Podcasts about cognitive canine

In episode 69, Marissa Martino interviews her dear friend, Sarah Stremming of the Cognitive Canine on the topic of balancing welfare and training for our dogs. Spoiler alert, Sarah feels strongly that both meeting your dog's needs and teaching them high-level training skills are equally as important. Sarah discusses how teaching these skills can increase both the dog's and the pet parent's welfare - making that a win-win for everyone!   

This episode is jointly released through the Functional Breeding Podcast and Cog Dog Radio, which is hosted by Sarah Stremming. Sarah is an internationally known dog behavior consultant with a special niche working with sports dogs. She consults at The Cognitive Canine, teaches online courses on dog behavior, and hosts the Cog Dog Radio Podcast. I sat down with Sarah to talk about the recent news that SPCA Tampa Bay has partnered with a pet store and a puppy broker - and what we think this means we all should REALLY be talking about. Although the shelter's pilot program was paused due to community feedback before we released the episode, we feel the issues we discuss in here are still critical ones to ensuring the welfare of the dogs we share our lives with.

Handling dog-to-dog aggression in the home can feel like navigating through a minefield, but guess what? We've got just the right person to guide you - my friend and colleague Sarah Stremming, a Certified Dog Behavior Consultant with nearly two decades of experience under her belt. She's here to unravel the complexity of dog aggression, spotlighting common triggers like resource competition and dog incompatibility and the fascinating role of humans in these cases.The Aggression in Dogs ConferenceThe Bitey End of the Dog Bonus EpisodesThe Aggression in Dogs Master Course and Expert Webinar Bundle --- LIMITED TIME SPECIAL OFFERABOUT SARAH:Sarah Stremming, the Cog Dog Coach is a Certified Dog Behavior Consultant (IAABC) with a bachelors of science degree in psychology from Colorado State University. She has been in the field of dog behavior and training for nearly two decades and has been competing in the sports of agility and obedience for even longer. Known for her popular podcast Cog Dog Radio, Sarah owns and operates The Cognitive Canine where she works complex behavior cases, runs a dynamic members platform, offers online courses and webinars, mentors colleagues, and speaks globally. Her passion is helping people and dogs live their best lives side by side. When she is not working you can find her deep in the woods of the Pacific Northwest behind two border collies and an Icelandic sheepdog. https://thecognitivecanine.com/Support the show

This episode is jointly released through the Functional Breeding Podcast and Cog Dog Radio, which is hosted by Sarah Stremming. Sarah is an internationally known dog behavior consultant with a special niche working with sports dogs. She consults at The Cognitive Canine, teaches online courses on dog behavior, and hosts the Cog Dog Radio Podcast. I sat down with Sarah to talk about fear periods - do they exist? What do we know about them scientifically? What do we know about them anecdotally? What do puppy raisers and breeders need to know about them?

In the final episode of Cog Dog Radio for the year 2022, Join Sarah in celebrating ten years of The Cognitive Canine and see what's in store for 2023 and beyond. Classroom: https://cogdogclassroom.mykajabi.com/ Patreon: www.patreon.com/cogdogradio IG: @cognitive_canine TT: @ sarahstremming Fb: facebook.com/thecognitivecanine

If you want to listen more about Sarah training tips and knowledge you can find her on her website: https://thecognitivecanine.com/ On her podcast The Cog Dog Radio https://thecognitivecanine.com/the-podcast-cog-dog-radio/ And find her Online Course on Fenzi Dog Sport Academy https://www.fenzidogsportsacademy.com/people/786-people/faculty/10574-sarah-stremming Hope you enjoy this and you take home loads of food for thoughts! Do you want to work with me on your crazy Border Collie? Check my Online Academy and my website to learn more: That'll Do Online Academy Get in touch if you want to discuss a training plan, even if you are on the other side of the world! Get in touch!

In episode 49, Sarah Stremming and I will be talking about the necessary strategies used to strengthen and maintain a healthy relationship between the dogs in your home. Some of the topics we discuss involve proactive management strategies to prevent inter-household aggression, ways to increase your observation skills, and training skills to teach your dogs to achieve harmony. Sarah Stemming is the owner of The Cognitive Canine and podcast host of Cog-Dog Radio. 

This week, Jess and Scott are joined by Sarah Stremming, host of the Cog-Dog Radio podcast. Sarah is a well known competitor, blogger, instructor, and podcaster. She specializes mostly in behavior and is currently competing in obedience and agility. To learn more about her and her methods, please check out her links below.   What are some different methods each of us use to calm our own dogs and/or client dogs? Why is professionalism in dog training so important? Will certain methods of healing ourselves potentially also help our dogs? To help Sarah better serve you and your dog, check out the links below:   https://thecognitivecanine.com   https://cog-dog-classroom.teachable.com/   https://www.patreon.com/cogdogradio/posts   On Facebook, you can find her business page: Cognitive Canine @cognitive_canine IG  @sarahstremming TikTok    For more information about Scott and Jess and their strategies, please check out: https://caninehealing.com To learn more about our podcast and to keep us with our Quirky Tips, join us at: https://thequirkydogpodcast.com/support Have you ever wondered why your dog behaves a certain way? Are there things you need help with or support? Join Scott and Jess Williams each week as they explore these and other topics.   Follow and Watch Us On: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/caninehealing YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtlRQjjeIHOgEAAlgB3MviA Listen to Us On: PodBean: https://thequirkydog.podbean.com/   #ScottWilliamsDogTrainer #JessWilliamsDogTrainer #CanineHealing #TheQuirkyDog #DogTraining #Studio21PodcastCafe #UnitedPodcastNetwork

Dr. Amanda Tinkle, project manager of the Dog Aging Project, is back to share some exciting updates about this massive canine health study design to help unlock the key to increasing the “healthspan” of our dogs.  Based on notes and feedback from “citizen scientists” who have enrolled their dogs in the program, Dr. Tinkle and her colleagues noticed comments and concerns about cognitive canine decline.  She chats with Karen and Jean (both owners of senior dogs) about the project's new area of focus specifically on senior dogs,Ironically, the Dog Aging Project didn't set out to specially focus on senior dogs, rather its goal is to study how dogs age.  To date, thousands of dog-lovers have turned into citizen-scientists to record and share information about their dogs' lifestyle, habits, nutrition, general health and behavior.  As Dr Tinkle and her colleagues continue pouring through information shared by dog owners, other areas of focus will emerge.Dr. Tinkle and her colleagues still are actively enrolling dogs of all ages, from all across the United States, including purebred and mixed breed dogs, to join the Dog Aging Project.  They are especially interested in large breed, active dogs (agility, working dogs, etc.) and dogs from the mid-west and south-east.   Poppy is very proud to be dog number 31, 934 in the program.   Join this important effort and nominate your dog at dogagingproject.org

So much good stuff in this episode!I want to turn half of the quotes in this episode into memes.Like, how learning how to do agility with a border collie is like learning to drive in a Lamborghini.Meet Tara Stillwell and her dogs Eva, the red and white border collie, Curri, the sable border collie and Duke the mini-Aussie.It's absolutely clear to me that Tara has put a lot of effort into reflecting on how her dogs have affected all the relationships in her life.How the expectations we put on ourselves and our dog can trip either of us up.Most importantly though, she shares so many insights that have helped her embrace life with her dogs again.We talk about dealing with the guilt she had about not knowing what everyone who's had multiple dogs before must surely have already known.Here's one thought Tara gave to combat that guilt. You can try it on yourself and see if it serves you:“Nobody says: “Let me get a messed up dog so that I can then modify their behavior!””Isn't that the truth?She also mentions importantly how she has adapted her thoughts about what other dog guardians are supposed to do or not do. She doesn't expect them to be able to recall their dogs for example. Can you imagine what that's like? If you drop that expectation and instead feel compassion for the other guardians?And of course we talk about some of her and my favorite podcasts and trainers that have already gotten multiple shoutouts on this podcast as well:Sarah Stremming of the Cognitive Canine, andMarissa Martino of Paws and RewardAnd then also, Kim Brophy (CLICK HERE for her website), who I didn't know yet but who has some amazing stuff out there dealing with dog ethology. She uses the LEGS (Learning, Environment, Genetics & Self) model (CLICK HERE to sign up for her course and/or get a free preview)  to account for a lot of why dogs (and us humans too) are the way they and we are.In short, it's not all in how you raise them. That is something I believe all of us dealing with guilt around  what we believe are our insufficient training skills should take to heart.CLICK HERE for the link to Kim's  insightful TED talk on “The Problem with Treating Dogs Like a Pet”The FREE mindset-mini course "THINK Your Way to a Better Relationship With Your Dog" is available here:https://kajsavanoverbeek.com/think-mini-course/

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!

