Podcasts about clicker expo

Kiki Yablon, MA, KPA CTP, CPDT-KA, is a Chicago-based dog trainer and teacher. In addition to consulting with private clients both locally and online, she teaches other professionals as a Karen Pryor Academy faculty member and a co-instructor for Susan Friedman's BehaviorWorks. She has also presented at multiple conferences, including the ClickerExpo, the IAABC Foundation conference, and APDT. Kiki is a former journalist, and worked for many years as an editor and writer before coming to dog training, but in 2018, she went back to school and earned her master's degree in applied behavior analysis from the University of Kansas, where her thesis research was related to stimulus control solutions for owner-directed barking.Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stories/kiki.yablon/Blog: https://kikiyablondogtraining.com/kiki-blog/2021/10/10/thanks-for-barkingLegal Disclaimer: This podcast is intended for educational purposes only and does not constitute advice or professional services by either the host nor any of the guests.About the Host:If you want to work with me, Susan Light, you can find me at:www.doggydojopodcast.comThe music was written by Mac Light, you can find him at:www.maclightsongwriter.comIf you like the show, please Subscribe, Rate, Review, and Share to help others find the show! I'll see you in two weeks with a brand new episode of the Doggy Dojo!

What do biofeedback, brewery manners, and doggy backpacks have in common? Amber Quann, CEO and Head Trainer at Summit Dog Training, weaves them together beautifully in this episode of Enrichment for the Real World. Host Emily Strong and guest, Amber Quann dig into the nuances of dog relaxation, not just as a one-size-fits-all goal, but as a spectrum that requires thoughtful practice and an understanding of what each individual dog needs to get there.Whether you're curious about how to help your dog unwind after a zoomie-fueled afternoon or you're wondering if your tiny pup can really enjoy a big hike, Amber brings science, heart, and a whole lot of actionable wisdom. Plus, you'll hear all about her Drink With Your Dog program that's making breweries more dog-friendly across the country.Meet Amber: Summit Dog Training CEO and Head Trainer, Amber Quann, has been in the dog training world since her childhood days in a 4-H club. With credentials from Karen Pryor Academy, CCPDT, and TAGteach, Amber is passionate about helping people and their dogs adventure together in a way that's safe, fun, and behaviorally sound. She's the creator of Drink With Your Dog®, a program designed to create more brewery-friendly dogs, and dog-friendly breweries. When she's not teaching, podcasting, or presenting at ClickerExpo, she's out hiking and hanging with her Papillon sidekick, Jameson.TLDL (too long, didn't listen): 1️⃣ Relaxation Is a Skill, Not a Switch – Helping dogs relax isn't just about asking them to lie down—it's about meeting their physical, mental, and emotional needs before asking for stillness.2️⃣ Trial-and-Eval Is the Name of the Game – Whether it's sniffaris, chew sessions, zoomies, or training games, each dog has unique needs to prep for rest. Find your pet's recharge formula.3️⃣ Small Dogs, Big Adventures – Don't let short legs stop the journey. With the right gear and prep, little dogs can hike, explore, and thrive alongside their big dog buddies (and humans).Links & Resources from the Episode

This is part 2 of our conversation with Ken Ramirez. For over thirty years Ken was the executive Vice President overseeing animal care and training at the Shedd Aquarium. He is now the Executive Vice President and chief training officer of Karen Pryor Clicker Training. Those are impressive sounding titles, but they don't come close to describing Ken's talent as a trainer and teacher. Dominique and I were delighted to be able to spend an afternoon with Ken shortly after this year's Clicker Expo. Dominique had a long list of questions for Ken relating to a talk he gave at the Expo. In this episode the discussion centers around treatless clicks, keep going signals, clickless treats, and end of session signals.

You know you're in for a great conversation when the guest for this week's episode is Ken Ramirez. For over thirty years Ken was the Executive Vice President Overseeing Animal Care and Training at the Shedd Aquarium. He is now the Executive Vice President and Chief Training Officer of Karen Pryor Clicker Training. Those are impressive sounding titles, but they don't come close to describing Ken's talent as a trainer and teacher. Dominique and I were delighted to be able to spend an afternoon with Ken shortly after this year's Clicker Expo. Dominique had a list of questions about keep going signals, treatless clicks and end-of-session strategies. We begin with why Ken describes advanced training as the basics done really well. Ken shares some great stories and then we jump into a discussion of keep going signals.

Last week Dominique and I were talking about the Clicker Expo. We shared our impressions of the Expo and then I talked about my presentation on the participating horse. This week we are continuing to explore what changes in the relationship that established when active participation is encouraged. Active participation very much means that it is safe for our animals to say “no”. We begin with a discussion of what a “no” really represents. We consider what it means for our animals to have a lifestyle of choice - an expression that comes from Dr. Susan Friedman. We discuss the use of multiple marker signals, treaties clicks, keep going signals, and treating without clicking. And we celebrate the wonderful clicker expo training community that is part of Karen Pryor's legacy.

We recorded this podcast on March 20, 2025. Dominique and I were just back from the Clicker Expo so of course that's what we wanted to talk about. We begin with highlights from the Expo including the Saturday evening keynote presentation given by Jade Fountain. Jade has been involved with Apopo the organization that trains the giant poached rats that are used for land mine detection in Africa and Southeast Asia. Both Dominique and I were enchanted, impressed, fascinated by the rats, their training, and the work they are doing. In addition to the many other Expo highlights, I talk about my presentation on the Participating Horse. I describe the difference between passive and active participation, both in terms of the procedures used and the outcomes that emerge.

Join Laura Cassiday and Joanna Wachowiak-Finlaison as they chat and chuckle with Laura Monaco Torelli about cooperative care with cats! Laura Monaco Torelli is the founder of Animal Behavior Training Concepts in Chicago, Illinois. Her career began in 1991 with Chicago's Shedd Aquarium, where she was part of the animal care team for beluga whales, dolphins, sea otters, seals, river otters, and penguins. After nearly a decade at the Shedd, she moved on to the San Diego Zoo and then Brookfield Zoo as a lead supervisory trainer. During her time in the zoo community, Laura worked with a wide variety of species, including primates, large cats, birds of prey, horses, parrots, tree kangaroos, giraffes, red pandas, and dogs.  Laura is a faculty instructor of Karen Pryor Academy for Animal Training & Behavior and serves as a teaching assistant for Dr. Susan G. Friedman's Living & Learning with Animals online course. She has presented at professional conferences and taught seminars across the United States, Italy, Sweden, United Kingdom, Singapore, Japan, and Caribbean. She has been an invited speaker for numerous conferences that include the American Veterinary Medical Association Convention, Midwest Veterinary Conference, Penn Vet Working Dog Conference, ClickerExpo, and the Aggression in Dogs Conference.  Laura has appeared on various broadcast media, including FOX 32, WGN, NBC 5 news, WGN Radio with Steve Dale, and WCIU's You & Me This Morning. She contributed training video content for the Fear Free Professional Trainer Certification program and the Karen Pryor Academy Better Vet Visits online course.

Today's Topic:  When you adequately prepare your dog for a visit to the vet, it can reduce stress for all parties (dog, dog parent(s) & vet staff) and contribute to an overall smoother experience at the vet.But what is the best way to prepare, and how do you know you're doing all that you can to make the vet experience as positive as possible for your dog?That's why we invited the founder of Animal Behavior Training Concepts in Chicago, Illinois, Laura Monaco Torelli, to the podcast to discuss the differences between husbandry training and cooperative care, how dog parents can better advocate for their dogs at the vet clinic, specific proactive training tips to help your dog remain calm during vet visits, her advice on preparing dogs for common procedures like blood draws, vaccines, and nail trims, and so much more!Guest Bio: Laura Monaco Torelli is the founder of Animal Behavior Training Concepts in Chicago, Illinois. Her career began in 1991 with Chicago's Shedd Aquarium, where she was part of the animal care team for beluga whales, dolphins, sea otters, seals, river otters, and penguins. After nearly a decade at the Shedd, she moved on to the San Diego Zoo and then Brookfield Zoo as a lead supervisory trainer. During her time in the zoo community, Laura worked with a wide variety of species, including primates, large cats, birds of prey, horses, parrots, tree kangaroos, giraffes, red pandas, and dogs.Laura is a faculty instructor of Karen Pryor Academy for Animal Training & Behavior, and serves as a Teaching Assistant for Dr. Susan G. Friedman's Living & Learning with Animals online course. She has been an invited speaker for numerous conferences that include the American Veterinary Medical Association Convention, Midwest Veterinary Conference, Penn Vet Working Dog Conference, ClickerExpo, and the Aggression in Dogs Conference. Connect With Laura Monaco Torelli:WebsiteFacebookInstagramYouTubeOther Resources Mentioned In The Episode:Julie Benson (Made artwork on behalf of Laura's dog, Santino)Living & Learning with Animals: A Super Short Course in the Science and Practice of Behavior Change by Dr. Susan G. FriedmanLaura's Appearance on The Bitey End Of The Dog PodcastThe Spectrum of Fear, Anxiety and Stress - Fear Free WebsiteLow Stress Handling® University CE Online Courses 

I'm always delighted when I get to talk about balance and why it matters. At this year's Expo I had both a presentation and a Balance matters lab. We talk about both of these in this week's episode. We end with a discussion of equipment - what halters and leads do I favor and why.

This week we're talking about the April Clicker Expo which was held in Portland Oregon. We start by talking about a panel discussion on working with aggressive animals. Then we move on to a presentation given by Ken Ramirez on the training terms which have emerged over time. Which of these terms have staying power and why. This was the perfect lead in to my own presentation on constructional training which I talk about in detail in this episode. At the very end, just for fun Dominique shares her experience of the solar eclipse on April 8.

In this podcast we discussed the recent XL Bully ban in the UK, the difficulties of owning and training adolescent dogs and Kamal's experience in dog sports. Kamal Fernandez is a world renowned dog trainer and dog sport competitor. He has appeared on several TV shows, most recently Channel 4's The Dog Academy. Kamal has written two books, presented at Clicker Expo, FDSA's Lemonade Conference and much more. Use our code NB10 at N2N Canine Mills: www.n2ncaninemills.com/

Training Without Conflict® Podcast Episode Twenty-Eight: Steve WhiteThe latest TWC podcast features guest Steve White.Steve is a seasoned expert in K9 units from the state of Washington, accredited as a Master Trainer in 1993.He is a key figure at major Police K9 conferences.In addition to his extensive career in police K9 units, Steve is also a prominent figure in the force-free training community. Notably, he was a founding instructor at Karen Pryor's ClickerExpo, frequently presenting at various “Positive Only” events.Our conversation dives deep into various training methodologies, industry trends, and much more. This conversation is close to 4 hours, we had a lot to talk about and I hope you find it interesting too.Ivan Balabanov is a 2-time World Champion dog trainer, Ot Vitosha Malinois breeder, trainer of Premier Protection Dogs and founder of the revolutionary Training Without Conflict® dog training system.For more information about Ivan Balabanov and information on how to train your dog using the Training Without Conflict® system, check out: https://trainingwithoutconflict.comhttps://malinois.comhttps://premierprotectiondogs.com

Ready to start your dog training business but feeling overwhelmed? Fear not, because today, we're joined by industry veteran and author Veronica Boutelle. Together, we're walking you through the journey of launching your own venture or enhancing your current business, from defining clear goals and vision to striking a balance between work and life. We're not just training dogs here; we're teaching trainers to take the reins of their business, ensuring they not only love their work but the life they're building around it.  So, listen in, and get ready to take notes - this episode is packed with insights to help you launch and grow your dog training business.The Aggression in Dogs ConferenceThe Aggression in Dogs Master Course and Expert Webinar Bundle --- LIMITED TIME SPECIAL OFFERThe Bitey End of the Dog Bonus EpisodesAbout Veronica:Veronica and her team have been helping R+ dog trainers create their dream businesses since 2003.Veronica is the author of How to Run a Dog Business and writes for multiple industry journals, including regular business columns in PPG's Barks from the Guild, APDT's Chronicle of the Dog, as well as APDT Australia's Clicks and the APDT New Zealand member newsletter. She is a sought-after speaker at conferences and dog training schools across the country and internationally, teaching R+ dog trainers how to help more dogs while better enjoying their businesses in countries ranging from North America to South America, Europe to Down Under. She is also a Clicker Expo faculty member.Veronica combines her experience as a professional dog trainer and business owner with her former career as a classroom teacher, teacher educator, and curriculum developer to create unique and effective programs and products to help dog trainers start, grow, and enjoy successful businesses. Fun Fact: Veronica grows much of her own food and is rarely seen at home without dirt under her fingernails. She's also a compulsive weed puller. See weed, must pull.www.dogbizsuccess.com www.dogbizsuccess.com/thrive facebook: dogbizsuccess instagram: dogbiz_successSupport the show

Linda Randall, DVM, KPA-CTP, LLA, TagTeach Level 3 Owner: One Smart Dog, Seville OH, USA Linda sold her veterinary hospital in 2019, where she had practiced as an ABVP Board Certified Diplomate, Companion Animals, for 20 years, and also worked with exotics. She then opened One Smart Dog, a full-service dog training facility, the month Ohio shut down for the pandemic in 2020, which, she says, was “exciting”. Linda has been engaged in dog sports, obedience, agility, and field trials with her Flat Coated Retrievers, and sheep herding, agility, and Scent with her Border Collies. Her passion for behavior grew from learning about training from a variety of trainers (she is a cross-over trainer) and realizing that although all the trainers she worked with felt they had a method that worked, only a few took the time to develop insight into why animals did what they did, or had the curiosity needed to want to understand what function their behavior had. Most had a “top-down” method of working with dogs which, the more she learned about the science of behavior, she found uncomfortable. And then: a friend came back from one of the first clicker conferences and talked about clicker training.  Linda couldn't get enough information about it. She started attending positive reinforcement conferences such as Clicker Expo and taking classes (Living and Learning With Animals is a favorite!) and joining intentional R+ communities such as the Animal Training Academy.   Linda works hard to maintain a positive presence in her daily interactions with friends, clients, students, and instructors. It can be difficult to run a full-service dog training facility, maintain her relief veterinary business and find time to do webinars and conferences, but Linda feels strongly the effort is worth it.  She especially finds joy in working with kids who want to learn to train their dogs. With their increased ability at a young age to have excellent hand-eye coordination (hello cellphones and video games!), kids make wonderful, compassionate trainers. She believes that engaging with another species and working in age-appropriate spaces helps develop compassion for others and encourages acceptance of diversity.  Linda has produced a 4-hour series on Kids, Race, and Positive Reinforcement for the Heart Album and, along with her co-host Kathie Nurena, MD, KPA-CTP, NACSW Cert. Instructor, Linda has spoken at The Convergence of Human Behavior, Animal Training, and Technology (CHATT) conference, The Lemonade Conference, and is speaking this fall at APDT. Linda and Kathie discuss Trauma Informed and Trauma Assumed Care in animals and people, with an emphasis on the intersection of animal training, human caregivers, and behavior. As a Black woman in the majority white professions of veterinary medicine and dog training, Linda has had experiences that have been life-changing and soul-searching at the same time. She is inspired to support others who have ventured into these worlds and to seek a deeper understanding of why we do what we do and why we believe what we believe. Behavior can help, and it can hurt, both the giver and the receiver. In a world of increasing compartmentalization of groups, and anger directed towards those considered “other”, she hopes encouraging a behavioral view and positive reinforcement interactions will, in some small, but tangible way, make a difference. As Linda says: we have to try. For links visit here >>> https://atamember.com/2023/07/06/linda-randall/

Am letzten Januar-Wochenende findet die ClickerExpo LIVE statt. Sie wird von der Karen Pryor Academy organisiert und durchgeführt. Die Konferenz dauert 3 Tage und ist vollgepackt mit Webinare, Learning Labs, Panel Diskussionen und Netzwerken mit den besten Experten aus der R+ Community. In dieser Podcastfolge erfährst du die Key-Learnings aus jeder Veranstaltung, die ich während der ClickerExpo LIVE besucht habe. Hab viel Spass!

Det här handlar om ett vanligt problem, som inte alla inser vidden av.Och bara orden “förgiftade signaler” låter skrämmande. Som om det vore helt kört… Men när du lyssnat på avsnitt 6 kommer du att ha nya verktyg, mer förståelse och fler sätt att analysera förgiftade signaler på!Milene går bland annat igenom:Vad som händer med beteendet när något förgiftatsAtt man med för svåra kriterier riskerar att förgifta sin träningVarför vi inte kan belöna oss ur förgiftade signalerHur vi genom att bygga om ett förstört beteende från grunden kan få det vi önskar5 vanliga misstag som kan skapa förgiftade signalerDen man som har bedrivit undersökningar och utforskat ämnet heter Jesus Rosales Ruiz och är docent vid avdelningen för beteendeanalys vid University of North Texas. Som den nestor han är har han även inspirerat andra, som till exempel Milene som gärna nämner honom som en av sina läromästare.Milene Wallin, är en certifierad Beteendeutredare med specialkompetens inom rädsla, stress, separations-och panikproblematik. Här finner du mer information om Milenes utbildning. Och behöver du hjälp med din hund finner du information om hur Milene kan hjälpa dig på Braver Dogs Utbudssida.Det vore toppenkul att höra vad du tänker om det vi diskuterade idag. Tagga oss och berätta, @braverdogssweden på Insta, Facebook, YouTube och TikTok!LÄNKAR FÖR ATT LÄRA MERMEDLEMSKAP; I Braver Dogs Målcirkel finns fördjupande information om Förgiftade Signaler för medlemmarna att ta del av.VIDEO: här kan du se hur det kan se ut när något blivit förgiftat. I det här fallet har mjukosttuben blivit förgiftad. Så trots att hunden älskar mjukost, och att slicka mjukost från fingret går fint, uppvisar han ett undvikande beteende när han ser mjukosttuben.VIDEO: på Braver Dogs YouTube Kanal finns en video om Förgiftade SignalerARTIKEL: Mary Hunter (på engelska)WEBBINARIUM: Jesus Rosales Ruiz på Clicker Expo (på engelska)PODD: Equiosity med Alexandra Kurland & Dominique Day (på engelska)KÄLLORJesus Rosales Ruiz (2022) Science CampJesus Rosales Ruiz (2018) Clicker ExpoMentioned in this episode:LJUDRÄDSLA MasterclassLjudRädsla Masterclass är självstudiekursen för dig som vill lära dig bygga upp en ljudrädd hunds självförtroende med modern, reko träning där hunden själv väljer att aktivt delta! Självstudiekursen inkluderar grundläggande teori som skapar förståelse, instruktionsvideos med övningar, praktiska video-exempel från träning,...

Episode #73 with Steve White Over 40 years of mostly K9-centered law enforcement career, Steve White is the only person to have served as a handler, trainer, and supervisor for the Seattle Police Canine Unit. Accredited as a Master Trainer in 1993 by the Washington State Police Canine Association, Steve is also a past executive board member of that body. He served as vice president of the Certification Council for Professional Dog Trainers, and is a consultant and instructor for the K9 Academy for Law Enforcement. Steve has instructed at seminars in the U.S., Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Finland, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, and the United Kingdom. He has served as a primary instructor for Karen Pryor's ClickerExpo and the Karen Pryor Academy for Animal Training and Behavior. His articles have appeared in police K-9 and dog training publications in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Finland, and Japan. He specializes in teaching behavior modification, tracking, and scent work through the use of positive reinforcement-based operant conditioning. He provides consultation and training to K-9 units on administrative and legal issues, and has been recognized as an expert witness by Washington and federal courts in Police K-9 and dog behavior matters. Steve now has his business www.proactivek9.com email Steve@proactivek9.com CDTA URBAN TRACKING SEMINAR WITH STEVE WHITE, PROACTIVE K9 OCTOBER 8 & 9, 2022 Show Sponsors: Sci K9 Home of the TADD and NOTA http://www.scik9.com Getxent: Training absorbent tubes for all your odor needs http://www.getxent.com Precision Explosives: Get all your safe and REAL training odors (no permits needed) http://www.pre-exp.com Sheepdog Guardian: All your K9 Legal information and updates. http://www.sheepdogguardian.com Ford K9: All your Detection Dog learning needs at one spot. http://www.fordk9.com 

Angelica Hesselius Bio Angelica Hesselius is an internationally renowned reward-based horse trainer with a background as an instructor in classical dressage and academic art of riding. She specializes in positive reinforcement training for balanced movement in groundwork and riding. Developing proprioception, movement and communication through systematic reward-based strategies.  Angelica has developed new strategies for creating high precision movements and low frustration from the get-go when working with food reinforcers and is passionate about sharing her knowledge. She trains horses, teaches students and coaches colleagues all over the world. Together with dutch horse trainer Do Groen, Angelica has founded the Reward Based Horse Academy with the aim to help horse people build a strong foundation using reward based training techniques. They are offering short courses and are currently working on their year-long educational program. Her current projects include Exploring Nuances with Eva Bertilsson, with lectures and courses for horse trainers and behavior geeks curious to explore and expand their training systems. Eva Bertilsson Bio Eva Bertilsson (she/her) is a behavior consultant and educator with a master's degree in behavior analysis and a passion for all things related to behavior, learning and animal welfare. She started out as a positive reinforcement dog sports trainer in the 90s and nowadays works with a wide variety of settings, helping individuals and organizations develop their practice of modern, science-based, empowering strategies for the benefit of learners of all species. Eva is a board member of the Swedish Association for Behavior Analysis and an enthusiastic disseminator of ethical practices based in behavioral science. She is a long-standing faculty member of Clicker Expo and of TAGteach, and an accredited speaker for Fear Free. Always striving to further our best practices, she hosts the Scandinavian CCC conference on Choice, Control and Communication and runs a Swedish membership group for husbandry training called Kul med Hantering (“Having fun with cooperative care”). Eva and her Carpe Momentum colleague Emelie Johnson Vegh are noteworthy influencers within reward-based training, having developed strategies and concepts such as start button behaviors, seamless training sessions and training session flow charts. Much of “E&E”‘s philosophy and approach to training is outlined in their book Agility Right From the Start, and you find them at www.carpemomentum.nu  If you are curious of Eva's most recent projects, check out the webinars she hosts on the www.abc247.wtf/online  and look into her positive reinforcement horse training collaboration with with Angelica Hesselius, www.rewardbasedartofriding.com/exploringnuances For links, visit >>> https://atamember.com/2022/08/29/exploring-nuances-2/ 

Angelica Hesselius Bio Angelica Hesselius is an internationally renowned reward-based horse trainer with a background as an instructor in classical dressage and academic art of riding. She specializes in positive reinforcement training for balanced movement in groundwork and riding. Developing proprioception, movement and communication through systematic reward-based strategies.  Angelica has developed new strategies for creating high precision movements and low frustration from the get-go when working with food reinforcers and is passionate about sharing her knowledge. She trains horses, teaches students and coaches colleagues all over the world. Together with dutch horse trainer Do Groen, Angelica has founded the Reward Based Horse Academy with the aim to help horse people build a strong foundation using reward based training techniques. They are offering short courses and are currently working on their year-long educational program. Her current projects include Exploring Nuances with Eva Bertilsson, with lectures and courses for horse trainers and behavior geeks curious to explore and expand their training systems. Eva Bertilsson Bio Eva Bertilsson (she/her) is a behavior consultant and educator with a master's degree in behavior analysis and a passion for all things related to behavior, learning and animal welfare. She started out as a positive reinforcement dog sports trainer in the 90s and nowadays works with a wide variety of settings, helping individuals and organizations develop their practice of modern, science-based, empowering strategies for the benefit of learners of all species. Eva is a board member of the Swedish Association for Behavior Analysis and an enthusiastic disseminator of ethical practices based in behavioral science. She is a long-standing faculty member of Clicker Expo and of TAGteach, and an accredited speaker for Fear Free. Always striving to further our best practices, she hosts the Scandinavian CCC conference on Choice, Control and Communication and runs a Swedish membership group for husbandry training called Kul med Hantering (“Having fun with cooperative care”). Eva and her Carpe Momentum colleague Emelie Johnson Vegh are noteworthy influencers within reward-based training, having developed strategies and concepts such as start button behaviors, seamless training sessions and training session flow charts. Much of “E&E”‘s philosophy and approach to training is outlined in their book Agility Right From the Start, and you find them at www.carpemomentum.nu  If you are curious of Eva's most recent projects, check out the webinars she hosts on the www.abc247.wtf/online  and look into her positive reinforcement horse training collaboration with with Angelica Hesselius, www.rewardbasedartofriding.com/exploringnuances For links, visit >>> https://atamember.com/2022/08/15/exploring-nuances/

MELISSA MILLETT - Professional Stunt and Movie Animal Trainer Melissa is the founder and head trainer of In Dogs We Trust, The Ultimutts, and Ontario Animal Actors.  Melissa has taught thousands of family pets, holds training workshops for professionals in the pet industry including Veterinary technicians, Rescue Organizations, Professional Dog Trainers and sessions for the staff and volunteers at the London Humane Society. After joining the world of cat training, Melissa has offered online lessons to cat owners around the world and is part of the faculty for  ClickerExpo,  Melissa's own cat team (Sashimi, Tonic and Kit Kat) have acquired a Guinness World Record, travelled to California to earn 4 yesses on the America's Got Talent stage and performed in Hollywood Blockbusters and commercials.  Most notably, Melissa was the key trainer for the cats for Stephen Kings 2019 Pet Sematary.  The dogs and cats represented by Ontario Animal Actors have been featured in Commercials for Tim Hortons, Duracell, a 2019 SUPERBOWL commercial and alongside A-list celebrities like Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell and Sam Worthington (Avatar)! For the links visit here >> https://atamember.com/2022/07/04/melissa-millet-2/ 

MELISSA MILLETT - Professional Stunt and Movie Animal Trainer Melissa is the founder and head trainer of In Dogs We Trust, The Ultimutts, and Ontario Animal Actors.  Melissa has taught thousands of family pets, holds training workshops for professionals in the pet industry including Veterinary technicians, Rescue Organizations, Professional Dog Trainers and sessions for the staff and volunteers at the London Humane Society. After joining the world of cat training, Melissa has offered online lessons to cat owners around the world and is part of the faculty for  ClickerExpo,  Melissa's own cat team (Sashimi, Tonic and Kit Kat) have acquired a Guinness World Record, travelled to California to earn 4 yesses on the America's Got Talent stage and performed in Hollywood Blockbusters and commercials.  Most notably, Melissa was the key trainer for the cats for Stephen Kings 2019 Pet Sematary.  The dogs and cats represented by Ontario Animal Actors have been featured in Commercials for Tim Hortons, Duracell, a 2019 SUPERBOWL commercial and alongside A-list celebrities like Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell and Sam Worthington (Avatar)! For the links visit here >> https://atamember.com/2022/06/20/melissa-millet/ 

Karen Pryor turns ninety on May 14th! Annie is celebrating today and... plotting continued celebrations on this podcast in the coming year. If you're a Karen Pryor fan, join the celebration! If you're not, you'll enjoy learning why she is so worthy of it. In this episode, Annie interviews BF Skinner Foundation president Dr. Julie Vargas, about the importance of this incredible scientist, writer and entrepreneur who, over the last thirty years, has done more than probably anyone else alive to help show people how we can use operant conditioning and secondary reinforcers to train dogs with rewards: aka, clicker training. When her husband bought Sea Life Park in the 1960s, Pryor was tasked with training the dolphins to perform. She got her hands on a paper written by students who were working in BF Skinner's Harvard lab, and it outlined the basics of operant conditioning and how to use a secondary reinforcer, like a whistle, to pinpoint the moment a desired behavior occurred. It further described how to then use successive approximations to shape the behavior using reinforcement. She took what she had learned about dolphins and wrote a book about about using positive reinforcement in everyday life: Don't Shoot The Dog!, then started doing seminars on how to use a clicker with dogs in the 1990s. In the 2000s, she started running Clicker Expo, a conference which brings the worlds best positive-reinforcement trainers together several times a year, and began training dog trainers through her Karen Pryor Academy. Follow us on Instagram, @schoolforthedogs, where we are giving away her book Reaching The Animal Mind and a signed clicker this weekend. Learn more about Dr. Vargas: https://www.juliesvargas.com/ Learn more about Karen Pryor: https://karenwpryor.com/biography/ Learn more about the BF Skinner Foundation: http://bfskinner.org Books: Don't Shoot The Dog! https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Shoot-Dog-Teaching-Training/dp/1860542387 Reaching The Animal Mind https://www.amazon.com/Reaching-Animal-Mind-Clicker-Training/dp/0743297776 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/dogs/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/dogs/support

In today's episode, hosts Elissa Looney and Whitney Taylor talk all things obedience with Hannah Branigan, host of the podcast Drinking From the Toilet, and owner of Wonderpups Training. We get into what obedience looks like, the types of behaviors you and your dog must know, and some of the common mistakes people make in their training. About Hannah: Hannah is a long-time dog training instructor with an impressive resume. Her podcast, Drinking From the Toilet is a must-listen, weekly podcast. She's also an author, and a faculty member with Karen Pryor Academy, Clicker Expo and Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, and teaches through her own online training programs through her website, hannahbranigan.com. Hannah is involved in multiple dog sports with her own dogs, including Obedience, Agility, Conformation, IPO (Schutzhund), and Rally. If you'd like to find out more about Hannah, you can find her at https://hannahbranigan.dog/,. Her book Awesome Obedience can help you start in the sport, she's on Facebook, Instagram and has a great, all-encompassing training program called Zero to CD, which you can find on her website. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it! Help us grow our audience to like-minded people who want to have fun with their dogs!

Dominique was intrigued by several of the panel discussions at the recent Clicker Expo. It sent her off into an exploration of the much debated nature versus nurture question. She wasn't trying to solve the puzzle. Her question was how does the interplay between genes and the environment influence the training choices we make? Dominique is a good researcher. She did her homework and that's what she is sharing in this episode.

This week we continue to explore the connection between teaching programs that have been developed for classrooms and the work we do with our horses. We are joined by Dr. Claire St Peter. Claire received her PhD in Psychology with an emphasis in Behavior Analysis from the University of Florida in 2006. She is currently a Professor of Psychology, the Director of Graduate Training, and the Coordinator of the Behavior Analysis program area at West Virginia University. She serves as the current Editor-in-Chief for the journal Education and Treatment of Children. Her research focuses on improving outcomes for children who struggle in school, identifying generative effects of extinction, determining how well reinforcement-based teaching procedures work in application by novice implementers, and teaching others to use behavioral approaches. That's the academic bio. Claire is also a horse person. In 2021 she saw my Clicker Expo presentations and decided to take a deeper look at my work. She attended my virtual clinics and Science Camp. One of the things Claire enjoys are collaborations that let her blend her research interests with her passion for horses. I enjoy collaborations as well, so I was delighted when Claire started attending my virtual clinics. That's given us many opportunities to have some fascinating conversations. And now it's clearly time to share some of those conversations in this podcast. In this episode we begin with mastery based learning - what is it and why is it relevant to our horses? Claire ends by introducing us to super resurgence. You'll have to listen to the podcast to find out what that means and what it has to do with horses.

Your Working Dog Radio hosts, Eric @vanessk9 & Ted @ted_summers, sit down with former US Army MP MWD Handler, former Washington State Police Canine Association Executive Member, former Vice President of the Certification Council for Pet Dog Trainers (now called the Certification Council for Professional Dog Trainers), former instructor for the K9 Academy for Law Enforcement, and current owner of Pro Active K9, Steve White!⁣ ⁣ ⁣ White has instructed at seminars in the U.S., Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Finland, Mexico, Japan, Spain, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand. He was a founding instructor at Karen Pryor's ClickerExpo, and has been in law enforcement K9 for decades. White's written various articles which have appeared in police K-9 and dog training publications, and he specializes in teaching behavior modification, urban tracking, and scentwork through the use of positive reinforcement based operant conditioning. Your hosts delve into White's incredible history in K9, and discuss how he uses the HITT method for tracking. ⁣ ⁣ White also provides consultation, training, and audit services to K9 units, and has been recognized as an expert witness by Washington and Federal courts in Police K9 and dog behavior matters. Be sure to hit him up if you're ever in need of his services!⁣ ⁣ You can watch & listen on YouTube, Spotify, Apple & anywhere else you listen to podcasts.⁣

Your Working Dog Radio hosts, Eric @vanessk9 & Ted @ted_summers, sit down with former US Army MP MWD Handler, former Washington State Police Canine Association Executive Member, former Vice President of the Certification Council for Pet Dog Trainers (now called the Certification Council for Professional Dog Trainers), former instructor for the K9 Academy for Law Enforcement, and current owner of Pro Active K9, Steve White!⁣ ⁣ ⁣ White has instructed at seminars in the U.S., Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Finland, Mexico, Japan, Spain, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand. He was a founding instructor at Karen Pryor's ClickerExpo, and has been in law enforcement K9 for decades. White's written various articles which have appeared in police K-9 and dog training publications, and he specializes in teaching behavior modification, urban tracking, and scentwork through the use of positive reinforcement based operant conditioning. Your hosts delve into White's incredible history in K9, and discuss how he uses the HITT method for tracking. ⁣ ⁣ White also provides consultation, training, and audit services to K9 units, and has been recognized as an expert witness by Washington and Federal courts in Police K9 and dog behavior matters. Be sure to hit him up if you're ever in need of his services!⁣ ⁣ You can watch & listen on YouTube, Spotify, Apple & anywhere else you listen to podcasts.⁣

Our guest on Barking From The Wooftops today is https://twitter.com/kenkpct (Ken Ramirez). Ken Ramirez is the EVP and Chief Training Officer for https://www.clickertraining.com/ (Karen Pryor Clicker Training) where he helps to oversee the vision, development and implementation of training education programs. Previously, Ken served as EVP of animal care and training at Chicago's Shedd Aquarium. A nearly 50 year veteran of animal care and training, Ramirez is a biologist and behaviourist who has worked with many zoological organizations and dog programs throughout the world. He helped develop, and has been an instructor for AZA's Animal Training Applications course. He is past president of the International Marine Animal Trainers Association and has been active in various leadership positions within IMATA for over 30 years. He hosted two successful seasons of the TV series Talk to the Animals.  Ramirez authored the book https://www.amazon.co.uk/Animal-Training-Successful-Management-Reinforcement/dp/0961107499 (ANIMAL TRAINING: Successful Animal Management through Positive Reinforcement) in 1999 and most recently The Eye of the Trainer in 2020. He taught a graduate course on animal training at Western Illinois University for 20 years. He currently teaches at ClickerExpo every year, offers hands-on courses and seminars at the Karen Pryor National Training Center (the Ranch), and teaches online courses through Karen Pryor Academy. We would love to hear from you in terms of what specific areas you would like us to discuss in the future. Use the contact form https://quitethethingmedia.com/barking-from-the-wooftops/ (here) to get in contact, or find the show on https://www.facebook.com/BFTWpodcast (Facebook) and https://twitter.com/Barkingwooftops (Twitter). You can find video content from Barking From The Wooftops on https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf7g3O0uXrM88uiH9Iy6NsA?fbclid=IwAR0M0xOHPkYgby1iBQCBnZVRph-nyB4TZxdft84i3WGm8_dsZs6VvOXqmec (Youtube) too. A member of https://quitethethingmedia.com/glasgower/ (Glasgower) This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

This is part 2 of our conversation with Dr. Susan Friedman. When Susan presents at the Clicker Expo, I always make a point of sitting in on her presentations. But more than that, I like spending time with Susan in between talks. I learn a lot watching how generously and kindly she handles every situation. I have developed a mantra as a result - what would Susan do? I'm in a restaurant with slow service and frazzled staff - what would Susan do? I'm in a long line that isn't moving, behind a young family with cranky children - what would Susan do? I'm in a conversation on the internet that's becoming heated - what would Susan do? Susan is never one to shy away from difficult situations. And that's what prompted this current conversation. What do you do when the stakes are high and emotions are becoming heated? How do you keep the dialog going and maintain a relationship? And what is a relationship? That's what we explore in Part 2. We often think emotions get in the way, but Susan reminds us that emotions are diagnostic. They track contingencies. If you think we are just at the mercy of our emotions, Susan offers us a very different perspective.

This special episode includes an interview with the Cognitive Canine's Sarah Stremming, and we talked with Sarah about her philosophy regarding behavioral wellness in our dogs. The four steps include Exercise, Enrichment, Nutrition and Communication. Sarah Stremming is a dog trainer, dog agility and obedience competitor, and dog behavior consultant. She travels the globe helping dogs and handlers understand each other better. Her credentials include a bachelors of science degree in psychology from Colorado State University, and more than a decade in the field of dog training and behavior. Her special interest area is problem solving for performance dogs. She is committed to education and growth in the field of dog training and attends the innovative training conference, Clicker Expo, every year. In addition to offering seminars both domestically and across the globe, she coaches teams online and is a faculty member at Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Sarah has a weekly podcast - which we highly recommend - titled Cog-Dog Radio, which you can find on all your favorite listening platforms. We discussed several great tools to use in your wellness journey. Great toys to encourage chewing: Kong Toys Toppl Toys Other natural chews for dogs: Bully Sticks Himalayan Yak Chews Other items that might help enrich your dog's life: Snuffle Mats We have a few videos on our website and YouTube channel that will help with your wellness journey. Would you like to discover what types of treats your dog prefers? Check out this video to find out how to determine this. Want some ideas for how to stuff your food toys? Check out this video to see how Elissa approaches this. We also discussed a few great books that we encourage you reference: Kathy Sdao's Plenty in Life is Free Brian Hare's The Genius of Dogs Alexandra Horowitz' Inside of a Dog We sincerely hope you enjoy this episode! Many thanks to Sarah for joining us today. Please be sure to rate, review and subscribe to the podcast. Even better? Share it with a friend!

