Podcasts about udx

ゲーム業界を目指す新卒者を対象としたゲーム業界就活イベント『キャリアクエスト ～冒険者から専門職へ～』を立ち上げ、6月30日（日）に東京・秋葉原UDXで初回のイベントを開催いたします。

4月になりました。松尾がSuno V3とChatGPTを使ってでっち上げた架空のバンドによる架空のアルバムを音楽配信する企画がスタートして、嘘が誠になってしまいました。そんなことを中心にお届けしつつ、Apple Vison Proパーティー第2回のイベントレポートもしています。▽ 番組からお知らせ番組への感想や取り上げてほしいネタはTwitterのハッシュタグ「tedgeside」や、お便りフォームでお寄せください。お便りを採用させていただいた方はテクノエッジ特製グッズをプレゼントいたします。https://forms.gle/jLdXLiYK6CJH5HiT9Weekly TOP 5第6位：「三体」劉慈欣の短編「流浪地球」無料公開中。4月7日まで | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge第5位：生成AIグラビアギャラリー | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge第4位：中国、政府機関のIT機器からインテルおよびAMDプロセッサ排除へ。ArmとRISC-V、国産Linux主流の新ルール制定 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge第3位：次期iOS 18ではホーム画面のアイコン配置が自由になる？「最大級のアップデート」になる可能性 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdgeWWDC24は6月10日開催。AppleのAI戦略やVision ProのvisionOSに期待 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge第2位：NVIDIA直提供のGeForce NOW、4月4日に日本でサービス開始。RTX 4080のUltimateプランも提供開始 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge第1位：動画生成AI「Sora」のオープンソース版「Open-Sora 1.0」公開、AI同士を掛け合わせて高品質なAIを自律的に生み出す手法など重要論文5本を解説（生成AIウィークリー） | テクノエッジ TechnoEdgeイベントレポートイベント告知：Vision Proがドレスコードの「Apple Vision Proパーティー」第2回、秋葉原UDXで3月28日(木)開催。持っていなくても参加できます | テクノエッジ TechnoEdgeお知らせアジア有数のI＆T展示会『InnoEX』『香港エレクトロニクス・フェア』4月13日開幕　最先端技術と次世代スマート・ソリューション集結、巨大なアジア市場の玄関口 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge新連載「AIだけで作った曲を音楽配信する」。生成AIが作り上げた架空バンド「The Midnight Odyssey」を世界デビューさせる、その裏側 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge関連リンクTechnoEdge-Sideテクノエッジテクノエッジ公式YouTubeテクノエッジ公式Xアカウント技術の手帖カイ（@kai4den） / TwitterKoya Matsuo（@mazzo） / TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

このページをウェブブラウザで見る: リンク 4月になりました。松尾がSuno V3とChatGPTを使ってでっち上げた架空のバンドによる架空のアルバムを音楽配信する企画がスタートして、嘘が誠になってしまいました。そんなことを中心にお届けしつつ、Apple Vison Proパーティー第2回のイベントレポートもしています。▽ 番組からお知らせ 番組への感想や取り上げてほしいネタはTwitterのハッシュタグ「tedgeside」や、お便りフォームでお寄せください。お便りを採用させていただいた方はテクノエッジ特製グッズをプレゼントいたします。 https://forms.gle/jLdXLiYK6CJH5HiT9 ▽ Weekly TOP 5 第6位：「三体」劉慈欣の短編「流浪地球」無料公開中。4月7日まで | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge 第5位：生成AIグラビアギャラリー | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge 第4位：中国、政府機関のIT機器からインテルおよびAMDプロセッサ排除へ。ArmとRISC-V、国産Linux主流の新ルール制定 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge 第3位：次期iOS 18ではホーム画面のアイコン配置が自由になる？「最大級のアップデート」になる可能性 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge WWDC24は6月10日開催。AppleのAI戦略やVision ProのvisionOSに期待 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge 第2位：NVIDIA直提供のGeForce NOW、4月4日に日本でサービス開始。RTX 4080のUltimateプランも提供開始 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge 第1位：動画生成AI「Sora」のオープンソース版「Open-Sora 1.0」公開、AI同士を掛け合わせて高品質なAIを自律的に生み出す手法など重要論文5本を解説（生成AIウィークリー） | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge ▽ イベントレポート イベント告知：Vision Proがドレスコードの「Apple Vision Proパーティー」第2回、秋葉原UDXで3月28日(木)開催。持っていなくても参加できます | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge ▽ お知らせ アジア有数のI＆T展示会『InnoEX』『香港エレクトロニクス・フェア』4月13日開幕　最先端技術と次世代スマート・ソリューション集結、巨大なアジア市場の玄関口 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge 新連載「AIだけで作った曲を音楽配信する」。生成AIが作り上げた架空バンド「The Midnight Odyssey」を世界デビューさせる、その裏側 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge ▽ 関連リンク TechnoEdge-Side テクノエッジ テクノエッジ公式YouTube テクノエッジ公式Xアカウント 技術の手帖 カイ（@kai4den） / Twitter Koya Matsuo（@mazzo） / Twitter

松尾からは無料ユーザーにも公開された生成AI作曲サービスのSuno V3、甲斐からは龍が如く8のミニゲームのお話を。▽ 番組からお知らせ番組への感想や取り上げてほしいネタはTwitterのハッシュタグ「tedgeside」や、お便りフォームでお寄せください。お便りを採用させていただいた方はテクノエッジ特製グッズをプレゼントいたします。https://forms.gle/jLdXLiYK6CJH5HiT9Weekly TOP 5第6位：「公開するApple vs. 隠すOpenAI」アップルが300億パラメータのマルチモーダルAI「MM1」発表。重要論文5本を解説（生成AIウィークリー） | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge第5位：PS5 Pro (仮)は大幅強化で『GTA VI』と同時期発売？描画45%高速化・レイトレ3倍・独自ML超解像PSSRなど「開発者向け文書」と称する資料 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge第4位：Samsung、4月3日にGalaxy S24シリーズを国内発表 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge第3位：Google廉価スマホPixel 8a(仮)は120Hz画面でDP Alt mode有線映像出力対応、Tensor G3搭載？「パッケージ写真リーク」も | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge第2位：約5万円で省スペースなレースシム用コックピット150-SNCRC2、サンワサプライが発売。各社ハンコン対応、シート付きでポジション調整も可 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge第1位：『Apex Legends』eSports北米大会の試合中にチート付与したハッカー、「面白半分」で犯行に及んだと語る | テクノエッジ TechnoEdgeお知らせイベント告知：Vision Proがドレスコードの「Apple Vision Proパーティー」第2回、秋葉原UDXで3月28日(木)開催。持っていなくても参加できます | テクノエッジ TechnoEdgeApple Vision Pro、日本での発売準備が本格化？スタッフ募集や日本語対応の手がかり | テクノエッジ TechnoEdgePick Up NewsAI作曲サービス「Suno」、無料ユーザーにも高品質版V3を開放。1日20曲、1曲2分が生成可能（CloseBox） | テクノエッジ TechnoEdgeリアルな歌唱もインストも作曲できる生成AI「Suno」高性能な最新版V3が3月23日から無料？→22日公開されました。最新の使い方を解説（CloseBox） | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge米司法省、独禁法違反でApple提訴。iPhone囲い込みで競争阻害の疑い | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge最近のゲームの話『龍が如く８』 公式サイト｜SEGA【ゲーム】株式会社ポケモンの「類似他社ゲーム」についてのプレスリリースを見て『龍が如く8』スジモンバトルと連想する人々 - Togetter「どうぶつの森ならぬ、ごくどうの森じゃん…」ゲーム『龍が如く8』の新要素、自分好みの島を作れるドンドコ島が話題に - Togetter関連リンクTechnoEdge-Sideテクノエッジテクノエッジ公式YouTubeテクノエッジ公式Xアカウント技術の手帖カイ（@kai4den） / TwitterKoya Matsuo（@mazzo） / TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

このページをウェブブラウザで見る: リンク 松尾からは無料ユーザーにも公開された生成AI作曲サービスのSuno V3、甲斐からは龍が如く8のミニゲームのお話を。▽ 番組からお知らせ 番組への感想や取り上げてほしいネタはTwitterのハッシュタグ「tedgeside」や、お便りフォームでお寄せください。お便りを採用させていただいた方はテクノエッジ特製グッズをプレゼントいたします。 https://forms.gle/jLdXLiYK6CJH5HiT9 ▽ Weekly TOP 5 第6位：「公開するApple vs. 隠すOpenAI」アップルが300億パラメータのマルチモーダルAI「MM1」発表。重要論文5本を解説（生成AIウィークリー） | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge 第5位：PS5 Pro (仮)は大幅強化で『GTA VI』と同時期発売？描画45%高速化・レイトレ3倍・独自ML超解像PSSRなど「開発者向け文書」と称する資料 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge 第4位：Samsung、4月3日にGalaxy S24シリーズを国内発表 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge 第3位：Google廉価スマホPixel 8a(仮)は120Hz画面でDP Alt mode有線映像出力対応、Tensor G3搭載？「パッケージ写真リーク」も | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge 第2位：約5万円で省スペースなレースシム用コックピット150-SNCRC2、サンワサプライが発売。各社ハンコン対応、シート付きでポジション調整も可 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge 第1位：『Apex Legends』eSports北米大会の試合中にチート付与したハッカー、「面白半分」で犯行に及んだと語る | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge ▽ お知らせ イベント告知：Vision Proがドレスコードの「Apple Vision Proパーティー」第2回、秋葉原UDXで3月28日(木)開催。持っていなくても参加できます | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge Apple Vision Pro、日本での発売準備が本格化？スタッフ募集や日本語対応の手がかり | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge ▽ Pick Up News AI作曲サービス「Suno」、無料ユーザーにも高品質版V3を開放。1日20曲、1曲2分が生成可能（CloseBox） | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge リアルな歌唱もインストも作曲できる生成AI「Suno」高性能な最新版V3が3月23日から無料？→22日公開されました。最新の使い方を解説（CloseBox） | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge 米司法省、独禁法違反でApple提訴。iPhone囲い込みで競争阻害の疑い | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge ▽ 最近のゲームの話 『龍が如く８』 公式サイト｜SEGA 【ゲーム】株式会社ポケモンの「類似他社ゲーム」についてのプレスリリースを見て『龍が如く8』スジモンバトルと連想する人々 - Togetter 「どうぶつの森ならぬ、ごくどうの森じゃん…」ゲーム『龍が如く8』の新要素、自分好みの島を作れるドンドコ島が話題に - Togetter ▽ 関連リンク TechnoEdge-Side テクノエッジ テクノエッジ公式YouTube テクノエッジ公式Xアカウント 技術の手帖 カイ（@kai4den） / Twitter Koya Matsuo（@mazzo） / Twitter

