E412: 페트라 포드(Petra Ford) - "동기부여와 정밀함의 균형 맞추기"

want my dogs to think that quote-unquote precision behaviors are super fun so that's how i teach them that's how i perceive them that's how i want my dogs to perceive them and that's what i strive for um so basically motivation is i motivate everything including precision behaviors if anything i motivate them way more heavily than any other piece um that i that we work on and you know obedience is not inherently self-reinforcing so to make it fun to keep the dogs excited about it motivated that's up to us right that's our job to incorporate that into every piece of our training so that our dogs have fun um doing it with a young dog which one do you prioritize um so i'm always prioritizing i can't really say one or the other because again to me precision is not necessarily a separate thing right so if i know i already know certain behaviors are going to be more challenging than others so those behaviors i'm making super fun right out of the gate so if i have a little puppy and i'm luring it around with food right to keep um because initially that's what i'll do i'll lure my puppy into fronts and feed and i'll be like yes wow and i you know i put a lot of energy into it and fun into it as a dog gets a little older and i'm not luring i make sure that the more challenging behaviors that i create a positive condition and emotional response around them so i make sure the dog has a super high accuracy rate i make sure i break it into teeny tiny pieces so the dog can't be wrong and the dog is right all the time all the time so the dog's like yeah i'm super confident i know how to do this um i break everything down into teeny tiny pieces for that reason every behavior and even as i'm building those tiny pieces into a bigger behavior i make sure that the entire time my dog is confident and my dog's having a good time if my dog starts to struggle a little bit i'll immediately go back and break it down again so every time my dog trains everything they're doing um is very successful everything they're doing has a high reinforcement rate um and everything they're doing is in their mind it's just a whole bunch of games and tricks all strung together um seamlessly i know you kind of shared that you build motivation into your precision behaviors directly but what factors is it about precision training that can sometimes lead dogs to you know lose motivation or you can kind of see that flattening yeah well that's super common so if you want to take a front for example um some oftentimes people don't train front thoroughly enough so that the dog is fluent right meaning the dog can hit front

no matter what the dog really and truly understands it to the point where it can be correct 95 percent of the time so the behavior is not thoroughly trained and then they put it into the chain right so let's say you take something like a retrieve typically a retrieve would be more motivating than maybe some other exercises right so the dog runs out gets the dumbbell runs back and it comes to front and it's crooked and then the trainer says no no no front or maybe they don't say no but they just adjust and adjust and adjust right and they do that every time well what's gonna happen the dog's not gonna want to come back because every time it comes back it's wrong and it doesn't know how to be right and it's you know we're fussing over it and so that spills backwards into the whole exercise and the whole exercise starts to get demotivating so i would never i don't ever incorporate fronts into any chain until my dog's fronts are really really solid so the dog can do them perfectly in front of me um stepping to laterally um and rotation and then i back chain them so meaning i sit the dog a few feet back from me and then i ask them to find or i sit my dog further back and ask them to front and then maybe i'll send my dog around a cone and ask them to front so that by the time i'm putting the front into the chain there's a pretty darn high likelihood that my dog's gonna hit front and they're gonna be right and so therefore they're gonna want to come in to me because they're gonna be right a whole bunch of times um if i'm not a hundred percent sure and i want to help my dog then i'll use something like an aid maybe to ensure my dog is correct you know or as my dog's coming in i'll say something or use a little hand signal that i've taught them that helps them come in correct so the big the biggest issue is basically error rate right if the dog's failing constantly it's not going to want to do it you wouldn't want to either and then the human gets frustrated and then that frustration carries down to the dog on top of it and then it's just not fun and that's why i think precision gets a bad rap can you talk a little bit about how having a clear communication system you know fits into this picture um what do you do to kind of create that clear communication system with your dogs so i think the first thing is i have a very clear end picture a lot of people go awry because they don't have a clear end picture i know exactly what i want the end picture to look like now that doesn't mean i strive for that immediate like i go for that

