what's going on in front of you, and can maybe anticipate what's going to happen next, and then just breathing because if you get out of breath or find yourself holding your breath because you're just so excited you end up messing it up more often than not. And that advice I think applies to dog training as well. Slow down, think, just breath, and that kind of brings you back to center, and lets you focus on what's important, and focus on what the task at hand is. Block out everything else that is going on around you and just take it one thing at a time, and the results will be much better. Melissa Breau: Bonus points earned. So our last question, who is someone else in the dog world that you look up to? Amy Johnson: There are two people that come to mind immediately, and it's not because of their dog training skills, it's because of the way they handle pressure in running their dog businesses, and so the first one is Denise. Who isn't amazed by Denise and the way she handles FDSA really, and not trying to get brownie points from her, but as a business owner myself it's really important to find those people who are running their own business, and who I admire how they handle that business. You know, Denise has the pressure of thousands of students. She has the pressure of all of the instructors who…meeting some of them at camp was an eye-opening experience, and I love them all, but I admire Denise even more for her ability to handle all of us and our quirks, but to watch her handle that pressure of both the negative and the positive has become important to me. I know one of her things is people won't remember what you say, but they'll remember how you made them feel, and that is a phrase that runs through my mind constantly as I am dealing with customers, or if I'm dealing with students, and even with my family. It's changed the way I interact with everybody, including my family, and to say in my mind, you know, yes, I really want to make that snarky comment, but that's probably not the best way to handle it because it's going to make me feel better, but it's not going to do anything for our relationship, and it's not going to do anything for them and the way they feel, so that's been a really good thing for me. The other person that I look up to for similar reasons is Carrie DeYoung, who is the head of AKC agility, and I work with her a lot because I do both of AKC's big agility events for the year, so I watch her and how she interacts with her staff, and then watch how she interacts with the exhibitors at those national events, and her calmness, and her…I have never seen her flustered. I'm sure inside there are probably moments of, you know, face palm, or screaming, or whatever, because we all have those, but she does a really good job of on the outside she holds it all together, and that's something that I don't always feel like I do very well, but watching her has helped me do that better, so she's another person I really admire in the way that she…granted, she doesn't own AKC, but she is the queen bee of the agility piece, and I just really admire the way she handles all of the…I mean, if you think about any agility organization there are things that people want to tell them to do differently, things they like, things they don't like, and to be able to handle all of that constantly takes some real talent and skill. I mean, I admire anybody who trains dogs because I don't have that talent, and I don't have the patience to develop it. I know that I could, but it kind of goes back to the whole I live with dogs that are dumber than me, and so I mean, I love watching good trainers, I loved coming to camp and watching all of these amazing instructors that I get to call my colleagues. I loved watching them work with people, and with dogs, and that kind of level of discipline fascinates me, so there's lots to admire about the training side in the dog world in that respect, but for me what's been most important is to find those people, and specifically, women that are at the top of their game and dealing with those pressures that come with being at the top of their game. Melissa Breau: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Amy. Amy Johnson: You're welcome. It was a pleasure. Melissa Breau: It was. It was a lot of fun to chat. And thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week with Kamal Fernandez to discuss what it's like to be a man, in a female dominated job. Just kidding. We'll be chatting at FCI style of heeling and more. If you haven't already subscribed to the podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. CREDITS: Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called “Buddy.” Audio editing provided by Chris Lang and transcription written by CLK Transcription Services.