Z世代にコンデジが人気だという山根博士の記事を肴に、そもそもZ世代って何なのよ、マジンガーZ？といった話をしております。▽ 番組からお知らせ番組への感想や取り上げてほしいネタはTwitterのハッシュタグ「tedgeside」や、お便りフォームでお寄せください。お便りを採用させていただいた方はテクノエッジ特製グッズをプレゼントいたします。https://forms.gle/jLdXLiYK6CJH5HiT9Weekly TOP 5第5位：有機EL採用の新型iPad Pro(仮)は近日発表見込み、11インチ版は品薄予報。ディスプレイ製造に遅れとアナリスト報告 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge次期iPad AirやiPad Proに加え、M3搭載MacBook Airも2024年春に登場か。これまでの噂まとめ | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge第4位：約5万円で省スペースなレースシム用コックピット150-SNCRC2、サンワサプライが発売。各社ハンコン対応、シート付きでポジション調整も可 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge第3位：Pixel 8シリーズ、最新Android 14ベータでついに有線映像出力に対応。DP Alt Modeによるスマホ画面ミラーリングが可能に | テクノエッジ TechnoEdgeGoogle I/O 2024は5月14日開催。AIやAndroid 15新情報、Pixel新製品に期待 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge第2位：映画『スーパーマリオ』新作発表、2026年公開。宮本茂氏「マリオらしい世界をさらに広げて明るく楽しい展開」、イルミネーション続投 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge第1位：レゴ「マリオカート」、3月10日「マリオの日」に発表。発売は2025年 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdgeマリオカート ライブ ホームサーキット | Nintendo Switch | 任天堂お知らせイベント告知：Vision Proがドレスコードの「Apple Vision Proパーティー」第2回、秋葉原UDXで3月28日(木)開催。持っていなくても参加できます | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge生成AI「Stable Diffusion」の基本から最新技術の使い方まで。グラビアカメラマンが教える、生成AIグラビア実践ワークショップ（第6回）を3月22日開催。参加者募集します | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge「生成AIグラビア実践ワークショップ」過去回アーカイブの販売を開始しました | テクノエッジ TechnoEdgePick Up News「Z世代に中古コンデジが人気」は本当だった！香港の中古店は若い女性ばかり。ソニーMavicaやGalaxy S4 Zoomなど懐かしい機種も（山根康宏） | テクノエッジ TechnoEdgeZTE、激安フォルダブル「nubia Flip 5G」と「nubia Ivy」でnubiaブランド国内本格展開。激戦区のミッドレンジでシェア獲得できるか（石野純也） | テクノエッジ TechnoEdgeワイモバイルから6.3万円の折りたたみスマホLibero Flip発売。縦折りで6.9インチ、サブディスプレイは円形 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdgeGoogle Pixel Buds、紛失した片方だけサポートページから購入可能に。A-Seriesは5400円、Pro 9250円 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdgeApple Car(仮)はマイクロバス風だった？ハンドルもペダルもない試作車があったとの報道 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge▽ 関連リンクTechnoEdge-Sideテクノエッジテクノエッジ公式YouTubeテクノエッジ公式Xアカウント技術の手帖カイ（@kai4den） / TwitterKoya Matsuo（@mazzo） / TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

このページをウェブブラウザで見る: リンク Z世代にコンデジが人気だという山根博士の記事を肴に、そもそもZ世代って何なのよ、マジンガーZ？といった話をしております。▽ 番組からお知らせ 番組への感想や取り上げてほしいネタはTwitterのハッシュタグ「tedgeside」や、お便りフォームでお寄せください。お便りを採用させていただいた方はテクノエッジ特製グッズをプレゼントいたします。 https://forms.gle/jLdXLiYK6CJH5HiT9 ▽ Weekly TOP 5 第5位：有機EL採用の新型iPad Pro(仮)は近日発表見込み、11インチ版は品薄予報。ディスプレイ製造に遅れとアナリスト報告 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge 次期iPad AirやiPad Proに加え、M3搭載MacBook Airも2024年春に登場か。これまでの噂まとめ | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge 第4位：約5万円で省スペースなレースシム用コックピット150-SNCRC2、サンワサプライが発売。各社ハンコン対応、シート付きでポジション調整も可 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge 第3位：Pixel 8シリーズ、最新Android 14ベータでついに有線映像出力に対応。DP Alt Modeによるスマホ画面ミラーリングが可能に | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge Google I/O 2024は5月14日開催。AIやAndroid 15新情報、Pixel新製品に期待 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge 第2位：映画『スーパーマリオ』新作発表、2026年公開。宮本茂氏「マリオらしい世界をさらに広げて明るく楽しい展開」、イルミネーション続投 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge 第1位：レゴ「マリオカート」、3月10日「マリオの日」に発表。発売は2025年 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge マリオカート ライブ ホームサーキット | Nintendo Switch | 任天堂 ▽ お知らせ イベント告知：Vision Proがドレスコードの「Apple Vision Proパーティー」第2回、秋葉原UDXで3月28日(木)開催。持っていなくても参加できます | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge 生成AI「Stable Diffusion」の基本から最新技術の使い方まで。グラビアカメラマンが教える、生成AIグラビア実践ワークショップ（第6回）を3月22日開催。参加者募集します | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge 「生成AIグラビア実践ワークショップ」過去回アーカイブの販売を開始しました | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge ▽ Pick Up News 「Z世代に中古コンデジが人気」は本当だった！香港の中古店は若い女性ばかり。ソニーMavicaやGalaxy S4 Zoomなど懐かしい機種も（山根康宏） | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge ZTE、激安フォルダブル「nubia Flip 5G」と「nubia Ivy」でnubiaブランド国内本格展開。激戦区のミッドレンジでシェア獲得できるか（石野純也） | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge ワイモバイルから6.3万円の折りたたみスマホLibero Flip発売。縦折りで6.9インチ、サブディスプレイは円形 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge Google Pixel Buds、紛失した片方だけサポートページから購入可能に。A-Seriesは5400円、Pro 9250円 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge Apple Car(仮)はマイクロバス風だった？ハンドルもペダルもない試作車があったとの報道 | テクノエッジ TechnoEdge ▽ 関連リンク TechnoEdge-Side テクノエッジ テクノエッジ公式YouTube テクノエッジ公式Xアカウント 技術の手帖 カイ（@kai4den） / Twitter Koya Matsuo（@mazzo） / Twitter

Sandy Brown, another true American Sports Nomad, especially in the Media and Broadcasting space.  Listen to amazing stories of Sandy's globe trotting career around the world from ProServ, NBA, ESPN/Star Sports, Univision, ONE World Sports and more.   Key Highlights Growing up playing tennis, made connections through his Tennis Club in Delaware How he got started at ProServ, first meeting with Donald Dell, driving his limo around the airport Dennis Spencer one of his early mentors (shout out to one of the nicest guys in the industry) Pro-Serve, top roster of Tennis and NBA players, tennis tournaments – peak of company Before Sportel Monaco days, MIP TV and MIP Com , flogging sports TV rights in Cannes   Next stop NBA, international TV rights – David Stern his next mentor, early days as Commissioner (know your business better than anyone else was his mantra) CCTV story.  Happened to me before as well ESPN Asia,  move to Hong Kong  -  at the age of 28 (1992) Birth of Cable industry in Asia, Satellite distribution just started – DTH business across the region US content as a start and Monday night Premier League matches Creative deal making in China Merger of ESPN Asia and Star Sports in Asia (Murdoch) (new set up in Singapore) – Managing Director of new JV Big change in broadcast landscape and shock for Rights holders and agencies Two different corporate cultures working together, very focused on turning a loss making entity to break even ESPN had carriage fees,  Star Sports was free for platform owners (Advertising driven) Exploits in India, cable operators in India are another level (try to visualize it) – Chris McDonald/Manu Sawhney (wild west of India, machine guns, etc) ARPU blend discussion – penny a sub in China, 5 cent in India to 1 dollar in SEA and Taiwan – retail rate of partners Disney/ESPN recently shut the entire network structure down after acquiring FOX Sports globally a few years before, about 30 years later   Next stop CNBC Asia (NBC Universal) – learning the GE culture, Jack Welsh as CEO Business News different thing After 15 years, time to come back to the US – biggest take away, working with great people makes the difference Univision – President of Sports – launching a domestic US cable sports channel focused on Hispanic population – bringing in new ideas and concepts, pushing Rights holders to new grounds ONE World Sports – new platform targeting Asian diaspora in the US (Seamus O'Brien behind the venture) From two affiliate deals, pushed up to 70 Lots of live content, Chinese Super League, KHL (Russian Ice-hockey), ECB (English Cricket), European Football Club Channels, Table Tennis, etc Alternative to ESPN, heavy promotions and support to rights holders to market their product in the US Eventually shareholders decided to sell the business – to ELEVEN Commissioner of Major League Lacrosse – turn around situation, difficult set up with owners and commercial structure League had been around for 20 years, lots of cleaning up to do Competitive League shows up (PLL), plus Covid gets in the way Merging with PLL now, handing it over, winding up MLL Poshando Inc – starting his own consulting business just recently (back in Baltimore) Final thoughts on Broadcasting/Streaming industry currently,  subscription models (Netflix), investor expectations vs industry realities  (ARPU blend vs Sub growth) – quality of subscribers cost of acquisition of subs (cost of broadcast rights   About Alexander P. Brown joined Major League Lacrosse in February 2018. Since taking the helm, Brown has drastically improved the experience and opportunity for players, teams and fans. During his tenure, he has restructured the ownership group, rebranded the league marks and reacquired the league's media rights, leading to exponential growth in nationally televised reach. In 2019, Brown welcomed ten new partners to the league, introduced a creative and sophisticated digital team (generating 194% growth in social traffic, 97% growth in social engagement and 393% growth in web traffic) and achieved a 16% increase in total attendance year-over-year. During the 2020 COVID impacted year, Brown oversaw the most successful year in MLL's history in terms of overall engagement, generating over 150mm digital impressions over an eight (8) day tournament. Further, the league's impressions on ESPN and ESPN + increased by 150% and 1600%, respectively. Brown is an accomplished executive with over 25 years of leadership experience who has spearheaded the launch and growth of multiple sports media outlets. Most recently, he was the President/CEO of One World Sports, where he launched the HD channel across both linear and digital platforms to over 50 million US subscribers through cable and satellite distributors as well as over-the-top (OTT) platforms. In 2010, Brown became President of Univision Sports, the leading media outlet for Spanish-speaking Americans, where he created and launched Univision Deportes to over 15 million US homes. As part of this effort, Brown oversaw the rebranding of Univision Sports. Additionally, he not only supervised the production of the highest rated primetime sports broadcast in the channel's history at the time with the Mexico vs. Honduras match in the 2011 Gold Cup, but he developed Univision's nightly version of SportsCenter, “Univision Deportes Extra” or “UDX” as well as the network's signature soccer pregame program, “Futbol Central”. Brown has extensive experience in the international markets. Based in Hong Kong and Singapore, he launched ESPN's business in Asia while serving as the Managing Director of both ESPN Asia and ESPN Star Sports. Brown's international work in sports began in the late 1980's when he was hired by the NBA to oversee their international television interests in over 100 countries. Brown played lacrosse collegiately at Washington and Lee University and represented the university in the 1985 USILA North South Game.     Follow us on our social sites for the latest updates Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sportsentrepreneurs/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marcusluerpodcast LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sports-entrepreneurs Website: https://marcusluer.com Podcast: https://marcusluer.com/podcast To get in touch, please email us at podcast@marcusluer.com   Feel Good by MusicbyAden https://soundcloud.com/musicbyaden Creative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported — CC BY-SA 3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/_feel-good Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/bvgIqqRStcQ

