E66: 아만다 넬슨(Amanda Nelson) - "원거리 도입하기"

I think it's fairly common, especially if that's something that you're, you know, wanting to do in the future. It's, you know, kind of a goal or, you know, something that you're looking towards. I think it's fairly easy to go ahead and incorporate those distance skills in with the foundation skills. I do it a lot with my young dogs. With that being said, I listen to the dog quite a bit and, you know, don't want to push them too much or ask for too much distance work right off the bat. But I do start kind of incorporating some of that confidence work and some of those kind of skills to help, you know, build up that confidence and build up that drive to want to, you know, work away from me, especially, you know, with those younger dogs and, you know, get them used to that kind of, that kind of work and that kind of distance right from the get go. So when you're training your own dogs, at what point do you, do you start that? Do you begin kind of working on those distance skills? It really depends on the dog. Nargles right from the very beginning was very much into, she liked moving away from me. She liked doing the distance work, you know, so I started incorporating it pretty much right from the start. When I started doing even my groundwork skills with her, you know, and my targeting and working with cone work and things like that. I started asking for quite a bit of distance from her because that's really what she wanted and really what she liked. Allie, on the other hand, who I said was five, she is just now this year really wanting to get into that distance work. You know, she's just now kind of coming into her own and thinking that maybe she would like to do something like that. So, you know, her foundation, I did incorporate, you know, distance work and distance skills, but I definitely didn't push for it or ask too much of her just because she just wasn't mentally quite ready. So, you know, with her, I kind of let her tell me when she was ready to start, you know, adding more and more distance. But I still incorporated it, I guess, in her training. I just didn't push it, I guess, would be the best way to explain it. So you mentioned cones a little bit in there. I mean, what are those early steps in training kind of look like for those that are out there and interested? Um, so I start with the cones and pretty much the early steps when I start doing foundation work with my distance training, even the cones are great. Even if your eye is not looking towards distance, you're just looking at handling and commitment skills. I start teaching my dogs to, you know, work with the cones.

You know, when I say out, that means go to the outside of the cone. Here means come to the inside of the cone. Um, I kind of developed working with the cones and working my dogs on those because I didn't have a lot of space and I still don't. Um, and I travel extensively without equipment. So using the cones, I can set them up at campgrounds or I can set them up just about anywhere and I can work my young dogs on all their distance and directional skills with, you know, four to six cones, depending on how much space I have. And so when I'm beginning with them, it basically is just kind of, you know, here, we're going to send you out around a couple of cones, build their confidence to go out away from me to get around those cones. Um, and then I can also work on my handling timing because my dog's definitely going faster, you know, just going around a cone as opposed to going over a jump, you know, and things like that. So it improves my timing quite a bit by using the cones. And I can also work on not only their distance skills, but their directional skills as well. So how do you then kind of take those and build on them? I guess kind of what are some of the maybe intermediate steps between go around a cone and sending to an obstacle that may be, you know, a few yards away. So what I usually do, um, it's what I do with Allie, I think, and is what really helped build her confidence and build her drive to, you know, want to work away from me is once I have my dogs doing what I call cone work. Um, so they're doing, you know, that six cones and we're doing a bunch of different directional changes, distance work and things like that. Um, I'll take the cones and I'll place them next to jumps or hoops. Um, so they can be placed next to the wing of a jump. And because I've done so much foundation and value building for those cones, when I give my dog an out cue or, you know, any, whatever directional cue I want to use, um, they're going to see that cone and go, Oh, okay. You know, I, I know that cone. I know that. And be able to push out around that jump wing and, and, you know, start applying the cones to obstacles. Um, I can also use them kind of in sequences. What I really like to use them for is in between say a contact tunnel discrimination. So when I say out, you know, they can go out tunnel or here, um, into the, you know, contact or walk it. So I like to kind of start blending them in with my equipment and it gives my dogs something that is a visual, you know? So when I say out, they see that cone and they're like, okay, yes, I need to go out around that cone.

