Podcasts about Border Terrier

Jack & Seann meet Mango, the rescue Spaniel, and chat to his owner, TV Vet Dr Scott Miller. Scott tell us all about life with his other dogs Scully & Ludo too. He talks about losing his beloved Border Terrier, Betty, and answers your questions with some brilliant advice on pet obesity. Dolly's been to see Jack's dad, Juniper got recognised on the tube, Seann's getting a new dog gadget to try on Mildred and we discover another traumatic moment from Seann's childhood. Follow @omdpod and @juniperomd on Instagram for extra videos and content.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

OMD2 EP 27 STEVE STAMP Jack & Seann meet Peanut the Border Terrier, and chat to her owner, Steve Stamp. Steve tells us how Peanut is the first dog he's ever had and why they renamed her when she came into their lives. Do dogs and their owners develop similar personalities? Jack & Seann discuss. Jack tells us about Dolly's distressing incident and Seann thinks Mildred can't say goodbye. Follow @omdpod & @juniperomd on Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode, Janet Hitchen discusses the importance of understanding organisational priorities and aligning internal communication efforts with those objectives. She emphasises the need to ask the right questions and challenge assumptions to ensure that the work being done is truly impactful. Janet also highlights the educational aspect of internal communication, both within organisations and in educational institutions. She stresses the importance of business acumen and the confidence to ask questions and seek understanding. Ultimately, Janet encourages internal communicators to reflect on the work they are doing and strive to make a meaningful impact. Takeaways Understand the organisation's priorities and align internal communication efforts accordingly. Ask the right questions to ensure that the work being done is truly impactful. Educate others on the role of internal communication and its importance in achieving organisational goals. Develop business acumen and the confidence to ask questions and seek understanding.   About Janet Hitchen Janet Hitchen is a Internal Communication Leader with 20 years experience working globally in Finance, Tech, FMCG and Retail. She has worked in complex international organisations, start ups and scale ups and, for the world's most admired brand. In January 2020, she started her Internal Communication consultancy Janco Ltd to help companies create and/or reimagine their internal communication function. She's a strong advocate of internal comms as a business driver as she has done it and seen it many times when she and her teams have been given the opportunity to not simply react but proactively develop and craft. She's cultivated a deep passion for sustainability over the last few years and how internal communication professionals can help businesses shift to being futureready, strengthened by her recent studies and relationship with Cambridge Institute of Sustainability Leadership. Outside of work she's an avid theatre-goer with a review blog she has been writing for 10 years, a gentle runner, a very-amateur film photographer, a prolific bookworm and, she is accompanied pretty much everywhere by her Border Terrier, Mills. You can contact her on LinkedIn or janet@janco.uk (but she admits email is not her favourite thing) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janethitchen/

Mark Aston joined the army in 1964 as a boy entrant with no formal qualifications. On entering adult service in 1966 he was posted to the Gloucestershire Regiment. Here he served in Berlin, Minden, Belize, Canada and Northern Ireland. He was a Corporal, section commander at age 20 and within 5 years was a platoon sergeant and went on to command a platoon on operations in Northern Ireland.In 1978 he passed SAS Selection and was employed in Mountain Troop in D Sqn. He served all over the world and took part in the Falklands War where he took part in the liberation of South Geor gia, the raid on the airfield on Pebble Island and the taking of Mount Kent.Later he was employed as the senior instructor at the International Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol School in Germany. Following this he was instrumental in the formation of the Light Recce Commanders Course at the School of Infantry. A tour as the RSM of the British Military Parachute School followed. His final job in the army was as the Divisional Sergeant Major assisting in running Company Commanders Courses at the Land Warfare School.On retiring from uniformed service he was employed as a civil servant working with the Infantry Trials and Development Unit delivering Urgent Operational Requirements for ongoing operations.Since retiring in 2013 he spends his time walking ‘Wilf', his Border Terrier, cycling, training for and running ultra marathons. He has co-written a book with Col Stuart Tootal about his experiences during the Falklands War –‘ SAS – SEA KING DOWN'Top Leadership TipKnow your team and always be approachable, Always set an example and be decisive in all you do. Above all, know that Loyalty goes down as well as up. If the guys know you've got their back, they will protect yours. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of Good Enough for Now, Georgina Moore discusses her transition from successful book publicist to fiction author and how she found inspiration for her first novel within her own life and her own reading passions.   Georgina shares the vulnerability needed in becoming an author and having her friends and colleagues read and review her book. She also shares her own version of time and where she found space in her life as a mother, partner, and professional to write her book. Our conversation touches on themes of transition, curiosity, creating space for oneself, and the joys and challenges of pursuing a new career path mid-life.   Listen in to hear more, as well as a little bit of dish on the publishing industry.   What We Cover In This Episode:   Georgina's background in publishing as a book publicist and working with celebrities such as Hillary Clinton and Lauren Bacall. The challenges of transitioning from a corporate career to writing and the importance of having a plan B in mid-life. The process of writing and publishing her debut novel, set on the Isle of Wight, and the vulnerability she experienced receiving (and anticipating) critiques from editors and authors. Creating strong, relatable characters in her family saga novel and the importance of depicting women in their 30s and beyond. Balancing writing and promotion of her book, and the concept of "good enough" in striving for success as an author and a mother. The advantages of being older and established in her career, and the opportunities for women to share their stories and experiences in the publishing industry.   Resources:   Preorder The Garnett Girls from Bookshop Preorder The Garnett Girls from Amazon Follow Georgina on Instagram Follow Georgina on Twitter Connect with Georgina on LinkedIn   About Georgina Moore:   Georgina Moore grew up in London and lives on a houseboat on the River Thames with her partner, two children, and Bomber, the Border Terrier. The Garnett Girls is her first novel and is set on the Isle of Wight, where Georgina and her family have a holiday houseboat called Sturdy.

Changing the Conversation on Cancer Diagnosis in Dogs Dr. Angelo Marco, DVM and Dr. Andi Flory, DVM join host Laura Reeves for an exciting conversation about advances in early cancer detection. PetDx's OncoK9 test is able to “identify a biomarker of cancer that comes from cancer cells” from a simple blood draw, according to Dr. Flory. [caption id="attachment_10009" align="alignleft" width="308"] Dr. Andi Flory, DVM, Chief Medical Officer at PetDX.[/caption] Flory, Chief Medical Officer at PetDx, said the OncoK9 test has the potential to revolutionize our ability to detect cancer in patients, potentially even before they start to show signs and symptoms. While the blood test identifies a variety of cancers, it is most successful at finding the “big three:” Lymphoma, hemangiosarcoma and osteosarcoma. “Those big three,” Flory said, “that detection rate is really high. It's 85% and those are the most aggressive cancers that we see in dogs. So the fact that we have the potential to identify those really aggressive cancers sooner, it's just amazing. “The way that would kind of work, is if you think about dogs that are at high risk of cancer because of they're getting older, for example, we know that the risk of cancer increases with age. Or because of their breed. You're certainly aware there are some breeds that just get a lot of cancer, unfortunately. If we think about testing those individuals as a screening test, like as an annual test before they're showing any clinical signs you know while they're still healthy. If we can identify cancer while they're still feeling good, then we may have a better chance of controlling it longer term. “I think about the cases that we get almost universally when we discover hemangiosarcoma. It's because the tumor is bleeding or it's already spread and the metastatic lesions are bleeding and that often results in a middle of the night visit to the emergency room. It's a snap decision. Maybe your dog looked normal that morning and then all of a sudden you're in the ER being told your dog has a tumor on the spleen and it's bleeding and we need to do emergency surgery and we need to do a blood transfusion and there's really only one decision that you can make right now. It's shocking. It's traumatic. It's painful for the dog. It's all of those things and it happens so unexpectedly and it's so emotional.” [caption id="attachment_10010" align="alignright" width="293"] Dr. Angelo Marco, DVM and his Border Terrier at Palm Springs Kennel Club.[/caption] “The important thing to know,” Marco said, “is that when we see a cancer signal on this test, it's an indication of malignant tumor cells in the body right now. It's not something that they were cured of five years ago and it's not a predisposition test, so it's not something that is predicting, it is something that is there in the body right now. So that really highlights the importance of going forward on that “cancer hunt” to find where is this cancer signal is coming from.” Be sure to listen to today's episode in full and visit https://petdx.com/pet-parents/ (PetDX) for additional information.

An enjoyable ramble in nature with the lovely Lorraine Kelly and equally gorgeous Angus, her Border Terrier. Did you know that Lorraine is a closet bird nerd? Well she is, and we chat all about her travels and relationship with nature, animals and enthusiasm for birds. Angus keeps us on our toes throughout, and we encounter a few little surprises along the way. Come join us on a gorgeous walk by the river!Sean's Wild Life podcast is produced by Sean McCormack, co-produced and edited by Thomas Ntinas. Title track 'A Wild Life' kindly composed and donated by Mark Rose. All costs of production have been self funded. If you've enjoyed this episode and would like to tip me by buying me a coffee you can do so here: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/seanswildlife. If you would like to sponsor a future episode of Sean's Wild Life please email drseanmccormack@gmail.com and visit www.drseanmccormack.com to learn more about Sean's work.Skylark song courtesy of Patrik Aberg (Xeno-canto). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Well, it has been a while since we have recorded a podcast on Pharmacy in Practice so when I was recently in touch with friend of PIP Jonathan Underhill I suggested we have a chat. And it was a fun, interesting and insightful conversation. We recorded the episode first thing on Monday morning after the England football defeat. We had a chat about Gareth Southgate's leadership and what the pharmacist profession can learn from him. We also talked about how the various sectors of pharmacy have weathered the pandemic and where the profession goes next. Professionalism, competence, shared decision making and the future for pharmacists were also topics we covered. Jonathan completed his pharmacy degree at Sunderland and has post-graduate qualifications from London and Liverpool Universities as well as the Institute for Learning and Development. He began his career as a hospital pharmacist in London before joining the National Prescribing Centre (NPC) in 1996. Working on MeReC publications and then developing an educational network/eLearning platform for evidence-based therapeutics and Information Mastery gave him a passion for understanding how clinicians keep up to date and help people make informed choices about their medicines. Now as a consultant clinical adviser for NICE, he inputs into those Clinical Guidelines that have a large medicines component, oversees outputs from the NICE Medicines team such as evidence summaries on new medicines and Antimicrobial Prescribing Guidelines as well as providing NHS access to the BNF. He also has an honorary post at the Keele School of Pharmacy teaching under and post-graduates as well as pursuing his research interests in Evidence-Informed Decision Making. He is a member of the Scientific Committee of the European Association of Hospital Pharmacists and a qualified COVID-19 vaccinator. This gives him less time than he would like to devote to the passions in his life such as mindful walks in the Cheshire countryside with his soulmate Wor Bobby the Border Terrier, captaining his village cricket team, singing in his decidedly ordinary style with some incredibly talented rock musicians and his long-standing and largely unrewarded devotion to NUFC.

Beth and Jen meet the tenacious Border Terrier and discuss the pros and cons of having a pet fence.Sources:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_fencehttps://vcahospitals.com/know-your-pet/the-pros-and-cons-of-invisible-fences-for-dogs https://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/everyday-innovations/pet-fence.htmhttps://www.peta.org/blog/shocking-truth-invisible-fences/ https://thebark.com/content/debate-electronic-dog-fences-continues https://www.wikihow.com/Groom-a-Border-Terrierhttps://barkercise.com/exercise-border-terrier-need/https://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/border-terrier/https://dogtime.com/dog-breeds/border-terrier#/slide/1https://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10230465.asphttps://tails.com/blog/2016/05/29/star-signs-for-dogs/https://www.hillspet.com/dog-care/dog-breeds/border-terrierRescues:The National Mill Dog Rescue -  https://nmdr.orgNMDR's mission is to RESCUE, REHABILITATE and RE-HOME discarded breeding dogs and to educate the general public about the cruel realities of the commercial dog breeding industry.National Mill Dog Rescue pledged to put an end to the cruelty of the commercial dog breeding industry, more commonly known as puppy mills. Through rescue and education, NMDR continues in its life-saving work while enlightening the public about the truth of pet store puppies. NMDR has taken a national approach to their efforts and they have rescued and placed more than 13,000 mill dogs since their inception in 2007. North Shore Animal League  https://www.animalleague.orgSince 1944, North Shore Animal League America has been saving the lives of defenseless dogs, cats, puppies, and kittens — over 1,100,000 to date.Mission: Rescue. Nurture. Adopt. Educate.Vision: A future in which all companion animals find responsible, loving homes where they are free from abuse, hunger, fear, and loneliness and receive the care and respect they deserve.Instagram:@roodog_theborderterrier@mack_theborderterrier@jessyyandthewonderdogs @thatnuttyborder 

Jo Meek is an elite ultra runner....on roads, in the mountains, and on trails. She has been a runner for a long time working hard towards her goals. She enjoys racing all over the world and has even been lucky enough to be selected to run for GB in the World Trail champs (her best is 7th) and in the 100km champs (her best is 4th). She first broke into the ultra running world with a 2nd place at MdS and has since won Lakeland 50, The Coastal Challenge, Golden Ring 100km, and Malnad 80km. She has also had notable results with top 10 finishes at CCC, Comrades Marathon, Lavaredo Trail, San Francisco 50 miler, Tiger Ultra Trail among others. She is also a passionate physiotherapist. Her working week is split in two; self employed in Exeter and employed by the English Institute of Sport. She lives on Dartmoor with her husband and soon to be the owner of Wildred, a puppy Border Terrier! Originally on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMSM8rPgZro

Hacker T. Dog is a British television presenter. He is a Border Terrier and lives in Wigan. Hacker is best known for his work on CBBC presenting with comedian, Iain Stirling, his show 'Hacker Time' and his broadcasts from Wimbledon. Hacker brought along his personal assistant Phil Fletcher and Cal chatted everything from idols to tennis balls to Sue Barker to meat paste. If you would like to support the show you can at https://www.paypal.me/calbertmedia This is a Calbert Media Production. For more information visit https://www.calbertmedia.com

Following on from the sell-out book of his letters to his friend, Stanley the Border Terrier has put the audiobook of DEAR CLEMENTINA on the internet for everybody to listen to FREE of charge. So now you can follow the antics of our hero, which have received five star reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, and keep yourself amused and smiling as the soothing voice of Jimmy Hibbert brings you 27 different letters from Stanley, in which the young pup tries to understand the strange, but not unpleasant, world of humans and dogs, and the interaction between the two. So sit back, relax and dip into this delightful work, which will hopefully bring some light-hearted relief in these troubled times.New episode on Distinct Comedy every Thursday - wherever you get your podcasts or at distinctnostalgia.comNote: The Distinct Comedy Theme is composed by Rebecca Applin and Chris Warner. 

Following on from the sell-out book of his letters to his friend, Stanley the Border Terrier has put the audiobook of DEAR CLEMENTINA on the internet for everybody to listen to FREE of charge. So now you can follow the antics of our hero, which have received five star reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, and keep yourself amused and smiling as the soothing voice of Jimmy Hibbert brings you 27 different letters from Stanley, in which the young pup tries to understand the strange, but not unpleasant, world of humans and dogs, and the interaction between the two. So sit back, relax and dip into this delightful work, which will hopefully bring some light-hearted relief in these troubled times.New episode on Distinct Comedy every Thursday - wherever you get your podcasts or at distinctnostalgia.comNote: The Distinct Comedy Theme is composed by Rebecca Applin and Chris Warner. 

Following on from the sell-out book of his letters to his friend, Stanley the Border Terrier has put the audiobook of DEAR CLEMENTINA on the internet for everybody to listen to FREE of charge. So now you can follow the antics of our hero, which have received five star reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, and keep yourself amused and smiling as the soothing voice of Jimmy Hibbert brings you 27 different letters from Stanley, in which the young pup tries to understand the strange, but not unpleasant, world of humans and dogs, and the interaction between the two. So sit back, relax and dip into this delightful work, which will hopefully bring some light-hearted relief in these troubled times.New episode on Distinct Comedy every Thursday - wherever you get your podcasts or at distinctnostalgia.comNote: The Distinct Comedy Theme is composed by Rebecca Applin and Chris Warner. 

Following on from the sell-out book of his letters to his friend, Stanley the Border Terrier has put the audiobook of DEAR CLEMENTINA on the internet for everybody to listen to FREE of charge. So now you can follow the antics of our hero, which have received five star reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, and keep yourself amused and smiling as the soothing voice of Jimmy Hibbert brings you 27 different letters from Stanley, in which the young pup tries to understand the strange, but not unpleasant, world of humans and dogs, and the interaction between the two. So sit back, relax and dip into this delightful work, which will hopefully bring some light-hearted relief in these troubled times.New episode on Distinct Comedy every Thursday - wherever you get your podcasts or at distinctnostalgia.comNote: The Distinct Comedy Theme is composed by Rebecca Applin and Chris Warner. 

Following on from the sell-out book of his letters to his friend, Stanley the Border Terrier has put the audiobook of DEAR CLEMENTINA on the internet for everybody to listen to FREE of charge. So now you can follow the antics of our hero, which have received five star reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, and keep yourself amused and smiling as the soothing voice of Jimmy Hibbert brings you 27 different letters from Stanley, in which the young pup tries to understand the strange, but not unpleasant, world of humans and dogs, and the interaction between the two. So sit back, relax and dip into this delightful work, which will hopefully bring some light-hearted relief in these troubled times.New episode on Distinct Comedy every Thursday - wherever you get your podcasts or at distinctnostalgia.comNote: The Distinct Comedy Theme is composed by Rebecca Applin and Chris Warner. 

Following on from the sell-out book of his letters to his friend, Stanley the Border Terrier has put the audiobook of DEAR CLEMENTINA on the internet for everybody to listen to FREE of charge. So now you can follow the antics of our hero, which have received five star reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, and keep yourself amused and smiling as the soothing voice of Jimmy Hibbert brings you 27 different letters from Stanley, in which the young pup tries to understand the strange, but not unpleasant, world of humans and dogs, and the interaction between the two. So sit back, relax and dip into this delightful work, which will hopefully bring some light-hearted relief in these troubled times.New episode on Distinct Comedy every Thursday - wherever you get your podcasts or at distinctnostalgia.comNote: The Distinct Comedy Theme is composed by Rebecca Applin and Chris Warner. 

Following on from the sell-out book of his letters to his friend, Stanley the Border Terrier has put the audiobook of DEAR CLEMENTINA on the internet for everybody to listen to FREE of charge. So now you can follow the antics of our hero, which have received five star reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, and keep yourself amused and smiling as the soothing voice of Jimmy Hibbert brings you 27 different letters from Stanley, in which the young pup tries to understand the strange, but not unpleasant, world of humans and dogs, and the interaction between the two. So sit back, relax and dip into this delightful work, which will hopefully bring some light-hearted relief in these troubled times.New episode on Distinct Comedy every Thursday - wherever you get your podcasts or at distinctnostalgia.comNote: The Distinct Comedy Theme is composed by Rebecca Applin and Chris Warner. 

Following on from the sell-out book of his letters to his friend, Stanley the Border Terrier has put the audiobook of DEAR CLEMENTINA on the internet for everybody to listen to FREE of charge. So now you can follow the antics of our hero, which have received five star reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, and keep yourself amused and smiling as the soothing voice of Jimmy Hibbert brings you 27 different letters from Stanley, in which the young pup tries to understand the strange, but not unpleasant, world of humans and dogs, and the interaction between the two. So sit back, relax and dip into this delightful work, which will hopefully bring some light-hearted relief in these troubled times.New episode on Distinct Comedy every Thursday - wherever you get your podcasts or at distinctnostalgia.comNote: The Distinct Comedy Theme is composed by Rebecca Applin and Chris Warner. 

