E213: 사라 스트레밍(Sarah Stremming) - "셰이핑의 수수께끼 풀기"

But I guess we should kind of start with the basics, the definition. So what is Shaping? Such a good question, right? I think that dog trainers in particular hear that word and all just have a story in their head about what it is. And that's not really our fault because the teaching and learning is actually all over the place when it comes to this concept. But Shaping is really, it's short for Shaping by Successive Approximation. And what that means really is just that we are selecting for tiny slices of our final behavior or to borrow my friend Hannah Brannigan's phrase, our agenda behavior. I love that. So if we've got this agenda, if we utilize Shaping to get there, that just means that we are selecting pieces of that agenda along the way. And so when we define it like that, all good training really is Shaping. And so I think that that's an important, you know, if I could like sing one thing from the rooftops, it's that Shaping isn't this weird thing that you do, or it is, but it's not only this weird thing that you do with like a chicken on a table and a clicker and a bowl of stuff. Like it's, and it's also not sitting on the floor with a box in front of you and your dog is standing there and you're waiting for them to offer behavior. I think that's a common misconception too. It's not defined as those things. It's defined by that process of selecting those approximations. Okay. So that both seems simple and complicated, but I want to, you know, I think you kind of mentioned trainers have their own story in there. And I want to dig into that a little bit more. So why is it that Shaping often feels so complicated? It comes with so much weight. I think it's because we all have like Shaping trauma. If we've been in dogs for, or training really for any length of time, we have a history of learning about this thing, or maybe learning about like what we'll call clicker training. Um, and, and trying it and diving in. If you're a crossover trainer, like myself, your, your history is very complicated. And then a lot of us have been made to play this game where another trainer shapes us with a clicker in maybe a seminar or workshop format. And if that game is not extremely well run, and if your trainer is not really good at what they're doing, it's a really stressful game. And so when I teach about Shaping in seminars, I have had people think I was going to make them play that game and they start to get up and leave. And so they've all got this trauma associated with being shaped. And then yet we talk about it as like the kind way to train dogs. And, Ooh, that's a big, that's a big problem, right?

That's a, that's an intersection of some things that are really interesting. And so, you know, and then yet further still people maybe went to a chicken camp where they were made to cry by a person who told them how worthless they are. Um, or there there's just, there is so much baggage here. Um, or they were told, you know, just wait, the dog's supposed to offer stuff like just what's wrong with your dog that they're not offering stuff. Right. And so then they have a dog that quits and gives up in training when the dog was perfectly fine with a food lure. And then they're again, made to feel inadequate because their dog gave up. And I mean, it is just, there are so many stories like that. And my goal with my students is always to just kind of start new. All of the ideas in your head about what this is that make you hate it or make you afraid of it or make you think it's too hard are not, that's just the trauma talking. You can just let it, we can move on from that. Um, because it's, it should actually be a simple process. That doesn't mean easy necessarily, but it should be a simple process. And, you know, it's that, uh, quote, um, I'm not even actually sure who said it. I think Ken Ramirez that, um, you know, great training is actually the basics done really, really well. So that's what I think about when I think about shaping. When we're talking shaping, are we talking location specific marker cues, reward specific marker cues, a clicker? Can you kind of talk about that piece of it a bit? Totally. And this is one that's coming up a ton in class already. We've already, we've only been in class a week and it's a lot of people are asking. And the reason they're asking is because these complex marker systems are getting really popular and really common. And so then people are always going, wait, am I supposed to click then say the thing that tells them where to eat the food or, you know, what am I supposed to do here? The answer is you want to select one marker and you want to select the one that is the best one for the job and I don't care which one that is. But knowing which one is the best one for the job means that you need to think about it a little bit. So if I am using a clicker, it is because I need precision. Precision. Basically, it is the most precise tool that we have. It's the most precise marker that we have. I like to say that a clicker is like a scalpel. A scalpel is not always what you need, right? So if I'm stirring a pot of spaghetti, I don't need a scalpel for that. The best tool for that is something else. Um, you don't want to end up with lots of little spaghetti pieces.