And then I can start kind of fading that cone back a little bit. Um, I've also brought them back in for my older dogs. As an example, Nargles is having, for some reason, she's having a brain fart on her discriminations. Um, she's in her old age, she's forgotten what that means. So that's right. So in her training sessions, I've actually brought the cones back and I've put them in between the contact and the tunnel and just kind of helping her remember that out tunnel really, truly does mean out tunnel. Um, and so they're great for that too, is to kind of help, you know, bring those older dogs if they need a little tuning up or something like that, you know, bring it back into perspective for them. So just, just cause I know you mentioned out and here. So do you mind just repeating which ones, which way again? I know people are always interested in cues. Yeah. So, um, so my basic cues out means for my dog to move out away from me. Um, here means for my dog to move in towards me, just like that discrimination out would be out to the outside obstacle, which is usually a tunnel. Um, and then here would be to come to the inside obstacle. Um, a switch means for my dog to turn away from me. So if they're on my left side, they're going to turn away from that left side. And then I have a tight, which is basically just my wing wrap cue. Um, when I want them to wrap a hoop or wrap a jump or something similar, and I need them to turn very tightly back towards me. Those are kind of my base cues. Um, and then I, I tend to blend them together. So for instance, actually, um, just today I'm at an agility competition today. Um, and Allie needed to change direction. So I need to give her a switch meant, which meant for her to turn away from me. And then I needed her to wrap the jump. So I would say switch, which meant for her to turn away. And then I would say tight, which meant for her to wrap the jump towards me. That's awesome. Cause it really helps communicate all those different, uh, spatial things, I guess, different directionals, right? Yeah. So I know distance is a pretty big element in the competition venue you usually compete in. Is it, is it beneficial for dogs and other venues too? What advantages does training for distance really give an agility team? Um, I definitely think it's beneficial. A lot of venues now, I think are all asking for more and more distance. Um, and I think it's beneficial no matter what, um, agility venue you want to do with your dog, especially for the distance classes, you know, NADAC chances or gamblers, um, you know, fast, any of that.

It's great to have those skills and each venue asks for just a little bit of a, you know, they're all a little different in the distance skills they ask, but the core quality of, or the core, um, you know, skill that you're looking for is for your dog to, you know, move away from you. And so I truly think distance is great for that. And distance is great to be able to use, to get where you need to be as a handler, to be able to send your dog out away from you to go do that jump while, so you can get somewhere else. That I think is the biggest benefit of distance, especially for me. I I'm not perhaps the speediest handler in the world. So I like to use that to my advantage that I can kind of send my dog out in a way, and then I can get to where I need to go to help them on a piece of the course where they really need me to be there as a handler. So I love using distance for that. Now, is this something that all teams can learn? Is it something all teams can at least work on? I definitely think so. Um, you know, between teaching online and teaching in person, I feel like I've dealt with just about every breed in the whole wide world, um, you know, mixed breeds. It just feels like I've seen them all, which is fantastic. Cause I love going to seminars and seeing all these different breeds. And I, at one seminar I taught last year in this, the same session, I had a great Dane and a Chihuahua and it was fantastic. Oh, wow. It made my whole year, but you know, each dog is going to be a little different in how they learn. Each dog is going to be a little different in how, how much distance they can give. I have, like I said, I have three border collies and all three of them are vastly different in what they're comfortable with, what distances are comfortable. Um, and I, I really tend to listen to the dog and I do believe all, all, you know, handler and dog teams are capable of distance. It's just a matter of, in my opinion, confidence is the biggest thing with distance being clear in your cues and your dog, having the confidence to perform those cues away from you is huge. And I think once you've crossed that bridge, once you've taught your dog that, you know, when I say out, I really mean out and you've built so much value for moving out away from you, whether it's with, you know, the cones or whatever system you, you know, you would like to use. But once you've, you've built all that confidence and built that drive to move away from you, I think dogs really like it. Like I loved watching, for instance, the little Chihuahua I worked with.