Following on from the sell-out book of his letters to his friend, Stanley the Border Terrier has put the audiobook of DEAR CLEMENTINA on the internet for everybody to listen to FREE of charge. So now you can follow the antics of our hero, which have received five star reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, and keep yourself amused and smiling as the soothing voice of Jimmy Hibbert brings you 27 different letters from Stanley, in which the young pup tries to understand the strange, but not unpleasant, world of humans and dogs, and the interaction between the two. So sit back, relax and dip into this delightful work, which will hopefully bring some light-hearted relief in these troubled times.New episode on Distinct Comedy every Thursday - wherever you get your podcasts or at distinctnostalgia.comNote: The Distinct Comedy Theme is composed by Rebecca Applin and Chris Warner. 

Following on from the sell-out book of his letters to his friend, Stanley the Border Terrier has put the audiobook of DEAR CLEMENTINA on the internet for everybody to listen to FREE of charge. So now you can follow the antics of our hero, which have received five star reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, and keep yourself amused and smiling as the soothing voice of Jimmy Hibbert brings you 27 different letters from Stanley, in which the young pup tries to understand the strange, but not unpleasant, world of humans and dogs, and the interaction between the two. So sit back, relax and dip into this delightful work, which will hopefully bring some light-hearted relief in these troubled times.New episode on Distinct Comedy every Thursday - wherever you get your podcasts or at distinctnostalgia.comNote: The Distinct Comedy Theme is composed by Rebecca Applin and Chris Warner. 

Following on from the sell-out book of his letters to his friend, Stanley the Border Terrier has put the audiobook of DEAR CLEMENTINA on the internet for everybody to listen to FREE of charge. So now you can follow the antics of our hero, which have received five star reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, and keep yourself amused and smiling as the soothing voice of Jimmy Hibbert brings you 27 different letters from Stanley, in which the young pup tries to understand the strange, but not unpleasant, world of humans and dogs, and the interaction between the two. So sit back, relax and dip into this delightful work, which will hopefully bring some light-hearted relief in these troubled times.New episode on Distinct Comedy every Thursday - wherever you get your podcasts or at distinctnostalgia.comNote: The Distinct Comedy Theme is composed by Rebecca Applin and Chris Warner. 

Following on from the sell-out book of his letters to his friend, Stanley the Border Terrier has put the audiobook of DEAR CLEMENTINA on the internet for everybody to listen to FREE of charge. So now you can follow the antics of our hero, which have received five star reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, and keep yourself amused and smiling as the soothing voice of Jimmy Hibbert brings you 27 different letters from Stanley, in which the young pup tries to understand the strange, but not unpleasant, world of humans and dogs, and the interaction between the two. So sit back, relax and dip into this delightful work, which will hopefully bring some light-hearted relief in these troubled times.New episode on Distinct Comedy every Thursday - wherever you get your podcasts or at distinctnostalgia.comNote: The Distinct Comedy Theme is composed by Rebecca Applin and Chris Warner. 

Following on from the sell-out book of his letters to his friend, Stanley the Border Terrier has put the audiobook of DEAR CLEMENTINA on the internet for everybody to listen to FREE of charge. So now you can follow the antics of our hero, which have received five star reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, and keep yourself amused and smiling as the soothing voice of Jimmy Hibbert brings you 27 different letters from Stanley, in which the young pup tries to understand the strange, but not unpleasant, world of humans and dogs, and the interaction between the two. So sit back, relax and dip into this delightful work, which will hopefully bring some light-hearted relief in these troubled times.New episode on Distinct Comedy every Thursday - wherever you get your podcasts or at distinctnostalgia.comNote: The Distinct Comedy Theme is composed by Rebecca Applin and Chris Warner. 

Following on from the sell-out book of his letters to his friend, Stanley the Border Terrier has put the audiobook of DEAR CLEMENTINA on the internet for everybody to listen to FREE of charge. So now you can follow the antics of our hero, which have received five star reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, and keep yourself amused and smiling as the soothing voice of Jimmy Hibbert brings you 27 different letters from Stanley, in which the young pup tries to understand the strange, but not unpleasant, world of humans and dogs, and the interaction between the two. So sit back, relax and dip into this delightful work, which will hopefully bring some light-hearted relief in these troubled times.New episode on Distinct Comedy every Thursday - wherever you get your podcasts or at distinctnostalgia.comNote: The Distinct Comedy Theme is composed by Rebecca Applin and Chris Warner. 

Following on from the sell-out book of his letters to his friend, Stanley the Border Terrier has put the audiobook of DEAR CLEMENTINA on the internet for everybody to listen to FREE of charge. So now you can follow the antics of our hero, which have received five star reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, and keep yourself amused and smiling as the soothing voice of Jimmy Hibbert brings you 27 different letters from Stanley, in which the young pup tries to understand the strange, but not unpleasant, world of humans and dogs, and the interaction between the two. So sit back, relax and dip into this delightful work, which will hopefully bring some light-hearted relief in these troubled times.New episode on Distinct Comedy every Thursday - wherever you get your podcasts or at distinctnostalgia.comNote: The Distinct Comedy Theme is composed by Rebecca Applin and Chris Warner. 

Following on from the sell-out book of his letters to his friend, Stanley the Border Terrier has put the audiobook of DEAR CLEMENTINA on the internet for everybody to listen to FREE of charge. So now you can follow the antics of our hero, which have received five star reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, and keep yourself amused and smiling as the soothing voice of Jimmy Hibbert brings you 27 different letters from Stanley, in which the young pup tries to understand the strange, but not unpleasant, world of humans and dogs, and the interaction between the two. So sit back, relax and dip into this delightful work, which will hopefully bring some light-hearted relief in these troubled times.New episode on Distinct Comedy every Thursday - wherever you get your podcasts or at distinctnostalgia.comNote: The Distinct Comedy Theme is composed by Rebecca Applin and Chris Warner. 

Following on from the sell-out book of his letters to his friend, Stanley the Border Terrier has put the audiobook of DEAR CLEMENTINA on the internet for everybody to listen to FREE of charge. So now you can follow the antics of our hero, which have received five star reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, and keep yourself amused and smiling as the soothing voice of Jimmy Hibbert brings you 27 different letters from Stanley, in which the young pup tries to understand the strange, but not unpleasant, world of humans and dogs, and the interaction between the two. So sit back, relax and dip into this delightful work, which will hopefully bring some light-hearted relief in these troubled times.New episode on Distinct Comedy every Thursday - wherever you get your podcasts or at distinctnostalgia.comNote: The Distinct Comedy Theme is composed by Rebecca Applin and Chris Warner. 

Following on from the sell-out book of his letters to his friend, Stanley the Border Terrier has put the audiobook of DEAR CLEMENTINA on the internet for everybody to listen to FREE of charge. So now you can follow the antics of our hero, which have received five star reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, and keep yourself amused and smiling as the soothing voice of Jimmy Hibbert brings you 27 different letters from Stanley, in which the young pup tries to understand the strange, but not unpleasant, world of humans and dogs, and the interaction between the two. So sit back, relax and dip into this delightful work, which will hopefully bring some light-hearted relief in these troubled times.New episode on Distinct Comedy every Thursday - wherever you get your podcasts or at distinctnostalgia.comNote: The Distinct Comedy Theme is composed by Rebecca Applin and Chris Warner. 

Following on from the sell-out book of his letters to his friend, Stanley the Border Terrier has put the audiobook of DEAR CLEMENTINA on the internet for everybody to listen to FREE of charge. So now you can follow the antics of our hero, which have received five star reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, and keep yourself amused and smiling as the soothing voice of Jimmy Hibbert brings you 27 different letters from Stanley, in which the young pup tries to understand the strange, but not unpleasant, world of humans and dogs, and the interaction between the two. So sit back, relax and dip into this delightful work, which will hopefully bring some light-hearted relief in these troubled times.New episode on Distinct Comedy every Thursday - wherever you get your podcasts or at distinctnostalgia.comNote: The Distinct Comedy Theme is composed by Rebecca Applin and Chris Warner. 

Following on from the sell-out book of his letters to his friend, Stanley the Border Terrier has put the audiobook of DEAR CLEMENTINA on the internet for everybody to listen to FREE of charge. So now you can follow the antics of our hero, which have received five star reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, and keep yourself amused and smiling as the soothing voice of Jimmy Hibbert brings you 27 different letters from Stanley, in which the young pup tries to understand the strange, but not unpleasant, world of humans and dogs, and the interaction between the two. So sit back, relax and dip into this delightful work, which will hopefully bring some light-hearted relief in these troubled times.New episode on Distinct Comedy every Thursday - wherever you get your podcasts or at distinctnostalgia.comNote: The Distinct Comedy Theme is composed by Rebecca Applin and Chris Warner. 

Following on from the sell-out book of his letters to his friend, Stanley the Border Terrier has put the audiobook of DEAR CLEMENTINA on the internet for everybody to listen to FREE of charge. So now you can follow the antics of our hero, which have received five star reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, and keep yourself amused and smiling as the soothing voice of Jimmy Hibbert brings you 27 different letters from Stanley, in which the young pup tries to understand the strange, but not unpleasant, world of humans and dogs, and the interaction between the two. So sit back, relax and dip into this delightful work, which will hopefully bring some light-hearted relief in these troubled times.New episode on Distinct Comedy every Thursday - wherever you get your podcasts or at distinctnostalgia.comNote: The Distinct Comedy Theme is composed by Rebecca Applin and Chris Warner. 

Following on from the sell-out book of his letters to his friend, Stanley the Border Terrier has put the audiobook of DEAR CLEMENTINA on the internet for everybody to listen to FREE of charge. So now you can follow the antics of our hero, which have received five star reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, and keep yourself amused and smiling as the soothing voice of Jimmy Hibbert brings you 27 different letters from Stanley, in which the young pup tries to understand the strange, but not unpleasant, world of humans and dogs, and the interaction between the two. So sit back, relax and dip into this delightful work, which will hopefully bring some light-hearted relief in these troubled times.New episode on Distinct Comedy every Thursday - wherever you get your podcasts or at distinctnostalgia.comNote: The Distinct Comedy Theme is composed by Rebecca Applin and Chris Warner. 

  Mother's Day in the U.S. is May 9th. It's supposed to be a day when people show their appreciation for their mothers in different ways. Some people will take their mothers out to a restaurant for lunch or dinner, others will buy them gifts, or perhaps have a special celebration at home. At my home, my family organized a special day for me. My oldest son turned up from university unexpectedly just for the day. We were going to go on a hike, but it would have been a hard one, and I really didn't fancy making a lot of effort. So I said, "Change of plans everyone, let's just go for a walk in the park, and take the dogs to the dog park." Walla Walla park is right next to the river, and has wonderful walkways with some lovely shady areas of mature trees. It was the perfect amount of 'effort' for me for Mother's Day. The walkway goes past new apartment complexes, Pybus Market, and pleasantly landscaped office buildings. Then the terrain changes a bit, and gets drier as you walk past a more industrial area. Here you get a glimpse of what Wenatchee is naturally like without irrigation. The drop-off to the river is steep, sandy, and rocky. And here you can often see ground hogs. These are big rodents that are well known. They form part of the tradition of bringing in the Spring, and predicting when it will start. They are nervous creatures, like most rodents, and certainly don't like dogs, who tend to charge after them. Ironically, these animals live right next to the dog park. Ah, but they have the advantage of a big, metal fence in between them and the dogs. This dog park was made just a few years ago to satisfy the dog lovers of Wenatchee; it's a clever way to use up dry, unusable land. It's a very large enclosure with gravel, trees, and a few benches. It's a dog's heaven, as it's their place to socialize. And, as it is enclosed, no one has to worry about dogs running off after a ground hog, or jumping in the river. I think also that the dog owners enjoy socializing with each other almost as much as the dogs do. So our Rottweiler and Border Terrier had a wonderful time. We even took a back carrier just in case the old lady, the Terrier, got tired and needed to be carried back to the car. She did. So we strapped her onto my son's back, and she rode in style, like a queen, ignoring the ground hogs, and the less fortunate dogs. She's not a mother, but she looked as though the day was all about her. 1. 'To fancy' means to feel like, to want, to be attracted to. a. Gosh, look at that chocolate cake. I fancy a piece of that! b. I didn't fancy going on a hike; it was too hot, and the thought of it made me tired. c. I fancy buying myself those new sandals that are in fashion right now. 2. 'To tend to' is to be in the habit of doing something. a. He tends to interrupt everyone when they are speaking. b. I tend to drive slowly; I just want to be careful. c. My grandma tends to suck her teeth after her meals; I don't think she realizes that she's doing it. 3. 'It's all about + noun' is a general comment (it) meaning that the focus of a situation is either a person (or some other noun). We often use it negatively to tell someone to not be selfish. It also has an existential meaning: the main significance/ what is most important. a. "Thanksgiving is not about you, Johnny, getting what you want; it's all about the family." b. I read the book in 3 days. It's all about health and wellness. c. The exhibition is all about the artist's blue period. d. It's not about just amassing wealth, is it? It's all about enjoying this gift of life, and helping others, right?

Following on from the sell-out book of his letters to his friend, Stanley the Border Terrier has put the audiobook of DEAR CLEMENTINA on the internet for everybody to listen to FREE of charge. So now you can follow the antics of our hero, which have received five star reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, and keep yourself amused and smiling as the soothing voice of Jimmy Hibbert brings you 27 different letters from Stanley, in which the young pup tries to understand the strange, but not unpleasant, world of humans and dogs, and the interaction between the two. So sit back, relax and dip into this delightful work, which will hopefully bring some light-hearted relief in these troubled times.New episode on Distinct Comedy every Thursday - wherever you get your podcasts or at distinctnostalgia.comNote: The Distinct Comedy Theme is composed by Rebecca Applin and Chris Warner. 

Following on from the sell-out book of his letters to his friend, Stanley the Border Terrier has put the audiobook of DEAR CLEMENTINA on the internet for everybody to listen to FREE of charge. So now you can follow the antics of our hero, which have received five star reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, and keep yourself amused and smiling as the soothing voice of Jimmy Hibbert brings you 27 different letters from Stanley, in which the young pup tries to understand the strange, but not unpleasant, world of humans and dogs, and the interaction between the two. So sit back, relax and dip into this delightful work, which will hopefully bring some light-hearted relief in these troubled times.New episode on Distinct Comedy every Thursday - wherever you get your podcasts or at distinctnostalgia.comNote: The Distinct Comedy Theme is composed by Rebecca Applin and Chris Warner. 

A chance meeting between two twelve-week-old puppies in a Manchester park leads to a series of letters from young Stanley to his new friend Clementina. Based on true events viewed through canine eyes, this work is a collection of that correspondence, and reflects upon the quirky world of humans, dogs and the interaction between the two. In this deliciously humorous work from the creative mind of Colin Burke, listeners will delight not only in recognising their own pets, but also themselves and their fellow dog walkers. But you don't have to be a dog-owner to appreciate Stanley's letters as their comedy will appeal to everybody. And anybody contemplating getting a puppy should take advantage of Stanley's wit and insight to help them in taking that fateful step of joining the ranks of the dog-owning fraternity. Pick up Stanley's narrative and immerse yourself in the humorous, blossoming friendship of two adorable Border Terrier puppies!Following on from the sell-out book of his letters to his friend, Stanley the Border Terrier has put the audiobook of DEAR CLEMENTINA on the internet for everybody to listen to FREE of charge. So now you can follow the antics of our hero, which have received five star reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, and keep yourself amused and smiling as the soothing voice of Jimmy Hibbert brings you 27 different letters from Stanley, in which the young pup tries to understand the strange, but not unpleasant, world of humans and dogs, and the interaction between the two. So sit back, relax and dip into this delightful work, which will hopefully bring some light-hearted relief in these troubled times.New episode on Distinct Comedy every Thursday - wherever you get your podcasts or at distinctnostalgia.comNote: The Distinct Comedy Theme is composed by Rebecca Applin and Chris Warner. 

Meet the border terrier! This terrier breed originated in the border region between England and Scotland, hence the name. A feisty and game dog, they were used to go to ground to hunt foxes, badgers, and other vermin. Join Dog Nerd Show hosts Megan and Michael as they introduce you to their border terriers and discuss what it's like to live with this spirited and sweet breed of dog.When thinking about getting a dog, research is key. If you've thought about getting a border terrier, hear from border terrier parents about their health, shedding, barking, obedience, and more!Dog Nerd Show Episode 2

In this podcast Oli comes to a listeners’ rescue following her message describing how her Border Terrier jumped on her dining table and ate half a cheese platter and an apple tart whilst she was in another room. How do we train our dogs not to succumb to so much temptation? Just like humans, not all dogs are born equal, so should we use different techniques? At the end however, one thing matters above all else, trust. This comes through training, communication and collaboration. What if instead of simple cheese platter it was a child who was “attacked”?Episode Sponsor - Butternut Box Dog Food 50% off your first box of Butternut Box. Click above or visit www.butternutbox.com/adogsbestfriend

Welcome to the 12th episode of The Dog Real Talk! My name is Agnieszka Janarek and I am your host! My guest today is Nancy Tucker - amazing trainer I have had a pleasure to learn from! If you can’t wrap your head around how to approach classical conditioning, desensitization in training - this episode is definitely for you! "Nancy is a certified trainer with the CCPDT, and a certified behaviour consultant with the IAABC. She teaches seminars, webinars, and workshops on dog training, dog behaviour, and the business end of training throughout Canada, the US, and Europe. She is also an instructor for Fenzi Dog Sports Academy and a regular article contributor to the Whole Dog Journal. She shares her home in Quebec, Canada with her husband Tom and their Border Terrier, Bennigan." Make sure you visit Nancy's website: https://nancytucker.com/ WE would love to hear your feedback about this episode! Let us know in comments, emails, regular mails (yes they still work ;) ), Facebook messages or any other way you want!

Cette semaine on découvre l’histoire de Néron, ou Nero pour une touche un peu plus internationale, avec Sophie et Mathieu. Sophie voulait un chien, Mathieu n’était pas très emballé. Comment a-t-il changé d’avis, le process de l’arrivée du chiot, son prix aussi qui peut paraître indécent et quel accord ils ont passé à ce sujet… On a aussi discuté des accidents qui arrivent régulièrement quand le chien mange ce qu’il ne devrait pas, par exemple, le chocolat! Néron a quand même fait dans l’originalité, vous verrez! Bref, encore une histoire touchante comme on les aime. J’ai adoré la découvrir et je suis très heureuse de la partager. Pour suivre Dogs Dehors : http://instagram.com/dogsdehors http://facebook.com/dogsdehors Music by Belair from Fugue

Pour ce 5e épisode, j'ai discuté avec Yaël et Jeremie de leur chien Marty, un border terrier de bientôt 2 ans. C'est très marrant parce que j'ai découvert un chien bien différent de celui que je balade à Vincennes. Marty est un original, avec une double personnalité qui le rend encore plus attachant. On a aussi parlé de la naissance de leur fille Lennie et du comportement de Marty vis à vis d'elle. Je vous laisse découvrir tout ça, et un grand merci à Yaël et Jeremie pour ce bon moment passé ensemble. Pour suivre Dogs Dehors : http://instagram.com/dogsdehors http://facebook.com/dogsdehors Bonne écoute à tous! Music by Belair from Fugue

This episode - the first of the new, fortnightly episodes - is an alcohol-free special. Emma takes a look at: who's drinking alcohol-free beer? how is the beer brewed? what are some of the challenges around brewing & selling alcohol free beer? and what does it actually taste like?  She enlists the help of: Fergus Fitzgerald - Head Brewer at Adnams Brewery; Laura Willoughby - co-founder of Club Soda - The Mindful Drinking Movement; Brigid Simmonds - Chief Executive of the British Beer & Pub Association; the staff and customers at Bison Beer Crafthouse in Hove; and resident beer sommelier, Jane Peyton PLUS - we put the best dog beers to the test with the help of Rupert the Whippet and Colin the Border Terrier (no - really, we do...) Listen & subscribe via: Apple Podcasts Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Adnams Ghost Ship - Alcohol-Free Rupert Whippet Dog Beer Challenge - blind tasting Vanderstreek - Playground IPA, Big Drop - Pale Ale, Stiegl - Freibier & Guinness - Pure Brew Dog Beer Challenge - blind tasting Mikkeller's range of no/low alcohol beers Colin Border Terrier Mikkeller - Wierd Weather NEIPA Dog Beer Challenge - Rupert Whippet with the full line-up Don't forget to check out the Club Soda Mindful Drinking Festival at the Truman Brewery, Brick Lane this weekend - Saturday 12 & Sunday 13 January. Both Emma & Jane will be there leading tours and hosting talks & tastings. Come along and try some no/low alcohol beers for yourself. Emma would like to thank Euroboozer, Guinness & Greene King for supplying some of the beers. Rupert Whippet would like to thank Father Christmas for supplying his stash of dog beers.