For episode nine, Kayla Fratt speaks with Sarah Stremming from The Cognitive Canine all about crate training with your puppy.  Do puppies need to be crate trained? Just like everything else we do in training, it depends on what your goals for your puppy are. There is not a universal answer. That said, we both crate train our dogs! Are there alternatives? If you do not wish to use a crate, baby gates or x-pens are a great option to create a room or space for the puppy. If you do want to use crates, it is still recommended to have a separate space using baby gates or xpens along with the crate. How do you start? The pen should be highly enriching for the puppy. It should have a sleeping spot, an enriching area, and a potty area.   It is best to start crating during sleep times only at first. You don't want to put them in the crate if they aren't sleepy/going to fall asleep. The puppy should learn that the crate is for sleep time. If you notice your puppy is sleepy, put them in the crate. If you can, put the crate inside the xpen, making that the place for sleeping.  What problems can you prevent with crating? Prevents chewing items you don't want chewed Makes housetraining is much easier Prevents conflict between puppy and other animals in the home Prevents boredom biting when the puppy is trying to get your attention You would have to be constantly micromanaging them if they didn't have their own space to be in, which could really affect your relationship with your puppy How do your goals play into crate training plans? In order to have success with this, you can't ask them to do something they can't do. You don't teach by letting them get it wrong. Work your way up to where you want to be with a plan, you can't rush your dog if they aren't ready to give you the goal you desire You don't get it by doing it, you get it by doing other things that approximate it ie. if you want your dog to be good with flying in a crate, they have to be good with driving in a car first Teach the prerequisite skills first If your puppy can't wait quietly in their pen while you go to the bathroom, then your puppy won't be able to be quiet in their crate when you run to the store. How can listeners make their crates ultra-enticing to their puppies? Change it up frequently  Licky mat, put up obstacles for them to get to it Tug toy hanging Snuffle matt and snuffle ball Numerous toys of different kinds Bones and bully sticks Boxes and packing paper for them to rip up or shred Puppies should be doing “over, under and through” How can the 4 steps to behavioral wellness help you with crate training? The four steps of behavior wellness are exercise, enrichment, nutrition, and communication  Exercise and enrichment are the most important to focus on that will help with crate training, as crating isn't completely natural for them as it is confinement. When they tell you they are tired, let them be done. They need to have enough enrichment so that they are satisfied. Think about it like this: “If you lived in one room and that was your whole world, what would you need to feel satisfied and enriched?”   How can you help your puppy learn to like going into the crate? Only train entering and exiting the crate so they know that the crate is not a working space Mark and reinforce when they go in on their own Duration can be taught through boredom. Start with crating them while being busy doing something else that they aren't really interested in. Just as if they were in the crate while you were driving a car. Don't allow them to panic.  What are your thoughts on pacifiers like Kongs? How can they be used well for crate training? Use them carefully. Pacifiers can backfire if/when overused because they can teach your dog to be fine only if eating Many people don't struggle as much with getting their puppy to go into the crate as they do getting their puppy to settle in the crate for longer periods of time. How do you teach puppies to stay in the crate for longer periods of time?  Make sure they are not constantly distracted in their crate when you leave the room. They need to learn to be okay with you being gone. Being distracted does not mean they are okay.  Don't let them be completely distressed, if they want out, maybe try putting your fingers through the crate or bring the crate closer to you, but don't let them out if you are sure all their needs are met. Are there any advantages or disadvantages to crate training during the pandemic? You have an opportunity to have the best chance of avoiding separation anxiety with proper crating and foundations.  How can people avoid creating a dog who's trying to earn rewards in the crate (ie offering behaviors)? Make sure you put them in the crate when they are tired often This podcast is supported by Journey Dog Training and our Puppy Raising Blueprint course. If you're feeling lost with puppy raising, check out this course at journeydogtraining.com/blueprint. The full course covers topics ranging from common problem behaviors and socialization to the humane hierarchy of dog training. It's all taught by yours truly, Kayla Fratt. If you need more personalized training support, check out journeydogtraining.com - we have a variety of courses, e-books, and remote training services available. This podcast is also supported by our members on Patreon. For as little as $3 per month, you can support this podcast and get perks like submitting questions for us to tackle at the end of each episode. Sign up over at patreon.com/pandemicpuppy. Over the next few episodes, we'll cover puppy-raising lessons from a service dog trainer, self-regulation skills for puppies, and developmental stages for puppies. Where you can find Sarah Stremming:  Happy Crating Self-Study on FDSA Website Podcast Facebook Instagram TikTok

Join Marissa Martino of Paws & Reward catch up with Sarah Stremming of the Cognitive Canine. During this episode, they each share three life lessons they have learned from training their own dogs, working with clients and their dogs, and making careers of being behavior nerds. They share their challenges and successes regarding training, relationships, and life.   

Sarah Stremming is an internationally known dog behavior consultant with a special niche working with sports dogs. She consults at The Cognitive Canine, teaches online courses on dog behavior, and hosts the Cog Dog Radio Podcast. I sat down with Sarah to talk about agility dogs, particularly the ubiquitous border collie, and what is going on with them in terms of health and behavioral issues. Looking for your next agility prospect? This interview is a must listen. Find podcast transcript here.

Join Marissa Martino of Paws & Reward interview Sarah Stremming of Cognitive Canine in Washington. In today's episode, they discuss how to work with your dog's emotional threshold during training. In order to make progress in our training sessions, we have to push at our dog's emotional edge in a safe way. But how far is too far and how do you know when we have passed the dog's threshold?  Sarah 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. She also has a well-known podcast Cog-Dog Radio that you should check out.   

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:

Sarah is the founder of The Cognitive Canine, 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 with her special interest area being 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 internationally, she coaches teams online and is a faculty member at Fenzi Dog Sports Academy.

BARK! BARK! BARK! by Sarah Stremming, The Cognitive Canine

Kayla Fratt speaks to Sarah Stremming, owner of The Cognitive Canine and instructor at Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. They discuss the similarities and differences between working on “worked up” sport dog cases and over-aroused pet dogs. Sarah also shares some of her favorite tips for helping dogs calm down when needed.

Trail Occurrences by Sarah Stremming, The Cognitive Canine

Letting Reactions Play Out by Sarah Stremming, The Cognitive Canine

Safe Off Leash Spaces with Sniff Spot by Sarah Stremming, The Cognitive Canine

Hypersocial Dogs by Sarah Stremming, The Cognitive Canine

Riding in Cars with Dogs (and Laura Demaio Roy) by Sarah Stremming, The Cognitive Canine

Helpful Games and a Philosophical Meander by Sarah Stremming, The Cognitive Canine

