E141: 줄리 플래너리(Julie Flanery) - "임무 완료: 훈련 목표 달성하기"

And so reinforcement, trying to find reinforcement that is of value enough for her to really work through some of these difficult things I'm asking of her at this point in her career has been a real challenge for both her and I. And I think we're just now starting to get a handle on it and look at some appropriate expectations for her and looking towards retirement for her and just enjoying some of the fun things we like to do. She still enjoys to train. She still enjoys the work. But I think performance in live competitions is starting to subside now that we're at those. We've met a lot of those accomplishments that we wanted to meet and she's she's getting on in her years. But still a very active in the mind and body and still wants to train. So we're working through some transitions with her, which brings me to Fee, who is my newest puppy. And Fee is 18 months old now. And I've had her since she was about five months old. And I think she's really starting to become a really fun dog to work with and quite the personality. She is an Australian Shepherd Shih Tzu Cross. And people like to tease me that she's an aw shit dog. But I think I think she's a fabulous little dog and very, very fun to work with. And I think she has a really great future ahead of her, whether it's in freestyle or agility or or disc or whatever it is we choose to embark on. And I think she's going to be a really fun, fun little dog to have. So those are my two dogs that I'm working with currently. And like everybody in the world, I'm sure who does dog sports, you're always thinking about that that next puppy you might get. And I'm I'm like everybody else that in a few years I'll I'll start looking again for my my next dog. So, yeah. But that's my my current dogs. Awesome. So like most dog sports, you know, rally free and freestyle kind of require a lot of different behaviors, the wide variety of behaviors. And you kind of have to have them pretty fluent. So I want to want to kind of walk through that. If you have an end goal like that in mind, like those types of sports or really almost any dog sport. Right. Where do you start? Do you literally just list out all the behaviors and kind of break them down one by one? Yeah. So freestyle is a little bit different than other sports in that you are creating the performance from scratch. Nobody is telling you what to put into a routine, which is why actually rally free was developed, because what often happens in freestyle is because nobody is telling you what to put into your routines.

As a newcomer or beginner, you have a tendency to want to train a lot of the really cool stuff, a lot of the the fun stuff, the more difficult tricks. And that obviously can mean that you're missing out on some of the foundation to get there. And so rally free was a way that people could structure their freestyle training in a way that developed and built strength in their foundation skills. So when you start putting together a routine, let's take I'm going to take fee for an example right now, because she's my new dog. She hasn't done any freestyle yet. We're still working on some foundation skills. But I I have kind of a vision of my first routine that I would like to perform with her. And so, yes, one of the things I need to know is what are the skills that are fluent or at least on its way to fluency that I that I want to build strength in that I can actually use in that freestyle routine? Because freestyle routines are not just about individual behaviors. You can train a lot of individual behaviors to fluency and still not be able to perform a really nice freestyle routine. So there's a lot of a lot more involved in freestyle than just training the individual behaviors. Sequencing has a lot of moving parts to it. But you're right in first. I need to know what she can perform fluently individual behaviors. And yeah, basically, I have a list of the things that are important for her to learn before I can start to build a routine. And and those behaviors are foundations, what I consider foundation skills for freestyle. And then along with those behaviors, I list any other fun tricks that I might want to train. Anything that will add to the interpretation of the music that I've chosen. Anything that's going to put a little wow factor into that routine, of course, being level appropriate and skill appropriate for where she is at in her her training. I don't want to train anything too complex or too difficult because she's just not ready for those kinds of skills yet. But yeah, I start with a list. And as I work through that list, I can start to add more things or add more complexity to those foundation skills. And then when it comes time for me to actually choreograph the routine, I can kind of pick and choose from that list. And if there's something that I really want to include in that routine, but she doesn't have good strength in it, then I can focus more on that particular behavior or the foundation skills that I need to build that particular behavior. Boy, did that answer your question? I feel like I got off a little bit on a tangent there.