Click here to buy: https://adbl.co/2nu2Krr In this inspiring, uplifting and heart-warming memoir, world-renowned veterinary surgeon Professor Noel Fitzpatrick explores his journey to becoming The Supervet. Growing up on the family farm in Ballyfin, Ireland, Noel's childhood was spent tending to the cattle and sheep, the hay and silage, the tractors and land, his beloved sheepdog Pirate providing solace from the bullies that plagued him at school. It was this bond with Pirate, and a fateful night spent desperately trying to save a newborn lamb, that inspired Noel to enter the world of veterinary science - and set him on the path to becoming The Supervet. Now, in this long-awaited memoir, Noel recounts this often-surprising journey that sees him leaving behind a farm animal practice in rural Ireland to set up Fitzpatrick Referrals in Surrey, one of the most advanced small animal specialist centres in the world. We meet the animals that paved the way, from calving cows and corralling bullocks to talkative parrots and bionic cats and dogs. Noel has listened to the many lessons that the animals in his care have taught him, and especially the times he has shared with his beloved Keira, the scruffy Border Terrier who has been by Noel's side as he's dealt with the unbelievable highs and crushing lows of his extraordinary career. As heart-warming and life-affirming as the TV show with which he made his name, Listening to the Animals is a story of love, hope and compassion, and about rejoicing in the bond between humans and animals that makes us the very best we can be. Written and read by Noel Fitzpatrick (p) Orion Publishing Group 2018

Summary: Hannah Branigan, of Wonder Pups Training, is back on the podcast to talk about behavior chains, and a little bit about her new puppy (because he’s adorable).  Hannah is the host of Drinking from the Toilet and blogs at wonderpupstraining.com.  Next Episode:  To be released 9/28/2018, an interview with Shade Whitesel about crucial concepts when training for competition. 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 Hannah Branigan of Wonder Pups Training back on the podcast to talk about behavior chains, and a little bit about her new puppy because he’s adorable. Welcome back to the podcast Hannah. Hannah Branigan: Thank you for having me. Melissa Breau: Absolutely. To start us out, do you want to remind listeners who you are, share a little about the dogs you have, and a little about the new addition? Hannah Branigan: Sure. I am Hannah Branigan, in case you’ve already forgotten. I have my own podcast, Drinking From The Toilet, as well as teaching for FDSA and playing in a lot of different dog sports. Obedience is my primary focus, that’s where I spend most of my time, but I’m really interested in doing really good training, and diagnosing and breaking things down, and reverse-engineering cool behaviors and high-quality performances, and figuring out how we can systematize that and then how can we teach it. For my own dogs, I currently have five dogs. I have three Belgian Shepherds, one Border Terrier, Rugby, and my new puppy, Figment, is a Border Collie. Melissa Breau: Let’s start by talking about Mr. Figment. With a new puppy, what have you chosen to focus on, and I do assume the goal is to eventually do obedience? Hannah Branigan: Definitely we’ll do some obedience. We’ll probably do a lot of different things. I cross-train with all of my dogs. Again, obedience is my central focus, but we tinker in a lot of sports, so right now I’m not doing anything with him that you would consider sport-specific, nothing that is exclusive to obedience or exclusive to agility or exclusive to anything else. My theme for him right now, my word for him, is really balance. So what I’m trying hard to do is looking at the puppy that I have today and building his skills in how he and I interact together, how he interacts with the world, and trying to develop balance, because he’s definitely got … he has his preferences, I of course have my preferences because I’m old and set in my ways, but there are things that I want to build with him. But while I’m building these new behaviors, I want to make sure that I’m not creating a lot of reinforcement history for a particular picture that will make it harder for me to then get other behaviors to change that picture later on. That was really vague, so let me give you an example. For example, I do want to do sports with him, and so we play a lot of motivational games, drive-building games, where he’s moving and I’m moving and there’s a lot of excitement and a lot of arousal. At the same time as I’m playing those games in a training context, I am juxtaposing them with less exciting, less arousing, more relaxing, more thinking sorts of games. So we might play with his ball for a few minutes and work on some toy skills, and then immediately in the same session we’ll go to some mat, and shape relax on a mat with some food, and then we might go back to working on some toy skills, and go back to relax on a mat. That switching between food and toys, and again being able to balance that, is something that I’m focusing on a lot in terms of his reinforcement, and also just in terms of all the behaviors that we’re working on. Melissa Breau: I’ve been doing quite a bit of thinking lately about how much every dog is really unique and their own individuals, and that means that any new dog is going to be totally different than any dog any of us has owned or trained before that one. How do you go about getting to know a new dog or puppy? For that matter, what do you want to know about them? Hannah Branigan: I’m not doing anything particularly formal in that way. We mostly just go through life, and as we come across something like a cat, or an unfamiliar person, or whatever, I’ll pause and I’ll observe his response. Maybe it’s like, “Oh, that’s not a big deal,” and the behaviors I see in this context are totally fine and appropriate, great. I’ll just maintain that. On the other hand, sometimes we’ll see a car moving, and I’ll observe his behavior — and I put observe in air quotes because his behavior is quite obvious in that context — and I’ll say, “Oh, that’s not really what I was looking for, so maybe I need to do some training here to get a behavior that I can live with when we see cars going by.” Really I’m just living my life with my dogs the way that I would normally, and then, as we get to a new situation or some new picture or some new experience, I’ll just keep an eye on him and ask him the question, “How’s this for you?” and just be ready to look for his answer, and then adjust what we do at that time. Melissa Breau: Is there anything about Figment that feels new for you in terms of training? Hannah Branigan: I would say the biggest thing that’s different with Figgy is that he’s the first dog that I’ve ever had personally in my house that is easier to stimulate with toys than food. In fact, his food-eating behavior was not really present when he first came home to me, and it disappears rather easily if we go to a new situation. When we get out of the car at the park or at Panera or something, he may not take food right away. There are situations where I’ve accidentally over-fazed him and he’s not taking food or toys, but there are a lot of situations where we get into a new environment, or there’s people, or there’s other dogs and they’re moving, and he’ll chase a toy but not take food. That’s a new thing for me, because for my other dogs, they would usually take food first, and then the toy play would be the more fragile behavior. With him, he may not take food at all, but he’d be willing to chase a toy. And there’s a little bit of a trap there, because, one, having worked so hard to get Rugby to play with toys with me, it feels nice to have a dog that is so easy to stimulate with toys in that way. So it would be very easy for me to say, “Don’t worry about the food. We’ve got toy play, and that’s sexier anyway, so I’m just going to use the toy.” Having worked through this with students and clients, I know that that wouldn’t benefit my long-term goals, that wouldn’t fit that theme of balance I’m looking for with him, so I know that, “OK, you’re not taking treats; I need to go back a step. Where were you taking treats last? Where can you eat food?” and work from there, rather than blowing past that threshold where he can’t eat food anymore and then just lean on the toys to get through it, because that way is not going to get me what I want in the long run. It’s going to be very limiting and I’ll eventually get stuck. Melissa Breau: I’m guessing at this point he’s probably little enough that he hasn’t been introduced to much in the way of actual behavior chains yet, right? Hannah Branigan: Certainly not formally. Behavior chains are around us all the time, that’s just part of how we naturally function in the environment, but we don’t have really anything on cue. Everything that we’re doing training-wise is just on building fluent reinforcement behaviors, and a few movement skills, and those foundational individual behaviors, and way down the road we’ll work on turning those into more formal, finished behaviors. Once we have those really trained to fluency, then I’ll worry about creating sequences or behavior chains from a performance standpoint. Melissa Breau: Before we get into this stuff too much, can you explain a little bit what a behavior chain is? Hannah Branigan: Sure. A behavior chain … and you will hear words like “behavior chain” and “behavior sequence” can be used, there’s some debate in the behavior world as to what the definition between a chain versus a sequence is. There isn’t a lot of agreement. So some folks have their definition, and other folks have a different definition. I’m going to go ahead and just use behavior chain and behavior sequence pretty much interchangeably and talk about the phenomenon as a whole, and we’ll worry about splitting down the jargon later in another podcast episode. Melissa Breau: Fair enough. Hannah Branigan: A behavior chain or a behavior sequence is a sequence of behaviors that are held together with cues. Those cues can come from an outside source, like if we’re talking about a dog, they might come from the trainer, the handler, but they can also come from the environment. If you need to get in your car to drive somewhere, you’ll perform a behavior chain. You’ll walk out of your house, so that’s one behavior. You’ll see your car, and the sight of the car tells you, “Oh …” more specifically, the sight of your car with the door closed is a cue in the environment: If I’m going to drive my car, I need to open the door. So that’s your cue to reach your hand out, take the door handle, pull the door open, which of course is its own little behavior chain. We can really zoom in quite a lot on these and go crazy. Now you’re standing in front of the car with the door open. That’s your cue to get in the seat. Now you’re sitting in the car. That’s your cue to maybe close the door. You’re sitting in the car, it’s not running, that’s your cue: “Oh, I need to put my key in the ignition,” and then turn the ignition. Each behavior that you perform creates some change in the state of the environment and your conditions around you that then signal you to do the next step, and the next step, to eventually reach your goal of backing out of your driveway and driving to the grocery store to get some more Oreos or whatever. So that’s an example of a behavior chain where your actions changing the environment are functioning as your cue to do the next thing. And of course if you didn’t know how to do each of those individual behaviors, you’d be in trouble. If you were faced with — and this has actually happened to me in a rental car before — you get in the car, you close the door, and you cannot find where to put the key because it’s one of those weird cars with the new … Melissa Breau: With the start button. Hannah Branigan: Yeah, and you just sit there for a while and you’re like, “I guess I’m going to have to go ask someone for help.” The chain broke because there was a behavior that was required in the middle there that was not yet fluent. Once you learn how to do that behavior, now you know how to start this new, weird, funky car, and you’re able to complete your behavior chain. Melissa Breau: For anybody wondering, you have to step on the brake and then push the button. Usually. Hannah Branigan: Yeah. I had to go back in and ask for help. Melissa Breau: I had to ask for help too. I could not figure that out. To get back to dogs for a minute, what are some examples of behavior chains that are helpful for competitive obedience? Hannah Branigan: In competition the whole performance is a behavior chain, from the time you get your dog out of the crate to when you put your dog back in the crate, or back in the car, or whatever, after the performance. That whole sequence of events is a behavior chain, really. And it’s one of those combination sequences where some of the cues are coming from the environment and some of the cues are coming from you as a trainer. For example, we’ll look at the retrieve. You throw the dumbbell, the dog is still sitting at your side, and then you’re going to give a verbal cue to send the dog to go get the dumbbell. At that point, though, you’re no longer giving any cues. The cues are all present in the environment. So the dog leaves your side, runs out, the sight of the dumbbell tells the dog what to do with it. “Do I put my feet on it?” Hopefully not, because hopefully you’ve trained your pickup to fluency. So he sees the dumbbell, he scoops it up with his mouth on the bar of the dumbbell, now he’s got the dumbbell in his mouth, that’s his cue to return to you. He sees you standing there with your arms at your sides in that formal soldier kind of posture, that’s his cue to come sit in front. At that point you cue the give and then you cue him to come to heel. So you’ve given two of those cues for those behaviors, and the environment has given the rest of them. So that’s one exercise. But then again, that whole performance is a behavior chain, and we have sequences of behaviors that we have to perform to move from one exercise to the next. So once you’re done with the retrieve on a flat, now you need to cue a series of behaviors to move your dog into the retrieve over the high. Once you do that one, which is another little behavior chain, you have another behavior chain that links the retrieve over the high to moving over to the broad jump. I think we forget that there are still behaviors happening between “Exercise finished” and “Are you ready?” So that’s something that I have made a personal project to figure out. Melissa Breau: I know your upcoming class gets into this, and specifically into the behavior chains, in a big way. Can you share a little bit about that? Hannah Branigan: Yeah. It’s called “Unchain Your Performance,” I think, and it’s kind of a joke because I can’t do anything seriously. But the idea is that in order to unchain yourself from that feeling of having to have food in your pocket, having to have a treat in your hand, and get multiple behaviors, we can build behavior chains, build these sequences of behaviors, that end in the primary reinforcement, the food, the toy, whatever. That’s the little plan, which I thought was hilarious but maybe not everybody gets. But anyway, it is a common problem, in that it is the nature of dog sports that we have to leave all of our sources of primary reinforcement, all the stuff that we’ve been using for months or years to train this dog to do this particular set of behaviors, and we leave them all over here on our chair or in our crate, and we have to go all the way into this other space, which is usually clearly delineated by ring gates or hay bales or ropes or something, but it’s quite clearly a different room in the environment, and there are no food or toys in there. And it does not take many repetitions for your dog to catch on to the idea that “She left all the food over there, but we’re going into this room where there is no food.” That’s not the whole thing that makes performance hard, that makes competing hard, but it is a piece of it, and it is a piece that we want to account for. So one of the things that we can do is we can teach the dog that by being very systematic, I can create this sequence of behaviors that does lead to access to the reinforcement, even when it’s back at your chair. I can communicate that concept through successful approximations, which is shaping in a way, in that we’re gradually building these increments of performance by holding these sequences together in a continuous stream of cues and response and cue-response and cue-response that leads into the ring, we do the performance, and then out of the ring, and bam — that’s when you get access to your reinforcer. All of that is connected instead of having a big gap where we’ve left the food and then nothing happens, and then I come ask you to do this whole bunch of things, and then there’s this gap, and then magically food appears. So it doesn’t work to just feed at the end of the performance. There has to be that connection, and we need to condition the dog, we need to teach them that, “The reinforcement you’re getting right now, here at this chair, is related to the behavior you just performed.” Melissa Breau: You mentioned in there this idea that it does give people freedom from treats and toys, at least on their body, in order to get into the ring. But when you’re talking about clicker training and things, folks often say not to bother loading the clicker anymore because dogs figure it out. If we’re consistent about rewarding when we leave the ring, would a dog just figure it out that after they compete they get good stuff; it’s just in the next little bit of the room? Hannah Branigan: Well, yes and no. If you were consistent with how you performed that whole sequence of events, yes, it would probably totally work. That’s not usually the case in real life. We certainly have examples of dogs being able to catch on to sequences of events as cues that reinforcement is coming. For example, if you feed your dog at 5:30 every night, those behaviors that you’re doing that are leading up to dinnertime, your dog is totally aware of, and when you close your laptop and stand up and start walking toward the kitchen, your dog’s already responding to that. That consistent flow of events that you’re creating with your behavior there effectively becomes the conditioned reinforcer aspect would walk forward in time from scooping the food into the bowl to walking to the kitchen … to closing the laptop and then walking into the kitchen. So yes, that effect is there. However, it does depend on how good of a predictor your behaviors are, which requires consistency. When we’re talking about something in the real world, like a performance, there’s a lot of stuff that happens in between. If we’re talking about a 2-, 5-, maybe 8-minute long obedience run, that’s a lot of stuff to depend on just repetition. There’s a lot left to chance. Could the dog figure that out? Yes, and probably some dogs do. But we can do better than that by breaking it down and being systematic and deliberately building that from the ground up, or from the chair back, or however you want to think about it, so that we know for sure that there’s a connection, instead of just hoping that if I do this a hundred times, eventually it will come out right. Your dog can be learning so many things, and if you’re inconsistent in that space, like sometimes you come out of the ring and you continue straight to your crate and you give them the meatball, but sometimes you come out and somebody says something to you and you look away from your dog, and then you forget where your chair is, or you get there and … stuff happens. The bigger that space is, the more likely that there’s some external variable that’s going to come in and mess up your party. It’s easier, it’s more effective, to be more deliberate about how you build that. Melissa Breau: It feels like, looking at this, that there are two approaches to this whole deal of helping your dog understand that the ring has value. So the idea of building reinforcers you can bring INTO the ring with you, like personal play, which I know is a big topic at FDSA, and then this concept of teaching the dog that the good stuff will come when they’re all done and they get back to their chair or their crate or whatever. Are some dogs better suited for one approach or the other? Hannah Branigan: I don’t think it’s an either/or kind of thing at all. It’s just incorporating … however, again, the whole performance is a sequence of behaviors, so part of that sequence can and should, in my opinion, include a series of, we’ll say, very easy behaviors, preferred behaviors, like play. Ideally, play is a very high-frequency, it’s a very easy behavior, it’s very cheap for your dog because it’s so fun. So there’s some behaviors that are easier as part of your ring performance. Some of the behaviors you’re going to be asking of your dog are a lot harder, like finding the correct scent article under pressure while there’s some strange man staring at him, holding a clipboard, and being very judgy. So it is, I think, very helpful to apply a little bit of the easy-hard-easy pattern that we use in training a lot, where you ask for something a little bit harder and then you ask for something easier and you reinforce it, and then you ask for something a little bit harder and you ask for something easier. We can play that pattern out in the ring by “I’m going to ask you to find the correct scent article, return with that, take it, call to heel, exercise finished, now I’m going to cue an easy behavior, which is playful interaction with me,” whatever that looks like for you and your dog. Those are behaviors that need to be trained and conditioned separately, out of context, and then you can work them into your performance. But they still have to be something you have to condition the dog to expect. We have to build it. It can be systematic, be deliberate about building those easy behaviors into the performance so the dog knows what to expect. That’s part of what makes it easy. Easy things are things we expect. He knows that “Oh, and then we’ll play, and she’ll pet me, and at the end of that play session there’s another call to heel, and we go do another thing, and then there’ll be another play, and she’ll pet me, and then she’ll call me to heel, and do another thing, and then after that we get my leash on, and we go to my chair, and I eat my cookies.” So they can have all of those things, and it’s not one or the other. It’s looking at the whole picture and being thoughtful about how do you want this to happen, what are the actions you’re doing, the cues that you’re giving to your dog that tell the dog what to expect, what’s next, what behavior should he perform, and then being ready to give those cues so that you’re maintaining that continuous interaction that we would call it connection in the ring. There is a common phenomenon that I experienced with my own dogs, I didn’t really know what was going on, and I’ve since seen in a lot of student dogs and go, “This is something we need to train for.” It’s that we are often very good at incorporating play behaviors at the end of some training exercise that we do. We call the dog on a recall, the dog comes to front, finished, exercise finished, “Yay, good boy! You’re amazing and you’re beautiful!” We pet and we play and we do all this beautiful play, and then that’s the end. But we have to have a very clean way to go from “I’m petting and playing with you” to calling to heel. What I noticed with my own dog is when I would stop petting him, and I’d pull my hands back up and I’m ready to move on to the next thing, there was this withdrawal kind of effect where he would stand and just look at me and be a little bit flat. There was a question mark on his face, and I didn’t realize it in real time, but I saw it on the video. So many things are clearer on video after the fact. I was like, let’s try replicating it. Maybe that was just in the ring because he was stressed. So I tried it in my front yard, and damned if he didn’t stand and stare at me in the front yard when I tried to move from play back to call a heel. It was like, oh, this is a chaining problem. I need to be able to time that call. One, I need him to know to expect that this play session will end with another opportunity to work, and hopefully that opportunity to do those behaviors is also positively trained and so isn’t perceived as aversive. That’s part of my job. And then I need to time that cue for while we’re still engaged in the interaction, because if I am petting him and we’re engaged, and then I just stop playing and take a moment to collect myself, he’s just standing there looking at me, and then I say, “Heel,” and he’s like, “What?” There are two things. One, that ending of the play is potentially aversive. You’re taking the toy back. Whether there’s a real toy there or an imaginary toy, there has to be something to fill that space. I realized I was having gaps in my performance, and it was making the setups at the beginning of each exercise harder than they needed to be, because there ended up being a disconnection in-between the exercises. Even when I thought I was doing a good job at maintaining the connection, there was still a little bit of a question mark on his face, and subsequently when I would ask him to come to heel to set up for the next exercise, he would be a little slow, a little bit panty, and then I would fall into some horrible habits of patting my leg and shuffling my feet and repeating cues, which I never do in training, and only add to the weirdness of the ring performance. Melissa Breau: Most people probably wouldn’t think about that. You’re giving your dog a reinforcer, “OK, you did a good job,” now I can get back to work. From the human’s perspective, that makes sense, but from the dog’s perspective, I can certainly see how that might feel a little bit jarring to be in the middle of this interaction and have somebody be like, “OK, time to go.” Hannah Branigan: Especially if they didn’t even say it, if they just stopped, like you’re eating lunch with a friend and you’re having a conversation, and she just gets up and leaves. And you’re like, “What?” But we tend to rush dogs with reinforcement anyway. I think it’s just more obvious when there’s not a physical thing involved. Food is relatively easy because the food is swallowed and then it’s gone, and then that is a very clear signal that that reinforcement is and both of you are aware of that, so there doesn’t have to be an in-between. But we still tend to rush dogs: “Hey, come back, come back, let’s go, let’s go.” Whereas we could let them swallow, let them re-engage, and then give the next cue. With toys, it’s a little bit harder because the toy is still there and you have to take the toy back. We still have a tendency, we get in a hurry as trainers and we want to rush the dog back so we can do the next thing. So “Give me the ball back,” and then we reach toward the ball, and the dog isn’t aware that the reinforcer is over just yet: “I’m still pulling on your toy.” And then, when there’s not a toy there at all, I think it’s even more abstract. So we really have to be thoughtful about how are we signaling that we’re now going to the next thing, and make sure that that transition from this easy behavior to this new next thing, this new harder behavior, is not a surprise, that it’s expected, and that it’s a positive, that the dog has good feelings about that transition. Melissa Breau: To shift gears a little bit, we’ve talked a lot now about behavior chains and the intentional, careful planning, what it takes, think through, “OK, these are the pieces, and this is the order I want them in, and these are the bits in-between, and I want to think about that.” What about unintentional behavior chains? Let’s start with the obvious: Is it possible? Hannah Branigan: Of course it’s possible, and it happens all the time. Behavior chains — that’s how we interact with our environment. There are many, many things we do where we have to do a long sequence of different actions to get whatever outcome it is that we’re after. We can certainly set up what happens to people, but we’ll look at dogs because that’s what we’re interested in right now. It certainly happens in the dog world. Many of us have experienced the undesired behavior chain of the puppy that jumps up at you and then sits. I’m trying to teach you a polite greet, and the greeting that we end up living with or settling for in the short term is the puppy jumps up and then sits. “Did you see me? I sat! Did you miss it? Let me jump up and then sit again.” These sorts of things can happen in lots of places where there’s some behavior occurs on the way to the behavior that you want to reinforce, and then it gets built into that sequence of behaviors. Of course it’s harder to do that if it’s a behavior chain you want to occur. That’s like the Murphy’s Law of dog training, kind of. But if you want the behavior sequence together, it will take months of careful planning and successful approximation to create that structure. But if it’s a behavior that you don’t want because it’s annoying, like vocalizing, like squeaking in your crate, or something like that, or jumping up and then sitting or … Melissa Breau: Or ping-ponging to the end of your leash before returning. Hannah Branigan: Yes, ping-ponging to the end of your leash and then coming back for a treat, and then end of your leash and then coming back for a treat. Those things, of course, you only have to reinforce them, like, one time and you’ve bought it for life. So the trick for those unintended behavior chains, undesired behavior chains, the ones you don’t want, is to reinforce before the undesired behavior happens. So click before the puppy jumps up, which does mean you’re clicking before they sit, but you’re clicking before they jump up, and it interrupts the undesired behavior chain. It’s the universal trick for fixing that in all cases. Melissa Breau: Before the puppy squeaks, or before they hit the end of the leash. Hannah Branigan: Right. Exactly, yes. Click before the thing you don’t want to happen, happens, and it interrupts that chain, and you can get the reinforcement that was going to come at the end of the chain is now coming, you’re short-circuiting, you’re making a little shortcut to that reinforcer. “You don’t have to sit. You don’t have to jump up. Great. Now you’re stopping 2 feet away from me.” Or in the case that you’re hitting the leash, maybe you’re just dipping your head and looking right back, bam, I’ll reinforce that, because that, for me, is a lot better than having my shoulder snapped every three steps. Melissa Breau: Depending on the size of the dog, but yeah. All right, I’ve got one last question for you, Hannah. It’s the new last question I’ve been asking everyone when they come back on: What’s a lesson you’ve learned or been reminded of recently when it comes to dog training? Hannah Branigan: I would say something that Figment has reminded me of frequently right now is the importance of setting up the environment to make the behavior that you want very, very easy to happen, and the behavior you don’t want to see very, very unlikely to happen. So that he’s always rehearsing the things that you like, so that you have opportunities to reinforce them, and rarely — and hopefully never, but probably because we’re all human, rarely — practicing the behaviors that you don’t like. Almost all of the places through the course of the day where I start finding myself feeling frustrated and maybe tempted to fall back on some old training habits that are not tools that I want to use anymore, it’s almost always that I have failed to set the environment up so that he’s set up for success. And it means that I may need to put a leash on him temporarily while we’re walking through the house to go out the back door, if there’s going to be a cat in the kitchen or other predictable features of the environment that I need to change his behavior around. So I would say that’s something that I am having to think about. You don’t think about it as much with your adult dogs, with your old dogs, because they have their habits like we have our routines, and so those types of things are now very much unconscious. But with the new puppy, he doesn’t have those routines yet. He doesn’t have a lot of habits yet. I do have habits, and some of my habits are not setting him up for success. So I need to change my behavior so that he’s always rehearsing the things that I do want. If I catch myself starting to feel frustrated because he’s practicing behavior that I don’t like because it’s annoying or frustrating or dangerous, I need to change my behavior to change his environment so that I have what I want so that I can reinforce it. Melissa Breau: Thank you so much for coming back on the podcast Hannah. This has been great. Hannah Branigan: Awesome! Thanks for having me. Melissa Breau: And thanks to our listeners for tuning in. We’ll be back next week with Shade Whitesel. We’ll be talking about crucial concepts for competition. 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. Thanks again for tuning in -- and happy training!

