Podcasts about french ring

Hello trainers, I'll keep this intro shorter. This time I have as guests few very accomplished trainers Shannon Faltak, Jessica Johnson, and Spencer Bowman.We talk about the complexities of French Ring, Mondio Ring and IGP, the breeds and type of dogs that are better suited for each sport, the different style of helper/decoy work, preparation for competition, and much much more. Enjoy

My guest is Shannon Faltak, as you will find out her journey in the dog world is one of a kind! For those that don't know her at all just to give you a glimpse Shanon took Knox, a 5 year old dog, filled it in Mondo and French Ring , went to the world championships and now is planing to enter the IGP Malinois Nationals! Her story is very inspiring to me, she is a proof that everything is possible and starts with a dream

This week, Jess and Scott welcome Sriharsa Pradham. Besides being a scientist and sommelier, Sri has been a dedicated and responsible Malinois owner for the past decade. On this episode, he discusses his journey with his dog Tej.     Why did Sri choose the breed Malinois and the sport French Ring?   Are there extra precautions taken when entertaining with Tej?   What has Tej taught Sri?   For this week's Holiday Discount Quirky Tip, check out Sustenance Herbs at: https://www.sustenanceherbs.com/ -Code QUIRKY10 for 10% discount (excludes Bor-L-Immune and treats) -Order by 12/13   To check our previous episodes with Sustenance Herbs click: https://www.thequirkydog.com/podcast/2023/6/7/sustenance-herbs-as-a-way-of-life/   Quirky Tip Recaps:   -20% Savings at Natural Dawg Shop with code QUIRKY20 (ends 12/16): https://www.naturaldawgshop.com   -SIGNED & PERSONALIZED copy of "Super Dog Tricks" for $25 by Sara Carson (America's Got Talent Superstar). Email thesupercollies@gmail.com to order.   -If you are within driving distance of Princeton, MA, check out Dawn Gagye's Portrait Couture experience with dogs here (ends 12/31): https://www.portraitcouturestudio.com/portrait-couture-tqd-podcast-special?utm_source=Podcast&utm_medium=QuirkyDog&utm_campaign=October2022     -Farm Hounds Black Friday sale has ended   -15% savings at Havok Your Way with code QUIRKY15 (ends 12/15): https://www.havokyourway.com   For more information about Scott and Jess and their strategies, please check out: https://caninehealing.com   To view The Quirky Dog's website and a full catalog of episodes, visit: https://www.thequirkydog.com   To work with Scott and Jess in person within their service area (Portland, ME to Boston, MA to Manchester, NH), email them at studio@thequirkydog.com     Have you ever wondered why your dog behaves a certain way? Are there things you need help with or support? Join Scott and Jess Williams each week as they explore these and other topics.   Follow and Watch Us On: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/caninehealing YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtlRQjjeIHOgEAAlgB3MviA Listen to Us On: PodBean: https://thequirkydog.podbean.com/   #ScottWilliamsDogTrainer #JessWilliamsDogTrainer #CanineHealing #TheQuirkyDog #DogTraining #Studio21PodcastCafe #UnitedPodcastNetwork

Decoys, in particular, are the unsung heroes in sports like, PSA, Schutzhund, French Ring, or Mondioring, where they engage dogs in exercises that could potentially lead to injury. These skilled individuals don't just wear a bite suit and endure the physicality of a dog's engagement; they are artists of canine communication, understanding the subtle language of dogs to a degree that allows them to anticipate and react in ways that protect both the animal and themselves, ensuring a safe training experience. Their role is not merely about being a target; it's about being a partner in the dog's safe training journey. They help in honing a dog's skills, ensuring that the dog's natural drives are channelled in a safe and constructive manner. This requires a deep understanding of canine behaviour, impeccable timing, and a profound respect for the animals they work with, all contributing to a safe training environment. Trainers, on the other hand, are the strategists behind this intricate dance, with a focus on safety. Their knowledge in animal behaviour, training methodologies, and injury prevention is critical. They design training programs that challenge the dogs yet keep them within the bounds of safety. Their ability to read a dog's physical and mental limits is essential in maintaining a safe training regime and preventing overtraining and stress, which can lead to injuries. Together, decoys and trainers create a synergy that allows our dogs to engage in these sports with vigour and enthusiasm, while significantly reducing the risk of harm. Their skill and knowledge are the bedrock upon which the safety of our beloved canine athletes rests. As we cheer for the impressive performances of our dogs, let's also take a moment to appreciate these dedicated professionals who make it all possible, ensuring a safe and enjoyable experience for all involved. Further details looking for great dog trainers and supporters of the canine paradigm? Below is a vast array of people and business's who stand by us, donate to our running costs and do great things for the canine community. Glenn runs and has almost everything canine related at, Canine Evolution or Pet Resorts Australia Pat has a full range of coaching and dog training services at Operant Canine You can support our show and get extra content right here on our Patreon page. Everything goes into keeping the show running and we love all the wonderful people who are part of that community. If you're not sure how, just ask us. You can get our full range of our Merch at our Teespring store here You can help us by spreading the word amongst the canine community or even suggesting a special guest to interview. If you need to find out how to listen to our podcast, go here We have a YOUTUBE channel that you can subscribe to now If you enjoyed the podcast, please review us on Itunes, spotify and any other podcast directory Details on joining the IACP can be found here. If you're not in it you should be! Understand? Check out Dogs Playing for Life! A rescue process changing dogs lives across the USA For more details on how to help our friends at Peggy's Promise, you can find all the details on how to do that on their website. They are our rescue charity of choice. Support our supporters Narelle Cooke's raw feeding guide for dogs here. Narelle has her own podcast on all podcast directories called Natural Health for people and pets. Check it out in person. Looking for the best, human grade supplement range for your dogs? Check out Canine Ceuticals. Now available in the USA. SHOW SPONSOR Jason Firmin Einzweck Dog quip SHOW SPONSOR The motorcycle dog kennel by Rowdy Hound SHOW SPONSOR Professional dog training services DanKroft K9 SHOW SPONSOR Daycare and training from the heart dog training SHOW SPONSOR Dog training all styles in Adelaide Dog Club SA SHOW SPONSOR Our beloved friend and regular contributor,

Training Without Conflict® Episode Thirty: Omar Von MullerIn this episode, I had the pleasure to catch up and have a nice conversation with a long time friend, and trick dog master, Omar Von Muller.It is highly likely you have seen one of Omar's tricks in a viral video in the past or in a major Hollywood production. As a teenager, Omar trained dogs for friends and family. Omar also spent time training police dogs for the Miami Dade Police Department, as well as competing in Schutzhund and French Ring.In 1993, Omar moved from Miami to Los Angeles where he began to train dogs for celebrities, and the motion picture industry. Some of his movie credits include, The Italian Job, Four Brothers, Jackass 3D, and Water for Elephants.The highest honor of Omar's career is his dog Uggie being involved in the Academy Award winning film, The Artist. Uggie received many awards for this role worldwide and eventually became the first dog to have his paw prints immortalized on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Currently, Omar continues to train dogs for Hollywood films, but has also created an online learning platform for students to learn how to teach tricks to their personal dogs. For more information about Omar, check out: https://www.trainingwithomar.com/Ivan Balabanov is a 2-time World Champion dog trainer, Ot Vitosha Malinois breeder, trainer of Premier Protection Dogs and founder of the revolutionary Training Without Conflict® dog training system.For more information about Ivan Balabanov and information on how to train your dog using the Training Without Conflict® system, check out: https://trainingwithoutconflict.comhttps://malinois.comhttps://premierprotectiondogs.com

In this podcast we discuss why you should get into dog sports and what a profound impact doing so has had on us as trainers. Kelly Dunbar is content and curriculum director for the Dunbar Academy, a French Ring competitor and co-founder of Open Paw which provides training to shelter workers. Join Nick for a webinar on puppy selection and training: https://nickbenger793.clickmeeting.com/puppy-selection-and-training/register

This week, Jess and Scott are joined by their friends from New York. Ben and Janelle Allanson have over a decade of history in the sport of French Ring, and much like Scott and Jess, they have experienced the highs and lows of dog training together as a romantic couple!   What is the most challenging part of training with a partner? How does training with someone who also lives with your dogs make certain aspects of your training sessions easier? Why is it so important to schedule quality time outside of training even though training is technically a recreational activity? To follow Janelle's training, check out @makeupandmalinois on Instagram. For more on Ben's art, follow @live_byte on Instagram.   For more information about Scott and Jess and their strategies, please check out: https://caninehealing.com   To view The Quirky Dog's website and a full catalog of episodes, visit: https://www.thequirkydog.com   To work with Scott and Jess in person within their service area (Portland, ME to Boston, MA to Manchester, NH), email them at studio@thequirkydog.com     Have you ever wondered why your dog behaves a certain way? Are there things you need help with or support? Join Scott and Jess Williams each week as they explore these and other topics.   Follow and Watch Us On: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/caninehealing YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtlRQjjeIHOgEAAlgB3MviA Listen to Us On: PodBean: https://thequirkydog.podbean.com/   #ScottWilliamsDogTrainer #JessWilliamsDogTrainer #CanineHealing #TheQuirkyDog #DogTraining #Studio21PodcastCafe #UnitedPodcastNetwork

Training Without Conflict® Podcast Episode Twenty-Two: Dr. Stewart HilliardIn this episode, Ivan speaks to a true dogsport legend filled with a wealth of expertise and experience in the dog training world. This episodes very special guest is Dr. Stewart Hilliard. They discuss an array of fascinating topics about all aspects of dogs and dog training ranging from breeding and raising sport and working dogs, the history of dog sports in the United States and worldwide, working dog selection, the differences in selecting for different dog sports, and of course they even dive into canine science.Whether you know it or not, Dr. Stewart Hilliard has likely impacted your dog training education having been the lead script writer for many trainers that created content for Canine Training Systems on top of being a long time dog man that directly and indirectly inspired some of your favorite dog trainers today, including Ivan. Some of the younger generation of trainers might wonder why his name does not ring a bell, and this is because of the career decision that Dr. Hilliard made years ago to spearhead dog training programs and research with the United States Armed Services. However, we can assure you that his contributions to the world of dog sports in the United States are nothing short of remarkable. Dr. Hilliard has played an instrumental role in shaping and advancing the dog training field and industry.Here are some of Dr. Hilliards exceptional credentials:Stewart Hilliard has over 40 years experience in training companion and working dogs. He began training working dogs in 1980 in Denver, Colorado, when he became involved in German-style sport training and joined the Rocky Mountain Schutzhund Club, where he soon became the Training Director. Shortly thereafter he became a professional dog trainer, and established a reputation as an authority on canine aggression and man-work for both sport dogs and police service dogs. In the mid-1980's he was one of the first Americans to import working-bred Belgian Malinois to the United States, and he traveled widely in Western Europe studying Malinois breeding and the training disciplines of French Ring, Belgian Ring, and KNPV. He was the founder and first president of the American Ring Federation, the first F.C.I.-sanctioned organization for French Ring Sport in the U.S., and he was the first American to receive his Selection (certification) in France as a French Ring Trial Decoy.He has taught working dog training seminars for sport clubs and law enforcement agencies all over the United States, and also been invited to teach in Melbourne and Brisbane, Australia, Sao Paulo, Brazil, Montreal, Canada, and Beijing, China. He is the co-author, with Susan Barwig, of the very successful training manual Schutzhund: Theory and Training Methods, and has also written and directed many well-received videotapes about sport and service dog training produced by Canine Training Systems®. In 1983, Stewart Hilliard received his B.A. in psychology, and in 1990 he moved to Austin, Texas to enter Graduate School at the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied animal behavior and learning.He is the author of a number of scientific papers in reputable psychological journals, and in 1997 he received his Ph.D in Behavioral Neuroscience. Dr. Hilliard has worked in various research & development and operational capacities for the Department of Defense Military Working Dog program since 1997, including Chief of the Military Working Dog Course at the 341st Training Squadron, Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. In this role, he managed the basic training of most of the patrol and substance detector dogs supplied to all branches of the U. S. armed forces. Dr. Hilliard also served as Chief of Military Working Dog Logistics and Procurement at the 341st. He directed the testing and procurement of...