Autoimmune Disorders: Thyroid Disease[caption id="attachment_8506" align="alignleft" width="199"] Dr. Robin Nelson, DVM and her GWP, Outlaw, CH/VC Scotian Tougher than Leather, JH, UDX.[/caption] Dr. Robin Nelson, DVM joins host Laura Reeves for a deep dive into the impacts of autoimmune mediated thyroiditis, both on individual animals and on breeding programs in general. “The thyroid gland is a little gland on either side of the windpipe in all dogs,” Nelson said. “It is behind metabolism, so it affects nerves, organs, the brain… it is in charge of a lot of things, so presentation can vary. When I first graduated (Iowa State University, College of Veterinary Medicine), if you didn't have a morbidly obese patient, thyroid didn't cross your mind. It just wasn't a concern. “Certainly, obesity or weight gain without an explanation, without caloric intake increase (is a symptom) but even alopecia across the nose, unexplained lameness, chronic skin conditions, chronic ear conditions, vestibular disease… the list is long. Seizures, I mean if we have a dog with seizures (in the clinic), we look at thyroid function. “The important piece of the equation, when we're talking about thyroid, is how many different bodily systems it impacts … if your gut feeling is -- ‘I've treated my dog skin appropriately or I'm not feeding my dog that much food that it should be overweight or here's my dog that has loved to train, its young still, why is it all of a sudden selecting to sleep in the sunshine not firing up to do its job’ -- those are all subtle (clues)… thyroid disease can also mimic all sorts of medical conditions, so trying to confirm that it's thyroid disease is a whole ‘nother process. “I just think if we don't look for it, we don't see it. It is common. As a practicing veterinarian, it is out there. There's nothing better than diagnosing it and having your patient respond because it is so treatable and the majority of the symptoms disappear with synthetic thyroid hormone (which is) inexpensive. “(Owners should) look for a lab that actively searches for the different numbers that you need to confirm a diagnosis. You need to make sure that the free T4 is measured by equilibrium dialysis that will allow that number not to be affected by medication, not to be affected by most other systemic disorders. “Just as a veterinarian, I worry more about the numbers of people that don't test at all. There are a lot of breeds with thyroid disease. I will tell you that there's even a range, for me, looking at equivocal… I have told people, if you have an equivocal profile and everything else about your dog is so fantastic you can't hardly stand to think that it won't be in the gene pool, then minimally you need to really do a lot of vertical and horizontal https://www.ofa.org/diseases/other-diseases/hypothyroidism (pedigree research) on both sides of the pedigree. "There are lots of equivocals that go on to produce and I think there are lots of people who have equivocals that everything else is looking good, they just breed. But at some point, equivocal can turn into autoimmune mediated thyroiditis. “Hypothyroidism is a process that occurs over years. A dog is not hypothyroid until about 70% of its thyroid gland is destroyed. So, you have a list of numbers that you've used to assess thyroid function and it's such a gradual process … Technically, people should be testing dogs in a breeding program annually, not just taking the two year old result.” For additional insight on thyroid disease, listen to Dr. Jean Dodds https://puredogtalk.com/captivate-podcast/118-thyroid-epidemic-in-dogs-dr-jean-dodds-3-2/ (here). Support this podcast

UDX (Innosoul & Pavara) they are back again reunited to share with y’all Good music, this time we decide to bless you with a Main Mix from UDX and Special Package of Guest Mixes from the talent deejays and producers namely ; Chymamusique, Miza, Tazzmo Olifant, Deepfellar abs Prince Kebza What to Expect in this Package : Soulful, Deep, Afro Deep, Disco House,Local Deep, Good Music Main Mix UDX Present In Deep We Trust Vol 16 Main Mix by Innosoul and Pavara Track list 1. Rathonia (2020 Promo) 2. Billie Eilish- Everything I wanted (2020 Mix) 3. Giggs Superstar - I don’t Care (2020 Remix) 4. Nick Holder -Summer Daze (2020 Promo Mix) 5. 2020 Promo 6. Fistaz Mixwell & Vaalsow - Hade Mabebeza (2020 Promo) 7. Pavara feat Fako - Mfundisi we Number (Chromaticsoul Twisted soul 2020 mix) 8. Rodney - Fragile (2020 Promo) 9. Chronical Deep 10. Dafro & Aero Manyelo feat Bassekou Koyate - Ladon (2020 -Promo) Download Link : Alternative Download Link: https://www.sendspace.com/file/kyx298 Connection and Booking Mfundisi We Number

UDX present Vol 16 Guest Mix Chymamusique Alternative Link : https://www.sendspace.com/file/ihlh4q Good Exclusive Mix

UDX present Vol 16 guest Mix by Tazzmo Olifant Disco House Jams Download Link Booking Details Email olifanttazzmo@gmail.com Whatsaap /Calls 0609265734

UDX present Vol 16 Guest Mix by Prince Kebza Alternative Link :https://www.sendspace.com/file/4c315u For Booking : Email - kwaneleshaun@gmail.com Cellphone : 0797387151 Personal FB : Kwanele Shaun Buthelezi FB Page : KebzaUnlimited