This podcast was recorded on February 4th 2021, since that time the beautiful Cassie has left this life and I struggled a little with the delay in editing and loading this podcast. I hope you enjoy this one, it is really special to me and I want to thank Lori for giving me the time to talk about her work, our love of seeing dogs chill, and of course, the incredible Cassie, she certainly has been a dog that has given my goals and backed choices I've made for my dogs. If you haven't heard of Lori Stevens (CPDT-KA, SAMP, CPBC, CCFT), where have you been? All jokes aside, Lori is a professional dog trainer, an animal behaviour consultant, a canine fitness trainer, an animal massage practitioner, and a senior Tellington TTouch® Training practitioner.Lori continually studies the interactions among animal behaviour, movement, learning, fitness, and health. She uses intimidation-free, scientific, and innovative methods, in an educational environment, to improve the behavior, performance, health, and fitness of animals. Lori gives workshops, presents at conferences (e.g. Clicker Expo), teaches online courses, and gives webinars.CassieLori gets joy from teaching others how to help their dogs thrive–whether for competition or daily life. Periodically, Lori also coaches for courses taught by Ken Ramirez at “The Ranch”.  She has three DVDs produced by Tawzer Dog Videos and is the creator of the Balance Harness®. In addition, Lori teaches online classes.You can contact Lori here: lori@seattlettouch.comLori also teaches through Fenzi Academy, Behaviorworks with Dr Susan Friedman, and of course, Karen Pryor Academy Hey, thanks for listening to the Canine Ed Podcast! You can find more about Canine Ed through our website or check in with us on Facebook and InstagramCanine Ed is dedicated to bringing great training for people and their dogs to the community. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review, so you can help share the news!Important Note: It's FREE to subscribe to the Canine Ed Podcast! New to podcasts? The basic concept is like listening to a radio channel where you get to select the topic! Instead of listening to music you don't like or getting worn down by talk radio, you can binge on Canine Ed episodes. You can even pause, rewind and even share your leisure! There are several online platforms where you can access The Canine Ed Podcast. My suggestion – go with the old trusty standby, iTunes. This app comes preinstalled on most iPhones and iPads. If you have an Apple iphone, follow these steps next to subscribe/download the podcast. Step 1. Click the Podcasts app and then click the magnifying glass in the bottom-right corner to Search. Step 2. Type “The Canine Ed Podcast” in the search bar at the top. Step 3. From ...

2004 Annual Report     Advances:  The biggest advance in our history was this year when we went from “Tampabay'sBest Kept Secret” to a Household Name in the local area. This was due largely to the great media exposure donated by six local Cox Radio Stations. Hillsborough County gave us big green directional signs in 5 locations to direct visitors to our door. For the first year ever, in our 12 year history, we were able to cover all of the sanctuaries expenses from its own income! Thank you everyone! Howard Baskin was able to find a reasonable CPA, Marsha Weiss, and an accountant who completed an audit for our finances for grant writing purposes. This enabled us to apply to the Combined Federal Campaign and to apply to the online version of The Better Business Bureau called Give.org. Christy Anderson launched our first E-zine that carries AdvoCat issues to 5000 subscribers and links to our electronic version of The Big Cat Times. Jamie finished a movie that was nearly five years in the making called “The Big Cat Picture“. This has been widely distributed and 2 minute clips on every species of wild cat has now been added to our website from the movie. We wrote a 20 year plan and began taking steps to reach our goal of eliminating the cause of so much suffering and abuse.   Animal Care:  We took in five new tigers and a lion, but had to turn away 114 big cats. We submitted our anesthesia machine parts to have one usable unit rebuilt.  We built 5 new Cat-A-Tats with pools and dens and another multi-acre enclosure with dens and a pool.  Built new dens for Esmerelda, Tobi, and Little Feather and cage enhancements for Sultan, Canyon, Genie, Maharajah, Bailey, Scratch, Baby Cakes and Hercules. Shere Khan and China Doll got a hurricane shelter and we repaired cages that were badly damaged from the four hurricanes in six weeks. The Enrichment team is growing stronger and more professional in their collaboration with others, such as Disney, to help write a comprehensive Enrichment Guide. Operant Conditioning has been led by Jennifer Ruszczyk with marvelous results.   The cats are learning their cues and are much easier to handle for check ups. All of the volunteers have retaken their animal care classes this year and have re certified their credentials via testing. Dr. Liz Wynn, DVM has been donating time every week as a liaison to Dr. Stacie Wadsworth, DVM. We began using Truly Nolan for regular flea spraying and for rodent control with marvelous results.   Staff and Volunteer Training:  Attended the USDA's Big Cat Symposium.  Jamie Veronica attended AZA's weeklong college course, Managing for Success. Jen, Howard and Carole attended and presented Operant Conditioning and Cage Building at The Association of Sanctuaries' annual conference in Stone Mountain, GA. Susan Mitchell attended Karen Pryor's Clicker Expo and spent some time with Gary Priest from the San Diego Zoo and quite a bit of time with his top trainer of cats.  Susan also completed the Safe Capture course that some of our staff attended last year. Our volunteer program was overhauled to create an administrative branch for the first time in our history. We now have red through green level requirements on both the Keeper side and the Partner (admin) side and the proud recipients of those levels of accomplishment.   We began our first Intern program with three interns. Cathy Mayeski has been screening applicants from around the world and by the year's end we have had 3 successful graduates from the program and two of them moved here to stay in the volunteer program. By the year's end we have 6 full time interns and by next year hope to have 12-15. They have come from Wales, Canada, Brazil, Spain, Peru and all across the U.S. The interns work all day, six days a week for three months in exchange for housing and the experience of a lifetime. They are a volunteer force unto themselves and now have their own Den Mother, Gale Ingham who keeps them busy and makes sure they get the most out of their time at Big Cat Rescue.   Education:  Hired Kathryn Quaas as our new Education Director and started offering regularly scheduled kid's tours every Saturday at 9 AM. Summer Camp 2004 was a big hit. We created, with the help of creator LaWanna Jones, and a grant from Ken and Terri Pereira, an interactive CD called The Truth About White Tigers and distributed 1000 free copies. With the help of PeTA we were able to distribute 1000 copies of their CD about veganism.   Produced a new screen saver called 12 Tigers that has tiger photos and facts. Created an online game with the help of Point 2 Nature that children will be able to access online for free. It is a memory game of matching the cats with their fur and their sounds for fun fact rewards.   Created hundreds of pages of online games, puzzles, calendars, free screen savers, quizzes, polls and colouring activities for children of all ages. These interactive games are part of our campaign to reach the schools and day care centers with activities to teach children about animals and to inspire awe and respect for their beauty and their rightful place in nature. Our Big Cat Expedition continues to be our most pervasive educational tool and Susan Mitchell has trained countless people in the Operant Conditioning program portion that we offer to illustrate the medical needs of the cats and how we meet them. Our tours continue to increase and this allows Denny Mitchell, Brian Czarnik, Bill Lewis and many other great tour guides to educate people about the plight of these animals in the wild and in captivity. The most frequent response that we still hear from guests is “I had no idea!”.   Legislation:  We reviewed the Captive Wild Animal Coalition‘s proposed sanctuary standards and wrote and submitted the sub section specific to felid care based upon a compilation of our own standards, those of ACE and Florida's Fish and Game.  We assisted Animal Control's approach to the State of Florida in an effort to require owners of dangerous exotic animals to post on their property the dangers that exist and to allow the public to easily determine if their neighbors are harboring dangerous animals.  We began promoting a page on our site called Support Legislation and AdvoCats.   We partnered with Capitol Advantage to create the first and only online presence in the Animal Welfare industry that is promoted on MSN, Yahoo, AOL, Congress.gov, PBS, the LA Times and E-the-People. In just the first days of creation is already responsible for about 30 letters per day going out to legislators on important animal issues that are currently pending including: Stopping canned hunts, prohibiting steel jawed traps and asking USDA to quit issuing licenses to people who are circumventing the new 2004 law that prevents the sale of big cats as pets. We noted a drop in the number of big cats being abandoned. Every year the number of big cats in need of shelter was doubling and by 2003 we were turning away 312 exotic cats. After the passage of the Captive Wild Animal Safety Act in Dec. 2003 that prohibited the sale across state lines of big cats as pets that number dropped to 114 abandoned cats in 2004. We posted a composite of all state laws and enabled viewers to go directly to their state's online regulations. Our founder became a major donor to the only Political Action Committee fund for Animal Welfare issues called HumaneUSA.   Fundraising and Marketing:  We purchased a new Point of Sale system with cash register and inventory software.  Implementing this software has enabled us to better track inventory, sales and trends. On May 19 our web site received 29,724 page requests to be our largest day ever. By the end of the year our site is currently averaging about 100,000 hits per day. Jamie and Howard attended Scott Moller's Fundraising Seminar in Tampa and Howard, Carole and Jen attended Scott Moller's Fundraising Seminar in Stone Mountain, GA. Scott Lope and Daniel Capiro have been working closely with players of the TampaBay Lightning to raise awareness. Thanks largely to the lion vs tiger ligers thousands of dollars in radio air time donated by six Cox Radio stations, our Fur Ball attracted 850 guests and we netted 50,000.00 as well as had a Roaring Good Time. Jamie created our first Holiday Card with a collage of the cats for our use and for sale in the gift shop. The Adoption Kits have been so successful that she has had to order them by the hundreds from a printer, rather than printing them one page at a time on her computer as she has done in the past.   Our online giftshop sales soared from $7,914.00 in 2003 to $32,351.00 in 2004. We began monitoring news alerts at Google for exotic cat issues and proactively writing in to the media. We were in the press 63 times compared to 35 times in 2003. Our newsletter The Big Cat Times (formerly Cat Tales) is now in color and goes out quarterly to 23,000 supporters.   Grounds Improvement:  At our January zoning hearing, 96 people wrote letters of support and 47 attended the hearing and spoke in support of the fine work we are doing on a global level. At the second hearing more than 200 supporters came to stand before the Board of county Commissioners in favour of Big Cat Rescue's planned development. In the past we had to haul 30 bags of trash, twice a week to the end of the road. This year we managed to get our very own dumpster on site. We moved the golf cart shed, tore down the old green barn and re-routed the fencing to increase parking area. We repainted the cabins, food prep, painted the E-Center and repainted several of the cages. We installed new signs on the buildings so that they are consistently called by name in our documentation and training manuals and to avoid confusion. Sentry Signs enabled us to put new signs on most of the cats along the tour path that states their name, species, date of birth and how they were rescued.   We began a fence improvement campaign called the Catter-Wall. Two marble lions were donated for our front gate and we may have someone willing to donate a new front entrance next year. Food Prep was tiled and had gutters installed all the way around. Kiss Cote was applied to the Leopard Cat-A-Tat as a rust preventative trial model in March. The roads were reinforced to prevent inaccessibility to certain areas in the rainy season. We started the process for adding a 4 bedroom, 3 bath dormatory for interns. We upgraded to broadband and now have a wireless Internet connection available for guests.   Helping Others:  We covered ad costs for The Association of Sanctuaries annual conference in March to insure that the people who need the training will know it is available.  We also paid expenses for three of the speakers on Cage Building, Operant Conditioning and the No More Homeless Pets approach to companion animal abandonment.  We shared the secret to our high search engine placement with TAOS and CWAPC and members of both organizations. We joined the Sanctuary Workers And Volunteers Association SWAVA and provided material for them to launch their campaign. We send out news alerts to everyone in our new Yahoo group and in the TAOS Yahoo group and include a Tip of the Day feature in which we share ideas that have worked for us. We gave permission to Florida's state government site, at their request, to use our photos to illustrate why we should protect the Florida Panther.   Charities that we donated to this year:  100 passes to No More Homeless Pets Adopt-a-thon and gift certificate for a Big Cat Expedition, 50 passes and gift certificate for a Big Cat Expedition to Florida Voices for Animals, 50 passes to Clearwater High school's Project Graduation, 100 passes to Dress For Success, 300 passes to The National Humane Societies spay/neuter and adoption programs.  Big Cat Expedition to Clearwater Chamber of Commerce's annual fundraiser. Donated a Big Cat Expedition and several Two for One Passes to Animal Coalition of Tampa for their Spay Day fundraiser. Big Cat Expedition for two and 200 passes to the Tampa Museum of Art. 1000 passes and a 1500. Expedition Package was donated to the Global Understanding's Carousel Ball. There were many, many more that we donated to this year that we did not keep stats on.  We offered to let No More Homeless Pets – HC and Florida Voices for Animals utilize our legislative program in a manner that is branded for their constituents.   Other:  Carole Baskin represented The Association of Sanctuaries at the Captive Wild Animal Protection Coalition's conference in San Francisco and was made The Association of Sanctuaries liaison to The Captive Wild Animal Protection Coalition.  She served as the interim President of the Association of Sanctuaries in 2004.    2004 was a grrreat year and we are looking forward to an even better 2005!!!   The narrow mission of Big Cat Rescue is to provide the best permanent home we can for the limited number of abused, abandoned and retired big cats that the sanctuary can afford to take in. However, the sanctuary must turn away over 100 cats per year and the number is growing.   The broader mission, therefore, is to reduce the number of cats that suffer the fate of abandonment and abuse by educating as many people as possible about the conditions that lead to the plight of these animals. We do this through our tours of the sanctuary, our school education programs, our 2100 page website that receives viewers from all over the world, by supporting species preservation efforts, and by providing a hands-on experience for interns from around the world.   We hope, by setting an example and teaching about how animals should be treated, that this will carry over into how we humans treat each other as well, and in doing so make the world a better place for all living creatures.   Our Officers and Board of Directors • CEO Chair of BOD and Founder  Carole Baskin • President Jamie Veronica • Vice President & BOD Cathy Mayeski • Secty/ Treasurer  Vernon C. Stairs • Director and Operations Manager  Scott Lope • Director and Coordinator Brian Czarnik The current board of directors will serve until December 31, 2005. Between now and then, staggered terms of four years and five years each will be set by the existing Board of Directors to insure the uninterrupted good work of Big Cat Rescue.   The financial audits for 2004 are posted here and include total income in the past fiscal year, expenses in the same program, fund raising and administrative categories as in the financial statements, and ending net assets.   Income   Gifts and Contributions cash:   232,597. Program Service Revenue:    314,143. Inventory Sold:  48,076. Rental Income:   31,718. Interest & mortgages     85,041. Events income:   39,631. Total income for the year   751,206.   Expenses   Animal Care:    363,798. Employee Benefits:         74. Payroll Taxes:     4,650. Accounting Fees:       3,525. Legal Fees:        17. Supplies:    39,322. Telephone:   14,232. Postage & Shipping:    4,911. Equipment Maintenance:     9,970. Printing & Publications:     50,583. Travel:    1,476. Conferences:       3,443. Depreciation:    18,116. Total Expense for the year  574,906   Excess for 2004    $  176,300 Net Assets at the beginning of 2004       $ 1,142,039 Net Assets at the ending of 2004            $ 1,318,339   While this accounting appears to show a gain, it does not take into consideration money spent on capital improvements and set aside for more capital expenditures.  Our complete 990 is available online at Guidestar.org under Big Cat Rescue. Neither the Founder nor any of her family nor friends are paid by Big Cat Rescue.   I've been writing my story since I was able to write, but when the media goes to share it, they only choose the parts that fit their idea of what will generate views.  If I'm going to share my story, it should be the whole story.  The titles are the dates things happened. If you have any interest in who I really am please start at the beginning of this playlist: http://savethecats.org/   I know there will be people who take things out of context and try to use them to validate their own misconception, but you have access to the whole story.  My hope is that others will recognize themselves in my words and have the strength to do what is right for themselves and our shared planet.     You can help feed the cats at no cost to you using Amazon Smile! Visit BigCatRescue.org/Amazon-smile   You can see photos, videos and more, updated daily at BigCatRescue.org   Check out our main channel at YouTube.com/BigCatRescue   Music (if any) from Epidemic Sound (http://www.epidemicsound.com) This video is for entertainment purposes only and is my opinion.  

This week I zoomed off to Northern California for a visit with Sarah Owings. Sarah is a dog trainer. She’s a member of the Clicker Expo faculty and she’s an eager learner. Over the years Sarah and I have had many great conversations about training. Now we get to talk about how best to manage our land. Sarah is very much in a fire zone so any planting decisions she makes has to take that into consideration. She may be dealing with a very different climate from mine, but I still learned a lot that will help my spring planning during our conversation. Many of you listening to this podcast bought your land to give your horses more freedom. Sarah bought her fifteen acres to give her dogs more freedom. She bought her property in 2020 so she is just beginning to figure out what she wants to do with it. That’s a great time to check in to see what her beginning steps have been. Often when you take on a new property, it can be overwhelming. Where do you begin? Sarah is great at doing her homework. Recently that homework has included incorporating the work of Dr. Doug Tallamy and his Homegrown national park conservation initiative.

Michael is a an internationally sought after keynote speaker and presenter on the topic of aggression at numerous events, conferences, and universities worldwide. He has mentored and presented to thousands of animal professionals in twelve different countries and has been a guest at every major dog training conference in the U.S. and Mexico including the APDT, IAABC, FDSA, Clicker Expo, Victoria Stilwell's DBC, PPG, CICA, Owners of Dog Daycares, and The Aggression in Dogs Conferences.Michael is fully Certified through the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants and is one of fewer than 300 CDBCs worldwide. He is the founder of the Aggression in Dogs Master Course  at aggressivedog.com and currently teaches trainers and behavior consultants in more than 25 countries how to work with aggression cases.Michael also has a great podcast called The Bitey end of the Dog. Interview Questions:Define dog aggression?What are the different types of dog aggression?How do dogs become aggressive?How important is sleep for young puppies?What about fear, anxiety, and stress?What about the owners stress and anxiety?What are dog behavior consultants and dog trainers seeing more of since COVID-19?Have you seen more young puppies with dog aggression?What are the first signs that new puppy owners should look for with their dog being aggressive?How can we help prevent or minimize the possibility of our puppies developing dog aggression. Do male dogs that get neutered become more aggressive?Visit Michaels website at https://aggressivedog.com/ Be sure to visit our website  https://www.puppytalkpodcast.com/Our sponsor is Top Gun Dog Training at https://topgundogtraining.com/Support the show (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/puppytalk)

We have a long wish list of things we wanted to talk to Michele Pouliot about. Michele is a canine trainer. Many of you will know her through the Clicker Expo where she is a member of the faculty. Michele wears several “hats”. She was the driving force behind converting the training program at Guide Dogs for the Blind completely over to clicker training. One of her other “hats” is canine freestyle. In this week’s podcast Michele talks about how platforms can be used to teach the behaviors that have made her dogs standout performers in the freestyle world. The work she describes applies wonderfully to horses.

Hello everyone! Welcome back to our podcast!In today’s episode, we will share a new approach to training and living with our animals that has been featured for many years in Clicker Expo and The Art and Science of Animal Training Conference. This approach has changed the lives of countless animal companions and their families, and animals in zoos and shelters. Sean, a founder of Constructional Affection, will be sharing stories of milestones in the journey that he and his colleague had when discovering the power of affection as a reinforcer and developing the procedure of using affection to train behaviors.Sean will talk about Constructional Affection being more than just a training, but a way of living with our animal companions to improve our relationships with them. He will talk about the behaviors that we will train with affection and how we deliver affection when these desirable behaviors occur.We hope you enjoy listening to this episode as this sets the foundation for what will come next!Here is the website of Constructional Affection:English version: http://constructionalaffection.com/Japanese version: http://constructionalaffection.com/caJP.htmlSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/CAAWT)

Welcome to the 18th episode of The Dog Real Talk! My name is Agnieszka Janarek and I am your host! My guest today is Sarah Stremming! We talked about impulse control. What it really is, can we define it? What does it look like? About Sarah: ”Sarah Stremming, the founder of The Cognitive Canine, is a dog trainer, dog agility and obedience competitor, and dog behavior consultant. She travels the globe helping dogs and handlers understand each other better. Her credentials include a bachelor of science degree in psychology from Colorado State University and more than a decade in the field of dog training and behavior. Her special interest area is problem-solving for performance dogs. She is committed to education and growth in the field of dog training and attends the innovative training conference, Clicker Expo, every year. .” Resources:

Concept training really lets our animals show us how smart they are. It is tremendous fun and it widens out the repertoire of behaviors you can ask for. Many of us have been introduced to concept training via Ken Ramirez and his many presentation at the Clicker Expo. He has inspired us to explore match to sample and other forms of concept training. One of the many people who has been inspired by Ken's work is Vidhya Karthikeyan. I met Vidhya at the January 2020 Clicker Expo. Her use of concept training is so creative I wanted to share what she's been doing. So this conversation is about concept training, but it began with a detour into husbandry care so that's where we'll begin.

Last week we began a conversation with Lindsay Wood Brown. Lindsay is a member of the Clicker Expo faculty. She is a board-certified applied animal behaviorist (ACAAB) with a master's degree in animal behavior. She is a Karen Pryor Academy (KPA) course developer and has served as a KPA faculty member since 2012. Lindsay consults for animal shelters across the country. She previously served as the Director of Operations for Lynchburg Humane Society in Virginia and as the Director of Animal Training and Behavior for the Humane Society of Boulder Valley in Boulder, Colorado. The shelter work means for certain protocols Lindsay has seen hundreds of case histories. That’s the experience we wanted to draw on in this discussion of counter conditioning. At the end of part one we were stressing how important it is to adapt any of the protocols you read about to the individual you are working with. We pick up there as we look at counter conditioning from an operant perspective.

Hear what Sarah learned, was reminded of, and was validated on at this year's Clicker Expo

* 1:25 - Ryan introduces Dr. Jesús Rosales-Ruiz. * 3:45 - Jesús talks about where he first learned about Applied Behavior Analysis and what led him to his current work. * 17:58 - Jesús talks about meeting Karen Pryor and Gary Wilkes in 1992 at the Association of Applied Behavior Analysis International. * 20:15 - Jesús was hired by the University of North Texas (UNT) and begins using pets to teach students the principles of Applied Behavior Analysis. * 23:20 - Bob and Marian Bailey volunteer to visit UNT regularly to help the students jumpstart their learning. * 25:30 - A student identifies a socially relevant problem (horse trailer loading) to do her thesis on. The problem was solved and the results were published in Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (JABA). * 27:25 - Eduardo Fernandez comes to UNT and he and five other students create ORCA. * 29:30 - Jesús and his students begin doing work with rescue animals to help make them more adoptable. * 30:28 - In the early 2000s, Karen Pryor visits Jesús at UNT and talks to him about her plans to form Clicker Expo and invites him to be part of this movement. * 40:50 - Kay Laurence suggests creating a new conference at UNT, and the Art and Science of Animal Training Conference was born. * 45:15 - Jesús discusses a couple more published studies including one about a monkey with self-injurious behavior.

Welcome to the 10th episode of The Dog Real Talk! My name is Agnieszka Janarek and I am your host! In this episode I had a huge pleasure of taking to amazing Eva Bertilsson from Carpe Momentum and Tromplo. We geeked out into topic of marker cues. The conversation was so awesome, that we continued after the official part and then I had to add it too to this episode, because it turned out to be too good not share with you guys! References: ✔ Carpe Momentum: https://www.carpemomentum.nu/ ✔ Agility from the Start (Eva's and Emelie's book): http://agilityrightfromthestart.com/ ✔Eva's and Emelie's course at Tromplo: https://tromplo.com/course/seamlessness-from-one-reward-to-the-next/ ✔ Eva's conference in Sweden: https://ccc2019.se/ Eva Bertilsson is world recognized trainer who has a master’s degree in behavior analysis and perfectly combines scientific approach and its practical application when working with animals. Together with Emelie Johnson Vegh, Eva runs their collaboration Carpe Momentum. Teaching people all over the world about behavioral analysis, husbandry training, seamless training sessions, flowcharts, while working with variety of species. Eva is a board member of the Swedish Association for Behavior Analysis, a faculty member of Clicker Expo, and an enthusiastic disseminator of ethical practices based in behavioral science. In addition to her own teaching, she has also been instrumental in introducing TAGteach ™ and Fear Free™, as well as numerous renown speakers (for example Susan Friedman, Susan Schneider and Clive Wynne), to the Scandinavian audience. Source: Animal Training Academy https://www.animaltrainingacademy.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!

Eva Bertilsson - Bio Eva Bertilsson has a master’s degree in behavior analysis and a passion for all things related to behavior, learning and animal welfare. Together with business partner Emelie Johnson Vegh, Eva runs their collaboration Carpe Momentum, teaching seminars on the general principles of behavior and learning, and coaching trainers in the art of structuring great training sessions regardless of the venue or the species. Eva is a board member of the Swedish Association for Behavior Analysis, a faculty member of Clicker Expo, and an enthusiastic disseminator of ethical practices based in behavioral science. In addition to her own teaching, she has also been instrumental in introducing TAGteach ™ and Fear Free™, as well as numerous renown speakers (for example Susan Friedman, Susan Schneider and Clive Wynne), to the Scandinavian audience.

This is Part Two of our conversation with Sarah Owings. Sarah is a dog trainer. It may seem odd that in a podcast about all things equine, we are talking about dogs, but there is a lot of value in looking at what people are doing with other species. I learned a long time ago that the way to expand a field is not from within, but by bringing in fresh ideas from outside. So I love going to the Clicker Expo and sitting in on the presentations of other members of the faculty. Sarah is on the Clicker Expo faculty as well. One of the characteristics all the faculty have in common is we are all life long learners. When we aren’t presenting, we are sitting in on each other’s talks. So this year when I gave my talk on “Cues evolve out of the shaping process” Sarah was sitting in the audience. We chatted afterwards about the presentation but there wasn’t enough time to really have the conversation we both wanted. Not at the Expo. We both had other presentations to get to. But not to worry. It just gave us the perfect excuse to record a podcast together. That has two great advantages. The first is Dominique got to join us for the conversation, and the second is you get to listen in. So in this week’s episode Sarah describes for us the process she uses for teaching cues. Sarah says at the beginning what she teaches is evolving. To understand what she means by this, we describe the process for teaching cues that we both encountered when we first started to explore clicker training. For both my horses and Sarah’s dogs we very quickly decided this procedure wasn’t for us. It’s interesting to see the convergence of ideas as we work with two very different species. Sarah then describes her current procedure for introducing cues which leads to many more questions.

Welcome in the next episode of the Dog Real Talk Program! In this episode my guest is one of the trainers that I look up to and who inspires me to become better everyday! Eva Bertilsson from Carpe Momentum. Eva Bertilsson is world recognized trainer who has a master’s degree in behavior analysis and perfectly combines scientific approach and its practical application when working with animals. Together with Emelie Johnson Vegh, Eva runs their collaboration Carpe Momentum. Teaching people all over the world about behavioral analysis, husbandry training, seamless training sessions, flowcharts, while working with variety of species. Eva is a board member of the Swedish Association for Behavior Analysis, a faculty member of Clicker Expo, and an enthusiastic disseminator of ethical practices based in behavioral science. In addition to her own teaching, she has also been instrumental in introducing TAGteach ™ and Fear Free™, as well as numerous renown speakers (for example Susan Friedman, Susan Schneider and Clive Wynne), to the Scandinavian audience. Source: Animal Training Academy https://www.animaltrainingacademy.com Eva talked about seamless training session, respons to errors in training as well as choice and control we offer to our animals! If you want to know how to make your session fluent from the start till the end, and hear it from one of the best trainers I could imagine, you have to listen to this episode! References: - Carpe Momentum: https://www.carpemomentum.nu/ - Agility from the Start (Eva's and Emelie's book): http://agilityrightfromthestart.com/ Eva's and Emelie's course at Tromplo: https://tromplo.com/course/introduction-to-start-button-behaviors/ 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!

I am so thrilled to welcome you in the very first episode of the Dog Real Talk Program! My first guest is one the best nosework handlers in the USA, amazing world recognized trainer, KPA Faculty Member, Cyber Scent Teacher and I'm super proud to say Tromplo Trainer - Sarah Owings! She is also one of the kindest people I have met in the dog training business! From Cyber Scent about Sarah "Sarah Owings is a Karen Pryor Academy Certified Training Partner. She specializes in the practical application of behavioral principles to help transform the lives of fearful, shut down, and over-the-top dogs. As an international speaker, and regular contributor to online training forums, she is known for her innovative approaches to tough behavior problems, and her compassionate and insightful teaching. She has written for Clean Run Magazine on topics such as stimulus control, release cues, and toy-related cues, and serves as Clicker Expo faculty, an instructor for Cyber Scent Online, and is an advisor to the Glendale Humane Society in Los Angeles. Sarah is also an avid nose work competitor, currently competing at both the Elite and Iron Dog levels with her labrador retriever, Tucker. Tucker was the recipient of the Harry Award in 2015, and has the distinction of titling at each level of NACSW without a single miss. With Sniffing Dog Sports, he has won High in Trial in both Advanced, and Excellent divisions, as well as a HIT at Iron Dog. At Turner Trials, an invitation-only three day tournament, he came in second place on day three, finishing fourth place overall against 38 of some of the most experienced competitors in the country. Tucker's trained final response for nose work, a hover-freeze at source, was taught with a marker signal, following the clicker training principles outlined in the Cyber Scent Online course." KPA: https://www.clickertraining.com/ Cyber Scent: http://www.cyberdogonline.com - Agility from the Start (Eva's and Emelie's book Sarah has mentioned): http://agilityrightfromthestart.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!

CLICK HERE for the podcast outline Ken Ramirez Bio Ken Ramirez is the Executive Vice-President and Chief Training Officer of Karen Pryor Clicker Training where he oversees the vision, development, and implementation of training education programs for the organization, including ClickerExpo, Karen Pryor Academy, and The Ranch. This allows Ken to help bring positive reinforcement training to all corners of the animal training world. Previously, Ken served as the Executive Vice-President of animal care and animal training at Chicago's Shedd Aquarium, where he developed and supervised animal care and animal health programs, staff training and development as well as public presentation programs for a collection of more than 32,000 animals. He worked at Shedd Aquarium for over 25 years. A 40+ year veteran of animal care and training, Ramirez is a biologist and animal behaviorist who served nine years at Marineworld of Texas.  He also was a trainer and coordinator at Ocean Safari in South Padre Island, Texas, as well as acting as a consultant to many zoo and aquarium programs throughout the world.  He began his training career working with guide dogs for the visually impaired and has maintained a close affiliation to pet training throughout his career.  He hosted two successful seasons of the pet training television series Talk to the Animals that compared pet training to the important work done with training and caring for animals in zoological facilities.  He also works closely with several search and rescue dog organizations, service dog groups, as well as with bomb and narcotic dogs. Since 2005, Ken has brought his experience as a trainer of many cognitive projects with marine mammals and primates to the dog arena.  Most notable has been his work with modifier cues, adduction, matching to sample, mimicry, and counting. The latter two projects: teaching dogs to mimic or imitate other dogs, and to learn the concept of counting are in the process of being prepared for scientific publication.  Both of these projects have documented cognitive abilities in dogs that have not been previously well reported or understood. Ken has also pioneered groundbreaking conservation training projects with chimpanzees, polar bears, elephants, butterflies, and other animals. Conservation training applies behavior science in the field with free-ranging animals and uses remote training to facilitate learning to assist wildlife biologists in a wide range of projects. Ramirez has been active in several professional organizations, including the International Marine Animal Trainer’s Association (IMATA), of which he is a past president.  Ken has been actively involved in the creation of a certification process for animal trainers in zoological settings. Ramirez has written for numerous scientific publications and authored countless popular articles.  He authored the book ANIMAL TRAINING: Successful Animal Management through Positive Reinforcement, published in 1999 and Better Together: The Collected Wisdom of Modern Dog Trainers, published in 2017.  Ken taught a graduate course on animal training at Western Illinois University for 20 years and currently offers several online courses through the Karen Pryor Academy. In 2017 Ken moved to Washington state where he created a series of immersive hands-on training courses at The Ranch, the Karen Pryor National Training Center. CLICK HERE for Ken Ramirez's website CLICK HERE for the Karen Pryor Clicker Training website CLICK HERE to learn more about - The Ranch - mentioned in the website CLICK HERE for Ken's letters

Clicker Expo Recap by Sarah Stremming, The Cognitive Canine

In this podcast we spoke about shaping, targeting, differential reinforcement and some common misconceptions. Kay Laurence has been involved in training, breeding and rearing dogs for over 40 years. She has spoken at ClickerExpo for 12 years as well as other conferences and has competed at Crufts in Obedience and Heelwork to Music. She is also the author of several books including Tug More Learn More, Clicker Training: The Perfect Foundation, Teaching With Reinforcement, Learning Games and Clicker Dances with Dogs. Show Notes: www.nickbenger.com/kay-laurence IMPACT Tickets: www.growyourpetbusinessfast.com/impact Hannah Branigan Tickets: www.glasgowdogtrainer.co.uk

Summary: Leslie is a dog behavior consultant, author, and speaker. She specializes in creating operant counterconditioning procedures to empower working, performance, and pet dogs to feel safe and comfortable so they can function confidently in stressful environments. Leslie’s books have been translated into multiple languages and Leslie has taught the material from her seminal book Control Unleashed: Creating a Focused and Confident Dog to people and dogs all around the world. Leslie lives near Philadelphia with two kids, three dogs, two cats, one bunny, and one husband. She is a member of the 2019 Clicker Expo faculty. Next Episode: To be released 1/4/2019!