When it comes to dogs participating in bite sports, developing their grip strength and technique is a crucial aspect of their training. Proper grip development through good techniques in tug and rag work can help improve a dog's performance, prevent injuries, and increase their confidence and drive. In bite sports, such as PSA, Schutzhund, IPO, and French Ring, dogs are trained to bite and hold onto various objects, including sleeves, bite suits, and hidden sleeves. To prepare them for these tasks, trainers use tug and rag work to help develop their grip strength, proper bite technique, and overall confidence. It's important to use appropriate equipment when engaging in tug and rag work with a dog training for bite sports. Specifically designed bite tugs and rag toys that mimic the texture and feel of the equipment used in bite sports should be used. This helps the dog learn how to properly grip and hold onto the equipment, while also protecting their teeth from damage. Proper technique during tug and rag work is also essential for developing a dog's grip strength and technique. Trainers should let the dog win and avoid forcefully taking the toy away, as this can create negative associations with biting and decrease the dog's drive. Varying the types of games and toys used in training can also help develop a well-rounded grip. This recent episode got some great feedback about development too Further details looking for great dog trainers and supporters of the canine paradigm? Below is a vast array of people and business's who stand by us, donate to our running costs and do great things for the canine community. Glenn runs and has almost everything canine related at, Canine Evolution or Pet Resorts Australia Pat has a full range of coaching and dog training services at Operant Canine You can support our show and get extra content right here on our Patreon page. Everything goes into keeping the show running and we love all the wonderful people who are part of that community. If you're not sure how, just ask us. You can get our full range of our Merch at our Teespring store here You can help us by spreading the word amongst the canine community or even suggesting a special guest to interview. If you need to find out how to listen to our podcast, go here We have a YOUTUBE channel that you can subscribe to now If you enjoyed the podcast, please review us on Itunes, spotify and any other podcast directory Details on joining the IACP can be found here. If you're not in it you should be! Understand? Check out Dogs Playing for Life! A rescue process changing dogs lives across the USA For more details on how to help our friends at Peggy's Promise, you can find all the details on how to do that on their website. They are our rescue charity of choice. Support our supporters Narelle Cooke's raw feeding guide for dogs here. Narelle has her own podcast on all podcast directories called Natural Health for people and pets. Check it out in person. Looking for the best, human grade supplement range for your dogs? Check out Canine Ceuticals. You can also see her on Pooches at play with Lara Shannon SHOW SPONSOR Jason Firmin Einzweck Dog quip SHOW SPONSOR The motorcycle dog kennel by Rowdy Hound SHOW SPONSOR Professional dog training services DanKroft K9 SHOW SPONSOR Daycare and training from the heart dog training SHOW SPONSOR Dog training all styles in Adelaide Dog Club SA SHOW SPONSOR Our beloved friend and regular contributor, Birdy O'Sheedy can be found at birdyosheedy.com and you can see her baby puppy on her instagram HUGE thanks to all our contributing artists. Please support their works Jane StuartAvery KellerZoie Neidy

Sonja Nordstrom joins us on HFA to discuss how to select a dog for Human Remains Detection (HRD) work, as well as how to start training with the dog to prepare for real world deployments. Sonja is a retired FBI Special Agent and has nearly three decades of K-9 search and rescue experience, additionally Sonja competed in Mondio Ring, French Ring, and IPO for nearly 10 years. In addition to K-9 SAR and protection dog sports Sonja serves as a judge and trainer for UKC Nosework competitions. Sonja is also the owner of Sonja's Dog Training and a Co-Founder of American Tactical Aggregate K-9. In this episode of HFA we go into detail of what to look for and avoid when selecting a HRD dog, including breeders, puppy selection, and initial training of the dog. We discuss the benefits of selecting a dog from working bloodlines, the importance of health testing in dogs, and so much more. If you are interested in doing HRD with your dog, you will not want to miss this episode. This episode is Part 1 of a 2 part discussion with Sonja. References mentioned during the episode. K-9 Top Tales: K-9 Top Tales Podcast Great Basin Search and Rescue: https://greatbasink-9sar.org/ Sonja's Dog Training: Sonja's Dog Training American Tactical Aggregate K-9: https://atak9.com/ Hunt-Find-Alert: Facebook Page

Today we have our first Guest, Leri Hansen. Leri is the first and only handler to get to French Ring 3 with an American Pit Bull Terrier. She is a world class trainer,/competitor and we are lucky to call her our friend and teammate. On this episode we talk about The American Pit Bull Terrier, as a pet, a sport dog, and a protection dog. As well as what should be expected when considering this breed.  Instagram:  @elevatedcanineacademy  @oscarmoradogs  @roel_g   Leri Hanson's  Instagram accounts are:  @lerihanson @nitrostaffs_ichi @workingpitbullcentral

Your Working Dog Radio hosts, Eric @vanessk9 & Ted @ted_summers, sit down with⁣ retired FBI Special Agent and all around K9 badass, Sonja Nordstrom. ⁣ ⁣ Nordstrom served in the FBI as a Special Agent for over two decades. In addition to hunting bad guys, Nordstrom joined a volunteer K9 SAR team and progressed through the ranks as a handler, trainer, and evaluator. She has also earned her Detector Dog Trainer's Certification from VLK, and has provided Detection K9 training to LE, Professional, and Volunteer K9 teams and lectures hundreds of LE regarding the use of K9s in homicide investigations. ⁣ ⁣ Through the years, Sonja has completed thousands of hours of training under nationally recognized LE, SAR, and sport K9 trainers and experts, was Secretary of the Los Angeles County Police Canine Association, attained local and national level search dog certifications, and has trained and competed in the K9 sports of Schutzhund, Mondioring, and French Ring. While stationed in Los Angeles, Nordstrom deployed with her Human Remains Detection K9s for the FBI Evidence Response Team (ERT) and CARDA (California Rescue Dog Association) throughout California, the Western United States, Mexico, the Middle East, and to the Pentagon after 9/11. Nordstrom is currently fielding with her fifth HRD K9, is the lead trainer and President of a volunteer K9 SAR Team in Utah, and has completed hundreds of field missions including several deployments to Europe to assist in locating WWII MIAs.⁣ ⁣ In 2014, after retiring from the FBI, Nordstrom opened Sonja's Dog Training, LLC, providing training for pet dogs and also specialized training in detection and scent work for LE, SAR, and pet dog handlers. She is also a UKC Nosework and AKC Scentwork Judge. Most recently, Nordstrom has formed American Tactical Aggregate K-9 in collaboration with Steve "Zane" Stoops and several other top tier LE and Military CAD Trainers and Handlers. Nordstrom is also a host of the podcast K9 Top Tales, which features stories of K9 warriors, crime fighters, protectors, and rescuers as told by their Law Enforcement, Military, and Search & Rescue Handlers and Partners. ⁣ ⁣ Nordstrom has been a regular badass in her career, and after the badge. If you're looking for some inspiration, some training tips, go to see what she's up to now, be sure to follow her podcast: ⁣ K9 Top Tales https://anchor.fm/k9-top-tales⁣ IG @ k9_top_tales https://www.instagram.com/k9_top_tales⁣ FB @k9toptales https://www.facebook.com/k9toptales⁣ ⁣ ⁣American Tactical Aggregate K-9 with Steve Stoops:  ⁣ website: atak9.com⁣ IG @ata.k9 https://www.instagram.com/ata.k9⁣ FB @aggregatek9 https://www.facebook.com/aggregatek9⁣ ⁣

Mark Keating truly is one of the dog training worlds most understated gems. Beyond being a dog trainer Mark is fascinated with animal training in general, which over the last 4yrs has resulted in him investing significant time in learning the craft of raising and training highly intelligent flighted birds. As a French Ring decoy Mark was renowned as a 'monster' due to his aptitude and intelligence in presenting very difficult pictures for the dogs he played against in competition. As a dog trainer Mark displays a beautiful feel for dogs, with a strong, well demonstrated ability to connect with dogs and tap into the best that dog has to give. Beyond titling multiple dogs to French Ring titles himself, Mark has also coached and assisted in the development of a great many dogs towards high level competitive outcomes. In his current role as a dog trainer Mark trains dogs on the daily, predominantly in a board and train capacity at Red Star Kennel in Hudson, WI USA. If you found value in this episode, or if youre a fan of this podcast, then please consider supporting us via your favourite podcasting platform: HOW CAN YOU SUPPORT THE SHOW? 1 - Rate the show ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 2 - Leave a comment on the Apple podcasting platform - even one word helps other folks find the show 

Today, Stacy and Robin chat with fellow co-host Crystal Wing, who has been training dogs since 2006 and has been involved in protection sports over the years. She is the Training Director for the Evolution Working Dog Club located in St. Louis, Mo. and a certified trial helper through GSDCA for IGP and training decoy for Mondioring.Our conversation centers around Crystal's focus on engagement as being foundational when it comes to dog training of any kind, alongside her conviction that imagination is your most powerful tool as a trainer.“Training is simple,” says Crystal, “but it's not easy. Good training is good training and it doesn't matter what sport or what area. It's all about having clear criteria. It's about the foundation of engagement. [...] With engagement as that bottom relationship piece that builds everything else, it doesn't matter what I'm doing with my dog. That's where it all starts.”Asked about the secret to successfully incorporating play into dog training, Crystal says that it's important to read the dog and go with what they want to do, not what the handler wants to do.“All of the play that we create, creates all of our obedience. It's all started through play which creates engagement which then channels right into obedience. Play is work. Work is play. It's all the same thing.”Key Topics:About Crystal's four dogs and her foray into dog training (1:12)What to know about dog bites (8:03)Why the “introverted” Crystal acts as a decoy for dogs (11:12)Decoys versus helpers (13:24)What Crystal applies her search and rescue work from her protection background (21:20)Defining “IGP,” “Obedience,” “Protection Phase,” “Mondioring” and “PDC” (24:10)Learning from the best (29:45)Crystal's “creative bank account” and the art of dog training (38:32)“Without great rewards, what's my only option? I have to go to punishment.” (46:33)Crystal's advice for those who want to incorporate more play into their dog training (48:45)The biggest mistake people make when playing with their dogs (53:00)Crystal's closing thoughts (56:29)Learn more about Crystal at www.facebook.com/EvolutionWDC.You can follow us for notifications of upcoming episodes, find us at k9detectioncollaborative.com to enjoy the freebies and tell your friends so you can keep the conversations going.Jingle by: www.mavericksings.com Instagram: @mavericktasticAudio editing & other podcast services by: www.thepodcastman.com Instagram: @the_podcast_man