Note: We've rearranged episodes a bit here to better coordinate with guest schedules, so the names mentioned as next episodes in our last podcast was incorrect. Instead of Debbie Torraca, this week we have Esther Zimmerman -- we'll be back next week with Debbie Torraca.  Summary: Esther Zimmerman is a long-time FDSA student and has been a participant in AKC events for over 40 years. She's been teaching dogs and their people since the early 1980's.   Currently, she is the head competition obedience instructor at MasterPeace Dog Training in Franklin, MA, where she teaches multiple classes at all levels, and coaches many private students. Over the years, Esther has evolved her own special blend of the art and science of dog training, acquired through years of experience, extensive reading, and continuing education at conferences and seminars. She is well known for her patience, compassion, honesty, and humor, along with an unfailingly positive attitude toward both dogs and handlers. She feels it's the trainer's job to have the dogs WANT to play the obedience game, not to make them do it, and that there is no reason to use compulsion for the sake of a ribbon. Her many high-scoring students are proof of this, as they earn advanced titles, many with non-traditional obedience breeds. Esther herself competes with Schipperke, and she has finished the only Champion/Utility Dog Excellent in the history of Schipperke, and three additional Champion/Utility dogs. She also put three UDX legs on Presto, a Golden Retriever, who died of cancer at an early age. Links MasterPeace Dog Training in Franklin, MA Next Episode:  To be released 3/16/2018, featuring Debbie Torraca to talk about exercises, including exercise for puppies! 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 Esther Zimmerman. Esther is a long-time FDSA student and has been a participant in AKC events for over 40 years. She's been teaching dogs and their people since the early 1980's.   Currently, she is the head competition obedience instructor at MasterPeace Dog Training in Franklin, MA, where she teaches multiple classes at all levels, and coaches many private students. Over the years, Esther has evolved her own special blend of the art and science of dog training, acquired through years of experience, extensive reading, and continuing education at conferences and seminars. She is well known for her patience, compassion, honesty, and humor, along with an unfailingly positive attitude toward both dogs and handlers. She feels it's the trainer's job to have the dogs WANT to play the obedience game, not to make them do it, and that there is no reason to use compulsion for the sake of a ribbon. Her many high-scoring students are proof of this, as they earn advanced titles, many with non-traditional obedience breeds. Esther herself competes with Schipperke, and she has finished the only Champion/Utility Dog Excellent in the history of Schipperke, and three additional Champion/Utility dogs. She also put three UDX legs on Presto, a Golden Retriever, who died of cancer at an early age. Hi Esther, welcome to the podcast! Esther Zimmerman: Hi Melissa. I'm really happy to be here. Thanks for asking me to do this. Melissa Breau: I'm excited to chat. To get us started, do you want to briefly just share a little bit about who your dogs are now and what you're working on with them? Esther Zimmerman: I'd love to, but I have to start by talking about Jeeves, my Champion UD Rally X1 NW3 Schipperke, who passed away a few weeks ago at age 14-and-a-half. He was really an amazing ambassador of the breed. He was a perfect gentleman with all people, dogs of all ages and temperaments. He was that priceless known adult dog that we all want our puppies to meet because he's just so good with them. After surviving several serious illnesses as a youngster, he gave me a very profound appreciation of just how much our dogs do for us and with us when playing the games we love. I was grateful every day he was alive and he is really sorely missed. It's very fresh still because it was only a few weeks ago. Melissa Breau: I'm sorry to hear that. Esther Zimmerman: Thank you. Elphaba is my 9-year-old Schipperke. She happens to be Jeeves's niece. She has her CDX, which, when she earned it, included the group out-of-sight stays. Those were a real challenge for her. She doesn't like other dogs looking at her. But we persisted and succeeded. She's almost ready for the utility ring. She's the first and only nosework Elite 2 Schipperke and is a real little hunting machine in that sport. She also has her Fenzi TEAM 1 and TEAM 1 Plus titles. Friday is my 3-year-old Schipperke. His titles at this point are an NW1 and TEAM 1, 1 Plus and 1-H. He just passed his 1-H, which was very exciting. He's teaching me the importance of patience, a trait that I already have an abundance of, but he really requires it in spades. He really does. He can try my patience sometimes, but he keeps me honest as far as that goes. He's got tons of obedience skills under his collar, but there's no way he's ready for AKC competition. I'm hoping maybe by next year. And then I have Taxi, my 17-month-old Golden Retriever. He's had a Gold spot in an Academy class almost every semester since I brought him home as a baby puppy. He's got great potential, like all of our dogs do. I hope that we get to reach the goals I have in mind. He's a typical, happy, fun-loving dog. He's a real joy. And that's the three dogs that I have right now. Melissa Breau: How did you originally get into dog sports? Esther Zimmerman: It's interesting, because back in the beginning I didn't have my own dog. I didn't have my own dog until I was 15, but I've been training dogs since I was 5 years old. I grew up in New York City, and every apartment superintendent had a dog that they were more than willing to let me borrow. I read every dog and dog-training book in the library, much to my mother's dismay, because that's all I read, and with those dogs, I switched what I was doing based on whatever the advice was that the author of that book gave. So I had a real eclectic education as far as training dogs. Not my own dogs, and I did something different all the time. The very first dog show I ever attended was Westminster in 1969. School was closed because we had a snowstorm, but the trains were running. Westminster's on Monday and Tuesday, always has been. So the trains were running and off I went with my tokens, and I went to Westminster. I was in heaven. I had no idea they had 50 percent absenteeism because of the snowstorm, and I thought that the most beautiful dog there was the Basenji. I did not get a Basenji. Melissa Breau: OK. Esther Zimmerman: The very first obedience trial I ever went to was the Bronx County Kennel Club, and there I saw a woman in a wheelchair competing in Open with her Labrador Retriever, which just blew my mind. I couldn't conceive of such a thing, that not only was this dog doing all this amazing stuff, but that his handler was in a wheelchair. She was around for a really, really long time and quite well known on the East Coast and in New England as a competitor. So I got Juno, my first dog, was a German Shepherd. I got him from an ad in the newspaper — the best way to get a dog, right? Melissa Breau: Of course. Esther Zimmerman: She was one of two 10-month-old puppies who were so fearful that they were climbing over each other in their pen, trying to get away from me. So of course I said, “I'll take that one.” That was Juno. I used the same kind of eclectic training with her, doing something different each week based on what book I was reading from the library. It did apparently work, though, because seven years later, after I got married and moved to Massachusetts, I joined the New England Dog Training Club, which is the oldest still-existing dog-training club in the country. That summer we entered our first trial, we earned our first leg, and I got my first high-in-trial on this fearful dog Melissa Breau: Wow. Esther Zimmerman: And that's how somebody gets really hooked on this sport. The first time you go in the ring, you win high-in-trial, you want to do that again. Melissa Breau: Oh yeah. Esther Zimmerman: And coincidentally, my first paying job as a teenager was as kennel help at Captain Haggerty's School For Dogs. He's actually pretty well known. He used to train dogs for movies a lot out in Hollywood. But their training approach was “Break 'em and make 'em.” They would get dogs in there for boarding and training, and they went home trained. They were not happy, but they went home trained. It was absolutely pure compulsion, which as a teenager was really eye-opening and a little bit scary, actually. Melissa Breau: I can imagine. Esther Zimmerman: So that's how I got started in dog sports. Melissa Breau: Wow. You've really been doing it almost your entire life, but in an interesting, different story. Esther Zimmerman: Yes. Yes. Melissa Breau: You mentioned that it's been eclectic, and it's been a little bit here, a little bit there in terms of reading, but what really got you started on your positive training journey? What got you hooked there? Because I certainly know that's where you are now. Esther Zimmerman: I think this is a good time for us to talk about Patty Ruzzo, because she's a big part of that whole journey. In the early 1980s there was a really tight-knit group of us training at Tails-U-Win in Connecticut, and together we had our first exposures to Karen Pryor and Gary Wilkes and John Rogerson and others who totally and completely changed the way we were training and how we even thought about training. We were all attending every seminar we could go to, every clinic we could go to, we were reading dog magazines. I was amassing a huge personal library of dog books. That was all before the Internet, before YouTube, before Facebook. Patty was an interesting person. She was a really quiet force to be reckoned with. She was a great competitor, she had a great rapport with her dogs, anyone who saw her in the ring with her magnificent Terv, Luca, will always remember what that looked like. They had such a presence about them, and it's an image I always aspire to. It's one of those things that if you close your eyes, you can still picture it all these years later. So Patty was my friend, she was my training buddy, she was my coach. We were determined to pursue a force-free, reward-based approach to training. The first thing we eliminated were the leashes and collars. No more leashes, no more collars. We stopped any physical corrections. As our skills and understanding got better, we were able to even avoid applying psychological pressure to the dogs, and that was a big deal. My dog at that time was a Schipperke, Zapper. She was a dog that really pushed us to examine what we had been doing, and to see what we could accomplish with this new — to us — approach. She became my first utility dog. Patty was a really tremendously creative person. She was continually trying and then discarding ideas. It could be dizzying to try and keep up with her, sort of like Denise. Patty passed away twelve years ago. It was a real tragedy for the world of obedience and for me personally. Several of us from that original group have worked to fill the void by becoming instructors and trainers in our own right. We all made that commitment to stay positive, and I think the group of us really has done a good job of that. Melissa Breau: Denise brought up the fact that you knew Patty when she and I were talking about having you on. In case anybody doesn't really know the name, do you mind sharing a just little bit more about the impact she had on the sport in the area, just a little more about her background, or her history, and the role that she played? Esther Zimmerman: She had multiple OTCH dogs, she competed at the games in regionals and did really, really well at those. She had a Sheltie, she had a Border Collie, and then Luca, the incomparable Luca. And then she got a Whippet. It's a dog like that that really tests your mettle and your commitment, and she was totally committed to being positive with this dog. When I tell you that he not able to do a sit-stay of any sort until he was 2-and-a-half, I really mean it, and she just would keep saying, “Don't worry, he'll do it. Don't worry about it, he'll do it,” and that “Don't worry about it” is something that I say all the time to my students. “But my dog's not doing that.” “Don't worry about it. He will. Eventually.” And she was just like that. I'll tell a little anecdote, and this will tell you everything you need to know about Patty and the influence that she had on people. She had two sons. The younger one was about 4 when this happened. They had gone grocery shopping, and they came home and he wanted to help her unload the groceries. So what did he want to carry up the stairs? Take a guess. Melissa Breau: The eggs? Esther Zimmerman: The eggs. The eggs of course. So he goes up the stairs, and of course he trips and falls and drops the eggs. She hollers up the stairs, “Are you OK?” He says, “Yes. Six of the eggs did not break.” So just that switch, six of the eggs broke, six of the eggs did not break — that's how she raised her children to focus on the positive. Melissa Breau: Part of the impressive part is that back then, nobody was doing that. There weren't people achieving those kind of things with positive training, and a lot of people were saying it could not be done. Esther Zimmerman: Right. So the early dogs — it would not be fair to say that she was totally positive with the early dogs. But by the time Luca came along, it was very, very positive, and by the time Flyer, the Whippet, came along, it was totally positive. She didn't get an OTCH on him, things happened, and then she passed away. But there was and she put it out there in the competitive world the way nobody else was at that point in time. Melissa Breau: We've danced around this question a little bit now, but how would you describe your training philosophy now? Esther Zimmerman: That's a good question. My philosophy is fairly simple, actually: Treat the dogs and handlers with kindness and patience. I could probably stop right there, but I won't. But really, kindness and patience. Break things down into manageable pieces for each of them. Use varied approaches to the same exercise because dog training isn't “one size fits all.” The theory, learning theory, applies equally, but not necessarily the specific approach that you use to help them understand. I try to use a lot of humor to diffuse tension in classes, in private lessons. People are a little bit nervous, or a little bit uptight, so I try to make people laugh. If they can laugh, they feel better about themselves, and what just happened isn't nearly as important as they thought it was. I try to be supportive when the dog or person is struggling to learn something. We've all been there, we've all done that, it's not easy. We're trying to teach new mechanical skills to people. They're trying to teach new things to their dogs. That's a hard combination, and I really respect people who make the effort to do that. At the same time I encourage independent thinking and problem-solving for the handler and for the dog. I cannot be there all the time when the handler is working with their dog. No instructor can. Even with the online classes, we can't be there. So if we give the handler the tools to come up with solutions to the problems on their own, now we've really accomplished something. Let them figure out how to solve the problem on their own. That's a big deal to me. I don't want to be spoon-feeding the answer to every little thing that's happened there. So I applaud all their successes, however small. We celebrate everything. My students know that I always advocate for the dog. Whatever the situation is, I'm on the side of the dog, and I urge them to do the same thing when they find themselves in other places, other situations, where perhaps the atmosphere is not quite so positive, or it's stressful for some reason. Advocate for your dog. You're the only one that's looking out for them, and they're counting on us to do that for them. So I really, really urge people to do that. And it's not just about using a clicker and cookies, or any kind of a marker and cookies. It's about having empathy for a creature who is trying to communicate with us while at the same time we are struggling to communicate with them. It's all really very simple, but none of it's very easy. So that's my philosophy. Pretty simple, don't you think? Melissa Breau: Simple but not necessarily easy. Esther Zimmerman: But not easy. But not easy, yeah. Melissa Breau: You mentioned you've been in dog sports in one variety or another for … you said since you were 15, I think. Esther Zimmerman: A long time, a long time. I was 22 years old the first time I set foot in the ring. Melissa Breau: OK. Esther Zimmerman: So now people can do the math so they'll know how old I am. Melissa Breau: As someone who's been in dog sports for that long, what are some of the biggest changes you've seen over the last ten or so years? Esther Zimmerman: Well, for even longer than that, but the sport of AKC obedience has changed dramatically since I started. Classes have been added and deleted, exercises have been added and deleted. The OTCH — the Obedience Trial Championship — was introduced in 1977, and they added the UDX in either 1992 or 1993. I couldn't find the definitive answer for that, and I couldn't remember off the top of my head. The group stays, as of May 1, have been safer in the novice classes and totally eliminated in Open. They've added a new and interesting and challenging exercise to Open. Jump heights have been lowered twice. My little German Shepherd, she jumped 32 inches when we started. Now she would have jumped probably 20 inches. There are tons of exceptions from that, from the … once their jump height now, for the really giant breeds, the heavy-boned breeds, the short-legged breeds, the brachycephalic dogs, they just have to jump three-quarters their height at the shoulder, so that's a big change. Now you've got to remember all of this has been done with the hope of drawing more people into competition. All of it has been done with the accompanying drama, controversy, charges of dumbing-down the sport, nobody's ever happy with whatever the changes are. But we survived all these changes, and as far as what changes do I want to see in the sport, I don't really want to see any more for a little while. I think we need to give things a chance to settle down, I think we need to give people a chance to simmer down, because this was a very controversial thing, getting rid of stays. And then people need time to train the new Open exercise and give that a try. New people coming up will not know that things were different. The command or cue discrimination exercise won't be something that you teach for Open. As opposed to people who are in a little bit of a panic now, if they've got their CDX and they're going on to a UDX, or they've got their UD, they have to go back and teach a new exercise, and not everybody's happy about that. But I think it's all going to shake out in time, as it usually does. People resist change because inertia is really a powerful force, and I think we need to move on. So that's how I see the changes in the sport. I'm very passionate about the sport, or I wouldn't still be doing it, and I try and go with the flow with all these changes that have happened. Melissa Breau: Do you think, or maybe you could talk about, how