And she just lit up every time her owner said out, she's like, I can, I can, I can. And her little legs are going a hundred miles an hour. And she was just so excited because, you know, she got to do something all by herself sort of thing. She was so happy to go show that she really could do that. You know, it was very cool. I was waiting for that C word to come up because I know it's what we talked about kind of heavily last time was the fact that confidence is such a huge component of good distance skills. And so I knew, I knew it was going to come up sooner or later. Yeah. So your class on intro to distance, I know it's, you're, you're teaching that this session. So it starts on June 1st. I can't remember if this is coming out right before this or right after that, but would you be willing to share a little more kind of about the class itself? What you'll cover? Maybe who would be a good fit? Yeah, definitely. I love this class. So it's definitely one of my favorites. I love the beginning stages of teaching distance. I love watching dogs kind of light up when they start putting pieces together. Um, so this class is going to be, it covers all my foundation work. So it's very minimal equipment. Um, I do think towards about week five, week six, we start using like jumps and hoops. Um, but it's very minimal. A lot of it is focusing on the handlers, making sure that our handlers are all using the feet in the right direction, the arms in the right direction. Um, that the verbals match what all that should be saying and teaching the dog to really, a lot of it is, is again, it's confidence, building that confidence to go out around that cone, um, building value for the body language and the verbal cue of out, you know, so every time they hear it that they light up and want to go out and do it. Um, so this class really focuses on building that up, um, as far as who it's good for, you know, so the last time I ran this class, I had, um, a bunch of foundation like puppies and young dogs who are, you know, just coming in and really wanting to get that foundation training right from the get go. Um, and really wanted to build that confidence. But then I also had about three older dogs, um, that came in and the dogs just, you know, they're competing, they're high level competition dogs and the dogs just weren't, they weren't giving that same spark that they were. And so, you know, the students really wanted to see if maybe this class would kind of help bring that back. And that was a ton of fun, you know, so it is a foundation groundwork class, but whether

I think you have a young dog or even an older dog who maybe you want to, you know, start working on some distance skills because maybe you haven't previously, or, you know, want to try to build that confidence back up. Um, I really liked this class in that respect that it really, the focus is all about bringing up that spark and bringing that confidence and that push to get them, you know, to want to go out and, and do things all by themselves sort of thing. This wasn't necessarily in the questions, but I know earlier you kind of mentioned that one of the reasons you like using your cones is because it lets you work in a fairly limited amount of space. How much space is somebody going to need to kind of work on the exercises from this class? Um, very minimal. Like I said, towards the end of class, I set up some more advanced type exercises that have a couple of jumps, a couple of hoops, that sort of thing. Um, but they're more of kind of like bonus lessons. Most of the stuff is focused around the four cones and most of the lessons that you'll see if you sign up for the class, most of everything, all my lessons are filmed. Um, in a very tiny little area, I would say maybe, oh geez, 25 feet wide, maybe by 25 feet is very small. If that, um, enough for four cones set up. Um, and some of the videos are even, you can, you can watch my progression of travels because they're filmed in a different location almost every week. So it's a very small little area. I think I usually recommend people have about 30, 30 by 30 feet somewhere in there. So they have enough room to kind of get around, but I tend to modify any of the lessons if it doesn't quite work for someone's space. Gotcha. So now in addition to that class, you're also teaching an agility handler's choice this session, right? So I'd love to hear a little bit about what kind of problems maybe students could work on if they wanted to take that class. Again, handler's choice. That's one of my, that's again, another favorite class. Apparently all mine I like a lot. So that's probably a good thing. Um, that's a good start, right? I was just getting ready to say, well, that's my favorite class. So handler's choice, I think is a ton of fun. And, you know, there's other instructors in the school that offer handler's choice. And I always sign up for them at least at bronze because I love seeing in one six week class, you get to see so much stuff. It's just so awesome. So the last time I ran handler's choice, we had people wanting to work on weave poles. We had distance, we had handling. I had one handler who wanted to prep for an upcoming championships.