Managing Expectations with Sarah Owings by Sarah Stremming, The Cognitive Canine

The Phases of Crossing Over by Sarah Stremming, The Cognitive Canine

Fixing Behavior Issues by Sarah Stremming, The Cognitive Canine

Clicker Expo Recap by Sarah Stremming, The Cognitive Canine

Dog's Choice by Sarah Stremming, The Cognitive Canine

Creativity is Key by Sarah Stremming, The Cognitive Canine

Staying Safe by Sarah Stremming, The Cognitive Canine

Dog Training In Real Life by Sarah Stremming, The Cognitive Canine

Chill Out! With Casey Coughlin by Sarah Stremming, The Cognitive Canine

Changing Minds with Michele Pouliot by Sarah Stremming, The Cognitive Canine

NovemberQA by Sarah Stremming, The Cognitive Canine

Imposter Syndrome with Hannah Branigan by Sarah Stremming, The Cognitive Canine

Case Study: Page Part Three by Sarah Stremming, The Cognitive Canine

Case Study: Page Part Two by Sarah Stremming, The Cognitive Canine

Case Study: Page Part One by Sarah Stremming, The Cognitive Canine

Worked Up! Camp Q&A Part 2 by Sarah Stremming, The Cognitive Canine

Worked Up! Camp Q&A - Part One by Sarah Stremming, The Cognitive Canine

Puppy Socialization with Julie Parker by Sarah Stremming, The Cognitive Canine

Camp Craziness Microsode by Sarah Stremming, The Cognitive Canine

Summary: Sarah Stremming, founder of The Cognitive Canine and host of Cog-Dog Raido and her partner, Dr. Leslie Eide, join me to talk about their latest addition: Watson, a 6-month-old Border Collie puppy. Next Episode:  To be released 9/21/2018. TRANSCRIPTION: Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports Podcast brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high-quality instruction for competitive dog sports using only the most current and progressive training methods. Today we have two guests joining us, for the first time ever: Sarah Stremming, of Cog-Dog Radio and the Cognitive Canine, and Leslie Eide. Longtime listeners are undoubtedly are already familiar with Sarah, but let me share a little about Leslie. Leslie graduated from Colorado State University’s Veterinary School in 2006. She completed a rotating internship in small animal medicine in Albuquerque, N.M., and then became certified in canine rehabilitation with a focus in sports medicine. She is now a resident with the American College of Veterinary Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation. Dr. Eide also helped to create and teaches some of the classes to become a Certified Canine Fitness Trainer (CCFT) through the University of Tennessee's NorthEast Seminars. Like Sarah, Dr. Eide is involved in the agility world. She has trained two dogs to their ADCH Agility Dog Champion title and one to ADCH Bronze, an Agility Trial Champion title and a Master Agility Champion title. Three of her dogs have qualified and competed at USDAA Nationals with multiple Grand Prix Semi-final runs. And today, these two lovely ladies are here to talk to us about puppies, especially one in particular … . But we’ll get to that. Welcome back to the podcast, Sarah — and hi Leslie! Pleasure to “meet” you. Sarah Stremming: Hi Melissa. Leslie Eide: Hi Melissa. Melissa Breau: To start us out, Sarah, can you just remind listeners how many dogs you have now and who they are? Sarah Stremming: I have two Border Collies. Idgie is 9 years old and she’s my main competition dog right now. And Felix is 3 years old, and he’s in training and just keeping me on my toes. Melissa Breau: Leslie, would you mind sharing the same intro for your dogs, including the newest addition? Leslie Eide: My oldest is Brink, a 12-year-old Border Collie, and he right now is champion of holding the couch down. Next would be Stig, my 7-year-old Border Collie, who’s the main competition dog right now and who most of my online training videos have in them. Next is Ghost, my 5-year-old Australian Shepherd, and she is quickly trying to surpass Stig as the main competition dog. And then finally the puppy, Watson, is 6 months old and 1 day, and he is a new Border Collie. Melissa Breau: So, it’s Watson I really wanted to talk about today. Leslie, would you mind sharing a little on how you wound up with him? And why him … even though that meant bringing him over from Japan? Leslie Eide: It just kind of happened. I didn’t go out looking for a Border Collie and saying, “Japan is the place to get him!” I actually met Miki, who is sort of his breeder but not really, a couple of years ago at Cynosport, which is the USDA agility national competition, or international competition, but it’s always held in the U.S. One of her dogs had something happen to him, and I worked on him at the event and he did really well, and we became Facebook friends and stayed in contact. Last year, she won Grand Prix with her dog Soledea. And Soledea, the weird part about it, actually belongs to someone else. She just competes with her. She announced that Soledea was having a litter, and I had been looking for, I don’t know, probably had my feelers out for about a year, looking for a Border Collie puppy. I really liked Soledea, so through Facebook I was like, “Hey, I’m sort of interested,” and she was really excited about it. When the puppies were born, I many times thought it was too much trying to get a puppy from Japan, and everything you have to go through, and blah, blah, blah, blah. I kept saying, “No, no, no, no,” and finally she said, “I’m getting the puppy to L.A. Make sure you’re there to go pick him up.” And I was like, “OK.” So that’s how it ended up getting a puppy from Japan. It all comes back to the world of sports medicine, and that’s how you find puppies. So a little bit of fate in a way of it was just meant to be, despite all the odds. Melissa Breau: Sometimes, when it’s meant to happen, it’s just meant to happen, and it doesn’t matter how many times you say, “Well, that’s pretty complicated.” You end up with the puppy. Leslie Eide: Yeah. Melissa Breau: I know Sarah has talked a bit about him on her podcast and you’ve both blogged about him a little bit. My understanding is that you guys are doing things a little … for lack of a better word … differently than other agility handlers or even dog trainers might with a new puppy. Can you share a little bit about your approach thus far with him? What are you working on, what have you worked on? Leslie Eide: For me, it’s not much different than I would say I’ve raised my other puppies. I’m maybe what you would think of as a lazy trainer. I’m more about building a relationship than necessarily having a list of things I have to accomplish — “He’s this old, he must be able to do these ten things.” I just let everything happen in a more organic manner of he shows me he can do it, and then I say, “OK, I’m going to reinforce that.” An example is I had him at the agility trial this weekend. He hopped on the measuring table and … we’ve never worked on “stay” a day in his life, and because he was willing to stand on the table, I took the opportunity to say, “Hey, I can reinforce this,” and got some really good training in when it was again more organic of him telling me he knew he was ready for it, rather than saying, “He has to know how to stay by a certain age,” or “He has to be able to know how to wrap a wing jump by a certain age,” that kind of thing. Sarah Stremming: For me, more what I do with Watson is teaching him how to be a dog in this house, and how to go out on off-leash walks — as everybody knows I’m pretty into — and providing him with lots of environmental enrichment. I just want to make sure that he maintains this delightfully optimistic personality that he has. I know that you had Julie Daniels, I think just last week, and she talked about optimism. I loved it. I like that word for describing what he is, because it’s not like he doesn’t have any fears, because they all do. That’s not real. That’s not realistic. It’s more that when he encounters something novel, his first guess is that it’s going to be good for him, and I just want that to stay there, because if that stays there, then agility training is a piece of cake. If you’re not trying to overcome fear of other dogs, or fear of strangers, or fear of loud noises or weird substrates or anything like that, agility training is not that hard, especially for a pretty seasoned competitor like Leslie. I think both of us feel pretty confident in training agility skills and also handling. Not that we can’t improve and that we’re always trying to improve, but for me, I want him to maintain that really optimistic outlook on when something new is happening, he’s game to try it. Leslie Eide: I guess I would add, goes along with what Sarah was saying, is I also want him to learn what it’s like to be a dog in my life. So, like she said, being able to live in a household with lots of dogs, but it’s also about getting used to our schedule. I’m a busy person and usually work 12-hour days, and while he may get to come with me to work, he also has to realize there’s going to be some really boring time at work where he just has to sit and chill. And that happens at home too. So that’s really important to me that he doesn’t necessarily get upset or get stir-crazy or all upset when he doesn’t have something to constantly do. Border Collies are definitely busy, smart dogs, and so learning what our life is like, and not necessarily doing things out of the ordinary while he’s a puppy, and then suddenly, when he’s grown up, being like, “OK, now you’re an adult, and you just have to live with how our life is,” but rather teaching him how to handle it when he’s young. Sarah Stremming: You said, “How are you guys doing stuff differently?” I think that is the primary component, because most sport people that I know, especially in the agility world, really, really want their puppy to have tons and tons of drive to work with the handler. I’m not saying that’s bad. We want that too. But they tend to go about it in a way that seems really imbalanced to me, and the dog experiences isolation/boring-ness or super-exciting training time. That’s not how we live. I guess if your dogs all live in kennels and they come out to train multiple times a day, then you could pull that off. But we both want our dogs to be free for 90 percent of their time. We just don’t want them to be crated, kenneled, etc., for large portions of their lives, so they have to learn how to just hang out early on. Melissa Breau: I don’t remember if it was the blog or the podcast, but I feel like I remember something one of you at one point put out about planning to hold off on teaching certain skills until he’s a bit older. I was hoping you could talk a little bit about that too. What skills are you holding off on, maybe, and sharing a little bit of the reasoning. I know we’ve talked about it a little bit already. Leslie Eide: I think mostly the blog was relating to agility skills, and that a lot of times we start teaching the foundation movements right away with a puppy, like wrapping a wing, groundwork. You’re not necessarily putting them on equipment or doing anything like that, but everything that you are teaching them in some way relates to eventually an agility skill, including convincing them to tug with you. That’s a big thing of “They have to tug,” and it goes from there. Those things I think will come. I’m not going to push for them too soon. That’s kind of going back to the story of working on a stay on the table this past weekend. If he shows me he’s ready for something, then I’ll take advantage of it, but I’m not going to push him ahead of his comfort level. I’d rather him be comfortable with everything, be happy with playing with me, and know that good things come from me and that we’re going to do fun things, rather than taking it straight to an agility focus. Melissa Breau: I’d assume the two of you have had a pretty big influence on each other, and your approach to dogs and all that good stuff, over the years. From the outside, at least, it seems like you’re essentially taking all Sarah’s developed with her Whole Picture approach and applying it to Watson. Sarah, is that accurate? And for those not as familiar with your approach, can you give us the down and dirty version of what I’m talking about? Sarah Stremming: I would say that’s accurate. The Four Steps to Behavioral Wellness is what we’re talking about. That would be communication, nutrition, exercise, and enrichment. The communication front — that’s just training. That’s just having a positive-reinforcement-based training relationship with the dog, where you give the dog a lot of good positive feedback all the time. Nutrition is kind of self-explanatory, and Leslie’s a vet, so I pretty much defer to her in that regard with him. Exercise — I like free exercise. He certainly goes on leash walks, but the leash walks are more about learning how to walk on a leash than exercise. Again, I defer to Leslie in the exercise department because her field is sports medicine. You definitely don’t want to be overdoing it with a puppy at all, and he would like to be completely wild and run and run and run all day long, so we have to talk about that. The enrichment piece is really big for me. We do lots of things for him to shred. You should see our house. There’s cardboard shreds everywhere. So just giving him things to shred, feeding him his meals out of a slow bowl, we have all kinds of little kibble-dispensing toys around, lots of chew bones, things like that. So just making sure that his brain is exercised, his body is exercised, he is not confused, he is communicated with appropriately, and that he is fed well. That’s what we’re trying to do. Melissa Breau: Leslie, I’d guess your background’s had a pretty big influence on your general approach, right? How has your experience as a vet and a canine rehab specialist influenced your views on this stuff and led you to take this approach? Leslie Eide: It’s maybe changed it a little bit, but not much. I’ve always been a little bit more laid back with my approach with puppies. I’ve always had this belief that puppies should get to be puppies and experience their puppyhood, and not just be thrown into intensive sport training right from Day 1. Maybe that’s a little bit of backlash from my own experience of being thrown into competitive swimming as a 5-year-old and doing that for most of my young life, and everything was about training and being really serious. I also would say, from the vet side of things, I think there’s a lot of injuries that can happen when they’re young, and by pushing things and doing stuff