Hopefully I answered your question. I think you did. I think you kind of brought me into it as an example. But I think that helps. That kind of breaks it down and explains, you know, in real life, how you're approaching it and how you're dealing with it. Which brings me really nicely to my next question. So I think a lot of people, you know, kind of take the approach that, okay, these are foundation skills. And they work on things like platforms and targets and learning. And then they have this other bucket, right, of the things that they're going to work on someday, where they kind of mentally stick all those finished behaviors they'll actually need for competition. And, you know, for some of us, someday never seems to come. So can you just talk a little bit about how you approach it? Do you kind of mentally block things out as foundations and others? Or, you know, how do you look at it? I don't actually separate them the way you're describing as these are foundation skills. And then after I do my foundation skills, then I'm going to train my next upper level skills. And then I'll train my next upper level skills. I actually don't think of it that way. Your foundation skills are a means to an end. They are not the end result. So while it's important to work your foundation skills, and it's really important to maintain your foundation skills. So that doesn't mean that once you start training those other skills, you stop working foundation. But your foundation skills are a way to get to your other skills. So when you start your foundation, you should be thinking of a progression. You should be thinking, how am I going to use this? In what way am I going to use this particular skill, the pivot platform, let's say, for example, because a lot of people get stuck on the pivot platform. Why am I doing this? What is the purpose of this skill? And what are the steps I need to take or the path I need to follow in order to get to that next step? Now, it doesn't mean necessarily that once you have strong pivots. For example, for me, pivots lead to strong heel work, both forward and backwards and side passes. So I need those pivots in order to perform all of those behaviors. And if I just stay on the pivot bowl and continue to work strong pivots and not progress through the process, not carry forward through that progression, I am going to get stuck on my pivots. And the dog is going to think that is the behavior. There's such a strong reinforcement history there. It will be very difficult for them to, for example, eliminate whatever prop we might be using, the pivot bowl or pivot disc.

So I have to constantly be thinking about where is this foundation leading me to? That's if my goal is actually performance or a certain level of skill or other upper level skills. It doesn't mean that you're going to stop working foundation ever. It just means you're going to continue to add to that skill. Foundation skills aren't necessarily static in that they aren't going to maintain unless you continue to provide a certain level of maintenance and reinforcement history for them. And that's why as we move up into some of these more difficult or complex skills, that if we see the the complex skill, the upper level skill start to deteriorate or break down, then we can go back to the foundation to build strength there. And strength and foundation creates a better understanding of the next level up of skill, the thing that we're trying to build up to. So the foundation gives us a place to go when those upper level skills start to break down a little bit. It gives us information that the breaking down of upper level skills gives us information that we need to go back to foundation. We need to build strength there a little bit more and move up again. But if we're not progressing through that process, if we're not going from foundation to adding the next layer of difficulty or complexity and building towards that end result behavior, that goal behavior, then we can't really call them foundation. They are skills. They're fun skills. They're fun skills to train. They're, for example, in freestyle, the 360 pivot around on a disc. That's a really fun move in and of itself. It's just a fun trick. But it's also a foundation for other skills. So you can use it as a fun trick. And there's your end behavior. And that's fine. But if you don't use it to continue your progression into greater layers of difficulty or complexity, then it's not a foundation skill. So we have to look at, well, what are we calling foundation? What are we calling upper level? Foundation skills. Whenever you're practicing your upper level skills, your more complex skills, you are practicing your foundation skills. So, for example, if you are, let's say you're training a crawl and the dog crawling on his belly and the foundation for a crawl before a dog can learn how to crawl, he needs to learn how to remain in a down. If he doesn't have a strong down skill, strong down behavior, then it's going to be very, very difficult for him to learn how to crawl because he'll keep popping up out of the down. So before we train our crawl, let's say my dog already has a crawl even. Maybe I've trained it through fluency.