Nancy is a certified trainer with the CCPDT, and a certified behavior consultant with the IAABC. She teaches seminars, webinars, and workshops on dog training, dog behavior, and the business end of training throughout Canada, the US, and Europe. She has presented at conferences for the Pet Professional Guild (USA), the IAABC (UK), DogEvent (France), and will be presenting at the WOOF! 2019 conference in February here in the UK. She is also an instructor for Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, where she teaches online courses focusing on various topics including treating separation anxiety and learning to use desensitization and counter-conditioning to help fearful dogs. Nancy’s professional background in public relations, communications, and customer service management has inspired her to share her business experience with dog trainers to increase their bottom line and to take the stress out of communicating with difficult clients. Nancy has written numerous articles on dog behaviour and is a regular contributor to the Whole Dog Journal. She shares her home in Quebec, Canada with her husband Tom and their Border Terrier, Bennigan.

Summary: Nancy Tucker is a certified pet dog trainer and behavior consultant in Sherbrooke, Quebec. She teaches seminars, webinars, and workshops on dog training, dog behavior, and the business end of training in Canada, the U.S., and in Europe. She specializes in common behavior issues that affect the family dog, including more complex issues like aggression and anxiety. Nancy has also written numerous articles on dog behavior and is a regular contributor to Whole Dog Journal. At FDSA, she teaches a great class on separation anxiety, another on desensitization and counterconditioning, both of which are coming up in October, and a more lighthearted class on door greeting manners, which is currently running. Next Episode:  To be released 8/17/2018, featuring Helene Marie, talking about R+ Herding. 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 Tucker. Nancy is a certified pet dog trainer and behavior consultant in Sherbrooke, Quebec. She teaches seminars, webinars, and workshops on dog training, dog behavior, and the business end of training in Canada, the U.S., and in Europe. She specializes in common behavior issues that affect the family dog, including more complex issues like aggression and anxiety. Nancy has also written numerous articles on dog behavior and is a regular contributor to Whole Dog Journal. At FDSA, she teaches a great class on separation anxiety, another on desensitization and counterconditioning, both of which are coming up in October, and a more lighthearted class on door greeting manners, which is currently running. Hi Nancy, welcome to the podcast! Nancy Tucker: Hi Melissa. Melissa Breau: So, to start us out, can you just share a little information to remind everybody who the dog is that you share your life with and what you’re working on with him? Nancy Tucker: Yep. We’re a single-dog family, and I know that this is sometimes shocking and even an alien concept to lots of people, especially a trainer who has only one dog. “What? Just the one dog? Oh no, what happened?” Nothing happened, we just have the one dog, and I just find life far more enjoyable and easier to manage with just the one dog. He’s a 1-year-old Border Terrier named Bennigan — or Benni, for short — and we’re not involved in any dog sports or organized activities. I work on run-of-the-mill pet dog behaviors with him, and of course he’s my demo dog for lots of teaching videos, so sometimes I end up teaching him behaviors I’ll never ask of him again. But he loves to learn and he’s total eye candy on the video because he’s crazy-cute. Melissa Breau: I cannot believe he’s already a year old. It feels like you just got him. Nancy Tucker: I know! Melissa Breau: I do understand he has his own fan club. Nancy Tucker: He does. He has his own Facebook page called Bennigan’s Shenanigans. It’s where I post lots of silly things, like our pretend conversations between us, or photos and videos of some of his activities. And I’ll sometimes post some really easy training videos, especially when his fans ask how I trained a particular thing he was doing in another video they saw. I really like doing “how to” videos for pet dog stuff because it gets people to interact with their dog in a way they’ve never done before. I didn’t realize just how popular Benni was until I was teaching a seminar in another city a couple of months ago on separation anxiety for trainers. I had photos and videos of Benni in my presentation, and after hearing me refer to him as “my dog, Benni,” one of the participants looked up suddenly and said, “Oh my god, you’re Benni’s mom?” It was a really humbling experience. She was more excited about that than my presentation. So I’m thinking I should probably put that on my business card: Benni’s mom. Melissa Breau: How’s his door behavior looking these days? Nancy Tucker: Pretty good, actually. We’ve come a long way with Benni, because his greetings are super-expressive, especially when me or my husband walk through the door. To be honest, I let it slide for the longest time because it’s incredibly easy to let these things slide with little dogs. When a large dog greets you by jumping up or weaving between your legs, you can’t ignore that. But when a little guy does it, it’s cute and far less dangerous, of course, so we let it slide a lot more often. But we worked on his door greeting skills a lot more this summer and he’s a star now. He still needs some help remembering what to do once in a while, and we still use management sometimes, which is normal, but overall he does me pretty proud. Melissa Breau: Nancy’s class this session, for anybody who doesn’t know, is on just that — getting a calm door greeting, instead of the crazy chaos I know I tend to have at my house when someone gets home. Looking at the syllabus, Nancy, it looks like the first few lectures are heavy on management. Why is managing this behavior such an important step in starting to fix it? Nancy Tucker: The first step in modifying behavior is doing everything we can to prevent the old behavior from being practiced. Every time a dog gets to do that behavior, it gets reinforced by something, and that means that we’re actually helping to maintain it somehow. Reinforcement, in this case, can be in the form of getting immediate access to somebody at the door, or sometimes it can also be attention from the person at the door, or attention from us. Even if we’re yelling or grabbing at our dogs to corral them or try to move them out of the way, we could inadvertently be reinforcing that behavior. Obviously the dog is getting something out of that behavior, or he wouldn’t keep repeating it. If we can prevent it by using some management, we’ll at least stop reinforcing it. Melissa Breau: Is it possible to manage it forever without actually working on it? Nancy Tucker: Yeah, for sure. In some instances I’d even recommend it, if the circumstances make training a new behavior more challenging than simple management. My goal is always to find a solution that will make life better for both the human and the dog, so yeah, if management is the best way to obtain that result, then I think it’s perfectly fine. On the other hand, polite door greeting is actually a fairly simple behavior to teach. It can take some time, especially if the dog has been practicing an unwanted behavior for a long time. But once we’ve got some polite behaviors in place and we continue to reinforce them, it’s so nice to not have to worry or scramble when someone comes to the door. Melissa Breau: As folks progress from management to training, what are their options? What kinds of alternative behaviors do you like to teach? Nancy Tucker: Contrary to popular belief, reducing a dog’s access to the door area is not the most effective approach. I talk a lot about this in class. We get the feeling that we need to control our dog’s access to the door, and to get him to stay somewhere else and to stay quiet, and that’s actually really hard. My goal is never to create robot dogs who stay away from the door and give all visitors a really wide berth. I want to allow dogs to check out who’s coming into their home. I want to encourage interaction. But I also want to help people teach their dogs more appropriate interactions in that context. So while we do cover some behaviors that essentially send the dog away from the door area when someone walks in, because that can be really handy at times, we’ll also be teaching our dogs that one of the most effective ways for them to get access to visitors is to keep their paws on the floor or to carry something in their mouth. This one’s really good for happy barkers or dogs who get mouthy when they’re excited. And we’ll use nose targeting and other fun games that allow the dog to regain some composure before he interacts with someone at the door. So it’s not about reducing access to visitors. It’s all about adding a little finesse to their greeting behavior. Melissa Breau: I’m going to guess that some of those things are initially taught away from the door. After all, as with all dog training things, we want to start small and then build up. So how do you go about making the door “small”? How do you break something down like that? Nancy Tucker: You’re right, we’ll start by working on all the new behaviors in a more neutral area of the home with very little distractions, just like any new behavior. And then we move the whole thing over to the door area, but with nobody coming or going. We’re just helping the dog generalize the behavior to a new location. And then we’ll start introducing the door into our training sessions by first we’re just opening and closing it with no one else around. Again, it’s all about adding an element of difficulty very gradually. And then we’ll go out and come back in and practice the new behaviors, which really, when you think about it, is not at all exciting to the dog. He’s thinking, “I just saw you two seconds ago. This is boring.” And this is what we want. We want the dog to be able to practice the new behaviors when he’s not excited. And then, when the dog is able to offer those behaviors in that context, we’ll ask someone else to practice the exercises with us, someone familiar to the dog who has already greeted them, spent a little time with them prior to practicing these exercises — again, we’re trying to make it least exciting possible for the dog — and then we’ll gradually make our way to having a stranger enter the home. That’s the Holy Grail. I know it can be very difficult for people to find, or they think it can be very difficult for them to find somebody to help them with these types of exercises, especially if they live in a more rural area, for example. But in the past, people have asked neighbors to help play this role, or they’ve invited a co-worker to stop by, and people are generally really happy to help. Melissa Breau: You’re also covering multi-dog households, right? Nancy Tucker: That’s right. Melissa Breau: How does adding extra dogs into it further complicate all of it? Nancy Tucker: When you have a door-greeting issue with a single dog, that’s usually a pretty basic situation to handle. But when you have multiple dogs, you sometimes need Ninja-level management and handling skills just to even get to your door. So we’ll be handling multi-dog households the same way we train any other behavior with multiple dogs, and that means one dog at a time. In the lecture that introduces multi-dog households, I talk about the instigator dog. Every multi-dog household has one of those. He’s the one that usually sets the others off by being the first to respond to a sound or other stimulus, and anyone who has more than two dogs can probably already recognize which one of their dogs I’m talking about here. Anyway, we’ll be working with one dog at a time, and ideally we’ll start working with the instigator dog first. And then those handlers can work with each of their other dogs also individually, just like any other training session. And then, once each dog has learned the new behaviors and they’re doing well with them, we can start working with multiple dogs at the door. But that’s an advanced level of difficulty, and there’s no rush to get to that point. So it’s always best to work systematically with one dog at a time before putting them all into an exciting situation where they can’t possibly succeed. Melissa Breau: It feels like you’ve got lots of pieces in here. I know you also cover door dashing. Personally, I think door dashing is super-frustrating, in addition to being incredibly dangerous in some situations. Any thoughts on why dogs do that, why they build a habit of dashing out the door? Nancy Tucker: In most cases, dogs push past us at the door because they’re in a terrible rush to greet whoever is there. Those that run out for an unauthorized adventure when there’s no one there to greet — they’re simply getting out there to have a good time, whether that means exploring the neighborhood or going into the yard down the street to meet up with their buddy. Sometimes it can be a sign that maybe the dog is a little bored or his needs aren’t being met, but most of the time, as long as we’re not talking about a dog who is aggressively running out the door — and we’ll talk about that a little later as well — but most of the time it’s just to have a good time, or because we’re taking too long to open the door. They want to get there quick. Melissa Breau: How do you approach that? How do you start to work on door dashing and what do you want the dog to do instead? Nancy Tucker: I like to teach the dog that an open door is not an invitation to step outside, and I make it really attractive and rewarding to stay put, even while the door is wide open and they can see or hear or smell the outside world. Naturally, we get there gradually through a series of exercises, but it really doesn’t take that long to teach. I’ve got a couple more exercises that I like to add to the end of this process that makes it even more likely that a dog will stick around close to the door, even if he does manage to step outside. But you have to take the class to know more about those. Melissa Breau: Some dogs may have years of practicing bad door habits — you mentioned this in passing earlier. Do you find that it can take a really long time to retrain? Obviously every dog is different, and people should move at their dog’s speed, but still, over the course of six weeks, what kind of progress can people expect to make? Nancy Tucker: You’re right — how long a dog has been practicing a behavior can affect how long it might take to change his behavior in any given context. But generally, once we get rolling with practicing the new games and exercises, people begin to see a shift in their dog’s response to the usual signs that someone’s at the door. Within a few weeks they often see reduced barking, or a faster response to the simple cues that they’ll be working on. For some people, they’ll get a handle on the door greeting part pretty quickly, and then they’ll spend a few more weeks after the class is finished to work on the dog’s interaction with guests after they’ve come inside and are visiting for a while. You get the dogs that stay excited and happy and are constantly trying to get visitors’ attention, but by then the students have lots of tools and ideas to work with to tackle that part of the problem. That’s kind of outside of the scope of the class, but the things that they learn during class will definitely help with that as well. Melissa Breau: What if we kind of … you know, secretly LIKE that our dogs are so excited to see us when we get home? Is training control in this situation going to change that? Nancy Tucker: If you’ve ever taken a training lesson from me, or followed one of my classes, you’ll probably have figured out that I actually like normal dog behaviors. I’m far from one to create super-quiet robot dogs, and I use the term robot dogs a lot. I like natural dog behavior. I think dogs should be allowed to greet guests, and so my goal here is not to take the fun out of it for them, but to at least take the chaos out of it. If, by the end of the class, your dog is running to the door to greet you or your guests with a super-wiggly body and a toy in his mouth with four paws on the floor and nobody’s tripping over each other and the door can be left wide open and nobody’s running off, then I will consider that a massive success. Melissa Breau: It sounds like my idea of success. I know you’ve got a note at the bottom of your class description about who is and isn’t appropriate for the class. I wanted to ask you about that. Can you share, along with a bit more information on who might want to consider signing up? Nancy Tucker: This is a super-important note. I want people to recognize that this class isn’t for the dogs who are fearful of strangers coming through the door, or dogs who might bark and lunge aggressively toward guests. Those dogs that bark at someone walking through the door and at the same time they’re backing up or they’re avoiding eye contact — they’re not happy to see or greet somebody. And that’s a whole other topic. That’s not what we’re addressing in this class. This class is for the dogs who are so excited about greeting someone, and their behavior is a little over the top, but they don’t know what to do with themselves when someone walks in, or they push past you when you go to open the door, or they knock you out of the way, or they’re jumping up on the door before you even get a chance to open it. These are dogs who are happy to greet someone, not fearful or upset about seeing somebody at the door. So this class is for those happy, excited dogs. Melissa Breau: Gotcha. So one last question — my new “last interview question” — what’s a lesson you’ve learned or been reminded of recently when it comes to dog training? Nancy Tucker: A-ha. Well, this summer I was reminded about how training a behavior in one context, like in one location maybe, doesn’t mean that our dog will know how to behave in a different context. It’s funny you bring this up, because this just happened again last night, but it’s a pretty simple concept and you would think that I would know this by now, but when the summer weather arrived and we started eating our meals outside on the deck, I realized that I had to teach Benni table manners all over again. He knows what’s expected of him when I’m eating at the kitchen table, or on a coffee table in the living room, or even when I’m sitting at my desk in my office, because we’ve practiced those. I eat all over the house, basically, and we’ve practiced those behaviors, and he’s really, really polite and he’s got this down pat. But when I sat down … we have an outdoor couch with a table, and when I sat down on the outdoor couch to eat my first meal on the deck this summer, Benni had no manners and he was all up in my face. It only took us a few repetitions to straighten this out, but it really reminded me about the importance of not assuming our dog knows something just because he can do it in another context or another location. It’s easy for us to forget that and to get frustrated with our dog because he’s doing a behavior that we don’t like, and we think, Well, he knows this. He knows he shouldn’t do this. But the context has changed, and it’s a good reminder that we just need to brush up on our training when we change the context or location. Melissa Breau: For anybody who is thinking about signing up, class registration closes on the 15th, so that should be in just a couple of days. This will come out, I think, on the 10th, so you’ve got just a couple of days before things close. So if you want to hop in, go over and do that. Also, we are going to be back next week with Helene Marie to talk about a topic that gets asked about a lot: herding in an R+ way, so using positive reinforcement to train herding behaviors. Thank you so much for coming back on the podcast Nancy! This has been great. I’m glad we got to chat through all this. Nancy Tucker: This is so much fun! I love chatting with you on podcasts! Melissa Breau: And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in! 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. Thanks again for tuning in -- and happy training!