repetitively that causes problems at a young age, or maybe they’re not as visible at a young age, but then they show up a little later in life and can definitely cut their careers short. I want to be successful, but I also want to do it for a long time, and not just a year or two and then have to give it up because they’re hurt for some reason. Melissa Breau: We’ve talked quite a bit about what you’re NOT doing. So I’d love to hear … I know you mentioned a little bit of leash walking. I’d imagine you’re doing some other training with him. What ARE you focusing on as far as training goes with Watson right now? Leslie Eide: Well, Sarah’s trying to teach me how to teach him marker cues. We’ll see how that goes. So we definitely have that going on. He gets the basics of “sit” and “down,” and again, most of it is capturing offered behavior, rather than setting out as a training session of “OK, we’re going to learn this behavior.” We do fitness exercises, so I have my building blocks that I use to make all my canine fitness exercises. So starting to work on ones that are appropriate for him, like learning targeting, front paw targeting, rear paw targeting, being comfortable getting in an object or on an object, like a box or a disc or something like that. And then a lot of new experiences still. Most recently, over the past couple of weeks I’d say, I worked to introduce him to the underwater treadmill so he can start getting some exercise in that, since that’s a really easy way for me to exercise him at work. Melissa Breau: That’s so cool. Leslie Eide: Going places, we went to the beach for the first time, he goes to shops and meets people, he goes to agility trials and hangs out. Like I said, at agility trial learned how to do a stand-stay on the measuring table. So I’m the anti-planner. I don’t set out with “We’re going to learn this.” It’s more see what happens and go from there. Sarah Stremming: For me, the things that I need to teach him are things that make him easier for me to manage in a house with six dogs. We’ve recently started working hard on all the dogs are trained to release out the door by name, and so I want Watson also to know that with everybody else. So we’ve been working on some very early iterations of that. And things like the best stuff for puppies is not on the counter or the kitchen table. The best stuff for puppies is on the ground. And body handling, so handling your feet, and looking in your mouth, and accepting passive restraint, as is so important for all of them to learn. Things like that are more my focus with him. Leslie Eide: I would say something that’s really big is playtime, too. That’s not necessarily something like a skill we’re teaching, but just making sure that playtime happens every day in some form. Melissa Breau: Are there skills that you think get overlooked that you’re making sure to cover right from the start? You mentioned handling, you mentioned play skills. Anything else on that list for you? Sarah Stremming: I do think body handling gets overlooked, but for me, especially within the sport of dog agility, I think a lot of people start out with puppies ringside, watching agility, trying to “teach them” to be cool waiting their turn. And then what happens is at a certain age the puppy notices what’s going on in the ring, and they start to wiggle and scream and not contain themselves. And then, depending on the trainer, the puppy might get a correction, or the puppy might be removed from the arena, or they might try to distract the puppy with food, or I saw a competitor once basically just hit the side of her puppy with a tug toy until the puppy decided to turn around and latch on the tug toy instead of squeal at the dogs in the ring. For me, again, it’s an answer of what are we omitting? But it’s about the teaching him the skill of waiting his turn before we ever ask him to wait his turn. The early, early iterations for that, for me, look like feeding all of the dogs a little bite of something, and I say their name and I feed them, and then I say their name and I feed them. Watson is trying to eat everything that I’m feeding, but he doesn’t get anything until I say his name and then feed him. So he’s bouncing around and being ridiculous, and all the other dogs are sitting and waiting, and eventually they go, “Oh, this isn’t that hard. When she says my name, I get to eat.” Just like what Leslie was talking about, they show you that capability when they have it. It’s kind of like a 3-year-old child only has so much self-control, and I really feel that way about puppies too. They only have so much ability to “wait their turn.” So teaching him the skill of waiting his turn way before we ever ask him to wait his turn is a big one for me that I think people maybe don’t overlook, but go about it in a way that I wouldn’t. Leslie Eide: For me, it’s relationship. He can train, and he knew how to do that from pretty much the moment I got him, but he didn’t necessarily know that I was a special person to him. So, to me, it’s about building a relationship before asking him for a list of skills that he needs to be able to do. Definitely, training can help build that relationship, but I think it’s also just one-on-one time, especially when there’s a large number of dogs in the household. And it’s about snuggles and play and that kind of thing. Melissa Breau: Obviously we all TRY, when we get a new puppy, to do everything right, and there’s definitely nothing more stressful than that feeling. But inevitably something goes wrong. We’re out and about and another dog barks and lunges at the puppy, or kids come flying at the puppy’s face, screaming, and they scare the bejesus out of him. Have either of you had to deal with any of those types of moments yet? And if so, how did you handle it? Is there prep work you’ve done, or things you do in the moment … or even afterwards, stuff you do for damage control that you can talk about a little bit? Sarah Stremming: We honestly haven’t had anything big that I have experienced, but there have been things that he saw and went, “Huh, I’m not sure about that.” Like, we had him in this little beach town after running on the beach and there was a lot of construction going on, and so there was a jackhammer going into the concrete, and he wasn’t sure if that was what should be happening, and I can’t blame him, really. What was important for me, and what I usually tell people to do, is as long as the puppy is still observing the thing, allow them to continue to observe the thing. So he looked at it until he was done looking at it, and then he turned away from it, and then we all retreated away from it together. I think what people try to do instead is they try to distract the puppy away from it with food, or they try to make it a positive event with food, or they try to drag the puppy towards it, maybe, or lure the puppy towards it, and it’s best to just let them experience their environment from a distance that they feel comfortable with. He really hasn’t had any huge startles about anything. I tend not to let him see a lot of people unless I know them, because he is going to jump on them and I don’t want them to be a jerk about that. He did meet one strange dog that I hadn’t planned on him meeting once on a walk. And that dog — I actually posted a video of this on the Cognitive Canine Facebook page — that dog was inviting play before Watson was ready, and he scared Watson a little bit, but not terrible. What was amazing was that Felix walked up and intervened, and then the dog played with Felix. Watson still stayed there, and then he was like, “OK, I can tag along if there’s three of us, but I don’t want to be the center of attention.” If he had run away, let’s say that dog had really scared him and he had tucked his tail and run towards me or something, if the puppy is coming to me looking for shelter from whatever it is, I always give it to them. So I would have absolutely picked him up and just allowed him to look at the dog from a distance. But I tend not to try to involve food in those moments unless the dog is trying to approach. Let’s say, when Felix was a puppy, he saw a fire hydrant, seemingly for the first time, and decided that it was monster. I let him look at it as long as he wanted to the first day he saw it, and then we walked away. And then the next day, he looked at it and he wanted to sniff it and approach it, and I fed him for that. And then the third day, he was like, “Oh, here’s the thing. Feed me.” And I was like, “OK, good. Done. Here’s one cookie, and now I’m never going to feed you for that again because it’s over.” I think people freak out, and if you freak out and they’re freaking out, then we’re all freaking out, and it’s not a good thing. Leslie Eide: Yeah, he really hasn’t had anything, but I completely agree with Sarah. And I’m pretty good about it, again, going along with not planning everything. I’m pretty chill about everything, so when he reacts to something, I’m not going to feed into it by being like, “Oh my god.” It’s about, “Cool, dude. Check it out. I’m not going to force you into anything. We’ll just stand here. If you’re comfortable staying here looking at it, then that’s where we’ll stay.” If food comes into play, it’s for when he turns around and looks at me and says, “OK, let’s go.” It’s more of a reinforcement of choosing to be back with me and go on with me on our whatever we’re doing, not a reinforcement for necessarily … Sarah Stremming: Which we would do if the thing was exciting, too, not just if it’s scary. It’s “Choose me over the stuff in the environment that interests you.” Melissa Breau: I’d love to end on a high note. Can each of you share one piece of advice for anyone out there with their own puppy, hoping to raise a happy, balanced dog? Leslie Eide: My piece of advice would probably be something like, “It’s all going to be OK.” We all can make mistakes, and luckily dogs are very forgiving, so don’t beat yourself up if something bad happens or you make a mistake. There’s lots that you can do to bounce back and still have a perfectly wonderful puppy. Sarah Stremming: I think mine is really similar to yours, in that I would say … Melissa, you had mentioned we’re all paranoid about doing everything right and that’s really stressful. So my piece of advice would be to embrace and accept that you will not do everything right. Embrace and accept that you will screw something up at some point and that you’ll survive, and if you’re paying attention, you’ll learn, and that will in the end be a good thing too. I seriously look back on every puppy and go, “Yeah, could have done that better, could have done that better.” All of us do that, and that’s fine. Embrace it and run with it. Melissa Breau: For folks out there who are interested in following along as Watson grows up, what’s the best way to do that? And where can people who want to stalk — or at least follow — each of you, where can they go to stay up to date? Sarah Stremming: The first question, where can they follow Watson, we are running a subscription to a blog just about Watson. It’s called “Puppy Elementary,” and you can find that by clicking the Puppy Elementary tab on my website, which is thecognitivecanine.com. Again, you can follow me at thecognitivecanine.com. That’s where I blog. I also have a podcast called Cog-Dog Radio, and of course I’m on Facebook with The Cognitive Canine and Cog-Dog Radio, and just me, so that’s where you can find me. You can find Leslie at work — all day, every day! We are teaching our course together … is it next term? October? Jumping Gymnastics, for FDSA, together, so you can find Leslie there too. But your website is thetotalcanine.net?Leslie Eide: Yes. And Facebook. I’m on there. My business-y type page is The Total Canine, which has a Facebook page, and then the website is thetotalcanine.net and it is “canine” spelled out. And my real work is SOUND Veterinary Rehabilitation Center, and it’s on Facebook, and the website is soundvetrehab.com. Melissa Breau: Where are you located again, just in case somebody is in your area and wants to come look you up? Sarah Stremming: About 40 miles north of Seattle, but the SOUND Veterinary Rehab Center is in Shoreline, Washington, which is just north of Seattle. Melissa Breau: One last question for each of you — my new “last interview question” that I’ve been asking everyone: What’s a lesson that you’ve learned or been reminded of recently when it comes to dog training? Sarah, you want to go first? Sarah Stremming: Mine is exceedingly nerdy. When I told Leslie what it was, she was like, “Oh God.” It’s to remember not to stay on lesser approximations for too long. In real words, plain English, basically that means to progress as fast as possible. So don’t wait for perfection before moving on to the next thing that you’re going to be reinforcing. I’m always shooting for low error rates, high rates of reinforcement, I like nice, clean training, and because of that, sometimes I can stay on approximations that are not the final behavior for a little bit too long because I get a little bit too perfectionistic on those, and it bites me every time. I was recently reminded of it in Felix’s contact training. Melissa Breau: I’ve never done that. Sarah Stremming: I know, right? I think it’s the sickness, honestly, of people who are really obsessed with training just get way too fixated on the details. But anyway, that’s mine. Leslie Eide: I think I’m going to pick one specifically to make fun of Sarah. Sarah Stremming: I expect no less. Leslie Eide: In that it’s something that I never do, but she probably really wishes I would, and that’s take data. Sarah Stremming: Leslie never takes data. Leslie Eide: No. Sarah Stremming: I take data on everything. I always say that if we could put us together, we’d be a great trainer, because I’m too detail-oriented and nitpicky, and she’s too freeform. Leslie Eide: Yeah. Sarah Stremming: Which is why together, with Jumping Gymnastics, I think we do a nice job teaching together, because we do come from both of those different sides. Melissa Breau: Thank you so much, ladies, for coming on the podcast! And we managed upon a time when both of you could join me, so that’s awesome. Thank you. Sarah Stremming: Thanks for having us. Leslie Eide: Thank you. Melissa Breau: Thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in! We’ll be back next week talking about details with Hannah Branigan to talk about prepping for competition and more. 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!