Training Without Conflict® Podcast Episode Seven: Michael Ellis In this episode of the Training Without Conflict® Podcast, Ivan Balabanov interviews long-time friend and colleague Michael Ellis. Michael Ellis is an internationally known and respected dog trainer with over 30 years of experience in competitive dog sports. Michael has instructed countless seminars all around the country and the world. He is also a renowned teacher at the globally recognized, Michael Ellis School for dog trainers.   Michael was also one of the pioneers of popularizing Mondioring in the United States.  He was one of the first Americans that were certified Mondioring decoys, and he has done decoy and helper work across several dog sports at the National Championship level. In this episode, Ivan and Michael catch up on some memories they shared in the early 90s training alongside each other in Northern California and then dive deep into some of the biggest issues facing present day dog training. They discuss the recent attempts of the force free camp to push their “positive only” propaganda and dive deep into why their claims are false and unfounded. The attack on dog training aversive tools in Europe is also a very hot topic. Ivan and Michael also share some knowledge about the history of dog sports and their opinions about Schutzhund (IPO/IGP), French Ring, Belgian Ring, Mondioring, and PSA in the present day. Along with all this, Michael is also the breeder of the storied Loups Du Soleil Malinois kennel, which brings up a great discussion about breeding, genetics, puppy selection, and puppy raising. This discussion is truly a masterclass of knowledge that all dog owners, pet trainers, dog sport competitors, and working dog handlers will enjoy over and over.  One listen will not be enough to soak in the incredible dog training knowledge contained in this podcast. For more information about Michael Ellis, check out https://michaelellisschool.com Ivan Balabanov is a 2-time World Champion dog trainer, Ot Vitosha Malinois breeder, trainer of Premier Protection Dogs and founder of the revolutionary Training Without Conflict® dog training system. For more information about Ivan Balabanov and information on how to train your dog using the Training Without Conflict® system, check out: https://trainingwithoutconflict.com https://malinois.com https://premierprotectiondogs.com Please like, comment, and share with your dog friends!

Andy Krueger has been a student, participant, teacher, and trainer of French Ring for over a decade. His secret - stay humble, get inspired, and go all in. He first got into ring & in the bitesuit in 2009 with a local club. Despite not knowing a lot, he continued to show up and that integrity has led him to earning respect in the sport and the prestigious *super select* decoy title, extremely rare in the United States. About Andy - Andy is an Ohio boy, born & raised! He now has his own dog training facility on 7 acres of land outside Cincinnati, also known as the Dog Oasis, where he trains all breeds, pets & working dogs, behavior modification, board and train, etc. In this live we cover: - French Ring Objective & Rules - Point System & Levels - Decoy Role - Decoy vs. Dog dynamic - Tips for decoys - Mouth focus and why - Jumping Dogs - Andy's favorite upper level exercise - the art of Ring & more We first heard about Andy through Mike Jones of Primal Canine @primalcanine when Mike was giving accolades to the sport & Andy's decoying skills (quite different from Protection Sports decoying). Since then, we've been hooked on Andy's YouTube channel and have been fascinated with the sport! Thank you for joining us Andy! We look forward to seeing your continued growth and we'll be practicing that object guard!! There is an art to dog sports and we're grateful for you opening up about what it's like being in it. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/yolo-pup/support

Sharing my warm-up (and cool down) routines for my French Ring dogs! How do they differ from training & competition? Listen now to find out!!! Catch the video replay here: https://fb.watch/5ySog6wM2y/ Want more tips? Join our Facebook Live show every Friday at 8:30 pm Eastern Time to learn more tips and strategies for your business! Visit Northeast K9 Conditioning's Facebook business page to see more videos! www.facebook.com/NortheastK9Conditioning/ Want to know your K9 Fitness IQ? Go here to find out! k9fitnessquiz.com/0 Interested in becoming a Certified Canine Athlete Specialist (CCAS)? Download our program brochure to learn about the program! https://elitek9athlete.com Looking for ways to grow your audience, expand your business, and offer innovative programs that stand out from your competition? Check out our Canine Business Mastermind program! https://northeastk9conditioning.lpages.co/mastermind-program/

In this episode, you'll hear from Allison and Kirsty, two women who compete with their Belgian Malinois in the sports of Mondioring and French Ring, respectively. Kirsty also raises roping horses professionally, and uses dogs to help her herd cattle. These ladies give us an inside look at the world of competitive canine ring sports and also life on a ranch with a working dog.

Sonja's accomplishments with dogs and training credentials achieved during the last 25 years are unmatched. In 2014, Sonja retired from the FBI after 23 years of service as a Special Agent and opened Sonja's Dog Training.  While serving with the FBI, Sonja completed thousands of hours of training under nationally recognized trainers, competed in the protection sports of Schutzhund, Mondioring, and French Ring, attained local and national level search dog certifications, completed 100's of field missions with her K9s for the FBI and others, and has trained and worked with 100's of dogs of all ages and types.  For approximately 10 years, while stationed in Los Angeles, Sonja deployed with her K9s for the FBI Evidence Response Team (ERT) and CARDA (California Rescue Dog Association) throughout California, the Western United States, Mexico, the Middle East, and to the Pentagon after 9/11. Sonja also teaches the dog sports of Nosework/Scentwork and is a UKC Nosework and AKC Scentwork Judge.    You can contact her and visit her website at www.sonjasdogtraining.com   You can also listen to her podcast K9 Top Tales at https://anchor.fm/k9-top-tales   SHOW SPONSORS: FORD K9 LLC.   www.fordk9.com Attend any one of our classes or seminars.  Ford K9 now offers the new CSDT (Certified Sport Detection Dog Trainer) classes.  We offer Level 1 and Level 2.  Becoming a CSDT will help you develop as a trainer and become more familiar and efficient as a trainer working with all types of dogs and handlers wanting to join in the great sport of scent detection.   Ford K9 also offers Handler and Trainer courses for those working professional detection dogs such as Explosive, Firearm, Narcotic, Mass Media and Cell Phone Detection.   We are offering Seminars of Cognition for Handlers and Trainers in SAR/HRD as well as Wildlife Conservation K9 Teams.  Contact us for more information at www.fordk9.com   SHOW YOUR SUPPORT for K9s TALKING SCENTS PODCAST you now have all kinds of gear for you guys from Shirts, Hats, Mugs and more just got to www.fordk9.com and click on the ONLINE STORE

Husband and wife, dynamic duo Janelle and Ben Allanson discuss the sport of French ring. They walk through their history of working and titling Belgian Malinois and Dutch Shepherds, raising a dog for police work, and owning their own dog boarding and daycare facility. Ben speaks at length about French ring and the character of the sport, and what it’s actually like to be a decoy and get bit by powerhouse dogs. The two are the perfect balance of decoy & handler perspective and share super candid thoughts about living and working with dogs. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Connect with Lindsay, Derek, Erica, and other like-minded edupreneurs in the Teachers' Lounge on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/teacherslounging/  Share the show with others by telling them to go to wealthyteachers.com About Erica: Erica C. Boling, PhD, is a retired Associate Professor of Education from Rutgers University and the owner and founder of Northeast K9 Conditioning, LLC and ECB Aspire, Inc. Erica helps sport and working dog handlers create peak performance, canine athletes by teaching them how to integrate canine fitness into their training programs. She is also a leading authority on how dog enthusiasts can parlay their knowledge and passion for canine fitness into profitable programs and additional income for their dog-related business. Erica is a Certified Canine Fitness Trainer (CCFT), Certified Canine Massage Provider, member of the United States Federation of Sleddog Sports (USFSS) and a member of their USA National Team. She is also one of the founding members of North Pocono Search, Rescue and Recovery. Currently, Erica teaches canine fitness to officers at the Atlantic County “John Sonny Burke” K-9 Academy. She also does narcotics detection with her Belgian Malinois and trains and competes in French Ring. https://www.northeastk9conditioning.com/ https://www.facebook.com/NortheastK9Conditioning https://www.instagram.com/ecboling/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/erica-boling/ Music: Helios by Romos

Connect with Lindsay, Derek, Erica, and other like-minded edupreneurs in the Teachers' Lounge on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/teacherslounging/  Share the show with others by telling them to go to wealthyteachers.com About Erica: Erica C. Boling, PhD, is a retired Associate Professor of Education from Rutgers University and the owner and founder of Northeast K9 Conditioning, LLC and ECB Aspire, Inc. Erica helps sport and working dog handlers create peak performance, canine athletes by teaching them how to integrate canine fitness into their training programs. She is also a leading authority on how dog enthusiasts can parlay their knowledge and passion for canine fitness into profitable programs and additional income for their dog-related business. Erica is a Certified Canine Fitness Trainer (CCFT), Certified Canine Massage Provider, member of the United States Federation of Sleddog Sports (USFSS) and a member of their USA National Team. She is also one of the founding members of North Pocono Search, Rescue and Recovery. Currently, Erica teaches canine fitness to officers at the Atlantic County “John Sonny Burke” K-9 Academy. She also does narcotics detection with her Belgian Malinois and trains and competes in French Ring. https://www.northeastk9conditioning.com/ https://www.facebook.com/NortheastK9Conditioning https://www.instagram.com/ecboling/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/erica-boling/ Music: Helios by Romos

Episode 77: Leg Day with Jason Davis Ted and Eric sit down with Jason Davis from Karma K9 during an HRD seminar. Jason is an accomplished French ring trainer, handler, and decoy. The guys talk about French Ring and the transition to law enforcement. Jason covers how law enforcement handlers and trainers should teach Leah targeting and leg bites and the importance of each. AND OF COURSE, thank you to our amazing partners: HITS K9 Training and Conference https://www.hitsk9.net or Jeff Barrett at 863-529-5113 Ray Allen Manufacturing https://www.rayallen.com (USE DISCOUNT CODE WorkingDogRadio FOR 10% OFF your next order) Southern Coast K9 at https://www.southerncoastk9.com or 877.903.DOGS Dogtra (Use Discount Code WDR10 for 10% a single item over $200) www.dogtra.com Horizon Structures http://www.horizonstructures.com/commercial-dog-kennels Toll Free 888-447-4337 Silver State K9 https://www.SilverStateK9.com or on Facebook and Instagram @silverstatek9 QuickDerm by Vet Care Fast Acting Wound Care for all species of animal! Use Code: 10WDR For 10% off your first order!! www.vetcare.us Tactical Police K9 Training at https://www.tacticalpolicek9training.com CombatBet Challenge Coins https://combatbet.com Use discount code: WORKINGDOGRADIO for 10% off!!! & TRY BEFORE YOU BUY SAMPLER PACK HERE: www.combatbet.com/wdr then plug in discount code: WDR (sample pack offer valid in US only) ALM Suits & K9 Equipment https://www.almk9equipment.com (Ise Discount Code WDRADIO for 10% off your first order) Tripwire Operations Group https://www.tripwireops.org