You don't, right? And so, um, so if you have this complex communication system with your dog, totally fine. If you use it, you want to be sure that you're using it with intention and that you're using it as an actual marker. Um, where I see a lot of confusion would be click, then say toss or whatever means that I'm throwing the cookie or something like that, just using one marker and then, and trying to select the best marker for the job is where I like to begin. Most of my students start out just using a clicker because again, we're working on handler mechanics. We're working on being clean and precise and a mechanical, you know, thing that you, a button that you push is helpful when it comes to trying to keep yourself precise rather than trying to say, say toss and then say good and then say, you know, X or whatever, whatever it is, because based on where the dog is and where you're going to throw the cookie, because like, as we go, I might change where I'm delivering the food. Does that mean now that I'm changing my marker within one session? That doesn't feel super clean to me. So, um, the complicated answer is that absolutely you can use your reward specific or location specific markers. Um, but you want to be thoughtful and you want to pick the best thing for the job. And sometimes the best thing for the job is the clicker. For me, when I'm acquiring new behaviors, I'm almost always going to be using a clicker. So you kind of, you talked about it a little bit in there, but I just want to clarify, um, you know, for people who may not be super familiar with all of this stuff, it's the clicker or the word toss, right? This is what you're getting at there. It's like, you don't need both. Yes. In fact, if you use both, that's just noise. One of them is just noise if you're using both. Um, so if you are using a clicker, which maybe doesn't tell the dog where the food is, and you've set up kind of a, a deal, a contract with your dog that you're going to tell them where the food is, you want to get very clean about showing them with your delivery where the food is. And we go over that in the beginning of classes, just clean food delivery, because I do get a lot of students who are using their location specific marker, but the dog is still confused and frantic because their delivery is poor. So, um, yes, it's gotta be, it's one thing, not several things. We, we like to just, we like to talk, we like to click and then say the thing and then say some more things. And a lot of it winds up just being noise. Yeah. Yeah. I had the fun this past weekend of doing a, uh, a toy seminar with a friend of mine.

And there was somebody there who wasn't familiar with any of this stuff. And we got to talking about it. So fun when you actually get into it and play with it. It is really fun. And it's very interesting. And I remember when I was first learning it, um, especially with toys, it really upped my, my game and my communication with toys for sure. Yeah. All right. So back to kind of the topic at hand and, you know, often we're talking about shaping, you hear the ABCs kind of thrown around and, um, for anybody not familiar, antecedent behavior consequence, ABC. Um, and we often hear that we should manipulate our antecedents, um, manipulate that first piece, but what does that actually mean? Yeah, it's a good question. Right. And so what we're talking about is that, you know, generally speaking, when we're observing a behavior, a B, there's something that comes before it and there's something that comes after it. Um, and these things all kind of work together to produce whatever our next behavior might be. The antecedent is the scene upon which the behavior is going to occur. It's, it can be a simple concept. It can be a really complex concept because whether or not my dog has eaten today is involved in the antecedents. What, what my dog has eaten today, what food that I am using, what time of day it is like all of that is, is part of the antecedents, um, surrounding this behavior. And so setting up your antecedent is just basically setting your environment so that the behavior you're after your agenda behavior is the most likely thing that's going to occur. So Melissa, if I'm shaping you, if we're playing that game, we're in a seminar and I don't want to traumatize you. Um, and let's say that I want you to, let's say that my agenda behavior, cause it's always something silly is you're going to put a red solo cup on top of your head. Okay. So that's my agenda. You don't know that you're outside of the room and I'm setting up my antecedents. Is it wise of me to have a whole bunch of stuff sitting out? No, it's not right. So at, at our basic, basic level, we got to clean up. So I talk about something in the class, um, that I just use the acronym cat, which is imperfect because it also refers to something else in behavior training, but let's just put that aside. And the C in cat is clean. So you just need to clear out your space, make sure that there aren't other cues happening. Right. And, um, so I'm going to make sure it's clean. I might just have a table with a red solo cup sitting on it. Right. So we can definitely start there, but we can also be so much smarter than even that.