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SUMMARY: Sarah Stremming is a dog trainer, a dog agility and obedience competitor, and a dog behavior consultant.  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. Links The Cognitive Canine Effective Behavior Change Part 1: Replacement Behaviors Effective Behavior Change Part 2: Antecedent Arrangements Effective Behavior Change Part 3: Reinforcement Strategies Next Episode:  To be released 11/24/2017, featuring Hannah Branigan getting geeky about tuck sits. TRANSCRIPTION: Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports Podcast brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high-quality instruction for competitive dog sports using only the most current and progressive training methods. Today we have Sarah Stremming, of Cog-Dog radio and the Cognitive Canine back on the podcast to talk about… dog behavior. Welcome back to the podcast, Sarah! Sarah Stremming: Thanks, Melissa. Melissa Breau: To start us out, I know it's been a little while since you were on the show, can you just remind listeners how many dogs you have now and who they are? Sarah Stremming: Sure. Between my partner and I, we have five. I'll tell you about my two. I have Idgie, who's an 8-year-old border collie, and Felix, who's a 2-year-old border collie, and my primary sport's agility, so that's what they're both working on. Idgie doesn't really train much in agility anymore, she just competes, and Felix is mostly training with hardly any competing. And then I also play around in obedience, so they're both working on some of that stuff as well. Melissa Breau: So, I know that last time we talked, we just touched on the 4 steps to behavioral wellness briefly, covering what they are… but since I definitely want to dive a little deeper this time, do you mind just briefly sharing what those 4 steps are again and giving folks a little bit of background so that they're not totally confused when we start talking about it? Sarah Stremming: Sure, of course. The four steps to behavioral wellness are something that I came up with a long time ago when I was primarily working with pet dog behavior cases, and they are exercise, enrichment, nutrition, and communication. And basically they're the four areas that I find are often lacking in our basic dog care, and that includes sport people. What I found is that when trying to modify behavior, if one or more of these areas was lacking so the dog's basic needs were not being met, we would always hit a point where we couldn't progress with the behavior modification. So that's where they came from. Melissa Breau: Now I believe — though I could be wrong — that most of your students today come to you because of a problem training for a specific sport, but listening to your case studies in the podcast and talking to you a bit, it seems like the solution is often a lifestyle change. So I wanted to ask why it is that a dog's lifestyle can have such a huge impact on their performance in their sport? Sarah Stremming: That is true. Most of my clientele now, really all of my clientele now, is sports dog people who are having some kind of behavioral issue, usually a behavior problem that is preventing their dog from being able to compete or being able to compete well. And we definitely do work on specific behavior change protocols, so we definitely do go through behavior modification. But I've just come to find out that, over the years I've seen that if a dog's basic needs are not being met, you will not get where you want to get with the behavior modifications. So when we go through a lifestyle change, it is typically about meeting dogs' basic needs. I think a lot of people look at what I'm doing and they think I'm trying to give every single dog an exceptional life. Now, yes, I would like every dog and every person to have an exceptional life, but that's not necessarily the goal. The goal first is to meet basic needs, and I think that, unfortunately, that few people understand what some of those basic needs are. And so I think that's what shines through a lot of the time when I'm talking about my cases is I always want to look through those four steps of behavioral wellness as I want to look at what adjustments were made there, and then after that's done, we can then get into the nitty-gritty of the behavior modification work. Melissa Breau: Can you tell me just a little bit more about that? What are some of the common problems that you run into where those 4 steps can help? Sarah Stremming: Some of the most common things that I deal with are things that people label as “over-arousal issues,” and they're usually in agility, though I've definitely worked with a few obedience clients and a couple other clients from other sports on these issues. The behaviors that we label as over-arousal behaviors tend to be biting the handler during agility, oftentimes at the end of the run but a lot of times during the run, inability to hold front line or contact in competition, and then things that I just call spinning, barking, madness. The dog might spin, might bark, might also bite, just basically explosive behaviors that occur on course or during work. Those are some of the biggest issues that I deal with. Some of the ways that the four steps can help those issues are that when I see these dogs that have these … what we call over-arousal issues, especially in agility, often this is because agility is the most fulfilling thing the dog experiences in their life. So if their agility time is the only time that they actually feel satisfied mentally and physically, they become what I think looks like desperate to do the sport. Anybody that has ever felt desperate for something understands that that's a yucky way to feel, and I think that I observe dogs feeling desperate to do agility when I'm at trials. I've certainly seen it in my own dogs as well. And I think that some of the ways we train them encourage that, but the ways that we can help them feel less desperate are through exercise and enrichment, so those two steps out of the four. With adequate exercise, the dog's going to feel more like its body has been worked adequately, so that agility isn't the only time that the dog's body actually feels physically satisfied. And then enrichment needs to be part of  … environmental enrichment needs to be a part of every dog's daily life, because they do have brains and they do get to use them and they are not a couch ornament for us. If that sounds a little harsh, I don't mean to say that most people think that way. I do think, unfortunately, it's very common in the agility world to feel like agility class is enough. If we're going to agility class tonight, I don't have to do anything else today. Or if we had a trial all weekend, I don't have to do anything else this week to fulfill my dog physically or mentally, and that's just not true and that can definitely create problems. A couple of the others, just hitting on a few other steps to behavioral wellness, anything I deal with that has to do with generalized anxiety, so things like separation issues or fear responses that keep dogs out of the ring, anything that has to do with overall anxiety, my anecdotal experience is that diet can have an enormous effect on that. So when you feed the gut appropriately — and there is actually some cool research coming out about, cool research that exists and then also more and more research coming out about the relationship between mental health and gut health — but what I have observed anecdotally is that when a dog has a healthy GI, its overall anxiety is reduced, and so diet is a place that we look at. There's some nutrition being the one of four steps that I emphasize on the anxiety front, and then there just isn't any behavior problem that isn't going to be helped with better communication. Communication helps everything. No matter what we're talking about, that definitely helps everything. Melissa Breau: To go back a little about the couch potato bit, even if someone doesn't necessarily think that way, it can be hard if you've worked all day for eight hours and then come home and you have agility class. It can be hard to fit something else in. So even if it's not intentional, sometimes it can be totally easy to de-prioritize those things. Sarah Stremming: It is. It's easy for us to go, “OK, the dog box is checked because I have agility class tonight.” Where I want to encourage people to at least provide environmental enrichment for the dogs during the day when you're gone. So feeding them out of puzzle toys or Kongs as opposed to out of a bowl is a really simple, easy way to do that. And then just basically enrich their environment. Take a page out of the zookeeper's book and provide them with things in their environment that they have to forage through or rip apart or something. Even if they're crated during the day, give them stuff in the crate so that they literally aren't just left to lay around with a bowl of water and maybe a Nylabone that they've had for five years. Melissa Breau: I know that you recently published a series of podcasts on behavior change, talking about things like replacement behaviors… How can someone decide if what they need is just to teach a dog not to jump all over them or if they have a stress problem? And when is it time to look at things like nutrition and exercise — you got into this a little bit, but — versus going back to foundations to prevent frustration and stress through clearer communication in that sport? Sarah Stremming: The answer is yes. The answer is you should always be doing all of the above. Trying to look at behavior as one thing, or trying to look at a problem behavior as one thing, meaning a behavior is always serving a function for the animal, so it doesn't exist if there isn't reinforcement present for it. It doesn't exist if it doesn't serve a function. So you always want to look at it like that first, and you always want to make a plan to change it that way first. But you have to understand that if the dog's needs are not being adequately met that you may not be able to get anywhere with that plan. And then, as far as deciding between “Do I just need a training program, or do I also need a lifestyle change,” I think when most people get down to it and examine their dog's lifestyle, they will see the answer. I have certainly had clients who showed up and they were pretty much doing everything right. They just needed to tweak some training stuff. That is rare, but that has happened. So I think, to try to make it a simpler answer, I think we should always, always assess the functionality of the behavior you'd like to change. So if it's jumping all over you, try to look at what the dog is getting out of that, and try to help them to get that a different way, and make a plan to do that. And then also be sure that the dog's needs are being adequately met, because if you make a plan to solve this problem behavior, so let's say it is jumping all over you, what do they need? Is it that they are missing you all day long and feeling lonely? A little bit of assigning some human emotions here, but is it that? I mean, I do think that my dogs can feel lonely, but who knows? We can't ask them. Melissa Breau: It's a dog podcast. You can absolutely do that. Sarah Stremming: Right! So if it is that they're missing out on that human connection, can we address that as well as making this behavior change plan? And not just saying, “I want to change this behavior, therefore I will,” but also respecting that that behavior has a function, and that behavior came from a need that this dog has, and it's up to us to fulfill it always. Melissa Breau: Most of our listeners are probably pretty familiar with the idea of stressing up versus stressing down… that is, having a dog that's easily over-aroused versus one that completely shuts down. I know you have classes for both ends of the spectrum. So I wanted to ask a little bit about, now that we've talked about these four steps and a little bit about behavior change, how are the solutions to the problems different, depending on which end of the spectrum the dog falls on? Can you talk about that a bit? Sarah Stremming: Sure. And the two classes are Worked Up, which are the dogs that are worked up, just as it sounds, and then I call the other class Hidden Potential, which is about more of the stressed-down types of dogs. And I get this question probably every time I teach a seminar on one