Summary: Linda P. Case is a science writer, dog trainer, and canine nutritionist who lectures throughout the world about dog nutrition, training, behavior, and health. Her academic training is as a canine and feline nutritionist and trainer. She earned her B.S. in Animal Science at Cornell University and her M.S. in Canine/Feline Nutrition at the University of Illinois. She was a lecturer of companion animal science at the University of Illinois for 15 years and taught companion animal behavior and training at the College of Veterinary Medicine. Linda currently owns AutumnGold Consulting and Dog Training Center in Mahomet, IL. She is the author of numerous publications and eight books, as well as the popular blog “The Science Dog,” which I’ll make sure we link to in my show notes. Links: The Science Dog Blog Leave FDSA A Voicemail! Next Episode: To be released 11/16/2018, we'll be talking to Barbara Currier about teaching and training weave poles for agility!  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 Linda Case. Linda Case is a science writer, dog trainer, and canine nutritionist who lectures throughout the world about dog nutrition, training, behavior, and health. Her academic training is as a canine and feline nutritionist and trainer. She earned her B.S. in Animal Science at Cornell University and her M.S. in Canine/Feline Nutrition at the University of Illinois. She was a lecturer of companion animal science at the University of Illinois for 15 years and taught companion animal behavior and training at the College of Veterinary Medicine. Linda currently owns AutumnGold Consulting and Dog Training Center in Mahomet, IL. She is the author of numerous publications and eight books, as well as the popular blog “The Science Dog,” which I’ll make sure we link to in my show notes. (http://thesciencedog.wordpress.com/). Hi Linda! Welcome to the podcast. Linda Case: Hi Melissa. Thanks for having me. Melissa Breau: Did I totally butcher the name of where you live? Linda Case: No, you got it exactly. It was great, first shot. Melissa Breau: To start us out a little bit, do you want to tell us a little bit about the dogs that you have, and what you’re working on with them, and a little about you? Linda Case: Sure, sure. Currently my husband and I live with and love two dogs, which is low for us. We had a bad year last year and we lost two dogs in succession. But our two current dogs are Alice, who’s a 3-year-old Golden Retriever, and Cooper, who is a 7-year-old Golden Retriever. What we’re working on with them right now, which I know a lot of folks are excited about, all of the AutumnGold instructors — I have a group of great instructors that work with us at our school — we went to ClickerExpo last spring and we all got excited about concept training with Ken Ramirez, so I’m working on match-to-sample with them. We’re also working on object and identification in concept training with objects — colors and shapes and things like that. That’s not going so well, but match-to-sample is going well. Melissa Breau: That’s pretty cool. Linda Case: It is. It’s really cool. I love it because it brings together what’s the topic of my latest book is animal cognition and higher levels of thinking with behaviorism. I think it meshes those two so beautifully. I no longer show competitively, but I love to train tricks, so I’m doing quite a bit of tricks training with Alice and Cooper. My current goal … Alice is being trained to scoot backwards, like a backwards crawl, under a bunch of … it’s like basically a backwards Army crawl, and she loves that. And Cooper is doing a forwards Army crawl. My goal is to get them to do it together. Again, not going so well, but that’s my ultimate idea. Also I just want to mention that our school — I kind of separate these two — our school primarily works with what I call the highly interested pet owner. We have folks who want to do basic manners training and oftentimes want to do more, but they’re not generally dog sports folks. They’re people who just want to get out and have fun with their dogs. And so our school, we’re kind of challenged a lot of the time to provide things that are fun for them but not too intense, because then they may not want to do the competition stuff. So we recently came up with a concept that we call Life Skills Courses that are a bump up from your basic manners courses and things like good greeting behaviors, or being out in a park or even a dog park behaviors, or behaviors at doggie daycare, or behaviors at the vet. We also do things for CGC. So that’s where our school is, too. We wanted to do concept training with the school, but again that’s probably a little bit higher level than most of our clientele like or are interested in. Melissa Breau: I can see that. It definitely takes some commitment and some playing with things and a pretty solid understanding of training mechanics. Linda Case: Yeah, yeah. Sometimes I think we have a view … we look at it through rose-colored glasses, like, “Oh, everyone will love this!” And people are like, “Yeah, but I really just want my dog to sit when he says hello.” Melissa Breau: Right. I mentioned in your bio that you’re a science writer, dog trainer, and canine nutritionist — so which came first? How did you originally end up “in dogs,” as they say? Linda Case: I came by it very naturally. I actually grew up training, so I guess training came first. My mom was a dog trainer and she showed dogs, primarily in obedience, some tracking, and a little bit of conformation. She was also the leader of our 4-H Club when I was a kid, and that was a dog-training club, which was pretty cool, because back then those things were pretty rare. I started out with a Sheltie, and then, when I graduated from undergrad, that’s when I got into Goldens. My mom and I did a lot of training and showing around the country together, because when I started moving around, she would meet up with me and we’d go to seminars together, we’d go to shows, so that was a lot of fun. It was something really special in my life. So training definitely came first. Melissa Breau: That’s awesome. That sounds like such a unique opportunity to have family-bonding-type stuff but enjoy your dogs, too, especially as you travel around and do stuff with them. Linda Case: I know. I feel lucky to have had that. Melissa Breau: How did you get from that to focusing on nutrition? Linda Case: I would like to be one of those people that would say, “Oh, it’s been a passion of mine all my life,” but that would actually not be the truth. The truth is that I was an animal science major at Cornell, and at that time most animal science majors, if you were interested in companion animals rather than farm animals, you went to vet school. I wasn’t that interested in vet school, because I was training and showing dogs a lot and I knew I really wanted to do something with behavior and training. But this was a while ago, and at that time — I think things have changed amazingly in the years that followed — but at that time there really were no academic graduate programs in canine and feline behavior training. So I went back to my advisor, he was a great mentor at Cornell, and said, “I want to go back to school for something with dogs. What is there?” And at the time he said, “Linda, go into nutrition. You’ll get a job that way.” And he was right, because nutrition … it was in the mid-’80s, and nutrition was taking off as a field of study. Luckily my mentor here at U of I was also a former student at Cornell and a good friend with my advisors. She took me under her wing and was both my mentor as a dog person and in nutrition. So I did that and did find that it did become a passion, even though it wasn’t originally a passion, it was just “I want to do something with dogs.” Melissa Breau: Looking at that, is there a “best” or a “right” choice when it comes to nutrition? I know that’s kind of jumping straight into things, but … Linda Case: There probably is not a single “right” choice, but what I can say with confidence is that there are too many choices today, and that’s what baffles people and frustrates them and makes people finally throw up their hands and say, “How do I choose?” In my view, there are two problems with where we’re at right now with nutrition. One is that owners and consumers are not provided with adequate information about the foods that are available to them in order to choose well, and that’s a drum that I beat very hard in Dog Food Logic, in that book, things such as the food’s digestibility, ingredient quality, even ingredient sourcing. Many of those factors are hidden from pet owners, and they shouldn’t be. We should have full access, we should have full transparency, and we do not have that in the pet food industry. In fact, a lot of regulations are set up to hide many things from, or at least to not make them available to pet owners. So we don’t get the information that we need to choose. And the second is that there are so many choices and there are such small differences. I call it “a distinction without a difference” among these foods that it makes no difference, and people get confused because there are such small and subtle differences among these many choices in the different categories of foods. So that’s the long answer to say there is no clear choice, and even if there was, it would be hard for owners to choose because of the information they’re given today. Melissa Breau: Thinking about that, are there factors they should be considering? What should they be looking at when they’re trying to make a nutrition decision for their own dog? Linda Case: That’s actually the primary focus of my book Dog Food Logic, and the four primary factors that you can break that down into are, first and foremost, the dog, and that’s what I’ll be talking about primarily in the upcoming webinar — your dog’s life stage, their activity level, their health. And then the second would be the owner, and those factors really have a lot more to do with the owner’s values — what they think is important, what they’d like from a food, and also, sadly, economics. Lately I’ve been exploring some different types of foods, just exploring their digestibility and how valuable they are in terms of their nutrient content and their quality. One thing you’ll find is that there’s such a huge range in price point in these foods, so economics can affect a person’s decisions. The third thing, of course, is the food itself — the type it is, the ingredients, the information the owner is provided with and can have access to. And then number four would be the manufacturer — the manufacturer’s size, are they multinational, are they a small, private-owned company, certainly their long-term reputation, how many recalls have they had. Again a big one, this is my drum I keep beating: how transparent they are, how forthcoming they are with information when they’re asked by consumers. Those four factor categories are, I think, are the most important when you’re selecting food. Melissa Breau: It’s almost like you knew I was going to talk more about manufacturing in my next question! I used to actually cover pet food and pet manufacturing for my day job. I used to be a magazine editor at a business-to-business magazine covering that stuff. Of course, every manufacturer out there does their absolute best to make a case for why their food is the best on the market. What research is there that actually tells us what dogs need for a balanced diet? What do we really know, from a scientific perspective, about what we should be looking for? Linda Case: Of the questions that you sent me ahead of time, this was my favorite question, and the reason is that — you present it really well — is that it’s marketing today. Twenty-five years ago, when this field was really first taking off, science did govern the day. There were really great, small, start-up pet food companies that were hiring scientists, hiring nutritionists, they were doing really good research, they were partnering with universities and academic institutions to do this research, and food was about the science. But starting probably about 15 years ago, marketing — just as in the human food industry — became more and more the driving force, and it now pretty much owns pet food companies, so everything is driven by marketing. And so while marketing is very good at its job at selling pet foods to people, it tends to downplay and sometimes even mislead about the science. In fact, that’s one of the reasons “The Science Dog” was born, was trying to bring the science to the people that need it. So there is a real disconnect today between the scientific knowledge and the great research that’s being done, and I would argue this is true in behavior and training as much as it is in nutrition, between the science that’s being done and getting it to the people that need it, the people that are really interested in dogs, that want to do the best by their dogs, both in terms of the nutrition and training. So in terms of what we know, we know a lot. We know all of the nutrient requirements of dogs and cats, we know age differences, how activity affects the dog’s energy and basic nutrient needs, how certain health problems affect a dog’s nutrient needs. That knowledge is solid and it’s backed by good science. The problem is that it often doesn’t get where it needs to go, or it’s again misrepresented because of marketing practices. We also know a lot about many of the ingredients that are used in pet foods. I’m sure you’re aware of the recent grain-free scare and DCM in dogs. One of the problems with that — it’s a great example of ingredients that are relatively new to the pet food market and have not been studied in-depth. Things like chicken and rice and even lamb, all of those, certainly meat, pork, have been studied a great deal in terms of their nutrient availability, what happens to them when they’re extruded, what happens to them if they’re fed raw. We know a lot about those ingredients, but what we don’t know a lot about are the newer ingredients such as legumes and peas. They just haven’t been studied that much. It doesn’t mean they’re necessarily bad or they’re necessarily dangerous; they just haven’t been studied. We also know a lot about ingredient digestibility and safety, but again, does it get where it needs to go. It’s in the literature. It needs to just be disseminated in a better way, in my view. Melissa Breau: To dive a little more into that, it does seem like there are a lot of people trying to put out information. Everybody and their dog seem to be blogging about dog behavior, nutrition, all these things, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are all doing their research, or that the research that they’re doing is very good. Do you have any advice for, when you’re out there on the Internet, figuring out what’s reliable and what’s … not? How can folks tell what is based on research and what maybe is just somebody’s opinion dressed up as fact? Linda Case: What you’re really describing is evidence-based decision-making or evidence-based choices, which refers to saying, “If I’m going to make a choice, what evidence is there to support that choice and how reliable is that evidence?” Reliability of course is key. I hate to keep plugging my books, but I have a book called Beware The Straw Man, and the entire purpose of that book was to help interested dog owners and pet owners, and professionals as well, to understand how to sift through evidence that is reliable and evidence-based versus evidence that is just anecdote or opinion. Of course, you can always go back to the original research, but most folks don’t have the time or the interest to do that, so you have to find out where that information came from, what the original source was, how it’s being presented. But again, as far as the average pet owner goes, it can be really challenging. So I think critical thinking skills and being aware of some of the cognitive biases we have when we make decisions can be really helpful. This is why I said earlier this could be a three-hour conversation really easily, so I’m going to refer them to a book instead. Melissa Breau: Fair enough, fair enough. I know in addition to the nutrition stuff, you occasionally debunk training myths. I was curious: What are some of the oddest myths you’ve heard when it comes to training? I was wondering if you could debunk a few for us.   Linda Case: When I looked at this question I thought, Hmm, how do I pick? Because I probably have about twenty that I’ve written about, either on “The Science Dog” or in books. Probably one of my favorites, and I think many listeners will agree with this, but remember there’s a difference between what we intuit and what we believe to be true versus what we have actual evidence to be true, and it’s pretty common for the evidence to not support what we believe or to at least support part of it and hopefully change our beliefs. But this is actually one that most trainers already are onboard with but most pet owners are not, and that has to do with the guilty look. There’s the belief, this prevalent belief, amongst pet owners that when they come home and their dog is showing what they call “the guilty look,” which is usually just fear or submission, that that shows the dog knows he did something wrong or chewed something up or did something they didn’t like him to do, and therefore he’s showing guilt. There was a series of studies by Alexandra Horowitz and Julie Hecht, and Adam Miklosi also was involved in these, that showed once and for all it’s not guilt. It’s fear, and it’s fear of impending punishment. They did this through a series of very unique and creative studies, and I present it in the book Beware The Straw Man. It’s called “Death Throes of the Guilty Look,” and literally walks step-by-step through and say, you can actually fool the dog into thinking he did something, or into thinking that he’s going to be punished, rather, and he will show what’s called the guilty look. My hope is that that information can help trainers then convince their clients who are saying their dog feels guilty and shows guilt to understand that no, your dog has learned to show fear because they’re afraid of an impending punishment. The importance of that is not so much … we don’t really need to debate what the internal emotional state of the dog is, because I would argue it’s probably the same internal emotional state as humans when we supposedly show guilt. It’s basically fear of being caught at something you did wrong. It’s not that. It’s not that we would say, “Oh, they’re not feeling anything internally.” It’s rather that when we label a behavior as guilt, when we label it a certain way, that can then lead to improper and, in my view, cruel treatment of the dog, because if you say he’s feeling guilty, that means you can do something about it, which means punishing that dog, and that’s where we certainly go awry, rather than to understand your dog’s actually fearful, you should manage his environment better so these things don’t happen. That belief in guilt gets in the way of actually changing the behavior and changing how you manage that dog in another way. So that was one of my favorites. If we have time, a second one was an essay that I believe is still on the blog, but it’s also in … I think it’s in Beware The Straw Man and I also talk about it in Dog Smart. This one was called “The Kids Are All Right.” This I just found fascinating because we all know that it’s really important to teach children to be appropriate with dogs, to ask before they come up, and hopefully to learn to read a dog’s body language. I had a personal anecdote very recently with this, in that I was at our veterinarian’s office with Cooper just last week, and Cooper is pretty bombproof. He’s a very steady, easygoing Golden. He loves all people. But he was at the vet’s office, so he was a little nervous. As I was waiting to leave, I was actually talking to our vet about something, a little girl about 8 years old came up with her mom and she came up and said, “Can I pet your dog?” So I was like, “Good girl. You asked first.” And I said, “Sure, yes. He’s friendly.” Well, that’s where it went a little wrong, because she did start interacting with him, but she was very inappropriate in that she started — I’m sorry, that’s a dog drinking behind me, if you can hear that — she was very inappropriate with him. She threw her arms around him, she was leaning over him, she was way, way, way too close. Cooper put his tail down, he backed up, he was showing her every physical sign that he was uncomfortable. I intervened and said, “Hey, honey, you’re a little too close, he’s a little nervous, he’s at the vet’s,” and she was having none of it. This was how she interacted with dogs, and she was going to hug him. And Mom did nothing. Mom just stood there, because I think the mom looked at it as, “My job is done. I taught my child to ask before she went up to greet.” It ended up fine. We told her, “Back off, let him come to you, here’s a treat,” and everything ended up fine. But that story fits right into this essay. It was called “The Kids Are All Right,” and what they did, it was a series of studies from different researchers, which is wonderful because that is a really good way to corroborate information is if different researchers did the studies. They looked at a bunch of different programs that are available for teaching kids to be appropriate with dogs, for teaching kids to not only approach them correctly, but to pet them gently and to show appropriate body language and to read also body language from dogs who are unfriendly. They found that, above a certain age, these programs worked great with the kids. They did a test/retest, so they would test to see how the kids were before they’d had the training, they’d give them these trainings — and there were various types of training; some were online, some were onsite, there were various approaches — and then they’d retest to see did the kids learn something, and sure enough, they did. So this was all good. Then another study looked at the parents’ behavior, and what they found was that oftentimes the kids had learned this behavior, but their parents did exactly what this parent did that I saw. They taught their child to ask first, and then it was kind of like no holds barred, do whatever you want. And even though their child had been given this good information about good interactions with dogs, the parents didn’t follow through. The parents didn’t learn anything. So this essay basically is saying the kids are all right, they’re learning. We need to get to the parents and to teach them to teach their kids to be more gentle, to not encourage their kids. They even had examples in these studies of the kids showing appropriate behavior, just gently petting, and the parents encouraging them to do more, you know, “Throw your arms around the big dog, lean over him.” So what that particular myth busted to me was that it’s not always the kids, that we really need to educate parents as well. Do you want one more, or do we not have time? Melissa Breau: Sure, sure, give us one more! Linda Case: OK, I’ll give you one more very quickly. This has to do with extinction or sometimes negative punishment, which again I’m assuming again probably most of your listeners know what extinction is. It’s removing a reinforcer to decrease a behavior. The most common use of extinction in dog training of course is dogs who jump up or dogs who pester for attention. Owners are said that to extinguish that behavior, you ignore the dog or you step away, you turn your back to the dog. We have not used extinction at my training school for many years. I’m not a fan of it, I never have been. Although I know it is still used a great deal, veterinarians recommend it, a lot of trainers still recommend it, I’ve never been a fan personally because I think it causes frustration. That’s the short end of the story. The interesting thing is that there’s actually some evidence that the end use of negative punishment, removing something the dog wants in order to stop a behavior, do cause frustration in dogs. It’s a very quick experiment. They basically taught dogs to offer eye contact for a positive reinforce, for a treat. The dogs of course learned that very quickly. And then they either would continue to reinforce it or they would use extinction. So now the dog offered the behavior and they stopped reinforcing it and would either turn their back or walk away or just not reinforce the behavior. What they saw — what behaviorist would cause an “extinction burst,” cognitive scientists would call it frustration — that the dogs became very unhappy, they started pawing, they started pestering for more affection, they actually got a little distressed, some of them would whine. And so the conclusion of that study, even though it’s a very small study, was that maybe we need to rethink the use of extinction, especially if it’s not used with training an alternate behavior, which is again the way that a lot of trainers use it. They train an alternate behavior and use extinction. I would argue that just train the alternate behavior and don’t use extinction at all. This essay basically talked about we need to consider the outcome. “Extinction burst” sounds very pure and emotion-free, but actually what we’re seeing in an extinction burst is a dog who’s becoming frustrated and unhappy, and why do that when we don’t need to, when we have alternate approaches. We can just train an alternate behavior rather than the behavior that we don’t want. Melissa Breau: So, I know that we were introduced because you’ve got a webinar coming up at FDSA. It’s titled “Canine Athlete or Couch Potato? - Feeding Dogs to Meet their Exercise Needs,” and I wanted to talk about it just for a minute. Can you share a little bit on what you’ll cover, the type of person who might be interested in the webinar, that kind of thing? Linda Case: Well, first of all, thank you for inviting me to give that webinar. I’m really excited about it and really happy to be part of the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. I’m going to focus on exercise because I know that many of your audience are interested in dog sports and that that’s an important topic for them. We’ll start off with just a small discussion of obesity. That’s again recognizing it, looking at different foods that are on the market that are marketed as light or low calorie, and then we’ll really spend most of the seminar on exercise, looking at the three factors that impact nutrition and exercise, and those are the intensity of the exercise, the duration, and its frequency, and how these three factors influence the energy and nutrient needs of the canine athlete. And then we finish with choosing the best food for a canine athlete, and once again that whole idea that there’s so many choices out there, how do you distinguish among them, and what are the factors that someone who is interested in feeding a canine athlete should pay attention to when they choose a food. Melissa Breau: We’re getting close to the end here, and there are a couple of questions that I usually ask first-time guests, so I’d love to go through those. The first one is, what is the dog-related accomplishment that you’re proudest of? Linda Case: Oh, that’s a nice one. Can I say two? Melissa Breau: Sure, sure. Linda Case: Because I would divide these into an accomplishment that reaches a larger audience versus an accomplishment that reaches a local audience. I guess one of the things I’m proudest of is my writing, because I think science writing that’s brought to interested people, to everybody, rather than just to other scientists is what I’ve really tried to do in my writing, especially in recent years. And then I feel like it reaches many people outside of my local area, and hopefully to many dog trainers and dog professionals who are interested in learning about the recent science. The second would be my AutumnGold dog training school for the local audience, that hopefully we strengthen the loving bond that people have with their dogs, and hopefully increase their understanding of positively based training to our local area, because we only serve of course the local area with that. Melissa Breau: We talked about FDSA is making a ripple and you’ve got to start with your ripple where you are. Linda Case: Yeah, I love that. Melissa Breau: My second question here is, what’s the best piece of training advice that you’ve ever heard? Linda Case: I think the best piece of training advice is also the best piece of life advice I’ve ever received. It started with my dad and it has come from other mentors, and that is just simply “Be kind.” That’s it. Melissa Breau: I like that. Linda Case: It’s short. Be kind. Melissa Breau: Makes it very easy to remember. Linda Case: It is. Melissa Breau: And the last one here, who is somebody else in the dog world that you look up to? Linda Case: Right now I’d say, because I’ve been thinking about a lot and using his methods, is Ken Ramirez is way up there. Certainly of course Karen Pryor. And one of my personal mentors who I mentioned earlier, who was my advisor in graduate school and who now is also an amazing nutritionist and she’s also a KPA certified trainer, so we connected on many levels, and that was my mentor Dr. Gail Czarnecki, who is in the St. Louis area now. She’s no longer here. But I would say she’s definitely one of my most admired personal mentors as well. Melissa Breau: That’s awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast Linda! This has been great. Linda Case: It’s been wonderful! Thank you so much, and I’m really excited about the upcoming webinar, and again very grateful and happy that Fenzi Dog Sports Academy has invited me. Melissa Breau: We’re thrilled to have you! And for everybody who’s listening, just so that you know, the details on that, it’s November 15 at 6 p.m. Pacific time. It is up on the site already, so if you want to, you can go over and look. She’s got a full description up there, and we’ve got a link to her bio, and all sorts of good stuff, if anybody wants to go take a look at that. Thank you to everybody for tuning in! We’ll be back next week, this time with Barbara Currier to talk about teaching your dog to love weave poles. In the meantime, I have a special request. For this year’s anniversary episode, we want to do something special. We want to feature you, our listeners. I’d love it if you’d consider leaving us a voicemail that we can include in that episode. To do so, just go to SpeakPipe.com/FDSA_podcast. I’ll have a link to that in this episode’s show notes so you can go there and click on it to be taken to the page. There will be a record button there and you can leave us a message. Have a burning question we haven’t answered? A brag you want to share? Your own best training advice? Well, we want to hear about it. And 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!

Sarah Owings is a speaker at ClickerExpo and a Karen Pryor Academy faculty member. She competes regularly in the sport of nose work at an elite level and is an instructor for CyberDog online. She's also written for Clean Run Magazine on cues and stimulus control.  In this podcast we discuss how to get your dog to engage with you more and when and why we should give dogs choice in training. This podcast is sponsored by Butternut Box. To get 75% off your first order go to www.butternutbox.com/nickbenger

Summary: Dr. Jennifer Summerfield is a veterinarian and Certified Professional Dog Trainer (CPDT-KA), with a focus on treating behavior problems including aggression to humans or other animals, separation anxiety, and compulsive behavior disorders. She also teaches group classes and private lessons in basic obedience for pet dogs, and coaches students getting started in dog sports such as agility and competitive obedience.   Jennifer is proud to be a member of the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior (AVSAB) and the Association of Professional Dog Trainers (APDT). She is a passionate advocate for positive, science-based methods of training and behavior modification, and loves helping pet owners learn to communicate more clearly with their dogs. Links mentioned: Behavior Medication: First-line Therapy or Last Resort? Dr. Jen's Blog Dog Talk with Dr. Jen (Podcast) Train your dog now! by Dr. Jennifer Summerfield (book) Next Episode:  To be released 8/10/2018, featuring Nancy Tucker, talking about how to stop your dog from going crazy at the door. 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 Dr. Jennifer Summerfield. Dr. Jen is a veterinarian and Certified Professional Dog Trainer (CPDT-KA), with a focus on treating behavior problems including aggression to humans or other animals, separation anxiety, and compulsive behavior disorders. She also teaches group classes and private lessons in basic obedience for pet dogs, and coaches students getting started in dog sports such as agility and competitive obedience.   Jennifer is proud to be a member of the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior (AVSAB) and the Association of Professional Dog Trainers (APDT). She is a passionate advocate for positive, science-based methods of training and behavior modification, and loves helping pet owners learn to communicate more clearly with their dogs. Hi Jen, welcome to the podcast! Jennifer Summerfield: Hey Melissa. I am excited to be here. Melissa Breau: To start us out, can you share a little bit about your own dogs, who they are, and anything you’re working on with them? Jennifer Summerfield: Definitely. I have three dogs at the moment. They are all Shelties. The oldest one is Remy. He just turned 10 years old this year, so double digits now. He’s my old man. We were really excited this past summer because he just finished his PACH, which so far is our highest pinnacle of achievement in agility, and it only took us ten years to get there, so, you know, better late than never! So that’s been really exciting for him. And I finally just got the courage worked up to enter him in AKC Premier in the next trial that we’re entered in, in August. It’s a bit of a new adventure for us because we’ve never tried that before, but I figure what the heck. My middle dog, Gatsby, is 4-and-a-half years old, he’ll be 5 this November, and he is working on his agility titles as well. He currently is in, I want to say, Master Jumpers and Excellent Standard. His agility career has been a little bit slower than Remy’s. He’s had some stress-related weave pole issues that we’re working through, and he also had some really significant dog-reactivity issues when he was younger, so we spent a lot of time when he was about a year and a half to 2 years old or so just working through that to get him to the point where he could even go to agility trials successfully without having a meltdown. So for him, just the fact that he has any titles at all and can occasionally successfully trial is a pretty great accomplishment. But I have him entered in a couple of trials this fall as well, so hopefully we’ll keep building on that. And then my youngest dog, Clint, he is 4 years old now, and his history was a little bit different. He came to me as an adult, almost a year old, because I really wanted a dog to show in conformation. When I got Gatsby as a puppy, he was supposed to be my conformation dog. That’s what we were hoping for, but … I don’t know how much you know about Shelties and conformation, but the height thing is a killer. It looked like he was going to be in size on the charts and everything, and then when he got to be about 6 months old, he was over. So I got Clint a little bit later at a year old from his breeder, and he was already a finished champion at that point, so he knew what to do, which was perfect because I was a total beginner. So I had a really good time showing him for about a year after I got him. We finished his Grand Championship together, so that was really cool. And now we’re branching out and he’s starting to learn some agility and some other things as well. So that’s my guys in a nutshell. Melissa Breau: I’ve got a bit of a chicken-or-egg question for you here. Did dog training come first, or did becoming a vet come first? How did you get into all this stuff? Jennifer Summerfield: Funnily enough, I’ve been interested in dog training and dog behavior from as early as I can remember, even before we had a dog. When I was a kid, I was really crazy about dogs, and I was fascinated by dog training. I had books and books and books, just shelves of books on training dogs, obedience training, and also a bunch of random stuff, like, I had books on Schutzhund training, and books on herding training, and books on service dog training, and just everything I could get my hands on. One of the really formative experiences of my childhood was that my aunt took me to an obedience trial that was at that time … I don’t remember what the name of the kennel club is, but our local kennel club in Charleston — I live in West Virginia — used to have their show at the Civic Center every year, and they would have an obedience trial as part of that. And so my aunt took me one year. I must have been 8 or 9, something like that, and I just remember being absolutely riveted by watching the dogs in the obedience trial, which I guess is maybe a funny thing in retrospect for an 8- or 9-year-old to be riveted by, but I was. I remember watching that and thinking it was absolutely the most amazing thing I had ever seen, and I wanted to do it more than anything, hence all the books and all of that stuff. I wrote to the AKC when I was a kid to ask for a copy of the obedience regulations, because I had read that that was how you could get them. This was back before everything was online, you know, this would have been the early ’90s. So I wrote to the AKC and I remember being super-excited when they sent the manila envelope back that had the obedience regulations in it. I read them and I was just super-fascinated and I knew that was what I wanted to do. We got my first dog when I was about 16, and he was a Sheltie named Duncan, so I did a lot of training with him. We were never very successful in the obedience ring, which was completely my fault, not his. But I’ve just always been really fascinated by the idea of being able to communicate with another species that way, being able to have that kind of relationship with a dog where they understand what you want them to do and there’s all this back and forth communication going on to do these really complicated, fancy things. So when it came time to start thinking about what I actually wanted to do with my life, around junior high school, high school, getting ready to go to college, I always knew that I wanted to do something related to dog training or dog behavior, and I thought about several different ways of going about that. I considered the idea of just being a professional dog trainer straight out, but I was a little bit nervous about that because I wasn’t quite sure if it was easy to make a living doing that, or how one got established, and I was a little bit concerned. It didn’t feel very stable to me, but who knows, but I wanted something that felt like there was more of an established career path for it, I guess. Of course I thought about veterinary medicine, because that’s one of the most obvious things that everybody thinks about when they want to work with animals. And I did actually give some thought in college to going to graduate school and getting a Ph.D., and then possibly becoming an applied animal behaviorist that way, but there were two reasons I opted not to go that route, and one was that I discovered in college that research is really not my thing, and I knew that unfortunately that was going to be a big part of life getting a Ph.D., so that was kind of a strike against it. So what I ultimately decided to do instead was go to veterinary school, and what I liked about that idea was that I felt like I would always have something to fall back on, regardless. I knew that I could do behavior, hopefully relatively easily, I could get into doing that with a veterinary degree, but I could also just be a general practice veterinarian too, if need be, and actually I really like that aspect of my job right now. So that’s how I ended up in vet school, but it really was always kind of a back door way to get into the world of behavior. Melissa Breau: That’s awesome. It’s fantastic that that appealed to you at such a young age. I think that a lot of people who listen to this podcast can probably relate to that. Jennifer Summerfield: I think this was probably the audience that would relate to it. It’s only in retrospect that I realize what a strange little child I probably was. Melissa Breau: Hey, you’re not alone out there. Dr. Jennifer Summerfield: That’s right! Melissa Breau: So how did you become interested in it from such a young age? Were you always a positive trainer? Is that how you started out, or did you cross over at some point? How did that happen? Jennifer Summerfield: I do consider myself to be a crossover trainer, and I think a lot of that has to do with the kind of information that was out there at the time that I first started getting interested in these things and I was first collecting all my books and reading everything. This was the ’90s, for the most part, so positive training I know was starting to become a thing around that time, but it wasn’t, as I recall, super mainstream, at least not where I was, and in the things that I was reading and the classes that I was going to. Most of the books I had, of course, probably like a lot of people at that time, were pretty correction-based, and they talked about how you needed to be in charge, and you needed to make sure that your dog knew who was boss, and that you had to be really careful about using cookies in training because then your dog gets dependent on them, and of course you don’t want your dog to just be working for cookies, you want them to be working for you, and I thought all that made a lot of sense at the time. When I was first working with Duncan, I had this book that was about competitive obedience training, specifically, and I remember working through this book and just working religiously on doing everything it said. I remember teaching him to heel, and the way that the book said that you taught your dog to heel was you put a choke collar on them and you walked around in circles in the yard, and every time they got in front of your leg, you gave a leash correction and you jerked them back and you just did that until they figured it out. That’s how Duncan learned to heel, and obviously if I had it to go back and do it over again, I would do it differently. But he was a good dog, and he learned, and it worked reasonably well. Like I said, we never got to the point of having any great successes in the obedience ring, for probably a lot of other reasons besides that, but that’s kind of how I got started. As I got older and I started reading more things, one thing that I remember that was a big turning point for me was reading Jean Donaldson’s book The Culture Clash. I know that probably a lot of your listeners are familiar with that book, because I know it’s kind of a classic in the world of behavior, but it’s very much about how most of the things our dogs do that bother us are just dog things. They’re just doing things that dogs do, and those things happen to bother us, and that’s reasonable sometimes and we can teach them not to do those things. But that was such a revolutionary thing for me to think, like, You mean it’s not all about that my dog is trying to be in charge and he needs to know that this stuff’s not allowed. She just made so much sense. At that time I had never heard anybody put it that way before, and I want to say that was really the first time that the idea of positive training was presented to me in a way that made a lot of sense. As I got older, of course, and started to learn more about the scientific side of things — you know I’m a huge science nerd, as probably most people are who go to the trouble of getting a veterinary degree — and so as I learned more about the scientific side of things, then I was sold, because obviously the scientific consensus is unanimous that clearly there’s a way to do things that works a lot better than using correction-based techniques, and that there’s lots of really valid scientific reasons to use positive reinforcement training. So I would say by the time I started vet school, I was pretty solidly in that camp. The other thing that probably cemented it for me was seeing the difference in how quickly Duncan learned things, for one thing, once I switched. He learned to heel the old-fashioned way, but he learned to do his dumbbell retrieve with a clicker, and he loved his dumbbell retrieve. He would find his dumbbell, if I forgot to put it away after a training session, he would find it and bring it to me and sit, and he just had an enthusiasm for it that he never, ever had for the things we learned when I was still teaching the old way. And then, when I got my dog Remy, who was the second dog I had, the first dog after Duncan, who by that point I was pretty solidly in the positive reinforcement camp, and he learned to heel with a clicker. Looking at the difference between the two of them, both in terms of how technically good their heeling was, but also just looking at their attitude differences and how much they wanted to do it, I knew, I think, after I had done a little bit of work with Remy and seen that kind of difference, that I would never train another dog with corrections again. Melissa Breau: Sometimes the proof really is in the pudding. Once you’ve seen it, you can’t go back. Jennifer Summerfield: Yeah, and I guess that’s a pretty common experience, I think. I feel like I hear a variation of that from a lot of crossover trainers, that it’s a combination of understanding the science, but also when you see it, you see the difference in your own dog or in a client’s dog and you say, “Why on Earth did I ever used to do it a different way?” Melissa Breau: Absolutely. I’d imagine that being a vet and a dog trainer, you’ve got a lot of knowledge there. How does one body of knowledge inform the other, and how have they both influenced your career? Jennifer Summerfield: I’m really glad, looking back, that I did make the choice to go to vet school, because I think that’s a good skill set to have. Obviously I like being a vet. I am in general practice. Even though I spend a fair amount of my time seeing behavior cases, I do general practice stuff too, which I really enjoy. But that skill set is definitely useful for seeing behavior cases because there are a lot of behavior issues dogs have, and training issues, that have a physical component to them, and it’s very handy to have that knowledge base to fall back on, so that if somebody comes in and they say, “My dog’s having house training issues all of a sudden again, and he’s always been house trained, but now I don’t know what’s going on,” to be able to say, “Well, you know, your dog might have a urinary tract infection,” or “Your dog might have Cushing’s disease,” or “Your dog might have diabetes.” These are things that sometimes people think they have a training problem or behavior problem when actually they have a medical problem. So it’s definitely useful to have that knowledge base to be able to say, “Well, actually, maybe we should look at this.” Both being a veterinarian and being a dog trainer are fields that I think people feel like they have to do with dogs, or they have to do with animals, I guess, more broadly, being a veterinarian. And that’s true, but what sometimes I think people don’t realize, if you’re not in one of these two professions, is how much they have to do with people, because all of the animals come with a person, and it would be rare, being either a dog trainer or a veterinarian, that you’re dealing much directly with the animal. Your job in both of those fields is to coach the owner on what they need to be doing and figuring out what works for them, and engaging in some problem-solving with them and figuring out what they’re able to do with their lifestyle, whether it’s training their dog not to jump on people or whether it’s managing a chronic disease like diabetes. So I think that in a lot of ways that skill set, the people skills part of things, is something that has gotten to be strengthened and developed by doing both of those things. So I think all in all it worked out for the best. Melissa Breau: The last guest we had on — you’ll be right after Sue — the last guest we had before that was Deb Jones, and we were talking all about that piece of it, just the idea that if you’re a dog trainer, you’re training people, you’re not training dogs. It’s such a big difference. Jennifer Summerfield: Yeah. We do Career Day periodically for a lot of the elementary schools, but also junior highs and high schools in the area, because everybody wants a veterinarian to come for Career Day. And it’s amazing, of course, the common thing that you hear from people sometimes is, “Oh, I want to go into veterinary medicine because I really like animals but I don’t like people.” I say, “Well, then, I don’t know if this is the career for you, because it’s very, very, very, very people-centric. It’s all about people, so you really need to like dealing with people and enjoy that aspect of it too.” Melissa Breau: To shift gears a little bit, I know you’ve got a webinar coming up for FDSA on behavior medications, so I wanted to talk a little bit about that stuff too. At what point should someone start thinking about meds versus training for a behavior problem? Jennifer Summerfield: What I always harp on about this, and I actually have a blog post that I wrote a while back on this topic specifically, is that I really wish we could get more into the habit of thinking about behavior medication as a first-line treatment option for behavior issues. I see so many cases where I think people want to save that as a last resort, like, “Well, we’re going to try everything else first,” and “We’ve been working on this for a year and a half, and nothing’s helped, and maybe it’s time to consider meds.” I totally get where they’re coming from with that. I know that there are a lot of reasons people are nervous about medication. But it makes me sad in a lot of ways because I see so many dogs that I think, My goodness, their quality of life could be so much improved with medication, or The training plan that they’re working on could go so much smoother, and be so much less stressful for both the owner and the dog, if they were willing to consider medication earlier in the process. So for me, when I see behavior cases, certainly not every single one do we go straight to medication, but I would say that, gosh, probably a good 70 or 80 percent of them we talk about medication on that first visit, because usually if there are things that are legitimate behavior issues rather than training problems — which I can touch on here in a second, too, if you want — but if it’s a behavior issue that is enough of a problem that the owner is willing to schedule an appointment for it and pay for the consultation and sit down with me for three hours and talk about it, chances are that it’s something that could benefit from medication of some kind. I see so many dogs that do better on meds, and there’s very few downsides to them, so in general not anything to be scared of, and not anything that you have to feel like you have to avoid until nothing else has helped. I think of it more as it’s just like if your dog had an infection. You wouldn’t say, “Well, I really want to try everything we can possibly do until we put him on antibiotics.” Or if he had diabetes, “I really don’t want to use insulin. I just really, really don’t want to use it.” I think we just think of behavior medication differently, which is too bad in a lot of ways, and I would love to see the mainstream thinking about behavior medication move more towards the same way that we use medication for anything else. Melissa Breau: You said you could touch on the behavior stuff in a second. I’d love to have you elaborate. What did you mean? Jennifer Summerfield: As far as determining whether you have a behavior problem versus a training problem, which I do think can be a little bit of a muddy line sometimes for owners, the way that I usually try to break that down for people is that if you have a training problem, this is usually your dog is normal. Your dog is doing normal dog things that happen to be annoying to you or to other people, which is fine. And that’s legitimate, that’s still definitely something that we want to address, so I’m not saying that as like, “See, this isn’t a problem.” It’s totally a problem if your dog is flattening old ladies when it tries to say hi, or something like that. That’s a problem, but it’s a training problem. If your dog is friendly but otherwise normal, it’s not something that we would treat with medication, because this is just something that we need to teach your dog a different behavior to do in that situation. Whereas things that we think of more as behavior issues are things that have some kind of emotional component to them, so things that have an anxiety component, that’s probably the most common. The vast majority of behavior issues that we see do have an underlying anxiety component. But it’s that, or it’s a compulsive behavior issue, or it’s something that’s not normal, a genuinely abnormal behavior that the dog is doing. That’s when at that point that we think they’re more of a candidate for medication. Melissa Breau: That makes sense. It’s kind of, “Is this a normal behavior or is this …” Jennifer Summerfield: Exactly, exactly. I can’t remember who it was, but I know one year I was at a conference and I was listening to a talk on behavior medication, and I remember the way that the speaker put it, which I really liked, was one of the ways they look at whether it’s a true behavior problem that needs medication or not is, Is it something that’s bothering the dog, or is it just bothering you? Which was a great way to word it. Melissa Breau: Yeah, I like that. I’d love to include a link to the blog post that you mentioned that you wrote a while ago in the show notes. Would you be willing to shoot me over a link to that when you get a chance after we’re done? Dr. Jennifer Summerfield: Absolutely, yeah, I could definitely shoot that over to you. Melissa Breau: Awesome. To get back to the behavior meds thing, what are some signs that medications might really have a positive influence on a behavioral problem? Is there something about a problem that you go, “Oh, that, definitely. We can work on that with medication”? Jennifer Summerfield: Yeah, I would say a little bit of what we touched on a minute ago, in that anything that we think has a significant anxiety component to it, which is a lot of things. That encompasses things like separation anxiety, or thunderstorm phobia, or dogs that are generally anxious and constantly on edge and have trouble settling. Anytime we get the sense that, “Hey, this dog seems to be abnormally fearful or worried about things that are pretty normal in life that a ‘normal’ dog shouldn’t be fearful or worried about,” then that’s a pretty good indicator that medication would probably be helpful. The other big thing that makes me think, We should consider meds here is if the people have already been doing some work as far as training or behavior modification that’s appropriate, something that’s like, “OK, that sounds like a pretty good plan,” and they’re just having a really hard time making any headway, that, to me, is a strong indication that we could probably help that process along quite a bit with medication. The problem with a lot of dogs, especially if we’re working on something like, say, leash reactivity, for example, where we know how important it is from a behavior mod standpoint, how important it is to keep the dog below threshold while we’re working with it, for some dogs that are just so sensitive, that’s incredibly difficult because it doesn’t take anything at all to send them over threshold, and it can be really hard to find that little window of opportunity to even start working on training in a way that’s going to be successful. So in a dog like that, for example, medication can be really helpful to just bring things down enough that the dog is able to think, that you’re able to get that little toehold of space where the dog is able to see the trigger and not react so that you actually have some room to do your training. Melissa Breau: If somebody is considering this, they’re looking at medication or they’re thinking it might be good for their dog, what are some resources that they can use, or that they can turn to, to learn more about some of the options out there and the meds, or even just behavior modification training specifically? Jennifer Summerfield: That is such a great question. I think in terms of learning about behavior modification in general, there is some great stuff out there. There are tons of obviously really knowledgeable people in the field who have blogs and podcasts that are easy that anybody can access for free. You can find some great webinars through, of course, FDSA, but also through organizations like the Pet Professional Guild or the Association of Professional Dog Trainers or the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants. There are online courses you can do. I really think that for a lot of dog owners, they might even consider, if they’re into this kind of thing, attending a conference like ClickerExpo or the APDT National Conference, or something like that, if it’s nearby. I find that a lot of dog owners sometimes don’t think about that, or don’t realize that they can go to things like that, but anybody’s totally welcome at those conferences. I know the last couple of years when I’ve been at ClickerExpo, certainly the majority of people there, I would say, are professionals in the field of one kind or another, but there’s always a good smattering of people who are just dog owners who want to learn more about this stuff, and I think that’s really cool. So lots of opportunities to learn more about behavior science and behavior modification. On the behavior meds side of things, I actually wracked my brain trying to come up with some good resources that are available for dog owners for that, and there just really are not a lot, which is one of the reasons that I’m excited to do this webinar, because I do think there’s a lack of good information that is easily accessible for people about behavior meds, other than the very basic stuff, like, “Hey, behavior meds are a thing, you might consider it for your dog.” But beyond that, it is difficult to find much information. Melissa Breau: Now, I know you specialize in behavior. If somebody goes to their average veterinarian, is that person going to have enough of an understanding to start that conversation, or should they really be seeking out somebody who specializes? What’s the guideline there? Jennifer Summerfield: The answer is that it really does depend quite a bit on your veterinarian and whether that’s something that they have an interest in or not. That’s true in general of general practitioners about really anything, so I don’t mean that at all to sound like, “Well, if your vet doesn’t know this stuff, they’re lousy.” Believe me, if you are a general practitioner, you cannot know everything about everything. All of us have areas that we know a lot about and then areas that we know very little about. I know anytime somebody comes to my clinic and they have questions about orthopedic issues, or their dog has a broken leg that it needs pinned or something like that, I send that out the door so fast because I know nothing. That’s not my area and I’ll be the first to say so, and there are some general practitioners who are fantastic at it. So behavior, to me, is a lot like that. There are some GP’s who are going to be great at it and really know their stuff and going to be really well-versed in all the medication options, and then there are others that that’s just not an area that they deal with much, they may not know a lot. But one option that is available that I think a lot of pet owners don’t always realize is an option is that if you don’t have a veterinary behaviorist nearby, or a veterinarian who is good with behavior and sees behavior cases, and your vet says, “I’d really like to help you, I just don’t know that much about this stuff,” many veterinary behaviorists will do a remote consultation with your vet, which can be super-helpful. They can’t do it directly with you, and that has to do with the legalities of the Practice Act and things that we legally cannot make recommendations directly for an animal if we haven’t met them in person. But what they can do is they can talk to your veterinarian, and your veterinarian can give them the whole write-up and details of the case, and they can say, “Oh, OK, I understand. Here is what I would consider as far as a behavior modification plan. Here is what I would consider as far as medication for this dog.” And then your vet can take that information, and they’re the ones who are actually in charge of doing the prescribing and overseeing the case directly, but they can keep in contact with the specialist about the case and make changes as needed and all that kind of stuff. I think that is a really underutilized service that sometimes people don’t realize is out there, but it is. So if your vet’s not super-well-versed in this stuff, but they’d like to help you and you’re willing to do something like that, talk to them about it, because they may not realize it’s an option either. But I think that can be a really good happy medium sometimes if you don’t have somebody in your area who you can work with in person. Melissa Breau: I think that’s an awesome thing to have you mention on something like this, because like you said, maybe people don’t know that it’s an option out there. I certainly wouldn’t know. Jennifer Summerfield: Yeah, definitely. I know I am going to talk a little bit about that in the webinar as well, so I’ll have more details on how that can work and on how people can specifically seek that out, if it’s something they’re interested in. Melissa Breau: Obviously, during the webinar, you’re not going to be able to give dog-specific advice. Like you said, you have to see the dog, hands on the animal in order to do that. But I would love to give people just a little more of an idea on what you plan to cover, especially since I know we’re doing two webinars back-to -back in the same evening. Can you talk a little bit about what you want to cover? Jennifer Summerfield: Yes, I’m super-excited, and I guess this is kind of unprecedented for FDSA to do the double-header. Melissa Breau: It’s our very first one. Jennifer Summerfield: It’s going to be great. It’s going to be a behavior pharmacology extravaganza, and I could not be more excited. The first webinar is going to be an introduction, basically, so meant for people who want some basic information about behavior meds. It’s going to talk about things like how do you know if your dog might benefit from medication, because I know that’s probably a question that a lot of people will have who are watching the webinar. I’m assuming a significant portion of people will be watching because they have a specific dog in mind that has some issues. So we’re definitely going to talk about how to decide that for your own dog, is it something that might be helpful. We’re going to go over all the different classes of drugs that we use for behavior cases, because there are actually quite a few different options now. It just to just be Prozac and Clomicalm, but there’s a lot of other options out now, which is really cool. We’re going to talk about what our goals are when we use behavior meds, so how that works with a training plan and what kinds of things to expect that way. We are going to spend some time also talking about natural supplements and calming aids and things that can help either by themselves or as an adjunct to medication. In the second webinar, that one is going to go into more detail as far as things like how do we actually choose for real specific cases what medication to use, because there are a lot of options. So we’re going to go into factors that we look at to help us decide what medication we think is going to be best for this particular dog. We’re going to talk about combinations, because for a lot of cases we do actually use more than one medication together, so we’re going to talk about how that works and how you decide whether you want to go down that road, and if you do, what things can go together, what things can’t. We’re going to have several case studies to go over, and examples to use for discussion, which I’m really excited about, because I think that’s where sometimes you get the most information is seeing how it applies to some actual cases rather than kind of getting everything in the abstract. And we will be talking in that second webinar, because we know that the FDSA audience obviously is a lot of performance dog people, we are going to talk specifically about considerations for performance dogs, so things like how do behavior meds impact learning and memory, are there any ethical questions that we need to consider when we’re thinking about medicating dogs who are actively showing and competing, that kind of stuff. So I think that will be a really interesting discussion too. Melissa Breau: That sounds so interesting. I’m actually really excited to dig into it. Jennifer Summerfield: Me too. I’m so excited! Melissa Breau: In addition to the webinars and your work as a trainer and a vet — you’re a pretty busy lady — you also blog, and you’ve recently started podcasting. I wanted to point listeners to those resources a little bit. Can you share a little bit on what you write about and talk about, maybe some of the recent topics you’ve covered, and where they can find that stuff? Jennifer Summerfield: Sure, definitely. My blog is Dr. Jen’s Dog Blog, so you can search for that and it will come right up. I’ve been doing it since, gosh, I think July of 2016, maybe, so I’ve got quite a few posts on there. I think the most recent one I did was on accidental behavior chains that sometimes we teach without realizing to our dogs, which was interesting. I know some of the posts I have had in the past on that blog that people have found really helpful have been on things like I have a post on behavior euthanasia, which actually a lot of people have written to me about and said was helpful for them. I have a post on fear periods and single event learning, which I think a lot of people have found pretty interesting. And then I have some posts on specific topics like leash reactivity and odor-directed aggression and things like that. So if anybody’s curious about those topics, a lot of times I do try to include case examples when I write about those too. Melissa Breau: Lots of sticky issues. Jennifer Summerfield: I know, I know. They are sticky issues, but actually those are some of my favorite things to write about because I think that sometimes there’s a lack of honest conversation about some of those things, and I think it’s sometimes useful to just say, “Well, here is something I deal with every day in my job, and here’s some thoughts, here’s my perspective on it.” And I know that I do get a lot of e-mails from people about those sticky topics that they found them helpful, which is really nice to hear. The podcast is pretty recent. I just started that here earlier this year and it’s been super-fun so far. I only have a few episodes of it out so far, but of course I’m actively doing that and the blog, so there will be more coming. The most recent one I did was on teaching reliable recalls to your dog. That’s a topic I get a lot of questions about and a topic that we troubleshoot a lot in our Basic Manners classes. And I’ve had some past episodes, I know I did one on car ride anxiety, and then I’ve got some basic topics like puppy socialization and housetraining and that kind of stuff. I guess I should probably mention here I do have a book out as well, if it’s something that people are interested in. The book is called Train Your Dog Now, and it is basically a reference guide, like a handbook to pretty much anything that might come up, behavior- or training-related, with a dog. So it has sections on teaching basic obedience cues and tricks, but it also talks about how to teach your dog to cooperate for grooming and handling — nail trims and teeth brushing and ear cleaning and that kind of stuff — and then there is a whole section on behavior issues. So it does talk about leash reactivity, it does talk about odor-directed aggression, it talks about aggression to visitors, and there is … it’s a brief section, but there is a section in the book also about behavior medication and supplements. So for people that like to have a hard copy of something they can look at in their home, that might be a good option to consider. Melissa Breau: To round things out, since it’s your first time on, there are three questions I try to ask every guest their first time on the podcast, and I’d love to do those. So first off, what’s the dog-related accomplishment that you’re proudest of? Jennifer Summerfield: I would have to say, and there are so many, that’s always a question that’s hard to narrow down, but honestly, if I had to pick one, I would probably say getting my dog Remy’s CD would be my biggest accomplishment. From the time that I went to that obedience trial when I was a kid, and I watched the dogs and I just wanted to do that so bad, and with Duncan we muddled along and we did a little bit, we dabbled very briefly in competitive obedience and it didn’t go super-well, but I learned a lot from that, obviously. And then with Remy I did things a little differently, and it still took us a long time to get his CD finished, but the day that we finished it was just like … I went back to the crate and I cried. It was such a big deal for us. And I know obviously, for a lot of your listeners, they have much, much higher accomplishments in the obedience ring, but for us, that was huge. Sort of the second part of that, I guess, obviously finishing the title itself was such a big thing for me because it was something that we worked so hard on. But one of the things that kind of was the cherry on top about that trial was I remember when we were packing our stuff up and getting ready to go back to the car, there was a woman that came up to me. I didn’t know her, but I guess she had been standing around, watching the obedience ring, and she came up to me afterwards and she congratulated me on finishing my title. I said, “Thanks,’ and she said, “I just wanted to tell you how much fun I had watching you and your dog because he looked so happy,” and that was huge. I probably still feel the greatest about that of everything that we’ve done in our competition career or anywhere. So that was a great feeling. Melissa Breau: That’s amazing, and I just want to encourage everybody who’s listening, hey, listen, people remember when you say that kind of stuff about them and their dog. It’s worth it. Jennifer Summerfield: I don’t remember very much about that lady now except that that was what she told us, but she made my whole year, my whole decade. So thank you, whoever that lady was, if you’re listening. Melissa Breau: And if you see somebody have a really awesome run and you feel something like that, absolutely step up afterwards and let them know how awesome it was. Jennifer Summerfield: For sure. It makes a big difference. Melissa Breau: It’s such an amazing thing to hear. That’s just awesome. Jennifer Summerfield: Thank you. Melissa Breau: So my second question here is, what’s the best piece of training advice you’ve ever heard? Jennifer Summerfield: What I would have to say — and this is not technically dog training advice, I guess I’ll preface it that way, but I think it can apply to dog training, and I think about it in regards to dog training a lot. It’s actually a quote from Maya Angelou. It gets paraphrased a lot, but the actual quote is, she said, “I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.” That has always struck me as being such a great way to look at life, a lot of things about life in general, but specifically about dog training, because I think for probably a lot of us who are crossover trainers, I think it’s probably a pretty widespread thing to have some degree of regret or guilt, maybe, about how we did things with our first dog, or how we taught some things that we wish if we could go back and do it differently. I love that quote because it’s so true that there’s no reason to feel guilty or to feel ashamed about doing the best that you knew how to do at the time, and that’s all any of us can do. But when new information comes along and you realize that there’s a different way to do things, that you just adjust your behavior and you do it differently. So I’ve always found that really helpful in terms of thinking about myself and my own choices, but I also think it’s so helpful to keep perspective when I’m thinking about clients and the people that I work with in my job as well, because I think it’s so easy for those of us who do this professionally, and we know all the science and we do this day in and day out, it’s so easy to get a client and to feel like, “Oh, can you believe this person’s been using a shock collar on their aggressive dog,” or “This person’s been alpha-rolling their dog,” and these things that are things that obviously are probably not the ideal way to handle whatever behavior issue they’re having. But I think it’s so helpful to remember that people are just doing the best they can. That’s so powerful, that people are just doing the best they can with what they know, and that’s all any of us can do. We all were there at one point, too, and that thinking about it from that perspective, that our job is to say, “Hey, you know, I totally understand where you’re coming from, and I understand why that seems like it makes sense, but let’s look at some other ways to address this that hopefully are going to be a little bit more effective and don’t have some of the side effects that those methods have.” I think about that frequently, both in terms of my own life and also working with clients, just to try and keep that perspective that it’s important to give people the benefit of the doubt that we’re working with, too, and remember that everybody is just doing the best they can with what they know. Melissa Breau: For our last question, who is somebody else in the dog world that you look up to? Jennifer Summerfield: All three of your questions are very hard because there are so many choices. I have two for this one, if that’s OK. For the first one, as far as being a really well-known public figure in our field that I have always looked up to, I would have to say Dr. Sophia Yin for that. For veterinarians especially, she was such a pioneer of changing the way that we deal with dogs in the clinic, and of course she did a lot of behavior stuff besides the low-stress handling as well. But I think she was such a tremendous role model for all veterinarians in the way that she dealt with animals and the way that she dealt with people, and so I look up to her tremendously, and I think she did great things for the field. The other person that I would have to mention, she’s not overly famous, I don’t think, but she is a great clinical applied animal behaviorist that I worked with when I was in veterinary school, and her name is Traci Shreyer. I worked pretty closely with her through the four years that I was there, because she was very involved in the puppy class program at that school, which I worked with quite a bit, and then she was involved in teaching some of our classes, and things on behavior as well, and working with us, the behavior club setups and some things with her, and so I dealt pretty closely with her the whole four years. What I loved about her and really took away from that experience is she was great with dogs and animals in general, she was fabulous, but she was also so, so great with people, with clients, and she was always reminding us … I think, again, for many of us in this field, being empathetic towards the dogs is easy, that’s kind of what drew us in in the first place, but I think it’s so, so important to remember that we have to have empathy for our human learners too, that what we’re asking them to do is hard, and that they deserve just as much consideration and kindness and respect as our dog patients do. She was probably the single best example of that that I have ever seen. She was fantastic, and that is a lesson that I definitely took away from working with her. So I would say she’s the other person that I still really look up to in the field. Melissa Breau: That’s awesome, and that’s such a great compliment to have given somebody you learned from, to say that they are so empathetic and so good with people. Jennifer Summerfield: Yes, it’s a hard skill, such a hard skill, but it’s so important. Melissa Breau: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast Jen. Jennifer Summerfield: No problem. I’ve had a great time! Melissa Breau: And thanks to our listeners for tuning in! We’ll be back next week with Nancy Tucker, to talk about getting better door behaviors. Don’t miss it. If you haven’t already, subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. CREDITS: Today’s show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called “Buddy.” Audio editing provided by Chris Lang and transcription written by CLK Transcription Services. Thanks again for tuning in -- and happy training!