I am still going to, before I work that crawl behavior, I am going to reinforce a down. And that's going to benefit the dog's understanding when I cue the crawl because he will have had that recent reinforcement history for the down. And that will increase his ability to perform that crawl. So if I start to see my crawl deteriorate, that tells me, and by that I mean if he starts to pop up or not be as willing to stay in that down, that tells me my foundation skill has weakened a bit. And I need to go back and reinforce the foundation part of that. All right. Sorry about that. We had some technical difficulties, guys. So we lost Julie for a second, but we're back and we're going to jump back into things. All right, Julie. So for a lot of us, I think, not really me because I've never done this. You know, that's a hypothetical. We focus on those foundation skills for so long that we just kind of get stuck. And at what point do you really take a foundation behavior, decide that it's just good enough for your end purposes, and kind of begin working on more advanced behaviors? When do you – and how do you kind of bridge that gap? Training is a process of testing. So once you have – you don't need to have perfect foundation behaviors in order to move to the next step. And that's what I mean by training is a process of testing. Perfection is an illusion. All right? If you get to the point of perfection, you are likely going to have so much reinforcement history that the dog will find it difficult to move up to the next step. Yes, we want the dog to be confident in their presentation of the skill or the criteria that we're asking for. We want there to be very low latency in the time of the cue or the context, and they're performing that criteria. But we don't need massive quantities of repetitions of the exact same thing before we move on to the next step in that behavior. So I think if you're waiting for perfection in your foundation skill, then you've probably waited too long to ask the dog the question, can you do it if? Can you do it if I add a little more difficulty? Can you do it if I add a little more criteria? Can you do it if I add a little more criteria? We aren't able to often split the difference and say, well, okay, you answered no, you can't do this level of difficulty. But what if I ask you just for a little bit more and not quite so much more? Can you do this?

And we have to remember, too, that when we add layers of difficulty or distractions or duration or a new piece of complexity to the skill, anytime we add that, we are going to see a lesser quality of behavior than we saw previously, where the dog had all that reinforcement history and all of those reps and all of that practice. And I think people worry about that. I think they get scared by their dog's inability to take that next step and make it be perfect. Your next step is not going to be perfect. Your next step is going to look rough. It's going to look maybe sloppy. It's going to look a little bit, it's going to make you uncomfortable that it's not the perfect piece of foundation I just had. Of course not, because you've been working on it forever. But we need to take those steps. We need to ask the question. We need to test our dog's ability to move ahead. And the longer we stay at a particular step in our skill building, the harder it will be for the dog to move forward to the next step. And I think maybe if people start thinking about that in terms of if I can get a confident dog at this particular step and I can get low latency and even just a few reps. You know, for me, if I see four to six reps in a session that look really nice, I want to move ahead. I don't want to end that session and then start the next session the same place. When you're working on specific skills or criteria, the goal is moving ahead. The goal is not perfection at where you are at. The goal is, does my dog have enough understanding of that skill that I can build a little bit on to that while still maintaining his understanding of the previous skill? And so there's an ebb and flow to maintaining foundation and asking the question, can you do it if? Can you do it if I add this little bit of difficulty? Can you do it if I add this bit of duration? Can you do it if I add this little bit of information? And move into those behaviors that you're trying to build out of the foundation. Remember I said earlier, it's not foundation if you're not building on it. So I said something a long time ago, and I think you made a meme out of it once. And if you're not progressing, it's not training. And it's not that you're not training. I mean, obviously, if you're working with your dog and you're reinforcing, you're training. But what is your goal in working this particular skill? Why are you doing this? What is the purpose of this particular skill? And if it's something like a pivot on a disc, well, as I said earlier, that could be a neat trick. That's a fun thing to train in and of itself.