Episode 77: Leg Day with Jason Davis Ted and Eric sit down with Jason Davis from Karma K9 during an HRD seminar. Jason is an accomplished French ring trainer, handler, and decoy. The guys talk about French Ring and the transition to law enforcement. Jason covers how law enforcement handlers and trainers should teach Leah targeting and leg bites and the importance of each. AND OF COURSE, thank you to our amazing partners: HITS K9 Training and Conference https://www.hitsk9.net or Jeff Barrett at 863-529-5113 Ray Allen Manufacturing https://www.rayallen.com (USE DISCOUNT CODE WorkingDogRadio FOR 10% OFF your next order) Southern Coast K9 at https://www.southerncoastk9.com or 877.903.DOGS Dogtra (Use Discount Code WDR10 for 10% a single item over $200) www.dogtra.com Horizon Structures http://www.horizonstructures.com/commercial-dog-kennels Toll Free 888-447-4337 Silver State K9 https://www.SilverStateK9.com or on Facebook and Instagram @silverstatek9 QuickDerm by Vet Care Fast Acting Wound Care for all species of animal! Use Code: 10WDR For 10% off your first order!! www.vetcare.us Tactical Police K9 Training at https://www.tacticalpolicek9training.com CombatBet Challenge Coins https://combatbet.com Use discount code: WORKINGDOGRADIO for 10% off!!! & TRY BEFORE YOU BUY SAMPLER PACK HERE: www.combatbet.com/wdr then plug in discount code: WDR (sample pack offer valid in US only) ALM Suits & K9 Equipment https://www.almk9equipment.com (Ise Discount Code WDRADIO for 10% off your first order) Tripwire Operations Group https://www.tripwireops.org