the addition of other dog sports has changed obedience in particular? I feel like originally it was really conformation and obedience, and now there's nosework and tricks and all sorts of things. Esther Zimmerman: I think that one of the reasons for the decline in obedience entries is the proliferation of alternate sports. When I started, like you said, it was basically confirmation, obedience, tracking, herding, and field. That was pretty much it. Look at what's been added, not only in sports in general, but there are multiple organizations now that offer their own variations on some of these previously existing activities. I'm just going to rattle these off. Besides those we have rally, we have agility with various venues, earthdog, flyball, multiple venues for nosework, lure coursing, barn hunt, dock diving, parkour, freestyle, weight-pulling, Frisbee, carting, sled dog, treibball, tricks, IPO, French ring. That's without even really thinking about it terribly very much I came up with that list. And I'm sure there are ones that I have overlooked. So depending on what part of the country you live in, there are many options to choose from on any weekend. And some of these sports, at the beginner level at least, seem to offer more immediate gratification with a shorter investment of training time than AKC obedience. This can be quite appealing for some competitors. When you get to the upper levels of almost any of these activities, sports, training matters. It really matters. But there's another influence on competition, and I think that's the advent of the private training center. Back in the day, if you wanted to train your dog, you went to a training club. Once you got out of the puppy class you were encouraged to join that club. In order to join that club you had to attend meetings, you had to help out, you set up equipment, you swept the floor, you rolled up mats in the gymnasium, you stewarded the annual trial, and sometimes you became an assistant to a trainer that was already at the club. You became part of something. Now don't get me wrong. Again, training centers like MasterPeace, where I work, offer far more than the clubs ever could. MasterPeace has classes and activities seven days a week, morning, noon, and night. But most of the people come for that class, and turn around and go home, so their exposure to the notion of competition may be more limited than it was when they went to a club. So only AKC clubs can put on an AKC trial. Without the clubs, there are no trials. Several New England clubs no longer exist because of the lack of membership. They had to just fold up and go away. So consider that. Consider … I want people to consider joining their local club. Support them. If you want to be able to compete, there have to be people working to put on the trials. Another thing: I also want to put in a plug for experienced exhibitors to become judges. I don't care what your activity is. I'm an AKC Open provisional judge now. In case anyone has missed the stat, the average age of judges is getting higher and higher. Without new, younger judges in the pipeline, competition will disappear, because sooner or later these judges have to retire. They can't go on forever, and there have to be new people coming up to step up and judge. Competition requires judges. The other thing is that becoming a judge really changes your perspective of your sport. It's so easy to criticize the judge from outside the ring: “He didn't see this,” “He didn't see that, “She missed this,” “She did something wrong.” Yeah, try stepping behind the clipboard and see how hard it really is to keep all the rules and regs in mind, to see everything that's going on, mark it all down. Yeah, it's not that easy, guys. But I encourage everybody to do it, because how else will we go on? The other thing: I can only compete in New England. I go to my national specialty occasionally, not that much anymore, but I have traveled. But in this area there seems to be an improvement in the general competitive environment. Experienced handlers seem to be a little more welcoming of newbies, and more supportive of each other, than maybe five years ago. But those of us in the FDSA world would like to think that training overall is moving in a positive direction. Again, in my area, we have pockets of people devoted to that concept, but we're surrounded by more traditional training. That can feel a bit isolating. But the ripple effect that we talk about is a real thing. We do reach out to support each other, and we have an influence on what other people decide to do when we show how we behave with our dogs when we're in public, when we're at competition. People are watching when you don't think they're watching, and seeing you celebrate with your dog, even if things haven't gone quite well — they don't miss that, and that's an important thing for them to see. So yeah, things have changed a lot. Things have changed a lot. Melissa Breau: Yeah, for sure. Esther Zimmerman: But I'm hopeful for the future, very hopeful for the future. Melissa Breau: You mentioned FDSA in there, and I'm really curious: What led you to the Academy? How did you wind up there? Esther Zimmerman: I first encountered Denise at a seminar, and she's a dynamic presenter. She's got all this energy, talks really fast, is very excited, she's also passionate about what she does, committed to it, and her message just resonated with me in a way that nothing had since Patty. So I started following her blog — there's a lot of information there. Before FDSA, she offered an online course of relationship-building through play through another organization. I thought the idea was intriguing, but was really uncertain of how that could possibly work. So I got a working spot with Elphaba, and as we all know, it works great. It was a fabulous class, and I've been a devotee of the Academy since its inception. So that's how I came to FDSA. Melissa Breau: We talked through and you had a ton of experience before that point, so what is it that keeps you involved in coming back? Esther Zimmerman: This is a really easy one for me. I love dogs. I love dogs, number one. I love training, number two. I personally love how detail-oriented competition obedience is. It's not for everybody, I understand that, but I love that aspect of it. I love every training session, I love every class I teach, I love every lesson that I give, because every single one of them is different. I really love how my classes are a level playing field. Everyone who comes to the sport is a newbie, regardless of their professional and personal fields of expertise. I have doctors, I have veterinarians, I have lawyers, I have chefs, I have people who are really accomplished in their respective fields who are all starting at the same place when they come to dog training. None of that other stuff matters in the least. And I'm dealing with all the different breeds that come to me. That makes me a better instructor and trainer. I think to some degree people like to bring their non-traditional breeds to me since I have Schipperke. I think they think I will have a different sympathy and empathy for the perception of what we can expect from the non-traditional breeds, and to a degree that is correct, because I don't feel, “Oh, it's a terrier, it can't do that.” “It's a sighthound, we can't expect it to be able to do that.” Right? “It's a fill-in-the-blank, and therefore…” Yeah, there are predilections, but we can be successful, if we work at it and if we want it, with most breeds. And with FDSA specifically, I love how we have access to such a wide variety of subjects, world-class instructors from different parts of the world, and we never have to get out of our jammies if we don't want to. Melissa Breau: That makes me think of Sue's competition, her PJ competition, of everybody posting pictures of themselves training in their PJs. Esther Zimmerman: Exactly. And I don't know if you saw it, somebody was talking about FDSA swag that they bought, I think it was a sweatshirt or something, and I said, “How come there are no FDSA pajamas?” Melissa Breau: Yeah, we are looking at that. This is an aside, but I found onesies, pajama onesies, that you can get with your logo on them online somewhere, and I was sharing them with the other instructors, like, “I don't know, I think this should be what we wear to camp.” I think it got vetoed. But I don't know, I still think it's a good idea. Esther Zimmerman: That might be a little small for some of us. Melissa Breau: It's pajamas. Footie pajamas. One-piece footie pajamas. Esther Zimmerman: Hey, why not? You know some people would take you up on that. Melissa Breau: Right. This has been a lot of fun, but since this is your first time here, I want to ask you the three questions that I used to ask on almost every episode, but now that people have been on once or twice, we haven't gone back to them. The first question is simply, What's the dog-related accomplishment that you are proudest of? Esther Zimmerman: I'm not going to limit it to just one. I have a couple of things to say. Melissa Breau: OK. Esther Zimmerman: I'm really proud of the titles that I've earned with my dogs, with the Schipperke. Some of them have been firsts for the breed, which is really a nice thing to be able to say. What I'm most proud of, though, is how much I appreciate the partnership that I develop with my dogs as we go along. I have a bunch of candid photos that people have taken, and almost every one of them shows me looking right into my dog's eyes, and my dog looking right back into my eyes. I cherish those pictures and that feeling that I have. It's so special, and I can conjure that up at a moment's notice. I almost get choked up every time I talk about it, because it's just me and my dog, and everything else just goes away. That is something that I'm proud of, that I have that connection with my dogs. Melissa Breau: That's beautiful. I love that. Esther Zimmerman: Thank you. The second thing is that I love to share in the accomplishments of my students. That brings me so much joy, that they are finding success and happiness in this sport, and I'm just thrilled for all of them, every little thing that they do, and it doesn't always translate to a ribbon. If a person can come out of the ring when they have not qualified, and come to me and say, “Did you see that drop on recall?” or “Did you see how she worked articles?” when maybe that's something they've been struggling with and the dog did it — even if something else went badly, then I've done my job of teaching that person to focus on the positive and not worry about the rest of it, because we can make that better too. Those are the things I'm really proudest. Melissa Breau: I love that. Our second and second-to-last question is, What is the best piece of training advice that you've ever heard? Esther Zimmerman: I've got a couple of things here too. Melissa Breau: OK. Esther Zimmerman: I do like to talk. Melissa Breau: That makes for a good podcast, so we're good! Esther Zimmerman: Patty said, “When in doubt, put a cookie on it.” That's it. That simple statement can address so many issues. When in doubt, put a cookie on it. Sheila Booth said — I don't know if too many people know who she is, but in Schutzhund circles, IPO circles, I think she's a little better known — but Sheila Booth said, “They can do at 4 what they couldn't do before.” So she's saying what they can do at age 4, they couldn't do before then, which again speaks to patience and not showing prematurely. I firmly believe the dogs will tell you when they're ready to show, and don't rush it. There's no rush. Take your time, put in the work, and you'll be way happier. There are Flyers, there are dogs you can take out at 1 or 2 and accomplish great things, but for the most part, not so much. I have a saying that I say to my students, so much that one of them embroidered it on a vest for me. In class it always comes out when someone says, “How come my dog did that?” I always say, “Too far, too fast, too much, too soon.” Don't go too far too fast. Don't do too much too soon. That's how it got embroidered on my vest. That's my biggest piece of training advice to put out there. Don't go too far too fast. Don't do too much too soon. Melissa Breau: I love that. That's awesome. Esther Zimmerman: Thank you. Melissa Breau: It has a certain sing to it. Too far, too fast, too much, too soon. Last question for you: Who is somebody else in the dog world that you look up to? Esther Zimmerman: This is going to sound like a cliché, but I really admire Denise. In addition to being an outstanding dog trainer and instructor, she's a really smart businessperson. She works harder than any five people I know, she's created something unique with FDSA, and surrounds herself with other smart people who help keep it running smoothly and efficiently, specifically you, Melissa, and Teri Martin. Melissa Breau: Yeah, Teri's fantastic. Esther Zimmerman: And then Denise's generosity to the dog training community always impresses me. There's so much free material and information out there, the blog and these podcasts are free, of course, she joins in the conversations on the various Facebook pages and gives training advice there, she does her live Facebook sessions are free. I think the scholarships for free Bronze-level classes and the contests for free Bronze-level classes are amazing at making education available to everybody, even if you have limited means. It's just a wonderful thing to put out there for people. And then of course the inception of TEAM — that was also just brilliant. It's brought high-quality titling opportunities to anyone, anywhere, anytime. It forces people to pay attention to detail. There's a lot of precision required right through from basic foundation skills through the advanced levels. People who do that are pretty well prepared for success in other types of competition. It was a brilliant concept and brilliant in execution. I don't know what Denise has in store for the future, but I know she's been teasing us about something new coming in April, I don't like being teased like that, but I also can't wait to see what it's going to be, because it's going to be great. I know it is. So I have to say it's Denise. Melissa Breau: I will say that she is by far the most productive person I know. She gets more done in a few hours a day than most people do in a week. Esther Zimmerman: I don't know. It boggles my mind. It just boggles my mind. Melissa Breau: You're not the only one. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Esther! This has been great. I really appreciate it. This has been fun. Esther Zimmerman: I know it took us a little bit of time to be able to connect. I had a cold. I hope I sound OK, because my voice was shattered last week. It was worth the wait. It was a lot of fun, and I'm very honored that you decided to ask me to do this. Melissa Breau: Well, I'm definitely glad that you could. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in! We'll be back next week, this time with Debbie Torraca, to talk about exercise for puppies. If you enjoyed this episode, I hope you guys will consider hopping over to iTunes and leaving us a review. I know I mentioned this in our last couple of episodes, but reviews really help the show! We've gotten a few new ones since I've started including this request, like this one from Schout: “Melissa does a great job interviewing accomplished guests. Filled with useful insights and funny anecdotes.” Thank you Schout, whoever you are! And, while you're there, if you haven't already, I hope you'll subscribe 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: Mariah Hinds' love affair with dogs and fascination with their behavior began young. She's wanted to be a dog trainer since she was eight years old. She's now been training dogs and teaching people for more than 14 years and is a Certified Professional Dog Trainer. Mariah has broad practical experience in the dog world, volunteering and working in kennels, shelters and veterinary hospitals, dog sitting and walking, fostering rescue dogs, and two years of veterinary technician college. She has a passion for finding the best way to communicate with the human half of the dog handler team, because she knows small changes in the handler and practice can yield big results in the long run. Her specialty at FDSA is teaching skills that require self-control from the dog including proofing, impulse control, stays and greetings while using positive training methodologies. Links Mariah's website Next Episode:  To be released 12/22/2017, and it will be a special anniversary edition of the podcast, so stay tuned! 