Summary: Nancy Tucker is a certified pet dog trainer and behavior consultant in Sherbrooke, Quebec. She regularly teaches seminars, webinars, and workshops on dog training, dog behavior, and the business end of training to dog owners, trainers, and veterinary staff in Canada, the U.S., and in Europe. She specializes in common behavior issues that affect the family dog, including more complex issues like aggression and anxiety. Nancy has written numerous articles on dog behavior and is a regular contributor to the Whole Dog Journal. At FDSA, she's offering a great class on separation anxiety and a new class on desensitization and counterconditioning for the April Session. Links Nancy's Website Next Episode:  To be released 3/30/2018, featuring Nancy Tucker to talk about desensitization and counter conditioning. 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 Tucker. Nancy is a certified pet dog trainer and behavior consultant in Sherbrooke, Quebec. She regularly teaches seminars, webinars, and workshops on dog training, dog behavior, and the business end of training to dog owners, trainers, and veterinary staff in Canada, the U.S., and in Europe. She specializes in common behavior issues that affect the family dog, including more complex issues like aggression and anxiety. Nancy has written numerous articles on dog behavior and is a regular contributor to the Whole Dog Journal. At FDSA, she's offering a great class on separation anxiety and a new class on desensitization and counterconditioning for the April Session. Hi Nancy, welcome to the podcast! Nancy Tucker: Hi Melissa, hi everyone, I'm very happy to be here. Melissa Breau: I'm excited to have you here. To get us started out, can you just share a little information about the dog you share your life with and what you're working on with him? Nancy Tucker: Sure. I have a Border Terrier named Bennigan. He's not quite 9 months old yet, but he's creeping up on 9 months, so right now we're working on helping him navigate canine adolescence. That means we're teaching him the basics, with an emphasis on things like impulse control, and good, solid recalls, and trying to remain calm. Melissa Breau: With two classes on the calendar, I want to make sure we get to talk about both of them, but I wanted to start with the shiny new one. You named it “Feelings Change.” What inspired that name? Nancy Tucker: Well, it was catchy, because we're talking about feelings and we're talking about changing feelings. In training, we focus a lot on shaping behavior, and when we're dealing with behavior issues that are rooted in fear, we need to address the emotions that are driving that behavior. Lucky for us, there's a way to zero in on those emotions and help our dogs change how they feel about something, and that's huge. Melissa Breau: I know the core is desensitization and counterconditioning; I mentioned that during the intro. I think anyone who's been in the dog world for a while has probably heard those words thrown about, or at least seen the abbreviations, usually ds/cc, but can you explain what they actually mean? Nancy Tucker: In a nutshell, when we're talking about desensitization, we're describing a process that involves exposing our dog to something they fear, and that's done in a very measured and systematic way. We would start exposing them in a way that is completely non-threatening to them. It doesn't induce any fear at all, and we gradually work our way up from there. That's desensitization. Counterconditioning involves pairing the scary thing with something that elicits a positive emotional response in the dog, so now we're working with building an association. When that's done correctly, we can actually change the dog's emotional response in such a way that he's no longer fearful of the thing that he used to be afraid of. Typically we're aiming for a neutral response, that he's just not afraid of that thing anymore, but if we're lucky, we might even go as far as to create a positive emotional response, which means that he actually now feels good about the trigger that used to scare him. So we're talking about two separate and distinct methods here, desensitization and counterconditioning, but together they complement each other and they're very effective in treating fearful responses. Melissa Breau: Listeners of the podcast have definitely heard us talk before about the idea of creating a positive conditioned emotional response, or a CER. How is that concept, that idea of creating a positive CER, different from what you're talking about with desensitization and counterconditioning? Nancy Tucker: CERs — I'm giggling because now every time I hear the term CER, all I can think about is “ball feelings,” as they're known at Fenzi, thanks to … for those who don't know, that was coined on Hannah Branigan's podcast on CERs. When we're talking about CERs, we're dealing with creating a positive response to something that was previously neutral to the dog. So we're starting from scratch, basically, with a clean slate. When we're talking about desensitization and counterconditioning, we're not starting from scratch. The dog has already formed an association with something, and it's not a good one. To give a visual here, if creating a positive CER is like building a brand new house on a vacant lot, with only brand-new materials, desensitization and counterconditioning is like remodeling an old house. You first need to tear down some things, and you're never quite sure what you're going to find when you start knocking down walls. Anybody who's remodeled a house, I think, can probably relate to that. So maybe you discover you can rebuild a whole new fabulous design on a really solid foundation, or maybe you'll need to make some adjustments and compromises along the way, and build something wonderful but not quite a brand new design. Does that make sense? Melissa Breau: Absolutely. I love that analogy. That's fantastic — the idea of building from scratch versus remodeling. And for listeners who aren't Hannah fans, Hannah's podcast is “Drinking From The Toilet,” and I will try and find the specific episode that Nancy's talking about to include a link to it in the show notes. To get back to our conversation, the general concept sounds simple enough — the idea that we want to build this positive association — but I know a lot of people really struggle to do this stuff well. What are some of the common pitfalls that lead folks to struggle and to be unsuccessful? Nancy Tucker: The reason that I want to teach this course in the first place is because of these common pitfalls. The course focuses on the skills and mechanics that we need to have in order to be successful at desensitization and counterconditioning. There are natural laws at play here that we just can't get around. Things need to happen in a very specific way in order to work. We can't cut corners, and we can't speed up the process, and honestly, that's something that we're all guilty of when we're training our dogs. We can be really impatient, and we try to skip a few steps to reach our goal just a little bit faster. Sometimes we're lucky and our dog figures things out on his own, so hurrying up ends up being very reinforcing for us because it worked, so we do it over and over, again and again. But, when we're treating fears, that's just something we can't do, and understanding the process better and practicing our own mechanical skills is the best thing that we can do to finally be able to help our dogs overcome their fear. And it's actually a very rewarding process. Melissa Breau: Can you share a little more about the class? How you approach teaching this to your human learners to help them go through that process with their canine partners? Nancy Tucker: At the start of the class we'll all be on the same page, so we'll all be practicing the same set of skills, regardless of everyone's individual training experience. And you don't need training experience to do this class. It's quite an eye-opener. Once you start to really break down your own mechanical skills — and naturally this is a Fenzi class, so everything is done in the spirit of positivity and support, and there's no judgment — so there will be nitpicking, for sure, there'll be a lot of analyzing mechanics, but it's not about judgment. It's about helping to perfect these skills. So a lot of nitpicking, but in a very good way. The students' skills will grow from this experience, and they'll be able to transfer these skills to their other training projects as well. So at first we'll be making sure everyone fully understands the process and practices their mechanical skills, and then we'll tackle some actual issues. Students will be able to work on changing their dogs' fearful response to something. Melissa Breau: I know the other class you're teaching in April is on separation anxiety. How is separation anxiety different from what we're talking about here – from general desensitization and counterconditioning – and how does that lead to how you treat it? Nancy Tucker: Treating separation anxiety definitely involves desensitization, and a lot of it, in fact. It's the meat of the program. Desensitization is the meat of any program to treat separation anxiety. We very slowly and very gradually expose the dog to the thing that he fears the most, which is being alone or being separated from a particular family member. We make sure the dog only experiences being alone for however amount of time he can handle without experiencing fear or distress. That can be a very time-consuming process, so again, this is one of those things that we can't rush and we can't cut corners. But along with some environmental management, desensitization is really the most effective way to treat separation anxiety. Melissa Breau: I think a lot of the time when people talk about separation anxiety, they are actually talking about a few different things. It's not necessarily one of those terms that has a hard and fast definition in common use. Do you mind sharing what separation anxiety is — your definition — and what some of the symptoms are of true separation anxiety? Nancy Tucker: We tend to use separation anxiety as an umbrella term for what are essentially a few different issues, so most of the time, we're using it incorrectly. But it's so widespread as a label for a common problem that it's easier to use it. I know that's not correct, it's not scientifically correct, but sometimes when everyone misuses a term the same way, it's just as effective to use the term, if that makes any sense. In truth, what most people are dealing with when they say that their dog has separation anxiety is a dog who fears being alone. That is more common than actual separation anxiety. He fears isolation and he panics when he's left alone. True separation anxiety is when a dog experiences distress if he's apart from a particular person or persons. A dog who suffers from fear of isolation will be fine as long as someone, anyone, is with him. A dog who suffers from separation anxiety will experience distress even if someone else is there with him, if that makes sense. Some of the telltale signs that a dog is experiencing distress during your absence, if you're listening to this and you suspect that your dog may be suffering from this, some of these signs — and what I'm about to mention is in no particular order of importance here, and the dog might display one or several of these behaviors, and at different intensities … and before I go into describing what these symptoms might be, I want to point out, too, that the level of intensity of a symptom does not correlate to the level of severeness of the fear. If a dog overtly displays symptoms, it doesn't mean that he is more fearful than the dog who cowers in the corner and does not move all day. That dog could be equally as in distress. Anyway, some of the signs are vocalization, barking, whining. Actually, that's how quite a few people learn that there is a problem is when their neighbor complains about barking during their absence. That's often the first clue. They don't know until somebody complains about it. So vocalization is one. Excessive drooling is another. You might come home and find a puddle of drool that some people might mistake for pee, but it's actually drool. There can be that much of it on the floor, or the dog's bed is soaking wet. Anorexia is a very common one as well. The dog won't touch his food or a treat toy. Sometimes I discover a problem when a client has called me for another issue. When I'm doing my history intake, I ask them how often the dog eats, or when is he fed, and they say, “We feed him in the morning before we go to work, but he doesn't touch that. He's not hungry in the morning. He doesn't eat until we get home.” And I find out that when they get home, the dog devours his food. That's a sign to me, if the dog hasn't touched his food all day from the moment that they leave, that there may be an issue there, that he might not appreciate being alone and there could be a problem there. So anorexia. Obvious signs that the dog has scratched or chewed an area, especially near an exit, near the door that the owner uses to leave the house. Peeing and defecating, usually a lot of it during their absence, even just a short absence. And self-mutilation, signs of excessive licking or chewing at the paws. If you're not sure what your dog might be doing when you're not home, set up a camera and video him, or watch a live feed. There's lots of apps now that we can use to keep an eye on our dogs. Some dogs might pace while you're getting ready to leave. They're pacing and then they continue for another five minutes after you're gone, but then they settle down quickly and they go to sleep without a problem. Or, on the other hand, some dogs might appear perfectly chill for a few minutes after you leave, and then they begin to panic. So you can't know unless you record it or watch a live feed. Melissa Breau: Right. And technology is our friend, for sure. Nancy Tucker: For sure. Melissa Breau: Do we know what actually causes separation anxiety? It seems like some dogs struggle with it and others are never fazed at all. Is there a reason? Nancy Tucker: That's a really, really good question, and I'll start by talking about what doesn't cause separation anxiety. Owners. Owners' behavior does not cause their dog to develop separation anxiety. If you have a dog who panics when left alone, it is not your fault. It's not because of something that you did. It's amazing how many people feel, or are told, that it's because of something that they did. It is not because you've spoiled him. In fact, if you have a puppy, helping him feel secure by responding to his needs will go farther towards building a confident adult dog than if you try to use tough love by letting him cry it out at night. Don't be afraid to shower your puppy with attention and to provide that sense of security. You do need to teach your young dog that being alone is nothing to be afraid of, but you can do that systematically. Back to causes. For starters, dogs who suffer from this problem, they tend to already be predisposed to having anxiety issues. Just like people, some of us might be more genetically predisposed to experience mental health issues, and this is true for dogs as well. It is worth mentioning that there is correlation between a few things in separation anxiety, but it can't be said for sure that these things actually cause it. For example, dogs who are surrendered to a shelter might display some isolation distress once they're adopted into a new home. Actually, that's pretty common. But it's possible that these dogs had this issue in their previous homes, and maybe that's the reason that some of them were surrendered in the first place. It's not always easy to tell. So it's not always accurate to say that a dog develops a fear of isolation because he was surrendered to a shelter or abandoned somewhere. Another possible correlation is dogs who are sick as very, very young puppies might develop separation anxiety as adults. And again, there's correlation there, but nothing to say that this is a cause. What I see most commonly is after a major change in a dog's life, like a move or a major disruption, a divorce, or a huge disruption in a dog's routine or schedule, that can lead to this type of problem. But again, in most cases we're talking about a dog who is already predisposed to experiencing anxiety. So it's not ultimately because you moved into a new house that you caused your dog to develop this problem. Rather, the move may have triggered an anxiety disorder that was already there but hadn't yet manifested into a behavior issue, if that makes sense. Melissa Breau: Absolutely. It's really interesting. I hadn't realized there were those specific things that were correlated with the issue. That's news to me, so it's interesting. I know you're not a vet, but I know that on the syllabus or in the description you mention that you do touch on meds in the class. I was curious if you'd talk about that a little bit. How do you determine if a student should talk to their vet about their options? Nancy Tucker: I really respect my limitations as a trainer and a behavior consultant, and I avoid talking about meds, except to say that everyone should do their own research and find out what's available to you to help your dog deal with an anxiety issue, and there are quite a few options out there. So if your dog is at risk of hurting himself — self-mutilation, or a dog who is scratching or throwing himself through glass, which I experienced that myself, a dog who is simply overwhelmed with fear or anxiety in general — I strongly urge you to look into medication to help him out. I will say this much: medication can be a huge help. It can create a sense of calm in a dog so that he's able to learn the new behaviors that you want to teach him. It puts him in a better state of mind to learn and for behavior modification to take place. A lot of the antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds out there, they will allow for learning to take place, so in other words, they aren't simply a sedative that can affect short-term memory. So that would be an important thing to discuss with the vet. If you're looking for medication to help your dog deal with anxiety or immense fear, you want to use a medication that will allow him to learn. The whole point of using medication to treat separation anxiety is to be able to work through a desensitization program so that the dog can eventually be comfortable alone at home. Melissa Breau: Right. You mention in the class description that, when done right, Gold videos in this class may be sort of … boring, I think is the word you used. Why is that? Nancy Tucker: This is true. This is very true. There isn't a whole lot of action going on when you're teaching a dog to remain calm. Videos are good, and I can still help guide students by watching what's happening in a video. I can dissect the dog's behavior and body language, and I can make recommendations based on the layout of the home, because we talk a lot about finding that home alone space, and sometimes it's good to have a second set of eyes to look at the layout and see what might work, or even based on the student's own movements. So video is good. I might see something in the environment that the student has missed. Sometimes you're just so familiar with something that even when it's right in front of you, you don't see it. But the bottom line is that we are literally aiming for the dog to look bored and chillaxed. So Gold students don't have to post video, actually, but that's OK, because we tend to do a lot of problem-solving and creative planning and troubleshooting on the forums through discussions. During this class the discussion boards are really important. If you want to follow a case, follow the discussion, because even without a video there is a lot of back and forth and a lot of troubleshooting going on. The Gold-level students are still getting a personal coach as they work through this, and because every single case is completely different, all students get to follow and learn from each individual scenario, which is great. In the last couple of sessions we had a lot of trainers join, so I think they benefitted from seeing the different types of cases. Melissa Breau: There's certainly nothing to sneeze at there about taking a Gold spot just because videos don't play a big role. In an area like this, where there's so often those feelings of, “Oh my god, am I doing it wrong?” or “Oh my god, my dog's panicking,” having somebody to hold your hand and say, “No, actually, it's OK, let's take a step back, let's do it this way,” that can be a huge, huge help. Nancy Tucker: Absolutely. It's great to have a second set of eyes with a problem like this, for sure. Melissa Breau: I wanted to ask about common misconceptions or places where students often go wrong when it comes to working on this kind of thing — separation anxiety, that is. Can you share any tips or suggestions? Nancy Tucker: I think that we tend to circle back to the most common problem of all when treating a behavior issue that's based on an emotion like fear, and I mentioned it earlier: we move too fast. We try to rush things. Sometimes I get the feeling that the students somehow feel bad that they don't have more to show, that they feel they need to push it along in order to look like they're progressing. But that's OK, because I know that behavior change takes time, and I am far more giddy about seeing a student take their time and really progress at the dog's speed, whatever that may be for that dog. When I see that, I know that the student is on the right track and they'll get there eventually. So again, the common problem is just moving too fast. Melissa Breau: If students are trying to decide whether either of these classes is appropriate for their dog, I wanted to ask if you have any advice. How can they decide if their dog is a good candidate? Nancy Tucker: Now might be a good time for me to mention that the desensitization and counterconditioning class is not for those dogs who might display aggression towards the thing that they fear. For example, if a dog might bite a visitor entering his home because he's afraid of strangers, this class is not the place for that kind of issue. That's because I would much rather deal with aggression in person. Other than that, what I'd like to see are students working on minor issues throughout the term, throughout the session. I'll bet almost everyone can name at least one or two things their dog is afraid of. Students might think that their dog doesn't like something because he avoids it, but really their dog might be afraid of that thing, and this class would be a perfect opportunity to work on that. They'll get to practice their training mechanics on a minor issue, like a dog avoiding the vacuum cleaner, for example, or getting brushed, or getting their nails clipped. Then they'll be in a better position to handle a bigger issue later on, like aggressive behaviors that are fear-based, for example. Another important point about the desensitization and counterconditioning class is that whatever trigger the students choose, they need to make sure that they have complete control over their dog's access to that trigger while they work on it. In other words, if you plan to help your dog overcome his fear of the sound of kids playing and screaming on the street, you need to make sure you can control when and how your dog hears that sound. You can see how that can be really, really difficult. We can't control when the kids are going to be out playing, but we can maybe try to control the dog's access to that, to manage the environment or something creatively so that he's not exposed to that. That's just an example. The point that I'm trying to make is that we need to have complete control over that stimulus in order to work through the program, because the only way that desensitization and counterconditioning will work is if we're able to exercise that kind of control over the stimulus. As for the Home Alone class, you don't actually need to have a dog with a separation anxiety issue to take the class. Like I mentioned before, over the last couple of sessions we had lots of trainers take the class who wanted to learn more about helping their clients. It's also a good match for people with puppies who want to teach their dog to be alone in a structured way. In fact, a lot of the lecture videos are of my own dog, Bennigan, when he was just a puppy learning to be home alone. Melissa Breau: I did want to dive in a little deeper there , if you don't mind, and ask if there are any examples that come to mind of students with problems that would be a particularly good fit for the desensitization and counterconditioning class. Are there particular problems that you're hoping to get, or that you think might be particularly well suited for that kind of class? Nancy Tucker: Like I said, the two main criteria are that is not an aggression issue in that there is no danger that the dog will bite, so a dog who is extremely … I don't like to use the term “reactive” because it doesn't really describe what's happening, but a dog who might behave aggressively or lunge and bark at the sight of another dog — this is not a good class for that. I believe that Amy Cook has a good class for that. This is not a good class for that because I personally don't want to be dealing with aggression, except maybe resource guarding. If a dog is displaying object guarding and does not have a bite history, that is something that we might be able to handle, but again, I would rather speak with a student first and have them communicate with me to see exactly what's happening, because that might not be fear-based, and when we're talking about desensitization and counterconditioning, I think that what we're aiming for here is to help a dog overcome a fear. So no outright aggression, and to have control over the stimulus. That is the one thing that is an absolute must. So to answer your question, no, there is no specific thing that's carte blanche, and if students are unsure, they can just communicate with me and we can figure it out together. Melissa Breau: Excellent. I know that your class descriptions mentioned something about CEUs. Do you mind sharing with listeners — and I'm sure there are some ears that just perked up there who may be trainers trying to get those Continuing Education credits — what the deal is there? Nancy Tucker: Both classes are approved for 21 CEUs for training for those who are certified with a CCPDT. I specified “for training,” because with the CCPDT — the Certification Council For Professional Dog Trainers — there are training credits and there are behavior credits. These are 21 training CEUs for each class. Students can register at any level, whether it's Gold, Silver, or Bronze, and throughout the term they'll need to collect some code words that will be peppered throughout the lectures and the Gold discussion forums. So they have to follow and pay close attention to the course as it progresses, the lectures and discussion forums. And hey, 21 CEUs is almost two-thirds of a full recertification, so that's not a bad deal. If you take both classes, you get 42 CEUs right there. Melissa Breau: That's awesome. That's really a fantastic opportunity for those people who are out there trying to get those. Thanks so much for coming back on the podcast, Nancy! It's great to chat. Nancy Tucker: Thanks for having me, Melissa. Always a pleasure. Melissa Breau: Absolutely. And thank you to all of our wonderful listeners for tuning in! We'll be back next week with Julie Daniels to discuss confidence-building through shaping. 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.  