or the other. So if I'm teaching a seminar on worked-up types of dogs, the hidden-potential dogs come up and vice versa. And the reason that that's OK, and the reason that that should be expected, is because the solutions are similar. Both dogs are dealing with states of arousal that are not optimal. So if we've got a dog that is in a hyper-aroused state, he's not able to do his job because his adrenalin is off the charts. And if we have a dog in a kind of suboptimal arousal state, he can't do his job either, because he would rather go back into his crate and sleep and just may be bored. If we are talking about anxiety or stress, then that's where things start to change. So if we're talking about almost a temperament difference, we've all seen dogs that movement for them is cheap. They move a lot and they move quickly, versus dogs that … if you're training a border collie versus a bassett hound, you've got the border collie, movement is cheap for them. They will jump a bunch of times, they can heel a bunch of times, and that's cheap for them. They have a lot of energy. Versus maybe your basset hound has less energy than that and movement is more expensive for him. So then we're just dealing with differences in arousal states, and what we would do is play games to either bring the arousal up or bring the arousal back down. When we're dealing with anxiety or stress, that's where I might deal with it … that's where I see most of the dogs that fall into the hidden-potential category are. It's usually more of an anxiety-based or a stress-based or maybe a fear-based issue, and that's where I would address it in a different way. So if we can identify what the stressor is, I would actually want to tackle that head-on with a specific treatment protocol for whatever the stressor is. A lot of those dogs are worried about other dogs, and then we go to a dog show where there are tons of them. And then a lot of them are worried about people, and we go to a dog show and there's tons of them. The good news is they can be helped with those things. Certainly some of the worked-up dogs are experiencing environmental arousal or environmental anxiety, and if they are, then we want to go down that path as well and again address it the same way. So a lot of the times the same solution exists. It's just that we're looking at a different picture in the beginning and still trying to get to the same picture in the end. Melissa Breau: What are some of maybe the misconceptions people have about those kind of issues, or what do people commonly think about that maybe isn't 100 percent accurate when it comes to stressing up or stressing down and managing that? Can you set the record straight? 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. Melissa Breau: To be clear, it's not that people who have a dog that's shutting down in the ring aren't rewarding their dog enough. It's that there is a kind of misstructure there somewhere, right? Sarah Stremming: Yes. Thank you, Melissa. And actually I'm really glad that you said the word “reward” instead of reinforce, because they probably are rewarding their dogs plenty, but they're not reinforcing their dogs enough. And the difference is that a reward is just a nice thing that doesn't necessarily affect behavior. Reinforcement, by definition, affects behavior. So if behavior is not increasing, improving, etc., reinforcement is not present, though rewards well may be present. So if you get a Christmas bonus at work, that's nice, but that's not why you showed up the rest of the year. Melissa Breau: Well, maybe! But … Sarah Stremming: I'm going to argue it's not. I'm going to argue the paycheck that you got every other week is why you showed up the rest of the year, and then the reward might have affected your feelings about the job. It might have made you feel nicer about it. It might have made you feel nicer about your boss. Or it could have the total opposite effect, and be a $20 Starbucks card and you're, like, thanks a lot. But my point being there's so many lovely, kind people who are rewarding frequently who don't have enough understanding of the reinforcement procedures that they could be utilizing to actually increase the dog's behavior or change the dog's behavior. I don't mean to imply that those people are not training well or training nicely and training kindly and being generous. I think they probably are. In fact, they're probably a lot more generous. But a lot of the people I see training those super-high dogs, I see a lot of super-high dogs that do not get a high enough rate of reinforcement in training, which that's just amping them up, whereas the other end of the spectrum is that the other dogs are shutting down. So thank you for bringing that up, and I think, yeah, it's about the fact that understanding that if reinforcement is present, then the behavior will be present as well. Melissa Breau: I am glad that we went into that a little bit more. That was good information that people maybe don't hear often enough. Sarah Stremming: Good question, thank you. Melissa Breau: Thanks for answering it. Before I let you go, I mentioned earlier that you have a series that you've been publishing on effective behavior change, and I wanted to ask a little bit about that. First, what led you to explore that topic? Sarah Stremming: I'm just excited about the topic constantly, but to be honest with you, I decided to explore the topic based on dog trainers on the Internet. I saw a dog trainer on social media talking about behavior change as a kind of mystical thing, when I'm very passionate about training as an applied science and understanding training as an applied science. That certainly does not mean that I discount the art side of training, because there certainly is an artistic side to it, and before I ever knew anything about the science, the artistic side to it is what kept me in it. And so I think that's very, very important. But I do think that our industry would be better if all trainers recognized training as an applied science, and when I say “better,” I mean just serving the people and the dogs better. I think that all dog trainers, no matter what kind of training they do or what kind of training background they have, are in this because that's what they want to do. They want to serve the people and the dogs. They love dogs, and they hopefully like the people who own them, and they want to help people to have better connections with their dogs. I think all dog trainers are after that, no matter what kind of dog training they do. But I do see a general lack of recognition of dog training as an applied science, and specifically I think that a lot of positive-reinforcement-based trainers, especially on the Internet, can be very unkind to each other. I know this seems like, “How did you come up with this podcast series based on that? This has nothing to do with it.” Where I came to it, and where I wanted to talk about it, was because we really all should be generally training, generally the same way, or we all should understand some general basic principles, and I just don't see that as being reality. We should all be able to talk to each other about the effects of reinforcement and punishment and what makes for effective behavior change instead of … I think what we talk about instead on the Internet is how that person over there is doing it wrong and “This is how I would do it, and that's the right way to do it,” when in reality the right way to do it is treating it like an applied science. And then there are certainly variations within that, but I'm basically talking about it because we need to be talking about it as an applied science, and I think we do that over at FDSA, and Hannah Branigan does that on her podcast really beautifully. And the more I think we talk about it as an applied science, I think the further we can get and the more undivided we can become, and then the more dogs we can help. Melissa Breau: Not to ask you to take these three episodes and condense them into one tiny, short, little blurb, but to do exactly that I wanted to talk a little bit about what you cover in them. I definitely fully recommend people go listen to all three, if they haven't already. The first two have been out and I've listened to them and they're absolutely excellent, and by the time this comes out I know that you're planning on a third one and hopefully that will be available. But I did want to ask you to share just a couple of the key points or major takeaways that you really want people to walk away from after they listen to those episodes. Sarah Stremming: Definitely. Thanks for the plug there! Melissa Breau: Absolutely. Sarah Stremming: I'm glad that you liked them and all three should be available; two of them are as we record this, and I just recorded the other one today, so it should be out soon. The first one I did just talked about replacement behaviors. So if we are trying to modify a problem behavior, we want to use a replacement behavior to come in instead of that behavior. What that means is that instead of squashing a behavior, getting rid of a behavior, we just want to swap it out with something else. And so we generally think about incompatible behaviors, so an incompatible behavior, an example of that would be the dog is dashing out the front door. That's the problem behavior we want to solve, and we can train the dog to go lie on a mat when the door opens instead, and that would be an incompatible behavior because the two behaviors cannot happen at once. I also talked about the concept of alternative behaviors, which are not necessarily incompatible. I think that's a really interesting concept, that you can actually train the dog to sit, let's say at the front window, let's say the dog is barking at passers-by, you can train the dog to sit instead. Now that's an alternative behavior. My dog Idgie can tell you, she can bark while sitting just fine. She doesn't need to be standing to be barking. So it's alternative because both the behaviors can still happen at once, but what's really nice about it is that if you're reinforcing an alternative behavior, the problematic behavior still does decrease. So in the first episode we talk about what are some good qualities of incompatible or alternative behaviors, so basically what makes a good replacement behavior, and to really sum it up in short, what makes a good replacement behavior is that (a) it's incompatible or alternative and (b) it's already fluent, so it's something the dog already knows how to do. There's a little bit more to it than that, but you'll have to go listen to it. In the next one I talked about antecedent arrangements, or basically just the principal of manipulating the environment in which the behavior occurs, as opposed to attempting to manipulate the behavior itself. I think a lot of times, as dog trainers, we really focus on trying to manipulate behaviors when we should be thinking more about manipulating environments. The third one, that I recorded today, is kind of the other end of the spectrum of the second one. So you can manipulate the environment, and then you can manipulate the reinforcement. You can manipulate the consequences to the behavior. So the third episode is about reinforcement, and specifically, building what I call reinforcement strategies, so that you have a huge toolbox of reinforcement from which to draw from. So the more ways that you can reinforce an animal's behavior, the more effective you're likely to be in attempting to change its behavior. So those are the three that I've got. Melissa Breau: I'm curious now and looking forward to hearing that third one and rounding out the series. I really am glad that you tackled it and it's been a great series so far, so cool. Sarah Stremming: Thank you. Melissa Breau: Well, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast, Sarah! I know that you're in the middle of a long drive, so I will let you get back to that. But thank you. Sarah Stremming: Thank you. Thanks so much. Melissa Breau: And thank you to all our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week with Hannah Branigan, who Sarah mentioned. Hannah and I will be talking about detail oriented training -- things like getting that miraculous tuck sit or the perfect fold back down. Don't miss it! If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in itunes or the podcast app of your choice and 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.  

