Podcasts about tdx

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Sri Srinivasan, Senior Director of Information Security at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about his recent presentation at TDX and how to build secure, reliable AI experiences with Agentforce. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation […] The post Building Secure AI Agents with Salesforce Agentforce appeared first on Salesforce Admins.

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Jennifer Lee, Kate Lessard, and Brittney Gibson from the Admin Relations team. Join us as we chat about what they're looking forward to at TDX 2025 and the keynotes, sessions, and how to make the most of your time. You should subscribe for the full episode, […] The post Roadmap to TDX25 for Admins appeared first on Salesforce Admins.

From time to time I am contacted by someone who says they have an interesting and thought provoking guest who would be perfect for Unstoppable Mindset. Since I am of the opinion that everyone has a story within themselves worth telling I always work to learn more about the guest. Such was the case when I was contacted about our guest this time, Dre Baldwin. Dre and I had an initial conversation and I invited him to appear as a guest. I must say that he more than exceeded my expectations.   Dre grew up in Philadelphia. He wanted to do something with sports and tried out various options until he discovered Basketball in high school. While he wasn't considered overly exceptional and only played one year in high school he realized that Basketball was the sport for him.   Dre went to Penn State and played all four of his college years. Again, while he played consistently and reasonably well, he was not noticed and after college he was not signed to a professional team. He worked at a couple of jobs for a time and then decided to try to get noticed for basketball by going to a camp where he could be seen by scouts and where he could prove he had the talent to make basketball a profession. As he will tell us, eventually he did get a contract to play professionally. Other things happened along the way as you will hear. Dre discovered Youtube and the internet and began posting basketball tips which became popular.   While playing basketball professionally he also started blogging, posting videos and eventually he began selling video basketball lessons online. His internet business grew and by 2015 after playing basketball he decided to leave the sport and open his own business called, Work On Your Game Inc.   His business has given him the time to author 35 books, deliver 4 TDX talks, create thousands of videos and coach others. Dre and I talk about such concepts as discipline, mindset and the value of consistency. Our conversation will provide many useful insights and ideas you and all of us can use.       About the Guest:   As CEO and Founder of Work On Your Game Inc., Dre Baldwin has given 4 TEDxTalks on Discipline, Confidence, Mental Toughness & Personal Initiative and has authored 35 books. He has appeared in national campaigns with Nike, Finish Line, Wendy's, Gatorade, Buick, Wilson Sports, STASH Investments and DIME magazine.    Dre has published over 8,000 videos to 142,000+ subscribers, his content being consumed over 103 million times.    Dre's daily Work On Your Game MasterClass has amassed over 2,900 episodes and more than 7.3 million downloads.    In just 5 years, Dre went from the end of his high school team's bench to a 9-year professional basketball career. He played in 8 countries including Lithuania, Germany, Montenegro, Slovakia and Germany.    Dre invented his Work On Your Game framework as a "roadmap in reverse" to help professionals with High Performance, Consistency and Results.    A Philadelphia native, Dre lives in Miami.   Ways to connect with Dre:   http://Instagram.com/DreBaldwin http://YouTube.com/Dreupt https://www.facebook.com/WorkOnYourGameUniversity http://LinkedIn.com/in/DreAllDay http://X.com/DreAllDay http://TikTok.com/WorkOnYourGame       About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Hi again. Welcome to another edition of unstoppable mindset. Our goal in unstoppable mindset is to show you that, in fact, you are most likely more unstoppable than you think you are, at least that's the goal. Is to try to get people to believe that it's been fun talking to a lot of people about that, talking to people about the fact that they show that they're more unstoppable than they thought they were. And a lot of people tend to to stay that right out. Our guest today is a first for me. I've not ever talked to a professional basketball player live on unstoppable mindset. And our guest Dre Baldwin was a professional basketball player for a number of years, and I'm sure we're going to get into that, along with so many other things to talk about what he does today, because he's not doing basketball as such today. He's got a company called work on your game, Inc, and I'm sure that that relates back to basketball in some way. So we'll get to it. But anyway, Dre, I want to welcome you to unstoppable mindset, and thank you for taking the time to be here.   Dre Baldwin ** 02:28 Oh, thank you, Michael. And you can call me Dre, yes. Dre, yeah. So okay, I I appreciate, I appreciate you having me on. I'm looking forward to this conversation. Well, we're   Michael Hingson ** 02:38 glad that you're here and all that. Why don't we start by you maybe telling us about the early Dre growing up and some of those kinds of things.   Dre Baldwin ** 02:46 Sure, come from the city of Philadelphia, PA and now live in South Florida, but always played sports growing up, dabbled in a little bit of everything that was available. So went to my mom, put me in a little tennis camp once for a week or two, played a little football, touch football in the driveways. Played baseball for a couple years on an organized level, but didn't really find my find my groove in any sports. I got around to basketball, which is around age 14, which is pretty late to start playing a sport, if you're trying to go somewhere in it. That was my situation. No barely played in high school. Only played one year, and then it led to, I'm sure we'll get into what happened after that. But for the most part, as a youth, I was really into athletics and just figuring out what I could do athletically. So no, of course, you know, in the the street, you grow up on foot races, two hand, touch football, etc, things like that. But I figured that my meaning was going to be somewhere towards using my body in some way. I didn't know how, but that's what I figured I would do.   Michael Hingson ** 03:47 I would presume that along all the time you were in Philadelphia, you never did encounter Rocky Balboa running up the steps of Liberty Hall, or any of those things.   Dre Baldwin ** 03:57 Oh, that's, that's the art museum, the Philadelphia Art Museum. Oh, the art museum. Yeah, Rocky, running up the steps. I never did that. The only reason, no, go ahead, I was saying, the only reason I never did it is because where I grew up is kind of far from the art museum. Is big city, but had I moved near the art museum, then, yeah, I would have ran up steps as exercise. I just, I just, it just wasn't in proximity to me. So that's the only reason I didn't do   Michael Hingson ** 04:21 it, well, that's okay. Well, so what did you do after high school? Well,   Dre Baldwin ** 04:25 I wanted to go to college. I knew I was going to go to college period, even if it weren't for sports. I figured college was Well, first of all, I didn't know what I want to do with my life. Yet at age 18, and the small Inkling I had that I could be a professional athlete at this point, I got that idea around age 16. I wasn't not like I was good enough to be LeBron James or Kobe Bryant, who were no so good. They skipped college and went straight to playing at the program. I wasn't that good. So if I was going to play pro, I needed four more years of seasoning, which meant I needed to go to college. So just on that level alone, I knew I wanted to go. So, but because of my unimpressive high school career, if you want to call it a career, no one was recruiting me to come play in college. So whatever college I went to would not be on the basis of sports, it just be on the basis of I'm here, and let's see if I can get on the basketball team as an unknown, unverified person. So that's what I did. I walked on at a college that happened to be a division three college. Was the third tier of college sports. Most of your pro players are sourced from the Division One level. And I did go there, and I was able to get on the basketball team. Played four years of college basketball at the Division Three level, yet, and still Michael at that level, nobody at the pro level is really looking for pros from the Division Three level. Because, again, who cares about division three players? They can pull from the Division One ranks Division Three guys. So that was my situation. Graduated from college having played, but still, at that point, nobody was looking for me to come play at the   Michael Hingson ** 05:57 pro level. What did you get your degree in? I have a degree from   Dre Baldwin ** 06:01 Penn State University in business with a focus in management and marketing.   Michael Hingson ** 06:05 That explains where you went later, but and kind of how you ended up, yeah, sort of, and Penn State so you were a Nittany Lion, huh?   Dre Baldwin ** 06:17 Technically, yeah, we never talk about, we never say that. But yes,   Michael Hingson ** 06:21 well, yeah, whatever, yeah, Penn State, yeah, well, that's, I didn't know that they were division three in basketball. They certainly aren't in football. But okay, and they have more   Dre Baldwin ** 06:33 than one no, they have more than one campus. So, well, that's true, yeah. So I went to my degree, so just so people understand when Penn State has 23 campuses. So I started at Penn State Abington, which is a division three sports school, and I transferred to Penn State Altoona, which is also a division three sports school. At the time, Abington was not full fledged d3 it is now Altoona was so Altoona was the second highest level inside the entire Penn State system, which was a four years of sports school at the time. At the time, there were only two schools in the whole system where you could play four years. It was the main campus with the football team, and it was out tuning. Nowadays, there are several others who you can play four years of sports. But back then, for many other campuses, you can only play two years. And the other piece is, when you graduate from Penn State, any campus your degree is still Penn State, regardless of which campus you graduated from, I graduated from Altoona, so my degree still just says, it just says Penn State. It doesn't say which campus,   Michael Hingson ** 07:32 right? And, and in a sense, does it really matter? Not   Dre Baldwin ** 07:35 really maybe, to the people who go to the main campus, because they say, Oh, you all went to the other ones. So they try to, in a joking way, kind of discredit it. But I only went to Altoona for basketball. I was accepted into the main campus straight out of high school,   Michael Hingson ** 07:48 right? Well, so whatever. But at least you got a degree from Penn State, and you can't argue with that. Yes, you're right about that. I went to University of California, Irvine, UC Irvine, and when I enrolled my first year, my freshman year was the first year they had a graduating class. It was a new campus for UC system. So 1968 they had their first well 69 they had their first graduating class. And that was the year I was a freshman. And it was a only had like about 2500 2700 students that first year. I was back there in June of this year, they have 31,000 undergraduates. Now it's changed a little bit.   Dre Baldwin ** 08:34 Yeah, so you were part of the first class, where they had all four classes on campus at the same time. Then,   Michael Hingson ** 08:40 right, and they also had graduate school. They had started doing work. It was a well known, even back then, a biology school. In fact, if you wanted to major in biology in the first year I enrolled, I went into physics, so I didn't get to be a victim of this. But they had 1600 students enroll in biology, and the way they weeded them out was they insisted that before you could really take major biology courses, you had to take at least a year of organic chemistry. And so by the time students got to the end of their sophomore year that 1600 students got whittled down to 200 so they use organic chemistry to get get people out of it.   Dre Baldwin ** 09:29 Oh, well, that would have worked on me. Yeah. Well, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 09:33 yeah, I had no interest in doing that either. So, you know, I dodged a bullet, but, but it was fun. So you went to college, you got a degree in in business and so on. And then what did you   Dre Baldwin ** 09:48 do? Well, then I wanted to play professional basketball. So this is 2004 give everybody a timeline. And initially I didn't have any. Nobody was calling me. Nobody was checking for me, nothing. I tried a few things when. To a couple of tryouts for local, what they call semi professional teams that were based in the United States on smaller towns. Nothing really came of that. So the first work thing I did after college was get a job at Foot Locker as an assistant manager. So I was selling sneakers with the referee shirt and all and everything. So that was my first job out of college. I did that for about six months, and then after that, I went and got a job at ballet Total Fitness was a fitness gym that's now out of business, but not because of me. I made a lot of sales for ballet total fitness, and that's a relief. It   Michael Hingson ** 10:34 wasn't you, what'd you say? I say that's a relief. It wasn't you, yes,   Dre Baldwin ** 10:38 it wasn't me. If it was for me, they'd still be in business that was making a lot of sales, or maybe not, because people didn't like their contracts, but so maybe I contributed to the problem one way or another. So I then, in the summer of 2005 so this is a year removed from graduation, I went to this event called an exposure camp. And then, Michael, you familiar with those? Heard of them?   Michael Hingson ** 10:57 I've heard of it. I don't know anything about it. I can imagine. Okay, I suppose   Dre Baldwin ** 11:00 you can't. Similar to a job fair or a casting call in sports world. So it's where a bunch of people who want a job or want a better job, they go to this place that announces, hey, the people who can give you a job are all going to be here. And they all converge in one place. And as opposed to a job fair, where you just show up and shake hands and hand out your resume at an exposure camp. You bring your sneakers and you actually play whatever the sport is, and you try to impress the decision makers in the audience, who are there to look for people like you. They're there to scout and find talent people like you. So I went to one of these events. It was in Orlando, Florida. At the time. I still live in Philadelphia, so me and a couple college teammates who had similar ambitions to me. We rented a car in Philadelphia and drove to Orlando. It's about a 1517, hour drive, depending on traffic, and we showed up there 9am Saturday morning, hopped out the car, and that's the exact time that the exposure camp began. So I tell people, I could get away with that at age 23 Michael couldn't do it now, but then I could do it. How about the car and just start playing a two day event, and I played pretty well at that event. From there, I got two key things that I needed. One was a scouting report of a scout, a professional level Scout, who just wrote up some positive things about me that basically affirmed, like, Hey, this guy does have the ability to play at the pro level. Another thing I got was footage from those games, because you need in the sports world, you need proof of yourself playing. You can't just say you can play. You got to prove it, and the game film is your proof. So that game film was important to me, because even though I had played in college at college, I was only playing against Division Three level talent. At this exposure camp, I was playing against professional level talent. So this footage mattered a whole lot more. So with that footage, I had to be back in Philadelphia. I was still working in ballet, Total Fitness at the time. I negotiated, I had negotiated with my boss to get the weekend off just to go to this camp. Had to be back at work on Monday morning. So the camp was Saturday and Sunday, and had to be back at work on Monday so we when that camp ended on Sunday afternoon, we hopped right back in the car and drove right back home. So and I didn't sleep that Sunday night or that previous Friday night. And from there, what I started doing was cold calling basketball agents. So the way that agents work in the sports world is pretty similar to the literary or entertainment world, where the agent is basically the go between, between the person who has some ability, or at least they think they do, and the people who like to hire people with ability. And usually agents call you if you show potential, because they believe they can help well, they believe you have the potential to make money. And we know all know what agents do. They're the middleman. So if they help you make money, then they make money. Right? Of course, they want to find people who are going to make money. But no agent had ever been calling me, Michael, because it didn't look like I was going to make any money. But after I went to this exposure camp. Now I had some proof that maybe, maybe I might make some money. So at the same time, no agent knew who I was, so I started calling them. I started calling basketball agents myself, and I was selling myself to them and saying, Hey, I have this scouting report. This is some proof. I have this game footage. Here's some more proof. I called about 60 basketball agents. This is straight up cold calling. And after calling those 60 agents, I was well, through calling those 60, I was able to get in touch with 20 of those 20. I sent the footage to all 20, and one of those 20 was interested in representing me, and he's the one who signed me to become my agent. Now, when you get signed to an agent, doesn't mean you get any money, it just means somebody's working to help you make some money. And then he went and found me my first contract, which was in the late summer of 2005 August, 2005 playing in countless Lithuania. So that's how I started my professional basketball career.   Michael Hingson ** 14:33 So you weren't playing in the US, and it was a long commute to go to Lithuania. So, so how long did you play there? Then? What happened? Well,   Dre Baldwin ** 14:42 each year, for almost 10 years, playing ball, every year I was in a different place. So I never played in the same place more than one season. So I was in that year, I was in Lithuania. I came back to the USA later, later in that in the middle of that season, and I played for a Troy. Traveling team in the USA. It wasn't the team that any of you would know from TV, but play for a traveling team in the USA. Then from there was Mexico from there. After that, you had Montenegro, you had and this is as years are going on. So I don't know when you go through every single one, but I'm just fast forwarding here. Yeah, Mexico is Montenegro. There was Germany, there was Croatia, there was Slovakia. There was a couple other places. I'm not thinking of right off the top of my head, but this was between 2005 and 2015 these are all the different places that I played. Sometimes there were gaps in my schedule. I'm sure we'll talk about that. And there were other things I was doing besides just playing basketball, because the life of a professional athlete, for those who don't know, is a long day of work for us, might be four hours of committed time at work, that's all told. So we have a whole lot of time on our hands. So athletes tend to do other things besides play sports, because we have the time and space to do so,   Michael Hingson ** 15:55 right? And so how did you fill your time? Because you couldn't practice all the time,   Dre Baldwin ** 16:00 right? Yes, physically, there's only so much practice you can do. So I am an internet geek, a closet internet geek. So what I was doing, even back to when I was a child, I was always into computers. So I'm sure you remember given the frame that you gave me here, but I remember the days of the one computer in the whole school, we had a room called the computer we had. It'd be one room with maybe a couple computers. When I was in high school, there was one room with enough computers for everybody. But when I was in second grade, there was one room with one computer, and there was this the green screen, and we would play Oregon Trail and games like that in the computer with a little floppy disk. So that's as far back as I go. So I was always into computers, even back then. And then by the time I graduated college in 2004 now, we were starting to get what I guess people call web 2.0 so this was the Internet where you could kind of create your own stuff, even if you didn't know anything about the back end of the internet, like coding and HTML, etc. So that was about my era when I got out of college, and when I saw that during college, I said to myself, this internet thing, I'm going to do something on the internet. I didn't know what, but I knew I was going to do something. This is before we had we didn't quite have social media yet. We had some software or platforms where you could kind of make profiles and talk to people, but it was nothing like what we have now. So anyway, to answer your question, finally, in 2005 I took the footage from that exposure camp that I went to and at this good footage that I had this. It was not a link that I got this footage on. This is not a download. This was this thing called a VHS tape. Mike, you remember those? Oh, yeah, yeah. So the VHS tape was the format for my footage. It   Michael Hingson ** 17:42 was VHS and VHS, and not beta max, huh? And not   Dre Baldwin ** 17:47 that old, not that old. Remember VHS? Only the VHS the farthest back that I go. So with the VHS tape, I knew that no you can lose this. You can leave it in the sun. You can get it dropping in mortar. You destroy your footage. I needed this footage to last forever, so I took it to an audio visual store, and they transferred it onto a data CD, and that CD I uploaded to, I took the footage off that CD and uploaded to this new website called youtube.com and this website claimed that you could publish as much footage as you want for free. Now, yeah, and I said clean, because 2005 nobody knows is this YouTube thing going to stick around? So I put my footage up there and didn't think anything of it, because, I mean, who cares about putting videos on YouTube in 2005 and maybe six months later, I went just to check on the website make sure it still existed, and there were people who were leaving comments on my video. I didn't know. These people. Didn't know who they were or why they were looking for me. Turns out, they were not looking for me. They were just looking for a basketball period, and I happened to be providing it through my footage. And they were asking questions like, Where do you play? What schools you go to, how often do you practice? They just want to know more about this random person who is showing them this guy looks like he can play basketball. So who is he, and they were hoping maybe that I might give them more of what they were seeing on that footage. And that's it wasn't immediate, Michael, but over the next maybe year or two, the light bulb went off in my head that, hey, these players are just looking for help with basketball, right? And I can provide it, because I do actually practice every day. I can actually play. I'm at the pro level now, and at this point, by about 2007 I had this cheap little digital camera, $100 digital camera, because it's before we had cameras on our phones. So now I could just bring this camera with me to the gym every day, because I go every day anyway. Only difference is now I'm going to film myself working out, and I can take little pieces from what I do, and I can put it on his YouTube site, and if it can help some kids out and maybe stroke my ego a little bit, because they're happy to show them how to play basketball, and why not? So that that was the seed of what led to me building my name on the internet well,   Michael Hingson ** 19:53 and that makes sense for me when I started at UC Irvine back in 19. 68 that was the first time I really encountered any kind of a computer. And what we had were, well, we had in a building, mainframes and terminals around the campus, but we certainly didn't have individual machines. A little bit later on, I started to encounter, for a variety of reasons, more mini and micro computers, like the digital equipment, PDP, 8e, and Data General, no, but to later on, but mostly it was all terminals connected to a big computer. Actually, there were two big computers and and that was, that was what we did. Now for me, of course, it was more of a challenge because all of it was very visual, right? And back then, we didn't have software to make computers talk or anything like that. So there were other adaptions that adaptations that I had to do, but I know exactly what you're talking about. And then I appreciate all the the the challenges and things that you ran into. But obviously it worked for you. And by putting that stuff up on YouTube, I knew you were going to what you were going to say, and how that actually started to open the door. You're right, yeah, which is cool. Well, you So you started helping people by putting up shots and so on. So what happened from that? I assume that more and more people wanted to know more and more about you and what you did and and started asking more questions   Dre Baldwin ** 21:28 between 2005 when I first put the first footage up in 2009 I was putting video out sporadically. So every now and then Michael, I put a new video up on YouTube. I would record my workouts, but I didn't always put something up. So one thing about basketball, as in almost any profession, is that you're doing a lot of the same stuff over and over again. So it's not like I keep putting up the same video me doing the same drills. So I was just put stuff out randomly whenever I got around to it. On top of the fact this is compounded by the fact that there was nothing personal to gain from having people on YouTube watching your video again, you can get a little bit of an ego boost. But other than that, there was nothing tangible to get out of it, so I didn't really care. And mind you, at the same time, I'm playing basketball, my main thing is actually playing basketball, not YouTube. So in 2009 what happened is, Michael, I found myself unemployed, so I was in between jobs, waiting for the phone to ring, and the phone was not yet ringing. I wasn't sure if or when it was going to ring. Good news is going back in the story a little bit. And I got introduced to what I found out to be network marketing when I was in college, and I just wanted to a bulletin board posting about making some money, extra money in the summertime. Turns out some guy was doing network marketing, and I had gone to a few of the meetings. Didn't stay in the in the industry or build a business, but I go into a few of the meetings where a couple breakthrough things happened in my mind. Number one is that the speaker on the stage was talking about business in ways that my college experience had not taught, never even touched on. So that was one that was eye opening. Number two is that the speaker said, if you're going to build your business, you must also build yourself at the same time, because your business cannot business cannot grow any more than you grow. And that made perfect sense to me, and that introduced and then he went on to introduce the concept of personal development, or reinforce it to the people who had heard the message before. That was a phrase I'd never heard of before. I'd always been into reading and human psychology, but I didn't know there was a term called personal development. And number three, he mentioned a couple of the books that he was suggesting that everyone read, and he name dropped some some authors like Napoleon Hill and Zig Ziglar and Brian Tracy and Jim Rohn and Errol Nightingale. And I'd never heard of these people, but I kept them in mind, even though he sold us outside of this hotel room, there's people selling books with these same authors. Just bought a book. Well, I was a broke college student. I could not afford the book, so I didn't buy the book, so I didn't buy the books, Michael, but I went on eBay when I got back to college, and I bought some pi rated copies of some of these books. And there were two of them that made a big impact on me that led to what happened in the future. One was thinking, Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, rich, right? Which showed me that there's a way that you could intentionally and consciously alter your thought patterns that lead to an alteration in your actions. And the other was Rich Dad, Poor Dad, by Robert Kiyosaki. And when reading that book, I realized, okay, there's another way that you can earn revenue and make money in life, aside from what my school teachers, college professors and parents were demonstrating to me. And this is what really set me on the path toward entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship. These, these, this little story I'm telling you here. And this all happened in the middle of my college years, right? So 2009 I just finished reading. I've always been reading. So I just finished reading another book, which was almost like the the New Age version of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And it was made for people who knew how to use computers, and it was called The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. And Tim was talking about similar it was a similar direction as Mr. Kiyosaki. Difference is Tim Ferriss was telling you how to do all of these things through the internet. He was the first person, for example, that ever heard say you can hire someone to work for you who doesn't even you know. Even physically met. They can live in India or the Philippines, where they cost the living is a lot lower than the United States, which means you can pay them less than you need to pay an American, and they can still do the same job as long as it's on the internet. I never heard anyone explain it, and then he explained exactly how to do it. And he talked about, know, how you need to structure, how you talk to them and deconstruct things. And my mind, my mind works in that way. So it was perfect for me. So all that is said to say 2009 Michael, that flashed forward in the story when my when I'm unemployed and trying to figure out what to do, I asked myself a really important question, which was, how do I combine these three things? One is my ability to play basketball. Number two is me being an internet geek, and number three is my desire to earn revenue in a way that I control. And what I just explained, the backstory tells you why all three of these matter, right? So that's how I started to build what we now call a personal brand. At the time, that was a new phrase. So when I what I started doing was, first of all putting videos on YouTube every single day. Because another thing that happened about that? Yeah, so another thing that happened at that time Michael was YouTube got purchased by Google and Google, and people don't remember this, maybe, but YouTube was not monetized up to that point. So YouTube was losing a lot of money. It was very popular, but they were losing money because they were spending all this money on the the space to hold all these these videos, but they weren't making any money. So by monetizing the site, ie that means putting advertisements on the videos. There was a time those of you listening that you could watch YouTube all day with no ads, but they started putting ads on the videos, and this allowed them to make money, and it also allowed them to share in the profits. So people like myself, the more videos we put out, and the more I got viewed, the more money we made. So I started making videos every day. Other thing was, I had always been blogging. I've always been a big reader, always a big writer. So I started writing more often, just about my experiences playing overseas. And also I started writing about my background in basketball, and also about how to play overseas, because there's a a niche market, but a hungry market of basketball players who believe they could play overseas the same way that I've once believed it. The thing is, is, unlike being a doctor or a lawyer, there's no, like, quote, unquote, official documentation on how to do it. So I started writing and explaining that, because I have the ability not only to have done certain things, but also I'm pretty good at explaining them. So I started doing that. That was the writing piece. And as I continue to do this, people started to know my name on the internet. So then I started to become kind of a, what we now call an influencer, specifically for basketball players, because of what I was doing online. So this all happened during that about 2009 to 2000 maybe 11 period, and the two other pieces I'll add to this cap, this long answer to a short question, which is also Tim Ferriss introduced this concept of you can sell your own products on the internet. And he gave a little experiment on how to test out the market viability. I did it. I started selling my own products. My first two products, Michael, were $4.99 each. That was the price. One was for dribbling the basketball. Ones for shooting the basketball, and they started selling immediately, as soon as I put them out. And the reason was because I had a hungry audience who was already following me, and I had already built a relationship with them, not because I was any type of marketing expert, but I kind of was. But by accident, I didn't, I didn't think of it as marketing. I just thought of it as I had something they want. And the last thing is, self publishing became a thing. So I told you I told you I was a big reader, big writer, so now I can write my own books, and I didn't have to go through a publisher to do it, because I always had the idea writing a book, but I didn't know anything about going through the traditional publishing process, which eventually I have done. But at the time, I wasn't thinking about doing that. But now I can write a book, and I can put it out tomorrow if I want to. So that's what I started doing. So all of this happened between 2009 and 2000 1101. More piece. I'm sorry. Lot of things happen in this period. One more piece was that the players who were following me online, basketball players, 99% of my audience, they started finding out about my background, because every now and then I would reply in the comments telling them, oh, well, I only played one year of high school, or I walked on to play in college, or I played overseas because I went to this exposure camp, or I would make a video just talking, just explaining these things, because I got asked the same question so often. And when players found out about this background of mine, they started asking questions about mindset. They started asking me things like, what kept you disciplined? What keeps you disciplined to keep working out because you put these videos out every day, or, where do you get the confidence to show up and perform at an exposure camp when you only have two days basically to make or break your career? Or why'd you keep trying when you were getting cut from your high school team over and over again, because they would say, hey, Dre I got cut from my team, but I feel like quitting. So why'd you keep trying? What is it that kept you going? Or they would ask something about, how do you get started now? How do you get started playing overseas? How do you get started getting known on the internet? Because now, internet? Because now this is when we start to have the seeds, Michael, of this generation of kids who, instead of growing up wanting to be a police officer or a firefighter, now they want to be YouTubers, because this is what they're seeing. And I was, I guess I was that to them. So they just want to know, how do you get started with all these things that you seem to be doing? Troy, so you. Now that's the end of my long answer to your short question. All of these things happen around a three year span, and that's kind of what sent me in the next direction I ended up going.   Michael Hingson ** 30:08 So I'm curious. One thing you said earlier was that one of the things that you discovered by going to the meeting of the network marketing guy was that he was telling you things that were significantly different than what you learned in business courses in college. What kinds of things were different?   Dre Baldwin ** 30:31 Well, so much so number one, the guy, well, the first, first thing is, I'm sure you've been to a network marketing meeting before. I everybody, I think my age or older has been someone so in these meetings, the first thing that they do, I would say, about 70% of the presentation is just helping you understand a different way of thinking about earning money and just money period. And the other 20 to 30% of the presentation is about the actual product or service that you would actually be selling if you were to take advantage of the join the business opportunity, as they call it. So the first thing is, they help people understand that to make more money, most people just go looking for ways to do more work, put in more time, put in more hours, when they explain instead, you should look for ways to have a network, or for ways to have assets that will do work for you, so you're making money, even if you're not doing the work. And then you language it in a way that makes it simple for the everyday person to understand, not the way that I just said it, but they make it really simple to understand. That's the first   Michael Hingson ** 31:32 thing. But the reality is that while people may or may not realize it, anybody who tends to be very successful in business has probably essentially done the same thing, whether they acknowledge it or not. So I mean, I appreciate what you're saying anyway. Go ahead, yeah.   Dre Baldwin ** 31:47 So that's the first thing. Is they help you understand that to make more money is not give more time to your job, whatever, because most people there have a job may introduce the business for the first time like myself, and many of them no older than me. So that's the first thing. The second thing is them helping you understand that, hey, it's possible to have other people working for you, which everyone logically understands, but most of us have this block in our minds that to get people working for me. Well, first of all, I had to have my own company. Secondly, I got to make a lot of money. And third, I got to go find the people. Fourth, I got to teach them what to do. And fifth, I got to watch them. And network marketing kind of handles all those problems at the same time. Because if you join the business and you get other people to join with you, the system teaches them all that stuff. You don't have to spend any money to get them on your team. You don't actually even be having you don't have to be making that much money yourself to get someone else on your team. And every time they make money, you make money, right? So it kind of solves all those problems of getting people on your team to where their efforts put money in your pocket without you having to do all the work. So that was the second breakthrough that happened in that meeting, and the third breakthrough to me, Michael, because I've always been a person who I consider myself a critical thinker, and I try to be as logical and as objective as I can be. As I already told you, I have a business degree from Penn State University, so I'm thinking to myself, why haven't any of my college professors ever mentioned anything is being told to us in this meeting? I just didn't understand it. Why are they not talking about this? Because it sounds like it makes perfect sense. So if it's wrong, maybe they can explain why it's wrong. But if it's right, why are they not talking about it? So these are the three biggest things that stuck in my head after I went to that meeting.   Michael Hingson ** 33:26 How did you or what did you discover? Was the answer to that last one, why they don't talk about it?   Dre Baldwin ** 33:33 We have a whole conversation on that so I understand the answer is that the system that we have in the United States, especially educational system is designed to produce employees. It's designed to produce people. We're going to go work for somebody else and work out your no salvation for someone else. Because if you are, this is just my my opinion here. If you are independently making your own money, then you are less controlled, and you are, it's harder to keep you under the thumb of anything or anyone else, and you can do or say, you have much more freedom. Let's just put it that way, when you have your own business and you're making your own money, as opposed to when you work somewhere and they set the rules upon you. So I believe the educational system not I believe, I know the educational system was initially created the way that it is to train people to be ready to be ready to go work in factories during the Industrial Revolution. Now we're not in that space anymore. Now it's more mental work than it is physical labor. But the system is the framework of the system still exists the exact same way teaching   Michael Hingson ** 34:33 entrepreneurialism, if you will, is still something that is not nearly as common as it as it really probably should be correct. Yeah. So that happens. Well, so how long did you continue to play basketball?   Dre Baldwin ** 34:48 I played basketball to 2015 so by this 2009 to 2011 period. Now I basically had two, if you want to call them jobs, neither one of them was well, basketball is technically a job. If you're a contractor, but I basically had two jobs playing basketball, and I have this internet thing going on that we now call personal brand, or you can call it a business, but I wasn't calling it either of those back then. I was just a guy who was known on YouTube, and I sell products, and I got books, and there was no word for it. So in this time period that last four or five years that I was playing basketball, of course, I'm traveling back and forth and playing, but as I told you, our long days of work are four hours, so I have plenty of time on my hands. So I'm blogging, I'm making videos, I'm updating my website. I'm making more programs, because when those first two four hour and 99 cent programs started selling, I said, Well, I know I got more about basketball than just two things. Let me just make programs for everything that I know. So I just made programs for every single aspect of the game that I understood, and I just kept putting them out. And I just was selling those programs to the point that I was making money online. And I got to the point probably about 2010 that I remember telling a friend that whatever this is that we're going to call this, that I'm doing on the internet is going to be bigger for me than basketball. I can see that very clearly, Michael, it's just for the simple fact that athletes have a very short shelf life. You can only play a professional sport for so long, no matter how good you are, because the body can't keep doing that at that level forever. But what I had created when I started selling products was what we call intellectual property. And you can create intellectual property forever, as long as your brain works and you can either write or you can talk or some way of communicating, you can sell intellectual property your entire life. You cannot sell physical property, at least not through your physical body, forever, not in the sports realm. So I knew my time was going to end in basketball, and my time using my brain to communicate something and sell it, hopefully that would never expire. To this point, I'm it's still true, so that's how I knew what I was going to be doing next. So   Michael Hingson ** 36:46 you played basketball, but eventually, I gather that what you're really saying is you made the decision that you were going to go into to doing the marketing, to strengthening your brand and creating new intellectual property, and you were going to do that full time?   Dre Baldwin ** 37:03 Yes, absolutely. So I was doing it from, again, my 2010 and 2015 I guess you could call it part time, right? And, but again, you had the off season, and I had a lot more time doing that than I had on the basketball court, right? And it was just building the business. Because remember the network marketing experience, reading Robert Kiyosaki, reading Tim Ferriss. I knew I wanted to go into the business world, because after sports, you start to do something. I mean, it's not like you just sit around do nothing for the rest of your life. You're 30 something years old. I was 33 when I stopped playing, so I knew there was something else that I was going to be doing, and I knew I didn't want to go the traditional route. So I knew that from watching my parents, I knew that from listening to my college professors, and I knew that from looking at my college classmates, I said, I'm not like these people. I need a different option. What else am I going to do? So I already knew that route was my route.   Michael Hingson ** 37:51 When did you come up with the the title and the concept work on your game?   Dre Baldwin ** 37:57 That same time period about 2009 so this was early in the days when I first started publishing on YouTube a little bit more consistently. And my audience is steadily growing, of athletes at this point. And athletes were starting to just ask me a lot of questions about, help can you help me with this? Help me with that? And one day, I was in a 24 hour fitness gym here in Miami, as a matter of fact, excuse me, and I just had my camera with me. My little $100 camera still had it, and I was finishing a workout on my own at about four o'clock in the morning, because I was couldn't sleep, so I just went to the gym, and I was stretching after my workout. And I remember recording this video. It's about two minutes long, and it's still on YouTube to this day. And what I said in the video was that a lot of you players, the reason that you all are having trouble getting better or making a team or you play, but nobody wants to give you the ball is because you all are spending way too much time watching me on youtube or playing Xbox than you are actually doing what I'm doing, which is being in the gym and literally working on your game. So I said in a little bit more colorful language than that, but when I put that out there, Michael, people really loved the phrase. They loved the phrase work on your game because they hadn't heard it used so forcefully in such a way. And it took about a year and a half of people repeating it back to me, seeing me in a mall, seeing me on internet, and saying it when I realized, you know what, I could just name. I can put a name on this and call it work on your game. Because the good thing about it is, because I already had this business mindset. Even though a lot of these players only knew me for basketball, I was thinking bigger than just basketball. And the phrase, the great thing about the phrase is that it doesn't limit you to sports. So that's where I first said it,   Michael Hingson ** 39:32 right, which makes perfect sense, you know? And and one of the things that I'm reacting to is when you said earlier that people kept asking you, well, why did you continue? Why did you keep working and trying to get on basketball, even though you didn't get very far in high school and you did some in college, but you never got to be pro, and then you eventually went to the resilience camp and so on. But ultimately, a lot of it comes down to discipline. Uh, and you, you chose to be disciplined about what you did, which I think is really a very important thing. So the question I would ask is, why is discipline such a very important part of success?   Dre Baldwin ** 40:16 I believe it's the biggest differentiator between, if you have people who have potential or resources. Biggest differentiator between who actually makes it and who doesn't is who has discipline. Because if everyone in the room has potential and everyone has access to resources, information, knowledge, talent, etc, the person who's the most disciplined is the one who's going to get the most out of the opportunities that are in front of them. And I believe so few people have discipline that it becomes the opportunity. Because I tell people, Michael, the opportunity is always in the opposites. So you just look around at what most people in any space are doing. If you could just be the opposite of that, that's where the opportunity is. You just have to ask yourself, all right, looking at how everybody else is and what everybody else is doing or thinking or saying, if I looked at the opposite of that, where's the opportunity? Because the opportunity somewhere over there. So if you just wrote, you'll find it so discipline, easy differentiator, because most people are not disciplined,   Michael Hingson ** 41:10 no and and even the people who are, they're generally looking for that difference that they can take advantage of, which makes perfect sense. How about discipline and how it actually helps in building confidence?   Dre Baldwin ** 41:28 Great question. Well, discipline produces confidence, and most people don't go looking for discipline, even though everyone understands that they need it. If you ask, if you stop the 100 people on the street and say, Do you need more discipline, everybody will laugh and say yes. And they can point to several areas in life in which they need it, but most people don't have it, even though everyone claims that they need it, because this is one of those things. But if you ask 100 people, would you like to be more confident, and in what area, most people would also say yes. The challenge is, most people don't know how to go about getting confidence. They don't know how to get this one either. But confidence, since you want it, confidence comes from discipline. So the more disciplined you are, the more confident you'll become, because discipline is basically about doing the work consistently, and confidence is your belief and your ability to do a thing. So the more you do your homework, so to speak, the more prepared you are for the test. If people can follow that metaphor, and that's what confidence is really about. And a lot of people tend to think confidence comes from faking it until you make it, or pretending that you're something that you're not. The problem with that is eventually you had to stop faking and then you have to go back to being who you were before. So you don't want to be on this roller coaster of up and down. Instead, you want to become it. And the way you become anything is by embodying it, by doing the things that that person that's you, the future version of you would already do. All you have to do is figure out what's the process, what are the disciplines of that type of person that already exists? You can model after that, follow the structure that's already been put in place by someone who's already done it, or already has become it. You follow it, and you can get the same result. So that's where confidence actually comes from, and it's based on following the disciplines, and you follow disciplines when you simply have a structure to plug yourself into.   Michael Hingson ** 43:06 I am also a firm believer in the fact that if you try to fake it, people are going to see through it. People are generally smarter than people who fake it. Give them credit for being and the fact of the matter is, you can fake it all you want, but they're going to see through it. And the reality is, if you're authentic, no matter what you do, you're going to go a whole heck of a lot further Anyway, yes. So the other thing is that, when you're dealing with discipline and so on, another sort of phrase that comes to mind is the whole idea of mental toughness and and you've gotta be able to become tough enough to be able to cope with whatever you know you're going to be able to do, and you've gotta have the conviction to make it happen. That means you gotta be pretty tough internally,   Dre Baldwin ** 43:54 yes, and that's another differentiating factor. All of these are differentiators, but mental toughness is about understanding that no matter how prepared you are, no matter how disciplined, how confident at some point along the way, many points along the way, things are not going to go the way that you expecting them to go. Something's going to go left, that you expect them to go right, a person's going to let you down. Just something randomly pops up that throws a wrench in your plans. And what people should understand is that everyone has these kind of things happen to them. Everyone has stuff happen in their lives. There's no one who is immune to this. The difference between the people who get to tell their story and everyone else, because everyone has a story, but not everyone has the luxury of getting their story heard, is that the people who get to tell their story are those who persevered through the stuff and came out on the other side to where they can tell their story. They created some success despite the stuff that they went through, and now, because you created the success, now you have this credibility, and you're on this sort of pedestal that makes people want to hear what you have to say and hear about your story. But it's not that the people who are in the audience don't have a story. Is simply that until you create a certain level of success, people don't care to hear your story. They only want to hear the story when you become a success. But you can't just be a success with no story. Instead of person who hasn't gone through stuff but they became quote unquote successful, nobody wants to hear that either. So you have to go through the process of going through the stuff, going through the challenges, the times where it looks like you're going to lose and you figure out a way to make it work. Then, once you're a success, now you get to tell your story. So that's what mental toughness is about.   Michael Hingson ** 45:27 I wrote a book, and started it around the time the pandemic started began, and the idea behind the book was to teach people to learn that they can control fear and that fear doesn't need to overwhelm them and blind them and make them incapable of making decisions. And if they truly learn about fear and how to use it, they can use it in a very positive way to further them. And of course, that's for me. The example is what I learned in order that, as it turns out, I survived being in the World Trade Center on September 11 and escaping with a guide dog. And it's and it's all about really learning those skills, learning to be tough, learning to persevere, and at the same time, being, I think, resilient, and being able to go sometimes with the flow. You talked about the fact that, in reality, many times things will happen that you don't expect, and it can can take you down. But the other part about it is, if you analyze the things that are happening to you, especially when there's something that you don't expect happening, and it occurs, what are you going to do about it? What do you learn from that? And that's, I think the thing that most people never really discover is that they can go back and from all the challenges they face. They're not failures, and they can learn from that, and they just don't do that.   Dre Baldwin ** 46:50 I agree with that completely. Is that, well, one reasons people don't tend to not look back often enough at the things that they've gone through, and also people are just not very people tend to not want to be too much of a critical thinker about themselves. Now, people will be critics of themselves or criticize themselves, but being a critical thinker doesn't necessarily mean beating yourself down. It just means looking at the situation and asking yourself, uh, given the same circumstances, if i What did I overlook at the beginning? What did I not notice that I sort of noticed, and of course, looking at what we know now after going through the situation, maybe what what I have done differently. But a lot of people don't take the time to really think critically about their own lives and their own situations. Therefore, they miss the opportunities in kind of debriefing, so to speak, as you describe it. And   Michael Hingson ** 47:35 the other part about that is they don't develop, if you will, the mind muscle to be able to analyze and be introspective and learn from the challenges that happened, or even when they do something well, could I do it better? We don't. We don't tend to do that. And I think that so many people become so critical of themselves, it's a very negative thing. And I used to say it, I'm my own worst critic, because I like to listen to speeches that I give and learn from them. But over the past year, year and a half, what I really discovered is wrong thing to say. It's not I'm my own worst critic. I'm my own best teacher, which is absolutely true. I am the only one that can really teach me. And my own best teacher puts everything in a much more positive light. That's right, and which is cool. And you know, you, you, you certainly demonstrated a lot of personal initiative. You You stuck to it. You were mentally tough, and so on. And you build a business, and now that business, I gather, is pretty successful. You've written, what, 35 books, you've created lots of videos, and you continue to do things. What do you think the most important thing is that people get from you today and that they've gotten from you?   Dre Baldwin ** 48:51 Great question. Well, I'll tell you the answer that I've gotten from people who work with us because I asked that question, I asked them, or I framed it by saying, I know, and you know, Mister client, that I'm not the only person in the world who does what I do, not the only person offering what I offer or talking about what I talk about. So what is it about my material? If you see an I sent an email, you see I just put out a video, or you're getting in a conversation with me, what is it about my approach that makes it different from anyone else who might be offering something similar in the marketplace, and the common answer that I get every time is, it's your style of delivery. So it's Dre you're no nonsense. You're no fluff. You get straight to the point. You're honest, you're objective, you keep it real. You do a good job of explaining different angles of things, while at the same time letting people know your opinion. So I just people tell me they just appreciate my style of communication. But nobody ever says, Dre you're the best in the world when it comes to talking about discipline or confidence or writing books or entrepreneurship or nobody ever says that even though I may be the best in the world, nobody says I'm the best in the world. They all say, we like the way that you get your point across. That's what they appreciate the most.   Michael Hingson ** 50:01 Well, and I, I would buy into that anyway, because I think that authenticity and telling the truth in a way that that people can accept it is so important and and so often we don't see that. So I can appreciate them saying that to you.   Dre Baldwin ** 50:18 Well, thank you.   Michael Hingson ** 50:20 Me why? Yeah, go ahead. No,   Dre Baldwin ** 50:22 I agree.   Michael Hingson ** 50:24 Well, there you go. We'll see, see. Okay, we both bought into that one. Why is discipline more important than motivation? I mean, everybody talks about motivation. There are a lot of motivational speakers out there. I know that a lot of times I'm providing motivational or inspirational talks, but and I suspect that the answer you're going to give will explain the but, but, why is it that motivation isn't nearly as as crucial as discipline? Well,   Dre Baldwin ** 50:51 just like you, Michael, I will give out motivational messages as well, so to speak. And if someone is booking me to speak and they say, need a motivational speaker, I'll take it right? They want me on the stage, so I'm good with that. The thing is, motivation and discipline are not diametrically opposed, and sometimes when we talk about these things, people tend to get the idea that they are like enemies. They're not enemies. They work together. The thing is, motivation comes and goes. We don't know when motivation is going to show up. Sometimes we're motivated, sometimes we're not, discipline always shows up. So even in the times when we are not motivated, if you're disciplined, you're still going to go to the gym, you're still going to write the next 500 words in your book, you're still going to record your show, you're still going to do the paperwork you're supposed to do. You'll still check your email inbox, whatever it is that you're supposed to do for the discipline. So motivation, if and when I have it, great, but if I don't have it, no one would know the days that I'm not motivated, because I'm still going to do the same work. So motivation is a good thing because, again, it'll get people fired up. It'll get you moving. It can light a fire under someone and get them to do something that they otherwise would not have done. The problem is motivation is much more temporary than the long term effects of discipline. So when people are going around looking for motivation, especially at the professional level, you're setting yourself up for a problem. Because at the professional level, you're getting paid to do something as your main occupation, which means you have to deliver consistently. The problem is motivation is not always there. So what will you do when you're not motivated? This is where discipline picks up. So what I advise people, and I give them a whole structure for this, is you need to take their short term motivations and convert them into long term disciplines, because that's the one that you can   Michael Hingson ** 52:31 count on. I would also submit that those long term disciplines will greatly enhance the amount of time you're motivated as well. Good point, because the the reality is that the discipline