This week we welcome our first guest to our equiosity podcast. We’re joined by Hannah Brannigan. Many of you will already be familiar with Hannah’s work. She’s a member of the Clicker Expo faculty, and she also has her own, very popular podcast - Drinking from the toilet. Hannah is both a professional dog trainer and a horse owner so it’s easy to make the connections back and forth between training dogs and training horses. We both enjoy her podcast, so it was easy to get carried away in our conversation. We ended up talking for about two hours. We covered so many different topics we decided it was too much for one podcast so we split it into three much more digestible units. This week in Part One we talk about balance as it relates to both horses and dogs. We begin by asking Hannah why she became balance obsessed? Why does this attention to the minute details of how her dogs move matter. Hannah defines task analysis for us as we explore the question: how do you know what to look for to improve your animal’s balance? Hannah talks about her terrier Rugby and the huge change in his movement that good training has helped to create. In the podcast Hannah talks about a video that shows Rugby moving in a big, floating trot (big that is for a little terrier). We have put the links to that video, plus some still shots of his movement up in the members library. If you don’t yet have the password for the library, just fill out the subscription form in the member’s section. We’ll send you the password. If you don’t see it in your in-box, remember to check your junk mail. It may end up there. Once you have the password, you can access all the bonus articles we’ve posted in the Members Library.

Summary: Over her 40 years of dog training, Michele Pouliot has presented scores of seminars and has been responsible for bringing science-based clicker training to guide dog training around the world. In her "hobby world," she has actively competed in both horse and dog sports since 1970. In dog sports alone that includes A.K.C. dog obedience, attaining three OTCHes, agility, tracking, and then, starting in 2006, the sport of canine musical freestyle. A short time later, in 2007, Karen Pryor invited Michele to join her faculty for Clicker Expo conferences, where Michele presents on the application of clicker training techniques for a variety of dog sports, general training, and for the training of guide dogs for the blind. Karen Pryor and Michele collaborated for the development of Michele's online freestyle course, which is available from the Karen Pryor Academy. Links www.michelepouliot.com Next Episode:  To be released 5/11/2018, featuring Amy Cook, talking about thresholds and managing reactivity while you work on changing how your dog actually feels. 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 Michele Pouliot. Over her 40 years of dog training, Michele has presented scores of seminars and has been responsible for bringing science-based clicker training to guide dog training around the world. In her "hobby world," she has actively competed in both horse and dog sports since 1970. In dog sports alone that includes A.K.C. dog obedience, attaining three OTCHes, agility, tracking, and then, starting in 2006, the sport of canine musical freestyle. A short time later, in 2007, Karen Pryor invited Michele to join her faculty for Clicker Expo conferences, where Michele presents on the application of clicker training techniques for a variety of dog sports, general training, and for the training of guide dogs for the blind. Karen Pryor and Michele collaborated for the development of Michele's online freestyle course, which is available from the Karen Pryor Academy. I'm incredibly thrilled to have her here today! Hi Michele! Welcome to the podcast! Michele Pouliot: Hi Melissa, and thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here, and I want to thank Fenzi Dog Sports for having me here. Melissa Breau: Absolutely. So thrilled to talk to you. To get us started out, do you want to just share a little bit about your own dogs and what you're working on? Michele Pouliot: My current dogs are two. One is my English Springer Spaniel Déjà Vu, who is 8-and-a-half years old now, and I have a 4-and-a-half-year-old Australian Shepherd, Saki. They are both continually working on coming up with new ideas for tricks. It's what canine freestyle pushes you to do is always trying to come up with new moves and new behaviors to make your next routine interesting. So other than that, they're having fun just being dogs, running around the property. Melissa Breau: I know that you got started training horses. Do you mind sharing a little bit about how you originally got into training, and what led you then from horses to dogs? Just a little bit on your background? Michele Pouliot: Sure. We're going to go way back now. Straight out of high school, I really wanted to have a career in horses. I'm an Air Force brat, so my father, our family, moved all over the world as I was growing up, and in high school we landed on an Air Force base in Louisiana. My entire life I'd wanted a dog, couldn't have a dog, my mother was not a dog person and used the excuse of us moving so much as to why we couldn't have one. And I also wanted a horse. My father had always promised me that if we ever got to an Air Force base that had a stable, that I could have a horse. Well, we did, when we were stationed in the Philippines when I was in junior high school. I just fell in love with working with my horse, and I thought, This is what I want to do for the rest of my life. My father was very supportive when we came back to the States and ended up in Louisiana. In high school I got another horse, and he went ahead and allowed me to skip college and use the money to go to the Pacific Coast Equestrian Research Farm, which was run by Linda Tellington and her husband at that time, Wentworth Tellington, very well-known equestrian professionals. My whole goal was to be a professional horse trainer and instructor. After spending a year there with Linda and Went, I got my first job, which was running a new equestrian program in Fargo, North Dakota. What happened there was I was giving riding lessons to a woman who was a dog trainer. I got my first dog as soon as I got there, so I had a yellow Labrador. As soon as I got away from home on my own, I got my first dog. So I had this dog, loved it, didn't know what I was doing. But one of the gals I taught riding to was a dog trainer locally, and I look back on that experience realizing how lucky I was that the person I ran into about training dogs was such a good dog trainer. She was a traditional trainer, of course, back in those times, but she was a really good traditional trainer. So she taught me, in exchange for riding lessons, all about how to work with this young Labrador puppy that I had and make it a nice, mannerly pet. I was intrigued with how easy it was to train the dog versus the horses, so it got me interested more in training the dog versus just training it for being a nice pet. That is how I slowly started shifting my focus for my profession towards dogs, yet I always kept horses, so I haven't ever been without a horse since then. I just slowly, when I left North Dakota after my first winter — that was a sign that I never wanted to stay in North Dakota for another winter — but when I came back to the West Coast, I just decided, You know what, I really like this dog thing, so let me start that. And that's how I ended up going into dogs. Melissa Breau: That's really quite interesting, and I know you started to touch on a little bit there the similarities and differences in training the species, that dogs were a little easier. Do you mind sharing a little more about what you learned, compare and contrast a little bit for us? Michele Pouliot: Sure. Of course, when you're thinking that we're talking back in 1970 -'71, there was no positive training that was known of, so everything was traditional. We were training horses in traditional techniques, training dogs in traditional techniques, and when you're training traditionally, the gap between training a dog and a horse was huge, because what you had with this dog was a species that really wants to please in general. So not only are they maybe more domesticated than a horse, but they surely love to work with people. That was what stuck out so much to me. Whereas horses, being traditionally trained, it isn't like they're all excited to go out and work with you. It was good traditional training, they weren't afraid, but they certainly weren't the way horses can be nowadays when they are positively trained. So I think my first realization in that frame of reference, when you think of the times of training at that point in time, was just how much easier the dog was to train because they were so much more like, “What can I do for you?” The horse took so much longer to train because you didn't seem to have that automatic impulse from a horse you're working with to say, “What can I do to please you?” That was the big difference then. There's still a big difference, so even though my horses are clicker trained, as my dogs are, you're dealing with a big animal, so the difference in your safety is a big one. Even though we're not talking about an aggressive horse, it's still a big animal. If you think about dogs that will mug people and get in their bait pouches and jump up and want rewards, well, imagine a 1200-pound horse doing that to you. You have to be much more thoughtful about every step of the training process with a horse to make sure that you're not inadvertently creating an excitement or an energy in your positive training that can actually be dangerous for a human on the ground. Whereas with dogs, we don't really think about it that much as far as something that's going to be dangerous. If I teach a dog to leg kick and he happens to clock my leg, yeah, that's not great, but it's not life-threatening. Melissa Breau: Right. You talked a little bit about the fact that back then everything was traditional training, that approach. What led you to become a positive trainer and to clicker training? Michele Pouliot: When I got into dogs, first I kind of got my foot in the door with that first dog I had. Once I had him trained, I heard something about AKC and obedience, and I entered him in local obedience trials, and for some reason I was winning. People would meet me outside of the ring and say, “Ooh, do you give lessons?” and I felt weird because I didn't think I knew anything yet. But I started giving lessons and I was really enjoying that aspect. I ended up working at a kennel, figuring, You know, Michele, you've really got to learn more about dogs. So I took this entry-level position at a kennel in Long Beach, California. I was cleaning kennels and all that, but in the afternoon I would be giving some training lessons to the public, which was a great experience for me. But I wasn't there very long before I read an article about guide dogs and training dogs for blind people. Remember, there's no Internet back then. This is a magazine, and in the magazine was this article, and in the end were addresses of three guide dog schools in the country. The article was fascinating to me, and all I could think of is, Oh my god, what an amazing combination: the love of training dogs, and I'm also helping people. This is what I want to do. It just hit me like a thunderbolt that I had to do this work. We're in 1973 now, and I write all three schools. One of the schools never responded. Another one, I still have the letter framed on my wall today. The letter reads, “I'm sorry, but women are not emotionally or physically capable of training guide dogs.” Melissa Breau: Oh dear! Michele Pouliot: Understand that in 1973, that was not an affrontive letter. My reaction, as this naïve young woman, was, Oh, I didn't know that, in my head. Whereas ten years later, my hackles would have gone up reading something like that. Anyway, I got a letter from Guide Dogs for the Blind that invited me to fill out an application. I filled out the application, sent it in, and they had me come for an interview. Everything was great, I got the job, I was so excited. I found out later, when I arrived, I was the only woman besides one other woman who had just started working six months prior. It was not an easy place for a woman to step into, because there was a belief system that women can't do this. It's way too rigorous physically, and emotionally it's very difficult. So this woman and myself were like the pioneers of trying to get our feet in the door for proving ourselves that we could do it. When I first got my job at Guide Dogs, which was really my first serious, in my head, dog training assignment, I also was always focused on trying to do so good that I was paving the way for other women to come and do this work. That was the first goal. A part of that —which you're probably wondering, Is she ever going to get to answer my question? — a part of that is that I knew that I could do better what they were doing. I was so surprised when I showed up and realized that I was a darn good dog trainer when I was watching some of the techniques that I saw being used. What I saw was some very harsh traditional training. Very harsh. And I just knew I could do better than that. So, from the day I arrived, I started putting this subtle pressure from demonstrating that you don't really have to do it that way. My focus was always to be the best trainer I could be, the kindest, the gentlest, even though I was totally understanding of traditional training and that's what you do, there was no other option. But because that was my background in the 1970s, when I started hearing in the 1990s about this new, modern training, I was fascinated. Through those twenty years, before I heard about positive training, I had helped the program get better, better, better, and I mean in the early 1990s, our school was doing really good traditional training. I was so happy that the program had come so far that no dogs were being treated really unfairly. Even though it was traditional, it was good traditional training. I always have this flavor in my heart of, How can I be kind and gentle and still get the job done? Even when you're a good traditional trainer, you might be focusing on that, but you also inherited the belief that using a lot of punishment to teach is OK. It's a belief system that you are born into. So as I started opening my mind to looking at this new positive training thing I was seeing, I was so excited that, oh my gosh, there's other possibilities, and that's really what led me to start looking at videos and going to seminars and going to conferences and trying to figure out how this fits into my world, especially how does it fit into guide dog work. Melissa Breau: So, I'd love to hear a little bit more about some of what you did with the guide dog program, if you don't mind. I know that you spent a large chunk of your career focused there. How did that evolve? Can you share a little more? Michele Pouliot: Sure. I retired two years ago with forty-two years, so I've been doing it a long time. When I chose to introduce positive reinforcement training to my school, my guide dog school, my intent at that time was just, can we even make this better, kinder, gentler, and overall more positive for everybody, including the trainer. Because it was a very physical type of training when you're doing traditional training, too, so we had injuries. We had people coming in and being injured. By the way, by this time the staff was majority of women, so over the twenty years a lot changed. The men were in the minority, and I'm not really saying I even know why that is, because it's kind of true in the guide dog industry and in the cane mobility industry — meaning instructors who teach blind people how to travel with canes — it's interesting how through the last several decades the majority are women. I think it has to do with being nurturers and wanting to help is why we have more people in there now that are women versus men. Anyway, back to guide dogs. When I first brought the idea to my supervisor, my supervisor had a lot of faith in me. I had already done a lot for the program and had everyone training so much better than they used to train, so I had a good relationship with my supervisor, but he looked at me like I was crazy. Now, you have to understand that in the guide dog world, guide dogs have been trained since World War I. That's when it started. The techniques used for guide dog training were from World War I, meaning war dogs. How do you train a dog to be a war dog? And you know those dogs were hardy, hardy, tough, courageous dogs. So all the guide dog work that started was with very heavy-duty traditional training, and the thought process was you have to be tough to make the dog reliable. No matter how weird that sounds today in the positive training world, it's a reality for when it started. It was such a unique idea that somebody had in World War I to do this, and they were doing it successfully. So imagine if you say, “Can we train a guide dog to help a blind person get around safely and keep them from being injured?” and it worked, what does that do for your ego? It pushes it up there pretty big. So when you join a guide dog school and you are in awe of what they do, I was in awe of what they did. It's like, oh my god, this is like miracles. Those dogs are saving people's lives. So when somebody tells you that you can't use food when you train guide dogs, and the reason is the handler's blind and there's food all over the environment, everywhere you go, there's food, because of that, you believe it. I believed it. I was totally brainwashed. And I brainwashed so many of my blind clients over the years, like we all did, because we didn't want them hand-feeding their dogs. It was about food only comes in their food pan two times a day when they get fed. So the first thing that we had to tackle, we were the first school in the world that tackled this whole belief system, which was, believe me, very deeply entrenched worldwide that you can't use food in training guide dogs. There are still some outliers now that are holding to that, and their programs probably won't change until there's a few individuals that retire or leave the program, just because they're so entrenched in the belief system, and I understand that because I was there too. Thank God I had an open enough mind to say, “Maybe there's a way.” So the first task at hand was to show that we could teach the dogs, with food, how to not take food in the environment, and how to avoid offered food in the environment. If you picture that you've got this handsome, cute little dog out in harness and you're blind, how many people do you think a day come up and say, “Oh, he's so pretty. Can I give him this cookie? I have a little piece of meat.” You have all sorts of people doing that and not even asking. Guide dogs actually are offered food a lot. And imagine how many restaurants that you would go sit in, and your dog goes under the table, and guess what they find under the table that somebody previously dropped on the floor. There's food all over the place. So we thought — ha ha — we were doing this great job of teaching food avoidance through correction. The dog, of course, if they went for food, would be corrected. The comical part about that is although the response we trained looked really good at the end of guide dog training, because that means the professional was handling the dog, and the professional has sight, so the professional can do what? Time a correction. They can see what the dog's about to do. Well, hand the dog over to a blind client, and guess how long it takes a guide dog who's been trained that way to figure out that the blind person isn't responding at all when they head toward some food. We had ourselves brainwashed that we were doing a good job. The really cool thing about coming up with “How do we teach them with food to leave food?” was incredibly rewarding for us to go, “Oh my gosh, we just blew that belief system out of water.” The dogs are so much better now than they ever were with environmental food. And it's because they're choosing. It's their choice. They're not being threatened. They know that, If I leave this food alone and if I refuse this food from this person offering it, I know at some point in the near future I'm going to get a reward too. That was the huge hurdle to get over because of how entrenched that belief system is in the world. From that point on it was saying, OK, let's look at this clicker training thing, and look at all the skills we teach, and what can we teach with clicker training? I'm really glad my school took it really slow. At the time I felt like I was dragging them forward — “Please, let's do more, let's do more” — but the reality is traditional trainers have to learn these skills, it's totally new skills. So for us to just overnight decide we were going to change would not have been a good idea. We took it really slow. I look back at 2006, when all of our instructors were using clicker training, and it's comical to me to think that we thought we were so advanced, because it's come so far. Things that we transfer over to clicker training, it was clicker training, but now it's been improved to where it's really good clicker training. So it was a very long haul. The good news was that when we made this change, we had a couple schools that had heard through the grapevine that we were doing this who asked if we could help them out. Management made a decision then that really changed the course of the entire industry, because the industry could be very protective over what they did and their information, not necessarily willing to share “secrets.” Our management at that time decided that we're going to share this. We're not going to keep it quiet. And so at that time, around 2007, they started sending me out on the road to any school that wanted help. That is what kind of started the road to changing the industry, because the word started spreading. And then we started presenting at the International Guide Dog Conference, which happens every two years. That was like an international community, and presenting and showing video of all that we're doing, showing them data on success rates that skyrocketed higher than ever historically from the day we started clicker training. There was so much information that our school made available to the guide dog industry besides us actually personally helping. I mean, it's just wonderful. Let me give you an idea. There's about a hundred-plus guide dog schools in the world that belong to this International Guide Dog Federation. In 2006, there were three guide dog schools out of that group that were using positive reinforcement. Now it's over sixty-five. That's a big deal in ten years. It's a really cool thing to see it happening, and it's a really cool thing that I get to still do. I'm a consultant. I just got back from South Africa in February, helping a South African school, and it's just wonderful to see the excitement, because most of the staff are younger people now. There are always still some staff that are more senior, and traditional trainers who are learning new skills, but everyone has gotten to the point where they realize this is really a better way to go. So it's rare for me to run into people now that haven't realized, because we proved it. Basically our school proved it. Melissa Breau: That's fantastic. That's got to be such a good feeling to know that you've had such a huge impact on that field, and to really be able to look at the numbers and see how much change you've really created. Michele Pouliot: It is. It's an extremely satisfying time in my life to go ahead and retire. Melissa Breau:  Fair enough. Michele Pouliot: It was about five or six years ago now I was considering retiring, and I just had a funny feeling that I needed to give it a few more years to make sure that my program that I was leaving was really set to still move forward and not slide back if they didn't have me bugging the heck out of them all the time, for instance. Melissa Breau: Right. It's fantastic you've created this change, but I know there are still some fields that are, for lack of a better word, struggling to make the switch, or fields where traditional methods are still the norm. Do you have any advice for people who are maybe positive trainers in those situations, or positive trainers who are surrounded by others who aren't, when they're trying to maybe create change or inspire change in others? Michele Pouliot:  Over the past ten years — I guess more than that now, actually — I feel like I've done this so many times with so many different people and organizations, at least in the guide dog and service dog industry, I've been involved with so many now that I've learned the hard way what not to do. Even when somebody acts like they're open-minded and ready to listen, you have to be very careful that you respect them and avoid criticizing then, because the tendency in positive reinforcement trainers is to look down on traditional trainers as if they're being mean or even abusive or harsh or whatever. So when they're talking at a traditional trainer, they have that attitude of, “You need to change because da-da-da-da-da.” Well, the reality is traditional trainers love their dogs, too, and if you think they're doing it because they want to be meaner than they need to, that's not so. They inherited that. That's what they learned. I never thought I was being mean or harsh or too rough. I was a good traditional trainer and I used techniques that worked. My dogs were happy, they worked happy, they weren't cowering. But when I look back now, of course I realize, wow, there's so much of a better way to do this, and the animal is so much more joyous in its work. But people approach, if you want to call it the other side of the fence, they approach that with criticism, even if it's not direct criticism. You need to give a person respect for what they've done, what they've accomplished, and not in any way punish them. The comical part, to me, is if you're truly a positive reinforcement trainer, then why are you punishing these people? Are you going to punish them long enough that you think they're going to change? You should know that punishment isn't very effective. It only works with threat, so are you going to threaten them? No. The way you get them to change is reinforce them for their efforts, support them when they're having trouble, and sometimes that means you have to ignore something that's still happening and just go, “That will come in time. Leave it alone.” Right now, give them something you can actually help them with, because that reinforces them. When you solve a problem for someone or some organization with positive reinforcement and it's a problem they continue to have, you are now God. Now it's like, “Wow, we were never able to solve that with traditional training, and they just solved it.” That's all about reinforcement, so it's no different than applying positive reinforcement to animal training. It's how do I get this animal, which happens to be human, I have to want and get them inspired and motivated, don't I? I have to have something they want. So I have to give them the feeling of reinforcement, and usually that comes in the shape of showing them how it works. Don't just tell them. Show them. There are a lot of people in the horse barns, for instance, that are certainly surrounded by traditional horse trainers, and they're the one person in their barn that wants to do clicker training with their horse, so they day in and day out feel like they are one against a hundred. The best thing they can do is just smile and say, “Thank you. That's really cool that you're doing that, but I want to do it this way. I'm really enjoying this. This is really fun.” And then, on the side, you're showing them, from them noticing, that it really works. There's no sense in having a war, because the war never gets you anywhere. I've been at those wars. I've been the positive reinforcement and the traditional trainer wars. It doesn't work. It just makes the traditional trainers dig their trenches deeper because you're making them feel they have to defend themselves. The last thing you want to do is make a traditional trainer feel like they have to defend themselves. You have to get them curious so that they're really interested in how that works. The good news is in the guide dog world it's been proven now. We were on new ground when we did it, and when we did it, we didn't have anything telling us it's going to work, so we were just hoping we'd get the same quality of response at the end of training, and what wowed us was how much better all the responses were. We were just hoping that going to this new positive thing would be kinder-gentler and we'd still get what we had. We never, never imagined we would get better and better responses than historically the school had ever had. Melissa Breau: That's fantastic. I know there are a lot of people out there who are in that exact position, and they're surrounded by so many trainers who are doing things other ways. They feel like they're fighting that battle, so I think that's really useful for folks to hear. What about for those folks that are out there, maybe they're on the edge, or maybe they're in the process of crossing over, I think anyone who has done that knows it's not easy. Do you have any advice for those folks? Michele Pouliot: The best advice I can give for someone who wants to cross over, they're in the process, is realize that learning never goes away. I think in the traditional training world you get to a point — and I say this not just from my experience, but being around so many traditional trainers for so many years in the '70s and '80s — you get to a point where you think you've learned everything. It's a little phenomenon. It's like, I'm there, I've got it, I've done my thing, and now I just keep practicing it. As a positive reinforcement trainer I quickly realized that I didn't know anything about training. It was like, wow, I might be good at actually doing some certain things with animals, but I had never even thought about how the science would affect everything that I'm doing. So realizing that it doesn't end. When I first joined the faculty of Clicker Expo, Karen Pryor's faculty, I was totally intimidated by being on the faculty. It's like, Oh my god, all these people, they are so much better than me. And then I started getting more comfortable after a few years, but every time I went, I realized I still feel like a novice. Every single time I go to an Expo, I'm learning something else from a faculty member, or two or three of them, that I went, wow, I never even looked at it that way. That has not ended, so I realized it's an open book. It's an open end that never stops. And if you do stop and you say, “I've learned enough, this is all I need to know,” that's sad to me because there's so much more available to you, even within your own little world and how you're using it, because it's constantly got the ability to give you more information and make you even better and better at training both the animal and the student, the person. Melissa Breau: Even if you've learned, say, everything that was out up to a year ago, when you really talk to some of the leading trainers out there, there are always new ideas that they're trying and they're testing and they're playing with, and then going out there and sharing. Michele Pouliot: Exactly, exactly. Even through things like this, a podcast. You're listening to a podcast and you go, “Oh, well, that's interesting. I never quite heard that before.” Or you hear it said a different way, and even if all that gives you is ooh, when I teach that next time, I have another way to say that that might make more sense to that individual person who I'm having trouble getting that concept across to. Melissa Breau: Absolutely. I know that that, for me, was a big, big thing when I was teaching pet dog people was that I'd often sit in the class, or listen to somebody talk, and you just come away with, “Oh, well, that was a really great analogy. That was a really good way of phrasing that,” that you can reuse or turn around. Michele Pouliot: For sure, for sure. And to me, I really always look at myself as when I'm working with somebody, an individual and their animal, I'm never really teaching the animal. I'm teaching them. So it's my job to be able to be a hugely successful communicator and adjust on the fly when it's not working, because obviously the way I'm explaining it is not working, so I've got to find another way. Melissa Breau: I know that I mentioned in the intro you've done competitive obedience and agility, and that today you mostly compete in musical freestyle. For those who maybe aren't super-familiar with the sport, can you share a little bit about what it is and how it's judged? Michele Pouliot: Most everybody has at some point in the Winter Olympics watched the ice-skating. If you look at that event, the Olympic ice skating, and the short program, long program — years ago they also had the figures that they don't do anymore because it wasn't very interesting to watch — but it's very similar in that you have a piece of music, and what you're doing is you and your dog are performing certain behaviors and you're interpreting the music. So freestyle, in its own right, is meaning anything you want to do. Anything goes, so it gives you the open ability to choose a lot of interesting things to do. Most organizations that you can compete under, and there's about four or five organizations worldwide, do have some limit in freestyle for safety. In other words, the one limit can be as long as it looks safe for human and dog. Other than that, there really isn't a limit, other than don't do something in really bad taste, for instance. But if you look at the Olympic ice-skating, in that they are judged both technical and artistic, it's the same thing. In most organizations you have two basic element types you're being judged on, which is the technical aspect of the performance, including the precision, including how things flowed, and then you have the artistic, which is the creative part, how unique was this, how emotional was it, was it funny, was it dramatic, was it just really amazingly entertaining. If you look at it with that ice skating analogy, I think you'll realize, yeah, that's an easy to understand sport. It is still a bit of a subjective sport, meaning you could have the exact same performance in front of two different judges and they may judge it a little differently. But that's not really any different than if you get in a high level of competitive obedience. You're looking at who's going to win the classes a half-point ahead of the other, and that could be a subjective judgment between judges, so one judge saw it as a perfect sit and one judge saw it as a half-point-off sit. So no matter what, the subjectivity comes into most sports, agility being one that probably not. The dog either does the … but you still have some judgments about did he make the contact point, did he miss it, so it is a subjective sport. The cool thing about the sport is everyone going in the ring is doing something different, so you're not watching the same routine, like an obedience routine or the agility course. You're not seeing the same thing again and again. Every single person that goes in the ring is doing something different, even if you — by horrors — happen to have the same music as somebody else, which has happened to me. It happened to me. But they're still totally different routines because you have a different person and a different dog interpreting it. So it's very cool that it's your own creation. I have tons of video of my dogs doing competitive obedience at way back Games Nationals, really cool stuff, and agility runs. Do I ever pull that footage out and watch it? Not really. But do I pull out my old freestyle routines and watch those? I do. It's more like you created art yourself, you and your dog together created this thing, and nobody else has done that thing. It's something that you did, and when you are in freestyle long enough that you're losing dogs, obviously they die, I mean, that was the first time that hit me was when I was watching my Springer Spaniel Cabo's performance to Phantom of the Opera at a seminar. Somebody wanted to see it, and I showed it for the first time after he had passed, and I mean I got really emotional because it wasn't just seeing him on the screen as much as all that we put into that routine to make it an entertaining routine. The cool thing to me about freestyle, which is why I got so excited about it when I discovered it, is everything keeps changing. It isn't that you get to this high level and then you're doing the same skills and maintaining those same skills. You're always trying to do something new, inventive, because of the piece of music you've picked. It brings out the creativity and it really pushes you as a dog trainer. So it's been wonderful for me because it keeps pushing me to what is the next thing I'm going to clicker train — not necessarily that I'm going to use it in the next routine, but maybe the routine after that. So it really does help me, personally, get inspired and motivated to train, because my goal is to come up with some sort of performance that is entertaining to the audience. I just love that. Melissa Breau: You obviously bring it to the sport. You're very passionate about it. Is there anything, in your opinion, in particular that has led to your success? Michele Pouliot: I think for anyone's success, you have to say you're obviously doing good training. Again, it's motivating to me to keep pushing myself to become a better and better trainer for that reason, because it's going to come out in the performance. Creativity is something that I think I probably was born with, because I always had a wild imagination, and my brother is a very creative person too. I actually don't know how to teach people creativity, but you can get a lot of great ideas from just watching Broadway plays, movies, shows, you can get some great ideas for what might make a very cool routine. I would have to say that I entered this sport at a point in my career when I'd only been clicker training on my own with my own animals for maybe four or five years when I got into freestyle. But I had already learned the power of it for teaching really great behaviors, entertaining-type behaviors, so that really inspired me to, like, what else can I do? When you envision something in a routine that might seem a little up there — meaning, well, maybe I shouldn't really expect that I can make it look that great by teaching a dog to do something like that — and then you actually do it, that's really rewarding for yourself as a trainer, but rewarding in that you were able to show the audience something. It also is a really good ambassador for clicker training, because when you see a good freestyle performance, the one thing you know is there are behaviors you just watch that you know you couldn't train any other way except with clicker training because it wouldn't work. There's no way you could teach that traditional. It just wouldn't happen. Melissa Breau: I know we're getting close to the end here, and there are three questions I always ask at the end of my first interview with someone. The first one is what's the dog-related accomplishment that you're proudest of — and I feel like you probably have some good ones. Michele Pouliot: I kind of feel like I have two different worlds that I've been in. One is a very serious type of work with the guide dog world and the other is my hobby in the sports. I have to say that being able to look back on my career with the guide dog industry, knowing that I've made a big change, now I am one of the catalysts that's really helped to move that whole industry forward, certainly is something I'm extremely proud of and makes me feel really content that I left that career, officially left the career, when everything was really moving along. That would be the guide dog side. The dog-related side would probably be just individual great performances I've had with my wonderful canine partners. When you said it, I probably had to think of my first Aussie in freestyle, Listo, who passed in 2014. But we've had some incredible performances. I don't know if I can pick one out. But one thing that he did do that no other dog has done is he — I know I should say “he and I together,” but I think of him as such an amazing dog performer. He was like an actor. He was so good at this that I felt like he was carrying me through some of the performances. He not only scored perfect scores from judges once, he did it twenty-four times. It is incredible, and a few of those were at international competitions where there was a judging panel of three judges, and all three judges gave him perfect scores. And I realize gave us perfect scores. But I would have to say that probably is one of the highlights of my hobby career. Just a couple of weekends ago, my young Aussie, we debuted a brand-new routine, and it's a very cool routine. I'm very, very proud of this routine. In fact, we dedicated it to Listo. It's a very cool routine, and he did it so well for his first time. I was totally blown away with how well he did, and he got a perfect score. Melissa Breau: That's awesome. Michele Pouliot: For my young boy to get a perfect score was a really cool thing. So there I gave you the serious side of dog training and the fun side. Melissa Breau: Congrats on the new perfect score. That's awesome. Michele Pouliot: Thank you. Melissa Breau: The second question on my list is about training advice, and I wanted to ask what the best piece of training advice you've ever heard is. Michele Pouliot: Oh, so many to choose from. I am going to reach down deep to the first one I ever remember hearing that changed my life, and that was Linda Tellington. In 1970, I was having trouble working with a horse. She stopped me, and she walked over and very quietly said, “Listen to him.” And ever since then, I listen so hard to my learners, and that includes horses, dogs, people that I'm teaching. It's listening, paying attention to what's happening, because they're giving you so much information that so many people ignore. So I think that would be the first one, because it has affected me, it's so much a part of who I am when I train is really noticing what's happening quickly, not waiting until we get five minutes into it to go, “Oh, I guess that's not working.” Then the other one would be Dr. Phil's mantra, “How's that working for you?” Melissa Breau: I like that. Michele Pouliot: I say that at seminars all the time. I say it to myself. It's like somebody comes up with all these questions, “Why is he doing that? Well, I've been doing it this way.” And I go, “Well, how's that working for you?” It's a great mantra, so I find myself going back to that. It actually is usually quite appropriate for most situations to ask yourself that, or to ask someone else, so I'll just stick with those two for now. Melissa Breau: Absolutely, and it relates back to the first one. If you're not listening and you ask yourself, “How's that working for you?” it's going to remind you... My last question here: Who is somebody else in the training world that you look up to? Michele Pouliot: That would probably be Ken Ramirez and Kathy Sdao, both. They have been my lights in the distance when I started this guide dog movement to change to positive reinforcement training. Both of them … without them, I don't know if I could have made it happen, because they again were so supportive of what we were doing, and yet knowing a lot of what we were doing they did not like at that time. They were able to put blinders on and ignore some of what they were looking at, and focus on the stuff we were getting better at, knowing that when more time went, we'd be ready for the next step to improve. And then, on a personal note, when I joined the faculty, just to have them be so wonderfully friendly and open and warm, and so interested in the way I think about training and what I do. They've just always been really dear to me. Melissa Breau: That's awesome. Thank you so much for coming on, Michele! This has been great. Michele Pouliot: You're welcome, and I thank you for having me. I enjoyed every bit of it. Melissa Breau: And thanks to our listeners for tuning in! We'll be back next week, this time with Amy Cook to talk about the true meaning of a threshold and how to manage your activity while you work on changing your dog's feelings about the thing. Credits: Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called “Buddy.” Audio editing provided by Chris Lang.