Summary: Shade has been training and competing in dog sports since she was a kid. She has successfully competed in Schutzhund, AKC obedience and French Ring and her focus is really on clear communication with your dog. She also recently launched a blog on her website, which all of you should check out at www.shadesdogtraining.com. Next Episode:  To be released 10/05/2018, an interview with Stacy Barnett to take a deeper dive into scentwork than we have previously here on the podcast, talking about everything from start line routines to scent cones and converging odor. 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 Shade Whitesel back on the podcast to talk about concepts of competition. For those of you who haven’t heard the previous episodes with Shade, Shade has been training and competing in dog sports since she was a kid. She has successfully competed in Schutzhund, AKC obedience and French Ring, and her focus is really on clear communication with your dog. She also recently launched a blog on her website, which all of you should check out at www.shadesdogtraining.net. Welcome back to the podcast, Shade! Shade Whitesel: Thank you Melissa. Thanks for having me on again. Melissa Breau: Of course! To start us out, do you want to just remind listeners a little bit about who you are and share a little about the dogs you share your life with … including of course that newest addition? Shade Whitesel: Well, we’ve got six dogs right now. We’ve got three old ones — 10 and a half, 11 and a half, and 12 — so it’s going to be a hard couple of years, but they’re all doing really well. And we have two we call the twins, which is Bailey and Ones, who are almost 6. And the new arrival is a 4-month-old German Shepherd puppy. All of them are German Shepherds, with the exception of one of our old ones, who is a German Shepherd/Australian Shepherd mix. So yeah, we’ve got a full house here, including two kitties, so a lot of individuals in our small house. Melissa Breau: So let’s start with the puppy. It’s Talic, right? Am I pronouncing it right? Shade Whitesell: Yeah, you’re pronouncing it great. Melissa Breau: All right. So I’m pretty sure it’s puppy season, because it feels like everybody has puppies right now. I talked to Sarah Stremming and Leslie about Watson, and I talked to Hannah recently about Figment, and I’ve asked everybody a different version of this question, but … with a new puppy in the house, what have you been focusing on? Shade Whitesel: Well, I haven’t listened to what they said, so I’m interested in what they said. But I’m really about building his reinforcements, like, how I’m going to reinforce him, which means training his toy skills, how to use “chase” and “strike” as reinforcement, will you eat food here, will you eat food there, and then also, as far as skill-wise, how to move his body. Onesie’s got some challenges in his body as far as doing Schutzhund, and Schutzhund is physically challenging on the dogs, so I’m wanting Talic to understand how to move his body in different directions, how to be two on, two off, hind feet. I just want him to be really aware and really flexible and really supple, so I’ve been concentrating a lot on shaping skills like that. And he still does not know how to sit, and that’s not a bad thing. He knows a lot of other words that mean reinforcement, but it’s mainly about building the joy in what I can give him, because that’s what I’m going to be using to teach all the behaviors, like sit, and if I don’t have the reinforcement, then I can’t get the sit. Melissa Breau: We see that pop up on the Facebook page every so often, where people are like, “I have a puppy and I just realized that he’s however many month’s old and he doesn’t actually have that many things on verbal.” It’s like, they’ll come, they’ll happen, as long as you’ve got the other pieces. With new puppies, one of the places people tend to struggle is looking at those long-term goals — like you mentioned Schutzhund — that they have for that dog, and figuring out what to teach more immediately or in the short term. Can you talk a little bit about what your longer-term goals are with Talic and how you’re starting to prepare him for that? Shade Whitesel: Short term is basically the reinforcement, and how to move his body, and long term would be Schutzhund and AKC. I really want him to be OK around other dogs, working in close quarters with other dogs. I taught a seminar this weekend, a camp seminar with Amy Cook and Sarah Stremming, and it was really busy. We had lots of dogs around, and I was really impressed with how Talic handled himself in that environment. He was able to demo a couple of times, he was able to eat, he was able to demo his light toy skills. That’s so important to me because that’s going to fit into his long term, which is do the stuff around other dogs and be comfortable about it. So longer term, the competition goals. No one ever talks about it as much, but short term and long term is life skills. My dogs are in the house, and my short-term goal is getting along with everybody in the house, including that cats. That’s my long-term goal as well — to get along with everybody for all your life. Dogs mature and they’re at different stages, so sometimes that can be challenging when you’ve got a lot of dogs, and when you’ve got highly motivated dogs too. Melissa Breau: This session obviously you’ve got your “Crucial Concepts of Competition” class back on the schedule, which feels a little timely! What “crucial concepts” does it address, and how do those skills eventually help prepare us and obviously our dogs for competition? Shade Whitesel: First of all, I think I might enter Talic in the class, which means I’ll run a Gold spot showing what I’m working on with him and he’ll work through the class skills. I find a lot of people gain perspective seeing the trainers work the dog, so it’s good being a student. When I critique my own videos, when I realize how much more work we have to do, I have more empathy, so that’s a good thing. The class itself is about different ways of getting behavior. Do you want to lure that do you want to shape it, I just go through the ways in which to get it, making sure people are knowledgeable about when do you add the cue, how do you name a lured behavior, how do you name a shaped behavior. Not so much what’s the best way; I don’t really want to compare the ways. I just want to say, “Here’s how you do this, here’s how you do this.” We go through offered behaviors, we go through getting plain behavior loops, clean movement cycles, how do you decide whether your learner is in the frame of mind to work, things like that. I love giving the class because I feel that it covers a lot of different stuff, and so people can get an overall of what they’re going to use to get behaviors. Melissa Breau: I mentioned in the intro that one of the things you focus on is really clear communication when training, which I know obviously all of those bits and pieces fall into that. What are a few of the ways that we can, for lack of a better word, muddy things up when we’re trying to train a new behavior? Shade Whitesel: The first and foremost thing is people’s mechanics aren’t clean. It’s basically click, pause, then treat. That way the dog starts understanding to listen, and not to watch your hands and not to watch where the treats are. I see training get really muddy when there’s not clear cues for what the dog is supposed to do. There’s a lot of training sports that we do want the dog to watch us, like in heeling they need to be on one side of our body, so obviously they need to watch the left side of our body. But we really want the dog also to be listening to what you’re saying as you’re teaching them. In a lot of our sports, body language is not allowed, and we want to be clear in those mechanics. Also know what you’re teaching. Have a clear idea of the steps to get there, and what exactly you want to teach and what you’re going to reinforce. So I really like people to know what they’re teaching and what they’re going for. Melissa Breau: What are some of those common signs that our dogs give us that maybe we’re not being clear? Shade Whitesel: My puppy walked away from me today in his little training session, and we want to stop before they do that. Walking away — that’s not so good. I should have noticed before. But basically look-aways, not re-orienting toward you right away, sniffing, leaving, vocalization, things like that are a good sign that your training is going in a way that you don’t want it to. If you’re using toy skills, dogs that are taking a little longer to come back to you, or a little longer to give up the ball or the toy. You know things are going wrong, or you know your learner is having a hard time with stuff, when they stop re-orientating to you for the next rep, if that’s what you want. If you have a training loop where the dog is doing something, getting reinforcement, and then re-orientating to you in that behavior, then that re-orientating to you — I call that a reset — when that starts to deteriorate, that’s when you know your training session is getting a little harder for your learner. If you’re doing something shaping and the dog is re-orientating to the mat when you’re teaching a “Go to the mat,” if they start arcing on the way to the mat or something, that would be another sign that the training is not going well. And dogs will do that before they leave, before they sniff, so those are the things you want to start noticing and adjust your training session for. Melissa Breau: A lot of times we miss those early signals where things are taking a little bit longer, and it’s good to know that that’s where we want to start to listen. Shade Whitesel: Yeah, and more and more I know that I, as a trainer, I start noticing it faster. It’s a look away, it’s a slow into heel that we need to notice, because those things come before the dog is like, “I don’t know what heel means.” So we need to notice those little things, if that’s how we’re training. If your dog normally looks away in heel, then that wouldn’t be something that would give you information, but if normally they’re heeling along really well and then heel up against a baby gate and the dog looks away, that’s a real good sign that that’s hard. Melissa Breau: And it makes sense to go back and bring it down, and obviously that’s one of those places where video becomes super valuable, because even if you don’t see it in the moment, when you look back at that video, sometimes it’s a lot more obvious. Shade Whitesel: Video is great because you don’t always know. Or if I videoed my session before I’m sure the puppy did some stuff, before he went, “You know, that’s too hard,” if I videoed, I might be a little bit more knowledgeable about that, and in fact I will video our next session for that information. Melissa Breau: Often, if communication is less than clear, it leads to mistakes or misunderstandings about the behavior that we’re trying to teach. I know you have a specific protocol that you share for dealing with mistakes that happen during training. Can you talk us through that? Shade Whitesel: Just having taught this camp seminar with Amy Cook and Sarah Stremming, we had a Q&A session at the end of it, and we talked about mistakes both days. I want to thank … I didn’t know the woman who said this, but a shout out to her because it’s a really good way to put it: I want people to think of mistakes as information for the handler — not for the dog, for the handler — that whatever we’re trying to teach, it’s not getting through. So first of all, just knowing that, knowing that mistakes are information that we’re not communicating what we thought we did, because the learner, the dog, they always think they’re right. They’re doing what we’re teaching them, so mistakes are not really that much mistakes. They’re information that “I need to get a little better about something in that training session,” and we don’t always know at the time. As far as specific protocols, I have some stuff where it’s like, OK, the dog makes one mistake, reset the circumstances that made that mistake, and then, if they make two mistakes in a row, always, always go back, make it super easy, make sure they get reinforced afterwards. Another thing I might do, if I’m working on positions or something, I might feed the dog in position and then do a reset cookie. So basically the dog’s getting two treats: they’re getting one in position and then a reset cookie. If they get the position wrong, then I might not feed them in position, but I would still get that reset treat out there, so if they understand what to do instead, the next time they’ll do it. So they know they missed their opportunity for a cookie there. Everything I’m talking about, like the resetting or missing out on a cookie, that really depends a lot on the history of your learner and how old your learner is in the work. You don’t want to reset a puppy. I might treat one of these mistakes — I have a 6-year-old dog — a little differently than I will treat Talic’s mistakes, both of them being my own fault as their teacher, but one has six years of learning history, whereas the little puppy just has a couple months of learning history, so treating those differently might be a possibility. The big thing, too, is they made a mistake — they already made a mistake. There’s nothing you can do. Don’t worry about it. Give them another behavior they can do. I find everyone’s so worried about the mistakes, and more and more I think we should go … we should note it in our minds: They came off 30 degrees off position in heel position. Let’s not do that again. Let’s figure out and let’s give them a