Tune in to this episode of the Security Token Show where this week Herwig Konings and Kyle Sonlin cover the industry leading headlines and market movements, including new RWAs, exchanges, and stablecoins!    This week Jason Barraza had a chance to sit down with Nick Ducoff from Solana Foundation and debriefing their recent Solana Breakpoint conference. Jason also hosted Maredith Hannon from WisdomTree, breaking down their new WisdomTree Connect platform for institutions, their first product available on it, and more.   Company of the Week - Herwig: Ethena Company of the Week - Kyle: abra    = Stay in touch via our Social Media = Kyle: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kylesonlin/  Herwig: https://www.linkedin.com/in/herwigkonings/ Nico: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicopantelis/  Jason: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonbarraza/  Opinion articles, interviews, and more: https://medium.com/security-token-group  Find the video edition of this episode on our Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@stmtvofficial    The Market Movements Backed Lists 4 Tokenized Stocks on INX with Additional 3 in Pipeline: https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/inx-and-backed-expand-on-chain-tokenized-stock-trading-with-new-listings-on-polygon-890319069.html   Guggenheim and Zeconomy Issue $20M of Tokenized Commercial Paper: https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/wall-street-titan-guggenheim-tokenizes-113000218.html   AMA-AMBIOGEO and Tokeny Bring $4.6B in Gold Reserves Onchain: https://www.unlock-bc.com/129386/ama-ambiogeo-tokenizes-4-6b-in-gold-reserves-using-tokeny-technology/   Ethena Announces UStb Stablecoin, Backed by BUIDL: https://www.theblock.co/post/318297/ethena-ustb-stablecoin-blackrock-buidl-securitize   Assetera Lists SID Real Estate Token for Trading: https://thetokenizer.io/2024/09/24/sid-real-estate-token-begins-trading-on-asseteras-regulated-platform/   Polytrade and Anotherblock Tokenize Music Rights: https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2024/09/230421-rwa-tokenization-platform-polytrade-partners-with-anotherblock-to-enable-fractionalized-trading-of-music-rights-via-nfts/   Plume Network to Tokenize $1B+ in RWAs: Solar, Minerals, Medicaid Claims: https://www.theblock.co/post/317558/plume-network-says-its-tokenizing-over-1-billion-in-real-world-assets-like-solar-farms-medicaid-claims-and-mineral-rights   Telecom Comes to RWAs with Liquid Infrastructure in Industry First: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240923356633/en/Liquid-Infrastructure-Launches-as-the-World%E2%80%99s-First-Tokenized-Telecom-Asset-Platform The Token Debrief Visa Enters the Tokenization Industry with VTAP, Signs BBVA: https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/09/25/visa-to-help-banks-issue-fiat-backed-tokens-on-ethereum-via-new-tokenized-asset-platform/   Siemens Commercial Paper Settles in JPM Coin on SWIAT Blockchain: https://www.ledgerinsights.com/jp-morgans-jpm-coin-used-to-settle-tokenized-commercial-paper-on-swiat-blockchain/   Digital Asset and DTCC Announced Results From U.S. Treasury (UST) Collateral Network Pilot: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/dtcc-and-digital-asset-complete-successful-pilot-to-test-collateral-and-margin-optimization-through-tokenization-302255589.html   InvestaX Launches “InvestaX Earn” Product with OpenTrade: https://medium.com/opentrade/investax-partners-with-opentrade-to-launch-investax-earn-product-873b9f4a8e0e   OpenTrade Powers SCRYPT Investors to Participate in US Treasury Bills and EU Government Bonds:  https://thepaypers.com/cryptocurrencies/scrypt-partners-with-opentrade--1270214   Apex Group to List Assets on 21X: https://21x.eu/21x-and-apex-group-forge-strategic-partnership-to-transform-capital-markets/   Ownera to Power Interoperability for R3 Corda: https://www.einpresswire.com/article/746471679/r3-partners-with-ownera-to-offer-digital-and-financial-market-interoperability-solutions-for-corda   Abra and Praxis Partner to Bring Tokenized RWAs and DeFi to Network States: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240920339012/en/Abra-Partners-with-Praxis-Announces-Platform-to-Enable-Tokenization-and-DeFi-for-Network-States   Aktionariat to List Tokenized RWAs on Taurus' TDX: https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2024/09/230548-tokenization-is-the-future-aktionariat-and-taurus-to-partner-on-digital-assets-trading/   Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) Launches Digital Assets Lab with First Participants: https://www.ledgerinsights.com/qatar-launches-digital-assets-lab/   Hong Kong Project e-HKD+ Expands to Tokenization: https://cointelegraph.com/news/hong-kong-launches-ehkd-plus-tokenization   = Check out our Companies = Security Token Group: http://securitytokengroup.com/   Security Token Advisors: http://www.securitytokenadvisors.com/   Security Token Market: https://stm.co  InvestReady: https://www.investready.com   ⏰ TABLE OF CONTENTS ⏰ 0:16 Introduction 1:23 STS Interviews: Solana Foundation 13:24 Market Movements 38:52 STS Interviews: WisdomTree 56:08 The Token Debrief 1:06:52 Companies of The Week: Ethena, abra

Constantin Kogan, Partner at TDVC and CEO at TDX. Kogan co-founded BullPerks and GamesPad and has a decade of experience in the cryptocurrency sector, investing in blockchain technologies and incubating over 70 projects. Additionally, he founded Adwivo, served as a partner at BitBull Capital, and acted as the global managing director at Wave Financial. Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/constantin-kogan/ Website: https://ckogan.com/ _____ Protect your crypto and personal data from SIM swaps with Efani's cutting-edge mobile service. Use promo code CRYPTOKID for a $99 discount at https://www.efani.com/cryptokid. Let's secure your digital future together! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/cryptokidpodcast/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/cryptokidpodcast/support