“Fear masks itself as common sense all the time” - Kyle Kesterson Meet Kyle Kesterson, a nomadic serial entrepreneur on a spiritual journey. Three years ago, he combined his sense of efficiency, yearning for conservation, search for mindfulness, and an awesome van into a fascinating, inspirational adventure!   Led by the notion of self-improvement, taking life one day at a time, Kyle shares with us his stories from the road, his values and his philosophy. We discussed the benefits of living life outside of your comfort zone, the necessity of fighting negative self-talk and the wisdom of taking a single, deep breath.   He also has one of the cutest sidekicks of all time - Bean, the Border Terrier. Check Kyle out on Instagram and at his new site www.getyourownkyle.com.   Like This Episode? Leave a tip! Learn More: https://www.patreon.com/blc   --- Listen: iTunes | Podbean  Connect: IG | T | FB | Website | Sponsor Music: http://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music --- This episode is powered by Jumpstart:HR, LLC HR Outsourcing for Small Businesses and Startups: http://www.jumpstart-hr.com

SUMMARY: Self-proclaimed taining nerd, Hannah Branigan is back to talk about training those clean, precision behaviors that get obedience competitors everywhere drooling... tuck sits and fold back downs.  Hannah has been training dogs and teaching people for more than 10 years. She is a Certified Professional Dog Trainer (CPDT-KA) and a Karen Pryor Academy Certified Training Partner (KPA-CTP). Hannah is the owner of Wonderpups, LLC, and teaches workshops nationwide, as well as conducting behavior consultations, teaching private lessons, and conducting group classes on pet manners, rally, and competition obedience. She has titled her own dogs in conformation, obedience, rally, schutzhund, and agility. Links Wonderpups Training Drinking From the Toilet (podcast) Next Episode:  To be released 12/1/2017, featuring Julie Symons. We will be talking about Handler Scent Discrimination and AKC Scentwork. 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 Hannah Branigan, of Wonderpups Training back on the podcast to talk about creating precise behaviors — things like tuck sits and fold back downs. Welcome back to the podcast, Hannah! Hannah Branigan: Thanks for having me! Melissa Breau: I'm thrilled to be talking about this today. To start us out, can you just remind listeners who you are and share a little bit about the dogs you currently share your life with? Hannah Branigan: Sure. As you said, my name is Hannah Branigan. I married into the name — the last name, not the first name; I was born with that one. My business is Wonderpups Dog Training, and I am very excited/passionate about finding training solutions using positive reinforcement techniques. I can get really nerdy really fast, but I try to kind of tone it down so that it's appropriate for public consumption. I have a podcast as well. I am a dog trainer/podcaster, and my podcast is Drinking From The Toilet. As you can probably guess from the title, it's a little less polished than this one, but it's my own flavor. And my primary sport that I do with my guys is obedience, although I'm a big fan of cross-training, so I tinker in a lot of other sports. We play a lot in agility, Rugby is learning a little fly ball, we've tinkered in freestyle and barn hunt, we've done a little tracking, and some Schutzhund stuff with the big dogs, not with Rugby. And yeah, if there's a sport out there, I'll usually at least dip a toe because I love learning new things, and I love teaching my dogs new behaviors and seeing how everything comes together and how the principles of positive training reinforcement can apply in a wide range of settings. It's real exciting for me and I could easily get too excited, so I'm going to stop right there. I think that's most of it. I do have specifically, I have in my house right now, we are down to five, no, we're down to four. Oh, that's kind of sad. OK, we're down to four, and I have three Belgian Tervuren, and they are Gambit, because everybody needs to know the names, Stormy and Spark, and they are, let's see, 15, 12, and 8, respectively, and then Rugby, who is 3, is a Border Terrier. All of the Tervs are dual-titled in conformation and multiple performance sports, and then Rugby is just starting his career. He will not be titled in conformation due to, well, disqualifying physical characteristic, which he doesn't like to talk about in public. He has just started novice, and he finished his CDSP novice title with two high-end trials and is looking forward to making his AKC novice debut, I don't even know what date we're on, but very soon. In the next month or two, actually, I think. Melissa Breau: That's awesome. I know that for most people, when they start thinking about precision skills, which will be kind of our focus today, they think fronts, finishes, maybe some heeling. But I know it's as possible to get just as geeky about sits and downs. So I think a lot of people teach sit and down early on, then decide maybe it's not as clean or precise as they eventually want it to be, and I wanted to ask you how you handle that. So what do you recommend? Do you just stop paying for what you don't want? Do you create a new cue? How do you decide? Hannah Branigan: Those are all really good questions, so just bear with me, but I get real excited! So obedience has a lot to do with sits and downs. If you think about it, the sit is a critical component of so many of the exercises in obedience. If you think about all the places where a sit comes up, so at every setup, the beginning of every exercise, we set the dog up in heel position in a sit, and then all of the halts, those are sits again, every single front, every single finish. So if you add up all of the sits that happen, like, say, in one utility run, you're into — I did this once, I should have written it down and put it in front of me — but I think we have something like twelve or fourteen fronts and finishes, plus the halts in the heeling pattern, which you're going to have at least one, maybe two halts and heeling, and then maybe seven or eight setups, so you have, like, twenty-something sits. And so having a dog that sits square, sits fluently, sits quickly, and can sit straight, and then we put it into all these situations, you're already ahead of the game. And if you don't have that, then you're already starting from behind. So having a really clean, square tuck sit is an important piece that we want to have. And what I ran into, and what I think a lot of folks run into, is the way we are taught to teach sit, like in that first puppy class when you take before you know that you think you're going to do dog sports, because I think most of us rarely get that first dog with the idea of, like, “I'm going to go get a puppy and go do competitive obedience.” Usually we get a puppy because we want a puppy. At least that was me. And then we go to puppy class, and puppy class goes pretty good, and we go to the next one, and the next one, and then what else could we do? And then we start getting into rally or obedience or whatever. So in most puppy classes, most people are taught to teach a sit by putting a treat in front of the dog's nose and then you lift the treat and push it back over the dog's back, and so as the puppy follows the treat up in the air and back, they sit down on their rump. And it's a quick way to lure and teach a sit, and you can get a sit on cue very effectively like that. But it's a sit where the puppy's rear feet stay in place and the front feet walk back, so that's what we call a rock back sit. It's very much a weight-shifted behavior, because the puppy is looking up and following the treat over his head. A super-fast way to get a sit. And then we'll often teach a down by luring them up into that rock back sit first, and then we pull the treat down between their paws and forward, and they crawl forward into a down. Again, it's a super-fast way to lure a puppy into a sit and a down. It takes very little skill on the part of the trainer, the handler, but it is the exact opposite of the mechanics that we need for competitive sports. So a lot of people find themselves in a situation where they had originally taught their puppies to sit and lie down using this particular movement pattern, and then, when their dog is 3 or 4 or 5, now they suddenly care how the dog sits, and not only is their dog not sitting the way they want them to, but they've actively taught their dog to sit the complete opposite of what they need for participating in the sport. And that's what happened to me, and again, I hit that kind of wall when I first started competing with my older dog. I had no idea that there was a different way to sit, like sitting that butt on the ground. And so that's pretty good, and we had gotten her first title, we had gotten her novice title, and we were competing in open, and I could not figure out for the life of me why on every single retrieve she would hit me in the stomach with a dumbbell and then end up sitting a full arm's length away. Like, how is that even happening? I was just totally, like, mind blown, perplexed, and some random stranger — I don't even know who it was — on the sidelines says, “Well, it's because she's rocking back into the sit. If you taught her to tuck sit, that wouldn't happen.” And I'm like, “What are you even talking about? A sit is a sit.” And now of course it's really obvious, but it was not obvious back then. I don't know what year that was, 2010 or something, and now I recognize what was happening was she would come in with the dumbbell, bam, punch me in the stomach with it because that's kind of her style — she's still like that at 15 — and then, instead of leaving her front feet in place and pulling her pelvis and her rear feet under there, which would leave her close to me, she would leave her rear feet in place and then walk her back feet into that rock back sit, so she would be a full body length away from where she started when she had that dumbbell. Which we were still able to qualify, but it was an expensive deduction that I could have avoided with the correct sit mechanics from the beginning. Melissa Breau: So what do you do in that situation? Hannah Branigan: Well, I can tell you we can still fix it, even in a 5-year-old dog, but it is a lot easier to fix it sooner rather than later. Starting with a 5-month-old dog is a lot easier than having a 5-year reinforcement history of rocking back into the sit. But we can actually still, we can still teach the dog, “No, I need you to actually do this differently. I need you to support your weight on your front legs and bring your hind legs underneath you for this behavior.” It is hard, because it … I think you asked earlier should we put it on a new cue, and that would certainly be ideal, because I do think that a rock back sit and a tuck sit — and the tuck sit is what we're looking for, where the front feet stay still, and a rock back sit is what we don't want for the purposes of halt or a front or finish — they can be easily defined as different behaviors because there are different body movements, there are different muscles involved in moving the dog through space to achieve. Even if it looks like the same end position, they're very different movements that get the dog there. But say you have a dog that's in open, that's in a retrieve. There is no sit cue there. The cue is the context of you're doing it in a retrieve, so it's a part of the cue is that the dog has a dumbbell in her mouth, and part of the cue is you standing there with that formal front posture, and those aren't things we can change. So we do have to recondition that old cue with a new behavior, which is harder than if we were starting from scratch. But we can still do it, which is cool, and that's why I get so excited. Melissa Breau: It often seems like everybody wants to talk sit, but nobody really knows how to get one. Do you want to explain why people go so crazy for a good tuck sit, and then you walked through a little bit of what a tuck sit is, but if there's anything you want to add there for anybody who doesn't know? Hannah Branigan: Because a tuck sit leaves the dog's front legs in place and this is — I'm actually having a little harder time with this than I expected, because normally when I talk about this you can see me and I can wave my hands and have a whiteboard and video, visuals, and stuff — so with a tuck sit the difference is, if you imagine your dog has four legs — or should, most have four legs, dogs have four legs — and to sit they bring their front and hind legs closer together, because the back is parallel to the ground and then we put it on a diagonal. So the dog goes from being rectangular shaped to a triangle shape. Now he can either do that by leaving the front feet in place and bringing the hind feet closer to the front feet to shorten that base, or he can leave the hind feet in place and walk the front feet back. So either the dog will … since we measure where a dog is, so for our purposes, for our sport, because this is fairly arbitrary but it is what it is, in obedience we are measuring the dog's position and space based on where the dog's shoulder is. So when a dog is in heel position, we are measuring that the dogs, our observable criteria, that the dog's shoulder stays next to the human's leg, underneath their shoulder, hip, or heel, depending on how tall your dog is, comparatively, and how tall you are. So if the dog is standing in heel position, then his front feet are in line with your front feet. You only have two feet. With your ankles, with your legs. The dog's front feet are in line with your legs. And if the dog leaves his hind feet in place to sit and walks his front feet back, well, now he's going to be actually out of heel position because his shoulder will move backward in space. If he leaves his front feet in place and tucks — this is where tuck sit comes from — tucks his hind legs up underneath, so he walks his hind feet closer to his front feet, his shoulder stays in one place, stays in a plane, and so he stays in heel position. So for all of our setups in heel position, all of our halts, all of our finishes, we need that tuck sit so that the shoulder stays in place, so that the dog starts and finishes the whole action in heel position. And then front's the same basic idea, that we're measuring front by how close a dog's front feet are to your front feet, your hind feet, your feet, feet, feet. Your human feet. And so once the dog places those front feet there, I need them to stay put and I need him to bring his hind feet up underneath him. And so how well he can manage that action is part of how we're scored on those halts, those finishes, and those fronts. So being able to have that set of actions, move the dog from a standing position to a sitting position, is really pretty important for performance. Melissa Breau: For good scores in performance, at least. Hannah Branigan: Well, for good scores and even to the point of an end cue. Because for any of our fronts, that threshold between points and an end cue is the dog has to stop within arm's length of you, so you have to be able to reach the dog's collar or reach for the dumbbell without moving your feet. And of course if you have a Chihuahua, it's not going to make a big difference because a 9- or 10-inch dog can sit 9 or 10 inches further away and that's not going to make that much difference, but if you have a big, let's say, German Shepherd or other longer dog whose body length exceeds the length of your arm, then your dog could actually conceivably start off standing as close as possible to you for a front and end up sitting in end cue territory if they sit back further than you can reach. So it is important for the scores but may also actually be the difference between a title and no title. Melissa Breau: I think a lot of people, even people who know they want a tuck sit and understand the difference, still really struggle actually to get one from their dog. Hannah Branigan: Totally. Melissa Breau: Why is that so hard? Hannah Branigan: Most of the dogs that I work with, that I have seen — I don't want to claim all dogs in all of the world, but the dogs that I have had the chance to work with either in person or online usually offer … they fall on a spectrum. They'll offer a range of sits. So we'll see a sit that is 100 percent tuck. The front feet plant and stay put, and everything about the dog's weight moves forward into that sit. And we'll see dogs that 100 percent rock back, where it almost seems no matter what the circumstances are, the hind feet stay put and the dog walks back into the sit. And then most dogs are somewhere in the middle. They'll offer some of the time they'll tuck sit, and some of the time they'll rock back, and we'll even see what I consider a hybrid, where they'll almost move on a diagonal, and they'll rock back with one front foot and tuck with one hind foot and so they'll end up a little bit crooked, which also of course affects the straightness of the front or the finish. And so for some dogs that conveniently fall in the middle of the spectrum, it's just a matter of setting up a situation where a tuck sit is a little more likely. Maybe we're luring them into a tuck sit, or even just reinforcing them for the tucks and not reinforcing for the not tucks. And there are dogs that you get it for free. So after the dog where I learned about the difference between rock back sits and tuck sits, my next dog, Gambit, came with a tuck sit. I did nothing. It was lovely. Melissa Breau: Lucky, lucky dog. Hannah Branigan: Right. The universe loves balance, and I'll tell the story about my third dog following that. But Gambit came with a tuck sit, so he came at 9, 10 weeks old. If he sat, nine times out of ten it was a front foot planted tuck sit, so that was pretty easy. I could just selectively reinforce those and then all I really had to worry about was straightness. But then my next dog was the opposite. Again, the universe loves balance. And it was … actually it's kind of funny because it was around the same time I'm really becoming aware of these things, I'm refining my shaping skills so that I have the mental space to pay attention to that kind of detail, and she was the complete opposite. If she sat at all, it was a rock back. It was a real rock back. She'd move one-and-a-half body lengths backwards into that sit, and I was like, “That's OK, because I'm a dog trainer and I can fix everything if I just love it enough.” I'm just kidding. But I felt like for sure this is a solvable problem, and so I was, like, “Well, I'm going to lure her into a tuck sit,” and I would put food on her nose and I would follow the very best, most effective luring motion up and forward, and she would rock back away from the food into a sit. And we would both just look at each other with rumpled brows, like, “Why aren't you doing this right?” “No, why aren't you doing this right? This is how we sit.” And it was actually I started to freak out a little bit. I took her to see a local trainer that was very experienced in obedience, and she basically had me doing what I was already doing and it still didn't work, so I took her to see a seminar with another nationally recognized, very successful obedience trainer and she helped me problem-solve. We tried a couple of other things, and she couldn't get her to lure her into a tuck sit, and we tried a couple of other things, we put her on a platform, and there was no tucks. I may as well have asked her to fly. No matter how good the food, no matter how talented and skilled the luring hand that held the food, we could not get her into a sit. She would sit all the time, but it was just a rock back sit. And so I put it on the shelf for a little while, like, I don't know, seven months, because I couldn't put a cue on this rock back sit because I was going to compete with this dog in obedience. And so I made, like, a really nice mental block for myself. And the piece that I realized was missing, so then I go, one of my primary defensive strategies is research. So if I don't know what to do, or I don't like the answer, I'll go and “Let's just do more research.” We can learn more about it, and that's better than acting and actually making a decision or something. So I go and I start watching a lot of video of dogs sitting, and I watch dogs in person in trials, coming into a front, tucking and sitting, like, what are they doing, what are they doing that my dog is not doing, so that I can break this down into its individual motions. And the first thing that I'm seeing that these dogs do that's different is that the dogs that tuck into a sit are shifting their full body weight onto their front legs before they even bend a single knee. And my dog was doing the exact opposite. Her head was coming up and she was pushing her body backwards, so her whole weight was rocking backwards to get into the sit. And so then, what happens, if your weight's shifting backwards, you're going to tend to move your body backwards. If your weight's shifting forward, you're going to tend to move your body forward. So what I needed to do was get that forward weight shift. So I started experimenting with what are places where I get that kind of weight shift. And I tried a lot of it because luring just wasn't working. So I couldn't get a full sit, but I could put her front paws on a target, or a low platform, or a step, and she would lean forward over that step. So then I had the weight shift and I could reinforce that. And that turned out to be the pivotal behavior to get a tuck sit out of this dog, and then of course because I'm a good scientist and so I have to test it, so then I tested on all my local clients, and then I tested on my online clients, and so dog after dog, this is