SHOW NOTES: Summary: Nancy Gagliardi Little has been training dogs since the early 1980's when she put an Obedience Trial Championship or “OTCH” on her Novice A dog, a Labrador Retriever. Since then she has put many advanced obedience titles on her dogs, including 4 additional AKC OTCH titles and multiple championships in herding and agility. Nancy is also a retired obedience judge; she retired from judging in 2008 to spend more time training and competing with her own dogs. Next Episode:  To be released 2/17/2017, featuring Sue Ailsby. TRANSCRIPTION: Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports podcast brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high quality instruction for competitive dog sports, using only the most current and progressive training methods. Today we'll be talking to Nancy Gagliardi Little. Nancy has been training dogs since the early 1980's when she put an Obedience Trial Championship or “OTCH” on her Novice A dog, a Labrador Retriever. Since then she has put many advanced obedience titles on her dogs, including 4 additional AKC OTCH titles and multiple championships in herding and agility. Nancy is also a retired obedience judge; she retired from judging in 2008 to spend more time training and competing with her own dogs. Welcome to the podcast Nancy! Nancy Gagliardi Little: Thanks Melissa, it's great being here. Alright, well can you start us off by telling us about the dogs you have now and what you're working on with them? Nancy Gagliardi Little: Sure. I've had border collies since 1986, and i usually have about 3 in training. Score is my 12 year old; he's retired. I actually had to retire him around the age of 8 due to a back issue and he was close to finishing his herding championship; he was one point away from finishing it, had all his majors. He competed at AKC Nationals twice, got his ACK MACH, and he was one snooker Q, actually a super Q, away from ADCH in USDAA.  Schema is my 8 year old border collie. She's a bitch. She's actually a really really nice dog; she really is not a bitch, but she's a girl. We're competing in mostly agility. we do USDA and AKC. She's in the masters USDAA; she's got her ADCH. She competed at USDA nationals, she's got a MACH too, she just finished that recently, and she's competed at AKC nationals for the last 3 years. I think it's going to be her fourth time there coming up in March. I do train obedience with her; she's got lovely heeling on both her right and left side. I actually get a big kick out of training heeling on the right side, it's fun. Most of my training with her is in agility. I sold my sheep about 7 or 8 years ago, so i don't do as much herding as i used to, but she is probably one of my most talented herding dogs. She is amazing. I just haven't had the time to go any further than the training. And then my youngest is a 3 year old border collie named Lever. He was introduced to sheep when he was young. And I did some training with him between a year and two, and he's quite a talented jumper in agility, he's pretty amazing. I can't take any credit for that; I didn't screw it up, but he's just really amazing. He's got the power and speed, and he's just getting used to controlling his body right now. We compete in Master's level in AKC and he just needs one more advanced standard Q to move into Masters USDA. He's doing pretty good. And then last but not least, I figured I'd bring up my husband's dog is a Toller and this is kind of new for us. He's a year and a half; I'm not training him, he's being trained purely by my husband. I just really love this breed; it's new to us, he's the first Toller we've had, we've had other sporting breeds before, but what a cool breed that is. Yeah, so he's a year and a half.  Melissa Breau: So I don't know if you know this, but Tollers are the breed I'm looking at next, so... Nancy Gagliardi Little: Really! Melissa Breau: It's good to hear positive things.  Nancy Gagliardi Little: I'm very impressed with the breed.  Melissa Breau: Obviously, you've achieved a lot in the sport -- even with just the dogs you have now that was a lot of letters and a lot of titles, but how did you originally get into dog sports and those types of games with your dogs?  Nancy Gagliardi Little: My dad actually bought me a shetland pony when I was 5 years old. Can you believe that? He can't believe that he did that, but he just says he'd probably be arrested now a days. I just loved animals, and I did a lot with all of my animals. I taught them things. My horses all had recalls from the pasture and just that love of animals. When I got married my husband and I both loved dogs, and we each got a dog, a Labrador, and we decided to take them to a formal obedience class at a training school here. We were introduced to competitive obedience there. and scent hurdles, and fly ball and it kind of went from there. It was something we could both do together on the weekends; we were both working long weeks at work. So it's not -- it's probably not all that different from a lot of people getting involved in dog sports.  Melissa Breau: So, when you started out, I'm going to guess -- though I could be wrong -- that it was more traditional methods.  Nancy Gagliardi Little: Oh yeah.  Melissa Breau: I'd love to hear -- what got you stared on the journey from that way of training to where you are today, which is much more positive? Nancy Gagliardi Little: That's interesting, because I'm basically a really positive person. I was raised in a positive environment. So throughout my life I've continued to make changes to make live more pleasant and enjoyable. I think everyone does that sort of thing as the years go by.  So yeah, I started training obedience with traditional methods and I think a lot of people have; I was pretty successful using them, but then one of the last conflicts for me in the quest for me to make life more enjoyable was just addressing the way I was training my dogs. So I did lots of experimenting on my own, with my own dogs. I loved what I was seeing and of course it was much more fun for me. I loved getting out and training, instead of just trying to find the time and I got more involved in the sport of agility finally and as I did that I continued to learn about positive training methods since the majority of that sport trains that way.  