Summary: Kathy Sdao is an applied animal behaviorist. She has spent 30 years as a full-time animal trainer, first with marine mammals and now with dogs and their people. She currently owns Bright Spot Dog Training where she consults with families about their challenging dogs, teaches private lessons to dogs and their owners, and coaches novices and professionals to cross over to positive-reinforcement training. She's been interviewed pretty much everywhere worth reading — at least as far as dog info is concerned — consulted with organizations including Guide Dogs for the Blind, appeared on Bill Nye the Science Guy, and is one of the original faculty members for Karen Pryor's long-running ClickerExpos. She is also the author of Plenty in Life is Free: Reflections on Dogs, Training, and Finding Grace. Links Plenty in Life is Free: Reflections on Dogs, Training, and Finding Grace (via Dogwise) www.kathysdao.com Next Episode:  To be released 5/4/2018, featuring Michele Pouliot, talking about being a change-maker in the dog world. 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 Kathy Sdao -- Kathy is an applied animal behaviorist. She has spent 30 years as a full-time animal trainer, first with marine mammals and now with dogs and their people. She currently owns Bright Spot Dog Training where she consults with families about their challenging dogs, teaches private lessons to dogs and their owners, and coaches novices and professionals to cross over to positive-reinforcement training. She's been interviewed pretty much everywhere worth reading — at least as far as dog info is concerned — consulted with organizations including Guide Dogs for the Blind, appeared on Bill Nye the Science Guy, and is one of the original faculty members for Karen Pryor's long-running ClickerExpos. She is also the author of Plenty in Life is Free: Reflections on Dogs, Training, and Finding Grace. I'm incredibly thrilled to have her here today! Hi Kathy! Welcome to the podcast. Kathy Sdao: Hi Melissa. Thanks so much for the invitation. This is going to be fun. Melissa Breau: To start us out, do you mind just sharing a little bit about your own dogs and anything you're working on with them? Kathy Sdao: What an embarrassing way to start! I currently have just one dog of my own. His name is Smudge. He's a … who knows what he is. He's a mixed breed. Let's call him a Catahoula mixed breed. He's about 3 years old, and as I'm reminded after my walk in the woods with him this morning that the combination of young man in a hoodie on a skateboard with an off-leash dog running beside this young man — too much for Smudge to deal with on our walk in the woods, so rather than dog sports, I'm still training this young dog that the world is full of interesting adventures and you really don't have to bark at them when they startle you. So we're still doing real-world training just getting him out with me every day in my environment here in Tacoma, Washington, which is beautiful. We spend a lot of time outside. I also am very good friends with the magnificent Michele Pouliot, and she has offered to choreograph a freestyle routine for Smudge and me, and I feel like that would be crazy for me not to take her up on that. So if I ever dip my toe into the water of dog sports, it's likely to be freestyle, because I have an awesome friend offering to help me. Melissa Breau: That's fantastic, and hey, I can't blame him. I think that if a guy showed up suddenly and surprised me wearing a hoodie and a skateboard with a dog running next to him, I might be a little startled too. Kathy Sdao: I was having such a peaceful walk, and then we turned a corner and I'm like, Uh-oh, this isn't going to work. Fortunately, that kid was really nice about it. We all kind of laughed, so it ended up well, but anyway, training goes on, right? Melissa Breau: Absolutely. How did you originally get into training? Can you share a little bit on your background? Kathy Sdao: When I do Career Days at schools. I think kids always think it was planned, like “You had a plan.” I didn't have a plan. I was a premed student in college and took an elective, animal behavior, a psych course, which I thought, That'll be easy. The professor, Dr. Pat Ebert, had a need of someone to help her with some research she was doing and just happened to be at the aquarium where I lived in Niagara Falls, New York. She needed a research assistant, and I went to the aquarium and did some observation work there and fell into the rabbit hole and quit premed and changed my major to psychology. My beloved dad will turn 97 years old next month, and he still has not gotten over the shock that his daughter left premed to do this crazy career he has never once understood. So it was serendipity that got me to that aquarium where I ended up training my first animal, a harbor seal. My professor, Dr. Ebert, passed away very suddenly and at a very young age, 32, from liver cancer, and I don't know, I always felt like there's some way to pass the gauntlet on to me to study the science of animal learning and be brave about it. I applied to graduate school after I got my bachelor's degree in fields that could study animal behavior, and all the schools I was going to study either rats or pigeons, except the University of Hawaii, where I would be studying dolphins. I got accepted to the University of Hawaii to study dolphins, got accepted to Rutgers to study rats, it wasn't much of a choice: Newark to study rats or Honolulu to study dolphins. That was the beginning. The second animal I learned to train was a dolphin at the University of Hawaii, so that started my career in a really different kind of way. Melissa Breau: I certainly understand that decision. I think most people would choose dolphins over rats or pigeons. Kathy Sdao: You know, it's funny, Melissa. Rutgers gave me a big scholarship and I turned it down and they really were mortified. They couldn't believe I was leaving money on the table there. In retrospect, I think I made a good choice. Melissa Breau: It certainly served you well. From dolphins to dogs, it's a pretty big bridge there. What led you to go from marine animals and zoo animals — because you did some of that, too, if you want to talk about that — to dogs? Kathy Sdao: When I was fortunate enough to start my career working with marine mammals, I actually worked in three different, amazing settings. For several years I worked at the University of Hawaii, when I was a graduate student, on the research done there that included, among other cool things, teaching sign language to bottlenose dolphins back in the 1980s. That was just an amazing way to start a training career. I got my masters degree and then was hired as one of the first women to work for the United States Navy's Department of Defense that was training dolphins at the time to do mine detection and detonation work, also a job in Hawaii, working to prepare those dolphins to be turned over to sailors to actually be in the military. Another amazing job and worked there for several years, and then decided that it was time, even though I loved Hawaii, to go to a place that was more reasonable to live, just cost of living-wise. Honolulu's gorgeous but expensive. There were two jobs on the mainland in the United States that year that I decided I was going to transition back to the mainland. One was at Disneyland in Orlando and one was at Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium in Tacoma, Washington. I never lived either place, I didn't know anybody in either place, but decided that I much more preferred the Pacific Northwest and so took a job as a staff biologist at Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium, and got to work with beluga whales and porpoises and sea lions and fur seals and walruses and polar bears and sea otters and an amazing collection of marine mammals. Having worked at the zoo for five years, though, realized it was a difficult job. It was tough physically, it can be tough emotionally — I know people are listening; if they've done some zoo work, it's challenging — and so made the decision that it was time to leave the zoo. But I didn't want to leave Tacoma, Washington. I still live here. I love it. So training dogs was my creative solution to earn a living and not have to move, and I can't even recall to you, Melissa, how humbling that switch was, because I was cocky enough to go, “Hey, I've trained really cool, big, exotic animals. Dogs are going to be a piece of cake.” And oh, they weren't. I really didn't know what I was doing at all, and quickly found out that I needed a lot more dog savvy if I was going to do a good job, and opened up the first dog daycare in Tacoma, Washington, back in the mid-1990s. Nobody had ever heard of a dog day care here. I had to get special zoning from the city. They thought we were nuts. But I opened that dog daycare to be able to get my eyeballs on dog behavior more and to be immersed in it. I know you've got listeners that work in dog daycares, own dog daycares, it's a good immersion process for the human to learn about dog behavior. So that was my entry into dog work, and started teaching classes at night in clicker training, and that was really new at the time, a new way to set up dog training classes back in the late 1990s, so haven't looked back since. And though I loved my time with marine mammals and other exotic species, I really don't miss it. I'm just as intrigued working with dogs and their people as I ever was with the exotics. Melissa Breau: You mentioned that there was a little bit of a transition there. Can you share some of the similarities and differences and what they were as you went from training dolphins and zoo animals to dogs? Kathy Sdao: I really look right now, when I'm looking for teachers for myself … it's interesting, Melissa. One of the reasons I asked you if you would be so kind as to delay our appointment for this recording was so that I could spend a couple of hours this morning listening yet again to my colleague and friend Dr. Susan Friedman. She was doing a webinar this morning on a topic I've heard her teach on before, but I'm like, No, I would like to listen to Dr. Friedman again. What I look for in my teachers when I'm making choices is I really love teachers who are transparent and authentic. So your question invites me to be transparent and authentic, because I'm going to say to you that transition, which should have been smooth in terms of training techniques, I really was able to learn to be a trainer in some extraordinary settings that really call out the best skills. People often say, “You know, it's amazing that the dolphins could learn that mine detection and detonation work,” and keep in mind the work I did for the Navy was classified, it is no longer classified, I can tell you about it. The dolphins' lives were not in danger. That sounds really dramatic, like we were risking the dolphins. We were not. The dolphins and the sailors, the military, all the personnel, all the military personnel, dolphins and people, moved away from the setting before anything was detonated. I don't want any listeners to think, oh my gosh, how cavalier I am about that training. It was as safe as possible for everybody. But in saying that, people go, “That's amazing you could teach that to the dolphins,” and I say, “No, no. What was amazing is every one of those dozens and dozens of dolphins that we took out to the open ocean every day had to jump back in our motorboats, our Boston whalers, to go back to their enclosures every evening, every afternoon, good training session, bad training session. They were free, and they had to choose to jump on a boat and come back to the enclosures.” When you have that as your school for learning, you get an ego. So I got an ego to go, “Hey, I trained open ocean dolphins. How hard is it to train dogs?” Not only was it hard, here's the thing I'm sort of dancing around that I'm humbled by. I didn't think dogs could be trained using the same methods as marine mammals. So I really, switching over species, switched training methods and apprenticed with a local balanced trainer. That wasn't a term at the time in the mid-'90s, but used leash corrections and also positive reinforcement, but all mixed together. So I learned how to pop a choke chain, and I trained that way for, I want to say, at least a year, with only the mildest cognitive dissonance in the back of my head going, Why would dogs be different than every other species I've ever worked with? But of course we've got a mythology about why dogs are different. We can tell that story about pack leaders and hierarchies, and we can spin a good tale about why all other animals can be trained using positive reinforcement and a marker signal, but not dogs, they need corrections. Karen Pryor, fortuitously, happened to be talking in Seattle. She was giving a seminar, and I went to the seminar because Karen's a friend, so I just like, Hey, I'll go visit Karen. I don't need to learn anything about training. Now I'm mortified to say that out loud. Karen started the weekend seminar — I still remember it, it was more than twenty years ago — Karen started the weekend seminar to this big room filled with dog trainers, hundreds of dog trainers, and she said, “I'd really be grateful if no one gave a leash correction over the time we're together this weekend. It's upsetting to me, and it's upsetting to the dogs and anybody who has to watch it.” And then she just went on to talk, and like, What? What is she talking about? There's going to be anarchy in here. What does she mean, no leash correction? I had no idea what she was talking about. Oh my gosh, I'm so glad I wandered into that seminar with her, because she started the dominoes falling in my mind to be able to say, Why, possibly, would you not do this with dogs? She was such a good friend and mentor to me, to help me be brave enough to teach classes in my city in a completely different way that dog training colleagues were saying to me, “Absolutely impossible. You're going to fail at this.” So I'm grateful to her and so many people that taught me that it was possible. But my transition was ugly, so if you saw me in that time of me trying to figure out, does all the learning and training I did with marine mammals for over a decade, does it really fit in with dogs? Aren't dogs different? And the answer really is, no, they're not. Good thing I could bring all my other skills into the training. It's a different way to train dogs, but I'd say it's a better way and it's certainly more fun. So that kept me going for a long time, because I don't think we all agree on that yet, so there's work to do. Melissa Breau: That's really interesting. It's a specific pivot point or turning point for you. At what point would you say you actually became, to steal a line from your website, focused on positive, unique solutions, and what has kept you interested in positive training and made you transition to that so completely? Kathy Sdao: I owned that dog daycare for several years, and then at some point felt like I could fledge from that work. It was good work, but it wasn't really feeding me, so I switched at that point to becoming a behavior consultant, becoming a certified applied animal behavior consultant. And so, at that point, to be able to help people create solutions for challenging problems — that brought out a different level of my knowledge than running a daycare. So I'd have to say it was at that point that you have to make decisions about … today we'd look at the Humane Hierarchy and we'd go, “Wow, that algorithm, that sort of model for choosing behavior interventions to be least intrusive for the learner” — I couldn't have given that language back in the late 1990s. That's in reality what I'm doing with the best teachers I can to help me, because I'm now entering people's lives and their families to help them resolve behavior problems with a family member, so that changes things. The idea of that algorithm for interventions, for our training methods with nonhuman learners, comes to us from the work that behavior analysts do with children. And so to make that line fuzzier, to stop saying “humans and animals” like that's a dichotomy, humans or animals, we are animals, and the that learning we do, the teaching we do with animals and people, I want there to be no line dividing those two. So to be able to say, to help a family understand they can help their dog become less aggressive through skilled behavior intervention that's mostly focused on positive reinforcement of alternative behaviors, if I can help a family do that, it changes their lives. It not only changes that dog's life, but if I do my job right, it helps that family become curious about how behavior works. And you know what? We all behave. I love the kids' book Everybody Poops. I want there to be a kids' book called Everybody Behaves. We had the zookeepers read the Everybody Poops kids' book. I'm not a parent of human children, but parents tell me, “Oh yeah, that's a classic book. We read Everybody Poops in our family.” Where's the book Everybody Behaves, so that you can understand if you can change the behavior in one family member, and it happens to be your four-legged dog, and you're successful at that, and you sort of had fun doing it, and you didn't have to be coercive, oh my gosh, then what does that open up for you in terms of all the other behavior change solutions you can come up with? The reason that's interesting to me is I like my species a lot. The colleagues I have that say, “Oh, I work with animals because I don't much like people” are in the wrong business. We should like our species, because I feel like we're doomed if we don't learn some better ways of interacting. So I honestly feel like I'm helping people learn about better ways of interacting. I'm teaching them nonviolence in an around-the-corner, sneaky way to go, “Yeah, we're just training your dog,” but not really. That's never how I'm going into a situation. I'm hoping we can all be learning together to be effective at the same time we're being nonviolent. There's tons of work to do on that. I'm never going to run out of work. It's a tall mountain to climb. Every dog that comes into my consultation office — I mean this sincerely — I'm still fascinated at the learning. I had a new … it's a new breed for me … I always joke when people first contact me and they say, “What do you know about this obscure breed?” Like, in other words, “Are you an expert in …?” My answer to this is “No, but I've trained like fifty different species. Does that count that I don't know?” So a new breed for me this month was a lovely, lovely client with two Berger Picards, Picardy Shepherds. Beautiful dogs, but the breeder talked my elderly client into taking two puppies — “As long as you're going to take one, why don't you take two?” Breeders! Breeders, breeders, breeders! Anyway, lovely woman, retired, her husband just retired, now have two very active herding puppies. As those dogs come into my office, and they've got some behavior issues, but just to watch them learn. Tuesday I was sitting on the floor with them, teaching them just basic behaviors, and to watch their behavior change and their agency kick in that they realized, wow, their behavior is controlling my click, I don't know, it never gets boring for me. I've been doing this for a long time, and I'm still as excited with each dog that comes in as I was in the beginning. Aren't I lucky? Melissa Breau: That's awesome, and it totally comes through in that answer. I do want to back up for a second, because you mentioned two things there that I'm curious. All listeners may not be familiar with what the Humane Hierarchy is, or what it means, and I was hoping you could briefly explain the phrase. Kathy Sdao: I shouldn't presume people know it, but I'm hoping it becomes a common term in our conversations about training, because, Melissa, you've been doing this a long time, too, you know trainers like to have opinions about what's the right way to do things. And unfortunately, at least in the United States, there aren't a lot of laws about what are the right ways to do things, and it's a Wild West out there, at least in my neck of the woods, about what's considered acceptable training practices. I've had two different clients come to me, new clients come to me, in the last couple of months, having gone to another local … we'll call it a trainer. Both of their dogs were in the course of a ten-week package of private lessons. In Week 6, both dogs were hung until they passed out, in Week 6, to make sure that the dogs knew who the leader was. Were hung until they passed out. This is acceptable training. It boggles my mind. So to be able to have an algorithm model to be able to say, “What's OK when you're intervening in another organism's behaviors? Is effectiveness all we care about, that it works?” I first learned of the Humane Hierarchy through Dr. Susan Friedman's teaching, and the easiest way, I think, to find out about it would be on her website, behaviorworks.org. I certainly think if you Googled “Humane Hierarchy in training,” you would see that it's a series of, the last time I looked at it, six levels of intervention. Six choices you would have as a trainer for how you could change your learner's behavior, starting from the least intrusive way, basically looking at the learner's physical environment and health situation, to the most intrusive way, Level 6, which would be positive punishment, and that there would be lots of cautions and prohibitions before you'd ever get to Level 6, and that often, if we're doing our jobs really in a skillful way, we never have to consider using positive punishment, the addition of something painful, pressuring, or annoying, contingent on our learner's behavior. Positive punishment is done so casually and flippantly in dog training, especially in the United States, without a second thought, and this sort of hierarchy of methods we might use really calls out our best practices to say we have a lot of other approaches to go through before we jump right to punishing our learner for behavior we find dangerous or destructive. So I think learning and conversation that continues around the Humane Hierarchy, which comes to us trainers from where? From the rules for behaviorist analysts working with children, human children. They can't just go in and do whatever they want. They have professional restrictions, as should we, as trainers. But that day is not here yet for us. It's coming, I hope. So I find that to be a really helpful model. It's not the only model out there, but it's the one I go to most often when I'm teaching and also when I'm being a consultant. Melissa Breau: Thank you. I appreciate you taking a moment just to break that down and explain it for everybody. And then you mentioned Everybody Poops, and I haven't read that book. So actually I'm curious. Can you give us the gist of what we can imply from the title? Kathy Sdao: You know what? I'm being really serious. I have not read it since I was a zookeeper and was required. I'm not kidding. It's a kids' book, I would think the age group is probably 4-year-olds, to be able to say to your child, “Poop is normal. Poop is good. Don't worry about your poop. We all poop. We've got this thing in common. It's cool.” It's actually a powerful message, like, “Wow, all right, there's nothing weird about that. Everybody poops.” But seriously, in the back of my head I've got this Everybody Behaves book, because if you understood behavior in one organism, seriously … I've got dear clients right now, they're just lovely, they've been my clients for a long time. I'm actually friends with the family now, and one of my clients has a 9-year-old son. As a birthday present he got the fish agility set from R2 Fish School, so 9-year-old boy, he's got his fish agility equipment. What he said to me when I saw him just two days ago, he said to me, “Kathy, I have a science fair coming up. Can you help me teach the fish to do weave poles?” I'm like, This is the best question I've ever been asked. Seriously, I'm so ecstatic I can't even stand it. That a 9-year-old would say, “For my science project I'm going to teach fish to do weave poles”? Aren't we hopeful what that 9-year-old boy is going to grow into, just for the good of the world? Seriously. Melissa Breau: That is so cool. Kathy Sdao: He is going to have the perfect approach to being a parent and a boss and a friend. He's got it at the age of 9, because he's going to teach that fish. And how do you teach the fish? The same way I taught the dolphins and the same way I teach the dogs. It's all the same learning, so that learning principals are general and everybody behaves. Figure it out with one and then it spreads. It's so exciting. So yes, I'm going to help Ryan with his goldfish-training project. We're in the process now of choosing the right fish. It's just making me very happy. Melissa Breau: I seriously hope you video some of that and share it, just because that's so cool. It's such a neat project. It's such a neat science project. Kathy Sdao: One of the most valuable books I've got on my shelf, and I will never sell it, it was vanity-published probably 20 years ago. The title of the book is How to Dolphin Train Your Goldfish, and the thing that made me buy it in the first place is the author, C. Scott Johnson, was a really high and bio-sonar Ph.D. at the Navy, seriously geeky researcher into sonar. He helped us set up some of the training for the dolphins. I'm like, That's such an odd name, C. Scott Johnson. I see it on a book list, I'm like, He wrote a book. It's a 20-page, black-and-white, vanity-published, it is not a high-end book, but it is a perfect description of teaching five tricks to a goldfish and it's brilliant. So now everybody's going to go on Amazon and try to find the book and it's impossible. I wrote to him once and said, “If you've got cases of this book in your garage, I can sell them for you, because it's awesome.” So I've got good resources to help Ryan, and yes, Melissa, it's a great tip. I will videotape. Melissa Breau: That's awesome. I wanted to ask you, as somebody who has been a full-time animal trainer for over 30 years now, and in dogs for quite a while too, how have you seen the field change? What changes are you maybe even seeing today? Kathy Sdao: Oh my gosh, how long do we have? Oh my gosh, the changes. I don't even know where to start. I just taught at my 35th ClickerExpo — 35th. I've gotten the honor and privilege of not only teaching but attending 35 ClickerExpos over 15 years with amazing faculty as my colleagues, oh my gosh. To look back at the first ClickerExpo 15 years ago, what we were teaching and talking about, and now? I wonder when is it that I need to retire, because everything's just moved beyond me. It's so, gosh, I feel like a dinosaur sometimes. So, first off, I already alluded to the idea that whatever species we train is not unique in how they learn. Now, they might be unique in what reinforces them, how we're going to choose our reinforcers, or how we're going to set up the environment, or what behaviors we might teach first, absolutely. But that doesn't mean that the actual laws of learning and that choice of what training methods we will use, maybe with the Humane Hierarchy as a reference for us on how to do that effectively without taking control away from our learner, to be able to say that's general throughout species, to me, that's new. I like that we're moving in that direction and stopping the conversation, or maybe not having so much of the conversation, that says, “Rottweilers learn this way, and they need this kind of training,” and “High-drive dogs, they need this particular kind of training.” I like that the conversation's moving to more general. In fact, even the terminology, my terminology, has changed from saying “the animal learned” to “the learner,” so we are actually using a noun that encompasses nonhuman animals and human animals. And actually even the word training is being replaced by the verb teaching. I'm liking that. It's just a reflection that we teach learners rather than train animals just is taking that it's not just politically correct, it's reflecting the science, which says we can use some of these general principals to our advantage and to the learner's advantage, right? Melissa Breau: Right. Kathy Sdao: Even the idea that we want to empower our learners, you know, when I started with dogs, that was heresy. You would empower the dog? You're supposed to be the leader. You're supposed to be in charge. This is not about empowering. It's about showing them their place. They need to learn deference. They need to learn their place in the hierarchy, and if they get that sorted out, all the good behavior will come along with it. To be able to say that your learner can not only make choices but … I'm so intrigued by this; this is kind of new learning to me and I'm still playing with it. So to be able to say, “Give your learner a way to say “no” to opt out of anything, opt out of a social contact, opt out of a husbandry behavior you've asked the dog to do.” If the dog says, “No, I don't feel like, it,” that we not only accept that no, we reinforce the no — this is like mind-blowing. What does that mean that you say to your learner, “You don't have to. You don't have to”? I'm just intrigued that this doesn't produce complete opting out, the animal doesn't want to do anything, you get no compliance at all. No, instead, you set the animal free to feel so brave and safe in your presence that they're not compelled or pressured to do behaviors. I don't know. I feel like this is a new conversation that I've had with colleagues, again not just about allowing animals to opt out, but reinforcing them for opting. Ken Ramirez talked about training beluga whales, a specific beluga whale, to have a buoy in the tank that she could press with her big old beluga melon, her big head, and say, “No, I don't feel like doing it.” The data he collected with his team at Shedd Aquarium — what did that actually do? What did we get in her behavior? Less cooperation? Or did it provide her safety to be able to work with us in a more fluent way? I don't know. Twenty years ago I can't even imagine we would have had a conversation like that. Melissa Breau: That's so cool. It's such a neat concept. I'll have to go look up the specific stuff that Ken's put out on it, because I don't think I've had the chance to hear him talk about it. So that's cool. Kathy Sdao: You know, it's funny that you say that, Melissa. The timing is really great, because the videos from this year's ClickerExpo — there's two ClickerExpos a year in the U.S., one in January on the West Coast and one in March on the East Coast. The presentations, and there's a lot of them — there are three days, five simultaneous tracks, it's a lot of presentations — but those are recorded, and they're usually not available until the summer, but I know that they're going to be released later this week. So clickertraining.com, you could actually look for Ken Ramirez's presentation on — I think it's called Dr. No — on teaching animals to be able to opt out of procedures. You would actually not only be able to read about it, Ken has written on clickertraining.com about that procedure, you'd actually be able to hear Ken teach on it. So just to know there's a wealth of educational stuff. Gosh, there's lots of good stuff out there, but those ClickerExpo recordings are just one thing you can take advantage of and soon. Melissa Breau: That's awesome. And actually this will be out next Friday, so by the time this comes out, those will be available, so anybody who wants to go check them out can. Kathy Sdao: Thanks Melissa. Melissa Breau: We talked about the change that you've seen. What about where the field is heading, or even just where you'd like for it to go in the next few decades? What do you think is ahead for us? Kathy Sdao: It's a different question between where it is going and where I want it to go. I don't actually know where it's going. What I dream about. I dream about this. We need some guidelines. We need some legal guidelines. We need some way to have a field that has professional standards, and I don't know what that looks like, and I know that's not an easy thing to do, but it's just not OK. Yes, we continue to educate, and we continue to raise the standards, but I want to bring everybody along with us, meaning all my colleagues. That big line we tend to draw — I'm certainly guilty of this — of this “Us, the positive trainers, and them, the other trainers,” and there's this big chasm between us. I want to feel like there's not a big chasm between us. We're all doing the best we can with the knowledge we have, and you're putting more information out there through these amazing podcasts and through all the classes that I'm going to call the Academy, it's not the Academy, I don't know … Melissa Breau: FDSA. Kathy Sdao: The acronym doesn't trip off my tongue. But to be able to go, there's amazing education and I know there is, because I've got colleagues teaching for you, and I've got students who take those courses and rave and are learning so much. That's great. I love the increased educational opportunities, and the bar has really gotten higher. They're better. We're better at teaching this stuff. But I feel there's got to be a way that there's a professional ethic that comes along with. We've all got to be striving and moving toward better practices. It's no longer OK to say, “We've always used these coercive tools with dogs, and we've been able to teach them just fine.” I want that not to be so OK anymore. I'm not sounding very eloquent on this because I don't know exactly how to say … I strive for the day when I'm not losing sleep over what the dog trainer down the street is doing in the name of training. I would like to not lose sleep over what a professional dog trainer with a slick website can do. Melissa Breau: And I totally get you. I want to transition for a minute there. I'd love to talk a little bit about your book. I mentioned it in the intro, the title is Plenty in Life is Free: Reflections on Dogs, Training, and Finding Grace. Can you start off by explaining the name a little bit, and then share a little on what the book is about?   Kathy Sdao: Thanks Melissa. I sort of love my book, so thanks for giving me an opportunity to talk about it. I have to credit my publishers at Dogwise. Larry Woodward — what a lovely, kind man. My original title for that book, and I don't actually remember it because it was so horrible. I didn't see it. I thought it was really clever. I like puns, and so I'd come up with … honestly, I don't remember. That's how much I mentally blocked the bad title I had. Larry so graciously talked me into something else, and Plenty in Life is Free was his idea, and I really love it. The thing that really inspired me to write the book is I was becoming disenchanted with “Nothing in life is free” protocols that not only was I running into that my colleagues would use, but I used all the time in my consultation practice. I would hand out instructions on “For your aggressive dog,” or your anxious dog or whatever behavior problem brought my clients to me. Basic rule of thumb we would start at was your dog would get nothing that the dog would consider a reinforcer without doing a behavior for you first. Often these are implemented as the dog must sit before any food, toy, attention, freedom, there can be other behaviors, but it's sort of like you don't pay unless the dog complies with one of your signals first. Those were at the time, and still in some places, not only ubiquitous, like everywhere, but applied to any problem. So not only were they really common, they're applied to any problem, and the more I used them and really looked at them, I found them wanting in a lot of ways. Not only were they inadequate, but it seemed to me that they were producing really constrained relationships, like not free flowing, spontaneous, joyful relationships between people and their dogs, that everything was all those reinforcers were minutely controlled and titrated. I had clients say to me, “Oh my gosh, I pet my dog for nothing, just because she's cute.” I'm like, When did that become a problem? When is loving your dog the issue? And so the more I took a look at them, I realized I and maybe some of my colleagues were handing those out because we didn't have a way to be able to say, “Yes, we want to reinforce good behavior, but we don't want to be so stringent about it that we don't allow for the free flow of attention and love between family members that we aspire to, to have a joyful life.” Not only did I want to point out the concerns I had for those “Nothing in life is free” or “Say please” protocols — they come by different names — but to give an alternative. So to be able to say, if I looked at my masters degree in animal learning, what would the science say would be the replacement foundation advice we would be giving people. If I'm going to pull the “Nothing in life is free” handout out of my colleagues' hands — and that's what some people who have read the book said: “Wait, that's my Week 1 handout for class. What am I going to do?” “I know, let me give you another handout.” So, for me, it would be the acronym SMART. I don't use a lot of acronyms. I worked for the military, you can get really carried away with acronyms, but SMART — See, Mark, And Reinforce Training — is a really nice package to be able to tell my clients what habits I want to create in them. Because I'm actually changing their behavior. Anytime we teach, we're changing the human's behavior. What is it that science says we want the humans to do more of? Notice the behavior. Become a better observer. See behavior in your learner. Mark the behavior you want to see more of. Use a clicker, use a word, use a thumbs up. We're not going to debate too much about has to be one particular sort of marker signal, but marking is good. It gives information to your learner that's really important. And reinforce. So to be able to say, if I can develop that see, mark, and reinforce habit in my humans, the animal's behavior, the dog's behavior, is going to change, reflecting how much your habit has developed. Just to be able to shift people from that “I'm controlling every reinforcer in your life” strategy to “It's my responsibility to notice behavior I want to see more of, and to put reinforcement contingencies in place for that to make those behaviors more likely” — that's a huge shift. If we can get that going, I hope my little book might start the ball rolling in that direction. Melissa Breau: That's awesome. I know the book came out in 2012, and since then you've done some on-demand videos and you have all sorts of other resources on your site. I'd love to know what aspect of training or methods have you most excited today. What's out there that you want to talk about? Kathy Sdao: It's going to probably be a surprising answer to that. In my talks most recently, my presentations most recently, at ClickerExpo, because I've been on faculty for a long time there, interesting conversations happen about this time of year between the folks who put on ClickerExpo and me and all the other faculty and say, “Hey, what do you want to talk about next year, Kathy?” When that conversation happened last year, maybe even the year before, one of the things that's been really on my mind a lot is burnout, is burnout in my colleagues, and so sort of jokingly in that presentation, call it my Flee Control presentation, meaning I see lots of really skilled colleagues leaving the profession. I see some skilled colleagues leaving more than just the profession, leaving life. It's a really serious problem for trainers, for veterinarians, and where does this sense of burnout come from when we've spent all this time developing our mechanical training chops? We're actually good at the nuts and bolts, the physical skills of training, and we're studying the science, and we're taking courses and we're getting all this education. How is it that so many colleagues quit? It's a hard profession that we've got, those of us that are doing it professionally, and it can be exhausting. And so to be able to take a look at how we can support each other in a really skilled way, meaning taking the skills we have as trainers and applying them to our own longevity and mental health as practitioners. I think we're missing some sort of support mechanisms that are there in other professions. For instance, I have a client who's a psychiatrist and she works with a really difficult population, patients who are suicidal, very frequently suicidal and significantly suicidal, so she has a very challenging human patient load. When we were talking a little while back, she was at a dog-training lesson with her Rottweiler, we were working together, she said, “You know, every Thursday at 1:00 I have to meet with three of my peers. I have to. It's one of my professional demands. I would lose my license if I didn't. We don't look at each other's cases. We don't offer problem solutions. We give each other support. We're there to vent, we're there to listen, we're there to offload some of the grief and heartache that comes from doing our jobs well, and so that's just part of our professional standards.” My jaw sort of dropped open and I'm like, wait, what? I didn't even know that was a thing. Why is that not a thing for us? Why do we not have structures at least to support us being in this for the long haul? Because really, here's the thing. When I started out being a trainer and people said, “You've got to be a really good observer. That's what trainers do. They observe behavior.”  I'm like, cool, I'm going to get that 10,000 hours that Malcolm Gladwell talks about on watching animals behave. That's what the dog daycare did for me, lots and lots of hours watching dogs behave. No one says to you, “Hey, let's warn you that you're not going to be able to unsee.” You can't go back. You can't stop seeing animals in distress and in difficult situations, and it develops a lot of grief in each of us. So I think I'm losing colleagues not just because they've got better job offers. It's because their hearts are breaking. I don't know what the structure looks like to say I want to help prevent burnout in a structured way, but even the title of my book is going to hint the other thing I want to say to you, Melissa, which is intentionally that book title has the word grace in it because I talk about my spirituality in that book, which is kind of weird in a dog-training book, but to me they're all one and the same. Training, to me, is a spiritual practice, completely, and so I don't think we have comfortable formats to be able to have the conversation about the overlap of animal training and spirituality, not in a really saccharine, Pollyanna kind of way, but in a really open our hearts to what's deepest and true for us. I don't know. I want to figure out ways to facilitate that conversation. Because this is the conversation I want to have, so I'm brainstorming projects I'm hoping to take on in the next year or so that will let us have some formats to have that conversation. We're always talking about reinforcement for our learners, and I never want us to forget we have to set up reinforcement for ourselves and the work that we do. I think spirituality talks about how we can develop mindfulness practices that allow us to do good work, but also to stay happy and centered while we're doing it. I'm sure there are resources out there I haven't tripped upon, but I'm intrigued at developing even more. Melissa Breau: It's such an interesting topic, and it's definitely something I don't see enough people talking about or even thinking about, just our own mental health as you are a trainer or as you work towards training. It's an important topic for sure. Kathy Sdao: Exactly. Melissa Breau: We're getting close to the end here, and I want to ask you a slightly different version of the three questions I usually ask at the end of the podcast when I have a new guest. The first one I tweaked a little bit here, but can you share a story of a training breakthrough, either on your side or on the learner's end? Kathy Sdao: Anyone who's heard me teach at all is going to have heard something about my favorite learner of all time. That's E.T., the male Pacific walrus that I got the privilege to work with at Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium in Tacoma. The very short version of an amazing story is when I first got hired at the zoo in 1990, I had worked with seals and sea lions and other pinnipeds, but had never even seen a walrus. So I spent the morning before my interview at the zoo, walking around the zoo and looking at the animals that I would train, and realized that E.T. — he weighed about 3500 pounds at that point — was one of the scariest animals I had ever seen. When I went into the interview I got asked the question, “If you get hired here, you're going to have to work with a new species, a Pacific walrus. What do you think about that?” Of course, anybody who's been in an interview knows that the answer is, “Ooh, I'd be really intrigued to have the opportunity.” Of course, you're saying how cool that would be, yet on the inside I'm positive that he's going to kill me. I mean this sincerely. I had moved into an unfurnished house, I had no furniture, so I have really clear memories of all I have in that house is a sleeping bag, and I'm waking up in cold sweat nightmares, sleeping in a sleeping bag on the floor in my empty house in Tacoma right after I got hired, those nightmares are that E.T. is going to kill me. He is completely aggressive, humans cannot get in his exhibit, he's destroying the exhibit because it's inadequate for a walrus. It was designed for sea lions. He came to the zoo as an orphaned pup in Alaska, nobody really expected him to survive, he grew to be an adolescent. The reason that there was a job opening at that department at the zoo is all the trainers had quit. There were no marine mammal trainers at the time I got hired. I don't know why they quit, I didn't ask them, but I suspect it was because E.T. weighed nearly two tons and was an adolescent and he was dangerous, destructive, oh, and he was X-rated — he masturbated in the underwater viewing windows for a couple of hours a day, and you don't need the visuals for that. Trust me when I tell you, if you were an elementary school teacher in Tacoma, Washington, you did not go to the underwater viewing section. It was awful. We didn't know what to do with him. The end of that story that starts with truly I don't want to be anywhere near him, he's terrifying me, he becomes one of the best friends I've ever had, I trust him with my life. By the time I quit the zoo five years later, E.T. knew over 200 behaviors on cue, we got in the exhibit with him, we took naps with him, I trusted him with my life. He lived another 20 years. He passed away only a couple of years ago. He was amazing. His behavior changed so much that I am being honest when I tell you I didn't see the old walrus in the current walrus. There was no more aggression. I don't mean infrequent outbursts of aggression. I mean we didn't see it anymore, based on what? We were brilliant trainers? Based on we were stuck with him and we needed to come up — three new trainers, myself and two gentlemen from Sea World — we needed to come up with a plan to make this livable, and what came out wasn't a tolerable animal. It was genius, and I mean that sincerely. If anyone had had the chance to see E.T. working with his trainers, it wasn't just that he learned really complicated behavior chains and he was really fluent in them. It was we were his friends, and I mean that in the true sense of the word. So my biggest breakthrough is that I can say that E.T. considered me his friend. Oh my gosh, that's it, that's what I'm putting on my resume. I was E.T. the walrus's friend, and he taught me more about training and the possibilities, the potential in each learner, that given enough time and resources, we sometimes can unleash and release those behaviors. That doesn't mean we don't ever give up on animals and say, “Oh my gosh, they're too dangerous, we can't change this behavior in a way that's adequate,” but the fact that we didn't really have that easy choice with E.T., it made us pull out all our best training ideas and to be persistent. Wow, you just couldn't believe what was in there, and without videos and about ten more hours, I can't do him justice, but that we were friends? Yeah, that's my coolest accomplishment. Melissa Breau: That's awesome. My second-to-last question is, what is the best piece of training advice that you've ever heard? Kathy Sdao: Let me do two. I'm going to cheat. Years ago, this is straightforward training advice, but it's one that I keep in the back of my head, which is, “Train like no one's watching you.” Because even when I don't have an audience … sometimes I have a real audience and I'm onstage trying to train an animal, which is nerve-wracking, but I don't need a human audience in front of me. I have judges in my head, so I always have an audience I always carry around, my critics, and to be able to free myself from those and to instead what happens if I say, “There's no audience in my head judging me”? It frees me up to see what's happening right in front of me. There's a quote I have next to my desk and it's from outside of training context. It's from a Jesuit priest whom I like very much, Father Greg Boyle, and the phrase that's on the Post-It next to my desk says, “Now. Here. This.” To be able to be in the present moment with your learner and say, “What's happening right now? What behavior is right in front of me?” sounds really simple, but it's not. It takes real mindfulness and intention to be in the present moment. When you're paying attention to your audience, real or imagined in your head, you can't be really present. So that would be one: Train like no one's watching you. And here's one that comes from my favorite science book, and every time I have a chance to have anybody listen to me anywhere, I'm going to quote the name of the book so that I can get this book in everybody's hands: Coercion and Its Fallout, by Dr. Murray Sidman. It's an astonishing book. It's not a training book. It's a science book, but it's very readable, most easily purchased at the behavior website, behavior.org, which is the Cambridge behavioral site. It's hard to find on Amazon. You shouldn't pay much more than twenty dollars for Coercion and Its Fallout, by Dr. Murray Sidman. Here's the training advice that Dr. Sidman would give. It's not training advice, it's life advice, but it's my new tagline. Let's see how this works, Melissa, because, you know, you've been doing these podcasts for a while, you're into training deep. It's hard to go “positive training,” that phrase is kind of vague and weird, and clicker training is … so what am I? I'm going to take Dr. Sidman's, one of his lines from Coercion and Its Fallout: “Positive reinforcement works and coercion is dangerous.” That's a seven-word descriptor for what it is I do, and it comes for every learner. Positive reinforcement works, and coercion, Dr. Sidman's definition is all the other three quadrants: positive punishment, negative punishment, and negative reinforcement. So we've got the four operant conditioning quadrants. Dr. Sidman's going to go, “Positive reinforcement works.” It does the job. It's all you need. The other three quadrants, they're there, I know, we use them, but they're dangerous. I love that summary. I'm using that with my clients now. I'm seeing if I can let that really simple summary of the science and our best practices to see if it works. Melissa Breau: That's fantastic. I love that. It's a very simple, easy line to remember. Kathy Sdao: It's Dr. Sidman's genius, so take it and run with it. Melissa Breau: Absolutely. Last question for you: Who is somebody else in the training world that you look up to? Kathy Sdao: There's so many. But because he's now my neighbor … Kathy, what's the most exciting thing that's happened to you recently? Ken Ramirez has moved in my back yard. I'm so excited! That genius trainer, the kindest man you'll ever meet, colleague of mine for the last 25 years, truly amazing human being, is now not only living a half-hour from me in Graham, Washington, just outside of Tacoma, he's not only living near me but offering courses. He's teaching a course this week at The Ranch. It's Karen Pryor's training facility here in Graham, Washington. It's an amazing facility, but that Ken, mentor and friend and genius trainer … a client of mine yesterday said, “Wait a minute. Who's that guy that taught the butterflies to fly on cue for the BBC's documentary?” Like, oh my gosh, that's Ken, yes, he taught butterflies, herds of butterflies, what do you call a group of butterflies, swarms of butterflies to fly on cue to the London Symphony for a big fundraising gig. Oh my god. Now is that someone you want to know more about? So I'm going to do a shout out to Ken and say you can find out more about the educational offerings at The Ranch at Karen Pryor's website, clickertraining.com. They've got a drop-down on The Ranch, and I don't live far away from there, so if you want to come beachcombing with me after you've visited Ken and learned stuff, I'll take you beachcombing. I love my beachcombing, so I'm happy to share that. Melissa Breau: That sounds like so much fun. I keep meaning to get out that way at some point and I haven't been yet, so it's definitely on the bucket list. Kathy Sdao: He's going to draw some really cool people to my neighborhood, so I'm going to share. I'm going to share. Melissa Breau: Absolutely. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Kathy. This has been truly fantastic. Kathy Sdao: Thanks so much, Melissa. You made it fun, and it's just a real treat to be affiliated with … now teach me the name: FDSA. Melissa Breau: Yes. Absolutely. Kathy Sdao: Excellent. So cool to be affiliated with you guys. You do great work, and I'm just honored. Melissa Breau: Thank you. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in! We'll be back next week, this time with — she was mentioned earlier in this podcast — Michele Pouliot to talk about being a change-maker in the dog world. If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice and our next episode will be 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.