complete end picture on day one i'm shaping it right i'm heading in that direction but i always know where i'm going um i also believe in black and white so people it's super common that people in their minds they're helping their dogs because you know they feel like precision is nitpicky so they have this thing in their head it's negative so they're like well that's close enough i'll accept it good dog and then one day they're like well dog why do you keep sitting crooked dog's like well because you've told me for a year that that's correct and now the dog's like completely confused and demoralized because you changed your criteria so i'm always heading my dog in that direction and i'm saying to the dog that's correct or if it's not correct then it's on me to do something different to make sure my dog is correct so that's my job right that's not the dog's job it's my job to break it down or to communicate it more clearly i'm super clean with my markers um every class on week one i write a whole lecture on clean marking and i'm 99 sure that almost everybody doesn't read it because in their mind because people really believe they're marking cleanly right and then inevitably um telling everyone repeatedly you're not being clear with your markers right and markers are really the only way we're telling our dogs that's correct or not so if we're not using them correctly we're confusing the heck out of our dogs um and then your handling has to be clean so people have zero awareness of what they're doing with their hands what they're doing with their head their shoulders their hips right from a dog's perspective words are not that meaningful physical cues are extremely meaningful physical what what we do with our body is like screaming at our dogs so if i'm constant if every time my dog comes to front i use my hands to help the dog front then i go in the ring and my hands are at my side my dog is going to have absolutely no idea whatsoever how to front right because to the dog that's drastically different or if i use a platform for front for two years and then one day i remove the platform my dog's gonna have absolutely no idea what to do because without the platform that the picture looks drastically different um so i'm super conscientious about what i'm doing with my body like to the nth degree like my facial expression is information um every single thing you do with your body is information um so i that's what i really strive first to help people with is get their handling clean get their make sure they have a

clear picture of what's right and what's not make sure they're using their markers correctly make sure they're breaking the behaviors down and helping the dog so the dog can be correct so the dog has a high success ratio which builds um confidence so in addition to kind of that clear communication system you mentioned something there i'd like to talk about a little bit more so um you kind of talked about breaking behaviors down and i've seen uh in a few places that you do that even you know kind of with well-known behaviors and with some other bits and pieces do you mind just talking to us for an example of how you break something down um even when it's a well-known behavior already yep so um one thing i do very routinely is um healing so i will just do forward right turn yes feed forward right turn yes feed i'll do that like three times and you'll see my dog's like yeah yeah yeah right turn cool and i'll do that with the left turn and i'll do that with the about turn and i'll do that with halts um because and i'll i actually reinforce a fair amount which nobody does during the normal pace right because those are piece pieces that people just well now my dog knows it therefore i no longer need to reinforce it well if you think about doing a full healing pattern that's a really long chain and if you never reinforce those pieces in between the dog's gonna get bored the dog just it's just gonna get flat the dog's not gonna be motivated the dog's just like waiting for the end because it knows it's not gonna get any reinforcement until the very end so why would they put more effort in there's no reason for them to do that um let's say directed jumping very very very often i tell i send my dog to the go out i tell my dog to sit and i immediately say yes and my dog runs towards me and gets the toy people have a hard time understanding that right why am i first of all they're afraid my dog's gonna release forward second of all after you sit the dog you must jump the dog no you don't have to how am i gonna keep that turn and sit highly motivating if i never reinforce it um send articles is another one this gives people a stroke and i do this all the time to keep their confidence up my dog runs out finds the correct article the second they pick it up i say yes and i toss a toy through my legs and when i say yes my dog by definition is allowed to drop that article and my dog does because they're allowed to and they run through my legs and people are like oh my gosh your dog's gonna you know wait to see if you mark or not your dog's gonna start dropping the article