But is that why you're training it? Or are you training it because you want better heel work? Because you want nice side passes? Because you want good backup and heel? Or all of the other skills that we need that nice rear-end awareness and that tuck into the handler for? Think about the purpose of the foundation. And I think if you can keep that in the forefront of your mind, it will be much easier to move to the next step. I also think that sometimes people don't know what they're going to do with that skill. They just know they're supposed to train it. I think sometimes as instructors, we could do a better job of laying out the path, of laying out the progression, so that our students and handlers have a better understanding of what the next steps are and where they're going and why they're actually doing this particular skill. I mean, that's a question I have to ask myself. Why am I training this? Why am I teaching my dog this particular thing rather than this particular thing? And if we know the answer to that question, it makes it much easier for us to follow that progression into those upper-level skills. But if we're waiting for perfection, and then once we get perfection, I think the other piece of that is that we are heavily reinforced by our dog doing well. And the more they do well, the better that feels to us. And when we start to ask the question, can you do it if, then our dog doesn't do as well. I mean, that's to be expected, right? We're adding difficulty, so of course you're not going to do as well. But that doesn't feel good to us. And we want to try and avoid frustration in the dog or the dog feeling icky or the dog being reinforced. I mean, as reinforcement trainers, we are really good at providing reinforcement. We're not very good at asking the question, what is the next step? Can you do it if? And accepting that the dog is going to give you something less than what we were just reinforcing. And that's okay. That's a necessary part of the process. So I think that's another big reason why we don't tend to move ahead is because we are heavily reinforced by our dog's success. And once we start to move forward in that progress, once we have the criteria we need, then it often means that we get a lesser performance from the dog because it's very difficult. And we need to be better at either splitting the steps so that it's not quite as difficult. And we also need to be better at understanding that perfection isn't a criteria for moving ahead. Confidence. For me, confidence in my dog that, oh, I get this. I can do this. That he's in the game. That he wants to keep working.

That's a criteria for me to move ahead. And, again, all I need is a few really good reps showing me the dog has understanding before I ask for something a little more difficult. I don't need several sessions or several weeks of perfection before I move ahead. Because if you wait that long, it's going to be very, very difficult. And you're actually going to increase the frustration level of your dog if you don't think about your progression. And think of training as a progression and not just I will work my foundation skills. And when my foundation skills are perfect, then I'll be able to work this next skill. Well, there's a lot of mush and muck and ick in between there that we have to sludge through a little bit. And I'm not saying that your dog's going to completely fail after you step out of that foundation phase. What I'm saying is that there is a progression. And progression indicates little steps forward. And if we aren't taking those little steps forward, then there's no point to the foundation. Because that is the definition of foundation. It's something that you build on. So if you stay in, like, Hélène calls it foundation land. If you stay in foundation land, we have to change the name of foundation land, basically. We could call it happy land. Or we could call it success land. Or we could call it something else. But unless you're progressing forward, it's not foundation for anything. It's just behaviors that you like to train and that your dog enjoys doing. If you want to actually build your skill, if you want to actually use those skills as a means to an end, a more difficult skill or a higher level of skill, then you have to progress. And that progression has to be a planned part of your training. You have to know where you're going next or you're going to get stuck. So do you have any tips or tricks for kind of keeping yourself on track for that? So, like, making sure that, you know, this training session is building on that last training session or, you know, in terms of – I think you mentioned earlier in passing that, you know, you don't like to end off on a rep. That that was a perfect rep. Okay, now we're all done. You know, you like to kind of have those criteria shifts within training session to training session. So can you talk a little more about that? Like, how do you make sure that this session builds on the last session and that the next session is going to build on this session and that we're actually progressing, keeping yourself on track? Yeah. And it's a lot easier said than done. I'll just put that right out there.