Doctors James Ferriss, Linda Duska, and Jayanthi Lea discuss the promise and the challenges of targeting the immune system with immune checkpoint inhibitors, or ICIs, in cervical and endometrial cancers. They also examine emerging data that support the use of ICIs in recurrent cervical cancer, the potential for curing some patients with advanced endometrial cancer, and molecular factors that make cervical cancer a good target for immunotherapy. TRANSCRIPT Dr. James Stuart Ferriss: Hello, and welcome to the ASCO Daily News Podcast. I'm Dr. James Stuart Ferriss, your guest host of the ASCO Daily News Podcast today. I'm an associate professor of gynecology and obstetrics and the Gynecologic Oncology Fellowship Program Director at Johns Hopkins Medicine. In today's episode, we'll be discussing the use of immunotherapy in cervical and endometrial cancers to advance the treatment of these malignancies. I'm delighted to be joined by two acclaimed experts in this space, Dr. Linda Duska and Dr. Jaya Lea.   Dr. Duska is a professor of obstetrics and gynecology and serves as the associate dean for clinical research at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. Dr. Lea is a professor of obstetrics and gynecology and chief of gynecologic oncology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.  Our full disclosures are available in the transcript of this episode, and disclosures related to all episodes of the podcast are available at asco.org/DNpod. Drs. Duska and Dr. Lea, it's great to have you on the podcast today.  Dr. Linda Duska: Thanks, Dr. Ferriss.  Dr. Jayanthi Lea: Thanks, Dr. Ferriss.  Dr. James Stuart Ferriss: So, let's get started. In recent years, we've had a revolution in the treatment of advanced endometrial and cervical cancers with improved outcomes for patients treated with immunotherapy. And when we say immunotherapy, we're specifically talking about immune checkpoint inhibitors today. A few of these agents have actually been approved in the United States for the management of these diseases. In our discussion, I'd like to review the promise and challenges of targeting the immune system in patients with advanced endometrial and cervical cancers, as well as review the most recent evidence we have in these spaces.  Let's start with cervix. We've had a lot of improvements in outcomes here, Dr. Lea, and with cervical cancer, we've seen improved overall survival with the incorporation of immunotherapy along with chemotherapy and anti-angiogenic therapy for advanced and recurrent disease. Can you remind us why cervical cancer is a good target for immunotherapy?  Dr. Jayanthi Lea: Yes, Dr. Ferriss. Immunotherapy for cervical cancer is supported by several molecular factors. And I think first and foremost, it's so important to remember that the majority of cervical cancers are HPV-positive. And HPV-positive cancers can induce a high level of inflammation, but this high level of inflammation actually contributes to evasion of immune surveillance. What it also does is that it's responsible for the induction of PD-L1. And we've seen several studies that have shown that cervical cancers express PD-L1 anywhere from 50 to 90 percent of cases. Other pertinent factors to consider are that cervical cancer can be considered a tumor with a high tumor mutational burden. So, the number of somatic mutations that we see in the DNA can be considered as a proxy for neoantigens. And so the higher the level of neoantigens, the more immunogenic the tumor. And then lastly, about 1 in 10 cervical cancers present with microsatellite instability, which is an already established key biomarker for the response team in care.  Dr. James Stuart Ferriss: So, thinking about targeting PD-L1, what clinical evidence do we have that supports the use of immune checkpoint inhibitors in recurrent cervical cancer?  Dr. Jayanthi Lea: We now have several studies that have shown a benefit for immune checkpoint inhibitors. For example, KEYNOTE-158 was a phase 2 basket [trial] that investigated the antitumor activity of pembrolizumab, which is a PD-1 inhibitor, in multiple cancer types. And specifically for patients with previously treated advanced cervical cancer, we were able to see an overall response rate of about 15% in those patients who had PD-L1 positive. And similarly, the EMPOWER CERVICAL-1 study, which was a phase 3 randomized trial that investigated the efficacy of cemiplimab, which is another PD-1 inhibitor, versus investigator's choice of single agent chemotherapy, showed a significant difference in median overall survival and progression-free survival in the cemiplimab group. There are several other studies that have investigated the efficacy of PD-1 or PD-L1 inhibitors in cervical cancer. One specific PD-1 inhibitor is nivolumab. In CHECKMATE-358, nivolumab was associated with an overall response rate of 26% in women who had recurrent/metastatic cervical cancer.  Dr. James Stuart Ferriss: Dr. Duska, do you have any thoughts?  Dr. Linda Duska: I'm really interested in PD-L1 as a biomarker because in the KEYNOTE-A18 study, which we're going to get to, 95% of patients were PD-L1 positive by CPS, which is the scoring system that we use in cervix cancer. And some of the studies that you already mentioned, including BEATcc, which we're also going to talk about, reported results where PD-L1 wasn't even considered. And so it begs the question, since PD-L1 is actually – again, depending on when in the course of disease you look at it, but more recent studies suggest 95% of cervical cancers express PD-L1, and – agnostic is the word I was looking for – it seems at least in BEATcc and similar trials that PD-L1 is agnostic, but I wonder if PD-L1 is really a good biomarker for response to checkpoint inhibitor therapy and I wonder what your thoughts are.  Dr. Jayanthi Lea: I think that's an excellent question. To your point, that's correct that we saw in KETYNOTE-A18 that more than 90% of the patients had PD-L1 positivity and the result is sort of generalizable to all comers. That's still a matter of debate as to how we see PD-L1 as a biomarker to incorporate checkpoint inhibitors in the treatment of patients.  Dr. James Stuart Ferriss: So, let's talk about the use of immune checkpoint inhibitors in the frontline setting. Until recently, we haven't seen much improvement in overall survival since the introduction of anti-angiogenic therapy to the chemotherapy backbone, and that was in GOG 240. Let's talk about the changes that have recently occurred in this space.  Dr. Jayanthi Lea: So, we've had some very exciting data specifically from initially KEYNOTE-826 and its primary metastatic or first line salvage settings. So, KEYNOTE-826, which was a phase 3 randomized, controlled trial was very practice-changing for us because it showed that incorporation of pembrolizumab to the first-line treatment of patients with metastatic or recurrent cervical cancer, really changed the landscape for treatment in this group of patients. So, keep in mind that prior to the study, the standard of care was carboplatin, or cisplatin with paclitaxel plus or minus bevacizumab, which yielded a median overall survival range in anywhere from 13 to 17 months depending on whether you use bevacizumab or not. And then adding pembrolizumab to that regimen, increase the median overall survival to 24 months, which is very promising.  Dr. James Stuart Ferriss: If I remember correctly, KEYNOTE-826 allowed investigators choice, use of bevacizumab, and initially we were unsure about which regimen was best. Has there been additional data since?  Dr. Jayanthi Lea: There has been additional data since. And another study that was done in the same vein was the BEATcc trial, which also looked at the different checkpoint inhibitors, atezolizumab in combination now with bevacizumab and platinum-based chemotherapy. And the control arm for this study was the GOG 240 regimen, which included bevacizumab. And this study showed both a progression-free and overall survival difference. The median overall survival in this study was 32 months with the incorporation of the checkpoint inhibitor to the bevacizumab and platinum-based chemotherapy. So, the way that I look at it is that the BEATcc trial basically confirmed the findings of KEYNOTE-826 and highlights that it is important for us to incorporate checkpoint inhibition with immunotherapy along with bevacizumab when we're treating patients with a recurrence.  Dr. James Stuart Ferriss: Also, folks with primary advanced treatment for cervical cancer, this would be a great regimen, is that right?  Dr. Jayanthi Lea: Absolutely. Primary advance, we would want to use the same regimen for that.  Dr. James Stuart Ferriss: Okay. What about locally advanced in primary treatment? What advances have we seen?  Dr. Jayanthi Lea: So we've had some major changes in that field as well, especially with the recent KEYNOTE-A18 data where pembrolizumab was administered in combination with external beam radiation and concurrent chemotherapy. And this study showed that there was significant and clinically meaningful improvement in progression-free survival compared to chemoradiation alone. Specifically, the progression-free survival at 24 months using pembrolizumab with chemoradiation was 68%, and 57% when in the placebo group. The hazard ratio for disease progression was 0.7 and no new safety signals were observed, which is fantastic, especially given the 0.7 hazard ratio that received PFS.  Dr. James Stuart Ferriss: Yeah, absolutely. These patients with locally advanced cervical cancer often are quite symptomatic, and the prospect of adding chemo, radiation, and now immunotherapy on top of that is really encouraging to see that it was such a well-tolerated regimen. I believe that there were patient-reported outcomes recently reported at SGO.  Dr. Jayanthi Lea: Absolutely. So, the safety profile of pembrolizumab and chemoradiation was consistent with the known profile of the individual treatment components. And no new safety signals emerged in the pembrolizumab chemoradiation arm. So, you're right. It was very well tolerated.  Dr. James Stuart Ferriss: What would you say are the takeaways for folks who are seeing these patients in the community? These locally advanced cervical cancer patients that are now adding immunotherapy in a space that we have not used routinely in the past in terms of combining it with chemo radiation in gynecologic cancer. What are some things they should be looking out for?  Dr. Jayanthi Lea: Well, I think that with the hazard ratio of 0.7 and the patient-reported outcomes showing no new signal, I think we can say that there is a positive benefit-to-risk profile of adding pembrolizumab in combination with chemoradiation, and that we should feel comfortable using this regimen. Now, of course, we have individualized patient care, and be able to know when to use bevacizumab, when to use immunotherapy. So, taking the whole patient into consideration becomes important. But for those individuals who are able to receive these drugs who don't have concrete issues to not receive these drugs [then I'd say we could] incorporate them since the safety profile is set.  Dr. Linda Duska: I would add to that, Dr. Ferriss, that right now we only have FDA approval in the U.S. for stage 3-4A disease, and that's 2014 staging. Mind you, we are now in 2018, so we should be very careful in and follow the correct FIGO staging. But the FDA only gave approval for stage 3-4A disease, even though the study included patients with earlier stage disease and positive nodes.  Dr. James Stuart Ferriss: That's a great point, thank you.  So, Dr. Duska, thinking about endometrial cancer and advanced endometrial cancer, we have seen a similar revolution in the care of patients over the past few years, with major shifts in our approach. Can you remind us how we got here?  Dr. Linda Duska: Yes, I would say in the ‘90s and before, and maybe even in the early 2000s, we used a lot of radiation for endometrial cancer as adjuvant therapy following surgery. The general consensus and what we were all taught was that this was a chemotherapy-resistant disease. And then we learned from a variety of GOG at the time, Gynecologic Oncology Group trials, that this disease is actually chemosensitive. And we went through a series of chemotherapy drugs, ranging from adriamycin cisplatin to taxel adriamycin cisplatin, and finally to taxel and carboplatin, demonstrating that this disease is actually quite chemosensitive.  With this realization came the idea that maybe it would be important to combine chemotherapy and radiation particularly in high-risk endometrial cancer cases, so those with positive nodes or patients with high-risk histology such as clear cell or serous cancers. So two very important trials were done, one of them was PORTEC-3 and the other was GOG-258, which looked at combining chemo and radiation together to see if we could do better than one or the other alone. And they were very different trials, and they looked at different populations of patients and they looked at different things. For example, PORTEC-3 randomized patients to receive chemotherapy and radiation versus radiation alone, while 258 looked at chemotherapy and radiation versus chemotherapy alone. Without going into a great amount of detail, I think what we learned from both of those studies, and I think surprised many of us, that the arms that included chemotherapy, those patients did better.  In fact, the results of GOG-258 can be interpreted – and this is somewhat controversial – but can be interpreted that many of these high-risk patients don't need radiation at all, or perhaps need tumor-directed radiation. For example, chemotherapy followed by tumor-directed radiation either to the vaginal cuff, because the vaginal cuff is at risk for recurrence, or perhaps to an area of concern, maybe the cervix if there were cervical involvement or if there is a particular concern for local recurrence in a particular patient. So, I think the pendulum has swung from almost always using radiation alone to, in more modern day, using chemotherapy and using radiation much more sparingly, and then comes immunotherapy.  Dr. James Stuart Ferriss: So, update us on the results of NRG-GY018 and RUBY?  Dr. Linda Duska: So, we've already talked about the KEYNOTE basket trials, which really contributed a lot to our understanding of the importance of MMR deficiency and microsatellite unstable disease. The KEYNOTE-158 study and the GARNET study showed us how important it was for women with MMRd and MSI endometrial cancer to receive checkpoint inhibition, and actually with remarkable response rates to women who had already been pretreated. But we also learned from the GARNET trial, which included MMRp patients, that the response rates in MMRp were not that great. And that led to KEYNOTE-775, which looked to combine pembrolizumab with a VEGF inhibitor, lenvantinib, to see if we could make the cold tumor hot. And indeed, we could. And not only could we improve the response rate in patients with MMRp tumors, but we could also improve the response rate in patients with MMRd tumors. They did better with the combination than they did with pembro alone.  That led to the idea of combining checkpoint inhibitors with chemo upfront. The idea there was we were going to take paclitaxel and carboplatin, which were our backbone for advanced or recurrent endometrial cancer, and add immunotherapy to that. And to your point, GY018 and RUBY trials did just that. And they allowed MMRd and MMRp patients and combined paclitaxel and carboplatin, either with dostarlimab in the case of RUBY, or pembrolizumab in the case of GY018. These studies, both of which were reported and published in the New England Journal of Medicine last year, showed remarkable findings in the upfront setting and potentially in the curable setting. And the OS data for RUBY were presented at SGO this year and were remarkable for MMRd patients. In the whole population, in the whole group in RUBY, there was a 16.4-month improvement in overall survival with the addition of dostarlimab which is just huge.  When you look at the MMRd group, I think Dr. Powell described the overall survival improvement as unprecedented. I believe that was the word that he used. Also, he called it very robust, with a hazard ratio of 0.32 for the group that got dostarlimab, and a median OS that was not reached. So really remarkable. In addition, in the MMRp group, there was a seven-month improvement in OS that was significant. So that's really amazing in the RUBY trial. It's also of note that the RUBY trial allowed carcinosarcomas, whereas the GY018 study did not. So, I think it's fair to say that these results apply to carcinosarcomas.  It's also really important to note that many of the patients in the immunotherapy group who received placebo, 41% of them got IO in a later treatment line, and these OS data still stand. So that's really interesting and hypothesis-generating. For GY018, we don't have mature OS data yet, so we can't talk about OS. But we saw a similar improvement in PFS in both arms, in the d and the pMMR, with an OS trend in both arms that was also reported at SGO. GY018 was a little bit different though, because they unblinded at the time of the PFS reporting last year, and so those patients were unblinded a lot earlier than the RUBY patients were. So, to interpret the data in that vein, the OS data is not mature, but we anticipate looking at the PFS curves and the preliminary OS curves, that the OS data will also be statistically significantly improved in core pembrolizumab in GY018.  What's also really interesting, and we haven't talked about molecular subtypes, is that when we look at the molecular subtypes in RUBY, and I'm sure we're going to see data on the molecular subtypes in GY018 coming up, different molecular subtypes of endometrial cancer respond differently to IO. And so, there's going to be lots of really interesting data coming our way soon that we're really excited to see, and that will help us triage patients appropriately into treatment regimens.  Dr. James Stuart Ferriss: Dr. Lea, did you have a thought?  Dr. Jayanthi Lea: Yeah, I just wanted to comment that looking at the dMMR survival curve in the file that was presented recently, one thing that really strikes me is the importance of adding the IO at the time of initial treatment. The separation of the curves persists. And, like you just mentioned, Dr. Duska, I mean, some of those patients who received placebo then later on went to get an IO treatment, but at the same time, we still see a vast separation of those curves. So, I think it's really important to note that immunotherapy should be used upfront, especially in dMMR.  Dr. Linda Duska: Yeah, I completely agree with that. And I think that might be– I mean, this is just a hypothesis, but I think that that might be why we saw a difference with the addition of immunotherapy in the MMRp group, because it's possible that the chemotherapy created an immune environment that made the checkpoint inhibitor work more successfully than it would have otherwise. So, a really good point. You definitely need to include dostarlimab or pembrolizumab with the chemotherapy and then as maintenance therapy after.  Dr. James Stuart Ferriss: So, you mentioned, we're increasingly thinking about endometrial cancer in smaller and smaller buckets of patients with very prescribed molecular profiles. We don't yet have enough information to specifically tailor treatment. How are you approaching that today in patients that you see in clinic?  Dr. Linda Duska: Well, the MMR, and I'm interested in what you both are doing also, it's easy with the MMRd and MSI high patients. Those patients all should receive a checkpoint inhibitor, no question. The patients that are p53 mut, I test them for HER2, because we do have data to suggest that atezolizumab or TDX-d might be useful in those individuals, HER2 positive. And then the remaining patients, also called the NSMPs. That's a difficult group. I'm interested to know how you all manage them. I think that's the group where more clinical research is really needed to determine what the best treatment regimen for them is. But I'm interested in both of your thoughts on that.  Dr. James Stuart Ferriss: Dr. Lea?  Dr. Jayanthi Lea: I would have to say that I do exactly like you do, Dr. Duska.  Dr. James Stuart Ferriss: And I would say our approach is very similar. And we have a robust discussion always about the use of immunotherapy with chemotherapy and in patients who are proficient MMR. But I think that most of us believe that the PFS data is certainly compelling. And now the OS data from RUBY, very compelling in both groups. And so, we are routinely recommending the use of immunotherapy along with chemotherapy in these advanced patients.  Dr. Linda Duska: I've heard the argument made that GY018 required measurable disease, and so does not necessarily apply to patients without measurable disease. I'm not sure that I agree with that. I think there were clinical trial reasons why that was a requirement rather than biologic reasons. In addition, as we already discussed, RUBY included carcinosarcomas and GY018 did not. I don't think there's a reason to only use dostarlimab for carcinosarcomas, but that said, I don't know that pembrolizumab has an indication for carcinosarcomas. The devil's in the details, don't get too lost in the weeds. I think the take-home message here is that it's really important to use IO, particularly for the MMRd patients with endometrial cancer, upfront. And based on the OS that we saw in both RUBY and preliminarily in GY018, we may be curing some people with this regimen, and I think we should focus on that. The overall survival for advanced endometrial cancer is not great, and if we can improve that and potentially cure some people, that's a huge advance for our patients.  Dr. James Stuart Ferriss: Do you envision a day that we might even ask the question, “Do we need to do surgery?”  Dr. Linda Duska: So, the rectal data would support that assertion. I'm not sure that endometrial cancer and rectal cancer are the same thing. And I think that taking out a postmenopausal woman's uterus is a lot less morbid than potentially radiating or taking out somebody's rectum. I think a different question would be, is there a day when we would stop doing no dissection? We could definitely debate that, but I don't see that happening. Do you see that happening anytime soon? A stopping of hysterectomy for endometrial cancer? Dr. Jayanthi Lea: I don't see that happening anytime soon. And I think, as you said, taking out the uterus, tubes, and ovaries, it does provide us with some information about whether you're even dealing with a secondary primary. But also, it's from a quality-of-life standpoint. If a woman has a large uterus, that's uncomfortable. Postmenopausal bleeding, avoiding bleeding during the course of treatment, so many reasons why I wouldn't be in too much of a hurry to want to not do surgery for these patients. Dr. James Stuart Ferriss: So, we'll put a plug in for our fellow gynecologic oncologists that we still have a role to play in the incorporation of treatment regimens for patients with advanced uterine cancer. So it's not just medicine, there's still a role for surgery.  Dr. Linda Duska: I think that's very fair, yeah. Dr. James Stuart Ferriss: Okay. I think that's all the time we have for today.  I want to thank our listeners for their time, and you'll find the links to all the studies we've discussed today in the transcript of this episode. And finally, if you value the insights that you hear on the ASCO Daily News Podcast, please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you.  Dr. Linda Duska: Thank you. Dr. Jayanthi Lea: Thank you. Disclaimer: The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care, and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement.    Find out more about today's speakers: Dr. James Stuart Ferriss Dr. Linda Duska @LDuska Dr. Jayanthi Lea   Follow ASCO on social media:  @ASCO on Twitter  ASCO on Facebook  ASCO on LinkedIn    Disclosures: Dr. James Stuart Ferriss: Honoraria: National Board of Medical Examiners Dr. Linda Duska: Consulting or Advisory Role: Regeneron, Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Merck, Ellipses Pharma Researching Funding (Inst): GlaxoSmithKline, Millenium, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Aeterna Zentaris, Novartis, Abbvie, Tesaro, Cerulean Pharma, Aduro Biotech, Advaxis, Syndax, Pfizer, Merck, Genentech/Roche, Cerulean Pharma, Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Leap Therapeutics Patents, Royalties, Other Intellectual Property: UpToDate, Editor, British Journal of Ob/Gyn Dr. Jayanthi Lea: Consulting or Advisory Role: Roche

Join us in this episode with Simone Geib, Director of Product Management at MuleSoft, as she shares her serendipitous foray into the world of computer science. Listen in as Simone takes us back to her formative years in 1980s Germany and walks us through the trials and triumphs of entering a male-dominated field, her subsequent move into artificial intelligence, and the enriching experiences that shaped her path. Explore the revolutionary world of cloud-hosted development environments with us, focusing on Anypoint Code Builder and the Anypoint extension for Visual Studio Code. Simone elaborates on how this tool offers developers a flexible and secure solution that fits perfectly into their workflows, regardless of location or device restrictions. She also sheds light on the integration of generative AI, which promises to transform how we approach initial flow designs.  Remember to connect with us for more developer insights and stories, and don't miss the chance to experience innovation and community at TDX '24. Show Highlights: Simone's unexpected discovery of computer science and her journey from learning MS-DOS to embracing AI at university. Transition from a developer working with Visual Basic and C++ to a product manager role at MuleSoft. Advantages of cloud-hosted development environments and the role of MuleSoft's community in the evolution of Anypoint Code Builder. Preview of the Einstein for Anypoint Code Builder's generative AI pilot for flow designs from natural language prompts. Links: Simone at LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonegeib/ Anypoint Code Builder: https://www.mulesoft.com/platform/api/anypoint-code-builder Register to attend TrailblazerDX 2024  

Dr. Shannon Westin and her guest, Dr. Nanda Horeweg and Dr. Carien Creutzberg, discuss the paper "Molecular Classification Predicts Response to Radiotherapy in the Randomized PORTEC-1 and PORTEC-2 Trials for Early-Stage Endometrioid Endometrial Cancer" recently published in the JCO. TRANSCRIPT  The guest on this podcast episode has no disclosures to declare. Shannon Westin: Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of JCO After Hours, the podcast where we get in-depth on manuscripts published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. I'm your host Shannon Westin, Social Media Editor for the JCO and GYN Oncologist by trade. And I'm so excited about today's topic because it is a GYN Oncologist dream. Before I start, please note that none of the authors have any conflict of interest. We are going to be discussing molecular classification predicts response to radiotherapy in the randomized PORTEC-1 and PORTEC-2 trials for early-stage endometrioid endometrial cancer. And this was published in the JCO on September 20th, 2023. And we're going to be speaking to two of the lead authors. First is Nanda Horeweg. She's a senior researcher in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands. Welcome. Nanda Horeweg: Thank you. Happy to be here. Shannon Westin: And Dr. Carien Creutzberg. She's professor at the Department of Radiation Oncology at the Leiden Medical Center as well. Carien Creutzberg: Thank you. Shannon Westin: So, let's get into it. And I want to really level set because we have a mixed audience here. So, why don't you start by speaking about the incidents and mortality of endometrial cancer? Nanda Horeweg: Yes, of course. Endometrial cancer is the sixth most common cancer in women with around 400,000 new diagnoses made globally each year. And a woman's lifetime risk to get endometrial cancer is around 3%, and the median age, the diagnosis is 61 years. Most of the women who are diagnosed with endometrial cancer are diagnosed at an early stage, around two thirds, and they have an excellent prognosis. Actually, the five-year survival rates are around 92%. For stage 2 disease, this is actually already going down a bit to 74%. Therefore, stage 3 disease is only 48%. Women that are diagnosed with advanced disease have only a five-year survival, 15%. Shannon Westin: So, given that we know the majority of endometrial cancers are diagnosed at this early stage, prior to your evaluation, what was known about the optimal way to treat this early-stage patient population? Carien Creutzberg: Well, of course, the PORTEC trials were done … were started PORTEC-1 in the 19th of the last century, and PORTEC-2 in 2002. So, at that time, there were still many, many women treated adjuvantly with external beam radiation therapy. And we just developed risk factors to decide on their risk and the incidents for radiotherapy. And in PORTEC-2, because in PORTEC-1 we had seen that most of the recurrences in these early stage cancers were in the vaginal fold, we compared local vaginal brachytherapy only three sessions within full course of pelvic radiotherapy and showed that it had similar pelvic control and survival. Of course, this study, which Nanda conducted, was a long-term analysis with many new factors known from the translational research in the tissue samples of these patients who participate in PORTEC-1 and 2. And in the meantime, we've developed much more knowledge on the molecular factors and other important factors such as LVSI, which tell us much more about the individual prognosis to patients. So, the treatment has been developing greatly in the past 20 years. Shannon Westin: Yeah, and I think this is a great case of less is more, right? We were doing so much for so many people that really didn't need it. And so, really tailoring who needs less treatment, who doesn't need any treatment, and then also, conversely, who may need more treatment that would be missed by the traditional risk factors that you're speaking of. So, I think that brings us right into my next question, which is just bringing the audience up to date on the cancer genome atlas and how that's changed the way we classify endometrial cancer. Nanda Horeweg: Yes, I think the molecular classification of the TCGA has shaped the way we think about endometrial cancer, and has huge impact on decisions on adjuvant treatments in the years to come. The TCGA performed an extensive characterization of the endometrial cancers and found that in fact, this disease exists of four different groups. And the first of the groups I'd like to discuss is the ultra-mutated group, which is characterized by POLE mutations. And this group is shown to have an excellent prognosis in many independent studies. A second group that also has a high mutational burden is characterized by microsatellite instability, and mismatch repair deficiency and has shown to have an intermediate prognosis. Then there's another group that has a low mutational burden with high copy number alterations and frequent TP53 mutations, and these have a poor prognosis. And then lastly, there's a group that does not have any of the classifying features and is often called non-specific molecular profile or TP53 wild type. And this group also has an intermediate prognosis. And then finally, there's a small group of cancers that has more than one of these classifying features, the so-called multiple classifiers. And the WHO 2020 has developed an algorithm which can be used to classify them into the four groups. And that's first on the POLE status. And for the POLE wild type tumors, they are assigned according to mismatch repair deficiency status. And for those that are mismatch repair proficient than POLE wild type, they are classified according to the TP53 status into NSMP or p53 abnormal. Carien Creutzberg: Yeah, that is because of in the ultra-mutated and hyper mutated groups, many of the other mutations are secondary mutations in the context of the ultra-mutated stage, and they behave like the first molecular group. Shannon Westin: Yeah. So, that POLE mutation is going to trump anything else, and it's so important. And I will just say as a sidebar, it's been challenging with the price of next gen sequencing sometimes to get that for everyone. So, sometimes for us when we see a p53 mutation, we actually go back and do the full next gen sequencing to make sure that we're not going to act on that core prognostic feature when it really is in the setting of that more simplistic or that more positive prognostic place. So, this is great, we already kind of highlighted a little bit PORTEC-1 and 2, but if you don't mind, I would love to get the audience a little bit more information just maybe about the populations that were included as we were figuring out how aggressive to be with radiation just to remind people of that, or to teach them that if they haven't gotten a chance to look at those studies. Carien Creutzberg: Yeah, that's important to know because PORTEC-1 was still in the era that we also treated intermediate risk stage 1 endometrial cancer patients. So, deep invasion with grade 1 and 2 or superficial invasion with grade 2 and 3. That's what we defined at that point. Then we compared external beam radiation or no further treatment, showing no survival difference, but a higher risk of recurrence with higher risk being older age over 60, grade 3 for deep myometrial invasion. And we kept those high intermediate risk factors as also similarly found by GOG-99 at the time to do PORTEC-2. So, at the time, about 50% of patients did not have an indication for adjuvant therapy anymore, and with a high intermediate risk population for PORTEC-2, we compare external beam or vaginal brachytherapy and found the benefit of vaginal brachytherapy. A simple outpatient treatment, very short with almost no side effects ensuring local control. And nowadays, using the molecular classification of PORTEC-4a, we've compared achieving treatment with or without use of the molecular factors to designated treatment. So, the standard arm is vaginal brachytherapy and investigational arm is first, a molecular risk profile. And then we give no radiotherapy for those with a favorable profile, then a brachytherapy for the intermediate ones, and for the small group is either extensive LVSI or TP53 mutation or L1 chem overexpression external beam. And we hope to show that less overtreatment and less undertreatment will benefit these patients. Shannon Westin: Yeah, I'm very much looking forward to the results of PORTEC-4a. But let's circle back and talk a little bit about your amazing work here. So, how did you leverage those patient populations from PORTEC-1 and 2 for the current study? Nanda Horeweg: Yes. Well, the PORTEC-1 and 2 study provided a unique opportunity to look into differential treatment effects for radiotherapy. And that is because these are randomized trials, so the groups are comparable, and we have long-term follow-up data that's of very high-quality. In addition, as Carien said earlier, she had the vision already back in the nineties to directly ask the patients permission for the collection of the tissue. So, we have a broader complete biobank for both of these trials, which is quite unique. And our colleagues, Professor Smit and also Charlene Goseff from the pathology department, they have done extensive work on molecular classification, and have molecularly characterized all these cases. So, this allowed us to include 880 patients in this study, which is the largest so far. And besides like the very good starting point that we have of PORTEC-1 and 2 is that we also chose a design that was optimized to conduct like real causes, the causal effects of the molecular class on radiotherapy response. So, we tried to preserve this randomization effect, the exchangeability of the groups as much by working with the intention to treat population and not excluding any patients, except for when they did not have the molecular classification assessed. And also, we looked at areas in the body that were irradiated in one group and not in the other one to really observe the effect of radiotherapy as much as possible. So, looking to the entire pelvis, so local and regional recurrences in PORTEC-1 and looking at pelvic recurrences in PORTEC-2. Shannon Westin So, how were the intervention outcomes in this study different based on the TCGA classifiers? Nanda Horeweg: Before I tell you the results of biomolecular group, I think it's good to have the starting point of the analysis here. So, the no hypothesis of my study was to see whether there was any difference, and no hypothesis is that there's no difference. So, if we find a significant effect, then we can actually say that we found something. And if we start with the POLE group, we did not find any significant difference between the groups allocated to radiotherapy or not. But we did see not a single recurrence in any of the patients that we included from both of these trials. So, technically speaking, we did not find a predictive effect of the molecular classifier, but a prognostic effect. There's no one's having recurrence, so we can deduct from that, that radiotherapy is probably over treatment. Then for the MMRd group, we did observe some recurrences, but these were not significantly different between these three groups. So, based on this study, we cannot draw conclusions on which type of radiotherapy we should give to the patients or whether we should give radiotherapy at all. This was very different for the p53 group. There, the patients had lots of recurrences, unfortunately, as we expected, but we saw a big difference in outcome compared between no radiotherapy at all if it's vaginal brachytherapy where we still had lots of recurrences, and EBRT where we hardly saw any recurrences in the pelvis. And that difference was significantly different. So, that's an indication that these patients need more than just vaginal brachytherapy, even though it's only stage 1 endometrioid endometrial cancer. And then in the last group, the NSMPs, we saw even a different pattern where patients who had had external beam radiotherapy or vaginal brachytherapy, both had an excellent local regional control, and the ones that did not receive any treatments had more recurrences. And this was also very significant. So, there, you would conclude that both therapies are appropriate, but of course, the toxicity profile for vaginal brachytherapy is much more favorable than that of EBRT. Shannon Westin: We really are getting kind of consistent data around p53 needing more treatment. And I think the natural question that comes here, for me at least, and I know we can't answer it with the work, is would chemo be — would that be that extra treatment, when we saw with PORTEC-3 that the group needed the chemotherapy the most. So, I think we'll have to continue to work through that and determine is any more treatment what we need or specific treatments really the best. So, this is so intriguing and it's nice that it's consistent, that we're seeing that across these different studies that really kind of lends strength and validity, I think to what we're finding. So, one of the actions that we're kind of moving towards and that you advocate certainly in your paper is omitting therapy for patients with POLE mutations. Are there any ongoing studies around that that will help us confirm that this is safe for our patients? Nanda Horeweg: Yeah, that's a very good point. I think the evidence is strong enough now to conduct prospective trials. And of course, these are ongoing, the PORTEC-4a trial was already briefly mentioned there. The patients with poor mutations will be randomized between observation and vaginal brachytherapy. So, that will give us a good indication whether in this high intermediate risk early-stage group omission is safe. And in addition to that, we are also conducting with the RAINBO Consortium, the RAINBO-BLUE trial, wherein patients also with high-risk features, so non-endometrioid isotypes, LVSI and higher stages are included. And also in those patients, we investigate whether the de-escalation of treatment is safe. So, we're definitely looking forward to those results to be able to transfer this knowledge to clinical practice later on. Carien Creutzberg: And maybe it's nice to add that RAINBO BLUE is connected to the Canadian Taper trial. Taper being a general de-escalation trial where the POLE patients in that trial are also feeding into the RAINBO-BLUE. And I know that in North America, many centers will participate in the Taper trial. Shannon Westin: Yes, I think everyone is very excited and I think it'll be nice to have these two very strong studies that will help us really confirm that that is 100% a test that needs to be done, cost are not — and that will help avoid overtreatment of patients. So, in line of that, have you all experienced any challenges with implementing molecular testing across patients with endometrial cancer? Any thoughts on how we could potentially simplify? You talked about the rational promise algorithm, which I think is excellent, but I'm just curious to hear your thoughts on this. Nanda Horeweg: The implementation of the molecular classification can be challenging. We have to be honest about that. And usually, it's the assessment of the POLE status that's causing the problems because that's usually done with NGS, which is quite expensive. It requires a lot of knowledge in the laboratory and it's also a bit time-consuming. So, that is the bottleneck for most laboratories and for most settings. But this is already changing in a couple of places, like in the UK and the Netherlands, it's being reimbursed by healthcare insurances, and also, in many tertiary care centers in other countries, they're already systematically performing this test. But of course, there will always be places where this is not feasible. And luckily, there are also cheaper alternatives coming up and are already available at the moment. So, one of them is, for example, standard sequencing, which is not so expensive, but a bit labor intensive. Some colleagues we work with from India have implemented that in their clinical practice and are perfectly able to molecularly classify the endometrial cancers in daily practice. Another alternative is a test that we've developed in Leiden that's called the QPOLE test, which is based on qPCR, so that's a technology which we use for our COVID test around the world, so that can be done almost anywhere. And with that, you have a very high accuracy to detect unknown pathogenic variants. And this is also published in JCO Global Oncology, and can be implemented in any center after a local validation step. And even like more companies nowadays are realizing that this is important. So, I think commercial tests are already becoming available and very more on the market soon. So, I am really hoping that it'll be more available to endometrial cancer patients. Carien Creutzberg: And they'll offer them at a very low cost and also a rapid turnaround because NGS can take like 10 days. But realizing on a more national level, if you have found one patient with a POLE mutation, the omission of cycles of chemotherapy with all of the patient care around in the hospital is worth much more than just a few POLE tests. So, we have to look at this and that's I think why our healthcare reimbursement came through that if you look at a population level, it is cheaper, and we'll do an extensive cost analysis in PORTEC-4 just to show this. Shannon Westin: That is such a good point. I love that and all of the downstream issues that happen potentially with radiotherapy or with chemotherapy, that's really brilliant. And I'm going to take that back, I love these podcasts. I always learn stuff that I immediately start to use. So, I guess then the last question is, what's next for this particular research and how might we validate what you found? Nanda Horeweg: Yes. Well, as mentioned earlier, for POLE, we have already put the next step in place. So, PORTEC-4a has completed accrual almost two years ago, and we're very much looking forward to do the final analysis within one to one and a half years. So, that will be one of the important next step. And of course, the POLE-BLUE trial is open at the moment, and within a couple of years, we also hope to learn more about this group. So, that's very exciting. Then for the mismatch repair deficient group, while we did not find any particular sensitivity for radiotherapy, and I also don't think that we will conduct another large randomized radiotherapy trial in this group — I think the results that we've observed in the metastasized setting, were really impressive results with immunotherapy are the way forward for this molecular class. And I think the next thing we should do now is prove whether this works or not in the adjuvant setting. And if that's starting with the high-risk patients, which is something we are currently doing in the MMRd-GREEN trial, which is ongoing in the Netherlands, and soon, will open internationally. And from there on, we can work forward if we see that also in this setting the immunotherapy works well. Shannon Westin: And I think GY020 also — NCI trial is also looking at the addition of immunotherapy to radiotherapy in that irony at risk. Carien Creutzberg: Absolutely. Nanda Horeweg: Yeah. And the KEYNOTE-B21 as well — oh, well, already complete accrue. Shannon Westin: The B21, yeah. So, I think those are good. Yeah, that's a really good point for that MMRd group that the immunotherapy really is the way to go, and then more work to be done with the no specific molecular profile. Nanda Horeweg: The NSMP, I think like for the early-stage group, it's quite clear that vaginal brachytherapy is a therapy of choice. But you can of course, try to identify those at such a low risk that you could deescalate treatment. And that's of course what's being done in the Taper trial and also in part, investigated in the PORTEC-4a trial. Carien Creutzberg: And those with higher risk NSMP that we are revisiting hormonal treatments because 90% are estrogen receptor positive, and they have a clearly better prognosis than those with estrogen receptor negative tumors. So, those with estrogen receptor positive tumors can in RAINBO-ORANGE, which will be run led by the UK group, see if we can improve quality of life with less intensive adjuvant treatment. And then you came to the p53 group, that's a good one to stop with. Nanda Horeweg: Yeah, we have very good indications that radiotherapy and chemotherapy is working well for this group. And this is also in line with the guidelines that have been issued in the last few years by many societies. So, I don't think we should change this base of the treatment consisting of radiotherapy and chemotherapy. But since the prognosis is still rather poor, we need to add systemic agents to reduce the risk of metastasis. And preferably, this should be like well-designed based on a proper biological underpinning, plus something that's not too toxic since we're combining the three therapies together. So, this is what we try to do in the RAINBO-RED trial where we will investigate the addition of a PARP inhibitor to chemoradiation in the p53 group. Shannon Westin: Oh, I love that. That's been my whole career, is adding PARP inhibitors wherever I can. Carien Creutzberg): We might also want to mention the HER2 inhibitors, which are also in about 20% of the p53 group has HER2 overexpression. And there is a trial being set up in NCI with trastuzumab and pertuzumab. Shannon Westin: My only concern with that one is I think that the antibody drug conjugates are so much more powerful, the TDX data that we just saw from DESTINY is so impressive. And so, I do wonder, like if we need to move on from kind of some of the older HER2, and get with the program and use some of these more powerful drugs. But with that, I just want to thank Dr. Creutzberg and Horeweg. This was such a great discussion, and obviously, near and dear to my heart talking about endometrial cancer, but I hope our audience enjoyed as well. Just as a reminder, this was a discussion on molecular classification predicts response to radiotherapy in the randomized PORTEC-1 and PORTEC-2 trials for early stage endometroid endometrial cancer, published in the JCO on 9.20.23. I am your host, Shannon Westin, and I hope you'll check out more JCO After Hours wherever you get your podcasts. Have an awesome day. The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care, and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement.    