I'm a really creative person; it's kind of my forte. I love thinking and obsessing over training. So I started breaking things down more and become more aware of arousal levels and stress contributing to it all, and I started using those ideas and incorporating them into lessons with my local obedience students. And they enjoyed training a little differently. So it's kind of been a wonderful transition for me, and I love training more now than ever. Melissa Breau: You mentioned in there that you were raised positively. So Denise and I were chatting about this and the fact that I was going to have you on the podcast, and she mentioned your dad, John Gagliardi, and I'm not a football person, so I had to go look him up. I'd heard of you, but I hadn't heard of him. And he's really really well known as a coach with the most wins in college football history, but beyond that he had a really unique approach to coaching. My understanding is that included things like not letting his players call him coach, not using a whistle or blocking sleds, and he even prohibited tackling in practices -- just kind of a very non-traditional approach, very non-traditional techniques and I'd like to hear how that impacted how you train and your perspective on dogs sports. Nancy Gagliardi Little: Oh yeah, that had a big influence on me. His coaching style was quite a bit different than the norm. It still is. He was ahead of his time by 50 years. By focusing on what he believed in, and not on traditionally what was done. Believe it or not, he actually started coaching when he was 16 years old. His high school coach -- this is actually kind of a cool story -- his high school coach was drafted into the war at that time and they were going to cancel the football program; they were at the bottom of the conference and always loosing, and so he loved football, so he approached the principal and he proposed to take the team over and coach it himself. So kind of a self-coached team. And they decided to give him a chance, and he changed things so he made practices more fun with a lot of things. Apparently at that time they weren't allowed to drink water; they would drink water, they were told they were going to die, they were going to die if they drank water. Interesting. So with all the changes his team went from the bottom of the conference to winning that conference that year. He was successfully just making changes to do things that they enjoyed doing, and so many of the things he did in 63 years of coaching are now being looked at by the NFL and other coaches to help prevent injuries. He never wanted to hit in practice. He wanted to save his players for the game. He didn't like injuries. So his practices were centered around enjoying live, having fun, things like that. And his players absolutely LOVED playing for him. They rarely missed practice; he kept things simple worked on fundamentals, and he only added more difficult techniques when his players had mastered all of those pieces. And then he would break those plays down into small pieces, get those pieces perfected, build those pieces into a lot of complicated plays, and so his team rarely lost games because of the depth of training he put into those kids.  He was a master at analysis, details and creative solutions and i think that's something that I've either inherited or I've learned from him.  Melissa Breau: I was going to say, even just listening to you I can hear the parallels to dog sports; just the idea that he broke things down into pieces and foundation skills. Nancy Gagliardi Little: Exactly. This is the other piece that I think is so cool is he expected them to be X1 players, as well as X1 human beings, and he believes in people, respects people, loves to learn about people. There's so much about coaching that parallels the way I train my dogs because I expect and focus on their excellence too. I believe in my dogs -- I always believe in them. I believe they're right and they're telling me things. I listen to them and try to make changes to my training based on what they need. Those are all things that my dad taught me through the way he coached his players. There are so many parallels between coaching and dog training; just his way of coaching it helped me as a dog trainer.  Melissa Breau: I'd really love to hear how you describe your training philosophy now -- what's really important to you? Or what do you see as the big things that you believe in training when you work with dogs today? Nancy Gagliardi Little: Well, i guess to sum it up, it's not a really long philosophy. What sums it up for me is I just always look at my dogs as my coaches. So the dogs are my coaches, whether they're students' dogs, or my dogs', they're the ones who they're helping me develop a plan, and I like to look at it that way because it keeps me always evaluating and looking at things.  Melissa Breau: I want to make sure we talk a little bit about your experience as an obedience judge. Having had the experience of being a judge, how has it changed how you train and how you prepare yourself for competition? So can you talk a little bit about that?  Nancy Gagliardi Little: I got to watch a lot of dogs over the years -- 20 years, i think I was judging, around there. I don't think judging has really influenced the way I train at all; it's kind of separate. But it has made me aware of handling and timing issues that unknowingly contribute to problems in handlers. It's also helped me develop a system of handling for heeling where there's no footwork involved. That's one of the classes I'm doing right now, and it's really different. I noticed, when I was judging, handlers coming in and -- especially new handlers -- even handlers that've been around for a while that are just struggling with getting on the right foot and that. Those are just a few things.  Timing is another issue. Commands that I give to handlers and handlers quickly giving the cue to the dog, and you start to see anticipation issues; those kinds of things.  