Because if I want you to put it on your head and there's a rack on the wall full of hats, couldn't I just put it on that rack? Right. So now I'm actually saying, and what cues exist in this environment that I'm going to use to my advantage, right? So it's not just ridding the environment of other cues, but asking yourself what cues exist in this environment that I can use to make this as obvious as possible. You mentioned that. And I was like, oh, have everybody else in the room have a solo cup on their head when you walk in? Oh my God. You would instantly do it. Right. So using social cues, um, you would instantly do it. And so it's, we should be thinking like that. Somewhere in the trauma, we all decided that the best, that the, that the best, the superior way to shape is to have no cues available. Right. And we kind of colloquially refer to it as free shaping, which the phrase kind of makes my skin crawl and makes a lot of people skin crawl, um, who are, you know, really well versed in, in this process, I think, because it means to us that thing, that, that, that idea that it is superior to select these behaviors from thin air. When in reality, any trainer that I know, and I know trainers who are doing really fascinating, interesting, cool things, um, you know, like one of my best friends trains marine mammals to do really complicated things. And, um, you know, when I'm talking to trainers like that, oh God, they're not leaving anything to chance. You don't select behaviors out of thin air with a sea lion for God's sake, because by the way, nobody's created a basket muzzle that a sea lion can wear yet. So like, you're not, you know, if you are free in an area with an animal like that, like you want to set it up as best as possible. But for some reason, dog trainers decided somewhere that the superior way to do this is to not have any other cues that exist and arranging the antecedents and really talking about that and diving into that is a huge part of, um, it's a huge part of the way that I try to teach shaping so that we can actually just help ourselves as best as possible and know that thinking it's superior to not have those other cues is the trauma talking and nothing else. And, you know, if we have an agenda behavior, maybe if we don't have an agenda behavior, we're supposed to see what our dog can come up with on our own. It's a different story, but like you've got an agenda, right? Like, of course you want to help the dog see your agenda, right? You do. And I also stopped doing that thing where I just see what they come up with.

Um, a long time ago, I think a lot of people learned a shape like that as well, where it was just, um, you've got an object or whatever, and you're just kind of picking whatever it is out of thin air. And I think that a lot of dogs learn to become, um, frantic and not actually build upon their behavior that way because you just were clicking something different every time, clicking something new. So that's also something that, um, if I start out that way, I'm very quickly getting myself on an agenda path for the learner. It's for the learner, Melissa. It's not for my control enthusiasm. Not even a little bit. Right. All right. So that's antecedents. I want to talk about kind of the other end of the ABCs, the C, the consequence. I think most people think, all right, we're positive trainers. So C should basically stand for cookie. What's so complicated about that? But, uh, Sarah, what is so complicated about that? Well, consequences drive behavior, as we say, right? So the consequence is important. And also I already had a student get hung up on the word consequence because it had negative connotations for this person. And it kind of does for us. Like we don't like that word. Like we in the American English speaking language don't say consequence to mean here's a cupcake. Like we don't. So all learning science jargon is stupid and bad. It's all associated with things that we already believe about the world. Like the words negative and positive. The word consequence is, is one of these problematic words. It just means the thing that follows the behavior. It just means the thing that's having an effect on whether this behavior continues or not. And so what is interesting about that to me, I'll say interesting instead of complicated is that if we are smart, we can make our C a part of our A, which makes our A, B, and C exist in a really beautiful, clean loop. And so what does that mean making the C part of the A? Well, if, if my A was, um, you know, as the dog is standing opposite me in a room and there is some object that I want the dog to interact with in between us. So maybe it's a, um, maybe it's a box and my agenda is all four feet in the box. Let's just go simple. Right. And the dog is opposite the box to me. And that's my A. Then I can deliver my C, my consequence or my cookie. Let's just change it and call it cookie. Um, even if it's access to a squirrel, it could be so many things, but cookie is nicer. Um, if I deliver my C to my dog's mouth in the box, my dog is now no longer at A at the end of my