behavior that they can do that I can pay them for, get them reinforced as quickly as possible, and then move on and try to evaluate why they didn’t come in correctly to heel position. Those are just some things I’m thinking about off the top of my head about what we call mistakes but really should be information for us. Melissa Breau: If that kind of stuff happens regularly, obviously it can lead to frustration on the dog’s part. Let’s say someone is seeing definite signs of frustration in their training — barking or leaving or any of those obvious flags. How can they begin to figure out what’s going on and make a plan to fix it? Shade Whitesel: Well, video is your friend, and we’re all kind of talking about the same thing: frustration, mistakes, training being muddy, not having clear resets, behavior from the dog — it’s all kind of the same thing. Frustration — I think we label frustration when the dog is barking or pushy at us, whereas it’s probably the same reason as the dog that sniffs and leaves. Both of it is that they’re semi-confused over what we want, or we’re not communicating correctly. What I always look at is I look at my resets. Does my dog re-orientate to me as fast as they can? If that gets slow, then I always look. If my dog’s barking, that’s definitely I’m going to make sure my rate of reinforcement is up, make sure I’m communicating, make sure I’m breaking it down as tiny steps as possible. Working on my German Shepherds, they love to bark, and I’m very, very careful about drilling very hard behaviors. Frustration-wise, a lot of Shepherds will bark when you ask them to back up or ask them to do a left finish, and I’m very, very careful about training those in a calm way so that I don’t get any extra whines, things like that, and making sure that I don’t ask for ten of them, so that my dog isn’t frustrated, like, “I just did that.” Whereas a lot of times where the dog is moving forward, that’s not as frustrating for them. So look at your training, make sure everything’s clear so your dog isn’t frustrated, but also look at what you’re asking them to do. If they’re trying to inhibit themselves and do a lot of start-stops, that can be really frustrating for dogs that like to move and go forward, so that’s an extra thing to think about. The other thing about frustration is did your dog expect reinforcement, and have you made this association of your dog wanting reinforcement and now all of a sudden you’re not giving them reinforcement, so they get frustrated at you. So it’s about associations. I see a lot of times — and myself included, because I’m far from a perfect trainer — we may stay too long at one step in eventually what’s going to be a behavior chain, and when we try to move beyond that step of training, the dog is like, “But wait a minute. You paid me twenty times, and now this twenty-first time, why aren’t you paying me?” So we have to make sure that we up the criteria as fast as our learner is able to, so we don’t create that frustration of being at one step and then the dog thinking that that’s the end product. I usually describe it, if we’re teaching “Go to the mat,” because that’s a really easy way to describe it. Let’s say it’s five steps to go to the mat, and if we click at Step 2 three times and then we expect Step 3, maybe our specific learner thought, I only moved two steps to this mat. Have you clicked that three times so that’s all I do. And then they don’t understand when two steps doesn’t get a click. I always describe it that way because that seems to make sense to people, where we’re thinking we’re waiting for the next step, where the learner is like, “Wait a minute. You just taught me take two steps.” That’s often a thing that we can figure out in video when we watch them and think about in our training sessions. So lots of stuff to think about, and there’s no recipe for this, which makes it a little hard sometimes. Melissa Breau: Another endorsement for the value of video for sure. Shade Whitesel: Totally. It’s made me a better trainer. Melissa Breau: Looking at the syllabus for “Crucial Concepts,” it lists a lot of, obviously, a lot of concepts. Do you have specific skills — I know you mentioned mat work a couple of times — that students will work through to apply those concepts, or are they picking their own behaviors to work on? How does that work? Shade Whitesel: I do show behaviors that I want them to do, and they can pick their own, if they know those. For instance, one of the behaviors we show is “Go to a mat.” That’s real simple for the shaping part of it. You can choose to shape something else, but I’d rather people take non-trial behaviors so they aren’t so worried about stuff. I don’t want them to try to lure a perfect sit because they’re worried about having that perfect sit for heeling, things like that. I just want nonsense behaviors for them to practice these concepts on, so I really want people to do it on tricks. So I have suggested behaviors, but they can also, with instructor approval, pick their own. Melissa Breau: Fair enough. Fair enough. Share Whitesel: Yeah. Melissa Breau: I think, for a lot of folks, they’ll look at a class like this and they aren’t sure how to tell if it’s a good fit for them and their dog. Can you talk a little bit about who the class is for? Is it for beginners? Folks with young dogs? Experienced competitors? Where’s the focus? Shade Whitesel: All the things. All the people. I don’t think people realize that it’s not for beginners. It’s a great class for beginners because I start really basic and then I work up, but it’s also … I can guarantee you there’s stuff in there that you don’t know, even if you’ve been training dogs a lot. We’re always learning, and as instructors, we’re always learning, and I want this class to show you the basic stuff of how to learn, how to shape, and how to get offered behaviors, but I also talk about how to get clean loops in your training. By far, I see people not doing what we consider the foundation behaviors, the foundation mechanics, and it really, really helps to go back and work on that, and it’s going to really help your training. I’ve had a couple people say, after they took the class, that they got so much out of it; that they thought it was an elementary class, but they got a lot out of it that they didn’t realize. So I think a lot of people should take that. It’s going to be really helpful. Melissa Breau: You’ve also got your retrieve class on the schedule this term. Can you share a little about that class too, just what approach you use and who should consider that class? Shade Whitesel: I shape the retrieve, specifically shape the hold. And to clarify, this class, the retrieve is on retrieving a dumbbell, or mainly an obedience retrieve, where you’re going to send the dog out for a dumbbell and they’re either going to come to heel if they’re hunting, or I think FCI they come to heel position, they don’t do front, or we’ll teach the basic AKC or CKC dumbbell retrieve where the dog comes to front. So to clarify, we’re using … this is a formal, so the dog goes out, gets a dumbbell, and comes back. I’m not playing with the dumbbell, I’m not getting the dumbbell to be very exciting. I’m using what the dog is already is reinforced by, which is normally toy stuff to shape the hold and the dumbbell, so basically they’re retrieving the dumbbell for their toy. It’s preferable and ideal if people already have the toy class in their libraries, if they already have some toy skills, because I really, really like to use the toy marker cue of switch, which is switching grip to grip, so like toy to toy, but it’s not necessary for them to do the class. We can do a lot of the stuff with food, or if they already have some toy skills but they don’t have switch, I’ve got a couple of clients or student who have used just the basic toy skills they already had. So ideally I’d love for people to have the relevant toy skill of switch to shape the hold, but it’s not totally necessary. I’ll work with you, especially at the Gold spot, if you just have food. But really we’re shaping it. We, in the past, have given this class back-to-back, because I think it takes six weeks to get a really good hold on the object that you’re going to have to get, and then the next six weeks to get a really nice retrieve. So I’ve given the class in back-to-back terms. I’m not going to this time. I’m probably going to start teaching this class twice a year, and so ideally be realistic and realize you’re not going to usually be able to teach a retrieve in six short weeks. That’s really a three-month project. Melissa Breau: You mean people can’t get their final formal retrieve ready to walk into an obedience ring in six weeks? No way! Shade Whitesel: It’s like heeling. It takes a little longer. Melissa Breau: That’s so funny. Shade Whitesel: But I’m going to give it more often. People can work on it, and then work on it again in a couple of months. So they should get a good hold out of a hold in front or a hold in heel for this. And I do think this class might be good for people who need to work on dogs that chew in a hold. This might be a good class for that. Melissa Breau: To help problem-solve that a little bit. Shade Whitesel: Yeah. Melissa Breau: I will say, while I have absolutely shaped a “Bring the object to me,” I have no hold on my retrieve, so it’s interesting. Maybe that’s a class I should look at. Shade Whitesel: It is the most boring part because often we can convince a dog to go get something for us. It’s the sitting in front, holding it calmly, that’s so weird for the dogs. I mean, boy, who dreams up that, you know? The dogs are like, “Why would I sit here in perfect front and hold this calmly? I want to chew it, I want to fling it at you,” all the things that they want to do. I enjoy it, but it’s a behavior that probably doesn’t make sense to dogs, which makes it hard for us. Melissa Breau: Right. So I’ve got one last question here. My last question is the one that I’ve taken to asking everyone when they come on: What’s a lesson that you’ve learned or been reminded of recently when it comes to dog training? Shade Whitesel: You know what? Listen to your dog. I think I said that before, too, but just over and over, listen to your learner, listen to what they’re saying. My little puppy, a couple of days ago I’m trying to teach him a chin rest, and I stick my hand … and he would do one perfect chin rest and then he’d leave. He’s a leaver, and I haven’t had a leaver in a while. Normally I have dogs that bark at me. He’d do this perfect chin rest, and I’d give him his little marker cue and give him his little treat, and then he’d be like, “Nope, not doing it again.” And it’s like, why not? Because he was doing it perfectly. Well, obviously I’m not reinforcing it enough. So I switched to, like, five treats in a row, and he was like, “Oh, OK. I’ll do more than one.” I think it’s easy for us, not that I did, but I think it’s easy for us to go, “Well, he knows how to do it, because he just did it, and he’s choosing not to.” And he was. He was like, “You’re not paying me enough for that hard behavior.” I don’t tend to think of a chin rest as a hard behavior, because my other dogs are like, “Sure, we’ll chin rest all day.” But for him, as a young, active puppy, it’s a really hard, expensive behavior, and he was telling me that. Once I started paying it with more food, he was happy to do it again and again, and he’s got a beautiful chin rest now. And now it’s an easier behavior for him, and I don’t have to pay him five treats at once. But over and over in my training sessions, listen to what your dog’s telling you. Listen to what your learner’s telling you. Is your rate of reinforcement up there? Do they like it? I love that way of training, just listening to what they’re saying and their opinion about it. I just think that’s cool. Melissa Breau: That’s so interesting, because it’s something that I was talking to Hannah about. She was on last week and we chatted quite a bit about this idea that dogs really are each unique, and they really do have different things that are hard for them than other dogs, and it’s important to recognize that. Some things are going to be an expensive behavior and some things are going to be a cheap behavior, they’re not going to be the same as the dog you trained before this one. So yes, it’s really interesting. Shade Whitesel: Yeah, and in a way, of course, because I don’t like the same things that my brother and sister like. We all have different interests. So of course dogs, even if they’re related to each other, even if they’re same breed, they’re going to have different likes. I do automatically think of that, but I need to be reminded by my listener, or by my learner, that “This behavior, even though your other dogs know it really well and it was easy, this behavior is hard for me.” So yeah, they’re all individuals, and that’s what makes them pretty darn fascinating. Melissa Breau: Yeah, yeah. Thank you so much Shade. I really appreciate you coming back on the podcast. Shade Whitesel: Thanks for having me. It’s good to talk about this stuff. I enjoy it. Melissa Breau: And thanks to our listeners for tuning in. we’ll be back next week with Stacy Barnett to take a deeper dive into scent work than we previously have here on the podcast, talking about everything from start line routines to scent cones and converging odor. Don’t miss it! It if you haven’t already, subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. CREDITS: Today’s show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called “Buddy.” Audio editing provided by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in -- and happy training!