This week Laura Monaco Torelli and I talk about husbandry in the dog training world, and it turns out it's not ENTIRELY about teaching dogs to trim their own nails (though that could be part of it). During our conversation, we talked about exactly what “husbandry” means, and how we can work it into our training routines without a whole lot of effort and time commitment, we also talked about how she gets her pet clients to buy in and participate in husbandry training solutions, and a few other little tips and tricks, like using behavioral momentum to make hard stuff easier and the training sessions more fun. Laura Monaco Torelli is the founder of Animal Behavior Training Concepts in Chicago, Illinois. She began her career in 1991 at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium, where she trained beluga whales, dolphins, sea otters, seals, river otters, and penguins. After nearly a decade at the Shedd, she moved on to the San Diego Zoo and then Brookfield Zoo as a lead supervisory trainer. During her time in the zoo community, Laura worked with a wide variety of terrestrial animals, including primates, large cats, birds of prey, horses, parrots, tree kangaroos, giraffes, red pandas, and dogs. Laura serves as a faculty member of Karen Pryor Academy (KPA), and as a Teaching Assistant for Dr. Susan Friedman’s Living & Learning with Animals online course. She and her team at Animal Behavior Training Concepts offer private in-home training as well as group classes at Medical District Veterinary Clinic, an extension of the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine. Laura has presented at many professional conferences, including those held by the American Pre-Veterinary Medical Association, the Animal Behavior Management Alliance, the International Marine Animal Trainers’ Association, ClickerExpo, the Society for Veterinary Behavior Technicians, the Association of Professional Dog Trainers, the Midwest Veterinary Conference, TAGteach International, and the Interdisciplinary Forum for Applied Animal Behavior. She has appeared on various print and broadcast media, including Clean Run magazine, Chronicle of the Dog, Steve Dale’s Pet World, WGN and NBC 5 news and WCIU’s You & Me This Morning. For full show notes, visit: www.wonderpupstraining.com/podcast/51

SUMMARY: For our one year anniversary we're releasing a special edition of the podcast... a compilation of some of the most popular clips from the year in an extra long bonus episode. I hope you enjoy! TRANSCRIPTION: Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports Podcast brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high-quality instruction for competitive dog sports using only the most current and progressive training methods. Today I'm here with Teri Martin -- for those of you who don't know her, Teri is Denise's right hand woman; she handles setting up the classes for all of you each session, plays tech support, and is the main organizer for camp each year. Teri and I will be doing something a little different this episode… roughly a year ago today, December 23rd, I launched our very first episode, which was an interview with Denise Fenzi. To celebrate our anniversary, today we're going to reshare some of the more memorable moments from the last year. But before we dive into that, Teri is here with me to talk a little about the plans for FDSA Training Camp 2018. Welcome to the podcast Teri! Excited to have you co-hosting this special episode with me.   Teri Martin: Thanks, Melissa. Happy to be here. Melissa Breau: Alright, to start us out, do you want to just remind everyone when and where camp is going to be next year? Teri Martin: Camp is going to be June 1st to 3rd, that's a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and it's going to be at the Roberts Centre/Eukanuba Hall in Wilmington, Ohio. I'm super excited about the venue. It's going to have six different rings running and it's going to be amazing. Melissa Breau: I'm super excited because it's the first year that it's been close enough that I can drive, so I can bring a working dog, and I have a puppy, so can't beat that. Teri Martin: Cool. Melissa Breau: How does registration work? I know it's a little complicated and people tend to ask questions. Teri Martin: Working spot registration is complicated. The regular stuff isn't. Working spot are given priority registration, so there are two phases for those. The first one is Phase 1, and it's going to open on January 8th at 9 a.m. Pacific Time. If you have eight or more courses at any level in FDSA, you will get an invitation to register for that phase. After that, we have Phase 2, which is for people who have four or more courses at any level. That will start January 10th. And then after that we open it to everybody. I should add that auditing is also available and you don't need to register super early for that, but we do suggest you do at least fairly soon, but it's not going to be the same as the demand for the working spots. Melissa Breau: Can they start registering for that on the 8th, did you say? Teri Martin: If you're eight or more, then it will start on the 8th, and if you're four or more it starts on the 2nd. And then general registration opens on the 15th. Melissa Breau: Gotcha. Where do people go for the official schedule and all the additional information that you've got out? Teri Martin: Go to the FDSA website and it's up on there under “More FDSA Education.” You will see a link for the training camp and all the information is there. Melissa Breau: All right, last one -- what is your favorite thing about camp? Teri Martin: Oh, so many things. For so many of us it's getting to see all these people that we feel that we've formed these friendships with, and it's just like you're greeting an old friend that you haven't seen for so long. And those instructors are exactly the same way as they appear when they're giving you advice. They're friendly and warm and funny and fabulous. So it's just the sense of bringing that whole community together in real life and getting all inspired to go home and train your dog. Melissa Breau: Awesome. I'm so looking forward to it. It's been an amazing experience the last few years being able to attend as a volunteer, and so I'm totally looking forward to seeing things from the other side! Teri Martin: We're going to miss having you as a volunteer, though. Melissa Breau: I'll be back next year. Do you want to introduce our first clip, or should I? Teri Martin: (something about the question I asked that led to this -- how Denise's training philosophy has influenced other aspects of her life -- maybe “First up is that first episode, an interview with Denise, from when you asked her…” ). I think it's pretty appropriate that we start with our fearless leader Denise. I think you had a question in the very first episode where you asked her how her training philosophy has influenced other aspects in her life, and for me that just totally sets the ground for how this whole wonderful school and the sense of community that surrounds it has come to be. Melissa Breau: Excellent. Let's play that clip. --- Denise Fenzi: It's been probably the most significant thing that's happened in my entire life. When I changed how I trained dogs, you have to be pretty obtuse not to recognize that we all learn the same way. And if you're a positive trainer with dogs and you really emphasize catching what they do right and ignoring what they do wrong, I mean, you really have to choose not to think about it, to realize that exactly the same thing is true with people. So for example both of my kids have very good manners, and I know how that came about in part. One thing is, I'm simply a respectful person and I encourage that. But I remember our first outings to restaurants when they were smaller, and if they said they would order for themselves, and they would say please and show nice manners, the second that person would walk away from the table I would say to my husband who'd be there, “I am so proud that we have kids who are so respectful and have such good manners. It makes me happy to go places with them.” And you could almost see the difference the next time that opportunity came up again, you could almost see them go just a little bit further with their good manners. And it's not something I comment on any more, because they're older, they're 12 and 16, but they do it by habit. And I know that some part of their brain is always aware of it. So I've never said to them “Say please, say thank you,” I don't tell them what to do, but when it happens I really work to catch those moments and acknowledge them. And I think dog training is a lot easier than child training, that's just my perspective. But I try to work with that, and I try not to think in terms of getting my kids to go to school and do well because I've restricted the rest of their lives, and I try to think in terms of balance and cooperation. Of course with people you can talk things out more. But at the end of the day if you're having any kind of conflict with another person, whether it's a family member or some random person you see on the street, the question I ask myself now is, do I want to feel better or do I want to change behavior? So if I want to feel better I may well behave badly, I may yell. I do yell, by the way. I do yell at my children, I do yell at my dogs. I know some people say, “That's amazing you do, you're not supposed to do that.” Well that's great, I'm glad you're all there. I'm not, so I will yell, “Get off the couch,” or whatever. I'm not really training, I'm expressing my upsetness. So that's, do I want to feel better? Yes, so I'm going to yell. Or somebody irritates me on the street because their dog runs up to mine and is off-leash, and so maybe I'm having a particularly bad day, and I might respond inappropriately. But then the second question is, do I want to change behavior? And I think recognizing that those are different things is really important because never, ever, ever am I yelling if I want to change behavior, and never am I talking to somebody like they're dumb, or ignorant, or anything, because it's all perspective, because they just have a different perspective. So maybe they don't understand that their off-leash dog running up to my old dog is a problem. And the reason it's a problem is, my dog is old and she doesn't like other dogs jumping on her. And I've had much better luck saying, “I know your dog is friendly, but my dog is very old and she has a lot of arthritis. And when your dog comes up like that it really scares her, and it hurts her.” And when I say that, without fail they apologize and they put their dogs on a leash. And I smile, I'm not angry. I might be inside, but I don't show it. The next time I see them we continue with a pleasant set of interactions. And that kind of thinking, do I want to feel better or do I want to change behavior, has been really quite impactful, whether in my family or with people. We often talk about with our dogs, sometimes dog trainers are a lot nicer to their dogs than people. I find that very incongruent, and I don't like to live my life that way. I like my life to make sense. And I think we need to be very aware of not only how we treat our pets but show that same courtesy to each other, and I find that from there I am a happier person. Because when you are kind with people instead of getting your emotions from stewing in your, "oh my God, I can't believe how stupid that person is," that I understand that we take pleasure in those periods of time when we feel superior to other people, because I guess that's where that comes from, I understand that. But it is a short-lived and negative form of emotion, and in the long run it leaves you feeling worse about the world. Whereas when you take the time to think about things from somebody else's point of view, I find that that leads to an understanding, and honestly it makes my life a lot better. It makes me a more pleasant and happy person, so that has a lot of value. --- Melissa Breau: I think that one has really stuck with me. I think it's really influenced what FDSA is and how it works, too. Teri Martin: A little-known fun fact about all of that: As you know, we have a really active Facebook group that's been so much of this community, and that started way back in November 2013, which was maybe two sessions in. There was a group of us that had taken both of these courses and were totally all excited about the FDSA thing and wanted to start a Facebook group. So I pushed Denise about it, and she was like, “Oh, you know, I've had so many bad experiences with groups. People get really nasty and mean, and I just don't want to have that. Well, you guys can go ahead, if that's what you want to do, but I don't want to be part of it.” and then she comes back about a week later and she says, “You know what, I thought it over and I think this is actually a pretty good thing, so let's go for it.” And from there on, the rest is history. Melissa Breau: Yeah, think about how big a part that plays in the community today. It's huge. Teri Martin: Yes. And another fun fact is she has to be really nice to me, because I can actually kick her out of the group because I'm the original founder. Melissa Breau: That's funny. Since you brought up the early days, for our next clip let's use the clip I have from Amy Cook, where she shares how she became one of the first instructors here at FDSA. --- Melissa Breau: So I wanted to ask you too about the early days of FDSA because I believe, I think you actually told me that you were one of the first teachers that Denise brought on at Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. So I was really curious to get some of your impressions on how you think it's changed and kind of what happened when she initially approached you. Amy Cook: Oh, boy. You know, it was standing in the right place at the right time, I swear. You know, she had taught online elsewhere and decided to do this endeavor, and I was just…I'm pretty sure I was just finishing grad school and saying, well, I guess I'm going back to dog training. I wasn't sure what I had in store, I'll just revamp or ramp up my business again, fine. And I can remember, I was standing near a freezer in her garage and I can't exactly remember how it came up but she said, “We have a behavior arm, could you teach what you teach, teach a class in what you do?” Boy, I felt…the answer was both yes and no. The answer is no because I've never done that, but the answer is yes because well, it has to be possible, right? Sure. I'll certainly try it. I really wanted to do something like that. But for a second there I was like, really? Behavior? Behavior, though. I mean, behavior. It's complicated. People are all over the place. Dogs are behaving all over the place. It's a lot to…how will I do this online? But I had faith. She really had vision early on for how this was going to go and we brainstormed, I was really excited about it. She actually came up with the title of the class, Dealing with the Bogeyman, that's hers. She's like, let's call it that. I was like, sure. It was exciting. It was exciting times and I was really just like, well, I'm happy to run a class and see what I can do for people. If it's something I don't feel is resulting in improvements that are reasonable for the dogs I'm helping then it's not right, then online is more suited for skill-based stuff and not so much the concepts or the complicated behaviors. I shouldn't have been afraid because it's been amazing. --- Teri Martin: It's just so cool how all this online stuff works. There was a conversation elsewhere about this with Amy where she said she couldn't believe how much her online students progressed. They get to digest all their information on their own time frame, they get their feedback quickly, they can take the time to set up the scenarios properly so they don't get dogs overwhelmed, and can ask daily questions of the instructor. That's just so more efficient than meeting once every two weeks. So it's really a great way to work behaviour stuff.   Melissa Breau: I think that was on her blog, where she wrote about the impact of online training. Teri Martin: I know it's come up a few times, so it very well could be in her blog. Melissa Breau: Not only is it an awesome way for people to train where they can set up scenarios and whatnot, but because it's online, it lets our students learn from some of the best trainers in the world, no matter where they live, it gives them access to these training concepts that maybe haven't quite become widespread enough for there to be classes on those topics locally. I think a good example of that is Julie Flanery's Imitation and Mimicry class. It's this really interesting concept that I couldn't imagine a local trainer trying to run a class on that. They'd be scrounging up students left and right. So I want to make sure we include a clip of her explaining that concept from her interview back in May. --- Melissa Breau: You kind of mentioned shaping and luring in there, but you wrapped up a class on Imitation and Mimicry and I have to say that's like such a fascinating concept. If you could start by just kind of explaining what that is for the listeners in case they're not aware of it, and just kind of sharing how you got into that, that would be great. Julie Flanery: Yeah. No, I'd love to. Imitation and Mimicry is a form of social learning or learning through observation, and we've long known it to be effective in human learning, but it wasn't until probably the last 10 years or so that we've really seen any studies on its use in dog training. I first heard about it at a ClickerExpo, a talk that Ken Ramirez gave on concept training in dogs, and then further researched Dr. Claudia Fugazza's study that she did, and in 2006 she created a protocol that showed that dogs can learn these new skills and behaviors by mimicking their owners and it's her protocol that we use in class. Also what's fascinating is that Ken Ramirez has developed a protocol for a dog-dog imitation and mimicry, and some of the videos I've seen on that are just truly, truly amazing. So, things that we didn't think were possible now we know are and we're actually able to bring to more people now. The class was really quite inspirational for me because my experience of course had been limited with it in working with it with my own dog and then some of my live classes, my students there in my live classes, we worked through it, and when Denise asked me to do a class on it I was really excited, but I wasn't quite sure what to expect and I have to say my students in that class are just amazing. They have really shown me what this protocol can do and how truly capable our dogs are of learning some of these concepts, so it's been a really exciting class for me. And matter of fact, I'm going to go ahead and put it back on...I think it is already...Teri's added it to the schedule for August, and so I'm really excited about doing it all over again. --- Melissa Breau: I love that our instructors are really well versed in such a wide variety of animal-related training and research. Teri Martin: No kidding! I think there's been tons of podcasts where you've had discussions about all sorts of cool research with dogs including I think even Kamal talked about teaching dogs how to fly a plane. I listened to one with our newest agility instructor just recently, Barbara Currier, who said that she was doing some wonderful things in the field of service dogs. Melissa Breau: Awesome. Let's give that a listen. --- Melissa Breau: So, I have to say, kind of working on your bio, it seems like you've had the opportunity to do lots of different really interesting things, in the world of dogs, from animal wrangling to working on wearable computing, so I wanted to ask a little more about what you do now. Can you tell us just a little bit about the FIDO Program there, at Georgia Tech, and what you're working on with the dogs there? Barbara Currier: Sure. So, FIDO stands for Facilitating Interactions for Dogs with Occupations. My best friend, Dr. Melody Jackson, she's a professor there, at Georgia Tech, and she runs the brain lab and the animal computer interaction lab. She came up with the idea of creating wearable computing for service dogs, military dogs, police, search and rescue, any type of working dog, and she asked me to come on to oversee the dog training aspects of the work. Within the last year, I've been really busy with travel, and so I, actually, haven't been working a lot with them, on the project, and she's actually taking over most of the dog training aspect, the pilot testing, with her dog, but up to this point, a lot of the stuff that they've created, it's kind of funny, when I tell people what I do there, the team that creates all the stuff, it's Melody Jackson and her lab partner Thad Starner, they're brilliant people, and the students that all work there are super brilliant. I am not a techy person. I'm lucky if I can turn my computer on, I just train dogs, so I kind of compare it to like the Big Bang theory, and I'm Penny amongst all of these brilliant people, and they just say stuff and I'm like, that's great, just tell me what you want the dogs to do. That's, kind of, where my expertise is, and I don't have any idea what the technical aspect of it is, but we've, actually, created some really cool things. They've created a vest that a service dog is trained to activate that has a tug sensor on it, and so we had a woman come to us that had a speech problem where she doesn't have, she can't project her voice out very loudly, and she's also wheelchair bound, and she was at the dog park, one day, with her dog, and her wheelchair got stuck in some mud, and she couldn't holler to anybody because her voice just didn't project like that, and she really needed, like, a way that she could send her service dog to get help to come back, and you know, but a dog running up to somebody, at a dog park, barking, nobody is going to think that's anything unusual. So, they created a vest that has a computer on it, and the dog has a tug sensor, on the vest, so she can direct the dog to go to somebody, and the dog can go up and it will pull a tug sensor and the vest will actually say, excuse me, my handler needs assistance, please follow me, and the dog can bring that person back to the handler.   --- Teri Martin: And how cool is that!  FDSA instructors have also been on the forefront of some of the new force free happenings with veterinary medicine. It makes so much sense to extend the positive philosophies when dealing with things that are so often necessary but not necessarily pleasant for the dog.  I think Debbie Gross has some great views on that?    Melissa Breau: Yup, let's roll that clip. --- Melissa Breau: Now, I think that veterinarians and the medical field in general isn't always known as the most positive part of dog sports, so I'd love to get your take on that. How do positive training and rehabilitation overlap, and are there places where they just can't? Debbie Gross: Yeah. And that's a very good question. I belong to an organization, I sit on the board called Fear Free, and their whole goal and mission is to establish fear-free veterinarians' offices, rehab offices, looking at training facilities, boarding facilities, things like that, so it's all aimed at making sure the experience is positive and fear free. And certainly…you know, we laugh in our clinic because we're not the vet, so dogs come in and they know they're getting copious amounts of cookies, and it's going to be a great place, and they love it, and so I think it's very important to, you know, right off the bat we want to make sure the owner and the dog are very comfortable. Certainly, dogs often will become fearful or potentially aggressive if they're in pain, so I always tell the trainers that I work with, assume that it's physical before behavioral. Now, I'll hear so many times from owners, "Oh, my dog didn't want to do the A-frame this morning. It's probably because …" You know, they make something up and then get steak for dinner. They swear they don't think like that. You know, they probably didn't want to do something because they're in pain. Something like the A-frame puts a lot of stress on the dogs back, and the hips, and stuff like that, so understanding if a dog is fearful, or doesn't want to do something, looking at the reason why, you know, so is it pain that is prohibiting them from doing something. And certainly, some dogs are not candidates, like, we've turned dogs away because they're either too fearful, or they just can't do … they don't want to do anything, and rather than forcing them, we won't do that, you know, and that's a little bit different than traditional vet medicine where dogs need to go in. They may need to get an exam, or their vaccinations, or things like that, but this fear free movement is fantastic, and you know, looks at everything from the lighting, their potential pheromones in the air to relax the dogs, and cats also, and other animals, so most the time in rehab dogs love it. They love coming into our office, and it's fun, and it's all positive, and you know, that's the way I want it to be. I mean, I love when the dogs pull their owners into the office, so you know that they're having a great time, so it's great. --- Teri Martin: And of course, using positive training in places where it hasn't historically been used,  carries over into training sports that have been resistant to positive methods too -- like IPO and Gun Dog sports. Melissa Breau: Cassia offers positive gun dog training classes here at FDSA, so I wanted to include this clip from her on the importance of work and play. --- Melissa Breau: I know I mentioned in your bio that you believe dog training should be a form of structured play. It sounds like that's a little bit what you're talking about, but can you explain a little more what that phrase means, or at least what it means to you, and what it looks like in practice, like within a training session? Cassia Turcotte: Sure. I think that…I'm trying to think where I actually first heard that term, and it may have been even Lindsey that said it, but really, it's…you know, I don't want the dog to feel like what we're doing is work. If you feel like you're being dragged to work every day, it's mentally hard, but if they go out and they go, oh my gosh, this is the coolest thing ever, I can't wait to do more of it, then the attitude's up, the motivation's up, and you don't have any trouble with compliance. You know, they're really willing to play the game, and it's fun. It's fun for me and it's fun for them, so you know, it's one of the things…you know, how would it look in a training session? One of the things that we do in field work is called the walk up, and all that is, is a bumper is thrown in the air as you're heeling with the dog, and it's thrown in front of the dog, and the point of it is to challenge the dog to stay heeling and stay steady with you, and the traditional way would be to correct them for not doing that. So in our way, we jackpot with Chuckit! ball or tug or food as a reinforcement for being steady, you know, so they see the bumper go up, and they sit, and we say, “Oh my gosh, that's awesome,” and we throw a Chuckit! ball in the opposite direction, and so it's all a game, and it's about keeping them guessing and mentally challenging them and getting it so that they really understand what they're being asked to do, and they're not just corrected for not understanding. So I think that's pretty much what it would look like in an average day. --- Melissa Breau: We also mentioned IPO, before sharing that clip from Cassia, and the trainer best known for that at FDSA, hands down, is Shade Whitesel. With driven dogs, frustration problems can be a real issue; Shade has spent the last few years looking at how to prevent frustration through clear communication. During her interview back in February, she talked about location specific markers, which are one of the things she's known for here at the school. Teri Martin: I'm taking Shade's class right now with my young, 6-month-old puppy, and I'm absolutely loving this concept. It's really cool to see the clarification in how my dog knows that chase means [26:33] and you get the ball and [26:34] grab it out of my hands and [26:37] you can see the clarity, so I'm happy to see this clip. --- Shade Whitesel: No matter how you train, communicating as clearly as possible is so important, because 99.9 percent of our problems are due to the unclarity of our teaching. And all of our problems with dogs — I mean it's really our problem it's not theirs — go away when you look at the clarity, or more accurately the ‘not clarity' of your teaching. When your communication is clear arousal levels go down, frustration from your learner dog goes down, and you get more confident and fluent behaviors from them. And this holds true over trialing, over living with them, over everything, just to be as clear as possible and predictable, that goes into predictability too. So, no matter what method you do that is just so important I think — obviously, since I talk about it. Melissa Breau: So, I think one really good example of that is the work you've done with location specific markers. Do you mind just briefly kind of explaining what that means and kind of how you use them? Shade Whitesel: You know, markers are such a good thing and people are exploring them, and figuring out that it's really nice to bridge what behavior your dogs doing to get their reward. Tell the dog where to collect their reinforcement, like, technically I want a different marker that means collect it from my hands, whether that's food or a toy and I want a different marker that means collect it away from there, whether it's go pick-up the toy on the ground or whether I'm going to throw the toy, and again it's just that clarity. And I notice with my own dogs if I had a different marker word for, “Strike the tug out of my hand,” versus, “I'm going to throw it,” the dog stopped mugging me, they stopped looking for where the toy was all the time when I was asking for behaviors. Because they knew that I would tell them exactly how to get their reinforcement. And again, it just goes back to the clarity. So, location specific markers is just the dog knows exactly where to go and they don't have to be checking where the toy is or the food — is the food in your pocket? Is it over there in the dish? Because you're going to tell them so they can put 100 percent of their attention to figuring out what behavior you want them to do, because they can trust that you're going to tell them where the reinforcement is. --- Melissa Breau: The other person who really focuses on helping frustrated dogs at FDSA is Sarah Stremming. Sarah has her own podcast, but I've been lucky enough to chat with her twice so far, and wanted to share her take on frustrated dogs vs. dogs who just lack impulse control. Teri Martin: Let's roll that clip. --- Sarah Stremming: I think that for the worked-up types of dogs the most common misconception that I hear about is that these dogs lack impulse control, that a lack of impulse control is the problem. Or that a lack of … if we're going to be very accurate, we would be saying a lack of impulse control training is a problem. Just the phrase “impulse control” makes my eye twitch just a little bit because I think that it implies that there's this intrinsic flaw in these dogs that if they can't control themselves that there's something wrong with them, or that teaching them to control their impulses is something that we can do. I don't think that we can control their impulses one way or another. We can certainly control their behaviors with reinforcement. Whether or not we're controlling their impulses is probably one of those things that we would have to ask them about, kind of like asking them if they were lonely and if that was why they were jumping all over the person coming home. So I like to stay away from stating that lack of impulse control is a problem. I also think that in agility specifically we accept that our dogs will be in extremely high states of arousal and be kind of losing their mind, and we almost want them that way, and any kind of calmness is frowned upon. The dogs that are selected to breed for the sport tend to be the frantic, loud, fast ones, and looking at behaviors, there's just kind of a distaste in agility, I feel — and I'm going to get a million e-mails about this — I love agility, people! I love agility! I'm just going to put that out there! But there is a distaste for calm and methodical behaviors in agility. We push for speed, speed, speed from the beginning, and we forget that sometimes maybe we should shut up and let the dog think through the problem. So I think, to get back to your original question, “What's the misconception?” The misconception is that we need to put them in a highly aroused state to create a good sport dog, and that impulse control is the be-all, end-all of these things. And then, for the hidden-potential dogs, I think the misconception is just that they lack work ethic. They say, “These dogs they lack work ethic, they give you nothing, they don't want to try, they're low drive,” yada yada. I think that's all misconceptions. Everything comes back to reinforcement. When you realize that reinforcement is the solution to everything, you can start to solve your problems and quit slapping labels on the dogs you're working with. --- Teri Martin: I love that. She says, “Shut up and let the dog think,” and also that she says to quit slapping labels on the dogs, because we see so much of that. I love how she's challenging people to think outside the box on all those arousal questions. Melissa Breau: I couldn't agree more. Those are definitely topics that have come up again and again on the podcast, just the idea of not labeling your dog and giving your dog time to process through things. But they definitely aren't the only running themes. I think probably one of the most popular things I've heard, talking to FDSA instructors at least, is how important foundation skills are, and how much of a difference a strong foundation can really make. In fact, Kamal said it was his absolute favorite thing to teach. Teri Martin: Cool. Let's hear. --- Kamal Fernandez: My actual favorite topic is foundations for any dog sport -- that is by far my favorite topic, because that's where all the good stuff happens. That's where you really lay your… well, your foundations, for a successful career in any dog discipline. And I think the irony is that people always want to move on to what I would qualify as the sexy stuff, but the irony is the sexy stuff is actually easy if your foundations are laid solidly and firmly. And I think I've had more  “ah-ha” moments when I teach foundations to people than I have with anything else. I also, i have to say, i like behavioral issues. You can make GREAT impact, and literally change somebody's life and their dog's life, or save somebody's life with behavioral work and giving them a new take on how they deal with their dog at present, but i would say really, really extreme behavioral cases are really, really juicy to get involved in, and dogs that people say they're on the cusp of writing the dog off, and the dog is so phobic or aggressive or dog reactive or whatever the case may be, and you can literally turn that person and that dog's relationship around. That's really rewarding and enjoyable to work with. But I would say as a standard seminar, I would say foundations by far. It's just you've got young, green dogs, you can see the light bulbs going off for the dogs, you can see the pieces being strung together, that are going to ultimately lead to the dog being this amazing competitive dog, and you can see it literally unfold before your eyes. --- Teri Martin: Foundations are one of those things that keep coming up. We see it at camp all the time. People think it's part of an exercise that's wrong, and it's something that's in that exercise, but nine times out of the ten it comes back to how that foundation was taught. Melissa Breau: I definitely want to share one more clip on that because, like you said, it's constantly coming up. This next one's from Deb Jones, who's known for covering all of the awesome foundation skills in her Performance Fundamentals class and her Get Focused class. So I asked her that exact question: Why are foundations so important. --- Melissa Breau: Right, so both the Focused class and your current class, the Performance Fundamentals class, seem to fall into that foundations category, right? So I wanted to ask you what you thought it was so…what is it about building a good foundation that is so critical when it comes to dog sports? Deb Jones: Foundation really is everything. I truly believe that. If you do your foundations well you won't run into problems later on or…I won't say you won't. You won't run into as many problems later on or if you do run into problems you will have a way to fix them because the problem is in the foundation. Ninety-nine percent of the time something wasn't taught to fluency or you left something out somewhere. You've got a gap or a hole, so going back to foundation and making it strong is always the answer. It's never a wrong thing to do. So I really like being able to try to get in that really strong basis for everything else you want. I don't care what sport people are going into or even if they're not going into sport at all. If they just like training and they want to train their dog this…a good foundation prepares you for any direction in the future because oftentimes we change direction. You have a dog you think you're going to be doing obedience with, but if you focus in the beginning too much on obedience behaviors, it may end up that dog just isn't right for that, and so you have kind of these gaps for.. "Oh well, let's see if I want to switch to agility. Now I need to train a new set of behaviors." We don't want that to happen, so we've got the foundation for pretty much everything. --- Teri Martin: So true what Deb says. Having those foundations just sets up the basis for everything we do in a dog's life, including how they have to function in our society today ... which I believe takes us nicely into our next clip, which is Heather Lawson talking about life skills in her Hound About Town classes. Melissa Breau: Excellent. Let's let it roll. --- Melissa Breau: Now, you didn't touch on two of the things that stood out to me when I was looking at the syllabus, which were the Do Nothing training, and Coffee Anyone, so what are those and obviously how do you address them in class? Heather Lawson: Yeah. I always get kind of weird sideways looks when I talk about Do Nothing training, because it's kind of like…people say, ‘What do you mean do nothing training,' and I say, “Well, how often do you just work on having your dog do nothing,” and everybody looks at me, “Well, you don't work on having the dog do nothing,” and I say, “Oh yeah, you do.” That's what we call settle on the mat, chill, learn how to not bug me every time I sit down at the computer to do some work, not bark at me every time I stop to chat with the neighbor, stop pulling me in all different ways, so it's kind of like just do nothing, because if you think about it the first maybe six months of your dog's life it's all about the dog and the puppy. Then when they get to look a little bit more adult all of a sudden they're no longer the center of attention, but because they've been the center of attention for that first eight weeks to six months, and there's been all this excitement whenever they're out and people stop, and you chat or you do anything, it's very hard for the dog all of a sudden now to have this cut off and just not be acknowledged, and this is where you then get the demand barking, or the jumping on the owner, or the jumping on other people to get that attention, whereas if you teach that right in the very beginning, okay, and teach your puppies how to settle, whether it be in an x pen, or in a crate, or even on a mat beside you while you're watching your favorite TV show. If you teach them to settle, and how to turn it off then you're going to not have that much of a problem going forward as they get older. The other thing, too, is that by teaching the dogs all of these different things that we want to teach them, that's great, and that's fabulous, and we should be doing that, but most dogs aren't active 100 percent of the time, they're active maybe 10 percent of the time. The other 90 percent they're chilling out, they're sleeping, they're…while their owners are away working if they're not lucky enough to be taken out for a daily hike, then they've got to learn how to turn it off, and if we can teach them that in the early stages you don't end up with severe behavior problems going forward, and I've done that with all of my puppies, and my favorite place to train the “do nothing” training is actually in the bathroom. What I do with that is my puppies, they get out first thing in the morning, they go their potty, they come back in, we get a chewy or a bully stick, or a Kong filled with food, and puppy goes into the bathroom with me and there's a mat, they get to lay down on the mat and that's when I get to take my shower, and all of my dogs, even to this day, even my 11-year-old, if I'm showering and the door's open they come in and they go right to their mat and they go to sleep, and they wait for me, and that's that “do nothing” training, right, and that actually even follows into loose leash walking. If you take that “do nothing” training how often are you out in your loose leash walking and you stop and chat to the neighbor, or you stop and you are window shopping, or anything else that you when you're out and about. If your dog won't even connect with you at the end of the line, then just…they won't even pay attention to you while you're standing there, or they create a fuss, then the chances of you getting successful loose leash walking going forward is going to be fairly slim, okay.   The other thing that you mentioned was the coffee shop training, and that is nowadays people go and they meet at the coffee shop, or they go for lunch, and more and more people are able to take their dogs to lunch, providing they sit out on a patio, and on the occasion where the dog is allowed to stay close to you we teach the dogs to either go under the table and chill or go and lay beside the chair and chill, and teach them how to lay there, switch off, watch the world go by. Even if the waiter comes up, you just chill out and just relax and that allows the dog, again because they've got good manners, to be welcomed even more places. Melissa Breau: Right. It makes it so that you feel comfortable taking them with you to lunch or out. Heather Lawson: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. There's lots of places that dogs can go, providing, and they're welcome, providing they do have those good manners, and if we can keep those good manners going then regardless of whether or not your dog sports or not, it just opens up the avenues for so much more of us to do…more things to do with our dogs. --- Melissa Breau: Of course training and competition aren't entirely about our dogs… we play a big role in their success or failure in the ring. And that can lead to some serious ring nerves on both ends of the leash. Teri Martin: It always comes back to us, doesn't it? But the good news is FDSA has our resident “people trainer,” Andrea Harrison, to help us with this.   --- Melissa Breau: So let's dig into a couple of those specifically just a little bit more, because I know there are a couple that we talked about a little bit before the podcast and whatnot as being particularly important. So I wanted to dig into this idea of kind of ring nerves and people experiencing nerves before a competition, things that really impact their handling. I was hoping you could talk a little more about that, maybe include a tip or two listeners can use when it comes to ring nerves and tackling it themselves. Andrea Harrison: Yes. For sure. One of the things I really encourage people to do is test those tools. So people go off to a trial and they're really, really, really nervous, but they don't know whether those nerves are physical, right, or in their head, or if they're affecting the dog at all, right? Because they've never really thought about it. All they know is that they're really, really, really nervous. They feel sick but they don't know is it in their tummy, is it in their head, is it their respiration, is it sweat glands, is it all of them, right? They haven't thought about it, they know it makes them feel sick so they push it aside, they don't work on it between trials, they go back to a trial and they're like, oh my God, I was nervous again. Well, of course you were nervous again. You didn't try working on anything, right? So like everything else it's almost like a training exercise. You have to think about what is making you nervous, how are you manifesting those nerves, and how can you break them down? It's just the same, right, just the same as positive dog training. Break it down into these tiny little pieces that you can then find a tool to address. So for example, if your mouth gets really, really dry and that distracts you and you start sort of chewing cud, as it were, as a cow, you're like, trying to get the water back in your mouth and it makes you nervous. Well, once you figure that out you take peppermints with you in the car, you suck on a peppermint before you go in the ring, and that's gone away. Right? And that's gone away so you feel more comfortable so you can concentrate on the thing you need to concentrate on, right? You want to always build to those results slowly. When you look at the nerves, I can't say to you, “Here's my magic wand, I'm going to wave it over you and all your nerves will be gone.” But you get that sick, sick feeling in the pit of your stomach, why is that? Are you remembering to eat the day before a trial? Are you eating too much the day before a trial? Are you remembering to go to the bathroom? Because when you're nervous you have to go to the bathroom, so make sure you make time to go to the bathroom because then there's less to cramp in your tummy, right? So step by step by step, you know, you make a plan, you look at the plan. What kind of music should you listen to on the way to the show? Should you listen to a podcast that's inspirational to you? Should you put together an inspirational play tack? Do you know exactly where the show is? If you're anxious and worried and always run late, for Lord's sake, please drive to the trial ahead of time or Google Map it really carefully and build yourself in 15 minutes extra, because being late to that trial is not going to help your nerves. You're going to arrive, you're going to be panicked, you're going to be stressed. So where is that stress coming from? How are those nerves manifesting themselves, right? So the music that you listen to on the way, having the mint if your breath is dry, remembering to go to the bathroom, thinking about what I call Andrea's Rule of Five. So Rule of Five is really simple. Is it going to matter in five minutes? Five hours? Five days? Five years? Right? So if something is stressing you out you can actually stop, ground yourself, which I'll get into in a sec, but ground yourself and think, Rule of Five. And the vast majority of the time, yeah, it might matter in five minutes because your run will just be over and it was not successful and you're embarrassed, maybe, or maybe it was great, and like, super. But very, very few of us are going to remember a run in even five months, let alone five years. I mean, you might remember in general, but your anxiety is not going to still be there, right? I mean, a great run you can remember. I can probably still tell you the details of some of Brody's amazing agility runs or Sally's amazing work, right? Like, I can describe going from the A-frame around to the tunnel and picking him up and staying connected and it was beautiful. I can remember the errors of enthusiasm, right, like when he took an off-course tunnel, and he's never done that in his life, and I was like, oh my God, he took an off-course tunnel. That's amazing. That's so cool, and we celebrated. So I just loved that he was that happy about it. But do I remember those very first, early trials where…do I remember the courses where I stood thinking, I'm never going to get my agility dog to Canada? No. I don't really remember. I remember being sad that he was three seconds over the time and _____ (18:35) [47:44], and that was kind of sucky, but it was okay, right? Like, now with all this perspective it's fine. --- Teri Martin: There's a lot, really, that affects both ends of the leash. After all, we're all learners… it can be easy to forget that sometimes. Melissa Breau: Nancy, for example, shared during her interview how her father influenced her training. He was a football coach, and she's a dog trainer, but that doesn't matter -- because it's all training. Let's listen to that clip. --- Nancy Gagliardi Little: He was a master at analysis, details and creative solutions and i think that's something that I've either inherited or I've learned from him. Melissa Breau: I was going to say, even just listening to you I can hear the parallels to dog sports; just the idea that breaking things down into pieces and foundation skills. Nancy Gagliardi Little: Exactly. This is the other piece that I think is so cool is he expected them to be excellent players, as well as excellent human beings, and he believes in people, and he respects people, loves to learn about people. There's so much about his coaching that parallels the way I train my dogs because I expect and focus on their excellence too. I believe in my dogs -- I always believe in them. I believe they're right and they're telling me things. I listen to them and try to make changes to my training based on what they need. Those are all things that my dad taught me from the way he coached his players. There are so many parallels between coaching and dog training; just his way of coaching, it helped me as a dog trainer. Melissa Breau: I'd really love to hear how you describe your training philosophy now -- what's really important to you? Or what do you see as the big things that you believe in how you believe in training when you work with dogs today? Nancy Gagliardi Little: Well, I guess to sum it up, it's not a really long philosophy. What sums it up for me is I just always look at my dogs as my coaches. So the dogs are my coaches, whether they're my students' dogs, whether they're my dogs, they're the ones who they're helping me develop a plan, and I like to think of it that way because it keeps me always evaluating and looking at things. --- Teri Martin: Dogs as coaches is one of those gifts that sometimes takes us in new directions we never expected. Take Stacy Barnett, nosework instructor, for example. She sort of fell into that sport because of her dog, Judd, just needed to have something, and now it's  turned into this incredible passion for scent sports. I think she talks about that on her podcast and how the sport is so good for dogs that might struggle in some of the more traditional sport venues. Melissa Breau: She did! Let's give that a listen. --- Stacy Barnett: Nose work is not only a confidence builder. It can also help reactive dogs. Nose work itself is very reactive-dog friendly in those venues because the dog doesn't have to work within eyeshot or earshot of another dog. They get to work on their own. However, it really does help from a confidence perspective. The sense of smell is actually pretty amazing. It goes through the limbic system, which means that it goes through the hippocampus and the amygdala. So the amygdala is kind of the fight or flight area, and the hippocampus is responsible for developing those early memories. So what happens is, is that the dog is scenting, and the dog is using about one-eighth of his brain with scenting, and this is all going through this system that's responsible for emotion and responsible for memory. If we can develop this positive feeling toward sensing and toward scent, we can actually help to put the dog into a really good space so that they can work, and also, you know, as long as you're working the dog under threshold, the dog is able to continue to work and will actually become more confident over time and actually less reactive over time. I saw this particularly with my little dog, Why. When he came to me, he could not work at all away from the house. He was also fairly reactive to other dogs. Had about 100-foot visual threshold to seeing other dogs. Now, through nose work, he has developed a lot of confidence. He's now able to search in novel environments with very little acclimation, and he's also quite a bit less reactive. He's got about an eight-foot visual threshold now to other dogs, which I think is absolutely amazing. So the behavioral benefits, especially for a dog like Why, they're off the charts. Absolutely off the charts. --- Melissa Breau: It has been a lot of fun to see the sport of Nosework grow so quickly in the last few years. The AKC has even added it to their list of sports. I caught up with Julie Symons on the new handler scent portion that is part of the new Scent Work competition program with the AKC in Episode 39. --- Melissa Breau: I want to switch a little bit from outcomes to training… what challenges are there when training a dog to search for handler scent, you kind of mentioned that, that may not be present when you're teaching traditional odors? Julie Symons: That's a good question. First, it is just another odor. We can attack it that way and it's true, this is another odor that we teach your dog. But it is different in that it does have its challenges, especially for savvy nosework dogs that have been in oil for a lot of years. We've seen a little bit of it being a little bit more difficult for them in certain situations. For example, there's no aging handler scent, like with the oil odor. So oil hides, the nosework venues we've been at, they're usually placed and they're out there 30 minutes to hours, so the odor is going to disperse more and diffuse into the area. For handler scent you pretty much give it its last scent, you hand it over to the helper, they place it, and then you go in and run. So the scent's going to have less diffuse in the area, handler scents is heavier, that's going to fall down more than, like, a vapor odor oil will disperse in a room, and of course it depends on airflow. Any kind of airflow is going to travel in each scent. It's going to be helpful to your dog that the scent's going to travel into the space. With my dogs and many teams that I've worked in, I find that the dogs have to get a lot closer to where the hide is for handler scents to really hone on that. So in this case I'm not talking about the novice level and boxes; I'll get back to that. But if they hide Q-Tips or cotton balls in a search area, your dog really has to get close to it to find it. So what I'm finding is that I'm actually introducing a little bit more of direction with my handler scent and it's actually helped a lot, and it gets my dog focused and more... not a  patterned search, but just getting them to search. For example, in Advanced Handler Discrimination, it's an interior search, and no hide is higher than 12 inches. So I'm going to plant low. I'm going to be, like, have my dog search low, and they find it really easily. And I found when I have blind hides somebody has set up for me, I feel more liberated to point and direct. Whereas if I know where the hide is, we tend to not want to intervene at all and my dog finds it quicker, because I don't know where it is and I'm just going to have my dog cover the area and then they usually find it. So that's been very helpful in the difference with the handler scent. Also another thing that's interesting if you watch dogs search the traditional oil hides in a box, they just find it really easy. You put your scented glove in a box and the dogs just search differently. They have to go cover the boxes a few times, they just don't hit on it as easily as oil. That oil odor, especially for AKC, is so strong, and your handler scented item is just not going to be as strong in a box, especially it's not aged. So those are some of the differences and why I think the handler scent is a little bit harder to source for a dog, just because of the amount of odor that you have and the fact that it's not aged. --- Melissa Breau: And while we're talking nosework, we have to include a clip from my call with Melissa Chandler. Like Stacy, nosework became her passion after she saw the positive effect it could have on a more sensitive dog, like her dog Edge. Teri Martin: I think there's some really great takeaways for handlers who have softer dogs in that interview. --- Melissa Breau: Now, having worked with a soft dog, do you have tips for others who have soft dogs, kind of to help them let their dog shine or that they should know about setting up training sessions? I mean, what kind of advice would you share? Melissa Chandler: Sure, this is another subject that I did a lot of research and I attended a lot of different seminars to try and get information, mostly to help Edge, and I think, first and foremost, it's so important to keep your dog safe and build their trust because once they trust you, that you will keep them safe, that gives them more confidence, and as I always tell my dogs, I have a cue, it's called “I have your back.” So, if they see something and they get concerned, I'm like, “I got your back.” So, that's our communication of whatever it is, I see it, you're fine, I got you, and it just takes time and by keeping them safe you build that trust that they know that you do have them. I would say never lure or trick your dog into doing something that they don't feel comfortable doing. Sometimes we find that in parkour because someone really thinks their dog should be able to do that behavior and the dog doesn't feel comfortable in that environment, so they tried to take cookies and lure them there. Just back off, work on it somewhere else, and eventually it'll happen. If you lure them, and then they get up there and they're really afraid, they're never going to want to do it again. If you let them do it on their own then they'll be able to do that anywhere in the future. Teach new behaviors in a familiar, comfortable environment, and then when you're ready to take it to another room or on the road, lower your criteria and reward any effort that the dog gives you in trying to do that for you. And one thing, when you're setting up your training sessions, make sure you're not always asking for difficult behaviors or, in nose work, difficult searches. You want your dog to always look forward to and succeed in your training sessions. If your sessions are always difficult and challenging your dog will no longer look forward to them. Have fun sessions that you reward everything, or just play, or do whatever your dog enjoys most. I had mentioned how much Edge loved his dumbbell, there's times we just go in the other room and we play with the dumbbell and he loves that, and just think of the value you're building in your relationship in your training because we just went and did what he loves doing. And then, for nose work, play foundation games. Just have one or two boxes out, do the shell game, play with your game boxes so it's fun, fast, quick, highly rewarding searches. And, I have a thing that I put in most of my classes, it's kind of like your recalls but it's for odor. How much value do you have in your odor bank. And, when you set up these fun, fast, foundation games, you're putting lots of value in your odor bank so, then when you have a more challenging side, you have deposits in that odor bank that they can pull out in order to work harder to find that odor. --- Melissa Breau: Gotta love those tips from Melissa C. So our next two clips, I think, really speak to Denise's sixth sense for bringing on new trainers… she seems to excel at tracking down people who really are incredibly good at what they do, but who also truly imbue the FDSA additude. Teri Martin: I agree. I think our next clip, from Chrissi Schranz, really shows what that attitude is all about. --- Melissa Breau: So I wanted to get into your training philosophy, and lucky me, I got a sneak peek before we started. You sent me over the link for this, but I'd love to have you kind of share your training philosophy and how you describe your approach, and for those of you who are going to want to see this after she talks about it, there will be a link to the comic in the show notes. Chrissi Schranz: Yeah, so I'd say my training philosophy is based on my favorite Calvin and Hobbes cartoon. So Calvin has a shovel and he's digging a hole, and then Hobbes comes up and asks him why he's digging a hole, and Calvin says he's looking for buried treasure. Hobbes asks him what he has found, and Calvin starts naming all kinds of things, like dirty rocks and roots and some disgusting grubs, and then Hobbes gets really excited, and he's like, “Wow, on your first try?” And Calvin says, “Yes. There's treasure everywhere,” and that is the kind of experience I want people and their dogs to have with each other. I want them to feel like life is an adventure, and there's so many exciting things to be discovered that they can do together. I want people to learn to look at the world through their dog's eyes a little bit and find this pleasure and just be together, and doing things and discovering things, whether that's digging a hole or playing in dog sports. Yeah, I want them to feel like they're friends and partners in crime and have that Calvin and Hobbes kind of relationship, because I believe if you have that kind of relationship as a foundation, you can do pretty much anything you want, no matter whether you want to have a dog you can take anywhere or whether you want to compete and do well in dog sports. I think if you have that kind of relationship as a basis, everything is possible. --- Melissa Breau: I like that… “Everything is possible.” You certainly can't predict how far a handler and dog can go, if they build a fantastic relationship. Sue Yanoff talked to that a bit too -- she had some great things to say about how our relationship with our dog makes us a great advocate when they need medical care. --- Melissa Breau: Is there anything in particular about veterinary medicine that sports handlers often just don't understand? Sue Yanoff: Yeah. I don't think it's just sports handlers. I think it's a lot of people. Veterinary medicine is a science, and the decisions that we make have to be based on science, and not just what people think, or what they heard, and so when you're making a decision about what the best diagnostics are for a condition, or how best to treat the condition, it has to be based on a series of cases, not just on what somebody thinks, and I go a lot based on what I learn at continuing education conferences, and what I read in the veterinary literature. Because papers that are published in peer reviewed journals are scrutinized to make sure that the science behind the conclusions are valid. So while, you know, it's fine for somebody to say , “Well, I did this with my dog and he did great,” what I want to make my decisions on is what worked well for many dogs, dozens, or hundreds, or thousands of dogs, and not just something that might have worked for your dog where we don't even know if the diagnosis was the same. So I think I want people to know that veterinary medicine is a science, and we have to make our decisions based on science. Melissa Breau: I think that, you know, especially with the internet these days it's very common for people to turn to their favorite local forum, and be like well what should I do, but… Sue Yanoff: I know, like, let me get advice from everybody, and I know it's hard to make decisions when it involves your dog and you're emotionally involved, and that's one of the reasons I want to teach this class, to give people information that they can use to make those hard decisions. Melissa Breau: What about the reverse? Are there things about sports that you think most vets just they don't understand? Sue Yanoff: Oh yes. Yes there's a lot. Unless you're a vet who's involved in this thing, most vets don't understand the time and the effort, and the emotion, and the money that goes into the training, and the trialing that we do. They don't understand the special relationship that we have with our dogs when we put the time and effort into training them. I have had dogs that were wonderful pets, and I loved them, but I never showed them for one reason or another, and there is a different relationship when you accomplish something special with that dog. So I think that's important thing. The other thing that most vets don't understand, and might not agree with, but I have had some clients where we have diagnosed an injury, and said, “Okay, we need to restrict activity, and do the conservative treatment route,” and they say, “I will, but my national specialty is next week, and she's entered in whatever class.” Or they say, “I have a herding finals coming up in two weeks, and I really want to run her in those trials,” and I'm okay with that if the dog has an injury that I don't think is likely to get much worse by doing a little more training, or trialing, then I'll say, “Okay. Well, let's do this in the meantime, and when you're done with your national or with your specialty or whatever, come on back and we'll start treatment.” So I think a lot of vets would not understand that point of view, but I'm okay with it as long as I don't think that it's going to do serious harm to the dog, and as long as the owner understands that there's, you know, a slight chance that things could get worse. --- Teri Martin: One of the great things about all these podcasts is hearing all the instructors' personal stories. For example, you've just gotta love a Sue Ailsby story. Her talk stories are well worth the price of admission in any of her classes. Melissa Breau: She shared a great story about her cross-over dog when we talked. --- Sue Ailsby: The first dog I trained, it wasn't clicker training but it was without corrections, was a Giant Schnauzer and I got her to about eight months and it was glorious. And we were getting ready for an obedience trial and I'm heeling along, and part of my brain is saying, isn't this glorious? She's never had a correction and she's heeling. And the other half of my brain is saying, but she doesn't know she has to. And then the first part, why should she know she has to? She knows she wants to, but she doesn't know she has to. I'm going to put a choke chain on her and I'm just going to tell her that she has to. This is not negotiable. You don't want to put a choke chain on her, you've spent eight mon