repetition. But if I throw my treats back up to where my dog was originally, and he gets out of the box and goes and eats it and turns around and faces me, we are back at A again. Right. And so it's so important for us to think about that because what happens is you've got a green trainer. Oh my gosh, the dog got in the box. I'm so excited. I click, I feed the dog in the box. And then I go, now what? Maybe I click and feed the dog in the box again. Right. Maybe. And now I'm just building duration in the box, which could be great, but I didn't train that agenda behavior of get in box. Right. So then I think what happens is they go and they just put a cookie somewhere haphazardly that's not in the box. Right. And so they are resetting, restarting their loop by putting the cookie somewhere. But if they do it in a haphazard manner, and now the dog's not back at A, now we might get nosing the box. Now we might get one foot in the box. We're no longer getting four feet in the box. And now we have confusion. Right. Now, if you, depending on temperament, the dog is saying, well, I didn't want to do this anyway. I'm leaving. Or, you know, I don't know, biting the box and throwing it at your face. I'm barking at you. Like it depends on temperament, what you get next, but what you don't get next is another beautiful, clean repetition through your loop. So placement of reinforcement is what we're talking about. And it's something that we will discuss at length because it's, if we're doing it right, it's part of the antecedent. You use the example of kind of throwing the cookie before or behind you. And I think, I think people don't always recognize how many options they really have about reward placement. I know that's kind of what your sample lectures on, right? I think, I think that's your sample lecture for the class. Do you mind just giving you another example or two, just so people can kind of get some idea of the. Yes, because I love more than smart consequence arrangement so that I get the behavior that I want. In fact, I would say the majority of my like household training with my dogs is just smart application of consequences. Like there happens to be a loaded snuffle mat in the X-pen every time Raya, my puppy walks into my office. There just happens to be that there. And so she walks in my office and walks in the X-pen. It is just something like I produce the behavior that way. So other examples would be one of my, one of the easiest fun ones for me is if your agenda is for the dog to walk backwards, placing the treat in such a way that they will walk backwards

in order to put themselves back in that starting position. If we train them that they want to be in front of us looking up, which is part of what we also need to teach. That's a core foundation behavior. Um, then placing that treat between our feet so that after they eat it, they're going to back up to look up and give us eye contact. We're going to then produce our next behavior that way. Um, other ways that we can do it would be to use reinforcement that the dog is actually looking at so that they're not facing us. So if we are interested in, um, a behavior, perhaps I want my dog to look ahead when they get into their, like two on, two off on a dog walk. Um, if I want my dog to be looking ahead, but I walk up and give a treat from my pocket each time, he's probably going to curl back and look at me and wait. Right. So utilizing pre-placed food or throwing the food at a target after I click, um, that's out ahead of the dog is going to, again, help me to produce that final behavior because also we have to recognize that the behaviors that the dog does between the click and the acquisition of the reinforcement matter and they all get woven into your behavior. So looking at what those behaviors are and knowing that they are being reinforced, we can be, we can be such smarter trainers, right? We can be so much smarter about that. Um, I also really love to, so along those lines, if I'm looking for a specific postural, um, maneuver for my dog. So maybe I want the dog to do a sit pretty behavior without flinging his front legs out like Spider-Man, which is what Felix wants to do. I would like him to actually just sit up. Um, then I'm going to need to feed him in such a way that encourages that behavior, that, that postural behavior. And this again, comes back to the trauma that people think this isn't okay, that they think that you're cheating. If you reinforce in a specific position or reinforce in such a way that encourages that behavior in the future. I, I think I do know where that stuff came from, which is a whole other conversation, but that's not important. But what I, what is important is that none of that is real feeding in the position that is advantageous to you is always smart. And if you're getting a behavior you don't like, but the dog is like roughly right. So maybe you're doing heel work and the dog is like roughly is, is like curled in front just a little bit, but is roughly right is in heel work. Fix that with your reinforcement placement, rather than trying to manipulate what the dog is doing, um, or correct what the dog is doing.