no they're not because my marking is clean my dogs understand that if i do not say yes you keep going and they do i can release them out of the pile four articles in a row and on the fifth article i say nothing and my dog will run to front without any hesitation whatsoever but again if i'm only ever feeding after the finish or after the front the pieces in the middle they're just gonna get flat they're gonna get weak um they're just not gonna be that fun for the dog so for the dog's entire career i'm reinforcing all the pieces um and i reinforce the beginning of an exercise so with a broad jump i'll say wait take a step yes give my dog a cookie wait take three steps yes throw my dog a treat i'll reinforce the middle so i send my dog over the broad jump as soon as my dog lands yes i toss a toy out all the way over to the other side right um and a lot of times i that's what i do the majority of their training on the exercises and i just work front separately so for example on a broad jump front i can just back chain it or i can just practice the mechanics of that front by sending a dog around a cone and i'm off to the right and my dog has to practice their front that way so now i'm not um now i don't have to keep doing the you know the beginning and the middle with no reinforcement just to practice the end i can practice the end separately um and then yes sometimes i put it all together um but i'm constantly balancing it out right so if i put if i do the full exercise today for sure i'm not doing the full exercise tomorrow and um yeah so it's just constantly balancing all that do you tend to and this wasn't on my questions but do you tend to train the pieces the different pieces for the same exercise on the same day with the idea that you're eventually putting together for example would you work jumping and then the go out or vice versa as separate pieces because you know tomorrow you're going to work on them as a full exercise i think it depends on where the dog's at in their training like if i'm teaching i i don't i teach pieces individually so for example i would teach my dog to run to the go out that's one piece separately i'm teaching the dog the mechanics of a turn and sit completely separately i'll teach my dog how to do the jumping piece right so sit them there and do the jumping and i don't have to do those on the same day i don't have to do them in the same session because i'm just teaching the individual pieces only if if i have two pieces and those two pieces are fluent super solid like my dog understands them extremely well my dog does them correctly

consistently over time and my dog does them the way i want them like happily with speed and animation then i'll consider putting those two pieces together right um if i have a dog that i consider fully trained which the two dogs i have now are so they know all the exercises they're able to put the full chain of the exercise together with a high level of accuracy and understanding and speed and animation right so um no i don't have to like today i might just send my dog to the go out reward touching the go out and reward sitting a whole bunch of times i don't have to do the jumping they know how to do that like i might not do that for a couple days you know i might i don't typically i don't even practice that separately at all because the jump is highly reinforcing for them and it's not a big deal for them so it doesn't necessarily have to be done on the same day the different pieces um no i don't like today i might um send my dog over the bra jump and throw the toy five times and then maybe two days later i might practice the bra jump front separately and maybe a day or two later i do a little i'm doing some chaining and they'll do the whole thing it's not a problem but i i think it's not a problem for them just because that's how they're taught from day one right i'm not relying on doing the whole chain all the time to teach it to my dog my dog knows my dogs know the pieces i've put the pieces together they understand that and then if i just do a piece it's not like they forget how to do the the whole exercise they're just used to that what um other aspects of kind of how you structure training really do you feel have an impact on creating that balance between motivation and precision um so i think that uh what so for example when i'm teaching something my dog has to think so if you think about yourself like the last time you learned something that you have never done before right so i'm always doing new things so that's always fresh in my head so um when i first learned something new i'm slow because i'm thinking right i'm like okay so like um a year to go i want to get into indoor rock climbing and so my friend and i wanted to learn how to um belay each other which is basically just you know prevent you from falling so you have to tie a knot in its simplest form i have to learn how to tie a knot a specific way right so the instructor's teaching it he teaches step one step two step three we do it we muck it up i'm slow as molasses right and even once i learned it like if i've then a week we'd come back and i'm like oh god how did