SUMMARY: Shade Whitesel returns to talk about toys and the process of introducing work to play. For those of you who haven't heard the previous episode with Shade, Shade has been training and competing in dog sports since she was a kid. She has successfully competed in Schutzhund, AKC obedience and French Ring and her focus is really on clear communication with your dog. Links Shadesdogtraining.net Next Episode:  To be released 11/10/2017, featuring Patricia McConnell, to talk about what she's learned over her time in dog training. 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 Shade Whitesel back with us again, this time to talk about toys and the process of introducing work to play. For those of you who haven't heard the previous episode with Shade, Shade has been training and competing in dog sports since she was a kid. She has successfully competed in Schutzhund, AKC obedience and French Ring and her focus is really on clear communication with your dog. She also recently launched a blog on her website, which all of you should check out at www.shadesdogtraining.net. Welcome back, Shade! Shade Whitesell: Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be back. Melissa Breau: I'm glad to have you. So I kind of want to jump straight into things here. So when we talk about play, I think most people think, It's play, and think it should just kind of come naturally to them and to their dog. But all too often that's not the case. So why is it that play can be hard? Shade Whitesel: I think when you're talking about competitive dog sports, we're thinking about play as a reinforcement, and so the dog's idea of what's reinforcing and our idea what we want to teach them might be different. So it's not always easy. And also I think we have in our mind this ideal thing, this ideal of our childhood dog who always brought the ball back, and things like that. My childhood dog didn't. Maybe that's why I teach this, because I had work to do to get her to bring it back. But, so keeping in mind that I'm talking about play with toys, it's basically an interaction between the dog and the handler using toys. It's hard because it involves shaping on the handler's part, where they're working from approximating a little behavior that the dog is giving you to a bigger behavior that you want to eventually use to reward stuff. So it's kind of like even though it's play, we still have to train little parts of it and make it more … train rules in it might be a good way of putting it, where you've got, you know, you can reward with a ball, but you've got to get the ball back. So kind of like those things are all caught up in our word of play, basically. Melissa Breau: So you mentioned in there kind of the bringing the ball back bit, and I think probably one of the most common issues that you hear about when people are talking about play is the dog takes a toy, runs away in the corner, and enjoys it all on their lonesome. What's going on there — and how do you go about teaching the dog that you really can be part of that fun? Shade Whitesel: Well, the dog, when they're going away and they're chewing it, they're really fixated on the object itself, and so they're thinking that the object itself is fun. And what we need to do is we need to teach the dog that they need us for the interaction. So they need us to activate the toy, whether that's taught or whether we're throwing it for them to chase. And that is more fun and we need to create more value for that, rather than the dog taking the toy away and chewing it off in the corner. And one of those things that we need to do is figure out how to play in a way that the dog likes. It really starts there. And once they figure that out, once you figure out how to play in a way the dog likes, they bring the toy back to you automatically. And then value building for having you in there just works. The problems come when we expect the dog to play how we want them to play, like, for instance, how another dog we have played, or, like, what our sport wants our dog to play like, and then it's no longer play and the dog may have other ideas of what they consider play. So it's important to take what the dog offers to you and then reinforce that by giving the dog what they want, which is normally possession of the toy. I find a lot of people just don't want to give the dog the toy because they're so afraid it's going to take it away and chew it up, because that's what they do when they're babies. But in order to get what you want, you kind of have to give the dog what they want, and a lot of times in the beginning of training that's giving them possession, and honoring that, and being OK with that. So later on, and this affects right at the beginning, it is you also need to think about the tugging itself. One of my favorite things is to tell handlers to make it 50-50 when you're tugging with your dog. And that means that 50 percent of the time the dog pulls you around. The other 50 percent you pull the dog around. Most of the issues I see with dogs and handler play is that the handler is pulling the dog around 95 percent or worse, and then the dog doesn't think you're fair. They don't think they can beat you. So then when you finally let them have the toy, they leave. They're kind of saying their opinion of your playing and it's not all that fun for them, so ... And sometimes that's hard to hear, you know. We've got to start with little tiny parts, so … Melissa Breau: It is a little funny in some respects that kind of the dog wants the toy, but the person wants the toy too. Shade Whitesel: Right, and you need to learn, too, the word that occurs to me is cooperate. I'm not sure I mean that. To compete in a way that each creature has fun with it, and compete in a way that the dog thinks they can win, and maybe look at it that way, not that you're just tugging them around because you think that's what they should do. Melissa Breau: So you mentioned kind of the dog has to think it's fun. And we're talking mostly tug and fetch here. So what kinds of cues should people be looking for in their dog's body language to make sure their dog's enjoying the game and actually having fun? Shade Whitesel: Well, they kind of really have to be all in. So I'm not going to really describe what their actual body language looks like, that's probably different with each dog, but one of the things that I don't like to see is a dog that I think is frantic or hectic. And so I want to see a dog that's calmer than frantically tugging backwards. So I think many handlers are conditioned by their sport, or what they've been exposed to, to think that a dog that is frantically tugging backwards, growling and thrashing, is happy, and I'm not sure that that's always the case. It might be frantic and hectic and not so happy. The simple thing to ask the dog is, you know, when you let them have it, do they like it? Do they run laps? Do they come back and play with you, in which case they like that type of play, or do they race away? So that's kind of what you're looking, the actions that they're doing, rather than, like, their actual body language, because I just think that's open to a lot of interpretation based on people seeing other dogs play, things like that. It's really what does the dog do when you give it and how into it are they. So, yeah, that's what I'd be looking at. Melissa Breau: Looking at tug specifically, what are some of the common mistakes maybe that people make -- either in your toys class or in general -- and how would you address them? Shade Whitesel: Well, the biggest thing is we have to remember we're bigger than the dog, and so we kind of overwhelm the dog with the tugging, especially if the dog is young or if it's smaller than us. I mean, you know, really what I see people accidentally doing is they're dragging the dog all around and they're never allowing the dog to drag them around. And the dog has to affect you, they have to feel like they can pull you down and get the toy, or make you move, or make your hands go loose, or something like that. And then the other common thing is people never give the dog the toy, and that's just a big deal, because they're scared that the dog might not bring it back, and so they don't give it to them. It's a teaching thing. It's teaching trust around your hands near toys. Hands near the dog. My dog thinks hands are good. He thinks they're for shoving toys into. And that's what I want dogs to learn, rather than being overwhelmed. So that's kind of why I'm really big on letting the dog have it and then choose to come back. That gives me information on how I'm playing and if the dog likes that. Melissa Breau: With fetch or with ball play, are there common mistakes you see people make? Shade Whitesel: Yeah, they start, like, they get really concerned with the dropping, which, you know, we have to get the dog to drop it, so, but they start commanding it and cuing it and verbally making the dog do it, and using a little bit of coercion to get the dog to come back and drop it. And those, I'd say, what I want my dogs to figure out is that their dropping activates me, so when a dog drops a toy at my feet, that activates me to bring out another ball in sight and throw it. That's what I want them to look at the out as, rather than this thing that has to be commanded. So dogs will tell you a lot about what they think of the game when they're coming back to you. So, like, people get really concerned with dogs circling, with arcing, and all that kind of stuff, and it's good to notice that, but when you're training that, it's OK as the dog works it out that, yes, I can come back and drop it. So that's a little bit of a common mistake. Melissa Breau: Everybody kind of probably has heard the idea that you should start with the fun and then gradually add work in. So can you talk a little about that? How do you decide when and where you add work to the game? Shade Whitesel: Well, I have, like, a rote fetch game that I teach with rules, where the dog has to drop it, the handler has to have a marker word, and eye contact has to be added. And the dog needs to know that it dropped the ball to make the other ball in sight. So it's kind of a two-ball game, but you have to make sure that the dog understands that their dropping produces the other one in sight and that you're not bribing or prompting them with the one in your hand to drop. So once you have that basic thing for the chase game, then I would feel confident adding some behavior skills through either obedience or agility. With tugging, the dog needs to be bringing it right back. But also with tugging, the dog needs to have the self-control of not just jumping all over you. That self-control with the tugging is a big thing, so I want to physically cue the dog to jump on me when it's allowed, and that way when they've got, when they want to come back right away, but they're also looking for that signal that they're allowed to come back and shove it at you, that's kind of they've got some self-control in the game and some thinking in there. It's not just a frantic thing. When I see that, then I say that you can start to add simple behavior skills, and say you've got the rules, and you can start adding behavior skills. And your focus, especially at first, is to add the skills to the game. You don't want to just run an agility sequence and reward the dog with the ball. You want to basically put the behavior skills into the game itself. So it might look like you throw the ball to the dog a couple of times and then you cue a jump. And then you throw the ball for the dog a couple of times, and if you're doing obedience you might cue a sit. And then throw it a couple of times and then a hand touch. So what you're doing is you're adding those behavior skills in gradually, and you're keeping in mind that it's about the play and the reinforcement of the play. And then in fact it's easier for the dog. You can start to make that reinforcement of play thinner and thinner. And then, when you start doing that, so that leads to a whole other thing, basically, where eventually you're going to want to thin the reinforcement schedule so that you can get some stuff done. You don't want to have to, for the rest of the dog's life, have it three ball throws for one sit, you know? But that's what I call a tell, where, assuming you've got all your games really well taught and the dog is bringing back the ball, your dog's tell are what starts to deteriorate when your rate of reinforcement is too low, or the environment is too hard, or the behavior you're teaching is too hard for the dog. And so in a fetch game a lot of times what the dog will do is, let's say you only gave one ball throw for the sit and they thought that was kind of cheap. Then they'll arc on their way coming back to you when previously they would have run straight back to you. Or they'll not drop the ball quickly. They'll chomp it a couple of times. So those are the things that the dog will start deteriorating, the game skills will deteriorate, and that's what I call the dog's tell. So in tugging, the dog might start growling on the tug, or it may jump on you before being cued, or it will re-bite the toy. All those things that you hopefully trained past in your game skills when you were training for reinforcement will then start to resurface when you add things, behavior skills, too quickly. So, like, thinking of behavior skills as work and the game skills as the fun and the play, your game skills will start to deteriorate if your work is too much, in the dog's opinion. And then you want to figure out as the handler what how your dog is telling you that, because they each have different ways they tell you that. Like, a border collie will usually always give you the ball, but they'll usually arc. Arcing is usually what a stereotypical border collie will do. Whereas a German Shepherd will fully come back to you, but he'll stop dropping the ball. So different types of dogs have different tells. Melissa Breau: Gee, I wonder if I've ever seen that behavior before. Maybe a little. Shade Whitesel: Yeah. Anybody who's had a German Shepherd has seen the “Drop? What's that?” Melissa Breau: The chomp, chomp, chomp. Shade Whitesel: Chomp, chomp, exactly. Melissa Breau: I know kind of before we scheduled this to have you come back on, we chatted a little bit about the idea that you've spent a lot of time lately thinking about training loops and kind of how they feed into how a dog feels about a training session…. And I wanted to dive into that a little bit, but before we go too deep, just to make sure everybody kind of knows the terminology, can you explain just a little bit what a training loop is and why it's really important for the dog to feel good about the training session? Shade Whitesel: Well, I'm not sure this technical way of describing it, but for me right now what a loop is, is think about behaviors as a three-part process. You've got first the dog doing behavior, let's say it's sit, and then the second part is he's collecting his reinforcement, let's say a treat, and then that little part between the treat and when you cue sit again is what I'm calling a reset. I'm sure there's another technical name for it. So you've got behavior, collecting reinforcement, and a reset. And what I've really been interested in, so that all that forms a loop, because once a dog resets back to you, you can then, you know, cue another behavior. What I'm really concentrating on nowadays is that little part of the reset, because we train it, you can, you know, start paying attention to the dog noticing you and then cue a reward or something, but that's where it all starts to deteriorate. You've got your big loop. And what you're doing is you're seeing if the dog decides to do the behavior again or connect with you. So things happen right there where they'll start to deteriorate, and what I mean by that is the dog will start sniffing, they'll start glancing at the environment, and all those are little signs that the dog, how the dog is feeling. So with treats, you give the dog a treat and he'll always eat the treat, but they'll sniff around before they look back at you for the next cued behavior. For toys, that's exactly what the whole toy class is about, basically, teaching the dog how to give up the toy. So they won't give up the toy if that little reset isn't trained, or if they think the reinforcement is too thin. So what I've been noticing is that part of a behavior loop deteriorates before everything else. So you'll have a dog that's sitting, but they're glancing away. And so I'm really interested in that, because as positive trainers we really need to notice that, because it's telling us that the dog is not all into the training session, and I want to know that as their teacher right there. So it's just that reset, where the dog shows they're stressed or their conflict, is just something that I've really been noticing lately and trying to train better and also to address when it happens. Melissa Breau: So you talked a little bit there about some of the things that you've been doing. Is there more you want to say about that? I mean, I know you mentioned you get a little ahead of yourself, but is there more you want to say about what you've been playing with or you know, what you've been doing? Shade Whitesel: Well we need to intentionally notice it. I feel like I never noticed it until the last couple years, and so we need to intentionally also train it so train the reset. And how we do that is we, instead of prompting a dog to look at us — we can call it focus, we can call it engagement — but instead of, like, prompting them to look back at us after they've eaten a treat, we can actually wait and have the dog notice us, OK, and then reinforce that. And so that's we're reinforcing the dog's check-in, and the dog understands that it leads to work or another behavior. So being positive trainers, kind of like I said before, we need total buy-in. And if they're looking away, or they're sniffing, or they're not dropping balls, or arcing on the return, we don't have total buy-in. And so it's really, I think it's awesome because we can, like, address that there in the training session instead of waiting for our behaviors to deteriorate. Hopefully that makes sense. It's, like, the action the dog does between eating a treat or chasing the ball and then doing the next behavior starts to show the stress of the training session on the dog before the actual behaviors deteriorate. Melissa Breau: You know, most of the time you don't notice until the behavior starts to change. Shade Whitesel: Totally, totally. We don't notice until the sits get slower, or the dog doesn't sit, or — heaven forbid — we notice when the dog's not taking food. But I want to notice that stuff before, and I want to address it right then. Because my dog, like, say he starts chomping his ball and he doesn't want to give it up. Then that tells me he doesn't trust me to give him enough reinforcement for what behavior he just did. That tells me that it's hard. Like, if I ask for 50 steps of heeling and I throw the ball, and he brings it right back and drops it at my feet, he's telling me that 50 steps of heeling was not hard. If he doesn't drop his ball right away, he's telling me that was hard, and he needs a lot of ball throws, and he doesn't trust me to do that. When you start noticing that — I call it listening to the dog — then it's so helpful, for me anyway, in my training to know that. And then I can, like, cue another chase. I can throw the ball a couple more times. I can tug a little bit before I ask for 50 more steps of heeling. I can go, “Oh, you can do 50 steps of heeling at home, it's not that big a deal. But here out in the field with lots of other dogs around, this is a really hard behavior.” So I just like knowing that kind of stuff, and so I've been really interested in that the last, especially the last six months. Anyway, lots more questions about that kind of stuff as we all train. Melissa Breau: Yeah, no, I think it's really an interesting concept to kind of think of, and I think you hear everybody kind of say, you know, they have that “just one more rep” problem, right, and that seems like such a good way to kind of check in with yourself and check in with your dog before you ever get to the “one more rep” problem. Shade Whitesel: Yes, exactly. And you know, I think, I think as trainers we all notice this and we call it different things, you know, focus, or engagement, or I call it the reset. So I think we're all kind of talking about the same thing, but we all describe it a little differently. And it just, it's neat and fascinating for me because I always want to know my dog's opinion. I want to know, so yeah. Melissa Breau: So for those kind of interested in learning more about this stuff, how much of this do you explore in the advanced toys class, since it's coming up in December? What do you focus on there? Shade Whitesel: So the advanced toy class is, it's Part 1 working on impulse control and making sure everyone, the handler and the dog, has the mechanics down. So we work on presentations, we really work on the different marker words, so “In spite of the tug in front of your face, when I say ‘yes,' you need to take food,” that kind of thing. And then the second part of it is kind of figuring out where your dog's tell is, adding the work to it. Some people can get through that in the regular toy class because I do include it there, but the advanced toy class I usually get a lot of students who really want to concentrate on, like, adding behavior chains and things and figuring out how arousal plays a part, because a toy's arousal is always there. Melissa Breau: Of course, yeah. Shade Whitesel: So and it catches you by surprise sometimes. So yes, we do really work on that reset, basically, and trying to figure out how individual dogs are feeling about their session. Dogs who would do best in class are ones obviously … the prereq is the basic toy class, but they don't have to have all the skills from the basic toy class, but they do have to have the basics of the fetch game and the tug game. But they just need to work on the specifics. So yeah. Melissa Breau: Awesome. Shade Whitesel: Yeah, it's really a fun class. Melissa Breau: Hey, Shade, I think any class with you would be fun. Shade Whitesel: You're too kind! Melissa Breau: Well, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast Shade. It's always a joy to talk to you about this stuff! Shade Whitesel: Good, yeah, I love to, so thanks so much for having me a second time. I feel honored. Melissa Breau: Well, for all of our wonderful listeners, we'll be back next week with Patricia McConnell. Patricia will be on the podcast to talk about what she's learned over her time in dog training. Don't miss it! It if you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in itunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. CREDITS: Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called “Buddy.” Audio editing provided by Chris Lang.