Celine Yang is our talented guest today discussing nose work®, DNA testing for your dog, some product reviews, and her training journey with her two wonderful dogs, Severus and Whizbee. Follow her on her blog, The Dogwarts School Of Bitchcraft And Trickery. Celine is a Karen Pryor Academy Certified Training Partner (KPA CTP) who teaches group classes at The Pet Republic in Cambridge, MA. She is passionate about positive reinforcement dog training and always seeking coaching and inspiration from trainers whose work she admires. Her two dogs, Severus and Whizbee, push her to find creative, kind, and effective solutions to the frictions that can arise when humans welcome dogs into their hearts and homes. Website https://dogwarts.blog Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dogwarts.school.of.bitchcraft/ Resources National Association of Canine Scent Work® http://nacsw.net Performance Scent Dogs https://www.performancescentdogs.com Embark DNA https://embarkvet.com Blue-9, maker of the Klimb https://www.blue-9.com Karen Pryor Training and ClickerExpo https://clickertraining.com/clickerexpo Smart Animal Training Systems, maker of the Pet Tutor https://smartanimaltraining.com Fenzi Dog Sports Academy Denise Fenzi, author of “Train The Dog In Front Of You” https://fenzidogsportsacademy.com KikoPup https://www.youtube.com/user/kikopup Thank you Celine and the Dogwarts School Of Bitchcraft and Trickery! About Nancy and Harold Rhee We have been married over 20 years, fostered over 60 dogs in the past four years, and we love animal rescue and the amazing people who dedicate their lives. And of course, the dogs and cats! If you want to learn more about Nancy and Harold, go to our About Us page at http://thisispawprint.com/about or listen to our introductory podcast episode, "Fifty Puppies and a Podcast." http://thisispawprint.com/000 About Pawprint Pawprint (or Paw Print) is a weekly podcast dedicated to animal rescue, adoption, and the heroes who make it happen. Volunteer, walk, adopt, or foster a dog, cat, rabbit, or other wonderful pet through your local shelter, humane society, SPCA, pound, and animal control. Stop abuse, and help increase animal protection, welfare, and rights.  http://thisispawprint.com http://animalrescuepodcast.com Don’t miss any new episodes. Sign up for our email list. If you want to join our animal rescue community and receive two free bonus dog-training resources from Irith Bloom, positive reinforcement dog trainer, go to http://thisispawprint.com/ask. Irith can be found at http://www.thesophisticateddog.com/ About Pawprint’s Music All of Pawprint's music is composed by Luke Gartner-Brereton. Luke is based in Brisbane, Australia, and he composes a wide variety of songs and musical loops http://info.vanillagroovemedia.com http://vanillagroovestudios.com http://soundcloud.com/luke-gartnerbrereton