that go again and it's really slow and that's perfectly fine because i'm learning it if i do it routinely so if i'm tying that knot multiple times a week every week week after week month after month before you know it i'm going to be tying it super fast and i don't even have to really pay that much attention i i can be having a conversation while i'm doing it so it's the same with our dogs so sometimes people feel like um they're teaching it and they need to teach it fast so they like get the dog really aroused and the dog's like ah and they're like do it fast and the whole thing's a big disaster well because the dog can't think right so i like i allow my dogs to do it slow when zeal learned stuff it was so slow i wanted to poke my eyeballs out but that was just he didn't want to be wrong and he's like no he's like hold on a minute i'm thinking okay fine so he'd do it painfully slow and i just let him do it and then the more com more repetition he had the more confident he became he would just innately become faster and faster and faster right all on his own so does that mean i didn't add a little more arousal over time or play more you know do more tugging well yes over time i did but after he learned it because if i did it too soon he would actually like if i tugged and said okay we're gonna heal he'd go hold on i can't heal right now and it would be like it felt like 10 minutes of him sneezing and stretching and doing all these shenanigans to lower his arousal because he's like i need to think and i can't think where you just put me so that is a really intelligent animal right other dogs are like well you put me here so i'm here and they don't have the ability to say but i can't think right now so it just becomes a big mess so you know like a navy seal expression is slow is smooth and smooth is fast right so let my dogs learn it slow they start to get as it gets more fluent it gets smoother and smoother and smoother they get more confident and gets faster faster so that's um one of the things i do i manage their arousal i want them to be aroused enough obviously so they're you know engaged and into what we're doing but not so aroused that the wheels are coming off because that's not conducive to learning right um once they've learned it like now my dogs are fully trained i can put them in a much higher state of arousal and they can still do their work because they know their job really really really well so i don't know is that what you were am i that is what i was looking for you hit you hit it on on the nose um so the part of you're talking about all this right

is that you have the new class on the calendar um do you want to talk a little more directly kind of about the class itself maybe what you're covering in that class this term um and who should consider signing up yeah so i think any level can sign up right beginner because like i said i do these things from the beginning so um we look at games and different things to make all the pieces really fun and keep them motivated if you have a more advanced dog this is a perfect opportunity to pull those pieces out and put a lot of drive and animation back into them um i go over how i teach quote-unquote precision behavior so that we change kind of the definition of precision and just turn it into something fun so it's really about the pieces keeping all the pieces super fun keep maintaining motivation for all the pieces and that therefore precision and motivation really kind of be get wrapped up into being the same thing and just to help people change their mindset about precision so that it's not something bad or it's not something negative and so it's something that the dogs just really um like to do and then they're having fun throughout the entire exercise versus the dogs are usually fairly happy at the beginning then you know their attitude kind of dips in the middle towards the end and then at the very end like finish they're like finish cookie now because that's really predictable so um so yeah so that's what we're um doing in this class um yeah and i to me that's super fun i think that you know maintaining the pieces keeps the dogs really engaged and um really interested and motivated to do obedience um because like i said inherently it's not reinforcing so it's really our job to keep it fun and we can absolutely do that it's just you know not training the old way the way we used to which is just teach the pieces and do the whole chain over and over and over again yeah so uh that's not the only thing you have on the calendar right now do you want to plug anything else to talk about your other classes at all uh my other class is my open fun foundations class which this is the first session time ever i have um a ta so i think that's um super nice for people especially silver and bronze it gives you an opportunity to get feedback um from debbie who's been my student for an incredibly long time she has literally taken every single one of my classes multiple times every single one of my workshops every single one of my webinars she's been my assistant at camp so i think she had definitely

has an idea of how i train so she's an excellent resource and i think my third class is maintaining engagement at a distance which is always super challenging for people so we do tons and tons of games there so the dog stays engaged as we leave them and when we turn around and look at them right before we ask them to do a position change or something like that and i don't know i think i have a workshop running right now on engagement cues maybe and then i don't know i just finished what was the other workshop on oh i just finished one coming up on fronts and finishes oh and a webinar next week on developing a training plan that's for anybody really any sport um yeah so i have a lot of stuff out there because there's a couple things i can't really keep track half the time fair enough uh all right any final thoughts or key points you kind of want to leave folks with no i think the main thing is that obedience can be fun it can be fun and it can be highly motivating fun for you fun for the dog um you just have to change your mindset and precision can be fun um all the behaviors can be fun and like i said in this class we cover tons of um tricks and games and fun easy things to do to make that happen awesome all right well thank you so much for coming on the podcast thank you for having me as always thanks and thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in we'll be back this time next week with sarah bruski to talk about up dog and the various games you can play with your dog and a frisbee 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 today's show is brought to you by the fenty dog sports academy special thanks to denise fendy for supporting this podcast music provided royalty free by bensound.com the track featured here is called buddy audio editing provided by chris lang thanks again for tuning in and happy training to you Thank you.