SHOW NOTES:  Summary: Shade Whitesel has been training and competing in dog sports since she was a kid. Always interested in how dogs learned, she has successfully competed in Schutzhund, AKC obedience and French Ring. What started out as an experiment, competing at the national level in IPO without the use of an e collar, has now turned into a firm commitment to positive training and the desire to teach other trainers and dogs how to be successful in bitesports with as little punishment as possible. Her focus as a trainer is on clear communication with your dog -- as we discuss in the podcast, she believes this relieves frustration and improves the overall quality of the dog's work.  Next Episode:  To be released 2/17/2017, featuring Loretta Mueller.   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 Shade Whitesel. Shade has been training and competing in dog sports since she was a kid. Always interested in how dogs learned, she has successfully competed in Schutzhund, AKC obedience and French Ring. What started out as an experiment, competing at the national level in IPO without the use of an e collar, has now turned into a firm commitment to positive training and the desire to teach other trainers and dogs how to be successful in bitesports with as little punishment as possible. Hi, Shade. Welcome to the podcast. Shade Whitesel: Hi, Melissa. Melissa Breau: So, to start out can you tell me a little bit about the dogs you have now and what you're working on with them? Shade Whitesel: Sure. My youngest dog is Ones who is 4 years old and he just recently earned his Schutzhund 2 in December. I'm looking forward to getting his Schutzhund 3 this spring and then going on to compete nationally with him if it looks like we're a good enough team. Briefly, Schutzhund is kind of like a triathlon for dogs, based on police work. It requires tracking, where they have to follow a person's track and indicate articles that the person's dropped, and then an obedience portion, and then a protection portion. So, Ones attained pretty good scores in his one and his two, and I'm excited about his future career. I tend to do AKC later in the dog's career, since it's easier on their bodies than bitesports. I also have Baileys, Ones's sister, who was returned to me a year ago and we've start setting the foundation for AKC obedience, and she's coming along. She's been teaching me a lot about working an older dog with established habits before I got them. So, kind of what to do with that and how to retrain. And Reiki my old guy, he's both Ones's and Bailey's dad, he's 10 years old and I had really hoped to get him in the AKC utility ring. He's got his CDX, but he's getting older there so we'll see. And he has numerous IPO 3's. We competed nationally for four years, that kind of thing, and he did really well. So, that's my current dogs. Melissa Breau: Awesome. And they're all German Shepherds, right? Shade Whitesel: They are. I have only German Shepherds right now and I'll add a couple of more breeds eventually, but right now because of Schutzhund, I need to do the bite work and so I've chosen the German Shepherd as my breed for that. Melissa Breau: How did you get into competitive dog sports and training? Shade Whitesel: Well, I always wanted a dog when I was a kid and I finally got a mixed breed dog. And at that time, your training classes were kind of like AKC obedience and she did really well in her training class, but I couldn't compete with her because she was a mixed breed. So, I always wanted to kind of compete and then when I got my first purebred dog I got interested in Schutzhund because it's a breed test for the Shepherds. And I started really getting into it and getting titles on the dogs. So, that kind of morphed into people asking me to give training lessons to them and once I put a Schutzhund 1 on a dog then I figured that I could at least start training other people. So, that's kind of when it morphed into becoming a professional dog trainer. Melissa Breau: I've heard you talk before a little bit about your positive training journey and kind of what got you started. But can you kind of share it for the audience? Shade Whitesel: Yeah. In bite work sports and in Schutzhund training you're normally dealing with pretty strong dogs physically and mentally, that really like to bite. So, they have lots of reinforcement history for biting, whether that is the ball or the tug, or the bad guy. And there's a culture correction in this sport when it comes to getting control. Because these dogs are really strong willed and eventually you have to get obedience around that high value reinforcer, there's a lot of correction involved. When I first started doing Schutzhund I definitely was no different than anyone else. I used a lot of correction with my dogs, but I really started breaking down the behaviors much more than anyone I knew at the time. Teaching them at lower arousal, breaking it down in much tinier steps... and then I realized that I could use the helper as a reward. So, for instance, “Hey, dog heel two steps and then I'll send you to the helper for a bite,” and then I really started questioning all the correction, because that worked so well. And so, I kind of started out as a trainer using a lot of correction and then figuring out, and gradually getting more positive as I went till what I am right now. Melissa Breau: And I've seen some of your videos. I mean, you really truly manage to get that same precision and that beauty in the performance that I think most people are looking for. And I know from talking to you, you really do, do it completely positive so it's really impressive. Shade Whitesel: I think there's this thing that sometimes...I remember in Schutzhund even when I used correction we always said we use the ball for reward, but we can't get as precise behaviors when you do that and that was the argument against using a lot of motivation. And I always was like, “Well, I want both. I want the motivation, I want the strongness and then I want the preciseness.” So, even when I was figuring out how to do it without correction I was like, “I don't want to sacrifice anything. I still want really high quality behaviors,” and since Reiki took me to Nationals, now I'm not satisfied with anything other than as good as I can get. So, yeah, it's been a journey. That's a cliché thing, but it's definitely been a journey to figure out how to do that. Melissa: So, how would you describe your training philosophy now? Shade Whitesel: Right now, I feel like I haven't said no to any of my dogs for like four years. No. Seriously, I'm really currently most interested in what the dog is feeling about our training session and what their emotional state is. That's been my task. Ones has been definitely my teacher in that way, because I really need to know what his emotional state is in bite work. They'll tell you way before the behavior skills breakdown. Either lost focus, stressing, whatever that looks like. So, that's currently what I'm really into, trying to figure out how the dog feels and what that tells me of my training plan. And that kind of segues into creating the toy play as a reinforcement. So many of us use toys with our dogs because we realize how joyful they can get with that and how excited. But we could get much more efficient training done if we created more of a significant reinforcement if we had some rules in there like bring the toy back. When they all of a sudden don't drop the toy they're not being belligerent, they're pretty much telling us our rate of reinforcement wasn't up as much as it should be in the training plan. Also, when we use toys to teach stuff it gives us ways to work through high arousal situations, like, we're going to encounter in agility or bite work, or anything else a dog wants. I mean really a high arousal situation for my dogs is going from the car to the beach. That's a situation where they have to be on leash and it is none too fun if I can't get them to walk calmly from point A to point B. So, the toy play reinforcement gives us ways to work through that. I'd say that Ones is my most positively trained dog to date, since he's my youngest and I bred him so I've known him since minute one. I feel like sometimes I've gotten so positive in my teaching that most cases where we use negative punishment I look at that and I'm like, “We could teach that without even that.” So, I feel like I've swung really far in a very positive way in my training, which is good. Melissa Breau: And just in case anybody's not familiar with the four quadrants. Negative punish is the removal of something the dog doesn't like, right? Shade Whitesel: Exactly. And we as positive trainers tend to use that when we don't know what else to do or when we're having a dog that's doing behaviors we don't like. That's accepted for us to go there and it can be good. There's still some fallout sometimes, but it can be a polishing technique. Melissa Breau: So, I was super lucky. I got to shadow you at FDSA Training Camp last year. I have to say I definitely learned a ton following you around for a couple of days. Shade Whitesel: And I appreciated your technical skills, because I don't have any. Melissa Breau: Well, it was a pleasure to get to follow you around. I feel like I learned so, so much. And some of my favorites were just listening to you talk about play and how you structure some of that. And just some of the takeaways that I got at camp definitely I brought them home and worked with my own dog differently, and it really has had an impact. Shade Whitesel: Well, good. Yeah. Melissa Breau: So, it included everything from play to location specific markers... kind of, you ran the gambit, I think, at camp last year and it seems like, or at least seems to me, that there's a theme that kind of runs through all of your FDSA classes and all of the talks that I've heard you give — this idea of communicating as clearly as possible with your dogs. So, do you mind just sharing a little bit why you feel that's so critical? Shade Whitesel: No matter how you train, communicating as clearly as possible is so important, because 99.9 percent of our problems are due to the unclarity of our teaching. And all of our problems with dogs — I mean it's really our problem it's not theirs — go away when you look at the clarity, or more accurately the ‘not clarity' of your teaching. When your communication is clear arousal levels go down, frustration from your learner dog goes down, and you get more confident and fluent behaviors from them. And this holds true over trialing, over living with them, over everything, just to be as clear as possible and predictable, that goes into predictability too. So, no matter what method you do that is just so important I think — obviously, since I talk about it. Melissa Breau: So, I think one really good example of that is the work you've done with location specific markers. Do you mind just briefly kind of explaining what that means and kind of how you use them? Shade Whitesel: You know, markers are such a good thing and people are exploring them, and figuring out that it's really nice to bridge what behavior your dogs doing to get their reward. Tell the dog where to collect their reinforcement, like, technically I want a different marker that means collect it from my hands, whether that's food or a toy and I want a different marker that means collect it away from there, whether it's go pick-up the toy on the ground or whether I'm going to throw the toy, and again it's just that clarity. And I notice with my own dogs if I had a different marker word for, “Strike the tug out of my hand,” versus, “I'm going to throw it,” the dog stopped mugging me, they stopped looking for where the toy was all the time when I was asking for behaviors. Because they knew that I would tell them exactly how to get their reinforcement. And again, it just goes back to the clarity. So, location specific markers is just the dog knows exactly where to go and they don't have to be checking where the toy is or the food — is the food in your pocket? Is it over there in the dish? Because you're going to tell them so they can put 100 percent of their attention to figuring out what behavior you want them to do, because they can trust that you're going to tell them where the reinforcement is. Melissa Breau: I think a lot of trainers tend to rely really heavily on one or two training methods. So, somebody may lean really heavily on shaping, while somebody else tends to mostly lure behaviors or throw a ball, or whatever. I know that in the current session at FDSA, which will be current when this goes live, you're going to be teaching a class to help handlers better use all of their tools. Do you mind just talking a little bit about what that class is, and what it's about? Shade Whitesel: Yeah. I think the more we know and feel comfortable about all the positive ways we can train our dogs the more effective we're going to be as a teacher. And then, if we know how to lure and we know how to shape, and we know how to capture, we can then be more informed about what technique that we want to use to teach a certain behavior. I think we all could use a little more knowledge on how to get behaviors on cue. How to name it, how to get it on stimulus control, whether that behavior is lured or shaped and the one constant that I know I always struggle with is timing. Click, pause, treat. And I see many students coming through the academy, who are great at one technique, but they're kind of unsure of the other techniques and I'd like to help out with that. I'd like to teach that and help people figure out what effective technique they want to use to teach their dog a behavior. Melissa Breau: Now, does the class have specific behaviors that you try and work on through the course of the class? Are the students going to pick their own behavior and use different techniques to accomplish it? Kind of how do you structure it? Shade Whitesel: I'll give a couple of examples of what they can do. They can use behaviors their dog already knows or they can pick new ones. But it's really more about we can, for instance, ‘go to a bed' behavior, we can lure that, we can shape that, we can capture that so it's not so much about having behaviors already for your dog, but about explaining the different ways of getting there. It's good if your dog has some behaviors already on cue; so they can be experienced dogs, where the handler just wants to learn more about it, or it can be a dog that's brand new to stuff. Melissa Breau: So, when you're working with your own dogs how do you decide which technique to use? I assume you're probably better with all of them than say me. Shade Whitesel: Well, it's a steep learning curve for everything. Melissa Breau: But how do you decide whether you want to lure something or shape something, or capture something? Like, how do you pick which method to use when you're teaching something? Shade Whitesel: Well, I have to say when I first started training I was a big lurer and I came late to shaping. I really had no idea and my evolution in my last, I don't know, six, seven years has been really getting better at shaping. I'd be the first to say I'm not the greatest at it, but I'm getting better. So, for my own dogs shaping and capturing shaped behaviors, like, the dog offering a completed shaped behavior that's my preferred technique at this point. If I can communicate to the dog effectively through shaping and then they can choose the behavior, I'll always teach that way first. I think it creates stronger and then more confident and faster behaviors out of the dog. But I can't always figure out how to communicate via shaping. And so, if I can't figure that out I'll lure the behavior. I have no issue luring, but I'll then always put it on what I call capturing. And so, even if it's a lured behavior, I'll eventually want to have the dog offer it and then it becomes a strong shaped behavior, so to speak. Melissa Breau: So, to round things out. I have three more short questions that I've asked everyone so far at the tail end of the interview. So, first what's the dog-related accomplishment that you are proudest of? Shade Whitesel: That's such a hard one because every single dog I have had there are accomplishments that I'm really proud of with the individual dog. So, I don't think of it so much as what I've done, but more of what me and dog have done. [I Recently competed with Ones]. Schutzhund is tracking, obedience and protection and you get 100 in each. And he got 99 out of 100 in the tracking phase, he got 95 out of 100 in obedience and he got 96 out of 100 in protection. And that's a pretty good score for a young dog, because in the one and the two in Schutzhund we're kind of just seeing what does he know, how is my training going and you kind of get your three. And then, if you want to compete, you compete nationally and that's where you start to get your good scores. So, I'm excited for what the future holds for us. Melissa Breau: So, what is the best piece of training advice that you have ever heard? Shade Whitesel: It sounds cliché, but listen to the dog. I'm so into listening to what the dog says at this point. It holds me accountable in my training, it holds me accountable in their reinforcement and I feel like many people say, “Listen to the dog,” but I think we could be doing a lot more of it. Melissa Breau: And the last one. So, who is someone else in the dog world that you look up too? Shade Whitesel: That's always such a hard question as well. I've been training dogs for 20 years and there's too many to name. I've learned so many things from each and every trainer, and person that I've encountered and trained with. So, I've just learned from so many people and I look up to each and every one of them. Melissa Breau: All right. Well, thanks Shade so much for joining me. Shade Whitesel: Yeah. Thanks so much. Melissa Breau: And for those listening, thank you for tuning in. As a heads-up to those of you who aren't currently part of the FDSA community, registration is currently open when this airs for February classes, including Shade's Crucial Concepts for Competition Class, the one we talked about during the podcast. And in two weeks we'll be back with Loretta Mueller to talk about why one size does not fit all when it comes to dog training. If you haven't already, subscribe now on iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. CREDITS: Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called “Buddy.” Audio editing provided by Chris Lang and transcription written by CLK Transcription Services. Thanks again for tuning in -- and happy training!

Last week, Fernando Dosta was at Leerburg for a 5 day decoy seminar. Fernando lives in France and is one of the top French Ring decoys in the world. In this video, he is teaching Ed's 14 month old Malinois the foundation of safe down field bites.

Last week, Fernando Dosta was at Leerburg for a 5 day decoy seminar. Fernando lives in France and is one of the top French Ring decoys in the world. In this video, he is teaching Ed's 14 month old Malinois the foundation of safe down field bites.

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