It's easy for me to say, well, you do this, this, this, and this. But I, like anybody else, I falter. And there are times when it seems to take me longer to get through a step in the process than it should. If I really look at it, though, and I'll get back to answering your question, but this kind of popped into my head. For example, with fee, there are certain things that I feel like they're taking way too long. That it's like, oh my God, I've been working on this forever and I can't seem to push through. But if I actually look at it, and I'll explain what I mean when I say actually look at it. But when I actually look at it, it's, yes, it's been a long period of time. But within that long period of time, I actually haven't been working that particular skill. Does that make sense? So I might have started something three weeks ago. And I go back and I look at it today and I go, oh man, I've been working on this for three weeks. Why isn't it any better? And then I go look at my notes or my video and I go, well, it's not any better because I actually have only worked it twice in three weeks. Fair enough. So having a means of knowing, well, what did I work on and where was I in that process when I finished that session helps me look at it a little bit more realistically and not feel frustrated if I'm seeing, man, I haven't really progressed in this and it's been a while. What's going on? When I have something tangible that I can look at, such as notes, such as video, then I can say, oh, well, no wonder we're not progressing. We haven't worked on it. Or look, I've been staying at this same criteria for three sessions. No wonder she's having difficulty progressing. I was struggling with some duration in stillness with her for a little bit and couldn't figure out, well, why is it that she's having such a hard time with this? And I felt in my heart and in my head that I had been working on this. And when I actually look at my notes from the sessions, I can see I really haven't been. And I was probably in a mode, I know this for sure, of I want her to be happy. I want a high rate of reward. I want her trying things. And that focusing more on her shaping, her being active, her actions, and not so much on duration and stillness. Well, that's why we haven't progressed because I haven't actually been working on that as I thought I had been doing in my head. So by having those tangible things, a notebook, I use a notebook, and of course I video a lot of my sessions, that I can go back and say, well, this is why I'm not progressing.

What actually happens in your sessions and what we think happens in our sessions oftentimes don't mesh up. I don't know why that is. I think it's maybe because we like to remember the good. We like to remember all the successes. And then when we're in the moment, we say, oh, wait a minute, we're not getting this. And so going back to some notes can actually really help you have a realistic view of what's going on in your sessions and not just an assumptive view of what's going on in your sessions. So you mentioned Ellen's term Foundation London there. And I know you've got your Mission Accomplished class coming up, right? What are some of the other reasons that people kind of get stuck or don't finish behaviors? Well, I think, as I mentioned, they don't know what the next step is. And so in the absence of knowing what the next step is, they tend to continue to reinforce the same step over and over again. And then the dog becomes so ingrained in that piece of it that it's very difficult for them to move up to the next criteria shift. So I think that's part of it is they really don't know what to do next. I think another reason is sometimes the process or the protocols that they might be using aren't as effective or efficient as either they... How do I put this? Sometimes they might think they're applying a protocol correctly and they actually need to tweak it a bit in order for it to be an effective and efficient means for the dog to understand. So cueing is a perfect example. Oftentimes people feel like they're applying the correct process to attaching a cue to a behavior or a new cue to a behavior. And in actuality, the way they're applying it is actually hindering their success, but they can't recognize that. So that's another reason. I think also, again, like I said with Fi, there are times where I feel like I've been working on a long time, three weeks, four weeks, the same thing. Why is it she getting it? When in actuality, when I go back and look, I might have only had two sessions in that three weeks. So that's another thing. Our perception of time worked, how long we've been working on it, differs from the actual minutes of training that we've really put into it. And again, I think following that progression there, they have a difficult time following the progression. Maybe they don't know the next step or maybe they don't actually have a clear picture of the end goal. And so they're, for lack of a better word, procrastinating that next step because they're not really sure about what that end result should look like.