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 Mariah Hinds. Mariah has been training dogs and teaching people for more than 14 years and is a Certified Professional Dog Trainer (CPDT-KA). She also just recently put a UD on her awesome border collie, Clever. And she's here to today to talk about proofing and what it takes to get ready for competition. Hi Mariah! Welcome to the podcast. Mariah Hinds: Hi. Melissa Breau: Can you just remind listeners a little bit about who you are and who the dogs that you share your life with are? Mariah Hinds: Sure. I have Jada, my Doberman, who is 11-and-a-half years old. I got into competition obedience with her and she's my novice A dog. We started training for the ring at age 4, and she earned her novice, open, and utility titles, and some optional titles as well, between the ages of 4 and 8, and she's the one who taught me that positive training methods are much better for her and they're a lot more fun. Clever is my 5-year-old border collie. She got her novice title with 198 from 199. She won first place in Open against 100 other dogs last year with the 199, and she just got all three of her utility legs for her title a few weekends ago. She also knows a ton of tricks, and we train in agility as well. My goal with her for 2018 is to compete in open utility at all the local trials, and hopefully we'll earn some OTCH points along the way, and hopefully we will compete at the Classic next year and place in the top twenty as well. Those are my goals for her for the next year. And I have Talent, who's the baby dog. Her name is Squishy because she likes to lay on top of me. She's 14 months and we're just building the foundations for precision for obedience, and I hope to earn her MACH as well her OTCH and UDX, so we're doing a lot of agility training right now as well. So that's all about my dogs and a little bit about me. Is there anything else you want to know about me? Melissa Breau: Gee, I don't know. Is there anything else good that I should want to know? Mariah Hinds: Not really. I moved from Orlando to Fort Mill, South Carolina, a year ago, and so I'm just having fun getting to know people around here. Melissa Breau: I know that the core of our conversation today, I'm hoping we'll get really deep on proofing and getting “ring ready,” but before we dive into that stuff, I figure it makes sense to get some terminology stuff straight. So I wanted to ask what proofing means to you, and then maybe a little bit about why it's critical for success in competition. Mariah Hinds: Sure. So for me, proofing means that we're adding achievable challenges to a skill. So once a dog can do a behavior reliably on cue — and it can be a verbal cue or a hand signal as a cue — then we ask the dog to do the behavior in different locations, and perhaps we can ask the dog to do the behavior with other dogs around, and perhaps we can ask the dog to do the behavior in different locations in proximity to us, so “Can you sit in front of me? Can you sit at heel? Can you sit on the right side of my body? Can you sit between my feet?” I really think that proofing is critical to success in competition, because there are tons of distractions at a trial, and although you can't actually train for every single distraction, you can practice adding distractions in training. And if we add distractions in a strategic way so the dog is really successful, then we're really building the dog's confidence, and the dog learns to say, “Yes, I know exactly which behavior you want me to do, and no matter what's going on, no matter how far away I am, or where my handler is, or how quickly I'm moving, I know that this is the behavior that gets me closer to earning my reward.” Melissa Breau: You mentioned your dogs' different ages and different stages. At what age or point in your training journey do you really begin to add proofing, and what does that look like? Mariah Hinds: I think everyone proofs their dog, whether they realize it and they work through the behavior strategically or whether they don't. We work on adding distractions to our heeling, we work on adding distance to our position changes for utility, we work on adding out of motions to our downs for open, we work on adding distractions to our stays, we work on practicing in new locations, and once the dog has a basic understanding of these cues with different locations and durations and distance, we can oftentimes add another layer of understanding with even more distractions and more proofing. Typically, I find that those fall into a few different categories. It hasn't been introduced yet, the skill is just being learned, the dog is more than 50 percent reliable with behavior, we're adding new locations, or we're proofing for duration and stimulus control, we're adding distance or distractions, and so on. Those are all the categories that behavior can really fall into. And when the dog's just learning the skills, we setup the environment so that the dog can be really successful, and if we set it up well, then the dog goes up to being successful with behavior 50 percent of the time or better really quickly. Then we can start practicing in new locations, such as in the bedroom instead of the training room, or on the patio, or at the training building after the dog is acclimated, and we can also work on building duration and putting behavior on stimulus control. Then we can add distance and distractions. So I start adding distractions strategically to my dog's behaviors the moment that the behavior is robust and strong enough that the dog will really likely be successful. And if we practice the skill the same way without building more challenges with the behavior, then our training might just go stagnant and we might not make any real progress toward our goal. Melissa Breau: Is there ever a point when you stop proofing? Mariah Hinds: Not really. When I'm first working on sequencing behaviors together, such as for the retrieve over a jump, that's a behavior sequence, and it starts with the dog sitting in heel position. Then they go over the jump on cue, then they automatically retrieve the item, then they return over the jump, automatically do a front. So when I'm teaching that sequence, then I'm definitely going to start sequencing those things together with much fewer distractions than if I'm just working on one piece of that behavior. But before that, I want my dog to be able to do those behaviors separately with distractions. I want the dog to be able to pick up the dumbbell off the ground with distractions around. I want the dog to be able to go over the jump with my jump cue and take the cookie as the reward for that behavior. I want the dog to be able to set up in heel position and stay while I throw a distraction such as a cookie or a dumbbell or a toy. I want the dog to be able to come over the jump from a sit/stay at any angles with the cue to jump. I find that that's a really overlooked part of that behavior sequence and that falls apart really easily. If the pieces are solved separately before we sequence them together, then sequencing the behaviors together happens really quickly, and if a piece of the sequence falls apart, then we can easily fix that piece of the sequence just by revisiting that piece. And once the behavior sequence or the chain is solid, then we want to go back through and add more layers of understanding, and more layers of confidence, by adding distractions and proofing the entire behavior sequence. For example, with Clever, we're working on adding some distractions to our slow heeling. So at the trial, at our third leg, she really was a little forge-y with the slow heel, and so I really wanted to get that a little more reliable. She's consistent with it until we add distractions, so that's what we're working on. The goal, ultimately, for her will be that my training partner can fling a toy and that she'll remain in heel position while we're walking. Right now we're working on food distractions while she heels, because she finds that a lot easier. She's way more toy motivated than she is food motivated, so I'm building confidence with her with that so that she understands, so then I can add more layers of confidence. The other thing that we're working on proofing is doing a finish with the pressure of a judge, without her squeaking from the stress of the pressure. So at home I'm practicing finishing, having her finish on cue with a dog bone as a distraction, or some other distraction, food or toy distraction. And then, when I have my training friends to help me, then I'll do a few repetitions of what she's been successful with at home, and then I'll replace the distraction with a person and see if she can do that successfully. Melissa Breau: I know that precision and maintaining criteria are super-important to you, so I wanted to delve into that a little bit and ask you what the relationship between proofing and getting really precise, consistent behaviors is, and if you could just talk about that for a minute. Mariah Hinds: Sure. First, we need to add the behavior. We need the behavior to be precise with our desired criteria. So that means that has to happen first, and that needs to happen before we add layers of proofing. And we can certainly use different reinforcement strategies to help maintain the desired criteria without losing attitude, and that's really important to do. I do that a lot with my puppy when I'm building reliability, so she'll get one reward for trying, and she'll get multiple rewards for doing it accurately. We can also think about where we place the reward so that we're getting the most effect for our desired behavior. This is talked about a lot in the Precision Heeling class that Denise does. If a dog is lagging, we want to build more reliability for being in heel position, and then we really want the reward to happen ahead of heel position, and if the dog is heeling too wide, then we want the reward to happen with the dog really close to us, with the rear in as well, because otherwise we'll create crabbing, and if the dog is heeling and they tend to crab out and forge ahead, then we can have the dog spin away from us, which encourages their butt to get in, and then we can reward them from behind heel position, or even from our right hand. The dogs tend to anticipate when a reward will happen, and they will gravitate more to that area. And we do talk a lot about reinforcement strategies in my class, and it really can help a lot with building reliability. Melissa Breau: Do you work precision and consistency separately? It sounds a little bit like they're very closely related. Can you talk about that for a minute? Mariah Hinds: I do think they're closely related. I mean, I think that precision has to happen first, and consistency is really just generalizing the behavior. So first I work on precision. Let's say that I'm working on fronts. The first thing I do is I'm going to help the dog be correct, so I can use a platform to help the dog find front precisely. I can also do step back fronts where I lure the dog into position while I take a step back, and once the dog is precise at finding front from two or three feet away, with the platform or with luring, then I can start fading my lure, so I can ask the dog to find front with my hands pointing at my face instead of luring the dog with my hand. Another reason why I like to do that stuff is because when I'm teaching a dog where I want them to focus when they're finding front, I don't want them to accidentally find front on a stranger or the judge. I do want them to look up at my face, and then I can go to teaching them to find the precise position with my hands at my side. Once the dog can find the position precisely from two to three feet away, then I can start adding different angles to come to front, I can toss a treat from the left or to the right and have the dog find front that way. Again, this is from a very short distance away, and that's quite a challenging thing to do precisely. So once they're precise with that, then I can start adding more speed by tossing the reset cookie further away, I can start weaning off of the platform and going back to an earlier step to help guide them, to help guide the dog to where they should go. I like to do a little bit of pointing to my face as I'm weaning off of the platform, and then I can add in my distractions such as the judge and the pressures of the ring gating and so on. So the dog needs to understand exactly where the position is precisely first before we get consistency with that precision with a lot of variables. Melissa Breau: I think all novice competitors have been at that place where they thought their dog knew something, they show up to compete, and then their dog's carefully trained behaviors fall apart totally in the ring. Where do people go wrong when that happens? And what kind of things can they do to prevent it? Mariah Hinds: I think that's a really common thing that happens, and I think that we all fall into the habit of training at one or two places because it's convenient, and then we expect that is enough to get reliability in a new place, with new dogs, and new people, and a stranger in the room with you. I think that's a lot to ask of our dogs. I find that training at different places is really important, and going to show and gos is a great way to see where your dog is in terms of readiness. If you can't find a show and go, then I think another great option is to go to places where there are other dogs behind a fence or on leash. One option would be going to a big, grassy area outside of a dog park and practicing there, or you can go to a parking lot near the dog beach entrance, or you can go to a parking lot at a really busy veterinary clinic. For me and my dogs, that always tends to give me a really accurate gauge as to where they are with reliability with distractions. For me, I like to combine that with distraction work at home. It just isn't practical for me to go train at a new place more than once a week, but at home I can add challenging distractions that help my dog understand that the way to earn the reward for the cued behavior is really to ignore the distraction. Melissa Breau: I think the other place that a lot of people really struggle is when it comes to cleaning up their own body language as part of proofing. We get all this reinforcement built in from our dog doing the right thing when we include those extra movements! When we lean forward slightly on the down cue, or when we use our hands a little more than we should. I wanted to see if you could talk a little bit about why it's important to get rid of that movement, and then share any tips you have, because I think it's something that you do really well. Mariah Hinds: Well, thanks. I do find that it's really important. I find that especially when we're preparing to go into the novice ring, that we've done a lot of helping the dog set up in heel position by doing certain things with our body, or we help the dog halt when we're heeling by turning our shoulders toward the dog and looking at their rear, or we help the dog find front by always practicing with our hands near the center of our body during practice. And then we go in the ring and we can't help the dog, so we've removed the cues that the dog was familiar with and the dog doesn't know what you want anymore because we removed the cue and there are distractions everywhere. So it really can be challenging for the dog to go in the ring when they really just aren't ready yet. Whereas if we actually prepare the dog, and we show them that the cue for the behavior is in all of this extra body movement, then they're going to be a lot better prepared. As for tips, I think the first thing that's really important is discovering what your body is doing while you say the verbal cue. So the more that you actually video yourself, and then watch those videos back, the more you're going to realize what you're doing with your body while you're saying your cues. So once we realize what the body language cue is that we're doing, then we can start working on fading them. I also think that one of the longstanding myths of dog training, especially in obedience, is that you should be saying the verbal cue while you help the dog do the behavior with your body language. And what we really want to be doing is we want the behavior to be reliable without body language, and start saying the verbal cue without moving, and then following that verbal cue with your old cue, which will be the body language help or the hand signal gesture that you've been using. Melissa Breau: I know, for example, some instructors use the prompt “always return your hands to neutral,” or “always return your hands to the same spot.” Is that helpful? Is that kind of a strategy useful? Mariah Hinds: Yes. We want to practice looking formal, if that's what we're going to do in the ring. So yes. If, for example, you're using pocket hand, or putting your left hand to your side to help the dog actually sit when you stop, then that's fine. But we want to return to formalness when we can to help the dog see that picture as well. Melissa Breau: Beyond simply proofing, what other skills are there that somebody needs to know to get “ring ready?” And I know that you're teaching some classes on this, so I thought it might be a good topic to talk about a little bit. Mariah Hinds: I'm teaching a class on putting the novice exercises together, called Putting It Together, and I'm teaching Proof Positive: Building Reliability. The first thing we cover in Proof Positive: Building Reliability is discussing our reinforcement strategies for the behavior that the student has chosen to work on in the class. We have some people working on fronts, or position changes, or go outs, some heeling, some drop on recalls, some setting up in heel position, some weaves, some running contacts, some freestyle behaviors, and lots and lots of obedience. I really love that variety. It really keeps the class fun and it's fun to follow along with. So the next thing in that class is that we talk about fading our extra body language cues, and we work on actually putting it on a verbal cue, and we work on getting the behavior solid under one set of circumstances, and we work on waiting, and we work on teaching stimulus controls, so helping the dog learn to wait for the cue before doing the behavior, and then we start playing games. This week we're going to work on teaching the dog to ignore our body language and listen to the verbal cue, and we're going to work on doing the behavior in various locations, and in the upcoming weeks we work on adding sound distractions and spatial pressure, which is the amount of things around the dog, like ring gates and judges, although we're not actually going to be working on people, so a trash can can provide spatial pressure, a wall can provide spatial pressure. We're also going to be adding various angles, adding some duration and distance, different locations, adding some out of motion to the behaviors, and we're going to work on building reliability with food, and scent distractions in a few different scenarios. So overall we're playing fun games to build the dog's understandings and reliability with behaviors. In the Putting It Together class we're working on making sure that our behaviors for the novice ring are really solid separately. So we're working on stays, and fronts, and moving in heel position, and setting up in heel position, and stand stays, and our circles for our figure eights, and our complete figure eight exercise, and our turns and change of pace in heeling, taking off the leash, entering the ring, exiting the ring. So first we're doing some problem solving, helping the dogs understand the desired behaviors, then when those pieces are solid, then we're working on sequencing those behaviors together, building confidence by adding realistic ring distractions, weaning off of rewards, and practicing our entire ring performance. So we're looking at all of these pieces in this class, and putting those pieces together when the pieces are ready to come together. So in both classes we're talking about reinforcement strategies, and there are lectures on building reliable, precise fronts. The Putting It Together class covers a lot of topics regarding the novice ring, and polishing those behaviors before sequencing them together and putting them into a ring performance practice. The Building Reliability class covers adding distractions, different locations, spatial pressures, sound distractions, handler body language distractions, and adding those things to our simple behaviors like sit and down. Then we can take those games and practice with our complex behaviors, and we can add duration and out of motion and food distraction to those behaviors as well. Both classes are a lot of fun, and if you do obedience, then both classes can fit your needs. It just depends on where your dog's behaviors are and their understanding of the behaviors. So if you're just starting out, and you're just working on pivots, then Building Reliability would probably be a better fit, versus if your dog is solid with that, and you're really ready to move on and start sequencing a little bit of find heel positions stationary with actually moving in heel position, then the Putting It Together class is a good fit. Melissa Breau: They sound very complementary. Mariah Hinds: They do. Melissa Breau: They sound like they work well together. Mariah Hinds: Yes, definitely. Melissa Breau: Well, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast, Mariah. I appreciate it. I know things are crazy, but I'm glad you could make some time for me. Mariah Hinds: Yeah, it was a lot of fun. Melissa Breau: Awesome. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in! We'll be back next week, this time with a special anniversary edition of the podcast… also, just a last-minute reminder that if you want to take a class for the December term, today -- Dec. 15th, the day this episode comes out -- is the absolute last day for registration. So, if you're a procrastinator, it's time…. And, if you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in itunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. CREDITS: Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called “Buddy.” Audio editing provided by Chris Lang and transcription written by CLK Transcription Services. Thanks again for tuning in -- and happy training!