Just fix it with your reinforcement placement. I mean, so many problems can be solved that way. So we really dive in deep, um, on that piece and dig into it. Yeah. And at least part of that, right. It's just that it muddies the water between shaping and luring, but you know, yeah. So the word hole you didn't want to go down. You know, even when I'm luring Melissa, I'm shaping because I never just lure the whole, the whole shebang. I never just lure the dog into the whole thing and then feed them. I'm still luring approximations. Right. And I'm very quickly asking the dog to show me what I just lured. So like shade, uh, Whitesell calls that, um, putting the behavior on offer. So like she'll lure the behavior, lure the behavior, lure the behavior, wait. The dog begins to prompt the behavior. She's going to then mark and finish luring and feed. And like, um, that's still shaping. It still is. It's the believing that there need to be like these clear black lines between all of these things, I think has gotten us into trouble. All right. So we've talked about the A and we've talked about the C. So I suppose that means there's only one thing left, right? No. Um, that we should talk about the B at least a little bit. Uh, so a big part of shaping a behavior, right. Is understanding how to shift criteria and knowing what to click. And, you know, which of course we've, you know, if we've done our homework with the other two bits, if we've set up our antecedents and our consequences correctly, hopefully that's easier. But I think, you know, splitting behaviors down and then successfully shifting criteria is really, really hard a lot of the time for the human half of the team. Yeah. So where do we start there? Yeah. I think that unfortunately this is where people start is trying to understand this part rather than all those other processes. Um, and that's why they get confused and frustrated. And so do their dogs, because this is the part that takes you flexing a certain muscle quite a bit. So a few of the things that are required. One of the things is that you've got to be able to see all of the pieces. You have to be able to see the approximations. Um, really great tip again from Hannah that I heard her say on somebody else's podcast was, you know, if you're, if you're looking to shape a specific behavior, get a video of somebody else's dog doing the behavior and watch it in slow motion so that you can see all of the approximations. Um, so that's a really good tip, but also just practicing. So we've already, we've been in

class for a week and I've already had the students practicing identifying approximations of behaviors. So I post videos of some simple behaviors, like opening a book, and I want them to just tell me what are the approximations to this behavior? Like what are all the pieces involved here? But the other thing that I'm asking them is, and what are the prerequisite skills? Prerequisite skills. So teaching the dog some core skills is something that again, I think not talked about enough because if I go to teach my dog to do something really complicated and the dog doesn't already know what kind of what she needs to know in order to do that thing, I'm setting us both up for failure. Um, I look at all of my training like this. I don't teach them things until I think they're ready to learn them. Um, which is a little bit more, you know, nuanced. For instance, I'm not even going to think about jump work until I see you cleanly clearing logs in the woods because we're in the woods all the time. And when you're a silly puppy that you're scrambling over logs, we're not going to talk about that. You're, you can't even do it in real life. No way. Can you do it in a contrived situation that you don't naturally understand? Um, I am seeing Rhea, she's five months old, so we're not going to be doing any like serious full height jump training. Nobody emailed me about this, um, um, for a long time, but she just did a little puppy bump, jump bump grid because in the woods, she engaged her rear and pushed off and cleared a log that two weeks ago she scrambled underneath. Right? So just saying, what are your prerequisite skills for this behavior? So in the example of opening a book, nobody said that the learner should know what a book is, right? Or how to open it in the, in the first place. Like no one said that I've seen this learner open books, right? If the red solo cup were a hat and I wanted you to put it on your head, how much easier is that? So much easier for you to do, right? So if I'm going to use the hat rack to help me help you do this, right? You need to know what a hat rack is and you need to recognize that those are hats on it. If it's just a rack that's empty, that's not going to tell you much, right? Or if it's got coats on it, not helpful. Right? So with dogs, it comes down to what are the pieces that this dog really needs to be comfortable with and really needs to know. Um, the last time I ran Shaping Demystified, we, I had a couple of students teaching the dogs a really cute behavior