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to LeeAnne Rimel, Senior Director of Admin and Developer Strategic Content at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about the TraiblazerDX 2024 Call for Participation and why you should submit. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with […] The post Trailblazers at TDX with LeeAnne Rimel appeared first on Salesforce Admins.

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Jenny McNamara, Salesforce Admin at CINC. Join us as we chat about how she became obsessed with Flow Builder, the importance of Salesforce basics, and why you need to get yourself to a Salesforce live event. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are […] The post Jenny McNamara on Growing Your Career from TDX appeared first on Salesforce Admins.

今回は、チームスピリット社の畑本さんをお招きして、TrailblazerDX 2023で発表された Einstein GPT と Well-Architected について話しました。

Vanessa Grant and Zachary Banks recap TDX 23. Getting the most from conferences if you're an introvert. The #1 way to take your resume from good to great plus other questions from our amazing audience. 

Terence Campbell or you may know him as TDX Campbell talks to Nick about his time working behind the scenes at Sheffield United. He speaks about:  Becoming Blades videographer, his favourite project, videos that didn't go down well, the Blades rise to the Premier League and loads more!Support the show

This is a follow-up to my last podcast, posted December 7, Annexations – My Vote and Why - my NO vote in opposition to The HUB and Hawthorne Yards annexations, approved at the November 22, 2022, Town Council meeting, by a 3-1 vote. The HUB,  TDX, Master Site Development Plan:  Town Zoning Ordinance Section 191-11 – Site plans and master site development plan.  https://library.municode.com/md/la_plata/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=CH191ZO_ARTIIPLRESURE_S191-11SIPLMASIDEPL Hawthorne Yards, NCX, Master Site Development Plan: Town Zoning Ordinance Section 191-34  - Site  plans and master site development plan https://library.municode.com/md/la_plata/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=CH191ZO_ARTIVZORE_S191-34NECOMIUSZONC This concludes this latest La Plata Town Council Ward 4 Update. I hope you find this podcast informative and useful. Let me know what you think. I look forward to your questions and comments. My email address is djenkins@townoflaplata.org Talk to you soon!

​​Information: 00:31:22 - Hier beginnt die Therapie Wie schön wäre es, eine Lösung für belastende Gefühle wie Angst, Stress oder sogar Schmerzen im eigenen „emotionalen Notfallkoffer“ zu haben, die diese deutlich lindern können? Zu schön, um wahr zu sein? … Nein, denn die PEP-Methode kann es dir möglich machen. Und in dieser Folge wird sie dir von Cordelia und Boris Beimann erklärt. Boris ist mentaler Auftrittscoach und Performance Wellness Coach von bekannten Schauspielern, wie Verena Altenberger oder Moderatorinnen wie Jeannine Michaelsen. In seinem eigenen Podcast sind noch mehr Größen, wie Carolin Kebekus, Max Mutzke oder die Band Querbeat zu hören. Mit der PEP-Methode hilft er Menschen, die es in besonderen Auftritts- und Drucksituationen leichter haben wollen oder die vor besonderen Herausforderungen in ihrem Leben stehen. In der heutigen Folge erfährst du nicht nur, wie und warum die Methode wirkt, sondern du darfst sie zusammen mit Cordelia selbst ausprobieren. Vorher bekommst du einen Einblick in Boris‘ Arbeit, erfährst die Hintergründe zu den Wirkungsweisen und hörst live und in Farbe, wie Cordelia mit bestimmten Klopfübungen ihre eigene Zahnarztangst effektiv verringert. Danach haben die beiden das Ziel, dir eine pragmatische Methode zugänglich zu machen, mit der du schnell und effektiv vor, während und nach bestimmten unangenehmen Situationen arbeiten kannst. Egal, ob es um weniger Stress, weniger Schmerzen oder Angst geht; die PEP-Klopftechnik ist oft wirkungsvoller als viele herkömmliche Methoden. Wenn du es dir in deinem Leben einen Tick leichter machen oder etwas weniger Stress im Alltag haben möchtest, lohnt sich diese Folge besonders. Und jetzt geht es direkt ans Beklopfen - Viel Spaß! _____ Und für alle, die diesen Podcast hören, hat Boris noch etwas Besonderes angeboten: Er zeigt dir, wie du selber die Methode anwenden kannst, um an einem einwöchigen Experiment mitzumachen. Wenn du an dem einwöchigen Experiment teilnehmen möchtest, melde dich JETZT direkt an: https://calendly.com/borisbeimann/einfuehrungklopftechniken?month=2022-08 Wissenschaftliche Hintergründe zum Klopfen findest du u.a. auf Boris‘ Blog mit Verlinkung zu den Studien. https://borisbeimann.de/studie-eine-tappingsession-mit-experten-senkt-flugangst-deutlich/ https://borisbeimann.de/klopfen-wirkt-gegen-angst-und-ekel-erste-hirnscan-studie/ Hier kommst du zum aktuellen Buch von Dr. Antonia Pfeiffer über den Stand der Forschung und den Unterschieden der größten Klopfmethoden (EFT, PEP, TDx): https://www.carl-auer.de/emotionale-erinnerung-klopfen-als-schlussel-fur-losungen Hier findest du mehr von Boris: ► Homepage: www.borisbeimann.de ► Instagram: www.instagram.com/borisbeimann ► Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/1rtSG1koCB1T6CBEkCkS6h?si=19786799088644af _____ Hier findest du mehr zu Dr. Cordelia Schott: ► Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drcordeliaschott/ ► TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dubistdochaerztin?lang=de-DE ► Website: www.dr-cordelia-schott.de ► Twitter: https://twitter.com/cordelia_schott ► LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-cordelia-schott-bb861079

Welcome to Season Three of The Bitey End of the Dog! For this season, I will be continuing to have great discussions on helping dogs with aggression with the world's foremost experts, and will be introducing a new exciting format to the show, Fresh Bites which will be shorter episodes on a variety of topics focused on understanding dog behavior from a diverse group of dog trainers and behavior pros from around the world. I'm kicking off this season with none other than Jean Donaldson, who has had a profound influence in so many positive ways in my journey, as well as many others in the dog training world. We chat about her seminal book, The Culture Clash, as well as Mine and Fight, two other well known books, and must haves if you are working aggression cases, and go down many other deep rabbit holes in dog behavior. For additional resources on helping dogs with aggression, visit:https://aggressivedog.comIf you want to take your knowledge and skills for helping dogs with aggression to the next level, check out the Aggression in Dogs Master Course and get a FREE preview here:https://aggressivedog.thinkific.com/courses/aggression-in-dogsDon't miss out on the third annual Aggression in Dogs Conference  9/30-10/2/22:https://aggressivedog.com/conference/Woof Cultr swag!https://woofcultr.com/collections/the-aggression-in-dogs-conferenceAbout Jean Donaldson:The Academy for Dog Trainers was founded in 1999 by Jean Donaldson.She ran it for ten years as a residential program at The San Francisco SPCA before spending a year and a half re-inventing the curriculum in its current form as a two-year e-learning course. The new format broadens the scope and content of the original program, includes the latest research on behavior and training, and allows students a much longer enrollment time so that they may study, “marinate” and integrate concepts and skills, train and fit their course work around their life commitments.Jean is one of the top dog trainers in the world and has lectured extensively in the US, Canada, the UK, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. She is a four-time winner of The Dog Writers' Association of America's Maxwell Award, and her seminal book The Culture Clash was named number one training and behavior book by The Association of Pet Dog Trainers. Her other titles are Mine! A Guide to Resource Guarding in Dogs, Fight! A Guide to Dog-Dog Aggression, Dogs Are From Neptune, and Oh Behave! Dogs From Pavlov to Premack to Pinker.Her most recent book, Train Like a Pro, was her first written training guide for a lay audience. In 2017, Jean authored and instructed Dog Training 101 for The Great Courses.Before transitioning full-time to pet dog training, Jean competed in dog sports with dogs of various breeds, earning numerous titles and wins including OTCh, HIT, TDX, and FDCh, as well as a CGC. She ran a successful training school for fifteen years, and spent six years doing primarily referral aggression cases. She holds a degree in comparative psychology and is a keen student of evolutionary biology.The Academy for Dog Trainershttps://www.academyfordogtrainers.comThe Great Courses - Dog Training 101https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/dog-training-101Support the show

This episode of the CFO Playbook features an interview with Kirstine Archer, CFO at Bam Boom Cloud. Although having been in finance for over 20 years, Kirstine says she fell into accountancy rather than making it a deliberate career move. Even though she may have taken a non-traditional path to CFO, Kirstine has a clear passion and expertise for helping small to midsize businesses by increasing their efficiency through advising and technology. Kirstine has worked for Bam Boom Cloud for the past two years. As CFO, her role isn't just about making sure the numbers balance, she is always striving for the company to have the best finance team around. Her goal is to make sure the company delivers world class finance systems, both as their number one fan and number one customer. Her previous experience includes financial leadership positions at Cooper Parry, Equifax, TDX, Boots and more.In this episode of the CFO Playbook, Kirstine talks about the many opportunities that technology provides for improving the way finance works. She emphasizes the need for more competition among companies to develop newly innovative finance tech. Kirstine explains how the finance industry should challenge the status-quo situated around old technology to develop new innovations that would eliminate human errors. She discusses her unconventional path to becoming a leader in finance, including finding benefit from attending an open university and getting on-the-job experience early in her career. Kirstine also talks about her approach to creating a great team, and provides advice for becoming a successful CFO. Take The CFO Playbook Listener Survey to help us improve the show. You'll also be entered to win your choice of the latest iPad Pro or a Samsung Galaxy S7.--------Guest Quotes:“When young people come into the world of work, they can be incredibly highly academic, intelligent, young people but don't have work skills. So don't have those skills in terms of communication or writing emails or just logic and problem solving and circling round to speak to people. There are a lot of skills that you don't get until you come into the world of work. And I think that the world has moved on. I think that with the entrepreneurial spirit, you are probably going to get more from the world of work and learning from peers and seeing the good side and the bad side of what they do than you are necessarily sitting in a lecture hall, listening to somebody who is incredibly qualified in what they do, but hasn't necessarily been in that work environment either ever or for a very long time. Knowing that you've got options should be really empowering to young people now because it's something that I didn't have when I was at school.”“Finance can be a tough place to work at times. You get the business looking at you, suppliers, customers, it can be a tough environment to work in. We need people around us who we can rely on as team members and who not only have that tenacity, but that drive and that desire to want to do their best in their role.”“I don't necessarily want a team that everybody wants to be CFO. I want a good, well-rounded team where, yeah some people are knocking down at my door, wanting my job after me, but other people want to do the best they are at the job that they've got because they have family outside of work, or they have loved ones that they're caring for, or actually they just don't want the stress and the hassle of a high powered job because they want to finish on time and go and play football. We're all many different sorts of people. And I think a well balanced team and a well-balanced company should support that.”“Cultural fit is massively important. I think we've probably all worked in organizations where what they do is great and we've probably been remunerated well, but that cultural fit isn't right. And if that cultural fit isn't right, then you get demotivated and you don't do your best. Eventually you get bored and you leave. So finding that right cultural fit from the office and spending the time doing that is massively important.”“Young people that come in haven't necessarily had a job in an office environment before let alone a finance function and actually setting them up with the right training and setting them up for success is important, but not everybody is going to succeed in that role. I think making a quick decision around that is equally as important. If you have gotten the wrong fit person in the team, and it could be that they're a great person but they're just not the right person for the role, then actually making that decision and finding either another role internally that's better suited to them or  letting them leave and find their own career path is important.”“I think the damage done to teams by keeping under-performance in place for long periods of time is worse than facing it head on and admitting that sometimes you make mistakes. Sometimes we get recruitment wrong. I know that I have in the past. You have to sometimes go with your gut. You sometimes have to go with the best person that's sat in front of you, hope they'll fit in and be great for them. And then, unfortunately, you have to deal with the consequences if they don't quite meet expectations.”“I don't see why any of us want to do something that technology can do for us. We get a bit worried about the robot revolution. That will never happen because robots will never think in the same way as humans. They'll never spot those little intricacies and add that value. I don't want to grow a team that's enormous. I want technology to take away the heavy lifting so that my team could do the interesting stuff, the stuff that really benefits them in their career journeys.”“It still astounds me, today in 2022, the world's global finance system is pretty much still held up by Excel. There is no finance function on earth that does not have an Excel spreadsheet somewhere. I think that's symptomatic of the fact that actually as finance people, we don't challenge the status quo enough sometimes. I think that sometimes, because we have month-end reporting and because we have to make sure that what we do gets done, we go, ‘I'd love to fix that but I haven't got time and I need this to carry on working, it will do the job'. And I think sometimes we need to be bigger advocates of the fact that this doesn't work for us.” “There are ways that you can use technology to speed every process up, every operational process. And the more that we do that, the more that you're not reliant on humans and human fallibility and errors with that. As finance people, there's nothing more frustrating than being like, ‘oh, someone forgot to do this', or ‘you posted something in the wrong way round'. If we can remove that and get people doing what they should be doing, which is controlled checks, analysis, the data and the insight side of things, then we'll all be better for it.”“I think there needs to be competition within this space. Otherwise you end up with just Excel again, just a newer version of Excel that everybody relies on. There needs to be competition. A single source is great and Microsoft enables that, but there has to be competition within the partners in terms of who's going to get to market first…. A world without competition is a world without innovation. So it's massively important that that continues.”“Don't rush into the CFO role. Some people seem to be very desperate to get to the top of the ladder. It will come if it's right to come to you, like the right opportunity will come up.”“For me, it's just about learning. If you're not learning in the role that you're in, then it's probably time to move on. But it doesn't always have to be up the career ladder. It can be sideways or a similar role in a different organization. If you want to be a CFO of a fast paced organization, spend some time in finance in a fast paced organization. See how you like it. Because one day that's all going to be yours to look after.”--------Timestamp Topics:01:30 Kirstine's career path05:39 Formal education07:58 Advice on university10:31 Education v. work experience13:04 Narrowing down hiring candidates19:27 How Kirstine's finance team functions compared to others25:45 In-house v. outsourcing when it comes to finance28:03 Opportunities for improving the way finance works36:35 Advice for upcoming CFOs --------Sponsor:This show is brought to you by Soldo, the brighter way to manage business spending and expenses. With Soldo, you can control every expense, track spend in real time, automate financial reporting, and then use those insights to fuel growth. Learn more at Soldo.com--------Links:Connect with Ross on LinkedInConnect with Kirstine on LinkedInThe CFO Playbook Listener Survey

Theophilus adds a new simulation to the TDX and explains what the quest to build the Melanite Man will look like. He also touches on the differences between a Melanite Man and a Melanin Man. 

อัปเดตข่าว Mission News ประจำวันพุธที่ 12 มกราคม 2022 . [ในประเทศ] เตรียมตัว! SET เตรียมเปิด TDX ศูนย์ซื้อขายสินทรัพย์ดิจิทัล [ต่างประเทศ] จีนเจอ "โอมิครอน" ระบาดหนัก ยกระดับมาตรการควบคุมโรคเข้ม [ต่างประเทศ] Facebook ยังต้องสู้คดีต่อ! หลังถูกศาลสหรัฐฯ ปฏิเสธคำขอยกฟ้องข้อหาผูกขาดตลาด . . #missiontothemoon #missiontothemoonpodcast #missionnews

Salesforce's annual developer and admin event, TrailheaDX, starts this week. And on this special Dynamic Developer episode, Salesforce CTO and co-founder Parker Harris joins host Bill Detwiler to talk about the big theme's for this year's TDX event, how Salesforce is betting big on its platform, and what's next for the future of software development as more companies expand their use of no-code and low-code tools. Spotify: https://tek.io/34Vo2mT Stitcher: https://tek.io/2KkwjHG Apple Podcasts: https://tek.io/2xQUSt5 Google Play: https://tek.io/3btMluL Follow Bill Detwiler: https://twitter.com/billdetwiler Watch more TechRepublic videos: https://www.youtube.com/techrepublic TechRepublic on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TechRepublic/ TechRepublic on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TechRepublic/ TechRepublic on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techrepublic/ TechRepublic on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/techrepublic/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kris Harrison is a Director of Product Management here at Salesforce. Specifically, he works with enterprise API’s and external services.    Kris used to be a Consultant with The Gap until his abrupt transition to Product Management. In his past, he also led a charge to begin thinking about services that are called from multiple customer touchpoints instead of standalone website features. In this episode, we’re talking more about his historical experience, what his current role at Salesforce looks like, and some great insights into API.  Listen in to get an angle on the current state of API's for 2021, including what is going to be retired and what the roadmap looks like. Also if any developers would like early preview access to the GraphQL pilot, they can tweet Kiril Seksenov (@k_seks).   Show Highlights:   How Kris came to join Salesforce’s enterprise API team. What teams within Salesforce he is the Product Manager for. What a “day in the life” looks like for him in his current position. Characteristics of a good API. How developers can use an API effectively.  What a Composite Graph is and how it can help developers. The roadmap for the upcoming Composite Graph API. The problem Kris and his team are trying to solve with the fields function in SOQL. Why the SOQL character limit was recently upped. Why they have decided to retire old versions of API and what those retirement phases will look like. What else is on Kris’ roadmap going into the future.   Links: Kris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/GETkharrison Kris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krissirk/ Kris on Github: https://github.com/krissirk Readiness Release Live on SOQL Fields: https://www.salesforce.com/video/16254714/ Blog Post on SOQL: https://developer.salesforce.com/blogs/2021/01/new-soql-fields-function-is-ga.html OpenAPI 3.0 Pilot blog: https://developer.salesforce.com/blogs/2021/01/learn-moar-with-spring-21-openapi-3-0-spec-for-rest-api.html Readiness Release Live on Composite Graph: https://www.salesforce.com/video/12954039/ Composite Graph blog: https://developer.salesforce.com/blogs/2020/09/learn-moar-with-winter-21-composite-graph-api.html Good API Trailhead module: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/content/learn/trails/architect-solutions-with-the-right-api What to know about API retirements: 7.0 thru 20.0 - https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=000351312 21.0 thru 30.0 - https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=000354473 TDX '20 “Do More with Less” session - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c2NS4V9lxk ***   EPISODE CREDITS:   If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment. He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com

Dick Lo is the founder of TDX Strategies. TDX is a quant firm that focuses on volatility trading strategies and structured products for sophisticated clients. 

Laura Biessy and early Career Scientists and TDX

“I grew up thinking that a research scientist was a natural thing to be.” Stephen Hawking There’s physical science. And there’s a kind of science as to how the mind works and how people achieve their dreams. Blend one-part plasma fusion physics with one-part commercial real estate and stir this in an open and creative mind and you have Peter Capuciati, the Chairman and Founder of Bluon and the guest of today’s podcast. Starting in 2011, Peter has led the team at Bluon to develop a true solution for R-22 replacement. It’s called TdX-20 (R-458a), something unlike anything the HVACR world has ever seen. It truly is an energy saving product, as they are demonstrating amp draw decreases of 10-20% and increases in capacity of 3-6%. We love digging into the science of HVAC in this podcast, and Peter is the perfect tour guide for the challenging journey of creating a refrigerant chemistry that has been proven to perform in about 80% of R-22 systems. This is backed up by real-world testing on equipment, not just simulations After an easy, free registration and testing process, techs can gain full access to the operating manuals of over 22,000 types of R-22 units as well as individual retrofit instructions and compatibility ratings for each unit. Beyond all this, Bluon provides the training, know-how and demonstrates (sometimes in person) the skills necessary to successful do a successful conversion. If this sounds like a commercial for Bluon, it sort of is, as we sell Bluon at TruTech Tools. However, this is exactly the kind of product we love selling; smart, well supported and one that relieves a major pain point for our customers. Plus, it’s fun working with the energetic Ninja team at Bluon, or as Peter calls them the Analog Renaissance Cowboys. You can learn more about Bloun at www.BluonEnergy.com and join the thousand technicians every month that are downloading and using the app.