More on the reflexive (or not) nature of barking, dealing with handler-focused dogs in agility, and training your students with positive reinforcement. Plus, what's up next for The Cognitive Canine?

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

SHOW NOTES:  Summary: Competitive sports dog trainer and founder of FDSA Denise Fenzi talks about how she got into dog sports, her journey from traditional training to her current all positive approach, and more.  Links mentioned: Fenzi TEAM Training Site FREE Beyond the Backyard Instructors Guide Denise's other books via her website Next Episode:  To be released 1/6/2017, featuring Sarah Stremming    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 FDSA founder Denise Fenzi. Denise has competed in a wide range of dog sports, titling dogs in obedience, tracking, Schutzhund, Mondioring, herding, conformation, and agility. She is best-known for her flashy and precise obedience work, as demonstrated by two AKC OTCH dogs and perfect scores in both Schutzhund and Mondioring sport obedience. Her specialty is in developing motivation, focus, and relationship in competition dogs, and she has consistently demonstrated the ability to train and compete with dogs using motivational methods in sports where compulsion is the norm. Hi Denise, can you tell us a bit about the dogs you have known and what you're working on with them? Denise Fenzi: Hi Melissa, how are you? Melissa: Good. Denise: Good. I'm excited to do this. Yeah, I'll tell you. Let's see, I have three dogs here now. I have Raika, she's my oldest dog, she's 12½ and she is retired and mostly spends her days hanging out with me and going for long walks. That's what she wants to do now. My two younger dogs are Lyra, she's also a Belgian Tervuren, and Brito, who's a little mixed-breed, and I primarily train them to learn new things. So I do a lot of play skills with them, I do a lot of obedience with them. I just use them as, I want to say sample dogs, that's not quite the word I want. But I like to experiment with them and try out new things. And right now I'm sort of in a coaching phase of my life more than a competitive phase of my life, so I'm not actually sure if or when I'll compete. I have done some of the TEAM obedience levels with both of them, and I think they both have a TEAM Two title, [but] I'd have to look. And at some point if I get inspiration I'm going to keep going. So those are my dogs.   Melissa: So I know it wasn't on the list of questions I sent over, but do you want to briefly just tell us a little bit more about TEAM? Denise: Oh, TEAM is Training Excellence Assessment Modules, and it's the new obedience program that we started for people who want to compete via video and with more emphasis on quality of training and less about the competitive environment. So anybody who wants can look it up at fenziteamtitles.com. It's, in my opinion, an extremely well-designed program and worth taking a look at. Denise: Yeah, my parents showed dogs, and I'm 48, so I was sort of born into it. They actually competed with Lhasa Apsos in obedience, which is _____ (3.23).  I know my parents got a CDX on a Lhasa Apso; it took 23 shows. I think their final show was a 171 1/2, but they did it. So I give them credit for that. It was kind of an ugly way of getting titles back then, it was uglier to watch, but they did it. Melissa: So is that what originally got you into dog sports? Denise: Yes, I guess I inherited it. When I was about 10 I raised a couple of guide dog puppies, and my parents said that if I did that then I could have a dog of my own. So my first dogs were Shelties, because they had to be small dogs. And I just sort of went from there. Melissa: What got you started with positive training? Denise Fenzi: Well, I had been competing in AKC obedience for a long time, and then I decided to try IPO. And when I went over and watched the IPO training at that time, which would have been, I don't know, 20 years ago now I guess I started, I was kind of appalled actually, because they were using so much compulsion and such poor training that my reaction was to go the opposite way. And so I felt obligated to use as little as little as possible and to be successful. But I still absolutely would have called myself a balanced trainer, and I absolutely used compulsion with that dog. He did end up a Schutzhund III. But I did my best to minimize it. And then as time went on I found that I became a better trainer, and I wouldn't say I was trying not to use compulsion so much as just becoming a better trainer and needing less and less. Also, I had some good dogs, that really helps, that were cooperative. And I continued to use compulsion with my student dogs well after I stopped myself. And actually I was thinking about that recently, looking back, why was that? I think I was using it to compensate for my lack of ability to communicate with the humans who owned the dogs how to be better trainers, so it was a bit of an out for me. It's much easier to say, “Correct your dog when the dog sniffs,” than to take the time to try to figure out why the dog is sniffing and then adjust your training, i.e. my training, to get the handler to do it correctly. And so I did use compulsion there, and I can actually look back and see why I did that and also really how under the particular circumstances how unfair it was, because both of those corrections almost certainly were the result of the dog showing displacement behaviors. And then I taught seminars as I traveled; because those weren't my personal students I didn't feel as vested in the same way in the entire process. And so it was pretty obvious when I would walk in that the problems were handler-generated, and so I never got around to correcting the dogs, I was pretty busy correcting the handlers. And after a year of that, seminar after seminar realizing I was never correcting the dogs at all, that I never even got around to the dogs, then it started to be a philosophical thing. And that's when I started looking at it and saying, there's something wrong with holding the dog responsible when in every single case I can look at the situation and see how the handler caused it, and that's when I switched. And that was sort of interesting. Because in terms of solving problems, if you come in with a philosophical point of view and you don't decide that you have the option of reverting to compulsion if you get stuck, I can tell you your ability to problem solve will skyrocket, because it's not sitting there any more as an option. And you get a lot more clever, and you learn to think much more broadly. So it's actually a very good thing for me in my training. Melissa: It always seems easier to train the dog than to train the people. Sometimes the people are definitely the hardest part. Denise: That's true. Melissa: So you kind of mentioned your training philosophy now. Do you want to just describe that a little more for us and tell us kind of how you approach training now? Denise: Well, I think most of us continue to evolve over time, and there's no question that I continue to evolve. Right now I really am looking at dogs a little bit differently. For me it's less than what can the dog do for me to humor me, so I like to do dog sports. So rather than thinking, how can I get the dog to do this for me, I'm more in a place of, how can I get to a point where I can enjoy my time with this dog? And instead of thinking, how can [I set up the] environment so that time spent with me is the best part of their day I'm thinking more, how can I become important to this dog so they want to do things with me? And at first it may sound the same, getting the dog on my team as opposed to me joining their team, but if you think about it you start to realize it's not the same. So I'm perfectly happy to spend time with my young terrier who loves to hunt lizards, and I will sit with him in his little lizard territory telling him, “Did you see that one? Did you look over there?” It's a lot of fun, it really is. It sounds odd, but it's a lot of fun. And I think when I do that with him, I think it creates a really nice place for both of us that makes me appreciate him for who he really is. And then I think he's more willing to play my games. And so it's very much a relationship-based way of thinking about dog training, and sometimes this is hard for people to understand. But I really believe that if your dog genuinely likes you because you are interested in them and because you make their life more interesting, I think that skyrockets what the dog is capable of doing for you. So it's not because the rest of your life is miserable that you want to spend time with me. My dogs have great lives, they have a lot of freedom. I think it's because we just like doing stuff together and it's really fun. So if you can get that relationship down, like I tell people, if you can get your dog to play with you, just run and play and be silly, your dog will start to look at you more, which is really interesting. It's not a trained response at all, it's because we look at others that we enjoy. And that's true with people too. So for example with my older son, he's 16 now, and so he's getting into that, well, independent's not the word I want, but perfectly happy to lock himself in his room sort of phase. And recently he sent me by message text a game, and it's pool, billiards. And he had done a turn, and then says, “Next.” And so when I opened it up it showed me his turn, and then I had a chance to play back. So then I played, and then I sent it back to him. And so we do this, and it's not because I have some great interest in playing pool via text with my son. But what means a lot to me is that he wants me to do that with him. It's something we can do together. So while it would not be my first choice, you bet I respond when he sends me those. And then what I find is, it changes how he interacts with me in general. So that when I need things from him, I think because we have that baseline relationship that we're trying to maintain even as he gets older, I think it allows us to have a better relationship in general, not just about what I want or what he wants. And so I think that dogs are very similar, that if you can find a way to just simply be generically important to them, and accepting, and forgiving, and have a little give and take… You don't always have to get your way. What a concept. It's okay. Your dog does not go through life trying to manipulate you. And I think really internalizing that would sum up where I am right now in terms of how I see training. Melissa: So I know that you kind of touched on this a little bit there with your son, but we've talked before about just the impacts that your training beliefs have had on your other relationships. Do you want to talk a little more about that? I know you've said it's influenced almost all of your relationships, including with your parents and things like that. Denise: 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 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 happened I really worked 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, 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 that makes my life a lot better. It makes me a more pleasant and happy person, so that has a lot of value.   Melissa: That kind of transitions us really nicely into my next question, which was going to be, what led you to start FDSA, the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy? And I want to say kind of before you respond to that, that I think that that's part of the reason that there's been such a fantastic community kind of that's grown up around the school, is just because you have that belief and it spreads through the other teachers and the students. It's really created a really welcoming community for dog sports competitors. Now that I've gotten a little ahead of myself, so what did lead you to start the school? Denise: It was a numbers thing. If I spend a half-hour with one person I can work with one person for half an hour. Online, if I can do it well, then I can spend a half-hour with a much greater number of people. And we each have our own drivers in life, and one of my big drivers is, I want to see change in the dog sports community, and that's very important to me. So to be able to affect a large number of people as opposed to a small number of people was very appealing to me. The school in many ways has just sort of exceeded any expectations I could have possibly had, in many ways. But probably one of the most valuable is, I did not recognize what would happen in terms of the culture, not just with each other. There's a second culture that people wouldn't really know about, and that's the one among the instructors. The way they interact with each other, the way they talk on the mailing list, the support they offer is extraordinary. And I see the same thing with the students, the way they interact. And there really is a sense that your accomplishments mean a lot to you, and everybody else is willing to honor that. So if you figured out how to teach your dog to lay down and it's the first time you ever did that, I find that people are just as excited about that for you as another person who went to a dog show and got maybe a high in trial. Because we're each at a different place in what we value. And I think people have really internalized that, and it is extraordinary. I get a fair number of e-mails from people saying thank you for something or the other, maybe with their dog. But the ones I value the most are the ones where people say, “Over time I started to recognize that the same things we do with our dogs work with each other, and I have become kinder to myself, kinder to people around me, and you know, generally I'm just a much happier person.” That's enormous. And starting an online dog training school