Melissa Breau: Like I mentioned, I'm fairly new to obedience, so I've been volunteering to steward every chance I can get just to surround myself with the sport, learn a little more about it, make sure that when I do eventually wind up in the ring I'm not quite as nervous. At the very first trial where I got to steward, the judge said something to his beginner novice handlers -- I don't think I'll ever forget this -- he said, "I'm here to work for you. If you're not ready when I ask, tell me so; I'll wait. Take your time." He really emphasized this idea that they were paying for him to be there, not the other way around. Most handlers probably haven't ever thought about a competition quite that way before, or the judge at least quite that way before, and I was curious if you had any nuggets, things you which handlers had known when you were judging that you wish handlers knew when they walked into a ring from your time being on that side.  Nancy Gagliardi Little: Yeah, that's wonderful advice from the judge. So true. That was one of my biggest... one of the things is I wish people would slow down and just take more time, so that's awesome that he or she brought that up. A couple other things come to mind and one is, I think it's a little better now, but just playing and engagement between exercises. There is countless times when the judge is busy scoring, and you're moving between exercises, when the dog needs a break. And i just wish more people would break the dogs, rather than heeling them, and just play a little bit between exercises. It's fine to do that, if you just don't hold up the ring. Just make sure you're moving between exercises. Another important thing is just to be your own dog's advocate in the ring. Just making sure that if something is going on that you step in and take control. Just because somebody's telling you not to do that -- just make sure you do what's good for your dog. Melissa Breau: I didn't include this in the questions I sent over in advance, but I'm curious, since you've had so much experience with the sport, just what some of the changes that you've seen over the years have been. From what I hear, even the instructions the AKC gives to the judges have changed a little bit. They've become a little more about trying to make the sport more acceptable and more interesting for people maybe new to it --  Nancy Gagliardi Little: Which is awesome.  Melissa Breau: Do you have anything that comes to mind about how the sport has changed and what your thoughts may be? Nancy Gagliardi Little: I don't think the sport has changed too much. I wish it would change more. Some of the exercises have changed; the orders in the B classes at one time there was only one order, and now the open B and utility B exercises have... i think there's 6 different orders. At one point in time you could not excuse yourself from the ring and you can do that now. That's fairly recent to change.  There's lots of little things like that. Utility, a long time ago, utility A and B were split recently but at that point in time they could be combined into just one utility class, and there was also an exercises in utility that was a group stand, where the dogs would all be standing and the judge would go down and examine each. That was before I was judging; I was competing then, but the dogs would all stand and the judge would examine them all 12 of them at the most. Those are some changes; in terms of judging, the judges have changed according to the rules. Basically, I think procedures are pretty similar to what it was... since I haven't been judging since 2008, I can't really say what is going on currently.  Melissa Breau: Well just to round things out, I have 3 more short questions that so far I've asked everybody whose been on the podcast. So the first one might be a little hard to answer, but what's the dog related accomplishment you're proudest of? Nancy Gagliardi Little: Yeah, that can be hard because everyone has that issue, i know for myself, each of my dogs have given me some pretty amazing things to be proud of -- but actually I could think of one thing and I think my proudest accomplishment was that the American Kennel Club's Border Collie Parent club, which is Border Collie Society of America, gave me the 2010 Good Sportsmanship Award, which I was very honored to receive.  Melissa Breau: Congratulations!  Nancy Gagliardi Little: Thanks. Melissa Breau: So the second to last question -- what is the best piece of training advice you've ever heard? Nancy Gagliardi Little: I had one ready for today, and it's not so much training advice buy more life with dogs and that includes training and it's something I love so much I have T-shirts made with it on, and that's "Be the person your dog thinks you are." I just love that slogan or saying. But today Julie Daniels posted a respondences in the instructors' email list, and it was on a discussion we were having and she said something that became my new favorite piece of training advice. So that just happened today, and what she said was, "consequences are not always the enemy, but anger is always our enemy." I just love that.  Melissa Breau: I'm sure she'll be very flattered that that's what you chose.  Nancy Gagliardi Little: Yeah, so that's just awesome.  Melissa Breau: This last question is who else is someone in the dog world that you look up to? Nancy Gagliardi Little: Boy, this is a heard one. There's so many people in the dog world that I admire, there are too many to mention, so I think I'll say the entire group of instructors at FDSA as an entity. It's an incredibly supportive family and Denise is just the best boss that anyone could possibly have.  Melissa Breau: I'll agree with that. Alright, well thank you so much for joining me,  and thanks to our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back in two weeks with Sue Ailsby, the creator of the Levels training program. If you haven't already, subscribe now in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available.  CREDITS: Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called “Buddy.” Audio editing provided by Chris Lang and transcription written by CLK Transcription Services. Thanks again for tuning in -- and happy training!