OH MY DAYS BOOKSHELVERS!Never meet your heroes they say... well Barks from the Bookshelf say a big BOO to that.This episode features the one and only Jean Donaldson. Jean doesn't really require an introduction. She is a burning light in the Dog Training Community. It was our absolute honour to talk with Jean and we really hope you all enjoy it.Jean's BioJean is one of the top dog trainers in the world and has lectured extensively in the US, Canada, the UK, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. She is a four-time winner of The Dog Writers’ Association of America’s Maxwell Award, and her seminal book The Culture Clash was named number one training and behavior book by The Association of Pet Dog Trainers. Her other titles are Mine! A Guide to Resource Guarding in Dogs, Fight! A Guide to Dog-Dog Aggression, Dogs Are From Neptune, and Oh Behave! Dogs From Pavlov to Premack to Pinker.Her most recent book, Train Like a Pro, was her first written training guide for a lay audience. In 2018, Jean authored and instructed Dog Training 101 for The Great Courses, another resource for dog guardians.Before transitioning full-time to pet dog training, Jean competed in dog sports with dogs of various breeds, earning numerous titles and wins including OTCh, HIT, TDX, and FDCh, as well as a CGC. She ran a successful training school for fifteen years, and spent six years doing primarily referral aggression cases. She holds a degree in comparative psychology and is a keen student of evolutionary biology.We recorded this podcast a few weeks ago before the real Covid 19 horror show hit. We sincerely hope everyone is coping out there and doing all they can to keep themselves, their loved ones and the entire planet safe. We hope this goes some way to making these uncertain time a tiny bit easier.Love to you all.Steve and NatLink to Jean Donalsons Animal Teaining Academyhttps://www.animaltrainingacademy.com/podcast/training-tidbits/jean-donaldson/Link to Jean's book 'Mine!'https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0970562942/ref=dbs_a_w_dp_0970562942Link to Jean's book 'Fight!'https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0970562969/ref=dbs_a_w_dp_0970562969Link to Steve & Corrins Goodall Dog Training Facebook pagehttps://www.facebook.com/goodalldogs/Link to Nat's Training & Behaviour facebook pagehttps://www.facebook.com/Natdogs/

On this episode we speak to Jed and Nate from Bluon about their R22 replacment TdX 20 (R458A). XOi Technologies http://www.xoi.io/hvac-know-it-all-demo/. Housecall Pro https://www.housecallpro.com/hvacknowitall. Navac http://www.xoi.io/hvac-know-it-all-demo/. Testo https://www.testo.com/en-US/testo-465/p/0563-0465. Cool Air Products https://www.coolairproducts.net/. Refrigeration Technologies https://www.refrigtech.com/

"Anybody can say they're artist... not everyone is actually making money from it" - EJ EJ is CEO of TDX, an artist services company that helps with booking, marketing, and professional development. He focuses on publishing registration to help artists get their royalties and looks to "set flames" in the next generation to become better. In this episode we cover publishing, what it means to "support an artist," and what you should look for in a manager.  "Money makes the world move, but money don't move a lot of people" - EJ R & R Social Media: https://www.instagram.com/recrespectpod/ http://facebook.com/recrespectpod/ http://soundcloud.com/shneaky/sets/recognition-and-respect HOST: SHNEAKY www.SHNEAKY.net/blog/shneakyradio www.instagram.com/officialshneaky www.instagram.com/shneakyent www.facebook.com/officialshneaky www.facebook.com/shneakyent GUEST: EJ Jones https://www.instagram.com/young_ej/ https://www.instagram.com/tdxmediashow/ SPONSORED BY: ThaAfterParty.com instagram.com/thaafterparty Recorded 5/7/18 at Tha Afterparty Radio Station: thaafterparty.com www.instagram.com/thaafterparty/ https://www.facebook.com/thaafterpartyradio 11222 S La Cienega Blvd Unit 645 Inglewood, CA 90304 United States #RecognitionAndRespect #SHNEAKY #SHNEAKYent #Entrepreneur #CommunityBased #Culture #Art #Music #SELANightLife #DJMCAnythingYouNeed 

This week’s all-new episode of the Contingent Workforce Weekly podcast features an exciting conversation with Jason Ezratty, co-founder of Brightfield, a workforce management solution provider. Jason and I chat about Brightfield’s Talent Data Exchange (TDX) technology, the company’s recent Series A funding, and how TDX’s AI-powered intelligence fits into the Future of Work movement.

Jean is the founder and principal instructor of The Academy for Dog Trainers.  The Academy is celebrating its twentieth anniversary in 2019.  She is a four-time winner of The Dog Writers' Association of America's Maxwell Award.  In 2017, Jean was recruited to create Dog Training 101 for The Great Courses. Born in Montreal, Canada, Jean founded the Montreal Flyball Association, and Renaissance Dog Training, the first positive reinforcement-based school, and counseling service in the province.  Her own dogs and dogs she has trained have earned numerous titles and wins in a variety of dog sports, including OTCh, TDX, HIT and FDCh.  While a student, she worked as an adoption counselor at the Montreal SPCA and later served on its Board of Directors.  Before founding The Academy, Jean did exclusively referral aggression cases for six years.  She lives in Oakland, California, with her dog, Brian, adopted in 2015.

SUMMARY: Julie Symons is owner and head dog trainer at Savvy Dog Sports and she joined to break down what it's like to compete in a nose work trial, plus we talk introducing handler scent to your nose work dog. Next Episode:  To be released 7/06/2018, featuring Donna Hill, talking about owner-handler trained service dogs and what it takes to get a fantastic recall. 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 Julie Symons, owner and head dog trainer at Savvy Dog Sports, to talk about scentwork. Welcome back to the podcast Julie! Julie Symons: Hi Melissa. It’s great to be here again. Melissa Breau: I’m excited to chat. Just to refresh everyone’s memories, can you share a little bit about who you are and the dogs that you share your life with? Julie Symons: I’ve been training since the early to mid-1990s. Started out, I think, obedience, like most people probably did, and then agility came on the scene, and then I got my first purebred dog. What I was really drawn to from the very beginning was the versatile sports that I got into with my dog and how much I enjoyed the cross-training. I’ve stayed with the Belgian breed so far and really enjoyed that journey, and starting to look at some other breeds as well. I also incorporated my Savvy Dog Sports training, I have my own training center now, and I just very recently, haven’t really gone public with it, gave my notice at my corporate day job that I’ve been at for 30 years, and my last day is July 6, so that’s pretty exciting for me. A lot of change going on. Melissa Breau: That’s awesome. Congrats. That’s so exciting. Julie Symons: My two dogs that I have, Savvy, who I can’t believe is 10-and-a-half. She’s done everything I wanted her to do. She is a breed champion, she has her MACH 2, she has her TDX, she has her UD, and she has her Elite 1 nosework trial. Right there it shows my love of versatility, and how well dogs enjoy and that we can train across different sports. Obviously all this occurred over her lifespan up to now. I didn’t do it all in one year, obviously. But we’re focusing on nosework now and enjoying trialing her at the Elite level, and just want to see how far I can go with that before she’s just not able to trial. And then I have my baby dog, who’s not really a baby anymore, Drac, who’s a Belgian Malinois. I got him because I thought having two different genders would work out better in the household, and it really does. They get along great. He’s 2-and-a-half, and he’s out of most of his hormonal peak. He was a late bloomer, I think, and I think with boy dogs they mature a little slower. I’m really, really seeing the days of adolescence in our past, and really see the potential in how I can get a little bit more … not that I wasn’t serious, but more serious and formal with his training coming up, so I’m really excited about that. We trialed in nosework and confirmation so far with him. Melissa Breau: Awesome, and that’s reassuring to hear, considering I have a year-and-change puppy, a boy, still definitely maturing. Julie Symons: I wrote a blog about that, I believe, and I saw somebody recently asking and I haven’t had time to reply, but I am experiencing the first time for myself having an intact male. The last year I’ve been busy with other stuff, I’m still training him, but I didn’t put any pressure on him or myself, and he’s really come along. For example, in agility classes I couldn’t get his nose off the ground. Now he stays in the whole class without sniffing the ground. It just was waiting that out and working with him, letting him acclimate, and not putting the pressure on either one of us. Melissa Breau: So, I wanted to talk about trialing in nosework. I know you have this webinar coming up on achieving nosework trial day success, so I was hoping you might start us out by walking us through what a nosework trial looks like. I know it’s super-different than some of the other sports that are out there. What that looks like, how it works, and when everything goes well. Julie Symons: Absolutely. One thing that’s interesting about it, at least in the Nosework Association, which is the main venue that most of us got involved with, is you get maybe 30 to 40 dogs, total, at a trial, and you are staying in your parking lot with the dogs inside because they usually are in locations where it’s not like a training building and you can’t crate anywhere else. So you have to get used to working out of the car, and your dog does have to get used to hanging out in the car all day long. You have to deal with, handle the different temperatures and weather concerns you may have, and when you get there, especially with the Nosework Association, they don’t want a lot of dogs hanging out and wandering around because, as many people know who do nosework, a lot of it is geared toward supportive reactive dogs. In the AKC venue it’s just like a regular AKC trial, but most people are still very courteous of that. A little bit different situation in their locations, but for the most part you’re at a school or maybe a Boys Club of America or something that you’re just going to be waiting outside with your dog. They have a running order, and there’s a briefing, so you meet with maybe the host, the judges, and they talk about some of the logistics and the situations of how the day is going to run. They tell you if there are back-to-back searches, are you going to run and then go back to your car, and then they take you on a walkthrough. So you go on a walkthrough — most trials you get a walkthrough, some of them you don’t, depending on the level — you get a look at your search areas, and then you come back and ask questions about the areas, if you have them. And then the judge or the certifying official, depending on what venue, will go over how many hides you have, if it’s a level of known hides, and your time limit that you have to search. Except for AKC, where they do a lot of spectators if there’s room, you are generally in there searching, nobody else can watch. There’s a few people in the room that are timing and judging and videoing and things like that. It can be a very low-key situation. For some dogs it can be a little worrisome, when you go into this empty room with one or two people can actually be more concerning for a dog, versus having people around all the time, and then you’re just working in that environment. Those are some of the “how a typical day goes,” and you end up sitting outside your car and you meet your parking lot neighbors, because you usually don’t know a lot of people, especially if you go out of town. Of course I know a lot more, and everybody does as you go to more and more trials, but it’s not like you go with your friend who also entered, because the odds of two people getting in, most of it’s a lottery system, is not likely, so you’re usually traveling by yourself and meeting new people. It’s a good question you asked, because it is a very different trial day compared to other sports. Melissa Breau: You mentioned in there how hard it is to get into trials, and looking through some of the webinar description and some other stuff, it seems like maybe that leads people to sign up for a chance to compete even if they’re not sure they’re really entirely ready. How can a handler ensure their team is truly ready to trial? What advice do you have there? Julie Symons: I would say luckily at least I know my students are prepared to enter. I’m always happy when some of them are even unsure if they’re ready, and I assure them that they are in most cases. They have the skills, they may be concerned about the level of difficulty or the differences, and I’m also proud of some of my students who realized, I shouldn’t move up in AKC, because you can get your novice title on the weekend and move up in the Sunday afternoon trial, but you might not have taught multiple hides or the second odor. So I really admire my students who realize, Why would I move up? I’m just going to run bumper legs and go home early because I don’t have those skills. Why would I put my dog in there? But I do see the occasional teams, now that I can spectate in AKC, I hate to see the teams that aren’t prepared, either the handlers or the dogs, and I’m hoping it’s less of an issue. I think more of it is, as you said, getting into trials is challenging, so when you can only get into maybe two trials a year — and that’s changing, so I don’t want to scare people off with that type of cadence — but you can’t make the same mistakes in those two trials a year that you have. Back to being ready for trialing, if you have a good foundation and you know the skills that are required at that level, I would say that you’re ready to enter. We all run into something that we haven’t expected, or just not had a good trial day, but it’s mostly just know what’s expected and make sure you have trialed in those novel situations that can prepare you, because all of the trial situations you’re going to be in are novel and new, with new people around. Melissa Breau: I know you’ve also talked about the importance of taking inventory of training gaps and handling mistakes. How can a team do that before the actual trial, especially if, like you said, there’s maybe two trials a year that they’re going to compete in? Julie Symons: You definitely see your training gaps. They usually surface when you’re trialing, because that’s when we’re nervous and so we’re acting a little different, or the place is novel and we just aren’t our normal selves. That’s something that we do have to, as best we can, combat that, like, develop good mental strategies and just realize that everybody’s nervous. If you go there with the idea of, depending on what your goals are, if you just go there and do your thing and not worry about passing or whatever, you actually usually do pass when you take that pressure off of yourself. When you do trial and some of these training gaps surface, you know that by purchasing the trial video. So how you can inventory your gaps is either videoing your blind training searches, if you’re in classes or whatever, or definitely your trial video. What you can do, and this is what we did in my Shoulda Woulda class, is we had people review some trial videos that didn’t go as well. A trial I would say doesn’t go as well is if you don’t find all the hides, or if you get a no from the judge — you called an alert and the judge said no. And that’s the worst thing to hear at a nosework trial. So you watch those videos of those experiences, and you take inventory. You say, “Oh, I was crowding my dog, I talked my dog into a hide,” or “You know, I never taught my dog to search over 4 feet, and that’s why that’s a gap I have.” By watching your trial video is where you’re going to really see those gaps, and then you literally want to write them out, list them out. One of the neat things about that class that I didn’t really anticipate was it kind of … not forced people, but it had them go back and kind of organize their trial videos. They went back and re-watched them with a fresh set of eyes, and they said, “Wow, I sometimes don’t watch them a second time,” or “I haven’t watched all these.” It was eye-opening to them to go back and not just watch them to watch them, but to watch them with a purpose of saying, “What didn’t go well here?” We also of course in the class go over what goes well, because we want to stay positive and be aware of how well we’re doing. But since we’re focusing on trialing better, you have to know what didn’t work when you trialed and how to not do that mistake again when you go to your next trial that you got into. I just was reading something on Facebook that somebody said. We were like, “We always remember that one mess-up that we had, and we can’t let go of it.” And somebody said, “You know, I drove eight hours, I didn’t sleep the night before, I was busy at work, the first one in my day I just blurred an alert, and all that stress and tiredness and everything, it was over.” So we need to be in a better state, go there with the right, I guess, tools and strategies to start off the trial well. Sometimes it’s that first search that is the most stressful, definitely, and maybe we’re going to make some mistakes. So if we just can hold it together and learn to be in that moment and having a plan, and that’s what we did in the class is people had trials coming up, it was really cool, and we said, “What are your goals? What are your goals for your next trial? What are you going to do differently? What are you going to do the same?” These people are going to trials and passing and placing, and I’m getting goose bumps talking about it, and it was such a rewarding experience because we were looking at the trial experience not in a different way but just in a specific way to inventory and to just know it’s OK. We need to own our mistakes. Somebody actually shared with me that it was so refreshing to have this topic in the class, because every time they talked to somebody who went to a trial, they would always blame the trial site, the hide placements, the people, the dogs. Sometimes we need to own where we have training gaps and how we can improve our handling instead of blaming other things. Melissa Breau: What were some of the common “holes,” or some examples of the holes that people discovered? Maybe if you’d just walk us through a little bit of problem-solving? Julie Symons: Yeah — this is neat. I had a guest, a lecturer, Holly Bushard. From a judge’s perspective, she listed what she believed were the common handler mistakes. But these are my list, so if you want to know what Holly thinks, there’s definitely some overlap. I also just had a recent judging assignment, as my first AKC judging assignment, in North Dakota. It was fun. You’re in the best seat in the house, and I was nervous because I was, like, I want my high placements to be good, and I want the dogs to be able to find them. So this is what I saw there, as well as I see when I’m teaching. I think the number one hole that we have is not covering the search area. Just to back up a little bit, sometimes your gaps are your handling. Our handling is the problem. If you cleaned up some of your handling, then that’s going to go better. Some of the other, and I can get to those later, are actually your dog’s skills. Those are the types of gaps that we would find: our handling and our dog’s skills. The number one hole is not covering the search area. What happens is our dog shows interest in an area, and it could be pulling odor, which means odor has blown, maybe you even found that hide, but then it also collected further down into an area. Or you say, “This would be such a great place for a hide,” and your dog maybe showed a little bit of interest, maybe it wasn’t because of picking up some odor there, and you’re sure there’s something there, so we stay there and we stay there and we stay there. I just did a class recently, and most of the people in the class stayed about a minute and a half in one-fourth or third of the search area, having not even covered the rest of the area, and there was no hide there. I always tell people, “If there was a hide there, your dog would have found it within a minute and a half, and even if there was a hide and they didn’t, you need to leave, cover it, and you can always go back.” So that’s the number one. I saw that at the trial, not very many, there were a few teams that got convinced that there was a hide somewhere, and every dog that left that area and walked about 8 feet found the other hide. So they just were convinced, and you just need to cover your search area. And sometimes I think people are nervous, they don’t realize the search area, sometimes you don’t get a walkthrough, or it’s covered so fast that you forget, and again, when you’re nervous, our mind’s a little fuzzy. I have actually asked during a search when I was trialing, “Remind me, is this in the search area,” so that in case I forget, to make sure that I am covering it. The second thing that I notice a hole in training is crowding our dogs. Again, when we get nervous, I’m not sure why we do this, but we stand closer to our dog. Maybe it’s a security thing for us too, but what happens is you could be affecting the dog’s access to a hide. You could actually be blocking a hide or affecting the airflow. But what generally that says to the dog is because when we’re training and we know where the hide is — this is actually one of my topics in my current class, Nosework Coaching — is we need to be good actors when we are running known hides. When we know where the hide is, almost everybody is fishing food out of their pocket. I catch myself doing that. And so then at a trial, when you walk in, because you’re nervous, you’re crowding your dog, the dog goes, I smell odor, and my handler’s coming in really close to me, and I’m a little nervous with this environment, and the dog offers some type of an indication and you call it. So you talk your dog into a false alert by crowding your dog, because to the dog it contextually can mean, Oh, this is normally when I get fed because I find something. The third thing which plays into that is you can talk your dog into a hide. That’s a very common mistake because you’re convinced that somewhere you’re crowding your dog, you’re nervous, and sometimes our dogs give a little bit weaker indications at a trial and we can so easily talk our dogs into a hide. The last thing I came up with, there’s many more, but the more difficult one that I’m seeing, I see in training and when I was judging, is when to let your dog drive the search and when you need to intervene. That’s why I always say that we’re 50 percent a teammate to our dog — we both have half of a role in the job to do. Sometimes it’s better to let the dog drive, and then there’s times when you have to intervene and get the dog to a different search area, or cover an area, or refocus them if they’re distracted. We won’t always get this right, but what I generally see, I know where the hide is because I placed it, and the dog is heading right to the hide, but the handler goes, “Oh, you didn’t cover these chairs over here.” Now, that’s not necessarily a bad decision, because maybe you have a dog that doesn’t have time to search the whole area twice. You need to cover this area. But it happens more than not where that area was cold and the dog was going right to odor and you just pulled him off. It’s not the easiest call to make in the moment, but I also did this in one of my Elite trials where Savvy was going to a hide. I pulled her off, but when I took her back to where I went, she found a hide and ended up finding all the hides in that search area. So even if you pull your dog, I’m not talking about literally some dogs, the dogs are building a sign that says, “The hide is here,” and you pull your dog off. I’m talking about your dog is working their way toward the area where the source is, because they’ve picked up odor, and then you interrupt them on their way and say, “No, come check here.” Sometimes that works in your favor, but sometimes it’s, “Oh shoot, the dog was headed right to source.” So sometimes I feel like if the dog is actually working and moving, and you can tell, some dogs will pick up speed because they pick up odor, and again, we’re not going to always get that right, but it’s something that we need to, I think, continually improve in when to intervene and when to let the dog drive. And again, by videoing and by reviewing that, that’s how you’re going to progress with that, and maybe getting another set of eyes to review. I have some of my colleagues review my videos, because I don’t go to a regular trainer, or a training buddy, just somebody else that can view your work and say, “Hey, did you notice you did this?” can be very helpful. Melissa Breau: Are there other issues that usually are overlooked in training, and even when prepping, that tend to pop up just in that trial situation? Julie Symons: I think the main thing, if you truly are prepared, you know the rules, the thing that tends to pop up is a novel situation, a surface you never got your dog on before, or a distractor that they’ve purposely put in a container, or even an unintentional distractor in the environment. That’s usually something that pops that can catch you off guard, and of course in that area you want to train in as many novel locations with as many novel distractors as possible. You’re not going to ever train for everything, but as we know, as long as you generalize, for the most part, and when the dog has confidence with the job, they do overcome these novel situations. But I noticed with my dog Savvy, I didn’t realize one year she had no problem going across a laquered gym floor, but the following year she bellied to the ground. I think it was a visual thing, with age, maybe, I don’t know, and I’ve had to work that afterwards. Melissa Breau: I want to shift from talking about trialing to, I guess, the other end of the spectrum — those early steps. I know we’re in the middle of … recording this, we’re in the middle of the June session right now, and you’re teaching Intro to Nosework this session, and then next session you have Intro to Handler Scent Discrimination in August. I wanted to ask you what the difference is between those two classes. Julie Symons: They’re quite similar in the approach, I mean, a target odor is a target odor. So we teach a target odor pretty similarly. We do use the same games, very similar games, that make sense for each of the areas. With HD there’s just some different considerations, like, is it a problem searching or training in your area where you live and spend a lot of time in it, ended up not being a problem. But what I found was that I did a lot of nosework searches in my house so that sometimes I could tell my dog was like, I’m looking for oil, and I don’t know I’m supposed to be looking for your scent. So we worked through that basically with the two different target odors. We developed different start line cues and different search strategies. I think the biggest difference between the two is I go into handler discrimination with a different search strategy, a different start line. One of the different strategies is I’m going to probably direct my dog a little bit more, because handler scent is going to be heavier and it’s going to drop, so dogs are going to pick that up more low. Also the hide placements, they’ll go as high as the oil searches, so your dog generally doesn’t have to, depending on the dog’s size, they don’t have to search as high. So those are the different things. And I think the biggest difference is just our brain realizing that our dogs can find our handler scent just as easily as oil, but they disperse into the area differently, and dogs have to be a lot closer to the handler scents, I found with watching many dogs run, than they do in oil searches. Melissa Breau: Are there additional skills that the dogs need to learn specifically for handler scent discrimination? Is that an issue for it? Julie Symons: I haven’t noticed that there was a need for a new skill as much as we need to train HD a little bit more frequently to solidify the understanding. We have to stay with it, and then if I were at a trial, I would have to refresh and remind them. Whereas oil, at the point where my dogs are, if I just did a real cursory session before a trial, they’re going to be pretty strong. The other thing I’ve noticed with HD, though, is it sounds kind of strange, but the dog really has to be using their nose. I think with nosework, oil is so strong, and it’s so different for a dog to learn wintergreen or birch that they just notice it, like, I know there’s something about this funny-smelling birch over here, so they pick that up. But when you start doing handler scent, we start with gloves and dogs want to retrieve them, if they’re retrievers or they’ve done tracking. So there’s, I think, with handler discrimination there’s a little bit of context overlap, but it’s doable to train across the different sports. They just have to get past the context that you normally think it is. It’s a little different, and we have some really neat games to work through those, like put the socks right in the bowl if the dog wants to retrieve them, because the dog has never seen a sock in a bowl in tracking or in obedience scent articles. So we just need to get them to use their nose, and if they want to retrieve the sock, then we actually start getting it covered inside of a container. That’s generally the difference. I do a neat little thing that’s different is a lot of people pair a food with the odor, it’s very common with scent articles, but I’ve found the pure shaping of only the target odor, so what I do is to get dogs to actually use their nose when they have four or five socks, because in handler discrimination we use a cotton sock or glove. I rub food on the cold items, completely opposite of one of the methods, and I tell you, it works wonderful, because the item with your scent on it happens to get food crumbs and food smell on it because we’re refreshing it with our food hands and dropping crumbs on it and stuff, so what becomes unique about a hot sock is that they are cotton, they all have some food smudge on it, but only one of them has your scent, and it gets the dog using their nose. Even with scent work with oil, I find some dogs we have to kick-start them using their nose, not their eyes, not thinking the container is a pivot box or what to do with a box. But generally, and I find it more with handler discrimination, where we need to find a way to jumpstart their seeking sense over their retrieving. Melissa Breau: Are false alerts more common when training handler scent discrimination, especially since so often we’re probably training in a “usual” training environment where maybe handler scent is all over? Julie Symons: I thought that was the case from training at home. I did find when I went outside into the fresh air and I was doing exteriors with this little, tiny cotton ball, I was amazed at how well the dogs did. I think the airflow probably helped, and maybe being outside of where I live. But I never had my dog truly false. They would false where I had placed the hide just before it, since I’m lingering handler scent. I think false alerts are comparable across the two, and I would say if you’re not prepared for handler discrimination, but you’re a nosework dog and you enter a trial too soon and the dog sees these boxes out, which contextually for years has meant oil, and you send your dog out there and they’re thinking, I’m looking for oil, and they just aren’t clear that it’s your handler scent, and they might false because they can’t find anything. And then there is a judge’s scent there, and I do think sometimes they false for the other handler’s scent, if that’s not thoroughly trained, because it’s sometimes hard to get access to other people scenting socks for you. But in general I’m going to switch the other way and say in nosework oil work we do containers for the rest of the dogs’ lives, and in handler discrimination for AKC you only do containers for Novice and then you’re out of there. You get three legs in Novice, and it’s like everybody has a party because we want to get out of the boxes with our socks, and we get into interior searches and we get that scent outside of a box. Whereas in nosework oil searches, you have container searches in every level, and I do believe containers have the highest false alert rate, and because boxes become such a context of being reinforced, so dogs who are nervous or unsure, or if there are distractors, they do tend to false on containers. So I think it’s comparably they have the risk of false alerts. Melissa Breau: I know the class discusses both UKC and AKC. I was curious what some of the differences are in the different venues. Julie Symons: UKC only does HD in a box, so they never move to scent outside a box, and in Novice it’s only your scent. There’s no discrimination with the judges having a scent out there. Another thing that’s different with UKC, actually similar to SDDA in Canada, is you have to indicate your dog’s alert behavior. In UKC you also have to say what your search command is, how you’re going to cue your dog to search, and that might be how they start, maybe they start the timer, I’m not sure. In the Novice class they don’t judge that part, but you still have to provide it. When you get into Advanced and Excellent, they are going to judge you on that you used the search command you said that you do, and that your dog alerted in the way in that you expect to call it. Those other search levels, though, every box has a discrimination scent, so in Advanced, the judge puts a scented glove of theirs in eleven of the boxes and yours is the hot in the twelfth. In the Advanced level, each of the competitors that are there with you provide their scented sock, and they’re all out there when you search. So everyone else’s sock is out there, and they must group them by groups of twelve or whatever. I haven’t trialed in UKC, there’s just none in my area. So it’s kind of neat that that’s a little different. But then that ends there. They don’t search for this outside the box. Melissa Breau: That’s all super-interesting. I’ve got one last question, though, here for you, and it’s a little bit different. It’s a new question that I’m asking returning guests each time they’re on the podcast, because hopefully it’s a question that you can actually answer more than once and have a different answer. My question is, what’s a lesson you’ve learned or been reminded of recently when it comes to dog training? Julie Symons: I thought about this, and because I’m now training more locally, and I have either returned to sports I used to train or I’m extending into some other areas, is that dog training is dog training, and no matter what sport you do, or if it’s a pet class or a puppy class, you have the same foundation skills. You need the same skills and concepts as your foundation. So many of them apply to other sports. I always knew that, but since I started delivering the curriculum and talking to different groups of people that are coming in with different goals, I’m teaching the same thing. I’m teaching the same thing to them as a foundation. That was something that I very recently was reminded of — how it’s not really that different what you need across the different sports, and even for a pet dog, but it’s acclimating, it’s your mechanics, it’s building your dog’s motivators, it’s having good cue control. All of those things are common across all of the sports. Melissa Breau: Excellent. Thank you so much for coming back on the podcast, Julie! Julie Symons: You’re welcome. I enjoyed it. Melissa Breau: And thanks to our listeners for tuning in. We’ll be back next week with Donna Hill to talk about owner handler trained service dogs and teaching a recall. 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!