So I think those are some of the reasons that people struggle with moving forward in there. And I think, too, a lot of us are drawn to the next new shiny thing. And so we have a tendency to get through a certain to a certain level of a behavior where things are looking really good. And then because that next shift upward is a little more difficult, rather than go through that little difficult, icky phase where we know our dog might have some failures and we were not feeling confident in our ability of as being a trainer to get them through that, that instead we start something new. Because in most cases, dogs and handlers are really, really good at starting new things. There's an excitement about it. There's a high rate of reward. There's an overall feeling, a happy feeling that we get and that we believe and observe in our dogs that they get when we start something new. And so we're constantly starting these new things because of the emotional high it gives us, whereas trying to get through the difficult parts of behaviors we've already started kind of don't give us that same emotional feeling. And so I think we have a tendency to avoid that somewhat. So as I mentioned, Mission Accomplished is coming around again. So it's on the calendar for December. Yep. Can you share a little more kind of about how you kind of approach things in that class and really what the class is all about? Ooh, okay. I feel like, oh, I need to get my syllabus up here because I looked at my lectures last week briefly and I thought, wow, there's a lot of really great stuff in this. And so hopefully I'll get it all. If I miss some of these things, please do go look at the description, look at the syllabus, because there's a lot more involved, I think, in accomplishing a goal behavior than just going out and training. So certainly having that vision, that picture in your mind of what your goal behavior looks like is a really, really important part. Because in a very real sense, accomplishing your vision is what drives us. It is why we want to continue on the path. So having that vision is an important part, knowing exactly what the end goal is going to be. It doesn't mean you're not going to at some point change that, tweak it along the way, but you do need to kind of know where you're going in order to get there. It's like, you know, if you open up a map before you start your route, you kind of need to know where you're going in order to know which path to take. So that's the first thing. Being able to identify what is the foundation skill I need? What does my dog need to know?

It's kind of like taking steps backward. You look at your goal behavior and you say, well, before they can do this, they need to do this. And before they can do that, they need to do this. And before they can do that, they need to know how to do this until you take it all the way back down to your base foundation skill. That is the one that's going to start the ball rolling. And then having benchmarks for yourself. You know, what is where do I need to be before I go to the next level? And as I said earlier, for me, that is that I see confidence in the dog, that I see low latency when he starts to offer the behavior or is provided the cue, either cue I give or the context cue. And once I have those things, then I know that I can progress and move ahead to the next step. But I need to know what that next step is. I think it's really important to, in order to keep our motivation going a little bit, is to provide reinforcement for us. When we take those, when we have a really good skill and we're ready to move to the next step, boy, oh, boy, oh, boy. We know there's going to be difficulty and we tend to avoid that difficulty. We all try to avoid layers of difficulty. And so being able to say, not necessarily, ooh, when I reach this benchmark, I'm going to celebrate. Because in actuality, reaching that benchmark, that feels good. And that's why we stay there, because it feels really good. But I think it's more beneficial to say, when I push myself to move to the next step, now I'm going to celebrate. And now I'm going to provide some reinforcement for myself. And that reinforcement can come in a variety of means. You know, yay. Once I do that, it depends on, I mean, it depends on what motivates you, right? It depends what's reinforcing to you, right? So for me, scheduling a massage would be a huge level of motivation or reinforcement for me to say, you know, I know my dog's doing this piece really, really well. Oh, can I break through and ask my dog to do a little bit harder piece? Oh, I know she's going to fail at it. But, you know, if I can do that, I will do X, Y, Z for me and for her or whatever. So I think looking at where you're providing reinforcement for yourself, you're already being reinforced by the dog's success level. That makes us feel good as trainers. Where we need to reinforce ourselves is when we're willing to take that next step and ask the dog the question, push a little bit harder, add a layer of difficulty. And saying and understanding that you're not going to get the same level of success as you did on the previous step because that's just part of the process.