SHOW NOTES:  Summary: Sarah Stremming is a dog trainer, a dog agility and obedience competitor, and a dog behavior consultant. Her specialty is working with behavior problems in competition dogs. During her interview we talk about her approach to training -- including allowing dogs their dog-ness -- and the 4 things she looks at before making behavior recommendations: exercise, enrichment, diet and communication. Links mentioned: Cognitive Canine Blog Cog Dog Radio (also available for Android and iPhone) Next Episode:  To be released 1/20/2017, featuring Hannah Branigan.   TRANSCRIPTION: Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau, and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports Podcast brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high-quality instruction for competitive dog sports using only the most current and progressive training methods. Today we'll be talking to Sarah Stremming. Sarah's voice may be familiar to some of you since she owns the excellent Cog-Dog Radio. Sarah is owner and operator of the Cognitive Canine. She has been working with dogs in the realms of performance training and behavior solutions for over a decade. Her special area of interest has long been helping dog owners address behavioral concerns in their competition dogs. Reactivity, anxiety, aggression, and problems with arousal are all major concerns for many competitors, and Sarah works to help her clients overcome these issues and succeed in their chosen arena. Hi, Sarah, welcome to the podcast. Sarah Stremming: Hi, Melissa, and thanks for having me. Melissa: Absolutely. Sarah, to start out, can you just tell us a little bit about the dogs you have now and what you're working on with them? Sarah: Sure. I have Idgie, who is an 8-year-old border collie, and she's competing in agility and her agility training is really just kind of in maintenance phase, but I'm getting her ready to go into the open level of obedience next year; and I have Felix who is also a border collie and he's a year and a half, so he's learning everything. He's learning agility, obedience, and mostly how to just kind of keep his head on his shoulders in the agility environment is our number one project… and those are my two dogs. Melissa: Excellent. How did you originally get into dog sports? Sarah: I saw agility on TV when I was probably nine or ten and immediately knew that that was for me, and it was like five years later that I actually got to do agility, but as soon as I saw it I wanted to do it and I've been doing it ever since. Melissa: That's awesome. So did you start out R+ then, since you started in agility or kind of what got you started on that positive training journey? Sarah: I definitely did not start with all positive reinforcement. I am definitely what I would call a crossover trainer. I started in not just agility but competitive obedience. Agility really got me started, but the kind of local dog training school required an obedience class before you started agility training, and I actually really liked the obedience side as well, so I competed in obedience and agility with my first dog Kelso. He had some really severe behavioral problems, primarily aggression towards other dogs, and so I learned to do all kinds of nasty things from people who…everybody I worked with was really trying to help me, and so I did all kinds of corrections as far as obedience is concerned and as well as his aggression was concerned. Because he had these behavior problems I reached outside of the realm of performance training into the animal training world and found out that all of these corrections that I had been taught from really the competitive obedience sector were not only not necessary but probably causing some of my problems. So when I started to realize that and started to change the way that I did things, he started to get better and that was really all that I needed to see. Melissa: I know that for most trainers it's definitely an evolving journey, so how would you describe where you are now in terms of what your training philosophy is and kind of how you approach training? Sarah: My training approach I actually have a philosophy that I really sat down and figured out and wrote out a while ago so that I could reference it and come back to it in my work with my own dogs as well as with other people and so it's kind of four different mantras, and the first one is ‘Do not deny dogs their dogness.' So meaning dogs are dogs, they're going to act like dogs. Dogs like to bark and pee on stuff and dig holes and do things like that, and we really have no right to deny them those things because we chose to bring dogs into our lives, but that segues into the next mantra, which is to teach dogs what we need from them in a kind way, so we need them to not do those things all the time and it's important for us to teach them what they need to know to live in our world in a way that is kind. Then the next one is ‘Provide dogs what they need,' which is a big deal to me to just make sure that their needs are being met. I find that a lot of dogs living with people don't have all of their basic dog needs met, and then the last one is just ‘Above all honor the dog,' which means always honor their experience of what you are doing, that this isn't just about you. They're here. They have autonomy. They have ownership over their own lives and we really have no right to not take their opinions and experiences into account.  