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SUMMARY: Julie Symons has been involved in dog sports for over 20 years. She's competed in flyball, conformation, agility, obedience, herding, tracking and nosework. One of Julie's favorite things is a versatile team! Her first Belgian Tervuren, Rival, was the first of his breed to finish his championship in conformation, obedience, and agility. Julie truly believes that participating in multiple sports is enriching to both person and dog and builds on that mutual partnership and trust. Today we have Julie Symons, of the newly-named Savvy Dog Sports, to talk about handler discrimination and AKC scentwork. Links Savvy Dog Sports Next Episode:  To be released 12/8/2017, featuring Nancy Gigliardi Little. We'll be chatting about start line stays! 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 Julie Symons, of the newly-named Savvy Dog Sports, to talk about handler discrimination and AKC scentwork. Welcome back to the podcast, Julie! Julie Symons: Hi Melissa. Thanks for having me back. Melissa Breau: I'm excited to chat today. To start us out, do you mind just reminding listeners who you are a little bit and share the dogs you share your life with? Julie Symons: I have Savvy, she's my 9-year-old Belgian Tervuren. Gosh, she's going to be 10 in February. She's doing great. She's a champion Mach2, UD, TDX, and recently a Nosework 3 Elite dog. She's retired from all sports except for nosework, and I keep meaning to work on my variable surface tracking with her. She's just a phenomenal tracking dog, so if I can just find that time. And I have Drac, who's my 2-year-old Malinois. He just turned 2 last month, and I'm waiting for him to mature a little bit and his hormones to settle, but he has his Nosework 1 and his Level 1 Interior, Container, and Vehicle titles from the Nosework Association of Canine Scentwork, and he also has his AKC Scentwork Novice title, which means he's earned all of his novice element other titles. He also has two legs toward his Handler Discrimination Scentwork title and his first Advanced legs in Containers, Interiors, and Exteriors, and he's actually really turning out to be a nice nosework dog. So it's been fun training him there. And since you mentioned Savvy Dog Sports, I'll share that I'm in process of building a training facility — on my property, actually. We have enough acreage out in the country. I've always wanted to do this. Back in probably the year 2000, I had thought about doing something like this. So we're going to start building in February and I'll be able to teach more dog stuff. There's, I think, opportunity and need in this area to offer some more obedience or pet classes, so I'm really looking forward to that. And then my nosework students, I'd like to be able to have more opportunities to train with them. So very, very excited. Melissa Breau: And you said you're in Rochester, right? Rochester, New York. Julie Symons: Right. I'm in a suburb of Rochester. I'm south of Rochester near the New York Thruway between Syracuse and Buffalo. Melissa Breau: Awesome. So if anybody listening is in that area, Julie's your new go-to person. Julie Symons: Yes. So we'll be busy getting some more information out on that soon. Melissa Breau: Awesome. Last time you were on the podcast I know we talked a little about the AKC Scentwork. Since today I want to dive a little deeper there, do you mind just starting us out by sharing a little about how the program works? Julie Symons: Yeah. The AKC Scentwork program has three divisions. They have their Odor Search Division, which is what we're typically familiar with, with the oils, the birch, the anise, and clove, and they have a new odor, cypress. And they have four search elements: Containers, Interiors, Exteriors, and Buried. Buried is a new element across any of the venues that I'm aware of. There is no vehicle search in this venue. I think that's actually nice, because vehicles are always hard for trials to find to use, so people don't want to get their cars scratched up or just to get enough volunteers to volunteer vehicles. So that's a nice difference for some variety there. They have four levels: Novice, Advanced, Excellent, and Masters. And then they have the Handler Discrimination Division with also the same levels: Novice, Advanced, Excellent, and Masters, where the target scent is your handler scent. It could be your dirty sock that's been in the laundry, or a cotton item that you scented with your hands. The first level there in Novice is your scented sock or glove that's in a closed box. And then after that the higher levels are a scented Q-Tip or cotton ball that's hidden in an interior, exterior, or a multi-element search area. So we're starting to get some trials out there at the Advanced and Excellent levels, so it's fun to see how that division is going to progress as time goes on. Then they have a Detective Division, which hasn't been offered yet because there's nobody yet that's qualified to enter one of those. You have to actually have a Master title in one of the other divisions before you can enter a Detective Division. It's an integrated search environment with unknown number of hides in a variety of elements, so you could be indoors with containers, or outside and buried with containers, and it's multiple search areas up to ten hides, all four oil odors, and they want it to emulate as closely as possible to the work of a true detection dog. So that's going to be a really exciting class, once people have trialed enough to get to that level. Melissa Breau: That sounds awesome. Julie Symons: Yeah, yeah. And like with most AKC sports, you're required to get three qualifying scores in each element to earn a title. That's different from what we're typically familiar with with the Nosework Association, where you have to pass all four of the elements. You have to pass Vehicles, Containers, Interiors, and Exteriors in the same day, which adds an element of challenge, and you can't have any errors to title. Whereas in AKC you might not do as well one day, but then you can get your next score the next day and title. So it's just different. Some people think one's easier or harder, and I'm just telling people they're different. They're just different programs that, to me, result in the same outcome, the same challenges and skills and work involved. Melissa Breau: You mentioned a little bit in there kind of how it compares to the other venues. Is there more you want to say there? Are there more differences and similarities that are worth making sure people know about? Julie Symons: Yeah, yeah. I think the skill level's pretty comparable, and some of the other venues have game classes or specialty classes, like speed, a speed class, or a distance class, you can't pass or cross a line, or some endurances where they're going to have, like, ten hides in a small area. So a lot of venues out there can offer something for everybody. AKC is going to allow spectators, and that's one item that's different from other venues, where they keep things closely monitored where there's less people. And in all venues you never have another dog out when you're working your dog. So those are the differences that you really want to read up on the rules before you decide. And a lot of the other not-as-known venues are starting to get more popular, some of the California-based, the sniffing dog sports, they're starting to make their way out here. So there's a lot of fun options so that you can trial more, because sometimes I've only trialed sometimes twice a year. And now it's so exciting because there's so many more venues out there that you can get out there and get more experience, and that's just better for you and your dog. If you're already trialing, if you've already been trialing in nosework, you're pretty much ready to go into the early levels of AKC. You pretty much have the skills, but you do want to practice the stronger odor, because AKC does two drops of oil on each Q-Tip, which is quite a lot of odor. It's not too big of a problem, it's just sometimes a little bit more pooling odor going on in these search areas, dogs picking it up off hide and alerting on the fringe, and so they might get a “no” because they're not close enough. So you want to practice with a stronger odor, and you also want to practice buried hides. Buried hides is unique of any venue that I'm familiar with, and in some ways it's straightforward, the dogs generally have no issue. The first level it's just buried two inches from the surface of a stand and a container. So you have six containers. But once you start getting to the advanced and higher levels, it's deeper, then it's in the ground, and I think it's just a little different for the dogs, some different skills that you're going to want to focus on specifically for buried hides. And the other main difference with AKC is that they have intentional distractions that get pretty challenging at the higher levels. So you have your typical food and non-food distractors at the early levels, but once you get to Excellent and Masters, they'll have auditory, visual, mimic, and human distractions, which has concerned a lot of people. A lot of sensitive dogs do this sport, and so if you want to trial in AKC, you definitely want to acclimate your dogs to that, introduce them to these types of things before you're doing a nosework search. So those are some of the things that are different and unique in AKC. And I haven't heard, and we have an AKC judge form, people really are going to be fair. They're not trying to scare dogs. The intentional distractors aren't supposed to be meant to scare them. You're not supposed to drop loud pans or slam doors or anything like that. But they're going to have, like, a flashing light, or some toy that turns on when your dog gets close to it, or somebody clapping, things like that. Mimic is a statue or stuffed animal that looks like the real thing and might make dogs want to go check it out. So you can train for that stuff pretty easily. And then I think one of the hardest things for some dogs would be having more people in the search area. So already your dog has to learn to work with the judge, and a couple of the other helpers are in the search area, but they usually stay off to the side. The human distractor can be actually right in the middle of your search area, sitting or standing. So, to me, that's actually something that's very doable to train early on with somebody that you know, and let the dogs get used to it. And by the time you're at that level, if you're trialing at the Master level, you're not going to have an issue with that. And dogs, from what we find, once they get working, they get so focused on odor that they really all their worries go away. So those are some of the things you want to look out for, and I would make sure to read the rules very closely because it describes them in more detail. Melissa Breau: That's a good tip for any sport. Julie Symons: I find actually that people don't read the rules. And sometimes I feel bad that I didn't tell somebody something in one of my classes, and I'm sure I do at times. Maybe they didn't go to that class. But you have to take responsibility to read the rules, because you'll find something. I mean, I'll find something that I haven't read the first time I read it. So that's germane. Melissa Breau: I want to switch a little bit from outcomes to training… what challenges are there when training a dog to search for handler scent, you kind of mentioned that, that may not be present when you're teaching traditional odors? Julie Symons: That's a good question. First, it is just another odor. We can attack it that way and it's true, this is another odor that we teach your dog. But it is different in that it does have its challenges, especially for savvy nosework dogs that have been in oil for a lot of years. We've seen a little bit of it being a little bit more difficult for them in certain situations. For example, there's no aging handler scent, like with the oil odor. So oil hides, the nosework venues we've been at, they're usually placed and they're out there 30 minutes to hours, so the odor is going to disperse more and diffuse into the area. For handler scent you pretty much give it its last scent, you hand it over to the helper, they place it, and then you go in and run. So the scent's going to have less diffuse in the area, handler scents is heavier, that's going to fall down more than, like, a vapor odor oil will disperse in a room, and of course it depends on airflow. Any kind of airflow is going to travel in each scent. It's going to be helpful to your dog that the scent's going to travel into the space. With my dogs and many teams that I've worked in, I find that the dogs have to get a lot closer to where the hide is for handler scents to really hone on that. So in this case I'm not talking about the novice level and boxes; I'll get back to that. But if they hide Q-Tips or cotton balls in a search area, your dog really has to get close to it to find it. So what I'm finding is that I'm actually introducing a little bit more of direction with my handler scent and it's actually helped a lot, and it gets my dog focused and more... not a  patterned search, but just getting them to search. For example, in Advanced Handler Discrimination, it's an interior search, and no hide is higher than 12 inches. So I'm going to plant low. I'm going to be, like, have my dog search low, and they find it really easily. And I found when I have blind hides somebody has set up for me, I feel more liberated to point and direct. Whereas if I know where the hide is, we tend to not want to intervene at all and my dog finds it quicker, because I don't know where it is and I'm just going to have my dog cover the area and then they usually find it. So that's been very helpful in the difference with the handler scent. Also another thing that's interesting if you watch dogs search the traditional oil hides in a box, they just find it really easy. You put your scented glove in a box and the dogs just search differently. They have to go cover the boxes a few times, they just don't hit on it as easily as oil. That oil odor, especially for AKC, is so strong, and your handler scented item is just not going to be as strong in a box, especially it's not aged. So those are some of the differences and why I think the handler scent is a little bit harder to source for a dog, just because of the amount of odor that you have and the fact that it's not aged. Melissa Breau: What additional skills or things do people who have previously taught their dogs on oils need to consider when adding handler scent to their lineup? What do they really need to think about that might not have occurred to them? Julie Symons: We actually found this when I taught my first Intro to Handler Scent. It was so fun because we were realizing these things, exactly what you just said, like, we were realizing, “Oh yeah, I didn't think about this.” A couple of the things are, we were really worried about “How can I train in my house? My scent is everywhere.” We were really worried about that, but it ended up not being a problem at all because we actually teach our dogs to find our hottest scent. Just like we do with obedience and articles, you're rubbing, you're scenting, a hot item. All the other items have been lightly touched by somebody else, so it's your hottest item. So it ends up not being a problem if you've touched stuff in your house, or touched a box that you moved around. It has not messed up any dogs because they're looking for that hot cloud of odor, the highest gradient of odor. So that was kind of neat to realize we can train at home. Melissa Breau: That's awesome. Julie Symons: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Also you can reuse boxes. In nosework it's about boxes. You can put Q-tips in there, a hide in there, it's always hot, because if an oil gets on cardboard, it's there forever. Handler scent, I do keep my hot glove or sock separate, that's always hot and I throw that in a jar. But for the boxes that I use, if I throw my glove in one of those boxes, once I'm done with that session I'll just open up my boxes, air them out, some people put them outside on a nice day, let them air out, and you can reuse those. So I don't have to make a box hot, and always hot, because we all have so many boxes, nobody wants to get any more boxes. The other thing that's really important is if you think about the trial situation, so if you're searching for oil, containers with oil in it, the same container is out there for every dog. So by the time, if you're at the last of the running order, these dogs, these boxes have saliva on it, they have probably food drops near the hot one, they're pretty traveled, they've been traveled very heavily by the other dogs. In Handler Discrimination you have your unique box that's pristine, so when the next dog comes in, they take another box that has your glove in it, and you leave with your box. So when you run and hopefully you find your hide, or not, you leave with your box. Your box is never used for another dog in the trials. So they're pretty pristine when you're trialing. In training we were all using the same box just over and over and over, and it had saliva on it, and some food crumbs, and we realized when we went to a clean box, when we switched out to a new box, our dogs really had trouble. And we figured out that the dogs were alerting us the saliva they had left on the hot box, so what we've learned is you really, maybe even more so in the oil searches, is to rotate out a new box in your training sessions because you're going to have a pristine box that doesn't have any dog's saliva on it when you go on there. So that was another neat thing that we found out. Melissa Breau: Interesting. You mentioned your Intro to Handler Discrimination class. When is that up next? Julie Symons: That is up in December. It opens Wednesday is the registration day and it starts December 1st. Melissa Breau: Wednesday for us, and we're talking now, for when this airs it will have happened already, but yeah, so registration will be open when they hear this. Julie Symons: That's right, that's right. What else is different? You can make things different from your regular nosework training. You can have a different start on your routine. That's really important, so we discuss that a lot in our classes. I decided I'm going to make my handler scent searches to be similar than my obedience article, where you're rubbing your hands, because you're scenting an article in obedience utility, and so I'm going to rub my hands because my advanced dog knows what that means, so that means I'm going to do a pivot and turn and send her. So my start routine for my advanced dog, I actually face away from the search area, I rub my hands like I'm scenting an article, I pivot, and I send her, and that just gets her into that frame of mind that it's, because she turns around and she sees these twelve or ten ORT boxes that look like nosework that she's done for five years. My young dog, I'm just facing it and rubbing my hands, and I might put my hand up to his nose and send him on his way. So that's been important. I find having a different search routine when you're starting to training your dog…. Melissa Breau: Interesting. That's neat that you use your AKC obedience work to carry over. I wanted to ask if there's anywhere that people really tend to struggle as they work through this stuff. Julie Symons: I found that people have a hard time reading their dog at at source initially when we are starting to introduce it. Oil odor is so strong, you know the dog can't help but notice it. I think they can build that association quicker with a strong odor. But it really is no different with our scent. You just have to have good timing. Your dog has to actually be sniffing and using her nose. Sometimes when you're starting to get socks or gloves out there, a dog is like, “Oh I'm going to pick it up,” or they're going to retrieve it, and they're not sniffing. That's one problem that they have. So we can work on some of that through the class. You're not even waiting for an indication. The minute they take it out, you're rewarding it, and then they're going to start understanding that, “Hmm, the smell keeps giving me food.” The other thing is dogs perch, and when you start putting things in containers, and especially we have had more obedience people coming into this area because it relates to them, “This sounds like something I'd be interested in, you know, it's handler scent, I do this in obedience,” and those dogs have done a lot of platform and pivot work, so they see these containers and boxes and they perch on them. So that's one of the problems that we deal with. And tracking dogs. We had one of my students, it was a great, great experience to have her in the class, her dog saw these socks and started downing on them like scent articles. Not scent articles, tracking articles. So what we did was we immediately got them in a bowl, we took her bowls in her kitchen or whatever, and once we changed that picture to the dog, he started doing much better, because again, context is so important that for that dog it just said, “Oh, I always down on socks.” And that's how we actually teach them article indication. We just lay out some item, and the dog's supposed to go up to them and down on them. So we got creative with dealing with dogs that thought it was an article. Melissa Breau: That's really interesting. Julie Symons: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was such a great, and it was so good to have her in class, because I think some of the bronze students really, really resonated with that because they were having the same issues. And then we have dogs that want to retrieve, and it's not really a problem if they're retrieving the right one. I mean, I've always heard even in nosework, dogs will retrieve a tip or the hide, and there's nothing more clear when a dog retrieves the source but eventually, they'll never be able to retrieve at a trial, especially handler scent because it's either in a box or it's pretty tucked away, it'll be a Q-Tip or cotton ball that they'll hide very well. So unless a dog's not sniffing, and they're just retrieving randomly, then we have to pick back up and build the value for that odor before we move on. Melissa Breau: Since you mentioned that, I'm going to jump around with my questions a little bit here. What can students do to help their dog understand the different contexts? You mentioned the retrieve thing. What should students be doing to make sure their dogs understand, “OK, in this situation, in this type of trial, you're doing this, in this type of trial you're doing that”? I feel like that's such a complex thing. Julie Symons: I think when you get to the final picture, I think early on, when you're training, they look very similar. How you teach scent articles is very similar to how you start teaching oil or you start teaching the cotton items with your scent on them. Once you start getting to a picture that looks more like the final picture, like a pile of scent articles, they're going to know they're going to retrieve it. And I do think the odor versus handler scent can look similar with the boxes, and that's why the routine, your start routine, is really important, as well as a different search cue. I had to think long and hard if I wanted to really have a different search cue, and I decided to go ahead and do that. In obedience I do a “find it,” so I did a “find mine” in handler scent, and I've always done “search” in nosework, so that's how I do it. Whether the dogs are really going to pick up on that verbal cue, I don't know, but I'm going to be consistent with that because I do think in the long run that is going to make a difference. And then gear is really important. I've had people think tracking dogs shouldn't be doing nosework at the same time. And I get a little bit where one of them is more air scenting, one of them is more ground sniffing, but dogs recognize that flag out in the field versus “I'm in a classroom searching for,” or “I have twelve boxes out.” I think they know the difference between “I'm going to go check these objects” versus “I'm going to go run a track in the field.” So when you have handler scent now in the mix, I think it's in our minds, we realize it's just another odor, whether it's birch, cypress, or handler scent, and we've taught our dogs that those odors will pay, then I think with time and some experience they're just going to be searching for any of those odors, and when they find them, they're going to all work. That's how I'm approaching it. Melissa Breau: You mentioned the start routine in there, and I did just want to quickly ask at what point in the training process do you start routinely using the same start system or process? Julie Symons: I don't start that right away. I will start using it when a dog's doing some mini-searches. But of course the first couple of weeks you're just building value for odor -- we're just building value for odor -- so I would say maybe halfway, or by the end of a six-week class, you're going to start putting a search cue, but as with anything, I'm not going to put a search cue to something until they're actively searching. I think the rubbing of my hands, I did start that pretty early because I often would rub the item and then go put it, hide it, or something, and that was always a warm-up. So we would go place to hide, and then, when we were warming up, I would have another item on me, and I would warm up with my dog with another. You can do that, you could actually, at a trial you give your scented something to the steward, and at the start line you could actually warm up with another glove, and show it to your dog, and then have them search. So I think those things just are all going to be context that's going to help your dog. Melissa Breau: You mentioned earlier a little bit about the idea of pulling from your start routine for obedience into your scentwork stuff, and I want to talk a little bit more about how those two things compare. How does the new scentwork program compare to the classic handler scent discrimination task in obedience? Julie Symons: Again, we mentioned that contextually they're just very, very different. So when you are going to be in an obedience ring, your dog's going to have done probably an exercise prior to the scent articles, they're going to see a pile of articles. When you do obedience scent articles, you start off by facing the steward who's jingling the bag and putting the articles down. So right there your dog is thinking scent article retrieve. You've also taught them that those articles are what you retrieve, so you've already gone further in that training process to complete that picture of the behavior that your dog is going to do. So in that case it's a chain of behaviors. You're going to be pivoting with your dog, sending your dog, they're going to search for scent, they're going to retrieve it, they're going to do a front and finish, so it's all these chains that you've already taught up to that point. And a good thing is a handler scent search looks so different from that. Like I said earlier, I'm more worried about a search area looking similar for oil odor or handler scent odor. That's going to be probably more confusing, but between those two exercises, the obedience scent articles and handler scent, the dog's going to know what they're there for right off the bat. Melissa Breau: Does it matter which one somebody trains first? Julie Symons: No, I don't think there is any order to that, and if I haven't mentioned it already, a lot of teams that have come through my class that did obedience are thrilled with their, that have come through are saying their obedience scent articles are just better and better. And I think what we're able to do is, we're able to play a lot more games, and the handlers that work arena before were even worrying about retrieves or anything, and were able to build a little bit more value there. And I'm going to already, I already have with Drac, teaching him his scent articles differently than I did my previous dogs, rewarding at source, I'm doing these games, worrying about the retrieve later, but just getting them sniffing. A dog cannot search a pile unless they're using their nose. So we're going to teach them to use their nose, we're going to teach them what odor is valuable. So I don't see any problem with teaching those two at the same time. Melissa Breau: Are there any concerns at all when training one or the other if you hope to compete in both sports? Is there carryover? Is there anything else that students should know if they're going to do both? Julie Symons: A lot of the ways we train carry over to each other. I think in that way a lot of the same games and exercises that I do are going to carry over. So I found that when I started doing nosework, it helped my tracking dog. It upped her article indication. She started downing an article and holding her nose to the article because of nosework, because I taught her that reward comes from staying at source, whether the source is an article on a track, or it's oil, or now if it's handler scent. And they all really just complement each other. One thing that I just love is I love this new sport, I love this new division, Handler Discrimination, because it gives us another thing to learn about our scenting dogs, and learn about scent and our scenting dogs, and I just think, I think they all complement each other. Now I wouldn't start maybe them on the exact same day, but they can overlap in whatever timeframe, I think, that you have. I have not seen any problems with that. Melissa Breau: That's certainly reassuring to hear. Julie Symons: That question comes up all the time. You'll see it. It's one of those questions that just resurface. People are really worried about it. And now maybe some dogs it wouldn't be the right thing to do. I mean, you have to know your dog, and you have to know your skills, and you just have to make that decision for yourself, for the most part. But I'm here to say context is playing a large hand here, and as a handler I learn more about scent and scenting dogs by participating in these multiple scent areas because of that. So once you do one, you're just going to be more skilled and be more ready for the other one. Melissa Breau: To round things out, if someone hasn't taught any handler scent yet, where should they start? What does that process look like? Julie Symons: As we mentioned earlier, if people can sign up for this Intro to Handler Scent course, that would be great, and it's on December 1st. But what you would do, if you've done nosework already, then you start the same way. We use a game called It's Your Choice. I'm not going to hold these scent articles in my hands because my hand actually has the scent, but I get the item on the ground, I just put one item that's heavily scented, the dog checks it out, I mark quickly and reward, I get quickly to two and three gloves, two cold one hot, and move them around in the shell game, and then I get again quickly, I get some more items. Sometimes people get stuck at a few items, and I think dogs do better with more choices. They're going to start using their nose more. So I get up to four to five items, socks or gloves, and what I do is I heavily scent it between reps, I do a cookie toss to reset, and then I just move the hot glove and repeat. So you want to get a high rate of reinforcement in a short period of time. So they find a scent in a short period of time, they're going to hopefully find it, like, twenty times, and you're going to give them a lot of reward for that. So that's very similar to how we teach a nosework scent oil, and the same way that we start out scent articles for obedience. We get these metal canning lids, or I actually use some leather strips that I have, and it's the same way I start that. So if you've had some experience at either of those sports, all you've got to do is just go get some cotton gloves, some cotton socks, and play around with the same way you've taught your other scentwork. Melissa Breau: Well, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast, Julie! Julie Symons: It was great. I love talking about this. I enjoy teaching it, and I enjoy competing and training in it. Melissa Breau: I think that comes through. And thanks to our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week with Nancy Gagliardi Little to talk about start line stays. Don't miss it! If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in itunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. CREDITS: Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called “Buddy.” Audio editing provided by Chris Lang.