of getting inside a suitcase. So, um, and the queue is, are you packed? And it's super cute, right? So, so, um, but I wanted, and we had to dig in, we, we were getting a little bit stuck and I said, let's, let's think further about prerequisite skills. Does this dog know how, because the handler of course wants the dog to open the suitcase and get in. So it's not open, right? So the dog gets in and lays down with it closed, no problem. And there's a few ways you could go about this. You could physically have it more and more and more and more closed as the dog approaches, or you could put something, the dog totally outside of the training session, put something the dog really likes inside that suitcase and close it. Let them figure out that they know how to open this. Now that I've knows how to open it. So we did this with one of the student dogs. She knew how to open it very next session. She was opening it and getting it when they were really, really stuck on that before, because she doesn't know what a suitcase is. She doesn't know that it flaps open and you get in and it zips closed and then you fly to Disneyland. She doesn't know these things, right? That's just me. Is that just me hoping soon that I can do that? Um, so, so not too much longer, hopefully. Um, so what I'm saying, and obviously, you know, me, I'm just, I'm going on, I'm being very tangential right now, but teaching the dogs, some prerequisite skills are just kind of saying, can I make sure that you actually know how to do this and know how this works before I try to make you do it the way that I want you to do it? Right? So if we want to shape a retrieve, but this dog literally never picks anything up, it's going to be hard for us, right? So just setting up situations where they do learn to pick stuff up first, then talk about retrieve really, really important. And if you want a really nice dumbbell hold that is still, I'm going to say the dog needs some other stillness behaviors. Dog needs to know how to be still in the first place, right? Or you're going to get chompy, ugly dumbbellness, right? That we do not want. So when it comes to the B, it is about seeing the approximations, but it is not only that. When it's only that we, we get stuck a lot of the time. Seeing the approximations and then seeing what prerequisite or core skills will help us in teaching those first, that's just going to make you fly through as well as go easy on yourself. Also as a trainer, like do not walk into week two of shaping demystified and say, I would like the dog to sit up and hold a teddy bear to its chest with its feet.

When the most complex behavior you've maybe shaped is lay on a mat, right? Like let's walk before we run. We can get there. I think this is just because people think of shaping as teaching complex tricks. They think of it as, you know, put a quarter in a shot glass with your little dog teeth. Oh, that is hard, right? That's hard for them to do. It's hard for you to teach. How about we help you both out a little bit? Yeah. Yeah. All right. So we've covered quite a bit, but we haven't talked a ton specifically about the class. So you are teaching a class for April called Shaping Demystified. Do you want to talk a little bit about who it's for and, you know, why you developed it as a class? Yes. So who it's for is basically anybody who wants to get better at shape at their shaping skills. Um, or I love to have people who think they don't like shaping or think that their dog doesn't like it because, um, again, that's the trauma talking. Come on, let's go. It's fun. We, it can be fun. It should be fun. Um, and the reason, so that's what it's for, but the reason I developed it is because I see so, so many deficits in this area when I'm teaching my other classes. So it was really selfishly motivated. Um, for instance, worked up is kind of the class that I'm known for. Um, it's the class all about kind of the dogs that we label over aroused or whatever in sports or the barky, spinny, spitty, bitey, whatever dogs. The vast majority of those dogs do not have an arousal problem. They have a clarity problem, usually about the reinforcers, often about the training process. If you can clean up your training, you will see a huge reduction in those behaviors and you will do that in shaping demystified. So don't think shaping demystified is for training cute tricks. It is, you're going to apply it to all of your training all over the place. That's what it's actually for. And it will help you to just be more clear all of the time because it's true in my other course, hidden potential, which is kind of the other end of the spectrum. The dogs that quit, the dogs that shut down, get sniffy. Those dogs have clarity problems too. And the shaping skills and the handlers that take that class, cause they're shaping projects in that class. I want them to do, um, are, they're just typically lacking. This isn't about, you know, your dog quits and your dog is a quitter or you're a bad trainer. It's about, you're both lacking a core foundation. So I think, you know, FTSA tries to have a shaping course just about every term. Like we all teach one. If you haven't taken