Melissa: I know you kind of mentioned Kelso at the beginning, and your specialty now, at least as far as I understand it, is over-arousal in competition dogs. Does that kind of tie back to that or can you tell me kind of how you got started in that and kind of just a little bit about your work now? Sarah: That being my special interest area was really shaped by the competitors and the current climate of agility. Kelso actually wouldn't be described by anybody who knew him as over-aroused. They would describe him more as one of those shut-down type of dogs, so he was overwhelmed by the environment, but it translated into a dog that was slow and didn't do agility very fast versus most of the dogs that I work with now are kind of the opposite. They are also overwhelmed by the environment, but it comes out in big displays, big behaviors of biting the handler, excessive barking, not being able to stay on the start line, that kind of thing. I do work with the dogs that shut down too. Most of the dogs that I work with are over-aroused, and I think that that has been largely cultivated by just the culture in agility right now, which is we're breeding dogs with hair-trigger arousal on purpose and we are fostering really, really high levels of arousal in training and the reason is everybody wants faster. Everybody wants speed, and they really think that this is how they're going to get there. When you put all of this arousal into the picture and you're not actually sure how to deal with it once you've got it, you run into problems and it's everywhere. Every single time I go to an agility trial, which is frequently, I see dogs that are really struggling with the environment and really just if they were people would be screaming and banging their fists against the wall and instead they're a dog on a leash being asked to stand next to a handler quietly. So we see a lot of problems come out because that arousal has got to come out somewhere. Melissa: So I'm actually going to shift gears slightly and then come back to this topic. Before starting this podcast, I asked around for other good dog training podcasts. Cog-Dog came very highly recommended, which is how I first learned a little about you and a little about what you're doing. For anyone listening who may not be familiar with it, can you just briefly tell us a little bit what Cog-Dog Radio is and kind of how you have it set up? Sarah: Yeah. So I really started getting out there through my blog, which is at the cognitivecanine.com and I wanted to cover specific cases that I have worked on. I thought that was a good idea for material basically, and I tried to write them as blogs and they really weren't working out, and a friend of mine suggested that I try a podcast and so that's how Cog-Dog Radio was born and so it's my podcast. You can find it on SoundCloud or iTunes just by searching for Cog-Dog Radio. You can also get it through my website. The format is that I do a series of three episodes at a time, and the three episodes cover a case that I worked on. So I start out talking about kind of the basics of the case and then in the next episode I talk about specific behavior modification that happened in the case and then the third episode, which is turning out to be everybody's favorite episode is that I interview the owner of the dogs that we're talking about. Melissa: Now I know, kind of to tie this back to the previous question, which is why I wanted to make sure we talked about this first. In one of your early podcasts, you talked about like the four things that you consider before creating a program or a behavior modification process for a dog. Exercise, enrichment, diet, and communication. Did I get all of them that time? Sarah: You got them. So this is what I call the four steps to behavioral wellness and this is something that I came up with a long time ago when I was working primarily actually with the general public with their dogs so general public versus the dog sport public, which is more who I work with now, and it's basically just these four areas. If you come back to my philosophy in dog training, one of them was to provide dogs what they need, and since we examined these four areas, we find out where we maybe aren't giving them what they need and that way we can adjust it. So exercise is the first one that you mentioned and I really advocate a specific type of exercise for dogs. I find that them being allowed to just mill around and sniff around and be a dog in an open space type area is best so off-leash or on a long line and a harness if off-leash is not safe where you are. I find it really best for them as far as reducing overall anxiety and stress in their life versus the exercise that most dogs get, if they get any, it's fetching a ball or a Frisbee. Going to agility class, a lot of people tell me that they see that as a form of exercise for their dogs, and I would totally disagree, or just walking on a short leash around the neighborhood. A lot of times that even does the opposite of what we would like it to do. It creates more stress for the dog so exercise is a big one for me. I find that most dogs aren't getting enough and I would include my own dogs in that statement. I mean, it is very difficult to get them what I would call enough, right? And so the next one is enrichment, which is basically just that we've got a hunter/scavenger species on our hands here, and we put kibble in a bowl and hand it to them twice a day and we could be using those calories in a way smarter way. We could be having them work to find their food essentially, so giving them projects that they can do that help them meet their own needs somehow as opposed to a lot of people recommend giving all the food through training and there've definitely been situations where I've recommended that, but usually I think if they also are allowed to search and find food as their way of getting food as well as not all dogs are super-hot on food and we'll use toys and hide toys and have them find it. Just any kind of mental enrichment