the piece for all of those dogs that just seem to be incapable of tucking into the sit. Once we get that forward weight shift, not a sit but just a standing forward weight shift where they lean their weight onto their arms — their front legs, our arms; you can tell I do a lot of projection and gesturing when I'm working through these problems, and if you could see me on video now you would see that I am doing all these actions with my own body on my desk and chair, but anyways. So yeah, once we get that forward weight shift, getting the tuck sit becomes really pretty easy. And if we try to somehow skip that, it's really hard to get the tuck sit and everybody gets frustrated. So that was the piece that finally clicked into place. And there's lots of ways to get that weight shift, but the front feet planted, lean your weight forward, and watching her shoulder muscles — at this time she had really no coat; she has a lot more coat now, so it would be harder to see — but I could see her shoulder muscles actually working as she leaned her weight forward onto those front legs. And being able to mark and reinforce that and then work from there into the sit, then from there it was just like rolling a ball down a hill. It was really easy. Melissa Breau: That's awesome. My next question was going to be, can you break it down and explain how you were teaching it, but I think you've got that covered, unless there's anything you want to add. Hannah Branigan: Really, that's the main thing — if you can find a way to tap into that weight shift. Early on, I was using a lot of front foot targeting, which required the dog have a huge reinforcement history for sticking their front feet to a target, because still front feet is part of it. Since then, I've discovered a few shortcuts, like, for example, using a front edge, like a step. I use the front step on my porch, or I have into the training space that I use has three steps into it, so there's just a front edge. It's not a full platform, because I don't care about the side-to-side limitation at this point. I really actually want the dog to feel comfortable leaning, and we tend to feel more comfortable leaning if we have space to spread out, sort of. But, like, a front step, preferably one that the dog has already existing in their environment. A lot of my clients have the sunken living room where it's one step down into their living room space. I don't know if that makes sense. So a lot of folks seem to have that. Or a step on their porch. So your dog's already used to this in their environment and it doesn't take a lot of extra training to teach them to stand on the top of the step and to lean forward. And the visual I have in my mind as I'm shaping towards this is, if you ever tried to lure your dog into your bathtub, or lure a horse into a horse trailer, or lure your dog off of the dock into the lake, it is amazing how long the dog or the horse's neck can stretch forward without a single paw or hoof stepping into the bathtub or onto the trailer. And if you pull them forward over this edge and they are sufficiently motivated to stay on the edge, now with a bathtub or a horse trailer there's a negative reinforcement instantly because they don't want to put their feet in the trailer or in the bathtub, but if we fed them a bunch of times for staying up on that step and then we present a target or whatever a little bit further forward, they're going to be a little bit used to having their feet up on that, so we can use positive reinforcement here. And as they lean forward without stepping down, they lean forward to get the carrot, to get the treat, you'll actually see their front legs take the weight and their back feet start sliding forward up underneath them. And when we start getting that, because they're leaning as far forward as they can without moving their feet in order to not just flip head over heels off of the step, their haunches come up underneath them. There's no weight on them yet, we have to fix that later, but again, it's that first action of moving from the stand, shifting the weight forward, and letting that pelvis come up underneath them. We can capture that, and then it's really easy to shape into a sit from that point. But trying to get a sit from the stand without that weight shift is really, really hard. So we get that first little activation energy, that first step, and then it's all really very easy. Melissa Breau: I wanted to ask a little bit about age. At what age can you really start working on a behavior like that with a puppy? I know I've seen mixed recommendations in the past and was curious to hear your take... Hannah Branigan: I think with puppies there's a happy medium, as with everything. I would definitely put a lot of energy into making sure that that puppy was really confident and able to shift weight forward and back as a balance proprioceptive, that kind of thing, which I think people do. It's becoming more common, more popular as part of our puppy raising, getting them used to different kinds of surfaces, getting them used to using their body in different ways, and just a forward backward weight shift with a standing puppy is it's very low impact, you can do a whole bunch of them in a very short amount of time, keep a really high rate of reinforcement, really keep it really positive, really simple, and easy for the puppy. So I would put a lot of energy into that forward backward weight shift because then, whether you're looking for that tuck sit or whether you're looking for the fold back down, having a puppy who can confidently balance on front or back and control that movement is going to find any of the other actions that we want to teach easier. I don't want to put a whole lot of — and maybe this is a human problem — I don't want to put a whole lot of pressure on myself or on the human side for getting a perfectly square sit, but I want to be setting up situations where I'm encouraging the mechanics that I do want, because it is easier to teach these correct mechanics when you have that brand new, soft, moldable brain and central nervous system to play with than it is with a 4- or 5-year-old dog who's been sitting a certain way for several years and you have that reinforcement history to overcome. So I think following good puppy training procedures of short, fun sessions, you don't have to do … certainly not 10 minutes of sitting, but do three reps here, three reps there in between while you're teaching him to play with you and cultivating your reinforcers. So you're teaching them about their body, you're teaching them how to move their body in space so they can be safe, and they can be confident, and then gradually, and I would start this as soon at as they're ready to start training, so 5-and-a-half weeks, 6 weeks, whenever they're interested enough in our food and in our interaction that we have leverage, and or 8 or 9 weeks when you bring them home, if you don't have access to them that early. But we can start setting those things up in the context of all the other normal puppy stuff that we would do without getting super-rigorous and formal about it. I'm looking at these sorts of behaviors are the function of a well-balanced, physically well-balanced dog, and we can start that very, very early, for sure. Melissa Breau: So, the other precise behavior I want to talk a little bit about is a fold back down. Can you again just talk about what's the big deal there and describe the behavior a little bit? Hannah Branigan: The fold back down is sort of the opposite of the tuck sit. In the fold back down, I want everything about the dog moving backwards. And the two places where this matters is the drop on recall and the down in the part of the signals exercise in utility. With the novice, the only down that we have in the novice is the long down for the stay, and it doesn't really matter how the dog lays down in that context. But by the time you get to open, the drop and recall and signals exercise, both of those are again scored by the dogs … well, they're kind of scored by the opposite, by how not forward the dog comes after you give the down cue. So ideally you want them to drop in place or even kind of push back into the down. So that's the fold back down idea. So again, if we look at the dog as being sort of a rectangle, we want to flatten that rectangle. And I don't know how many Amazon Prime deliveries you get per month, but you may be breaking down some boxes for recycling periodically. If I have the top and bottom punched out and I'm left with hollow rectangle, I can fold it forward or I can fold it back, and with the dog we want them to fold back, so that everything about their body, their weight shift, is pushing backwards, their hind feet stay planted for this transition from stand to down. And the reason that I want that is (1) in signals the judge is looking at the dog, he starts off in standing position, you're going to give a cue from 40 feet away for the dog to lie down, and the judge is looking for the dog to lie down without coming forward. And so if the dog pushes back, folds back into that down, you're good, you're golden, because he's not going to come forward at all. In the drop on recall, we have that plus the dog is moving towards you like a freight train. So we need not only for the dog not to come forward as part of his down, but we need him to put on the brakes. And what's kind of cool, and again I get kind of excited, is that the same muscles that fold the dog back into a down from a stand-up push the dog back into the down are those same muscles that put on the brakes when a dog is moving fast. So the same muscles that stop a dog who's coming down a contact on a dogwalk, those are the same muscles that are pushing against that forward momentum that are pushing him back into a down. So dogs that have really clean, fast, sharp fold back downs are going to drop really cleanly on your cue, and a dog that needs to move his legs forward and out — doesn't need to because he can learn this — but if his habit of moving into a down is to walk his front legs forward, and he's already moving forward, hurtling forward through space, then that momentum plus the mechanics of that down are going to carry him even that much more towards you forward. And that's definitely scorable and again to the point of an end cue, because if he moves more than maybe a body length forward after you've given the cue, then we're potentially end cuing. And that drop on recall is such a common weakness in an open performance, it's something that I've put a lot of attention into because I get a lot of folks that come to seminars and, “You know, we're doing really good in open, but we can't seem to qualify on that drop on recall.” It seems to be one of the first things that breaks under pressure, and when we pull it apart we'll see that certainly imperfect drop mechanics can still qualify, but you really have to have a sharp cue response. And since the cue response tends to degrade a little bit under pressure, we get a little more late and see a little slower responses. It doesn't take a lot to take an adequate down and turn it into an inadequate down in that setting. So we certainly want to do what we can to improve ring stress, we certainly want to improve the stimulus control over the down, but we can buy ourselves a lot of buffer on those very fragile parts of the performance with a down that is a fold back down because, and even if the dog does take a split-second to respond to the cue, at least once he starts responding, he's not going to come forward any more than he already has. So we get a lot more robust performance with a dog that is, and again we get some overlap there because they're both fluent in putting on the brakes, they're fluent in stopping their forward momentum, and they're fluent in pushing their body back into the down. Those things come together and we get those really flashy drop on recalls, which are also way more likely to hold up under pressure than a little less sharp drop on recall. Melissa Breau: When teaching a fold back down, where do people struggle, and I guess if you have any tips for how they can teach the behavior, those would be great too. Hannah Branigan: Again, one of the problems is how we're taught to teach that down. Teaching the dog to lay down in puppy class is counterproductive to our goals. I mean, it's truly like a dead end. So if the dog is taught that he has to sit and then lay down, and that's what a lot of dogs learn because we teach them to down from a sit, we lure them into the sit and then we lure them forward into the down, and then we put that on cue and the behavior becomes sit and then lay down as, like, one big piece. And so if the dog is standing and you say “down,” the dog puts his butt down and then walks his front feet forward to lie down, and again, that's not helpful. We want that push back into the down. So one of the first things is making sure, “Can my dog actually go from a stand into a down without sitting first?” That's the first and most important and critical piece. Most dogs actually can. If you pay attention, they often lay down from a stand all the time, and we can take those moments and we can build on them so that we're teaching a stand from a down because, or sorry, teaching a down from a stand, because a down from a stand is closer to a down from motion than a down from a sit is, in terms of mechanics, in terms of what muscles are being used and how the body is moving them. So teaching it right off the bat from a standing position instead of cuing or luring the sit first is half the battle. After that, I really find that the most effective thing to look at is the hind feet, making sure that the hind feet stay still. I was originally … I think a lot of us were originally taught to watch the front feet, and those are easier to see, especially from a distance, but they are less predictive of the ideal down mechanics than watching the hind feet. If the hind feet stay in place, then the dog's body tends to stay in place. If the front feet, the front feet can stay in place, but the dog can still kind of hunch up into a down, which again tends to turn into a creep forward when we add any source of pressure or stress. So looking for, it's the opposite of the tuck sit, so I'm looking for a backwards weight shift, I'm looking for the rear feet to be planted, instead of a forward weight shift with the front feet planted. And we can do this with a target, we can do this with a platform, there's lots of pieces, but again it's that focus on the rear feet is what I've observed makes the difference between an OK down and those really snappy, sharp, pretty ones that we all want to replicate. Melissa Breau: Just looking again at sits and downs as a group, and just the idea of precision, are there any common misconceptions people have when it comes to teaching these kinds of behaviors, and can you set the record straight? Hannah Branigan: I think really the biggest misconception is either that we can't change it, like, that's just how your dog comes, which is total crap because we don't have to give that away. I'm not going to let you off the hook. We can completely change that. Even if your dog is 5 or 6 years old. We had in the last Devil in the Details class, which is where we work specifically on these behaviors, we had dogs that were, like, 9, 10, and 12 years old, and we were changing mechanics, which was kind of cool. I did not actually expect that. I would have probably not counseled someone with a 12-year-old dog to try and change how their dog lays down. But you know what, they did great, which was really pretty cool. So I think it's that “This is how my dog comes,” He's just not good at,” or using a label or qualifying is a characteristic of the dog when it's just a behavior and we can shape it. All behavior is modifiable, including these. And then the other side of that is, “Well, it's boring.” And of course that's not true at all, because dog training is awesome and it's really exciting, and having clear criteria and a shaping plan — dogs love that. They love clear criteria. So I think there's this idea of, “Well, if my dog doesn't sit square and I try to teach him to sit square, then he'll hate me, he'll hate obedience, everything sucks, the world sucks,” and that's really not true. It's all the same game to the dog. So then it becomes a matter of “How can I set this dog up for success? How can I break down the criteria so that they're reachable by this dog on this day?” “How can I set up a shaping session that takes me from what my dog currently does, the highest probability version of this behavior, to what my goal for that behavior is?” And being really clear about what each of those steps look like. And when we're doing that, if you get as excited about shaping as I do — which most people probably don't and hopefully don't, for the betterment of the world — then we have these little training projects that we can do, and I've not met a single dog that didn't get more motivated with clearer criteria. As long as they're reachable, like having more clear criteria first is where we do get in trouble, especially with things like fronts and finishes is if we're using the word “enough” in our criteria and particularly in our head. Like, if you're working with your dog on fronts, and you're watching your dog come into a front and you're asking yourself, “Is that straight enough to reinforce?” As soon as we're saying “enough,” then yes, we're absolutely creating frustration, because if you are thinking, Is this straight enough? you are too late in clicking, you're too late to reinforce whatever has already happened to impact the outcome. So again, breaking the movements down and having it really, really clear, “What, exactly, what am I reinforcing?” so that you can mark that instant, and when we're that clear, and our timing is that good, there is absolutely nothing to lose in building that precision. We'll only create more motivated, more clear dogs that love training because they know exactly what they're doing, and they feel good about doing it, and they can earn that reinforcement. Melissa Breau: You snuck in a quick mention there of the Devil in the Details class, and I know it's coming up again and somehow we managed not to mention it before then, so I want to talk about that for a second. Can you just tell us a little bit about the class and what it is? Hannah Branigan: The Devil In The Details, I think the title kind of effectively describes it, this is definitely a dog nerd class. It is written for those who enjoy a certain amount of hairsplitting, that love peeling away all the layers and seeing what muscles are moving, and what's the physiology behind this behavior, and how can I manipulate and adapt my training sessions to effectively change the behavior that my dog is doing. It's definitely not for a casual, brand new dog trainer. Most people would be bored by it. The right people are going to get totally pumped because it's really very nerdy. What we really do is we look at these core behaviors, which are certainly critical to obedience but also to a lot of the conditioning and trick behaviors that we want to do involve some of the same mechanics, and so can we look at what's really going on. If we're having a problem with teaching a particular behavior, what is the dog doing that needs to be changed, and what are the muscle movements that we need to activate, how we put together a plan to systematically activate the right series of muscle movements to take the dog from stand into that beautiful tuck sit, to square up any straggly feet or crookedness, and build this kind of awesome sit, down, and stand. So it is six weeks on sit, down, and stand, and you'd think, How can you spend six weeks on that? And I could easily spend twelve because you can just keep going. There's such a rabbit hole there. But if you've had trouble teaching a tuck sit, and you are interested in behavior, and you're kind of a behavior you'd feel like you would maybe qualify as a behavior nerd, then this is a great class for you because we will absolutely get a tuck sit out of your dog. I feel pretty confident in saying that. But we dig pretty deep in terms of mechanics and physiology and criteria and breaking things down to get that, because that's what the dogs need from us. Melissa Breau: And that's offered in December this time, right? Hannah Branigan: Yes, December. It's in our December session. Melissa Breau: Excellent. Well, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast Hannah! Hannah Branigan: Thanks for having me. Melissa Breau: Absolutely. And thanks to our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week with Julie Symons. We will be talking about Handler Scent Discrimination and AKC Scentwork. 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.

Clare Balding meets a group of five friends from Stoke on Trent who have been walking The Two Saints Way www.twosaintsway.org.uk , a route that's taken them from Chester to Lichfield. All retired or semi-retired professional women, they all have very personal reasons for taking this pilgrimage. They like to mark various stages of the walk with a song, taking it in turns to decide on the type of music required for the particular location. They are accompanied by Buddy, a Border Terrier cross Jack Russell who has been with them for every step of the way. They women call themselves The Fast Girls Walking Group on account of the brisk pace they like to keep, so Clare will not be dawdling as they explain to her their love of their home town and why they believe The Potteries are wrongly overlooked as a great walking area. The route can be found on OS Explorer 258 Stoke on Trent and Newcastle Under Lyme . The walk takes them from Stoke Minster to Lord Sutherland's Monument. Ful Producer: Lucy Lunt.