SUMMARY: Nancy Gagliardi Little comes back on the podcast — Nancy has been training dogs since the early 1980's when she put an OTCH on her Novice A dog, a Labrador Retriever. Since then she has put many advanced obedience titles on her dogs, including 4 AKC OTCH titles, 6 UD titles, 3 UDX titles, and multiple championships in herding and agility. Today, she joins me to talk startline stays in agility. Links Nancy Gigliardi Little's Website Next Episode:  To be released 12/15/2017, featuring Mariah Hinds. We'll be chatting about proofing and building reliably, ring-ready behaviors! 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 Nancy Gagliardi Little back on the podcast — Nancy has been training dogs since the early 1980's when she put an OTCH on her Novice A dog, a Labrador Retriever. Since then she has put many advanced obedience titles on her dogs, including 4 AKC OTCH titles, 6 UD titles, 3 UDX titles, and multiple championships in herding and agility. Welcome back to the podcast, Nancy! Nancy Gagliardi Little: Thanks, Melissa. Thanks for having me. Melissa Breau: The last time we talked a little bit about obedience. Today we're talking a little bit about agility. To start us out, do you want to just remind listeners who you are and share a little about the dogs you share your life with? Nancy Gagliardi Little: Sure. Who I am … I guess I'm still discovering that, but I live in Minnesota, about 45 minutes north of the Twin Cities, and I compete mostly in agility, AKC mostly, but also USDAA and UKI. I still train my dogs in obedience, I just don't compete in obedience anymore. I have aspirations of doing that again, but we'll see. I teach agility and obedience online classes with FDSA, and I teach agility and obedience lessons and classes at a local center here in Minnesota. I did judge obedience, AKC obedience, for about twenty years, and I judged around the country in all classes and also in some national events. So that's about me. And then my dogs. I've had border collies since the mid-'80s, and I love everything about the breed, including their quirkiness and their sensitivity. My dogs are Score, a border collie, 13. He's retired, obviously. He did agility and herding. And Schema is 9 years old. She's currently my competition dog doing agility. She is competing at AKC Nationals this year in 2018, and I think that's the fifth time she's qualified. She's also competed at Cynosport. And then I have Lever. He's 4, and he is competing in agility. I train him and Schema too, both in obedience. He's kind of the up-and-coming guy, I guess. And then my husband has a toller and his name is Rugby. He's 2, and he trains in agility and obedience. Melissa Breau: That's your crew, and we were talking a little bit before I hit “record” that hopefully there'll be one more joining the family early next year, right? Nancy Gagliardi Little: Correct. I think they're supposed to be born in early December. It's one of Lever's puppies. Melissa Breau: I look forward to lots of puppy pictures. Nancy Gagliardi Little: Yeah. That will be exciting. Melissa Breau: I mentioned in the intro that last time you were on we really talked obedience, but today we're going to talk agility, so specifically we're diving into start line stays. So, I wanted to start with how they're different from a stay in any other sport, something like obedience, for example. Nancy Gagliardi Little: They are quite a bit different in the agility environment. Agility is very high-energy, and the environment itself is fairly unpredictable, and that makes for difficult conditions for dogs that are trying to perform these skills that they learned at home and in class, especially the start lines. That's kind of the transitional exercise into the course. And then of course most dogs love agility, and it's pretty reinforcing for them to go. In obedience the stays are very predictable, well, in actually all the exercises are fairly predictable. They're patterns. Dogs learn those patterns, and that gives them pretty clear information when exercises start and end. Even in obedience, dogs can make mistakes. They might read a pattern and anticipate the finish of an exercise, especially the stay, and it's probably just when the judge says, “Exercise finished,” so they're pretty much done anyway. So it's just much more predictable. Melissa Breau: Why is it so important that people actually have a good start line stay in agility? What benefits does it offer if they put in the work and they get there? Nancy Gagliardi Little: Well, agility is pretty much all about speed, and most people have dogs that are much faster than they can run. I know I do, and most of the people do, and if they don't, they want that. Being able to lead out gives you an advantage, especially with a fast dog, and actually on many courses it can be difficult to start without a lead out with a super-fast dog. Going into the sequence, you just can't get where you need to be to cue something. So yes, it's quite an advantage having that. It gets you ahead. It might even keep you ahead throughout the course. And without that, you're going to be behind, which isn't all that bad if you want to do rear crosses throughout the course. Some people are very good at that. I have some students without start lines just because they came to me after their dog was a little bit older and we just decided we weren't going to teach the dogs the stay. And there are definitely some sequences that they just can't … or courses with starts that they just can't do, or they just have issues with it, so it does put them at a disadvantage. Melissa Breau: You mentioned that you decided just not to bother with it. Why do people struggle with it? Why is it something that's hard to teach? I think a lot of people think a stay is a stay is a stay, right? Nancy Gagliardi Little: Right, right. Well, there's just so many variations, but it could be that there's holes in training or holes in generalization. There's a lot of that that happens. And lots of times handlers try to control the dog's behavior instead of training, so that would be like a hole in training. It could also be the training sessions are handled differently than the handling at the trials, and there's a lot of that that's due to handling. Another thing I see contributing to the start line is — this is interesting — but the handler's own increased arousal level. And this happens in obedience, you see that too, but in agility it's pretty much, it's a big contributing factor where the handlers are too hurried, they're un-confident and disconnected when they enter the ring, and then, at the beginning of the run, they're thinking more about the course and they just don't stay connected and focused on the dog. The dogs sense that, and that can cause — in the dogs we're talking about, probably the dogs that have increased arousal level — that causes stress and also increased arousal, and that's never good at the start line. Especially the dogs start reading a disconnected handler, and they start losing the ability to think, and then you have a break. A lot of times there are small issues that crop up along the way and they aren't noticed by the trainer until it becomes a big problem. And that happens a lot. There's little things, you know, little things that they just aren't seeing, or they aren't aware of, and then they don't know how they got there. Melissa Breau: Do you mean on the day of the trial or do you mean … Nancy Gagliardi Little: I just mean in general kind of building up to that, but it will happen at the trials usually because that's where the ultimate differences are between the training and the trials. Melissa Breau: Little stuff like creeping, or what do you mean? Nancy Gagliardi Little: Well, it would be mostly handling. Some of it would be handling. The dogs start getting a little more and more aroused because they maybe can't predict when the handler's going to release them. That causes … and it depends on the dog. It could be that this dog, this particular dog, responds to arousal and stress by creeping forward, or they stand up, or even just a glazed look in their eyes. It just keeps changing until there's actually just an outright break. And that's when the handler notices that there's an issue, but it's actually happened long before that. Melissa Breau: I know we talked about this a little bit just now, but I think a lot of people attribute start line problems to poor impulse control. The person just didn't work it enough, or didn't do it right, or something. Nancy Gagliardi Little: Right. Melissa Breau: Can you talk a little bit about the role that impulse control actually does play in a good start line stay? Nancy Gagliardi Little: I hear that a lot. People think their dogs are pushy or have impulse control issues. But I've seen more over-arousal issues or frustration issues than impulse control issues. And frustration and over-arousal, they can be caused by lack of clarity, unpredictable cues, and then, like I said before, handlers that aren't connected with their dogs. The dogs really want that. And impulse control skills, they're just a part of the foundation of training a start line, and it should be fun for the dog. Some of the issues with start lines might be due to poor impulse control training, but there's a lot more at play here than that. And actually I've seen plenty of dogs that really have great impulse control, but they can't hold a stay at the start line, and a lot of that is due to just their arousal state. They can't think. People just call that “impulse control issue,” and really it's something quite different. Melissa Breau: That's really interesting. You commented that you've seen a lot of dogs with great impulse control who really struggle with this particular skill. I think that's something a lot of people don't think about. Nancy Gagliardi Little: Yeah, exactly. Melissa Breau: I'd imagine … I don't do agility, but I'd imagine that part of what often goes wrong with a start line is simply that the dog breaks their stay in a trial situation and people just start the run. And they do that over and over again, and the dog figures out, “Well, we're just going to go.” Nancy Gagliardi Little: They're so smart! Melissa Breau: Is there a better way to handle that? Nancy Gagliardi Little: That's a really good question and it's a complicated one, too. I think it's one of those things that's hard to answer, but it's part of what goes wrong. Usually there's an issue, like I said before, that's starting to manifest long before the dog even breaks the start line, and the handler isn't recognizing it until the dog finally leaves before that release cue, and it's actually usually in a really important run for them, so they're like, “Oh my god.” And a lot of times this has been happening for a while. The dog's been breaking it, but the handler doesn't really notice it because they might be just turning back and releasing, and this time they turn back and they don't release and the dog goes. Something like that. And like you say, the more a dog breaks the start line in a trial, the more it becomes a pattern or a habit, and actually it's very, very reinforcing to the dog because they love — most of them love — agility and they want to go. So in terms of a way to handle it once they go, I'm not a big fan of removing the dog for breaking the start line. If you watch some handlers, a lot of times they remove the dog, and the dog's already taken a few obstacles by the time he realizes that he's being taken off course, so he's probably not even going to associate breaking the start line with that removal. And that not understanding why he's being removed is going to cause more stress and frustration for the dog, and that makes the start line area even more frustrating, and then that causes more mistakes, so how do you handle it? Again, it's very complicated, and it also depends on the dog and the handler. Lots of times when we decide this with students, I come up with a plan, depending on the dog, the sensitivity of the dog, the experience of the dog, making sure the handler's being clear, all those things come into play for that. It's mainly just making sure that the handling is clear. I'll give you some examples. Melissa Breau: That would be great. Nancy Gagliardi Little: And I'll just use my own dogs because their start lines are very good, but Schema, both of them, have broken their start lines. Schema, so she's been running about seven-and-a-half years. When she was maybe 4 or 5 years old, it was in a two-ring soccer arena with lots of activity behind and around, and as I'm leading out, I was watching her and she left before I gave her the release cue. But I was watching her, I saw her expression, and she looked the same as she always does. There was no twitching or any odd behavior. I just let her run. I just went on because that's just the way I feel. It's like, I'll look at this later, we'll deal with this later, and one mistake is not going to affect anything. I looked at the video and I obsessed on it, and then I went to the practice jump between runs, and I tested her with some games, and she was solid, like I figured she would be, and she never broke the rest of the weekend or any time after that run. So I suspect she just heard someone else at the practice jump behind her give the same release cue and truly thought I had released her. So if I would have removed her for that, or done anything but just run her, that would have been very confusing to her, so she never really knew. An example I have with Lever is he's got some arousal issues, increased arousal issues, I've been working on a lot over the years. He has some great skills but has issues where he's really gotten, he's really improved, but his start lines were a little … I guess there's lots of arousal there, and they've gotten better. What I do at the start line is I ask him how aroused he is. I know that sounds funny, but I basically just pause briefly before I leave him, and if he can look at me before I lead out — I step lateral and then wait for him to look at me. It just takes a brief moment. If he looks at me, his arousal level is under control. There was a time when he couldn't even look at me, and that told me that his arousal level is high. That didn't mean I was going to do anything different. I just needed to know that. I just would stay super-connected with him as I led out and just be a little bit more focused on him. So about six months ago I waited a little bit too long to see if he could look at me, and that was me trying to control him, a little bit of control. It was too long, and once I decided to leave, he broke. I realized what I was doing at that time and I just went on. I just kept going. And he actually knew right away he made a mistake, and that was not my intention to make him think he made a mistake, because I knew in his case it was arousal. But he did have a really nice run after that. So if I would have pulled him off for that, or handled it in any different way, it would have affected him, and I want him to be very confident in himself at the start line. His start lines have improved dramatically just by me being super-connected to him and just knowing that they're a work in progress. So those are a couple of examples. There's so many different ones, and it really just depends on the team, and the experience of the dog, and what kind of things they're training for start lines, but they are all very different how you would handle it. The main thing is just ensuring that it's handled the same in practice as it would be in trials. Melissa Breau: I was going to say that it sounds like you don't necessarily have to worry about it a ton until it happens that first time, and then after that first time you want a plan in place in case it happens again. Nancy Gagliardi Little: Right, you really do, because the first time it happens, you want to go back and make sure that it's not handling. People don't realize how much in agility people work hard on handling, but there's a lot of handling that goes into start lines and the whole routine with start lines. There's a lot of handling, and if you don't, if your handling's not clear to the dog, there's going to be issues. Melissa Breau: Now that we've talked a little about problem solving, I want to take a little of a step back and talk about how you actually teach a start line stay. Is there anything special you do during the foundation stages? Nancy Gagliardi Little: I probably teach it the same way most people do, but I do a lot of Zen games, I think some people call it “It's your choice.” I do lots of that, and on the flat, and my young dogs wanted to stay by, they make a choice not to go, and then that decision brings reinforcement. I do lots and lots of games away from equipment, starting without handler motion and then adding more and more motion. It's the motion that can really, or even the anticipation of handler motion, that can actually cause issues with the dogs, so adding that is important in agility. And then lots of behaviors to train in the start line routine: entering the ring, moving to the start line area or the area you're going to set them up, the position of the dog, what position are they going to be in, a sit, a down, a stand, whatever, between your legs, setups, or how they're going to line up, and I guess that has more to do with going between your legs, or if they're going to go to the left side, or the right side, or some handlers stand in front of the dog and position them kind of like a front, and the stay, there's an actual stay, which isn't really a big deal, the release is the big deal, there's a lead out, and then there's handling and training involved in all those areas. So all of them are worked on separately, and then we gradually put them together as each area is mastered. So it's like a lot of flat work and fun stuff so dogs don't even know that we're working towards a start line. Melissa Breau: I think that a lot of people probably just think about the stay itself, and they leave out all those other pieces you just mentioned about entering the ring and setting up. Nancy Gagliardi Little: Right. And what happens is then they try to control the behavior instead of asking the dog to do the behavior, and then that creates more stress and more issues there, and the dogs don't want to stay at the start line because they're never right, they're always being controlled. So that contributes to it too. Melissa Breau: So once you've gotten the stay that you want, and the entrance that you want, and you're trialing, what do you do to maintain that stay? How often do you train it, how do you approach it, what do you do to make sure that it doesn't erode or doesn't disappear over time? Nancy Gagliardi Little: I don't think about it that much, but I guess when I think about it, I do it all the time without even thinking. I'm always looking at videos of my runs, or of training, and I'm always checking to see if the dog … how's the start line. It's just maintaining it. It happens by keeping the handling clear and the cues clean. When I talk about the cues clean, I'm talking about making sure that it's not being any of the cues being paired with any extra motion or movement, because that's a big deal in agility. Well, it's a big deal in any sport. And it's also ensuring that my dogs are going to be able to predict when the release is coming. That's what people don't pay attention to, and then the dogs are sitting back there watching the handlers lead out and just arousal level's going up, like, “When are they going to release me?” They don't know, they can't predict, and so I try to create a predictor that is easy for the dog to read. So I'm watching videos of my runs, and I evaluate my dog's start lines just as much as the rest of the run. I'm always looking to see did the dog release on my cue, or was there any twitching, or whatever. It's just really important to know what to look for, and that's I think what people are missing. They don't know what to look for. They're just looking to see if the dog stayed and not looking at a lot of other things, which is a lot of handling. So my start lines are really important to me because my dogs are very fast. But I find them very easy to maintain if my dogs understand the routine. And whenever I lead out, I'm just always checking to see that my dog has made the choice to stay, and if I'm always doing that, then my dog has always made that choice to stay because the release cue is very reinforcing to my dogs. They get to go, and so they learn to choose to stay because that's what leads them to go. They love that. Melissa Breau: For people out there who are listening to this and going, “All right, that's awesome,” but they are in that position where they taught their dog a stay initially and it disappeared after they started running more regularly. How would you handle that? Would you just look at it as a poisoned cue and start over with a new cue? Would you retrain it with their existing cue? How would you approach it? Nancy Gagliardi Little: That's a really good question too. I think the first thing that I'd recommend to people in that situation is to make sure that they're videotaping their training, the dog in training. And also making sure that they're in that videotape as well, and also in the trial, and then really look at those two sessions and see if the handling is identical. It really needs to be. It's important for the dogs. Dogs need to see the same thing. It needs to be clear to the dog. Cues need to be clear and clean. And then also the connection to the dog is super-important to the dog in agility, very, very important, and that's at the start line, not just during the run. So the questions to ask are, does the dog understand all of the little parts of his job at the start line, or is the handler trying to control the dog, like leading out and telling them to stay constantly. That's going to be the beginning of a break because it's going to stress the dog up, and there's many reasons why that's going to cause a break. So any type of controlling rather than training is going to make that experience stressful for the dog, so it's better to take the time to teach those behaviors for the start line routine. So if that's the case, we look at that. You really take a look at that picture of the start line. Are all those behaviors trained, and is the dog confident in all those little areas? That's going to make that whole experience very, very easy for the dog. And then, in terms of whether a new cue or a new setup routine needs to be trained, that just really depends on the dog and the situation. If it's been going on for a long time, it might be wise to change the position. If the dog was doing a sit and he's breaking, maybe you just start him in a down. I don't really think the cue is usually the issue, because probably most likely the dogs are not even reading that cue. They're probably reading some type of incidental cue or signal or motion from the handler that's being paired with that. So it's not even probably an issue, but yet it can make the handler feel better changing the cue, and it might still be the case that we'd want to change it. But it's just one of those, again, creative processes you have to go through with each individual team. It just depends. Melissa Breau: I know that, to mention FDSA, again here at the end, but I know you have a class on this subject running – and it's supposed to start literally the day this airs, but registration is still open! — can you share a little bit about what the class does or doesn't cover, and the kind of dog-handler team that might benefit most from taking it? Nancy Gagliardi Little: Sure. Like I said before, I'm pretty excited about this class. At one time I had another class that was pretty popular that covered agility, start lines, stopped contacts on the table, and that was just filled with a lot of information, probably too much. So I felt it was important to make the subject of start lines into its own class. So this class is perfect for young dogs starting to train or even getting ready to trial. I think that's a perfect area for these type of dogs. But it's also a good class for dogs that are already trialing. I just ask, if they're going to take the class, to make sure that they stop trialing during this retraining period because that's really important for the dogs, because we do really want to make the trial and the training the same, otherwise they just become different. What it's not going to cover is how to address over-arousal issues, or environmental issues at the start line, and that subject's covered in other FDSA classes. So in this class we're going to work extensively on creating handling and training skills that will help predict the release. That's the main thing I want people to be aware of is how much your dogs depend on predictability for start lines. It's amazing, once you clear that up, it just creates a whole different world for the dogs. So with these consistent predictors the dogs are going to get more confident and adapt much easier in different environments, and that's hugely important in agility. Melissa Breau: Awesome. Well, thank you so much Nancy -- it sounds like a great class. Nancy Gagliardi Little: Yeah, I'm really excited. Melissa Breau: I can see why. And thank you again for coming back on the podcast! I'm glad that you did and I'm glad we got a chance to talk about some of this stuff. Nancy Gagliardi Little: It was great. Thanks for having me. Melissa Breau: Absolutely. And thanks to our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week with Mariah Hinds to talk about proofing and building reliable, ring-ready behaviors. Don't miss it! It if you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in itunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. CREDITS: Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called “Buddy.” Audio editing provided by Chris Lang.