that we can give them that helps them meet a need of theirs on their own without human interaction tends to be really helpful and the people that I work with learn a lot about their dogs through these things. If you hide food and give your dog a puzzle to figure out, the way that they figure out how to get to the food or if they figure it out at all tells us a lot about them. So if you, for instance, wrap a bully stick up in a paper bag and then stick the paper bag in a box and then put the box underneath a blanket, there are going to be dogs that are not even going to try to figure it out. There are going to be dogs that are going to plough through it really, really quickly and really frantically. There are going to be dogs that think really hard but wind up getting there and basically learn a lot about what kind of problem solver your dog is and what kind of thinker they are just by giving them problems to solve. And then over time if you don't give them things that are too hard, but you give them things that are kind of just hard enough, they start to be this dog that says I can solve problems and their confidence in training gets better and their confidence in other situations, maybe competition, gets better because, and this is purely anecdotal, I don't think there's any research on this, but what I witnessed is that over time they start to have more self-confidence because we've provided them with puzzles to solve. Then diet is something that I am not specifically trained in and technically cannot advise specifically on. I get a lot of emails asking for specific diet recommendations and formulas and I always tell people that I can't give them that. What I can tell you is that what I observe anecdotally is that a fresh food diet is best when we're talking about behavior and I think all of us know that already when we think about ourselves, whether it's a better idea to have a meal made of fresh whole food or a pre-processed powder, I think we all know which is better for us. We just forget what's better for dogs because there are so many processed options for dogs that are supposedly healthy and good for them, and I've just seen too many of my cases where the behavior change that we really, really needed happened after the diet change. I have to mention it, and I really do think that even if you switched from one processed food to maybe a better one that works better for your dogs, diet should always be considered, especially when anxiety or over-arousal are involved. Then the final one, communication, I just want people to better tell their dogs when they're right and to have a better system for telling their dogs when they're “wrong.” But basically we need to be telling them when they're right more often. And I really like Kathy Sdao has a system for this that she calls SMART x50, and SMART stands for See, Mark, and Reward Training and then x50 is just that your goal is to do it 50 times a day. And all that means is you see the dog doing something right, you tell them, hey, that was right, I liked that and then you give them a piece of food or a game or something. So that's how you can reinforce behavior throughout the day that's working for you and then I have people do something so instead of corrections I want them to instruct, so we are going to replace correction with instruction and then always follow up that instruction with reinforcement. So if my dog is let's say barking at the front window and I ask her to go lie on the mat instead and then I give her a cookie for doing that, that's a more effective way for me to alter her behavior than to spray her with water or throw something at her or yell at her for barking. So those are my four areas.      Melissa: And I'm assuming those didn't sort of immediately pop into your brain all together fully formed. How did you come to that? Sarah: That's a good question, and to be honest I came to them through my own kind of journey with mental health. So I have an anxiety disorder and that really, even though it's not fun for me, it helps me to really help dogs better. There's some really great research in the human world as far as anxiety disorders go and other mood disorders go as far as what we can do in our daily lives to help lessen our needs for medications. One of them is exercise. You're not going to find a single resource on any mood disorder, whether it's depression, anxiety, or anything else that won't tell you exercise will help. For me personally I know that getting out and walking up a dirt path with a forest and trees and animals and everything is better for my brain than getting on a treadmill, and I see the treadmill as like us walking our dog around on concrete in the neighborhood. So that's the exercise piece. The enrichment piece is just you have to feel that's being satisfied in your daily life so that's liking your job, finding your job interesting, not being bored, that's the enrichment piece for people. Being involved in hobbies so not just sitting and watching a television but reading a book or writing or something like that. These adult coloring books. There's a craze right now, adult coloring books and it's because of enrichment. It's because we all need a little bit more of it in our lives. We need to unplug and do something with our brains and our hands and that's exactly what we're doing with dogs when we give them a puzzle to figure out. And then diet's a huge component. It's a huge component for me, and I know it's a huge component for everybody that I've talked to that has any kind of mental health concern but if they really examine what they're eating and really adjust what they're eating towards a whole food-type of diet, they get better and then communication for me that is mostly