Summary: Nancy Tucker is a full-time pet dog trainer and behavior consultant in Sherbrooke, Quebec. She regularly teaches seminars, webinars, and workshops on dog training, dog behavior, and the business end of training to dog owners, trainers, and veterinary staff in Canada, the US, and in Europe. Most of her time is spent doing private in-home behavior consultations with clients. She specializes in common behaviour issues that affect the family dog, and is skilled and experienced in treating aggression and anxiety cases. Nancy has written numerous articles on dog behavior for various French-language Quebec publications, and is a regular contributor to the Whole Dog Journal. At FDSA she's wrapping up a great class on Separation Anxiety and has a class coming up in December on teaching door manners when guests come to visit. Links Mentioned: Next Episode:  To be released 9/8/2017, featuring Chrissi Schranz talking about fitting training into our busy lives, teaching a reliable “real life” recall, and other pet skills that help us build a better relationship with our dogs. 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 Tucker. Nancy is a full-time pet dog training and behavior consultant in Sherbrooke, Quebec. She regularly teaches seminars, webinars, and workshops on dog training, dog behavior, and the business end of training to dog owners, trainers, and veterinary staff in Canada, the US, and in Europe. Most of her time is spent doing private in-home behavior consultations with clients. She specializes in common behavior issues that affect the family dog and is skilled and experienced in treating aggression and anxiety cases. Nancy has written numerous articles on dog behavior for various French language Quebec publications, and she is a regular contributor to the Whole Dog Journal. Here at FDSA, she's wrapping up a great class on separation anxiety, and there's a class coming up in December on teaching dog door manners so when guests come to visit. Hi, Nancy. Welcome to the podcast. Nancy Tucker: Hi, Melissa. Thanks for having me. Melissa Breau: Absolutely. Excited to learn a little bit about your upcoming classes and about you today. To start us out, I know you're expecting a new puppy. Do you want to share the details? Nancy Tucker: Oh, man. We are so excited. He's a Border Terrier and we're picking him up to take him home this weekend. He's nine and a half weeks old and I haven't raised a puppy in decades since my last four dogs were all adult, so I will get to practice what I preach when I dole out advice, and I'm sure it will probably cause me to have a lot more empathy for my clients after this experience. Melissa Breau: By the time this comes out you'll probably actually have the puppy so everybody can go on the Facebook group and check out the cute puppy pictures. You'll share those, right? Nancy Tucker: Oh, there will be plenty of puppy pictures. Melissa Breau: So I want to go a little bit into your background. What got you started in dogs? I mean, how did you end up where you are today? Nancy Tucker: It's a bit of a funny story and it's the type of story that's actually pretty common in trainer circles. You know how you can meet a bunch of trainers who had all kinds of fabulous careers before they were dog trainers and somehow ended up as a dog trainer, so in my life before dogs as they say, my career had nothing to do with training at all. I was a freelance writer and I worked in marketing in public relations and I ended up a trainer quite by accident and then eventually it became my full-time job. So like most people in that situation, I've always loved dogs, I've always had dogs, I felt I knew dogs, and years ago I thought that I could offer my services as a PR and marketing consultant to our local shelter just to kind of help out, see what I could do in terms of marketing and PR, so I thought that I could donate some time and services to the shelter in my field of expertise. And then I learned that the majority of dogs who were surrendered there are there because of behavior problems, that was kind of my first insight into shelter dogs. So I thought well, if I can learn some basic training skills and maybe I could also offer those service to help get more dogs adopted. I don't know if you can see where this is going, but I was very green, very naive. I had no clue about how anything worked in a shelter, but I wanted to help and I was sure that I could. So I'm grinning here because, well anyway, I bought some DVDs, I read some books, all on positive reinforcement and after a very short time I was convinced that I was an awesome trainer and I could save all the dogs everywhere. And so I volunteered as an assistant to the head trainer at the shelter who used to give group classes, so I was her assistant for a little while and we hit it off, we became really good friends, I learned a lot from her, and eventually I was teaching my own classes and couple years later opened my own school. And actually working with dogs and their owners was a huge learning experience for me. It's not like just you and your own dog, you're working with people and their dogs, so if anyone's listening to this and they're thinking about becoming a professional trainer, I highly recommend getting involved with training shelter dogs and the people who adopt them because you'll get tons of experience dealing with all kinds of different dogs with different issues and varying human dog teams. Anyway, at the time I was just teaching basic skills, just regular basic training, and then I adopted Woody. He was a dog who would introduce me to separation anxiety. So it was living with Woody and trying to figure out how to help him that I ended up really diving into the world of dog behavior and to this day I continue to study and learn about behavior. Melissa Breau: So this is kind of like a big ambiguous question, but why are you a dog trainer? What is it that inspires you every day? Nancy Tucker: I would say that I'm a dog trainer today for the same reason that I accidentally became one in the first place. I want to help reduce the number of dogs that are surrendered to shelters for behavior reasons. I want to help families deal with their dogs' behavior issues. Just as people can be when they surrender a dog to a shelter, the truth is that most of these people absolutely adore their dog and they're simply at the end of their rope. They can't handle this problem any more and they don't have the tools or skills or knowledge to work it out, so that's why I'm a dog trainer, I'm trying to keep dogs in their homes. Melissa Breau: And I think it's so common to hear things like, “He's such a good dog, I'm sure he'll be adopted. Or, “He's such a good dog in this situation, that situation. I'm sure he'll find a great home,” and they kind of make themselves feel a little better because they do love their dogs and they do believe that they're great dogs and they're just, like you said, they're at the end of their rope in that one area. Nancy Tucker: Absolutely. Yeah, and sometimes it just takes a little bit of guidance and a little bit of help, a little bit of support. It doesn't always work out, of course, but most of the time things can turn around for the better, so that's what keeps me motivated. Melissa Breau: Do you have a particular philosophy or training philosophy that you kind of believe in? I mean, how would you describe your training approach? Nancy Tucker: My main focus when working with people and their dogs is creating or repairing the bond between them, and I say repairing because sometimes it's a matter of trust has been broken or like we mentioned a couple of minutes ago where somebody's at the end of their rope and they just don't like their dog any more, so I think a lot of my work is about repairing that bond. And once that bond is there and it's healthy and it's strong, then all kinds of good things start happening. The training becomes easier, training becomes more fun, interaction in general becomes more fun, and I think that a large part of building a really strong bond is letting go of expectations. Let go of this idea that we have in our mind about how things should be, and letting go of some of the rules that we tend to put on ourselves and on our dogs' behavior. I am a big fan of letting dogs be dogs and training them so that our lives can coexist in harmony without kind of training the dog out of the dog. Melissa Breau: So I kind of mentioned in your bio that you're wrapping up the class on separation anxiety. I know that's a really, really hard thing to work on with some dogs, so why is that so hard and kind of how are you approaching it in class? Nancy Tucker: Yeah. Separation anxiety encompasses a lot of different emotions, for both the dog and the human. So there's fear, there's frustration, there's resentment often. There's guilt, there's sadness, there's loneliness because you find that as a human living with a dog with separation anxiety often your social life is severely affected, you can't go out, so it's a super tough situation all around. And of course there's a lot of emotions involved for the dog, too. So in this course I skipped a lot of the theory behind this type of problem, you know, the possible causes and symptoms, for example. I figured if people were signing up for the class it's because they're already experiencing it, and spending more time on theory means spending less time on working towards solving problems. So because it can take such a long time to solve this type of problem, I wanted to start right away and make the best of the six weeks that we have together. So right now students are working on very gradually helping their dog learn not to fear being alone, and it is a very gradual process but if it's done right, we begin to see improvement at every step, and then a spark of hope gets ignited. And then the next thing you know you're on your way to solving the problem, so for most students this is true. They'll be able to solve the problem, but there are some cases unfortunately where it's not so easy to solve or that it just won't ever be resolved, and this is true, so those are super tough on the student who's trying so hard. Melissa Breau: Right. Right. Sometimes it's just out of their control. It's not that they're doing anything wrong, it's not that there's anything wrong with the dog, it's just that that's who the dog is. Nancy Tucker: Exactly, and to take away that guilt that some people have where somehow they think that it's something that they've done that's caused the dog to have this problem and that's so untrue. Melissa Breau: I mean, behavior issues in general are just, I mean, they're so hard. I know personally it often feels like because those behaviors are so tied to emotions, right? They're different than skills, like obedience skills. Because of the emotions, they're often so much more difficult to teach. Would you agree with that? Can you speak to that a little bit? Kind of how do emotions and behavior interact? Nancy Tucker: Yeah, for sure. When we're working on a problem like separation anxiety, for example, we're directly addressing the dog's emotions, so how they perceive what being alone means, and this is true for any sort of behavior issue where there are very strong emotions involved, like aggression. So in this case we want to take him from feeling intense fear or panic to being alone, to feeling confident and perfectly okay with being alone at home. So we are working on the emotions and that's quite the journey, and this is why it takes time. So we're not training any new behaviors at all really, we're not putting any movements on queue, that's not the type of training we're doing at all. So what we're doing is helping the dog feel better, helping him feel safer and more confident about this whole being alone thing, and we're doing this through what's called systematic desensitization. And just very quickly, systematic means that we're working on it very methodically, not making progress at random; there's a plan. And desensitization means that we're working to reduce or eliminate this negative emotional response that the dog has to being alone and we're doing this by exposing him to the situation very, very slowly. So we start with super easy situations that they can handle and then we very slowly make it a tiny bit harder as we move through the program, so during this six weeks it's really just all about gradually making the exercises a little teeny bit harder until the dog can handle longer periods of being alone. Melissa Breau: Yes. Now I imagine that you're talking about very different emotions in your upcoming class where it's door greeting versus something like separation anxiety. I mean, in your opinion, what's kind of the common issue that we tend to see when dogs are just way over the top at the door, kind of what's going on there? Nancy Tucker: My God, this is actually one of my favorite training issues to work on because we're dealing with an issue that's actually fun to solve, and I just want to clarify here that we're not talking about dogs who are fearful or who behave aggressively when someone enters the home, that's a whole other issue. What this class will address, and this is in December, what this class will address are those dogs who scramble to get to the door when someone walks in. They push their way through to greet visitors and they usually come on way too strong, so it might be barking with excitement, they might be jumping up, they might be scratching legs or if they're big enough they can just lean so hard into people that they knock them down. And as happy as they appear to be, I think a lot of these dogs are experiencing some sort of conflict of emotions and that's why we see kind of the over excited behavior. So there's a huge difference between what the dog wants and needs to do when someone walks through the door and what we want them to do, and I think that's when some over exuberant behaviors are born. Melissa Breau: So you said something really interesting, though. You said there's a conflict of emotions. do you mind just explaining a little bit more what you mean by that? Nancy Tucker: If they want to greet the people, they want to see the people, they want to smell the people, they want to see what's going on, they want to interact, but there may be somebody standing behind them pulling on their collar or yelling at them. They know that this seems to be a situation where their human gets very excited or very upset and they're not quite sure how to behave, but they have this overwhelming sort of urge to go and greet the people at the door. So I think that that's where I see the conflict of emotion and that's where we see a bunch of appeasement behaviors or the dog just gets over excited and it's just overwhelming emotion. Melissa Breau: Yes. I think that sometimes people aren't really sure kind of what that phrase means. I mean, I did, there's this conflict of emotion, it's like well, I know what I want you to do, why aren't you just doing it? You should know better. If our dog really knew how to do better they'd be doing better. But I did want to ask you, though, why door skills are so important for the dogs and kind of why the focus on that. So why is that such an important skill? Nancy Tucker: For safety reasons, first of all. Safety for your guests, and of course I should mention that there are dogs who aren't nearly as interested in the people walking in the door, they're more into the fact that the door is open and here's the chance to slip out for an unauthorized adventure. So it's safety for the dogs, safety for your guests, and it's also a  matter of being able to have people come into your home without being accosted by your canine welcoming committee. Not everyone's into that, to getting jumped on or to get greeted by a whole big gang of dogs come running at the door, if you have multiple dogs, of course. I am, though. When I walk into people's homes I'm all about greeting the dogs first. It's actually a fault of mine, I don't even see the people, you know, can you get out of the way? I want to see your dogs. But not everybody's into that, so it's nice to have some sort of control over what happens at the door and it's nice to have friends who actually want to come over to your house because when you discover that people aren't coming over any more because walking into your place is such an unpleasant experience, well, that really should probably be addressed. Melissa Breau: Yes. Can you share a little bit of detail about how you'll be addressing it in class and maybe even a tip or two for students who are super eager to get started? Nancy Tucker: Sure. There's a lot of different ways to deal with this issue, so they don't all involve sending a dog to a mat which is a legitimate way, of course, to train a dog to behave when somebody comes to the door but it's not the only way and that can actually be a very difficult thing for many dogs to do. That's a lot of impulse control to go and sit on a mat away from the door and watch people come in. So that is a way, but there are others and we'll be covering a lot of different ways during the course, and I've personally always allowed my dog to be part of the greeting committee at the door. They've always been there, I've never sent my dogs away when somebody comes in. But we worked it out so that I could open the door without tripping over my dog. Sometimes dogs just get so excited that they're at the door first and you can't reach the door because the dogs are there. I can leave the door open without a dog trying to slip out, and people can walk in without being accosted. So for me my dog being there to greet is important. They're part of my family and I'm okay with that as long as they do it politely. And I think that the first tip that I would give to people who are dealing with this type of issue is to take a deep breath and try to remain calm. It's easier said than done, but for sure raising your voice or trying to corral a bunch of dogs by grabbing collars or shouting orders is not helping at all and it might even be contributing to the level of excitement. So the next step is to look at your dog and be thankful that he's super happy to see people walking in because it could be worse. You could be dealing with a pooch who greets aggressively. An impolite door greeting is far easier to modify and it's actually a fun process. Melissa Breau: I know this wasn't in my prepared questions for you, but how much is the class going to require that students have that other person to be that person at the door and how much of it's independent skills that they can really work on without those set ups? Nancy Tucker: Oh, set ups. Well, set ups will be very important, that's for sure, but set ups, I think that comes later. The dog needs to learn certain skills before we start setting them up in actual scenarios, so management will play a very big part of it and training all kinds of different games and skills. And I think, too, that in a lot of training where we are requiring some sort of impulse control I find that the more restraint we put on a dog the worse it is. They learn to control their impulses and doing it in this sort of game in a fun game fashion seems to work so much better than putting any restraint on the dog. Not any restraint, but we'll be using management but we won't be putting physical restraint most of the time on the dog. So if I remember your original question, you were asking if set ups will be a big part of it? Yeah, definitely it will be but not ‘til later. Melissa Breau: Okay. Yeah, because I was asking like somebody like me, it's me and my dogs at the house, right? So the problem is huge but it's very hard to train a problem when you don't have somebody who's willing to come knock on your door 18 times because they live with you. So I was just curious about how much that, like people should be prepared to call up a few friends and be like hey, are you willing to help me train my dog this weekend? Nancy Tucker: It is an important part but it's not the entire course, it's a part of it. Melissa Breau: Excellent. So to kind of round things out, I want to ask you the last couple questions that I've asked everybody who's been on the podcast. So the first one is, what is the dog-related accomplishment that you are proudest of? Nancy Tucker: Yeah. This one's a bit hard to talk about because it has to do with the dog that we lost this summer, our girl Chili. When we adopted her she was almost three years old and it was impossible to manipulate certain parts of her body, she became very aggressive. She reacted to being touched like around her paws and ears, for example, those two particular places she really didn't want to be touched, and unfortunately those are two places that we needed to touch regularly. So anyway, we worked on these things and we eventually got to a point where she did really, really well and we could do her nails and we could clean her ears without any problem at all. But the absolute best part, and this is what I consider to be my greatest accomplishment because of the situation. When I taught her to accept a needle aspiration for a lump that she had on her chest, we were able to get it done at the vet's office with zero restraint, so in just a little over a week I taught her to lie down and roll over on her back and to lie still while the vet aspirated the lump, and she never flinched. So we know that this can be done and we can teach dogs to be cooperative participants in their own care, and having done it now with a dog who was previously extremely aggressive when we manipulated her, to me that was just such an eye opener to see that it can be done, and it was a huge accomplishment for myself to be able to train it because I was emotionally involved in the situation, attached to the dog, so sometimes that can be a little bit harder. Melissa Breau: Yes, absolutely, and that's really impressive. I mean, that's quite a skill to have taught and to have accomplished. I mean, somebody who has a dog who's not thrilled at the vet, I can understand how difficult that can be and yeah, that's quite an accomplishment. My next question for you here is, what is the best piece of training advice that you've ever heard? Nancy Tucker: The advice that's always stuck with me and that I incorporate into every single training scenario is that the learner is always right. So if I'm trying to teach a dog something and he keeps offering me the wrong behavior, the problem lies with me as the teacher. The dog is doing the right thing. If I want him to do something different, I'm the one who needs to adjust my approach, so I think that that has been the handiest piece of advice, the most, uh, what's the word I'm looking for? Not handy…Not convenient. Melissa Breau: Applicable? Nancy Tucker: Yes. Yeah. For any scenario. Melissa Breau: And then my last question for you here is, who is somebody else in the dog world that you look up to? Nancy Tucker: Oh, my. The list is endless, it truly is. I couldn't possibly try to narrow it down to a single person, but I can tell you this much. The people that I'm drawn to are those who promote a two-way communication between the trainer and the learner. Those who teach with respect for their learners' needs and for the learners' unique personality. That's what I'm drawn to and those are the people that I really, really love to learn from. Melissa Breau: I think that you are not alone when it comes to that here in the FDSA community. Nancy Tucker: Yeah, I definitely detected that and it's fantastic. Melissa Breau: Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Nancy. Nancy Tucker: Oh, my pleasure. It's been fun. Melissa Breau: It was fun. And thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. I will be back next week with Chrissi Schranz to discuss how to fit training into our busy lives, a very important topic, and teaching a reliable, real-life recall, plus a couple other pet skills that help us with a better relationship with our dog. If you haven't already subscribed 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.

Today on podcast, I’m interviewing Kyle Kesterson, a storyteller, incredible photographer, illustrator, and also the founder of Freak n’ Genius and Campfire. Kyle has written for media outlets like Geekwire and Huffington Post. One of his start-ups even received an investment from Tony Hsieh of Zappos. Kyle has been on the road now for a little over two years and is currently living in a red Winnebago Travato named Bramf with his best friend Bentley Bean, an 8 ½ year old Border Terrier. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/rve/message

How we are positively affecting change for animals & the planet; prep school students trains/shows champion Border Terrier; dog poems

Marty Haist from The Horse of Course talks saddle fitting, we learn all about the Border Terrier in the Breed of the Month, Tigger explains what Natural means on food labels and Hedwig tells us as how he feels about kittens. The Coffee Klatch features Christian Mueller-Ehrenberg on cold compression therapy. Listen in...Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=87421)

Amanda, named one of the top 20 photographers in the U.S., has been working with brides & book-lovers for more than fifteen years.  Her work has lined the pages of leading wedding publications including Grace Ormonde Wedding Style, Town & Country, Real Simple Weddings, Martha Stewart Weddings, Inside Weddings, The Knot, Style Me Pretty, Modern Bride, and more. She's been featured in industry publications including Photo District News (PDN), Rangefinder, and Professional Photographer. Amanda was twice awarded the coveted Photo District News (PDN) Top Knots Awards and her body of work is profiled in three books including Wedding Photography Unveiled by Jacqueline Tobin / PDN, Ultimate Wedding Look Bookby The Knot and Photographer's Guide to Wedding Album Design and Sales by Bob Coates. Amanda shoots up to 15 weddings a year worldwide, designs and produces 100s of books for her devoted clients each year, makes art, and shares her photography & bookmaking knowledge through workshops and professional consulting. She holds a BFA in photography and art history from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Amanda calls Oak Park home where she lives with her husband, their two adorable kids, and a crazy Border Terrier, Sadie, who jumps really high.

Hello everyone! We are excited to present this latest and greatest program to you on the Your Pets My Dogs radio show! Our loveable host Lisa Smith-Putnam interviews author John Sheirer and it is truly one of our favorite interviews to date. This is a must listen for any lover of life and surely that of animals. We all know that dogs have a special wisdom that makes them among the most beloved creatures on earth. Libby Speaks by John Sheirer provides a rare look into one miraculous canine mind as Libby, a happy and lovable Border Terrier, gives us her gift of insight about life's mysteries. John Sheirer's stunning photographs provide the perfect backdrop for Libby to share her wit and wisdom with readers young, old, and every age in between. Questions or Comments? Send them to: lisa@petliferadio.com More details on this episode MP3 Podcast - Libby Speaks on Pet Life Radio

Our farming updates this week include several things.  Like the new animal on the farm, our new Border Terrier puppy Cricket.  The Brother to Watson. (get it?).  Kelli shares her adventures from last week while Andy was away on business and the "while traveling" farm emergency she had to manage.  We complain about the fact it's early April and there's still snow on the ground.  We also have a discussion around pricing your products (pastured meats and other naturally farmed goods) and making sure you ask what you should be getting.  A little farm marketing advice about how discounting your brand isn't a good idea. If you haven't check us out on Facebook, Twitter or our web site...  the fact is we are NOT raising Ostriches or Gators...  that was an April Fools joke. The "In the News" segment we talk about the big uproar in the media about the fact that dairy producers want to add sweeteners to their milk and be held to the same labeling standards as the rest of the beverage industry (gasp).  Then we turn our attention to the "Monsanto Protection Act" and not so much about how it will impact food safety but rather from a bigger picture of how government behaving like this isn't necessarily in the best interest of it's citizens.  "Monsanto Protection Act" primer - http://investorplace.com/investorpolitics/the-monsanto-protection-act-only-in-america/

Clare Balding is walking with dogs (and their owners) in this series of Ramblings. Programme 3: Alnmouth, Northumberland If you go walking with a dog, something extraordinary happens: complete strangers will talk to you. Sometimes this doesn't go any further than a regular 'good morning' but occasionally strong friendships are formed. On this week's Ramblings Clare Balding goes walking in rural Northumberland with Kelly Smith and her friend Carolyn Ryan. They met while dog-walking and struck up a close friendship which is mirrored by the incredibly strong connection between their dogs: Mel the Border Terrier and Kizzy the Lurcher. The walk begins in Kelly's kitchen, where her partner (the author Val McDermid) explains why a Border Terrier was such an obvious choice of dog for this neck of the woods. Then (leaving Val behind to make bacon sandwiches for their return), Clare, Kelly and Carolyn head down to the beach for a bracing, uplifting walk. Kelly and Carolyn explain how their friendship works, and how - despite an initially difficult start their dogs are now inseparable. Producer Karen Gregor.

Our first podcast for 7 months! When we first started work on our TV show, I promised that we would post some of the stories here to the podcast feed / website, for those of you unable to receive Channel 31 Melbourne. So here’s the first installment! Dog Video: Meet a very cute Border Terrier; […]

Our first podcast for 7 months! When we first started work on our TV show, I promised that we would post some of the stories here to the podcast feed / website, for those of you unable to receive Channel 31 Melbourne. So here’s the first installment! Dog Video: Meet a very cute Border Terrier; […]