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

In this livecast from the National Association of Broadcasters conference in Las Vegas, Neal Forse, Strategic Marketing Manager for CODEC at Altera chats about the advantages of integrating general purpose servers and field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and how FPGAs are helping to drive incredible acceleration with Intel x86 technologies. He discusses how performance intensive FPGA integrations with Intel® Xeon® processors allow equipment vendors and manufacturers to build out best-in-class algorithms to achieve incredibly high quality video compression and performance while enabling highly increased density. Neal highlights how the Altera booth at NAB showcased their new video IP and reference design called UDX 10 that is helping customers to build very high quality baseband video processing. To learn more, visit https://www.altera.com/

本期新闻有：那些被“和谐”了的动画，EVA上月球失败，动画化决 定&游戏新作，游戏发售决定&KEY社新作制作决定，真人电影版BD发售在即，年内上映 决定，企划再启动，话剧化，重大发表 VOICE：浴火不死鸟，拍黄瓜 第三期的常规节目，有错误和建议欢迎大家直接回复提出～ 【纠错】 1.5pb并没有把chaos做成一个系列，，和都属于5pb的科学 ADV冒险系列。 2.游戏中拯救全部人的剧情应该是，世界线变线是从阿尔法到贝塔再到SG线，才达成了全拯救 3.白箱在UDX大厦的展已于4月5日就结束了Orz

本期新闻有：那些被“和谐”了的动画，EVA上月球失败，动画化决 定&游戏新作，游戏发售决定&KEY社新作制作决定，真人电影版BD发售在即，年内上映 决定，企划再启动，话剧化，重大发表 VOICE：浴火不死鸟，拍黄瓜 第三期的常规节目，有错误和建议欢迎大家直接回复提出～ 【纠错】 1.5pb并没有把chaos做成一个系列，，和都属于5pb的科学 ADV冒险系列。 2.游戏中拯救全部人的剧情应该是，世界线变线是从阿尔法到贝塔再到SG线，才达成了全拯救 3.白箱在UDX大厦的展已于4月5日就结束了Orz