SHOW NOTES:  Summary: Julie Flanery has been working professionally with dogs and their handlers since 1993. She focuses on the needs of the dog and helping people form a strong relationship through clear communication and positive reinforcement. She has placed Obedience, Freestyle, Rally-Obedience, Rally-FrEe, and Agility titles on her dogs. She began competing in Musical Freestyle in 1999 and was the first to both title and earn a Heelwork to Music Championship on the West Coast. In 2001 she was named Trainer of the Year by the World Canine Freestyle Organization and has been a competition freestyle judge since 2003. Five years ago Julie developed the sport of Rally-FrEe to help freestylers increase the quality and precision of their performances. It has since become a standalone sport enjoyed by dog sports enthusiasts all over the world. Julie has been a workshop and seminar presenter both nationally and internationally. She currently trains and competes with her Tibetan Terrier in both Musical Freestyle and Rally-FrEe. Links mentioned: www.wonderdogsonline.com VIDEO: Examples from Imitation and Mimicry VIDEO: More examples from Imitation and Mimicry VIDEO: Rally FrEe Compilation / Class Trailer Next Episode:  To be released 6/2/2017, featuring Mariah Hinds.  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 Julie Flanery. Julie has been working professionally with dogs and their handlers since 1993. She focuses on the needs of the dog and helping people form a strong relationship through clear communication and positive reinforcement. She has placed Obedience, Freestyle, Rally-Obedience, Rally-FrEe, and Agility titles on her dogs. She began competing in Musical Freestyle in 1999 and was the first to both title and earn a Heelwork to Music Championship on the West Coast. In 2001 she was named Trainer of the Year by the World Canine Freestyle Organization and has been a competition freestyle judge since 2003. Five years ago Julie developed the sport of Rally-FrEe to help freestylers increase the quality and precision of their performances. It has since become a standalone sport enjoyed by dog sports enthusiasts all over the world. Julie has been a workshop and seminar presenter both nationally and internationally. She currently trains and competes with her Tibetan Terrier in both Musical Freestyle and Rally-FrEe. Hi, Julie. Welcome to the podcast. Julie Flanery: Hey, Melissa, thanks for having me. Melissa Breau: So excited to have you on. This is going to be a lot of fun. Julie Flanery: Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Melissa Breau: So to start us out, do you want to just tell us a little bit about the dog or dogs you have now and what you're working on? Julie Flanery: Yeah. I'm actually down to one dog now. I've lost three dogs in the last couple of years, which has been a little bit hard, but all of them were about 15 years old so I'm down to just Kashi, and Kashi is my 6-year-old Tibetan Terrier. She is a great little worker, in spite of some severe food allergies she's had since she was a puppy and that kind of limits our training with food rewards a little bit, so we've really had to work hard to come up with some ways that she really enjoys her training and make every reward count. We do show, as you said, in Freestyle and Rally-FrEe, and we just showed our intermediate Heelwork routine last weekend and started work on putting together our new routine. It's a kind of a Las Vegas show-style illusionist routine, I'm kind of excited about it and Kashi plays my disappearing assistant and we just moved into... Melissa Breau: Sounds so fun. Julie Flanery: Yeah, it is, it is. I have the ideas kind of swirling around in my brain, nothing complete yet, but that's kind of where you start with freestyle is with an idea or some type of inspiration and you go from there. And then we also just moved into the Elite Division for Rally-FrEe after completing our Grand Championship last year. That was really exciting for me as well. Melissa Breau: That's awesome. Julie Flanery: Yeah. Melissa Breau:So I want to start kind of at the beginning. You know, I talked a lot about your history there and you've accomplished a lot, but how did you originally get into dog sports? Julie Flanery: That was a long time ago. If I'm really honest I would say it was about 25 years ago when I took my 5-month-old Border Collie to a pet class. I was a new pet dog owner, and I watched one of the instructors do a demo of how many tricks his 5-month-old Border Collie could do in a minute and I thought, wow, I want to do that with my dog. I mean I'm just a pet person here, but I saw that and I was so impressed and so intrigued at what training could do, that and having a great dog to start with got me really immersed into training, and my competitive nature kind of kicked in a little bit. And I didn't really start competing until probably a couple years in agility to start and then obedience, and both of those were rather short-lived due to my discovery of freestyle I'd say probably in the...oh, I don't know, mid-90s at an APDT conference after seeing a freestyle demo and again I thought, wow, I want to do that with my dog. And unfortunately, there was no freestyle available in the Pacific Northwest, or much really anywhere in the country at that time. It was just a fairly new sport then and there wasn't really the luxury of any online training back then, so if I wanted to do this I was going to have to learn this on my own, and because I didn't really want to do it alone I dragged a few of my students along with me, and today we have one of the largest freestyle clubs in the country and those first few students are still competing, are active members in the club today. So, that's kind of how I got started competing in general, first with obedience and agility and then really became enamored with freestyle, but I competed off and on in a variety of dog sports, as you said, so I think I have a little bit of a competitive nature at heart. Melissa Breau: Well, that's awesome. It's kind of cool that you managed to really...I guess you could almost start a movement in that area, right, like for the sport. Julie Flanery: I don't want to take that kind of credit, but I knew I wanted to do it, and I knew it was not going to be something I could probably do alone. Freestyle's not an easy sport to stick with and it really takes some perseverance to stay involved in it, and I just felt very passionate about it, and so anytime anybody would listen or anytime anybody wanted me to give a workshop on it I would go and I would oftentimes...early on with the club I would give free workshops just to get people interested and involved in it so that we could have a group that could put on competitions here. Melissa Breau: Well, I wanted to make sure that I told you, you know, I watched some of the videos of you and I think most of them actually you're working with Kashi on the FDSA website. Consistently she looks so happy to be working with you, and even the other dogs that you have in the videos, they all look so thrilled to be there and to be performing. So I really was curious what it is, or what you attribute it to in terms of how you train or the sport specifically that leads to that. Julie Flanery: Oh, I love...I love that that is what you noticed. So to me there really isn't much point in training unless you have a willing and happy partner, and in freestyle it's a sport where emotion shows through and emotion is something that you want to convey, and for most of us we want our dogs to be happy out there working, and as I said earlier, it's a very difficult sport and if you don't have a dog that's really enjoying it, it can be very, very difficult to progress in the sport. For me really, the shift to really wanting a happy, joyful dog out there came about when I started using operant conditioning and shaping specifically with al clicker. I'd always used treats in my training. I primarily have always been a positive reinforcement trainer early on in obedience. I did learn how to use a choke chain and I was quite skilled at that, but I did train with rewards and mostly the reward training, but when I started using a clicker and shaping it became a much more reciprocal learning process where both the dog and the handler have a vested interest in listening to each other and that that outcome includes a sense of enjoyment and a desire to keep going, and I think for me having that experience of learning about shaping and clicker training and really  listening to the other dogs was very impactful for me and impactful about how I structured my sessions and what I wanted out of those sessions in terms of emotional fulfillment for both me and the dog and I think the most effective way to build that is through positive reinforcement training and really important is clear communication, with that communication being a two-way street. For years training has always been about the dog listening to the handler and I think it's just as important, even more so, that the handler learn to listen to the dog. So, I think just making sure you're paying attention to how the dog is feeling and responding in a session makes a huge difference in the outcome of that session and whether there is mutual enjoyment in that session. So, I think it's a combination of both the sport that I chose and the techniques and methods that I choose to apply in my training. Melissa Breau: That's really interesting. I mean I'd imagine in something that's typically set to music where really part of it is a performance aspect, like in obedience precision is precision and it's possible to a fairly precise performance, even if you're not super positive in your training, and I imagine it's much, much more difficult in a sport where the goal is really to have it look joyful and to have it look really pretty. Julie Flanery: Yeah, it certainly can be, and that's not to say that there aren't freestylers that use or have used aversive techniques, and to be quite honest you can't always tell, the dog's being just as happy out there. But for me personally, I really enjoy the fact that I know that what I see in my training is what I see in the ring, and that's all about that enjoyment of working together and bringing that joy to the audience as well because you're right, freestyle is an audience participation sport, so to speak. It's a sport that they're not only for competition but for entertainment as well. Melissa Breau: You kind of mentioned shaping and luring in there, but you wrapped up a class on Imitation and Mimicry and I have to say that's like such a fascinating concept. If you could start by just kind of explaining what that is for the listeners in case they're not aware of it, and just kind of sharing how you got into that, that would be great.  Julie Flanery: Yeah. No, I'd love to. Imitation and Mimicry is a form of social learning or learning through observation, and we've long known it to be effective in human learning, but it wasn't until probably the last 10 years or so that we've really seen any studies on its use in dog training. I first heard about it at a ClickerExpo, a talk that Ken Ramirez gave on concept training in dogs, and then further researched Dr. Claudia Fugazza's study that she did, and in 2006 she created a protocol that showed that dogs can learn these new skills and behaviors by mimicking their owners and it's her protocol that we use in class. Also what's fascinating is that Ken Ramirez has developed a protocol for a dog-dog imitation and mimicry, and some of the videos I've seen on that are just truly, truly amazing. So, things that we didn't think were possible now we know are and we're actually able to bring to more people now. The class was really quite inspirational for me because my experience of course had been limited with it in working with it with my own dog and then some of my live classes, my students there in my live classes, we work through it, and when Denise asked me to do a class on it I was really excited, but I wasn't quite sure what to expect and I have to say my students in that class are just amazing. They have really shown me what this protocol can do and how truly capable our dogs are of learning some of these concepts, so it's been a really exciting class for me. And matter of fact, I'm going to go ahead and put it back on...I think it is already...Terry's added it to the schedule for August, and so I'm really excited about doing it all over again. Melissa Breau: It's so cool to watch. Julie Flanery: Yeah. I think you've seen some of the videos that were on the alumni page, and they've really drawn a really great response, so it is very exciting for me and I hope for the students too that are taking the class. Melissa Breau: Other than just being an additional tool in the toolbox, and of course we all want as many of those as possible, right, what are some advantages to using that as a technique? Julie Flanery: Well, first off, mimicry is not necessarily suited to all behavior training. It's really best used for broad or more general behaviors, behaviors that require a high degree of accuracy or precision may be better learned through shaping or some other method or reward, however mimicry can be quite useful and at least one study has shown that behaviors learned through mimicry were learned as quickly as they were through shaping which really surprised me. I was quite surprised by that. Some service dog work for example, retrieving items, turning on lights, opening drawers or cabinets, not only can the dog learn these skills very quickly through mimicry, but once the mimic cue is in place, even inexperienced handlers can teach the dog these behaviors with very little training themselves, so it allows inexperienced handlers to train these more complex behaviors much more quickly which I think is really quite cool. It can also give the dog the big picture, so to speak. So in most training the dog has no idea of what the end result is, only we know what that looks like and the dog needs to muddle along, and he may not even know that when we reach the end result that is the end result. So, mimicry allows the dog to know what he's working toward and may even help him to better able to guess steps toward that end result, so it could very easily shorten that training process, at least the big picture, at least the broad strokes of that behavior. I think too it forces us to look at the dog's perspective in how or what we are communicating. In mimicry the only information you're giving the dog is your demonstration of the behavior. If your demonstration doesn't make sense to the dog, he won't possibly be able to perform it. It's really no different than other forms of training. If we aren't giving the dog the information he needs then it's not that he's unwilling to do the behavior, it's that he's unable, and unfortunately all too often errors are blamed on the dog rather than our inability to communicate, so to me this really gives us that perspective from the dog's viewpoint. What am I communicating to the dog, and how can I make this more clear, and we learn that through our demonstrations in the mimic protocol and how we actually demonstrate these behaviors. I think it's been very fun to see some of the students realize, oh, wow, that demonstration couldn't possibly make sense to my dog, how could he possibly do that? So, I think that's a really interesting thing is that we gain a new perspective on the dog. I've also had several students tell me their dogs are more attentive to them, they appear more relaxed in training. The process itself, the protocol itself, is very predictable and so it sets the dog up to succeed. For me though I think it really comes down to a connection. I think I have a pretty good relationship with my dog, but the emotion I felt...the first time she truly mimicked the behavior that I had demonstrated was unlike anything I had ever felt before. Not only did I feel a different kind of connection with her, but I think she felt a different connection with me as well, or at least I'd like to believe that was what I was seeing. So, it's an amazing feeling that first time your dog mimics something that all you've done is demonstrated for them and then asked them to repeat it and like I said, for me it comes down to a different...maybe a deeper connection with my dog. Melissa Breau: Do you remember what that first behavior was for you? Julie Flanery: I do. It was a spin. Melissa Breau: That's awesome. Julie Flanery: It was amazing. I taught her...went through the protocol of teaching her the mimic cue, and then I did my spin and I told her “do it” and she glanced at me for a second and she did it and I was like, oh, my God. It was really quite exciting for her. I get a little teary thinking of it right now. I know that sounds kind of weird, but it really is such an amazing feeling. It's a different feeling than what I felt...I can't say that. You know it's funny. The first time I used shaping and had my dog offer something that I did not command him to do because that's the term we used then, “give your dog a command,” the first time my dog offered something just because I had clicked and rewarded it, that to me was almost the same kind of feeling, it showed me the power that that technique and method had and I felt that same way with the mimicry too. It really showed me the power this method could have. Melissa Breau: I just think it's so interesting, the different ways our dogs are really capable of learning if we take the time to teach them how.  Julie Flanery: It is. It's amazing. It's really amazing. It reminds me, Ken Ramirez once said in a lecture and it's actually one of my favorite mantras, I keep it on my monitor. He says, “We limit ourselves and our animals by assuming things aren't possible” and that is so true I think. It's so important that we keep an open mind to some of these techniques and methods because we don't know what we don't know, and it's up to us to explore these techniques that can really bring out the best in our dogs and our relationships with our dogs. Melissa Breau: Now this session you're offering Rally-FrEe class, right? Julie Flanery: Yes. Melissa Breau: So, I want to make sure we talk a little bit about that too. In the class description you explain it as a combination of Rally and Freestyle. My understanding is you're the founder of Rally-FrEe so I'd love to hear what led you to develop the program and why those two sports? Why did you choose to combine them? Julie Flanery: Right. Originally I wanted to develop a structured way for freestyle teams to focus on their foundation skills and build their heel work and transition skills primarily to better their performances and really to increase their longevity in the sport, and then ultimately improve the quality of the sport. Since I've been involved in freestyle I compete, I'm a judge, I've been teaching it for almost 20 years now, and I was seeing a lot of attrition in the sport. Freestyle is not easy. I would say it's probably one of the more difficult sports out there. There's a lot more involved in freestyle than just training behaviors. Teams would get through the novice level and then they would really struggle in the intermediate class and they'd end up leaving the sport. In freestyle you can train any behavior you want. You have a lot of options and so you do, you train anything you want and mostly that's the really fun, cool, complex sexy tricks, and generally they didn't train any foundation in to support the complexity of the tricks they were training. So like any sport, freestyle has a specific set of foundation skills, but these skills, these foundation skills, I know when I first started in freestyle nobody told me what they were, I'm not sure anybody knew what they were, it was such a new sport back then, and even if we knew what they were freestylers were so spread out around the country and there was no real instruction available to it, the information just wasn't accessible, and the information wasn't really given the importance and value I think. You know, having foundation skills didn't seem as important because of the perception that freestyle was free and you could do anything you wanted. And I remember...I remember one of the reasons I wanted to do freestyle was I didn't want to teach my dog to heel anymore, you know, heeling was, oh, my God, I don't want to teach my dog to heel, it's so awful. Of course heeling was taught quite a bit differently than we do now, but I didn't really understand at that time how important heel work and positions really are for freestyle. Melissa Breau: When you say foundation behaviors, is that what you're referring to is kind of the positions and... Julie Flanery: Yeah, the positions, the transitions, yeah. Those are considered foundation skills, and then there are certain foundation tricks in which all of the other more difficult, more complex tricks are more easily built off of as you know that anytime we start building a skill without a foundation it can be really easy to get frustrated in the training because it's not built on the foundation skill. The dog doesn't have any support for that skill, and so the skill tends to fall apart a little bit, and so as teams were moving up both the dog and the handler would start to get frustrated and not have that foundation to support the more difficult criteria and those routines would start to fall apart, and when they fall apart and it gets frustrating it's no longer enjoyable, and so as a result the quality of freestyle wasn't really getting any better and we were losing a lot of competitors. So, Rally-FrEe was a way for freestylers to build skill in their foundation and heel work so that they could be more successful in the sport and find more enjoyment in competing in freestyle, and in the long run improve the quality of freestyle that we were seeing in the ring. What I didn't realize is that teams from other dog sports Rally-Obedience, Agility, they were starting to participate. I didn't realize that this was going to become a worldwide competitive dog sport with participants in over seven countries, I mean I was like, wow. I was like wow. I remember one morning waking up and going how did this happen? I don't understand how this happened. This was supposed to be a fun little game for me and my students, and I'm not the first one that has put together these two sports in an effort to help freestylers or have more fun with Rally. There are many instructors that have done this. Somehow I was able to and I had the support of many, many people to have this grow into a worldwide competitive dog sport, so I'm very thankful for that happening, but really I have no idea how that happened.  Melissa Breau: Hey, it was a lucky break, right?  Julie Flanery: I guess. I guess. I'm sure glad it did though. It truly has met some of my goals. We are seeing a much better quality of freestyle. We are seeing teams coming into it with a stronger foundation, and we're seeing much more skilled teams staying in it longer, so for that I'm really thankful. And we're seeing new people coming into the sport, coming into freestyle that maybe never would have considered it partly because of the choreography and dance aspect to it, and partly because it is a difficult sport to understand the foundation for how to start training, and Rally-FrEe really allows the new exhibitor, the person that just is considering wanting to get their feet wet in freestyle but really don't know much about it, Rally-FrEe is the perfect sport to learn the foundation skills and then maybe ease into freestyle if you find you enjoy that. So, I've really actually been quite pleased at where we've gone in the last five years and how a lot of my goals have already been met with it. Melissa Breau: That's awesome. Hey, good ideas catch on, right? Julie Flanery: Yeah, I guess so. Melissa Breau: So I did want to ask you, you mentioned kind of in there something about novice and intermediate levels, and as somebody who hasn't competed in the sport. I was just kind of curious what some of the different things are I guess that they look at in the competition. Julie Flanery: Yeah. So for most freestyle organizations the scoring or the judging is broken down into several categories, one would be content and execution. So, content and execution would be what do you put into your routine? What is the variety of behaviors and how well are those behaviors executed? What is the accuracy and precision of those behaviors? Another thing that is looked at would be difficulty or creativity. How difficult are the behaviors that you're including in your routine? Are you using hand signals because hand signals indicate lesser difficulty than behaviors that are solely on verbal cues? Another aspect of it would be musicality and interpretation. How well do your behaviors and your sequences match the phrasing in the music? What is your attire, does it match the genre of the music? We also look at transitions and flow, and transitions are behaviors that allow the dog and/or handler to change position and/or direction in a way that creates ease of movement and a visual aesthetic or flow to the routine. And then Rally-FrEe Elements, which is the organization that I created that also conveys titles in freestyle, we also look at the teamwork and engagement between the dog and handler team. How well do they enjoy working together? How well does the handler support the dog? And I think we're probably the only organization that actually looks at teamwork as a judged criteria, so that's something that's a little bit different from most other dog sports. Melissa Breau: That's really interesting, and you kind of mentioned something about the verbals and the visuals in there. I was really curious how much of the cueing is verbal versus visual and what the role of each is in the sport, so do you mind just talking a little more about that? Julie Flanery: Sure. So in freestyle we use three different kinds of cues. We use verbal cues and generally we like those verbal cues to be not loud and obtrusive, but loud enough for the dog to hear them but not so loud that they are disruptive to the routine or distract from the enjoyment of the routine. In using those verbal cues we're aloud to talk to our dogs through the whole routine. There's nothing like in obedience where you need to give one cue. In freestyle you may give multiple cues. Obviously, you don't want your dog refusing cues or not responding to cues, but we are allowed to talk to our dogs the whole time, and so oftentimes we are giving our cues continually throughout a routine. We also use subtle physical cues. So my sweeping arm might mean for the dog to back around me or go out to a distance, but we want those cues to be hidden somewhat within the choreography, we don't want them to be very obvious like what a lure-like hand signal would look like. And then we also use something called choreography cues, and choreography cues allow us to teach new physical cues that we can then use within the routine as our choreography, so they are physical cues that appear counter to a hand signal. So for example, I can teach my dog that when I throw both my arms up into the air that's actually a cue to spin or to take a bow or whatever behavior I attach to it through training, and I can change those choreography cues for each routine as long as I understand and apply correctly the process for putting new cues onto behaviors. But truly, verbal cues are extremely important in musical freestyle and they're probably the most important cues in musical freestyle. It's those strong verbal cues that allow the handler to include their movement and their interpretation into the ring. If you're tired to hand cutes then you're really restricted in how you can interpret the music and that's part of what you're scored on, but having those verbal cues doesn't mean that we don't use some visual or body cues. We just really want those to be subtle and portrayed as part of the choreography. The goal in freestyle is to make it appear as if the dog is not being cued, that he or she is in total sync with the handler, and while the handler is leading the dance the dog is a voluntary partner. We want to create that illusion I guess, that illusion of dance partners, not one of telling the other what to do. If you've ever watched ballroom dance, even though you know one is leading it's really hard to tell because they're both so engaged in that process. So yeah, we have a lot of options in terms of cueing, but we work hard to avoid cues that appear lure-like or showing the dog or leading the dog into what to do. Melissa Breau: How long is your average performance? I mean it seems like...in agility even you have signs out to help you and I mean you kind of have to memorize the whole thing in a freestyle routine. Julie Flanery: Right. Yeah. For beginners, generally a routine is going to be about a minute and a half to two minutes. As you get up into the upper levels they're going to go three minutes plus, and these are routines that you choreograph, so you're actually memorizing them as you choreograph them. But make no mistake, it's not an easy task to choreograph two minutes of behaviors. You're probably looking at anywhere from I would say 30 to 80 cued behaviors in a two to three minutes period. Not only are these cued behaviors, but the dog needs to perform them in a timely manner with the music, so your timing of your cues is actually well before you need the dog to perform it so that he can actually perform it at the point in the music where it makes sense. So there's a lot to cueing in musical freestyle, and so it's something that I've had to learn an awful lot about and it's something that once you get involved in freestyle it becomes a really important part of your success. Melissa Breau: It seems like that would be a really interesting thing, even for somebody who wasn't interested in freestyle, to take a class on just because it feels like there's so much carryover there. Julie Flanery: Yeah. And I think actually, is it Mariah? One of the instructors I think is doing a class on cueing. Melissa Breau: Yeah, I think it's Mariah. Julie Flanery: Yeah. It's an amazing concept in and of itself and all of the different ways that we can teach our dogs to take our cues and all of the different ways that they can read our cues, so yeah, I think it's fascinating and I've spent a lot of time in my own personal training development learning how to do that and what's the most effective and efficient means of doing that. Melissa Breau: So, I wanted to kind of round things out with the three questions I ask everybody who comes on the show. So first up, what's the dog-related accomplishment that you're proudest of? Julie Flanery: Well, that's easy. Creating a venue that allows teams to really succeed and enjoy a sport that I love, but if you're talking personally I'd say that earning our Rally-FrEe Grand Champion MCL title. I really did not realize how hard that accomplishment would be and how fulfilling it was to get there. I created it and I didn't realize how hard that would be, I mean, I had to work hard for that title and it was very, very satisfying to be able to accomplish that. Melissa Breau: Well, congratulations. That's awesome.  Julie Flanery: Thanks. Thank you. Melissa Breau: So possibly my favorite question every single episode, what is the best piece of training advice that you've ever heard? Julie Flanery: The best? Oh, wow. So I've heard tons of great training advice. Certainly something we all do, which is to make our training sessions enjoyable for all involved, that learning doesn't really happen under duress and to keep it fun and light and amusing and enjoyable and amazing. I don't remember where I heard it, but a quote that always stuck with me is that “criteria is joy” and if we don't have that within our sessions then it's really all for naught. That and what I talked about earlier, Ken Ramirez who said that we limit ourselves and our animals by assuming things aren't possible. That hangs in my office because so many of the things that I'm doing with my dog now that I would have said weren't possible just a few years ago, so staying open to that. But I think the one piece of advice that has really benefited me the most as a trainer, I heard from Hannah Branigan. I bet she gets this a lot that she's responsible for most people's success in their training, but for me really she talked about being aware of when and where our peak in a training session and not letting them slide down that backside of the bell curve. I am the queen of just one more, and that little lesson from Hannah has made me so much more aware of when it's time to end a session and how much that really impacts the success of that session. So that's probably one that I have benefited the most from, most recently and that sticks with me. I try to remember that every single session, all right, where's my peak? Don't want to go down the backside of that bell curve. Melissa Breau: So that's three, but I think they were three excellent ones. That's awesome. Julie Flanery: Yeah. Sorry, sorry. Melissa Breau: No, that's okay. They were worth it. Julie Flanery: There's just so much training advice out there, you know? Melissa Breau: That's awesome. No, it's my favorite question for exactly that reason because I feel like It's solid takeaways and you kind of walk away with a really solid reminder of something, and I think those three tie together nicely too. Julie Flanery: Yeah. Melissa Breau: So, my final question is who is someone else in the dog world that you look up to? Julie Flanery: You mean aside from all the great instructors at FDSA? Melissa Breau: Preferably, I mean, they're all awesome. Julie Flanery: Yeah. That's right. They really are so passionate, so compassionate about what they do. I couldn't say goodbye without saying it's a real honor to work with them all and learn from them all, but outside of Fenzi, boy, the list is almost as long. I think probably Kathy Sadao has had the most long-term impact on me starting from probably about 15 years ago. Diane Valkavitch, my hero in freestyle, who taught me everything I know about transitions. I can't leave out Michelle Pouliot who inspires and pushes me to do better every single day really. And Cassandra Hartman, she's another really fabulous freestyler who is...she's like the complete package when it comes to training, performance, relationships with her dogs. She's just a real inspiration...all of them, super inspirational trainers and I'm really, really honored to learn from all of them.  Melissa Breau: That's awesome because there are some new names in that list, so that's super exciting. Julie Flanery: Yeah. Melissa Breau: I'm always interested in more trainers that I can go out and look up and read about and see what they have out there in the world, so that's awesome. Thank you.  Julie Flanery: Oh, yeah. They are great, and they all compete in various dog sports as well, so in spite of their current interest in freestyle and them being such great freestyle trainers they really have a wealth of information in regards to all different dog sports and training in general, you know, training is training is training and these folks have really impacted how I train and who I am as a trainer today. Melissa Breau: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Julie. Julie Flanery: Thank you so much. It was really fun. Melissa Breau: It was really fun, and thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. We have a super special announcement this week. You'll no longer have to wait two weeks between episodes. That's right. We're taking the podcast weekly. That means we'll be back next Friday, this time with Mariah Hinds, who Julie mentioned there in the podcast, to talk impulse control, positive proofing, and competitive obedience. If you haven't already, please subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have your episode automatically download to your phone as soon as it becomes available. CREDITS: Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called “Buddy.” Audio editing provided by Chris Lang and transcription written by CLK Transcription Services. Thanks again for tuning in -- and happy training!

Today's topic is frustration. The inspiration for today's topic is brought to you by a combination of my personal life experience and a Dr. Susan Friedman of BehaviorWorks. In one of her excellent presentations at Clicker Expo, she mentioned: Happiness is a function of positive reinforcement Depression is a function of punishment and FRUSTRATION is a function of extinction. The first two are interesting, but the third really struck me. And so that is what this episode is about. Especially since I spend a lot of time thinking about frustration. And dealing with frustrated dogs and their frustrated handlers. And dealing with a frustrated child. And being frustrated myself. At this point, I should basically be an expert. http://www.wonderpupstraining.com/blog/podcast-04-relationship-between-frustration-and-extinction#.WKuolxIrKt8

This week I answer email questions, talk about Clicker Expo, emotions as behavior in sport dogs, and my upcoming FDSA course, "Worked Up!"

SHOW NOTES:  Summary: Hannah Branigan has been training dogs and teaching people for more than 12 years. In addition to being a Karen Pryor Academy Certified Training Partner, she is a faculty member for Karen Pryor Academy and a teacher at the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Hannah is a Professional Member of the Association of Pet Dog Trainers, and a Certified Professional Dog Trainer. She has presented at APDT and Clicker Expo and teaches workshops all over the USA. Owner of Wonderpups, LLC, Hannah is committed to training both dogs and people with positive reinforcement methods. She has titled her dogs in Conformation, Obedience, IPO (Schutzhund), Agility, and Rally. Links mentioned: Wonderpups, LLC Leslie Nelson, Tails-U-Win Next Episode:  To be released 2/3/2017, featuring Shade Whitesel.   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 Hannah Branigan. Hannah has been training dogs and teaching people for more than 12 years. In addition to being a Karen Pryor Academy-Certified Training Partner, she's a faculty member for Karen Pryor Academy and a teacher at the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Hannah is a professional member of the Association of Pet Dog Trainers, and a certified professional dog trainer. She has presented at APDT and Clicker Expo, and teachers workshops all over the US. Owner of Wonderpups LLC, Hannah is committed to training both dogs and people with positive reinforcement methods. She has titled her dogs in conformation, obedience, IPO, agility, and rally. Welcome, Hannah. Hannah Branigan: Thank you for having me. Melissa Breau:  Thanks for joining us. To get started, can you just tell us a bit about the dogs you have now and what you're working on with them? Hannah Branigan: We're actually down to four right now, which is kind of weird. I still keep getting out five bully sticks, and then I wonder why I still have one left in my hand. Right now, I have…Stormy is my oldest and she's pretty much retired from anything competitive. She acts as sort of my guinea pig if I have a new, crazy idea that I want to try out on something. So, I'll often try it out on her because I figure, hey, she's 14, she's not going to be in a dog show again, and so if I completely ruin her heeling, then that's not a big deal. So, she will often show up in some of my videos that you'll see in class or on YouTube. So, she still stays busy and still likes to stay active that way. And then there's Gambit. So he's an AKC Champion. We finished his UDX. He's got an OM--something, I don't even remember which number we're on at this point, finished his CDSP OCH last year. We tinkered a little bit in Nose Work. I think this year we're going to go ahead and finish up his RAE, and he's still showing in CDSP, mostly for fun. He's older and he's had a knee injury when he was younger that's starting to kind of catch up with him, so that we appreciate the lower-jump heights of the CDSP Obedience, and we're still hitting the occasional AKC trial locally, depending on how he's feeling, but that's sort of where he is right now, and also, again, guinea pig and often video star. And then the next one down, in order of age, would be Spark. She's also an AKC Champion. In AKC, she's finished her UD and she has I want to say 25 or 30 OCH points, all in Utility. She has some personal space issues with other dogs that have caused me to be a little reticent to put her back in the open stay ring situation. So, I haven't quite decided what I'm going to do with her in that area yet, and we may just kind of rest on our laurels there. She did, this year, just finished her CDSP OCH, where of course there is no group stay. Right now, our main focus with her  -- with me and her together -- is in expanding our agility skills. So, we've been doing a lot of playing in agility and doing some trials in that. And then the baby of the family is Rugby, who I think everyone on the internet knows, and he is, let's see, he's currently training in obedience and of course also rally and then also cross-trains in agility and flyball. This past year, he debuted in CDSP Novice and picked up his first High-in-Trial and was basically awesome, so I was really, really happy with how he's working there, and I think we're going to set our eyes on going into the AKC Novice Ring this coming year. I need to look at my schedule and actually see when I have a weekend available to aim for, but he likes to do a little bit of everything. So, we're hopefully going to be competing, eventually, in all four of those sports and maybe a little barn hunt, maybe a little nose work. He's a terrier, so I feel like I feel compelled to at least… Melissa Breau: ...Honor that side? Hannah Branigan: Show up. Yeah, exactly, take advantage of that, those instincts, rather than always working against them. I think he would definitely enjoy barn hunt. Melissa Breau: Congrats on the High-in-Trial. That's very exciting, especially with your baby dog. Hannah Branigan: Thank you. Yes. Melissa Breau: Now, I'm lucky because you're here in North Carolina, not too far from me, and I had the pleasure of actually attending one of your workshops…I think it was at Lap it Up, and you tend to describe yourself as a dog-training geek, and I think you started the workshop out by kind of mentioning that. So, I wanted to ask you to tell us a little bit about what you mean by that. Hannah Branigan: Yeah. I usually apologize in advance when people have me in person. There's no editing involved. You know, honestly, it's more in the more modern sense of the word geek, really, rather than the original definition, but well, all I really mean by that is just that I'm sort of inordinately fascinated with dogs and behavior and learning, possibly to the point of obsession, and I really love, you know, like I love really digging into those sort of like microcosmic details of the behavior and really looking at how things can be broken apart atomically and how they're all interconnected, and that's really sort of what I spend my Friday nights doing, watching videos in slow motion and trying out stuff and just really, yeah, okay, obsession is probably the right word. Yeah. Melissa Breau: So, I'm guessing you didn't start out that way. How did you get into dog sports and training and kind of into being interested in all this? Hannah Branigan: Yeah. I'm not even really sure. That was kind of a complete accident. I think, like a lot of trainers, I had a pet dog, who was a rescue, and he turned out to have more challenges than I knew how to handle, and so through the process of learning more about training and learning more about dogs to figure out how to help him, so that he would stop biting me, I got kind of like hooked on this concept of training, and then somehow that turned into, once I had the dog that I could take for walks around the neighborhood and be relatively safe with, then I had to teach him to retrieve beer from a fridge. That one, in all honesty, was also to impress a boy, who I then married, so it turned out to be worth it. So, after the beer retrieve, then it was like well, what can I teach him next, and so we tried a little bit of agility, but that was going to be a lot for him, behaviorally, to manage, to handle that environment, and we kind of just ended up finding our way into a UKC Obedience Trial, and I still don't even really remember exactly how that happened, but there we were, and then I thought, well, that was kind of fun, what if I got a registered dog? And I started from scratch, because of course if you buy a purebred dog or, in my case, were given a purebred dog, it's absolutely a guarantee that they'll be easy to train for sports, right? Melissa Breau: Absolutely. That's everybody's favorite line. I think that may be the first time I've ever heard somebody get into dogs to impress a boy, though. Hannah Branigan: Well, I mean I did get the dog on his own merits, but it was the beer retrieve that was… Melissa Breau: That was to impress the boy? Hannah Branigan: Was really, yeah, to show him up. That's how I impress boys, I prove that I'm better than them at whatever the thing is, and it's actually kind of a funny story because, so, my husband, who I was dating at the time, was a computer engineer, and for his project in college, his team was making a beer robot, a robot that would basically retrieve a beer, and I said that I could train my dog to do that faster than he could make a robot do it, and so I did, and I was right. Melissa Breau: That's awesome. Hannah Branigan: I know, right? Exactly. So, and that's how it happened. Melissa Breau: I mean, I think that's a great story to tell. Now, I know that at FDSA, one of like your big series is the skill-building series, the obedience skill-building series, so I wanted to make sure we talk a little bit about that and the role of foundation skills overall. So, do you mind talking for a moment kind of how foundation skills turn into obedience exercises and kind of why they're so important to start out with? Hannah Branigan: Sure, and I think the skill-building series is kind of a…it's an interesting place to start because it's not structured the way most people who are used to competition obedience training expect. So, your average obedience club will typically have, they'll have, you know, maybe some kind of introductory class, if you're lucky, or they may start right out with novice, but they'll have a novice class where you learn how to do novice, and then you go to the dog show and you get your novice title, and then you start attending the open class, and you go to the open classes and learn how to teach that, and you get your open title, and then you go to the Utility class and you learn how to do those exercises, and that's really what most people are expecting when they're thinking about sort of a training progression, but that's not how the experienced elite dog trainers actually train their own dogs. Nobody who is really successful in obedience teaches that way, so, or trains their dogs that way, at any rate. So, when we designed the skill-building series, the goal was really, or our priority was let's set up a series of training progressions that actually mirror the way we would actually train our own dogs. So, you know, when I get a young dog and I intend to compete with that dog in obedience, I don't start with novice. I actually start with most of Utility, so, you know one of the first things that I teach a puppy is scent discrimination and we get started with some of the beginning steps that are going to become go-outs and directed jumping, and also there are things that will lead into heeling, but I don't wait until I have the novice title. We're actually, you know, mostly almost teaching it in reverse, right? So, with the skill-building series, we've very much done that. So, like the skill building one class, we're giving you the building blocks for scent discrimination, for directed jumping and go-outs, for the retrieve, for signals, drop on recall, all of the jumping-related exercises, all of the retrieving-related exercises, and getting those first steps trained, and then as we move through the progression of the classes, we build on those and we start to put them together and form sequences that become the exercises. So, it's a much more logical progression from a behavior standpoint, assuming that you're planning to take that dog into Utility at some point. The way that I think about it is really, like, well it's sort of like Legos, right? So, if you open up a box of Legos, which I was just playing with a minute ago, so that's where my mind is, there's really only like 5 or 6 different types of Lego blocks, right? So, they come in lots of different colors, but there's really only a couple of different shapes. There's the ones with like the 2 dots, and then there's the ones with the 4 dots that are kind of square, and then there's the 6 and then 8 and 12, and using just those blocks, you can really build almost anything, right, like anything from a Millennium Falcon to a dining room table, and it's just by putting those blocks together in different orders and repeating different ones, and I'm kind of getting lost with this metaphor. I don't remember where I was going with it, but…yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, so my point is that all of these exercises really only break down into kind of a handful of behavioral units that we can then sort of change the colors of, right, like we can put them together in different ways and we can modify them in kind of cosmetic ways, but there's not that much, really, to teach, and so if we concentrate on building these really strong, ubiquitous units of behavior that go into all of these advanced exercises, well, the exercises don't turn out to be quite that hard, right? So, the challenge is in getting those really strong little individual units, and then I can build lots of different things out of those, so, a dog that really understands concepts of targeting, that really understands the concept of stimulus control. I can teach a new behavior with a target, fade the target, get a cue on it really, really fast, and it's a strong behavior because they really understand how it works and how we're communicating that way. So, a large part of what we're doing, when we're talking about those foundation skills, is establishing these kind of, you know, we're looking at kind of two categories, right? There's the movement skills that I need the dog to know how to use his body in a certain way, so I need him to be able to shift his weight back and forth and I need him to be able to control his body and then use that to form these positions and understand the communication strategies that we're going to use to communicate with each other, and once I have those things, I can build so much out of it, and I get very excited, so, sorry. Melissa Breau: No. Absolutely. Hannah Branigan: So, yeah, so that's my goal. I want to take this like really mystical, challenging Utility exercise or any of the obedience exercises — I think heeling is more mystical than scent discrimination, really, but that's just me —and how can I break that down into its atomic units, like what are the things that the dog needs to know that then I put together that makes that heeling pictures, makes that scent discrimination picture? Those blocks, those little, individual Lego blocks, are really very achievable for anybody, and that makes it…it takes away that mysticism element, right, and it makes it very actionable, very practical training, and then it also then makes it easy to put them together, and then when they break, take them back apart and fix it and put it back together again. Melissa Breau: I think that leads really naturally into the next question, which is how does having strong foundation skills really help when it comes to proofing and problem solving, when you get to that point where you're starting to prep for competition? Hannah Branigan: First off, I don't love the word proofing, but I know why you're using it and I'm okay with that. I like words like fluency enhancement, just because it puts us in a little bit more of a positive reinforcement mindset, but I understand what you're saying. So, yeah, so having those really strong units of behavior, what I love about that is when I think about training an exercise in sort of a modular way, then if something does break, it's really easy for me to separate out the broken piece and figure out what's wrong here, what does he not understand, because the problem with teaching, and it's just as much of a problem while working human-to-human as gosh, well working between species, human-to-dog, is are they actually learning what I'm teaching, and the answer is not always yes. So, when we start putting together more increasingly-complex behaviors and chains of behaviors and sequences, we'll often find out that no, actually what I was laying down is not what he was picking up, and I need to figure out where that miscommunication happened and what I need to do to clarify that, or is there a legitimately missing skill here, you know, just from a mechanic standpoint, my dog can't do the thing. When I've gone through the thought process, the mental process, of breaking that complex sequence into individual behavioral components, then that really saves a lot of time when I need to go back and kind of debug, right? So, like what is wrong here, and I can check. I can pull it out and I can say okay, is it Unit A? No, looks great. Unit B? Looks great. Unit C? Absolutely perfect. Unit D? Oh gosh, oh, this isn't right. So, all right, this is where I need to spend my time. So, it really saves a lot of time because I've done all of that thinking in advance, right, during the original training process. I mean the behaviors are always functioning as behavioral sequences. That's not something that we've invented. It has a lot more to do with our approach for how we're thinking about it and how we go about teaching it that have the advantage. Melissa Breau: So, to take that and kind of, I don't want to take it from conceptual to practical, but kind of to take that idea just to that next step. Is there a common problem that students run into again and again where maybe you can kind of talk us through having strong foundation skills might help? Hannah Branigan: Like so the vast majority of problem-solving issues that people bring to me come down to exactly that thing, right? There's a piece, there's one of those components that was not well-understood, that the human part of the team thought they had taught, and the dog was not learning exactly what the human thought that they were teaching, and in fact I've dropped the term problem-solving or troubleshooting from my workshop materials just because, again, it so often puts us into that mind-space, which then makes it really hard to take a proactive approach to the training when we're trying to come up with a training plan, but so a really common example that I'll get all the time, and I get it online, I get it in person, so it's the drop on recall. It's a really common one. It's, you know, relatively easy to squeak through your novice, and you get into open and there's a really big monster on that drop on recall, and it catches a lot of teams, and a lot of teams struggle with it, and so people come to me that the dog is, you know, classically they're not dropping when I call him or he's dropping very slowly or he's creeping forward or he sits or he just stands and stares at me, and it is a complex exercise. There's a lot going on there, both bio-mechanically and behaviorally, with that exercise. We give a cue 'come,' and then we interrupt that behavior with a cue to do something completely different, suddenly stop and lay down, which is weird, and so there's a lot of stuff that can go on there, and it's a fairly complex training process, and when we have that kind of complexity, that opens a window for a lot of emotional problems when the people get frustrated, and the dog gets frustrated and confused, and so there can be a whole lot of baggage there, and what often it comes down to is that, you know, we start peeling away the layers and digging. Now, what's actually broken here is, well, it turned out the dog didn't actually have stimulus control on the down itself, right? So, the handler thought when I say down, the dog understands to lay down, and of course we're kind of on thin ice for a cognitive science standpoint when we talk about what dogs know and what dogs understand, but we're going to go with it, and what frequently has turned out to be the case, like, we could write a book about it, is the handler has taught the down with some kind of lure or prompt, nothing wrong with that. That's often how I teach it myself, right? But as part of the training process, if we're using some kind of physical gesture to teach the dog to lay down, and it's assuming that it's not a legal one that we can use in the ring, which in the case of food lure, of course you can't, and under no circumstances, for the drop on recall, can you step towards the dog, put your hand in front of his nose, and point towards the ground, right? That's not a valid cue at any venue that I compete in.  So most of the time we transfer that either to a hand signal, and the classic hand signal, of course, is the one-hand-straight-over-head like a traffic cop, or verbal, down, plotz, whatever, and so we have to do some kind of fading of the prompt or lure, that extra, illegal physical gesture, which often involves some amount of dropping of the head and shoulders towards the ground and/or into the dog's personal space, which is a really common way to teach a drop is we use a little bit of that spatial pressure to push into the dog's space, which causes the dog to lay down, and then we go through the steps of fading that, and then hopefully, we're now completely still and quiet with our body language. We can stand completely neutral, say "down," and the dog hits the dirt, right? What often happens is the handler thinks that's the process that's happened, but what's actually occurred is that the handler's continuing to do some amount of gesturing with the upper body, either at the same time as they say down or even just before it, and then they get in the ring, they say come when the dog is 25 feet away, they say down without that little ducking movement of the head and shoulders that has become the functional cue for the dog, and then, of course, there is no down because you did not give the same cue that you've been giving in training, and classic way to solve that is while you call the dog, and while they're coming towards you, you say down. If they don't down right away, you lean forward, step into them, with or without some amount of intimidation, and then perhaps the dog downs, and then you can say good boy and you can repeat it. Well, we can't do that in the ring, so it still doesn't solve the problem in the ring, and what the problem really is, is that original piece of the behavior, the down, is not actually on the cue that the handler thinks that the dog should be responding to. Melissa Breau: So, for problem-solving that, you then break that piece out and go back and work on just that piece, right? Hannah Branigan: Right. So, you know, what we would do to test it, then, is well, let's try just stand there and give your cue for down, and so, like 99 percent of the time, if we have the hander cross their arms, look at the ceiling, and say down, the dog just looks at them hopefully and wags his tail, right? So, "I know you're talking to me but I've never seen that cue before," and if you have them, you know, how would you normally handle this, and they will often drop their shoulders, lean forward, maybe point at the ground and gesture down, there's some upper-body movement, and the dog goes, "Oh, right, right, right!" and lays down, with or without emotional baggage, depending on what the last six months of that dog's life have looked like, right? My standard protocol is, okay, so now we know this is the situation. Let's just walk through the progression that you used to teach it originally, and so, you know, a lot of the time it's a food lure, which is fine, so we'll lure them down, great, that looks fantastic, fade the lure, now it's a gesture, dog's still dropping really nicely, start fading the gesture, the dog's continuing to drop, and then we'll get to some point in that progression where something's not quite right, like either there's a little bit of a hesitation on the part of the dog or the behavior starts to degrade. Great. That's where we want to act, right? We don't want to wait until we're at a complete failure. We're looking for that first glimmer that there's a question mark. Is it a down? Did you still want me to lay down? And then we shore that up and then continue through the progression from there. Melissa Breau: So, that kind of covers what my next question was going to be, which is what would your recommendation be to a student struggling with this issue. Is there anything you'd want to add there? I just want to make sure that, since I sent you the questions in advance, you get a chance to say anything else that you may have wanted to say. Hannah Branigan: I know. I cheated. They sent me the questions in advance. I think the main thing is kind of my visualization that I would love to share with people is when you use words like foundation, and I think that's a completely valid word to use because we are building our exercises out of these critical supporting concepts — but we often kind of think of it as like, it's like a one and done, like once I've trained these foundation skills, whatever you consider…you know you put these particular items in the foundation box, and you're done, and you tape it closed, and then you keep going.  And I think that that doesn't really do us any favors, and I really kind of prefer the learning model that we'll run across a lot in human learning and human sports, which is really more of a spiral staircase, rather than like the house, right, with the bricks, and then you just start building the house on top of the foundation, but it's more like the spiral staircase because we're never done with these behaviors. Behaviors, always, are dynamic. They're always changing, and they're always responding to their environment and processes of reinforcement and punishment and everything else, and so when I'm thinking about it in the way that I approach training and I think the way that a lot of people do, whether it's conscious or not, is I'm always moving up, I'm always moving forward, and we're always progressing, but we're always also circling past these same concepts and refining them and strengthening them and building on them, and sometimes yes, picking up gaps and filling them in as we discover them, because dogs are really good at letting us know when we've left a gap in our training, and so that's, you know, I think that spiral staircase is a really good visualization for me because I do spend a lot of time, so, you know, working on maybe positions, like the mechanics or the positions. Well, all of my dogs have sit down and stand on cue, I think, and then it's not a done thing. So, we periodically, you know, we're circling back around, and now what does my sit down and stand look like? Oh, how could I sharpen that up? What if I improve the latency on this one a little bit, or those mechanics are slipping, I need to make sure that my dog is really planting his rear end before he pushes into that drop, before we get into the drop on recall, and there's always little things that we can keep improving and refining and strengthening as we continue to build on these behaviors and make bigger, more complex exercises out of them. Melissa Breau: Awesome, and I think that that spiral staircase, I actually haven't heard it used quite that way before and I think that's really interesting and really helpful, even for me to just kind of think through training in that way. Hannah Branigan: Yeah. I invented it myself. I just thought of it. You can call it the Branigan Spiral Staircase Method. Melissa Breau: Deal. Done. I'll name the whole episode that. Hannah Branigan: Perfect. Melissa Breau: So, to round things out, I just have three more short questions for you. So, to start, what's the dog-related accomplishment that you are proudest of? Hannah Branigan: Yeah, so now we're into the beauty pageant section of the interview. Okay. So, it's not dog-related, but it's kind of fresh in my mind since we've been out of school and home for a whole week…I mean it's dog related, but not the dogs themselves. I would say that right now, at this stage, life stage that I find myself in, I am most proud of how my daughter Harper has learned to invite the dogs for petting and attention, rather than reaching out for them or grabbing them. That was something that we've worked really, really hard on for, well, four years now, and it's so awesome to watch it starting to solidify into this interaction that they have, and it started out…it's something we still coach her in, and it was very, very coached. We used a lot of tag teach to initiate it, because as a toddler, she's very grabby because she's a small primate infant person, and so I was like okay, we have to invite dogs to be petted. We don't reach out for the dog. She learned to pat her knee, pat-pat, clap her hands, clap-clap, and then she opens up her hands, palms up, and invites the dogs to come and greet her, and what is so cool is she pats pat and they're like okay, and when she opens her hands, they clearly make a choice of yes, and they come push their neck and chest into her hands and she can start petting them, or they'll just do a beautiful, smooth head-turn away, very canine, thank you, not right now, and we're still working on handling disappointment. That's, of course, that's something I, as an adult, continue to struggle with, but watching them communicate that smoothly when I'm cooking dinner and she's sitting there, and she sees Gambit and she really wants to pet him because, of course, who wouldn't? He's gorgeous. And she pat-pat, clap-clap, opens her hands, and he says oh, yes, please, finally someone to rub me, and he just melts into her hands, and she pets him, and it's so smooth and just seamless and natural, and that's another thing that, you know, when I see it, even though it's just one of those little daily miracles that kind of makes me like, oh, I get chills. Melissa Breau: That's awesome. You share lots of parenting and dog stories online, on Facebook and in other forums, so it's kind of neat. Hannah Branigan: It's all the same thing, completely the same. Melissa Breau: So, what is the best piece of training advice that you've ever heard? Hannah Branigan: Oh, that one's easy. So, Leslie Nelson: "When in doubt, throw food." And I fall back on that all the time. Whenever there's a question, something weird comes up in a training session or even at home, I don't know what to do right now, that was a very weird behavior and I have no idea how I should handle it, throw a handful of food on the ground, and while they're gobbling the food, I can think about my solution, and it turns out that there's a whole lot of behavior problems out there in the world that we can solve in very practical ways by throwing a handful of food at them. Melissa Breau: Both to give ourselves five minutes to think and to give them something else to do? Hannah Branigan: Exactly. Melissa Breau: All right. So, the last one, who is someone else in the dog world that you look up to? Hannah Branigan: Oh, okay. So, well, of course, you know I really admire Denise and Deb and Shade and all the other folks in the FDSA community. Outside of that, Ken Ramirez is really somebody that I admire a lot, well, basically because he's perfect in every way. So, I'm definitely a member of the Ken fan club. We're going to get t-shirts, maybe to share. Melissa Breau: I hope he listens to this, just so he can hear you call him perfect in every way. Hannah Branigan: He knows. I've told him. Melissa Breau: That's awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Hannah, and thank you everybody else for tuning in. We'll be back in two weeks with Shade Whitesel to talk about location-specific markers and being a top IPO competitor, using R+ philosophies. If you haven't already, please subscribe on iTunes or the podcast app of your choice, and our next episode will automatically be 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!