Does that make sense? Did I say that right? Yeah. Okay. I certainly hope he said it right. I mean, you're the expert. Yeah. No, I, you know, I have these things in my head, whether they come out my mouth correctly, that's a whole nother story. But I do think that we have a tendency to look at motivation and reinforcement for us as in keeping with our dog's successes. But sometimes we just need a little bit of reinforcement motivation for when we choose to make it a little bit harder because that's, that's the hard piece. I think that's what people procrastinate against. I think that's what they, they aren't really sure of how to do. So. Right. That accountability piece almost. Yeah. Yeah. I think too. Yeah, absolutely. I think that, um, that added, um, oh, prize, I guess that you'll give yourself for pushing to the next step, um, does kind of hold you accountable as well to move through the process. Yeah. I noticed, you know, in the description for the class, you mentioned that you're going to use shaping and targeting and clicker marker, low reward, props such as platforms, um, and or your training gates, uh, to kind of help students achieve those target behaviors. So that's a lot of different things, obviously. How do you go about deciding which technique to use for which students or which behaviors? Um, okay. So that's a huge question. Yep. How much time do we have? So the reason we have such a variety, the reason I use such a variety of props is because for that very reason, you don't always know which prop will make it. It's going to make the most sense for either the dog, uh, or for the handlers. And so I try, I personally try to use, and I try to encourage my students to use as many different props as possible to get the criteria that they want in order to pattern that particular criteria in the dog and create a very high rate of reward. We don't always know what prop is going to make the most sense to the dog. And thus we have several available to us to try. And we can generally see within a couple of sessions, whether or not the information that we are providing, we're trying to, uh, provide to the dog, whether or not he's taking in that information in a way that is, um, progressing the behavior. So, so that's why I have a variety of different things available is that I don't know which one of those is going to make the most sense to the dog.

The second reason I have a variety of props or use a variety of props, even for the same criteria is that it makes it much easier to eliminate the props because the behavior itself or the criterion for that behavior is not tied to any single prop. The prop is not an integral part of the behavior anymore. I'm sorry. The prop is not an integral part of the reinforcement. The criteria is the integral is the part of the reinforcement that is meaningful to the dog now because the prop is always changing. So for example, uh, pivots, I might, uh, actually I do. I use a pivot platform to work pivots, but I also can use the gates to work my pivots and I can have the gates in a square with my dog and I in the middle of the square. And so the, the square sides of the gates provide a guide to the dog to remain straight and come into me because he really, you know, the, he can't really go out away from me because the gate acts as a barrier. The, uh, pivot platform, I continue to use that. And even if I just have those two pieces of equipment, the criteria of shifting into me is the one that is getting reinforced and it doesn't become unnecessarily attached to any particular prop because the prop is changing. So that's another reason why I like to use different props. It makes it much easier for the dog to, uh, discriminate the behavior that's being reinforced outside of the use of the barriers or the platform or whatever prop we're using to get the, the behavior, the criteria that we want. Um, there are some dogs that don't do well with the pressure of a barrier, the pressure of a gate. And so I'm not going to want to use the gates for that particular dog, or I'm going to want to ensure that I'm using them in a way that isn't causing undue stress. Uh, so, uh, there are some dogs that are not, um, going to want to back up onto something. And so I might not want to use a platform. I might want to use a flat mat instead. So each dog and each handler are going to have their, um, their needs are going to be different in terms of what props we use. And again, I have to look at the handler as well. There are some props that the handler will have a difficult time using, whereas, uh, another prop might be easier or no prop. You know, there are many times I might say, you know, we're going to go ahead and lure this instead of shape this, because I think that's going to make more sense to you and your dog at this point in your training. So there is no one best way to train behaviors.