Summary: Sue Yanoff graduated from Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine in Ithaca, New York in 1980. After three years in private practice she joined the US Army Veterinary Corps. While on active duty she completed a three-year residency in small animal surgery at Texas A&M University, and became board certified by the American College of Veterinary Surgeons. She retired from the Army in 2004, after almost 21 years on active duty. After working for a year on a horse farm in Idaho, she returned to Ithaca to join the staff at Cornell Veterinary Hospital as their second surgeon. Sue retired from Cornell in December of 2009. After all her on call schedule was interfering with those dog show weekends. The following month she started working for shelter outreach services. A high quality, high volume spay neuter organization. About the same time Sue joined her colleague, a physical therapist and licensed veterinary technician to start a canine sports medicine practice at the Animal Performance and Therapy Center in Genoa, New York. The practice is limited to performance dogs, and now she's joined the team here at FDSA to teach a class on canine sports medicine for performance dog handlers. Next Episode:  To be released 9/22/2017, featuring Cassia Turcotte — we'll talk about positive gun dog training, and her upcoming class on channeling dog's natural instincts for high level behaviors while they are in drive. 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 Sue Yanoff. Sue graduated from Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine in Ithaca, New York in 1980. After three years in private practice she joined the US Army Veterinary Corps. While on active duty she completed a three-year residency in small animal surgery at Texas A&M University, and became board certified by the American College of Veterinary Surgeons. She retired from the Army in 2004, after almost 21 years on active duty. After working for a year on a horse farm in Idaho, she returned to Ithaca to join the staff at Cornell Veterinary Hospital as their second surgeon. Sue retired from Cornell in December of 2009. After all her on call schedule was interfering with those dog show weekends. The following month she started working for shelter outreach services. A high quality, high volume spay neuter organization. About the same time Sue joined her colleague, a physical therapist and licensed veterinary technician to start a canine sports medicine practice at the Animal Performance and Therapy Center in Genoa, New York. The practice is limited to performance dogs, and now she's joined the team here at FDSA to teach a class on canine sports medicine for performance dog handlers. Hi Sue. Welcome to the podcast. Sue Yanoff: Hi Melissa. Thanks. Melissa Breau: I'm looking forward to chatting. I think that most of the students who have been with FDSA for any period of time have probably seen your dogs in one class or another. But for those that haven't, do you want to just tell us a little bit about the dogs you have now, and what you're working on with them? Sue Yanoff: Sure. My older beagle is Charm. She's 12 years old. She's a breed champion. She has her UD, her rally excellent, MX, MXJ, and TD. She's pretty much retired from performance right now, but I am still doing tracking with her, and would like to get a TDX on her. And then my younger beagle, Ivy, who has been in a lot of Fenzi classes is six years old. She's also breed champion. She finished her mock last year. She has her rally novice title, and a TD, and she has two legs towards her CDX. Melissa Breau: Well congrats. Those are some seriously impressive stats, especially with beagles. Sue Yanoff: Thanks. Melissa Breau: So how did you get your start in dog sports? What got you started there? Sue Yanoff: A beagle. Between my sophomore and junior year as an undergraduate here at Cornell, I went home to visit my parents, and I also went to visit the vet I used to work for when I was in high school, and there was a little beagle puppy with a cast on his hind leg coming out of anesthesia, and I picked him up, and I cuddled him. I said oh I want to take this puppy home, and they said well you can because his owners had him for just a couple of days and then their little boy broke his leg, and they were going to pick him up from the vet that afternoon, and take him to the animal shelter. So some phone calls were made, and I got the puppy and took him back to college with me, and I didn't know anything about dog training. I had never heard of crate training, so I would just leave him in my apartment, that I shared with two roommates, while I went to class, and of course he destroyed things, and did all the naughty things that puppies do. So I thought I need to do something, and I enrolled him in the kindergarten puppy class at the local dog-training club. That's how it got started, and I ended up getting a CDX on that dog while I was in Vet school, and that got me started in dog sports. Melissa Breau: Wow. So to go from, you know, never having done anything dog training wise before, to a CDX. That's pretty impressive Sue. Now I'd imagine being both the sports dog handler and the vet has led to some pretty unique insights into each field. How has being involved in both influenced your views in each of those? Sue Yanoff: Yeah, that's an interesting question. As a dog trainer all my dogs have, at one point in their careers, been injured, and I know what it's like to have to restrict your dog's activity. You can't train them. You can't show them. It's very frustrating, and so as a vet when I have to tell a client okay you can't train, you can't show, you have to restrict your dog for weeks, or months sometimes, I know how frustrating that can be, and how hard it can be, but I also understand where they are coming from so I think I can see it from both sides. Melissa Breau: Is there anything in particular about veterinary medicine that sports handlers often just don't understand? Sue Yanoff: Yeah. I don't think it's just sports handlers. I think it's a lot of people. Veterinary medicine is a science, and the decisions that we make have to be based on science, and not just what people think, or what they heard, and so when you're making a decision about what the best diagnostics are for a condition, or how best to treat the condition, it has to be based on a series of cases, not just on what somebody thinks, and I go a lot based on what I learn at continuing education conferences, and what I read in the veterinary literature. Because papers that are published in peer reviewed journals are scrutinized to make sure that the science behind the conclusions are valid. So while, you know, it's fine for somebody to say well I did this with my dog and he did great. What I want to make my decisions on is what worked well for many dogs, dozens, or hundreds, or thousands of dogs, and not just something that might have worked for your dog where we don't' even know if the diagnosis was the same. So I think I want people to know that veterinary medicine is a science, and we have to make our decisions based on science. Melissa Breau: I think that, you know, especially with the internet these days it's very common for people to turn to their favorite local forum, and be like well what should I do, but… Sue Yanoff: I know like let me get advice from everybody, and I know it's hard to make decisions when it involves your dog and you're emotionally involved, and that's one of the reasons I want to teach this class, to give people information that they can use to make those hard decisions. Melissa Breau: What about the reverse? Are there things about sports that you think most vets just they don't understand? Sue Yanoff: Oh yes. Yes there's a lot. Unless you're a vet who's involved in this thing, most vets don't understand the time and the effort, and the emotion, and the money that goes into the training, and the trialing that we do. They don't understand the special relationship that we have with our dogs when we put the time and effort into training them. I have had dogs that were wonderful pets, and I loved them but I never showed them for one reason or another, and there is a different relationship when you accomplish something special with that dog. So I think that's important thing. The other thing that most vets don't understand, and might not agree with, but I have had some clients where we have diagnosed an injury, and said okay we need to restrict activity, and do the conservative treatment route, and they say I will but my national specialty is next week, and she's entered in whatever class. Or they say I have a herding finals coming up in two weeks, and I really want to run her in those trials, and I'm okay with that if the dog has an injury that I don't think is likely to get much worse by doing a little more training, or trialing, then I'll say okay. Well let's do this in the meantime, and when you're done with your national or with your specialty or whatever, come on back and we'll start treatment. So I think a lot of vets would not understand that point of view, but I'm okay with it as long as I don't think that it's going to do serious harm to the dog, and as long as the owner understands that there's, you know, a slight chance that things could get worse. Melissa Breau: I think it's really kind of interesting that you focused a little bit on performance dogs. So I wanted to ask about what led you to that, I guess, to focus on that. Was it your own interest just in the being involved with sports when you joined the practice in New York? Sue Yanoff: Yeah. No. It's my own interests. I'm mostly retired. I've retired from three different jobs now, so I don't have to do this sports medicine stuff to make a living, and to pay my mortgage. So I became interested in it when I joined the practice at Colonial Veterinary Hospital about the same time my colleague Lynn joined it. She's a physical therapist. She was a physical therapist for people for 20 plus years before she decided she wanted to work on animals, so she went to vet tech school to become a vet tech, and get some animal education. And I remember when I first met her she said to me well what do you think about physical therapy for dogs, and I thought I don't know anything about it. So the more I learned about it, the more I realized how important it is, and I did a lot of reading, and I went to continuing education about sports medicine, and about the same time, like a few years later, the American College of Veterinary Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation was getting going so the whole topic of canine sports medicine was getting more popular and people were learning more about it. So the more I learned about it, the more I liked it and of course since I did dog sports, I understood what's involved in dog sports. So when Lynn and I started this little practice, we did see pets for the first year or two, but then we said you know what, we don't want to deal with people. Performance dog people, in general, their dogs are better trained. They're better behaved, which make it easier to examine them. Not all of them but most of them. They're definitely more committed to doing what needs to be done to get their dog better. So they are more willing to put the time into it, and the work for treating, and rehabbing the dog, and the money that it costs to get their dogs better if the need surgery, or other treatments. So, you know, when Lynn and I started seeing more and more animals we said okay, we're not doing pets any more. We're just going to work on performance dogs. Melissa Breau: Now I want to talk a little bit about your upcoming class. So in some ways it's the first of it's kind here at FDSA. Do you mind sharing a little bit about what students can expect to learn? Sue Yanoff: Well basically the goal of the class is to, in the words of a friend of mine that I was discussing this with, is to make people better consumers of healthcare, for their animals. I want to give them information about the various injuries that the dogs can get, and how they are diagnosed, and what the treatment options are, and what's the best chance to get them back to competition. I want them to understand the importance of a good sports medicine exam. When I was a surgeon when I saw an animal for an injury, or a lameness, I would examine the leg that was lame. Most of the time, we knew which leg was lame and I would examine that leg and tell them what surgery I think the dog needs, and that was that. With a sports medicine exam, I examine the whole dog. At times I don't even know which leg is lame, because the owner doesn't know which leg is lame. We come with a history of knocking bars, or popping weaves, or not being as active, and they think there might be something wrong, but they're not sure. So it's a totally different type of exam from when I just did surgery to now doing sports medicine. So I want people to understand that, and I just want them to be able to make informed decisions if and when they have to deal with an injury. Melissa Breau: I'd imagine it was probably pretty hard to decide what things to fit into the class and what things were kind of beyond the scope of what you could cover in those six weeks. So what are some of the common types of injuries that you'll be discussing in those six weeks? Sue Yanoff: Yeah. It was really tough. When I started writing lectures, I had no idea how much material I was eventually going to cover. So people can go to the website to look at the course summary to see what we cover from week to week. But three of the common injuries that we see in sports medicine are injuries to the muscles and tendons of the shoulder, the biceps and supraspinatus specifically. Injuries to the iliopsoas muscle which ten or so years ago I never heard of, and now it's a very commonly diagnosed injury. And then, also talking about cranial cruciate ligament injuries because just based on a recent thread on the Fenzi Alumni Facebook page, there's a lot of information out there about cranial cruciate ligament injuries, and some misinformation. We have a whole lecture just on cranial cruciate ligament injuries to give people, you know just the basic facts of what's based on science. What's not based on science. What the options are, because there's always options. There's no one best way to treat almost anything. So those are probably the three most common things that people know about that they'll learn. But there's a ton of other stuff in the class. Melissa Breau: Now I know that the syllabus mentions prevention a little bit, and I wanted to know if you could talk for a minute about the role that prevention plays when it comes to these types of injuries. You know, how much should sports handlers focus on preventing problems? If you can, even beyond that, are there skills that they should teach that would make dealing with these kinds of problems, should they occur, easier before there's ever actually a problem for them to be worried about. Sue Yanoff: Yes. Well prevention is always best, and as far as preventing injuries in dogs the bottom line is that we don't know what we can do to prevent injuries. Everything that we know is based on the human literature, and some horse literature, but there are no studies in veterinary medicine for dogs as to anything that's proven to prevent injuries. So we have to just extrapolate from the human literature, but there certainly are lots of things. In fact my sample lecture is my lecture on preventing injuries, and that's a freebie for anybody to go read. But one of the most important things to keep your dog thin and fit, and there's some really good Fenzi classes on canine conditioning. So I think that's important. The other thing that is important that I notice that a lot of handlers don't do because I compete with my clients, I compete with all the people and I can see that they don't' spend enough time warming their dogs up before the competition, and cooling the dog down after the competition. Now for an obedience trial, the warm up is probably not as important as something like field trials, or agility trials, and certainly lure coursing. But I think those three things, conditioning, warm up, and cool down will go a long way to helping to prevent injuries. And then, as far as what they can teach their dog that will help, there's two things. On is to teach your dog to allow a hands on examination, including lying on their side while I examine them. Most of the dogs that I see are pretty good about it. Some of them will, you know, will fuss a little at first, but they pretty much relax into it. But I've had a few dogs where there's no way we can lay them on their side to examine them, and I can barely get in a good standing exam. So it'd be really nice to be able to have your dog do that, and I know that Deb's Cooperative Canine Care class, I'm sure, can help with that. Then the other thing that's important is best gait to diagnose a lameness is a trot, and a lot of my patients either won't trot nicely on a leash. They want to bounce around, or pull, or run. Or they won't trot on a leash next to the owner without looking up at the owner, and that kind of throws the gait off a little. So to teach your dog to have nice straight trot, on leash without looking up at you would be another thing that would make my life a little bit easier. Melissa Breau: I mean I definitely wouldn't have thought of that second one. The first one definitely made sense, having the dog lay on its side and being able to be calm while its examined, but it never would have occurred to me that it would be important to have a forward motion where the dog wasn't looking at you for diagnostic purposes. Sue Yanoff: Right. That's why it's really nice when we get show dogs, confirmation dogs that know this skill. I mean we get the job done, but there are certain things that can make it easier for the dog, the owner, and me. Melissa Breau: Obviously there's a limited amount you can do remotely when it comes to canine medicine, so how are you doing the different levels in the class and what will and won't be covered in class. Sue Yanoff: Right. Well the first thing I want to say is I will not make any diagnoses over the phone or online, and the reason for that is that, you know, in order to give advice on diagnosis and treatment, you have to establish a veterinary client patient relationship, and in most states, at least in New York state, that means you have to see the client, and the dog in person. So while I can answer people's questions, and look at video, and say well you know it could be this, and it might be this, and you might want to get these diagnostic tests, and if it's this then this treatment works, and if it's that, this treatment works. I don't want people to sign up for the class expecting me to diagnose their dog online. So with that said, there's going to be two levels. Bronze which is the typical bronze level, and then silver, and with this new working silver level that Fenzi has, I think that all of the silver spots will be working silver spots because there'll be no gold spots. So it's mainly a discussion class, but I want the silver students to be able to at least post photographs. They can even post radiographs, or x-rays if they want to. If we mutually agree that a video would be helpful they can post a video of their dog, and they can ask any question they want. They can ask general questions about the material. They can ask specific questions about their dog. They don't have to pick one dog. They can ask specific questions about any dog they want to. I want there to be a lot of discussion because I think everybody, me, the silver students, and the bronze students will learn a lot from the discussions, you know as much if not more so than from the lectures. So I'm hoping to have some really active silver students. Melissa Breau: Hopefully, you know, having said that you will now get even more of them, than you would have otherwise. I think that, that will be a real appeal for students to know that you really want an active silver group. Sue Yanoff: Right, and then the other things that they should understand is there's so much material that we could cover, but this class is basically covering injuries, and not specifically hereditary or developmental disorders like hip dysplasia or elbow dysplasia, or OCD. I mean those are common in sports dogs, but that could be a whole class in itself. So I really had to limit some things so we're going to be talking about injuries that they can acquire. Melissa Breau: So maybe in the future if this class does well, huh? Sue Yanoff: Maybe, and when I want to spend another huge amount of time writing these lectures, so. Melissa Breau: You mentioned earlier treatment decisions for dogs can be super hard, you know whether their a performance dog, or just a pet. So I'd imagine that one of the major benefits to this class would be that students will feel significantly more informed when they have those kinds of decisions to make in the future. First of all, would you agree with that? It sounds like from what you said earlier, you would, and then do you have any advice for students who may be facing those kinds of decisions now? Sue Yanoff: Yes. So yes the class will provide a lot of information for the students to help them make better decisions about their dogs medical care, but what they need to know for now, are two things that I think are important. One is to get a diagnosis. It's really hard to make a treatment plan without at least having an idea of what's going on, and general practitioners are great. I have a lot of respect for general practitioners because I was one for five years, but they're not specialists in any one subject. So unless the cause of the lameness is very obvious, you might have to see an expert, and there are two experts that can be used for sports dogs. One is the board certified surgeon, which is what I am, and more, and more board certified surgeons are realizing that sporting dogs, performance dogs, are a little bit different from pets, and so they're dealing with them a little bit better, although there's still some that do what I used to do, just look at the leg. Look at the injury, and not look at anything else. But then this new specialty of sports medicine and rehabilitation, there's more and more vets being trained, and being board certified in that specialty. So that would be another specialist to go see if your general practitioner, you know, is not sure about what might be going on. The other thing is that I'm a big fan of all the therapists that are out there. Massage therapists, and the physical therapists, and the people that do acupuncture, and chiropractic, but if they're not also veterinarians, then they may not be able to make the diagnosis. They could look at things that might be causing the dog pain or discomfort that might be secondary to the diagnosis. But sometimes treating the symptoms is all you need to do, but sometimes treating the symptoms won't cut it. You need to know what the diagnosis is so you know specifically what you have to treat, and we'll discuss all that in the class. Melissa Breau: What I was going to say is that I know this was in the questions I sent over, kind of in advance of our call, but I'm curious…you kind of mentioned some specific certifications. Is there anything out there, or do you have any recommendations if students are trying to find a good specialist or kind of get advice on where to look? Is there any, I guess, any way for them to kind of vet on their own, okay this is a person who really, probably is going to be good for a sports dog versus this is somebody who maybe doesn't have as much of a background in that. Sue Yanoff: Yes. Well I mean both these specialties have websites. American College of Veterinary Surgeons, and American College of Veterinary Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation, and on the websites you can look up to see who in your state is board certified, and you can also look up to see what their special interest is. So, I mean, for the sports medicine and rehab vet's then obviously their specialty is sports medicine and rehab. But for the board certified surgeons some of them are more geared towards, you know, sports medicine versus just plain old surgery. The other thing is, you want to, if you're going to see a board certified surgeon, you want to see somebody that deals with a lot of performance dogs, if possible, and you also want to deal with somebody who understands, and agrees with the importance of physical therapy postoperatively, because there are still some veterinary surgeons out there that don't think dogs need physical therapy post op. They just, you know, restrict the activity until the surgery is healed, and then say okay well gradually get him back to normal, and it's like what does that mean, or what do you do. So I truly believe that the surgery is only half of the story, and that physical therapy, post operative physical therapy, guided by a knowledgeable person, and there are certifications in physical therapy for both veterinarians and technicians, where they can get some, you now, advanced training outside of vet school and tech school, on physical therapy. There's a lot of human physical therapists that are now doing veterinary physical therapy, and you know, while I don't know how good they are, you know the Fenzi alumni Facebook page is a great resource if you say okay I need a physical therapist in this area. Can you recommend somebody, or I need a good sports medicine vet or surgeon in this area, can you recommend somebody. The Fenzi Alumni Facebook page is a great resource, and also just talking to friends, and you know it won't hurt to ask your veterinarian what's your experience with this condition, how many have you done, and what's your success rate? People are a little reluctant to do that, but no good veterinarian is going to be insulted if you ask them that, and they should be able to answer. Melissa Breau: I think that's a great piece of advice, just being comfortable asking that kind of question of your vet, or your veterinary surgeon. I mean if you don't ask, you can't know, right. Sue Yanoff: That's true. Melissa Breau: So I wanted to end with the same few questions that I ask everybody that comes on, at the end of the interview. So the first one is, what is the dog-related accomplishment that you're proudest of? Sue Yanoff: Yeah, I thought about it, and it'd have to be the UD on my older beagle now, Charm because Charm is a dog that switched me from you know traditional training to positive reinforcement training, and I had shown her nine times in utility, and nine times she NQ'ed, and people just kept telling me well she's just not putting in any effort. You need to correct her harder, or you need to make her do it. And so the more times she  NQ'ed, the harder I was on her until the final time in utility, I gave her the hell signal and she just sat there, and she basically said nope. I'm done, not doing it. So I thought to myself, there's got to be a better way, and that led to positive reinforcement training, which led to the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, and after a few weeks off from training, I retrained Charm pretty much all the utility exercises using positive reinforcement, and about nine months later I showed her in utility again, and she got the UD in four shows. So I am really proud of Charm. I feel bad for all the stuff I did to her before I crossed over, but now that I train with positive reinforcement, there's just no comparison. So I'm very proud of Charm for getting her UD. Melissa Breau: Congrats. Sue Yanoff: Thanks. Melissa Breau: So the second questions that I usually ask is, what is the best piece of training advice that you've ever heard? Sue Yanoff: Yeah. Now this is a hard one, because I've been taking classes at FDSA since pretty much Denise started, and there's so much good information, and great advice. But if I had to pick one I'd say it's acclimation, and that is because I've had people tell me don't ever let your dog sniff. Wherever you go new, don't let them sniff. They have to be paying attention to you, like all the time, and it's like you know what. I've tried that with Ivy for a few weeks, and it almost drove both of us crazy. So when I learned about acclimation I thought, yep. This is it. This is the best piece of advice I've gotten. Melissa Breau: And especially I'd imagine with Beagles, that nose, you know. It's a real thing so. The last question is, who is someone else in the dog world that you look up to? Sue Yanoff: Yeah, well it's not anybody that's known in the dog world, because she doesn't teach classes, and she doesn't have a blog, and she, you know, doesn't do anything online. But she's a friend of mine who I've known since college. We met through dogs. When I was getting a CDX on my first beagle, she was getting a CDX on her first keeshond and since then she has been put multiple notches in herding titles, and some agility titles on her border collies, but she's also put multiple OTCHs on her Keeshonds, and all of her OTCHd kees are also breed champions, some of them bred by her. So there's a lot of, you know, trainers out there who have trained another dog other than a border collie, or a golden, or a sheltie whatever to an OTCH, and they do it once, and they never do it again. But Marian has, I think had, at least four or five, if not six champion OTCH keeshonds, and she's got a young keeshond coming up now that just finished her CD with six scores or 199 or above, and one score of 200. So I'm sure that's a future OTCH. So you know, I don't agree with everything she does in her training, but her dogs are really good, and they are happy in the ring, and they love her, and she gets OTCHs on keeshond's over, and over, and over again. So I admire her. Melissa Breau: That is quite the accomplishment. Well thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Sue. Sue Yanoff: It was fun. Thanks Melissa. Melissa Breau: It was fun, and thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week with somebody that I've gotten lots of requests for. Cassia Turcotte will be here to talk about positive gun dog training, and her upcoming class on channeling dog's natural instincts for high level behaviors while they are in drive. If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in iTunes, or the podcast app of your choice, to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. CREDITS: Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called “Buddy.” Audio editing provided by Chris Lang and transcription written by CLK Transcription Services.