And then I had a couple of puppies that were just working on cone work. Um, I believe one dog didn't want to do any agility. She just wanted to focus on just her, like her start line and things like that. So the handler's choice, as long as it's agility related, um, you know, so obviously equipment related, you know, you want to work on your weave poles, jumping contacts, that sort of thing. Also, you know, skill wise, just, you know, you want to work on your directionals, distance, start line. Um, we kind of cover it all as long as it's, you know, related back into agility. Some, you know, some point for me, but I, the handler's choice, I think is just so much fun. Again, anytime I see an instructor in the school offer handler's choice, I always sign up at bronze. Cause it is such a wealth of information. You get to watch all these gold students working on a ton of things. It's like having, you know, if there's 10 golds, it's like watching 10 different classes all at once. Um, it's fantastic. I think handler's choice is fantastic. It's definitely, I think one of the more undervalued classes on the schedule, right? Folks don't really realize that even if they were to hire an instructor for private lessons for six weeks, like that compared to the cost of gold class, um, they'd be, you know, in a very different situation and they'd be working once a week, not several times a week. So basically anything agility related, that's not on the schedule specifically with the class, they could basically come to you for. Yep. That is right. That's right. Awesome. Well, for our last question here, I kind of want to try something new and I'm hoping it goes well. Originally we had those like three questions at the end of every interview, which was one of my favorite parts of doing a call with somebody, right? Especially asking for favorite pieces of training advice. And I used to get all kinds of great feedback on them. Now that we've had all the instructors on a couple of times, it makes it a little bit harder to, we don't ask the same question over and over again. Um, so I've been trying to go up with a new way to add a new question for returning guests. And I think I finally come up with one. You get to be the first guest to try and answer it. So, uh, no pressure. What's a lesson you've learned or that you've been reminded of recently when it comes to dog training? Honestly, just happened today. Um, I'm at a competition right now. Uh, yeah, see, this is perfect timing. It's a good question. So I'm actually at a trial this weekend. Nargles isn't competing this weekend. So I'm putting all my focus into Allie.

And I found myself today because I've never put a lot of pressure on Allie because I've let her kind of blossom and become her own little doggie. But I've always, always had Nargles, you know, to run. And I realized today I was running Allie and I found myself just putting all this pressure onto her of, well, you know, now, you know, Nargles can't run for a couple of weekends because she's got a little injury. So I'm letting her have some time off. And all of a sudden I just found myself just putting all this pressure onto, you know, you, well, you need to do this and you need to do this and we should be doing this. And I, I learned today over the past and I've been doing it for the past couple of weekends, patience and let your dog be your dog. Let them just be, you know, I found she completely, she completely changed. She, you know, she was really kind of coming up and I'm like, you know, I was running her and Nargles together. I'm like, wow, you know, look at Allie go. She's really, she's given me so much good stuff. Then all of a sudden these past couple of weekends, I've just, to me, until somebody kind of pointed it out, I keep telling myself, oh, she's just, she's going backwards. She, she's, you know, she's not doing well. Now she's, you know, she's not doing her contacts very well. She's not doing this very well. She's not, and a big thing, she's not wanting to change directions really well. And I'm, you know, she's just, she's being, you know, we're, we're regressing. I need to do this. I need to retrain this. And then I, I kind of took a step back and a friend of mine, you know, I was like, you know, you're treating her like she's already this elite level competition dog. And she's not, you know, because all your focus is on her. Definite lesson I learned that I think everybody, I don't ever, I think every dog trainer, every handler, no matter what sport you find yourself kind of falling into that, that trap of, you know, my dog needs to be this. My dog is this old and all these other dogs have all these titles and my dog should have that title or, you know, the litter mates from that litter are all going to world team, but my dog is not, you know, that sort of thing. And I found myself doing that. I found myself going, oh, you know, she's, she's five. She should do this and she should be this and we should be here. And I've never felt that way with her before because I've always kind of had the other, you know, my other dog to focus on. And I found myself falling in that trap. And so it's a lesson.

I don't quite know how to put into words what I guess the one word would be behind it, but I guess it's, it's more of, you know, let, let your dog be who they are, I guess, is what I'm trying to say in a roundabout jumble of words. I think though, I honestly, I think it's a great lesson because I think anybody who's ever competed in anything, not just agility knows that feeling, right? You start to get nervous for competition, especially if you only have one dog that you're running, like you, you get a little hyper-focused, you get a little hyper-attentive. You, you start to stress about little things that maybe wouldn't bother you if you had another dog to think about running before them or something else to think about or focus on. Like, I totally get that. That seems like it's something that will resonate. Yep. Big time. Thank you so much for coming back on the podcast, Amanda. This is great. Thank you so much. I love this. This is just fantastic. It was fun to chat. And thank you to all of our wonderful listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week. This time, we'll actually be back with Denise Fenzie because we'll be doing a short recap of camp from this year, and I'll share a recording of her opening talk so you won't want to miss it. If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzie Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzie 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.