about dogs. That stems from my belief that I've kind of formulated over all this time working with dogs, that there is nothing that a dog finds more aversive than confusion and there is nothing that they will work harder to avoid than confusion, meaning that's why you have so many trainers who are still using x, y, z aversive tool, prong collar, choke collar, or shock collar, whatever, who say but look at my dog and look how happy they are working, and a lot of those people are right. The dogs do it great. The dogs look fine, and the reason is they're skilled using that tool and the dog is not confused. The dog fully understands how to avoid the correction and they're not confused. To be clear, I'm not advocating for that, but I believe that their priority one is to better understand what's going on in their own lives and that we throw them into kind of an alien existence and expect them to just figure it out and I do believe that it causes a lot of stress for them so that's where that one comes from.    Melissa: Well, I mean that's true with people too. If you have a boss and you just don't understand what he or she wants from you and you just don't understand how to succeed at your job, you get frustrated and upset and unhappy. Sarah: Absolutely. Any kind of human-to-human relationship that does not have communication will not work for very long. Melissa: Right. Right. So to round things out, I have three more short questions that I'm trying to ask kind of towards the end of each of the interviews. So the first one, what's the dog-related accomplishment that you're proudest of? Sarah: I have to think pretty hard about this one because I feel like every time my dogs do have some minor breakthrough, I'm really proud of it, but this last year at AKC Nationals Idgie and I made the Challengers round and if you're familiar with AKC Nationals, the Challengers round is not easy to get into. Just making the Challengers round that's not what I consider the proudest moment for me, but the fact that Idgie who's a dog that used to really struggle with arousal issues in agility was able to not only have a clean round and run really nicely but really fully be the dog that I have been training in the most intense pressure-cooker type of arena that she's ever been in. Just standing in the dirt in the Challengers round in the main arena with the crowd cheering and a lot of really intense competitors around us and to be able to just stand there ringside with her and know that she was okay and know that I was okay and we could both walk into that ring and we could both do what we know how to do, I would say that's my proudest moment in dogs so far. Melissa: I mean that's a pretty good proudest moment. My next question is what is the best piece of training advice that you have ever heard? Sarah: I'm not even sure if this is advice but just kind of, I guess it is advice, and it's not from a specific person but it's kind of a collective idea that is a common thread amongst some of my biggest influences in training, which is that if something that you're doing is species-specific, meaning it would only work for the species in front of you, there's probably a smarter way to do it. Melissa: I like that. So my final question to wrap everything up is who else is someone in the dog world that you look up to? Sarah: I look up to so many people in the dog world and a lot of people really in the training world, but a person who's a competitor in dog agility who I really look up to is my friend Tori Self, and she lives in Wales now, but she has been on the FCI Agility World Team multiple times with a lot of success and she's a person that to me is able to achieve the highest level types of achievement in my favorite sport and still maintain this really deep, loving connection for her dog that she would do anything for. For her it's always been about the dog first and the sport second and yet she's still able to achieve these really high-level things, and for me that's the ultimate because I know a lot of competitors really it is about the sport first and the dog second whether they would admit that in words or not, that's what I observe in their behavior, and that's never been the case with Tori and I really respect her for that. Melissa: That's awesome. Well, thank you so much. I really, really appreciate you taking some time out to chat through this with me. Hopefully it was fun for you. It was definitely fun for me. Sarah: Definitely. Thanks, Melissa. Melissa: Thanks for tuning in. We'll be back in two weeks with Hannah Branigan to talk about the relationship of foundation skills and problem solving. If you haven't already, subscribe now on iTunes or the podcast app of your choice and our next episode will automatically download to your phone as soon as it becomes available. CREDITS: Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called “Buddy.” Audio editing provided by Chris Lang and transcription written by CLK Transcription Services. Thanks again for tuning in -- and happy training!  

In this episode (32:13) What does it mean to compete with an “off breed” dog in agility? And why do we even make the distinction? Mentioned September 2012 Dog Agility Blogger Action Day What makes a good coach/instructor? Episode 14: Agility Instructors, They’re G-r-r-reat! Our Rottweiler Sammie running in the Challenge Round at AKC Nationals.Click here to read the full article →

The AKC Nationals are this weekend and we discuss the AKC, the confirmation competition and information about dog breeds. -Direct download -K9Cast podcast player -Enhanced Feed Subscribe -Standard Feed Subscribe Shownotes (OPML): 00:00 Intro 00:49 All about the AKC Nationals 30:24 Sponsor-HomeAgain 31:02 Listener Pictures 31:52 Outro