I really never saw that one coming. I didn't realize how that could work out like that, and it's been really amazing for me. Melissa: Yeah, I mean, the community's probably one of the few places online where even controversial topics are handled very politely. And people honor each other's opinions and honor each other's thoughts, and they don't break down into insults and arguments, at least not that I've seen yet. Denise: No, it's amazing. I mean, it's not that it's perfect. We have a few thousand members, so you're always going to have differences. But I find that people have become quite good at saying, “This has been my experience, and this is my feelings,” as opposed to, “You're dumb and stupid for thinking that.” And I know that people don't mean to come across that way, but sometimes the online communities, all of them, people simply write and don't think too carefully about how what they just said might be interpreted by another person. And within the alumni group or within the Academy group I find an awareness of considering how you phrase things. And anyway the reality is, if you want to change behavior it's the same thing I said earlier. It may make you feel better to say, “You're dumb to think that way,” but you won't change behavior. If you say, “This has been my experience,” now you might actually change behavior, but you have to give up being self-righteous, and that's not always what people have in mind. Melissa: So I know that we wanted to talk about some of the other stuff you've been working on too. FDSA isn't the only thing you've created in the last few years. So you have another new book coming out. I don't know if you want to take a minute and tell us about some of the books that you already have out and then the new book, or if you just want to talk about the new book. I'll leave that up to you. Denise: Oh, so many. I didn't even know I was such a writer until I started writing, and now I can't stop writing. I've written seven, I'm actually looking at them. Four of them I wrote with Deb Jones, that's the Dog Sports Skills Series. Those are all generic to all dog sports but provide a really nice foundation for dog training. I wrote a book called Beyond the Back Yard, which was targeted at the pet market to help them understand how to get from the point of cookie in the hand in the kitchen and hoping for the best to actually getting some very cooperative real-world obedience. That book has done very well, and a lot of people are using it to teach their classes, which makes me very happy. It does have a free instructor's guide to go with it. And then I wrote Blogger Dog, Brito!, which is about Brito. It's, well, I'm going to say a true story, but keep in mind the dog wrote it, so take that with a grain of salt. And it's designed for about a fourth grade audience to read to themself. And if a person reads it they will learn quite a bit about dog behavior without learning that they learned about dog behavior, which was really what I had in mind. And then my newest book is Train the Dog in Front of You. I would call that my personal pet book, and what I mean is, it is how I feel about training and dogs. I feel that every dog is very unique, and I tried hard to find dimensions that people could work with to say, is your dog more secure, more cautious, more handler-focused, more environmental, and then offered suggestions for how to work with a dog based on those qualities. Actually I'm running a class online right now on that topic. And as you might expect there are many, many nontraditional breeds in that class, and I actually find it extremely interesting to watch different dogs behave in different ways under different circumstances. So you can see some of the dogs do a lot with their eyes. They stare when they go to a park. And other dogs' noses never come off the ground when they go to a park. And other dogs air sniff the whole time they're at the park. And other dogs just jump on their owners. And all of these things are really quite relevant to how you train your dog. So if you understand that your dog's dominant sense is going to be sniffing you might be better off training in a shopping center, whereas another dog that has a lot of pressure issues with people in buildings would be much better off in a big open park than in a shopping center. So thinking that way is very interesting to me. And I hope a lot of dog sports people pick this book up, because I think it has a lot to offer. Melissa: I mean, having had a chance to read an advance copy of the book I think it's a fantastic guide, even just as a thought exercise to think through kind of where your dog falls on some of those different meters, and what they are closer to than other things, and what traits are more true for your personal dog than others. Just to kind of give people a little more sense of what's inside the book, do you mind talking about any one of your dogs that you want, just kind of where they fall on some of those spectrums? Denise: In the first chapter I actually did go through the dogs. Well, Brito is, he's the little terrier dog of mine, he's about 10 pounds. He's a small dog. But he's very terrier, he's classic terrier. He's not handler-focused. So if I take him somewhere his nose goes down, he doesn't do a lot of looking with his eyes, he uses his nose. He does very little air sniffing, it's to the ground. Vegetative surfaces, he will not look back at me, it doesn't cross his mind for 15, 20 minutes. He is not what we'd call naturally handler-focused when he's in a new environment. But there's a piece that goes with that. He's also a very confident and social dog, so he likes people, he's confident with people. He's a little careful with dogs. They're big and that makes him nervous. He's also got a little bit of that terrier behavior, so he can get kind of puffed-up. And if he sees aggression around him he'll go there fast, so I keep an eye on that. And in some ways a dog like that is the polar opposite of Raika, my oldest dog who's here. Raika's always liked to be with me, she just does, it doesn't matter where I go. And actually I had to go to some trouble to teach her to look around, which is something I talk about in the book. Why would I do that? Why would I teach her to stop staring at me? It was a very good decision. And she does get nervous about people and dogs, whereas Brito, it just wouldn't happen to him. And knowing these things about them does make a difference, because Raika, I just take her to a park, I can take her anywhere and work with her, and that's easy and makes sense. But it also means that she needs different sorts of preparations for trial than he does. So if I really want to work him around distractions I would be inclined to go to a shopping center, because then I don't have to deal with grass. But at the same time if I want to compete with him outdoors, knowing who he is allows me to pick a middle environment, maybe not grass but maybe not cement, that allow us to go in that direction. So let's say a parking area, which is cement, near a vegetated area like with a forest or field, so that gives us some in-between. That kind of helps me think that way. I don't sit down and actually consciously go through it any more, it's just something that sort of happens in my head. And in the book I talk about case studies, more so in the online class. I put up case studies of specific dogs that I've worked with. But after a while you start to see packages, you just start to notice that dogs that tend to be a little more insecure are a little more likely to look to their owners. You start looking for stuff like that, and it helps you make a plan about which direction to try with the dog. And it also helps you recognize when you've made a bad decision so that you can back up, turn around, and try something else. Melissa: So to kind of bring things to a little bit of a close I have three last questions, kind of quicker questions. So the first one is, what's the dog-related accomplishment that you're proudest of? Denise: My second OTCH dog had a fairly complete meltdown about a third of the way into her OTCH, and I could not resolve that. I didn't know what to do, so I retired her for about a year-and-a-half. And while she was retired I finished an OTCH on a different dog. So she must have been, I don't know, I want to say eight, maybe nine years old. And I just kept thinking about what I now knew, because I had learned a lot, we're always learning, and I decided to try again. And I thought that we had lots of time to actually pursue the OTCH, because it does take a bit of time, and it helps to have a young and very fit dog. And I just felt that her jumping days were going to be wrapping up soon, and so I decided to go back into competition with a different goal. I simply wanted to see if I could stay connected with her and keep the stress out of the picture just for one exercise, and just for two exercises. Could I do this? And I went in with such a different mindset. It was really no longer about finishing the title, I was no longer frustrated, and she finished her OTCH in two months. So just my changing my way of thinking, and it was really amazing. I will tell you that when you hit about 90 points it gets a little hard to say, “Oh gee, I'm just doing this for fun,” but I managed to keep myself under control with it. I'm very proud of that, because it was hard, and I think hard things are always a bigger accomplishment. Melissa: And what's the best piece of training advice that you've ever heard? Denise: It's just behavior. So there's an expression, it's just behavior. When something is happening in front of you it doesn't mean deep and horrible things, it doesn't mean your dog hates you, it doesn't mean you're never going to be successful, it doesn't mean much of anything. It just means it's behavior. The dog just showed you something, and it has roots from where? Maybe an emotion. But it's not more than that. And that is why most of us when we're training our own dogs, everything is so big and magnified. So your dog goes around the broad jump and, "oh my God." "It's oh my God, what am I going to do? It's over." And we obsess and we stress, and we train and we train on the poor thing and the poor dog, and it's very hard to walk away. Whereas an outsider looks at it and says, “I have no idea what you're getting so worked up about. Your dog went around the jump. It's not a big deal, it's not the end of the world, and it doesn't mean it's going to keep happening.” And I think that expression, it's just behavior, really helps us remember that it's not worth quite that much energy. It just happened, it's okay. Move on, train. Melissa: That in some ways seems to sum up your philosophy almost as well as some of your other answers. Denise: That's true. Melissa: So for our last question, who is somebody else in the dog world that you look up to? Denise: There are actually a lot of trainers out there that I really respect. I've often said I don't think I'm a great dog trainer. I think I'm a pretty good dog trainer. I think what I do well is not dig a grave. I mean, if I see I'm starting a hole I back out of it. Whereas there are a lot of other trainers out there who I think are much better than I am at not starting the hole in the first place. So I can't go with just skills, because there's lots of people who are more skilled. So I think I'm going to say Suzanne Clothier, and the reason is, I have a lot of respect for her ability to look at the situation, the dog, the person, the whole picture, and stand back, and get an overview on what's happening, and then communicate that in a way that people can understand. So I really respect that. And she's been around for a long time, much longer than I would say it's been popular to be a force-free trainer. And she's been at it for really some time, and I appreciate that, and I appreciate her honesty and her ability to communicate what I think sometimes people need to hear that might not be very comfortable without getting stuck in how we're supposed to do things. So I think that's my answer. Melissa: All right. Well, thank you so much, Denise. It's been awesome to chat, it's been a lot of fun. Denise: Thank you. I am excited to see who comes after me. Melissa: Well, let me get to that. So for all of our brand-new listeners, since this is our first official podcast, thank you for tuning in, and we'll be back in two weeks. We'll be back with Sarah Stremming. She's the founder of Cognitive Canine, and we'll be talking about over-arousal in sports dogs. If you haven't already, subscribe now on iTunes or the podcast app of your choice, and you'll have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. In the meantime, happy training. CREDITS: Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called “Buddy.” Audio editing provided by Chris Lang and transcription written by CLK Transcription Services. Thanks again for tuning in -- and happy training!

In this episode (37:52) In this podcast, Sarah and Esteban talk with Sarah Stremming from the Cognitive Canine about her new podcast Cog-Dog Radio and the work she’s doing with agility dogs with behavioral issues. You Will Learn Why Sarah started Cog-Dog Radio. Common behavioral problems in agility dogs. How your dog’s ability to take food can be a barometer for their stress level. The 4 areas that Sarah looks at when she evaluates dogs. Mentioned Our Previous Podcast with Kathy Sdao CogDog Radio – a new dog agility podcast on Soundcloud or in iTunes Sarah Stremmings’s Website: The Cognitive Canine  

Welcome to Cog-Dog Radio! This is a podcast exploring The Cognitive Canine's special niche, behavior problems in performance dogs. Join The Cognitive Canine's founder, Sarah Stremming, as she explores the exciting and complex world of all things behavior as it pertains to dog sports.