SHOW NOTES:  Summary: Julie Symons has been involved in dog sports for over 20 years. She's competed in flyball, conformation, agility, obedience, herding, tracking and nosework. One of Julie's favorite things is a versatile team! Her first Belgian Tervuren, Rival, was the first of his breed to finish his championship in conformation, obedience, and agility. Julie truly believes that participating in multiple sports is enriching to both person and dog and builds on that mutual partnership and trust. She also blogs at K9 Rivarly.com, for those of you out there like me, who just can't get enough of all this dog stuff. Links mentioned: K9Rivalry.com Next Episode:  To be released 4/28/2017, featuring Julie Symons.  TRANSCRIPTION: Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau, and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports Podcast, brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high quality instruction for competitive dog sports, using only the most current and progressive training methods. Today we'll be talking to Julie Symons. Julie has been involved in dog sports for over 20 years. She's competed in flyball, conformation, agility, obedience, herding, tracking, and Nose work. One of Julie's favorite things is a versatile team. Her first Belgian Tervuren, Rival, was the first of his breed to finish his championship in conformation, obedience, and agility. Julie truly believes that participating in multiple sports is enriching to both the person and the dog and builds on that mutual partnership and trust. She also blogs at k9rivalry.com, for those of you, out there who, like me, just can't get enough of all this dog stuff. Hey, Julie. Welcome to the podcast. Julie Symons: Hi, Melissa. Thanks for having me. This is going to be a lot of fun. Melissa Breau:  Did I totally butcher the Belgian Tervuren there? Julie Symons: Not bad, but I forgot to remind you Rival is a she and not a he. Melissa Breau: Oh, well that makes a difference. Julie Symons: It does. Melissa Breau: So, to start us out, can you tell us a little bit about the dogs you have now? Julie Symons: I have my Belgian Tervuren, Savvy. She's nine years old, so she's my second Terv, and she is, I would not say semi-retirement, but I'm not training her in agility, or showing in agility or obedience anymore. We are focusing on nose work. She has her breed champion, her agility champion. Last year she got her UD and her Nose Work 3, and a couple of years ago she got a Tracking Dog Excellent, and that was really, a really exciting class to title in. It's hard to get into test, and it's challenging to find places to track and train, so she's a Versatility 3 dog, it's a title in AKC, so she's my first Versatility 3 dog, so that's her. My newest dog is a Belgian Malinois, sometimes also hard to pronounce. He is 17 months old, and I love him. I do prefer girl dogs, but I felt that he was a better addition with my current girl, and they do get along great, and he's a very friendly dog, not quite much phases him, so it's been really nice to find that in a Belgian, and it's just fun to train him, and he's different, so every dog I've had is different. He passed his Nose Work ORTs, Order Recognition Test, last fall, and we have his first Nose Work 1 trial next month. He's still a baby dog, you know. I don't like to push them. Nose work is a little different. I know he's ready for that, but I have years for him, really, you know, trialing and anything else, so I'm taking my time with that. Melissa Breau: It's kind of awesome that's he's a Belgian with the ability to kind of hang out. Julie Symons: Yeah. I actually, kind of, joked that he's like a golden in a Malinois suit, and he's gone to a couple of conformation shows, sometimes the only Malinois, and I never even, you know, he just didn't mind people touching him, examining him. I didn't even have to train that. I probably don't even want to admit that, but we'll see. He's a little older now. He might, you know, sometimes they go through different phases, and they go through different periods of time, and we, actually, have a trial next weekend that we're showing in conformation, so I do like to get dogs out early. That's the one thing I do like, conformation is something that you can get them into the ring early, if they're ready, and they can have some really fun time getting lots of steak and liver in the ring, so. Melissa Breau: Hey. Can't beat that. Julie Symons: No. No. Melissa Breau: So, I think, from reading your bio, and stuff, you started out in flyball, right? Julie Symons: Yeah, when I bought my first house, I was an adult, in my 20s, I wanted a dog, so one of the first things I did was I went and got a dog. I went to a shelter and I picked out Dreyfus, really cute dog, kind of a big, you know, 60 pound, 70 pound, you know, Collie mix. We called him the Dick Clark of dogs because he never aged. He lived to 16, almost 16, and except for his physical appearance, you know, he just looked as handsome and young as Dick Clark, I guess. You know, I don't really remember how I got into flyball. I do know that I started out in some local class where you just stood in the room for an hour, and you got one time up, you know, in such ways we don't train anymore. You just don't have your dog, you know, unfocused and sitting there for an hour, you know, while you wait your turn, and I think I started, I got into the Amber mixed breed, it's an American mixed breed organization registry. I don't even think they have it anymore, and I could get like, you know, obedience titles, so I must have been renting, you know, some other training buildings to practice, and there were some people there that were doing flyball, so I must have networked and met them because I once I started going to matches and some UKC trials, and you just started meeting more people, and I got on this flyball team, and it was neat because, you know, I learned how to teach my dog to hit a box and a ball would pop out. He was really good at flyball. He was a big dog, so he was able to jump the little hurdles fast, and he got a run in every heat, at the trials. I remember my team members weren't always happy that he got a run every time, but he was consistent, you know, and you want the time for the flyball, for the speed. I also learned, you know, like doing a Front Cross, you send your dog down one side and you do a Front Cross and you pick your dog up. So, you know, I do look back at that as, you know, I didn't stick with it, I still really like the sport, didn't stay with it, but it was my first time going to, driving a couple of hours to a trial and I remember thinking, well how can a dog stay in the car that long? What if they have to go to the bathroom? It's funny, when you look back and see, we were all newbies, we all started out somewhere, and you know, I remember taking pictures of my dog in the hotel room, like, wow, they can be in the hotel room, with us. So, I did that for about a year, went to about three or four tournaments for flyball. At that same time, I was starting to look for my purebred dogs, and I thought, oh, I like this. There wasn't as many opportunities for mix breeds back then, as it is today. I, actually, was looking at mixed breeds before I got Drac, my Malinois. I was so open to a mixed breed, it didn't really matter because you can do so much with them now, but back then you couldn't, so I definitely wanted a purebred dog. You know, Dreyfus was great, but he really was, you know, not a lot of drive, very distractible. Now I probably have a lot of skills now to deal with that, but you know, he liked to sniff the ground a lot, and he was not the easiest, you know, dog to train, you know, and for being new, you know, it was kind of hard, so I didn't do much with him, past that. So, I started researching, and I was looking for my next dog, and I saw the David Letterman Stupid Pet Tricks on, you know, one night I was watching TV and they had a Belgian Malinois. I really liked that breed, so I was still going to this local obedience class and I mentioned it, to the instructor, and he said, oh, you should really get a Belgian Tervuren instead, so I went to a show, in Syracuse, a conformation show, and I found when the Belgian Tervuren were on, and I loved them. They were so beautiful. I grew up with rust Collies, so they kind of reminded me of that a little bit, so it was so fortunate how I found my next dog. I contacted breeders. They didn't know me from anybody. They had a boy and a girl, and I got the girl, from Missouri, flown to me, sight unseen. Her name was Rival, and she changed my life, and she was just this high drive, just very biteable, bonded to me immediately, and then, I think, I did bring her to that same dog, pet, class trainer, for a little bit, but I didn't stay long because, you know, the methods were much different, and I heard about a local trainer, who had just got her OTCH, on a lab, so I started private lessons with her, and I never, ever, went back to obedience classes, a class environment. Then, so, when I got her, agility was really starting to hit the scene, so I got into an agility class right away. This is when AKC had one class, you would have the standard class, you would run in. We would drive like, you know, four hours, and you would go in the ring for 30 seconds, and you were done, for the day. So that's how I, kind of, went. Then, in obedience, of course, I was continuing with that, and private lessons, and then I added agility. I started, when she was young, I started tracking the pet class that I had gone to was run by some Schutzhund trainers, so I would meet with them, when they would do some tracking, and so I learned a little bit about tracking, but I didn't stay with them long. I would take a lot of breaks on and off from tracking, you know, and of course nose work wasn't around at that point, but that's how I, kind of, just, you know, I got the bug. I got the dog training bug with Dreyfus, got the purebred dog that I had more opportunities, and you know, she just made it so enjoyable and easy for me to pick up new sports, and so that's how I, kind of, you know, you get that first dog, you know… Melissa Breau: You dive in deep, and the world opens up to you. Julie Symons: Yep. Yep. Melissa Breau: So, at what point, I mean, it sounds like you were doing a lot of different things right out of the gate, with Rival. Did you immediately know that versatility was going to be something that was important to you? At what point was that like a conscious thing where that was like something you wanted to focus on? Julie Symons: You know, I do think it was because of her, and just training her in so many sports, her temperament and her drive were superb. She excelled at everything we did, and she was a great teacher. I mean I still consider myself a novice handler, at that time, and I really got addicted. I got addicted to dog training, and I know, any and all of it, so I just, you know, couldn't imagine just doing agility. I just enjoyed the cross training and just teaching such different skills, to my dog. I think I would get bored if I only did one, and I think that my dogs, the dogs I tend to get, to me, you know, I don't want to put human feelings on dogs, but I do think they enjoy the versatility too. I think they like the different skills and the different things they get to do. Melissa Breau: So, in retrospect, what are some of the benefits that you have seen, from competing in multiple sports, with each of your dogs? Julie Symons: Yeah. So, what I just mentioned, I do think there's a cross training aspect to it. I'm not just working on, you know, their muscles for running fast. I'm using their nose, and I'm asking for some precision in other sports, like obedience. It also gives them breaks, you know, instead of working one sport all the time, you know, they take a break from, maybe, some of the more strenuous running and jumping, and then they get to switch to something else. I found that training in the different sports, you just develop and bond and relationship that's different and maybe a little deeper because you have to learn different context of things, you're learning more skills, and it strengthens that relationship that you have, you know, you have this mutual understanding with each other, to go out and do these different sports, and that you have these, you know, cues and things that they understand, and it's just amazing to know that I have…because I train for sports, I don't normally train just to train. I've gotten a little bit more into doing some tricks, I think that's great for dogs, too, so just to think of all the ways I can teach my dog to do different things, and back to, you know, when I had Rival, she really showed me what was possible to do with a dog, and the possible bonds you can have. I just never thought you could do all of this with a dog, and I just think that's what made me like the versatility of it too, it's just a, kind of, challenge to try other sports, you know. So, when nose work came along, I did not need another dog sport, believe me, but her brother had started it, and I saw a video of it, didn't know much about it, and he passed away at a little bit of a young age, so I was, kind of, inspired to say, you know, in his honor I'm going to take this nose work class that I heard about Denise teaching, before Fenzi started, and she was actually in heat, or she was injured, or something, so like the timing was really good, so I used that, my dog is in heat or has a minor injury or it's winter, you know, I think of what else could I do with my dog because I can't do some of the other things, and that's, actually, how I got into nose work. So, you know, it just comes along at the right time, for you, with the dog that you have. Melissa Breau: So, I'd imagine that knowing now, at least, that that's something that's important to you, that you want to do a lot of different things with your dog, when you have a new puppy, which you've been through fairly recently, you might approach, kind of, those early days a little bit differently, do you want to talk a little bit about that? Julie Symons: Yeah. I think it is a little different, knowing what you're going to, you know, train your dog in and compete in, but it's really quite similar because a lot of the same skills that you need across all the sports, like you need your dog to be able to stay, you know, and sit or down, you really do, in every single sport. You need impulse control, you need them to, you know, wait for your cues. They need focus. They need recalls. You know, you just need all of that stuff, so that's what I just start building. I tend to train thoughtful dogs. That's good. I'm thinking like I want more like, almost out of control dogs, but I really don't. I do tend to train, I tend to teach dogs to be very thoughtful, and I do need to balance that with some of that little bit of edge that I do want from them as well. Let's see, what else? But I also, like, approach it by switching on and off. I'm not training every sport all the time, you know, nobody can do that, and even, since training in multiple sports is also a challenge in itself, I also, you know, have a busy day life, day job. I have, you know, a son. I have a husband, so it's hard to fit everything in. So, how I approach it is I just, sometimes, focus on one thing a month, like I need to teach my dog to weave, so just that month, it happened to be summer, I'm going to just, every day, go out there and train my dogs, a couple of times a day, on the weave poles, and I don't really have time for anything else, but that's okay. That's just what I'm doing that month. Then, the next month, I might focus on, I don't know, getting out to new places for obedience, and then the next month I may focus on teeter, you know, get my dog on the teeter and everything, so it just, I don't really have a good, you know, plan around it. I don't write it down, or anything, I just make sure I train my dog on something, most days, and I usually have a focus, so a lot of it depends on what I might be starting to want to compete in first. Melissa Breau: That makes a lot of sense. Julie Symons: Yeah. Yeah. Because you can't, if you try to sit there and say, you'll get overwhelmed. You'll get overwhelmed if you're going to try to say, I want to do all of these six sports, oh my gosh, you know, and you know, I kind of move on. Once Savvy got her MACH 2 to, you now, I didn't need to get a MACH 3 or 4, so I just decided, she could have still kept running, she was seven or eight, or something, but I just had other things to do. I had to go work on her, you know, TDX or her, whatever, nose work, now. I am very goal oriented to the title, so that kind of drives me in the direction that I train. Melissa Breau: Yeah. I feel like that's something that I've definitely struggled with, so it's interesting to hear, kind of, pick one focus. Now, at least, for me, and for my dog, I found that she doesn't always retain the information long term, if we, kind of, leave it alone and come back to it, you know, like months later. Is that something you've had to deal with at all? Julie Symons: Oh, she doesn't. Well, no. Well I do think it depends on what it is, if you hadn't, you know, taught something to kind of fluency, then you're going to lose a little bit, but I also think they remember some of it, at least, so there are some things that I think you do need to, kind of, not drop off, you know, for too long. It depends, you know, it might be stays or recalls, obviously. I do think that, most part, they do remember, so, in that case, if they don't, then, you know, you might have to just decide what's more important that you need, and keep that in because, you know, I could do more than just my weave pole training that month. Obviously, I'm in the catch, and I'll do stays with my dogs. I'll put them in a sit stay, while I'm making something, or you know, sometimes it just takes one minute of training, just one to three minutes of training, a day. Everybody can find that. I started to train a little bit before I went to work. Lately, with Drac, I train when I get home. He is so pumped and into me, that's when I need to train him because he's a young, adolescent boy. He, kind of, like doesn't have a lot of stamina to focus, so I've actually had some really, really wonderful sessions, and it just might be as much as i can train with a handful of food and that's all I do. Now he's 17 months old, and he is like, oh my gosh, I'm like, he is so focused on me, like that didn't happen months ago. So then, because I have that focus and maturity, I'm able to, kind of, progress a little bit further or teach him something new, so it's, kind of, give and take, and you're right, I know some of the stuff I started with him, like backup, I was teaching him backing up, he doesn't know that at all, anymore, so, yeah, that is something that I did lose, but that's not as important to me, to backup, away from me, so I've got to get back to that because I do think it's useful, in some areas, but yeah, I did lose that one on him, by the way. I think what happened was, I was teaching him some other things, like a fold back down, or something else, and he kept backing up, and it wasn't reinforcing it because I was working on something else, so I think that's why I lost it because of the reinforcement, you know, I extinguished it. I extinguished his backing up, accidentally. Melissa Breau: Yeah. Do you have any advice, I guess, for other trainers, who maybe want to intentionally train for multiple sports or approach the idea that if they have a dog, they want to compete in multiple sports, either for getting started or just, kind of, for balancing things? Julie Symons:Yeah. Yes, I do. So, a little bit, what I mentioned earlier, I think if you just don't get overwhelmed and realize that you aren't trialling your new dog, right away. It really is going to be years before you really get them in the ring, and I know, like it's almost like you put a lot of time in those first, you know, two to four years. I didn't bring in my, you know, Rival, who got an Obedience Champion, she didn't enter the obedience ring until she was five. She could have gone in a little earlier, but I wasn't ready, and once I got in and I realized we were ready, but you have time to bring your dog in because once you get them into that ring, at that time, it goes fast after that, so you take that time, you know, I would say two to four years, depending on the sport, and once you get to that point, then it goes really fast. If you start too early, I think you're just setting yourself up to have too many gaps in your training, and then you're going to, probably, struggle, and then it's going to take you longer, so I would, you know, number one, not worry about time. It will come, when ready. Also, a foundation, like I said earlier, just work on the foundation, work on things that you're going to want anyway, you're going to want to save the recalls, the focus, the impulse control, that's going to apply to every sport, and something that's near and dear to Denise's heart, actually, is personal play. I've had to learn that more so in the last nine years because my first dog, Rival, was just naturally into me. I was her world. Honestly, I didn't do anything, to make that happen, and when I got Savvy, and now I have Drac, other things in the world are more interesting, to them, than me, so I have had to think about, wait, I've got to build that personal bond, that personal play, not relying on food so much, or toys, and if you can focus on that, and you can have a dog that's totally into you, that's half the battle, and then the rest is just skill training, it's just skills, and we all know how to trail skills. Seriously, we have all the classes and the tools and the, you know, video examples, and the people's blogs, we all know how to teach skills, some are harder than others, don't get me wrong, but if you have a dog that you have built up this wonderful relationship with, I mean we all have wonderful relationships with our dogs. I'm not even saying that. It's from an interaction, it's a kind of bonded, you know, interaction that you need to build for that personal play around other, you know, interesting things, in the environment. So, I would say, and I had to, really, grow in that area, for me, and I really bring that into my training more where, to me, it's more important that I'm going to interact and play with my dog then teach Drac to backup again. To me I'd rather need him to really want to come to me and to play with me, so that's the things that I would have people to focus on.  Melissa Breau: You know, I've seen, I don't remember if you shared a video or if it's on your Fenzi bio, or what, I mean, I've seen some of your competition videos, and I would never guess that personal play is something you've struggled with. I saw you in between exercises, and on one of the videos you got down on the floor, and you were like very happy to be there. It was really nice. I mean it was… Julie Symons: Yeah. I mean I think one of the videos might have been Rival, and I did make a clip, once, for somebody, to show what I did between the rings with Savvy, and she's a very distractible dog. She'll know the things in her environment, which is typical of Belgians, too, they're very aware of people, there are some people they just don't like, and so I've really had to work on that, so thank you, for that compliment. To be honest, that is why Savvy didn't enter the obedience ring for a while. I can't remember how old she was, when she actually went in for her Novice, CD, but she actually went in for her, you know, Novice CD but she got her Utility title at eight, last year, because I got her, when my son was young, he was only two, so I just didn't have the time. I had three dogs, and I had my older dog, Dreyfus. I had, did I have three dogs? Yeah. Savvy. I still had Rival and Dreyfus, when I got Savvy, and I just couldn't do it all. I, actually, realized I cannot do it all right now, and that was okay. That was okay. If I put pressure on myself then it's just going to carry over to my dogs, so I appreciate that compliment. Melissa Breau: So, you got there, and you got there at your own pace, and you got beautiful results. Julie Symons: Yes. Yes. Melissa Breau: So, I know that, in addition to teaching for FDSA, you also teach in person, right? Julie Symons: Yeah. So, actually, back in the late ‘90s, I started teaching agility, when I was doing well with my dog and it was still new, in this area. I found, you know, that I enjoyed that. I enjoyed helping people, and I was in a dog club, so I started teaching through a dog club, and then, eventually, when we bought our current property, the first thing we built, you know, we have seven open acres, and the first thing we did is we built a hundred by hundred, you know, fence, so the property was, the house hadn't even started building, and I had this hundred by hundred, you know, fence. Melissa Breau: Priorities. Julie Symons: Yeah. Priorities because it was a lot of deer, and everything, and when I first started, without the fence, you know, a couple of dogs to take off, and that was really scary, so we got the fence up. So, I started teaching on my own. That was probably back in 2000, in 1999 or the year 2000, and then I had my son in 2004, and I tried to keep up, you know, and I tried to keep teaching, and I was still showing Rival actively, finishing up some of her big titles. I just had to back off a bit, so I stopped teaching and took a break from that, and then when I got Savvy into nose work, and she got her nose work 1 title, I immediately was like, “I'm going to start teaching.” I just wanted to get that first title and then start bringing it to my area because I could tell it was an up and coming sport. You know, everybody just didn't AKC anymore, you know, there's Barn Hunt, there's a lot of other venues of dog sports. It was about the same time that I started teaching at FDSA, and so it's gone very well, locally. People love the in-person classes because they can have them, you know, from me, so they're spoiled a little bit. So, yeah, really, actually this morning I hosted a little match for some students, and myself, trialing next month, so it's a lot of work. I rented a building and we had a gym area and another room to do hides. It keeps me busy. Melissa Breau: So, just for anybody who may happen to be local to you, do you want to share, kind of, what area you're in? Julie Symons: Yeah. I'm south of Rochester, New York. I'm near the thruway, so I'm actually equal distance between Syracuse and Buffalo. I do have some people that, you know, come about an hour away, but most are local. Ironically some of them are just like within five minutes of my neighborhood, so we all live pretty close, and Rochester, New York, we've heard this for years, we have a really, really big, strong dog community, some really talented people, a lot of people invested in training, you know, competitively with our dogs. You know, I have people, in my classes that, you know, I have few pet people that started with me, people who hadn't done much of the competitive sports, so I have a mix, but I do have a lot of people who have some dog training experience, and it was cool that they, these are people who do Schutzhund, you know, obedience, rally, agility, like they're interested in nose work. Their dogs may be getting a little older, they're retiring form a sport, or they're young dogs who are coming up, and it's, really, taught me that it applies, or interests, a wide range of people, you know, it's not just for certain, you know, demographic of dogs and handlers, so and it's growing. I, actually, can barely keep up. I, just recently, made a job change to go to part time. I work at Xerox. I've been there my whole career, out of college, and I just decided that I want more time to myself, as well as for dog training. So, yeah, I'm actually really excited about that. The hours will change in a couple of weeks, so we'll see. I'm not really sure if I'll get more time to myself. I may just get busier, so we'll see, but I did find that that's what I love. That's what I was passionate about. That's where I was creative, and that wasn't the side of my life that I wanted to cut back on, so I just sat back, looked at our situation, and said, “I can do this,” so, yeah. Melissa Breau: Now you, kind of, mentioned AKC in there, and some of the other Nose work programs, but I know there's been a lot of buzz about the fact that AKC has just recently added a scent work program, right? Julie Symons: Yeah, and that timing came quite at a good time, for some of my latest decisions. Yeah. So AKC rolled out a nose work program, they call it scent work, and you know, I think we all expected it to come at some point. I think a lot of people do like to show in AKC. AKC, you know, is a big organization, and probably going to be able to put on more readily available trials for people to enter. I love the other nose work programs. I think they've done a really great job with them, and I will still trial in them, but there's people that are in some isolated areas that are too far for trials, there's a long waitlist, so I think the AKC program, the reason I'm excited about it, is I think it will get more people into the sport because I really have found that nose work just does something to the dogs. It does something to the handlers. It's not just the dogs that love because they get to use their nose, but just the people, to see their dogs be these little detection dogs, and there's something about it. I haven't quite pinpointed it. I think people like tracking, but tracking, sometimes, is hard to find the field, and there's also limited, you know, tracking tests. There's just something about it, and I think it's just people seeing their dogs, instead of us telling our dogs not to sniff and smell things, we're letting them sniff and smell things, and they're doing it with purpose, and they're doing it, you know, it's a job. I think dogs are, kind of, bred to do jobs, and it's a job that comes naturally to them, but there's still practicing and training and skills that you've got to train to actually compete in that sport, so it's just been something that I'm really excited about with the AKC program. Then they added this handler discrimination class, which existed in a UKC program, so I'm not as familiar with that, from a nose work context, but I've done some articles for 20 years, and you know, I never really had a lot of problem with that, but I understand that it is challenging. I think it's just more of a mindset of people realizing our dogs really can pick up the smallest amount of smell, and it's not even a small amount of smell. I mean we're putting our strong odor on it, compared to anything else, in the environment, so there's a discrimination that they're making between our smell and the steward's, you know, smell, from touching the articles, and in this new AKC program, you actually have your glove, or your sock, that you, you know, scent, and then they're going to have another  person's scented, you know, item in one of the other boxes to start, so it's going to be discrimination, and you know, it's just like with anything,  you train your dog, what was reinforced, what is the value, so I teach my scent is to be reinforced, there's a value to that, and to me discrimination is less of an issue than somebody going, oh, I like the steward's hand smell better. It's just more that they're stressed, or they just pick up any article, so I think that the discrimination part, to me, you know, is very trainable, and it's easy to teach a dog, just like with nose work, we teach our dog these odors, you know, Birch, Anise, Clove, these are odors that we've taught you that are reinforced. Any other novel owner, whether it's a piece of bread or some meat or a toy, or even animal droppings, you know, they may find that self-reinforcing, but if they have the drive for the odors that we have reinforced, then they will seek those out over everything, so. So, yeah, it is pretty exciting, with the AKC program.  Melissa Breau: My understanding is that you're going to be a judge, right?  Julie Symons: Yeah. I did apply, to be a judge, and I was approved. They still have to rollout… Melissa Breau: Congrats. Julie Symons: Yeah. Thanks. I've never entered that arena, of judging, so they still have to rollout like some online training and a test to take, so we're waiting for that to come out, and it's exciting because somebody, locally, is taking nose work classes with me. She said, oh, we're thinking of getting this added to our national breed, coming up, and she said, I know somebody who's a judge, so it will be very nice that I could, you know, maybe for some of the local breed shows, you know, I'll be available to help with that, to get it started. Melissa Breau: Right. Right. Now I want to change gears a little bit because I know you also do the obedience games class, at FDSA, even though it's not in the schedule, until October, I wanted to make sure we had a chance to talk a little bit about some of the obedience stuff you teach too, so do you want to just tell us a little bit about the concept for the class and kind of what you cover? Julie Symons: Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for bringing that up. It's been a very fun class topic for me. It's called obedience games, and we added a starter version, which I just ended last term because I found that my first version got advanced pretty quickly, so I thought, wow, I can really even break this down more, and that was a real hit. It, kind of, you know, took a life of its own, and it was just real exciting. It's about, you know, being informal but still being clear to your dog. It's about adding more movement and less, you know, static, stationary behaviors, and less fiddling with, you know, precision and the front, so we're not even doing fronts, so I'm like, we're not doing fronts in this class. Every time your dog comes here, you're going to pass a treat between your legs, and then that just builds this like, you know, center of position, and your dog is going to continue with speed, and they're just going to know, you know, to like go through you, you know. We're not going to worry about errors. I really emphasize that because we all, you know, we all get a little frustrated or disappointed, and I'm really, really impressed, early on, there are no errors, we're just training, we're learning, we're finding out what gaps we have. We're getting information from our dogs. There's no reason to be, you know, upset, or bothered and we don't want our dogs to ever, you know, we don't want them to have stress, in this game, and I think that I'm seeing some people give me comments that they're seeing some people who took my very first obedience game class, last fall, they said, wow, I very rarely still use the games, it's really helped my dog in the ring. I think it's more that it's helped the human, you know, it's helping humans to, kind of, maybe loosen up a little bit. One of the things that I really was, you know, enforcing was, you know, these daily games that if you just work, just a few minutes, like I said earlier, a few minutes a day, with your dog, there's just something about that because I can go days and days without training my dog, I just get busy, you know, but instead, if I just find one little, kind of, action packed, high reinforcing game, to play with my dog, which with a purpose for obedience skills, for example, it just pays off with even your recalls. It pays off with your dog, you know, your personal bond, and I try to do some personal toy and play before every session. I encourage that for the students to do. Then, because we're all so busy, I'm busy, you know, you can find a couple of minutes every day, and it really will add up and you will find your dog actually learned skills, and they want to work with you more because they look forward to that time of the day, you know, that you train with them. Another thing is, you know, these scores will come eventually. When I entered, you know, my OTCH dog in her first trial, you know, we did get good scores, but they weren't going to be scores that got me placed to get the OTCH points, but I was just in the novice class. I didn't need those points yet, so I wanted her to go in there and know her job and be happy. I just, kind of, worked at those point deductions that I got, I just worked to clean them up, over time. I just said, oh, that's where our gap is. I'm going to clean it up, and I'm going to lose less points, in that exercise, and that's how I got to the higher scores, but not until I was, you know, further along, in my obedience competition trial because you've got to get that experience, and I just think I was trying to bring that thought process to the games classes.  Melissa Breau: Yeah. I mean, I think that even the mindset, right, from competition to thinking about it all as a game, for the person, is such a difference, and it just brings a more relaxed structure and more fun. Julie Symons: Yeah. Yeah. It has. I have been pleasantly surprised with how well it's been received, and I might even have to come up with like a middle level now. We'll see how I can plan that. And what I love about it, too, is it complements all the great skills classes that we have, at the Academy, so people can be working on their retrieves, and you know, whatever, you know, all these other little skilled areas, you know, separately but at the same time, but separate from the quick little three minute games sessions because I'm doing that with Drac. Believe me, I'm working on, you know, his retrieve and his hold, and things like that. I'm working those heavy-duty skill things off on the side as well, so. Melissa Breau: So, to kind of round things out, I want to ask you the three questions that we've asked everybody so far, who's come on the show. Julie Symons: Okay. Melissa Breau: So, first, what's the dog related accomplishment that you are proudest of? Julie Symons: Okay. It has to be just, you know, Rival, my first Terv, she became the first champion OTCH MACH Terv, and just getting that OTCH, actually, in itself, was just a thrill because I just went from the Novice A classes to OTCH, and I learned so much, from her. I, also, had my son, he was a couple of years at that time, and I just needed a couple of more points, and I was going in the ring, and we weren't doing well. I was no longer training in the open class because my dog was now older, she was ten, or nine, or ten, and there was a lot of jumping. I couldn't even train. I didn't have time to train a lot, and I didn't have time to maintain that, so one of my friends, and trainers, said, “You really need to enter the open class.” On a whim, I entered the one day that had spots left, in open, and we went in the ring, and I said, oh, I'm never going to finish my OTCH. I'm never going to finish my OTCH in an open class because all of the points are in utility and you know the scores, people get such great, you know, scores, you know, and it's so hard to get the points in open, if you look at the point schedule. We went in the ring, and that's the one that I show a lot, it's in my obedience games intro, and we went into the ring, and I love to watch it. I watch it, if I'm down, or something, because just I went in there and I think that's a lot, what I process my obedience games class with because I went in the ring not expecting much, and my dog was getting older, I knew she was going to be retired soon, and I have a son. I just can't keep up with everything. I just thought, someday I'm not going to be able to go in the ring with this dog, and so I'm going to go in there and we got like a 199, you know, first place, we got her OTCH from that run. Melissa Breau: That's awesome. Julie Symons: Yeah. Then, you know, to be a first in something is so hard, in a breed like the Belgian Tervuren. Now the MACH was a relatively newer title, so some fabulous dogs, before, obviously didn't have that chance, but yeah, I am, we are the first Belgian Tervuren champion OTCH MACH, so that was very, yeah, special to me. Melissa Breau: That's awesome. Julie Symons: To be honest, that dog was so deserving of that, so. Melissa Breau: Yeah. She really sounds like something special. Julie Symons: Yes. Melissa Breau: So, the second question, I like to ask everybody, and I think this is, honestly, my favorite question of the whole podcast, is what is the best piece of training advice that you have ever heard? Julie Symons: Yeah. I was looking forward to this one. I thought a lot about it, and you know, we all get such great training advice, but there's two that really stuck out to me, and they've been pretty recent ones. I absolutely love Amy Cook's, in one of her classes, but she also said it at camp last year, that, “Every time you train your dog, you're teaching them how to feel,” and that just, you know, goes back to some of my outlook on training, also, is just like that's why I don't want to, if I stress them out, that's how they're going to feel about training, so it's just such a powerful but simple statement that she made, and I really embrace that, and share that as often as I can with my students. Melissa Breau: That's great. Julie Symons: I have a second one too. Can I have two? Melissa Breau: Absolutely. Julie Symons: Okay. Another one that I really liked was one from Bob Bailey. It was, you know, he's big on clicker training, shaping, and he said something that, also, really resonated with me, with, “You better made a decision because the next one is right around the corner.” So, if you think about when you're training a dog, and you're like, oh, was that the right criteria. Was it right enough? You know, your next decision is right up on you. You have to make a decision, and it might not be the best decision, and it might not even be the right decision. You probably made a wrong decision, but you have to make a decision on whether you're going to click something or reinforce something because the next decision is right around the corner, and it's okay, you look at all of us trainers, our timing is off. We accidently click something that we weren't supposed to. Look how resilient our dogs are. They recover. You know, they're fine. So, I just really like that because I think some people, we freeze up, we freeze up in the training, when we don't know what to do. That's okay. Do something because you're going to have to make another decision, like, another second later, so I really pulled that off of a DVD that I was listening to, and I never wrote it down, exactly what he said, but I just remember that concept. So those are my two. Melissa Breau: That's awesome. So, for our last one, who is somebody else, in the dog world, that you look up to? Julie Symons: So, this is, of course, the hardest question, I think, everybody has had, and I thought about it also, so this is obviously tough because I've learned so much from people, local and afar, because I work in so many different sport areas, you know, it just multiplies how many people I've worked with. I think I'm going to say that I do look up to anyone that thinks out of the box and is willing to try something different. I just think that, sometimes, we all get, kind of, stuck in an area, in a way that we do things, and I think somebody who is willing to, you know, just, kind of, maybe work outside their comfort level or just try something new, I just really respect that because you're not going to grow if don't do that. You're not going to change something, and of course, my learning has exponentially grown, being a part of FDSA. I think the whole base of the FDSA instructors are amazing, so I do look up to the Academy and the instructors that we offer such a diversity of people and topics. It's not just performance now, it's from, you know, your mind to cooperative care to competition. There is one name I will mention, if I have to mention one name, if I have time, is I will never forget one person that I worked with, with Rival, my very first high drive performance dog, her name was Patty Hatfield. She's from Florida, and she had a wonderful Malinois named Lily, who was on the US agility world team, back in the ‘90s, and she would come to our area frequently for agility seminars, and she helped me, so much, with how I interacted with my dog. I am a pretty high drive person, myself, high energy, actually, high energy, and so with my dog, so she taught me how to, you know, adjust my energy levels, when she needed to be calmer. She also does just love her dog. She had a great bond with her dog, Lily. She just loved her. She would talk about, you know, when she went home, from a seminar, I know I'm going to do all the wrong things, and I'm going to go hug my dog and just get all crazy when I see her, but you're not supposed to do that because back in that day, you were supposed to ignore your dog, when you got home. You were supposed to not let them run up the stairs, ahead of you. You're not supposed to let your dogs on the furniture, or you're supposed to eat before they ate, all these little, you know, control things that were told to you, and I always remember, because I, kind of, did that stuff too, but I thought, “I'm not going to tell anybody,” but I let my dog up, on my bed, and let my dog run up the stairs, but I always thought I was doing something wrong because that was what you were told back then. I just remember her just saying, “I don't care what I'm doing, or if I'm doing the wrong thing. I love my dog, and I just got to be excited when I see her, when I come home,” so I always, kind of, still just think of those interactions that I had with her, with the advice she gave me. She had a Malinois, and again, I just love the Belgian breeds, and I could relate to that as well, so. Melissa Breau: Thanks, so much, for coming on the podcast, Julie, and thanks, to our listeners, for tuning in. We'll be back in two weeks with Amy Cook, to talk about using play to help dogs cope with fear and reactivity. If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app, of your choice, to have our next episode automatically download to your phone as soon as it becomes available. CREDITS: Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called “Buddy.” Audio editing provided by Chris Lang and transcription written by CLK Transcription Services. Thanks again for tuning in -- and happy training!

Doug Reinke, CEO of Bluon Energy, discusses the R-22 refrigerant phasedown, Bluon's Tdx-20 replacement option, and more. Posted on June 3.

Immortal Amiga Episode 7 - Amiga Week Episode 3/3 ! Track Listing : Big thanks to Amiga Music Preservation http://amp.dascene.net/ microtune - XTD - http://amp.dascene.net/detail.php?view=8279 mind solution ~ mix - Dax - http://amp.dascene.net/detail.php?view=1665 dust of time - Monty - http://amp.dascene.net/detail.php?view=5050 genesis-music - Matrix - http://amp.dascene.net/detail.php?view=4679 recalling mars - Deep Throat - http://amp.dascene.net/detail.php?view=8693 fantasy light ii - Okeanos - http://amp.dascene.net/detail.php?view=5499 cat-ah-pull-tah - JazzCat - http://amp.dascene.net/detail.php?view=3688 vivre dosk - xyce - https://soundcloud.com/xyce/vivre-dosk-mod - @xycechipmusic on twitter zyconix psychic mix - Hille - http://amp.dascene.net/detail.php?view=3337 reference - Nork - http://amp.dascene.net/newresult.php prelude - atheist -http://amp.dascene.net/detail.php?view=405 critical pressure - Xpeh - http://amp.dascene.net/detail.php?view=8270 a naff song - TDX - http://amp.dascene.net/detail.php?view=7301 - @TDK_CHIPTUNE on twitter repentance - Moonshine communication - Cartoon - http://amp.dascene.net/detail.php?view=963 sky ride - Beast - http://amp.dascene.net/detail.php?view=550 white shades - Estrayk - http://amp.dascene.net/detail.php?view=2539 testament (lost) - Jaroslav Kasny - http://amp.dascene.net/detail.php?view=3643 Thanks for listening :) Created for Immortal C64 by Steve Butterworth @sbutterworth I can be found on Twitter at Retrograde77 / email : akumadesigns at gmail.com and also on Commodore is Awesome's IRC : irc.abime.net #awesome. awesome.commodore.me