one yet, you got to take one. Like it is a core training skill that you need to know. Um, they're all good. They're all different, which is really cool. There's, there's definitely, um, intersecting concepts in all of them, but they're all different. And so you can get something from all of them. And I think that if you haven't taken one yet, you got to take one. It is a core skill that everybody needs for sure. So you said in there, it's not for teaching cute tricks, but I mean, by the end of the class, you know how to teach, teach a cute trick too, right? That was in the class. Yes. It is not, it's not a trick class, right? He's got that on lock. It's not a training class. I don't train. I was thinking the other day, man, like when's the last time I trained what I would call a trick? I don't even remember. Um, because I'm such an agenda focus, like do the competition behavior kind of person. Um, but you get to pick whatever it is that you want to apply the concepts to in the class. I don't tell you. And now we're training the dog to get in a suitcase. I also don't tell you. And now we're training the dog to, you know, back up to a mat. Like I, that doesn't happen. I make suggestions for sure. But, um, yeah, it's not a, it's not a cute trick class, but it can be a cute trick class. Fair enough. So just to dig into that, just a teeny tiny bit more, you know, since the concept of shaping, not actually specific behaviors, um, why that approach? Yeah. Well, one reason Melissa is that I don't know who I'm going to get at gold, right? So I could get somebody whose dog already knows like a massive amount of behaviors. And then if I'm like, okay, we're going to teach walk backwards to learn this concept. And the dog is literally walking backwards 50 feet in a straight line on a single verbal cue. What am I supposed to do with that student? Right. Also, I sometimes get other animals in class. I don't have any barnyard friends this time around, but I had a goat last time. And, um, I'm not probably not going to teach the goat to now I'm trying to think of something that goat can't do. And there's nothing, but, um, based on what I've got going on, I do have a dog in class that can't hear that's deaf. And so what we teach that dog may be different from what the next dog is learning. I also really think, again, coming back to that concept of walking before you can run for a specific human learner, get in a suitcase might be just right. Right. But for another human learner, pick up the quarter and put it in a shot glass might be just right. So for me, it's really important that we use

kind of the right behavior for the job to teach the people, um, how to do the thing. And they can absolutely involve competition behaviors if they want to. Um, and so maybe they're, maybe their sport is agility and they're never going to train a dumbbell retrieve. If my assignment is dumbbell retrieve, you know, it's, it's basically keeping everybody happy, but also, um, making sure that I have the flexibility as a teacher to say, I think this behavior is too complex for this team right now. Let's break it up. Let's do this part. Um, and I think it also keeps it interesting for people if they're like, you know, Hey, I'm working on this thing. Can we, can we kind of pull apart that thing rather than, um, me say, you know, go teach this thing that you don't care about. Right. Right. All right. One last question for you. It's kind of the one I've been rounding out, uh, the interviews with lately. What is something that you've learned or even just been reminded of recently when it comes to training? Well, it is, um, it is that it's a little bit complicated. Um, I mean, maybe not, maybe not, maybe a little nuanced. I don't know. Um, I was reminded recently to kind of trust my intuition, um, when it comes to communicating with my dog. So specifically it, I was reminded in the context of agility that if something does not feel right, there's probably a reason, right? So this could come down to shaping as well. And that may be one of the reasons that I don't prescribe the behaviors that people need to work on because if something feels kind of intuitively flawed to you to teach, there's probably a reason for that. Um, and even if you don't know what that reason is, it's your intuition is actually a good enough reason to, to trust that. So, um, you know, like if you're in class and we're maybe looking at a sit pretty behavior with the border collie and you've got a boars away in class and you go, Oh, I don't, that doesn't feel great. There's a reason that doesn't feel great. Maybe don't do it. Um, but also just, you know, I've been, I've been working with dogs a long time and I get to say that my intuition is a good enough reason to reroute or change my idea. Fair enough. I like that. We should all listen to our intuition just a little bit more often. Oh, we really should. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Sarah. Thanks so much for having me. It was so fun. It was fun. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week. Don't miss it. If you haven't

already subscribed 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 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. mom. Thank you.