We have many, many different ways, many options that we can use both in prep, uh, props in, um, technologies in methods and techniques. Uh, we're very lucky as positive reinforcement trainers to have a lot of different options available to us. And there is no one way that is the best way. We have to look at the dog. We have to look at their learning history. We have to look at the handler and, and their abilities. Um, and we have to choose what's right for both of them. I, I had an interesting, um, I had a class several years ago. This is a subject. It might've actually even been one of the first classes that I taught for FENZ. And it was on, uh, foundation skills for rally free musical freestyle. And I had a student in the class that, uh, had an older dog. The dog was over 10 years old, I'm sure. And had, uh, been taught through lure reward his whole life. And she was trying some shaping or using a target stick and it wasn't making sense to the dog. And it was a difficult mechanical skill for the handler. So there's absolutely no reason for me to push the use of a target stick on this dog and handler team. When this dog and handler had skills in lure reward and could absolutely get to the goal behavior using methods they were comfortable with. So, so that's an example of where is what I might think of as the, as an efficient and effective means to get a behavior, especially with my young dog that grew up learning about shaping and targeting. Whereas it's possible and even likely that a 10 year old dog that is really comfortable and learns quickly through another method. Um, I don't, I'm not going to take that away from them just because for me and my dog, this, this has, um, better results for me. But I do want to keep, I want to keep, um, a, a broad and wide variety of options available to me in terms of training because all dog and handler teams are different. And we need to really look to determine what's going to be the best option in that particular situation and for that particular skill or behavior. And so I try to do that a lot in my mission accomplished class. Um, and in all my classes, we have to take the team into account. It's not about the method. It's not about, um, getting to learn the technique correctly. Uh, although I do, as you know, um, I do teach certain methods and techniques and, and I do like to put a focus on handler mechanics, but at the same time, we can't be so rigid that we're hindering, um, the dog and handler success as a team. It's one thing to explore a technique because you want to learn a technique.

It's another thing when you have an end behavior to use an ineffective or inefficient method for that handler and team, right? Correct. Yeah. I think that's, that's totally true. Yeah. I have to say the first time I heard you talk about using multiple props to get the same end behavior, I thought it was genius because I hadn't heard it before. And it was such a smart way to think about fading props, right? Once the dog has learned it using different props, of course, it's going to be easier than to fade the props. Yeah. Well, thanks. I appreciate that. Yeah. So, uh, to get, to get back to my class for a minute, you know, you mentioned that, um, students need to have a notebook and a timer for this class. So I wanted to ask what that's about. Um, so notebook is an easy way to start some record keeping. I think that oftentimes when we are not completing, um, or moving forward in our progression towards an end goal skill, that part of it is we don't know what we've done and where we're at and what we did last session as opposed to this session. Um, and I'm just going to put this out there. I hate keeping records more than anything else in the world. I hate keeping records. So for those of you that are worried that you're going to have to do a lot of record keeping in this class and you hate it, don't worry. Um, uh, there are a lot of different options in how you keep records. Uh, and I think it's important to really understand why we keep records. The, the, the way you keep your records is going to be totally up to you. And I will share in class lots of different ways to keep records, lots of different charts or graphs or bullet journals or, or, um, uh, online digital type, um, programs that you can use. But in the end, if you don't use them, if you don't use the methods, then you're not gonna get the information you need out of them. And so one of the things you'll do in this class is, is explore what is the easiest way for you to have some record of what you did and what you're doing and what the next step is. Record keeping should not be complex. And I know that there are, um, many people that enjoy the complexity that they put into their record keeping and that is a motivation for them. And yay, I think that's perfect. Record keeping does not motivate me. Record keeping provides me with some information that I need to progress in this process. And so for me, record keeping is very, very simple. It's, it's, um, a notebook. It is, uh, specific types of notes that, that we'll talk about in that class.

But, but basically what the things that I need to know are going to be, um, what is the, what is the exercise? What is the criteria? What is the skill? What is the activity? What am I working on? What is the exact thing that I'm working on? Um, the second thing I need to know is what is the purpose of this session? Why am I out here training? Is it just to get a lot of reinforcement in my dog for the exact same thing I did last time? Or is it that I want to move ahead in this process? And what exactly is that next step? So I need to know what is the purpose of this session. And then I need to know what are the results of this session? What happened? Did, did the dog do the exact same thing as he did in the previous session? And the only way I'm going to know that is if I have a record from the previous session. Uh, and so your record keeping, um, is a means to keep you moving forward in the process. It's a means to help you progress because we are not good at, uh, how do I put this? We're not good at keeping records in our head. We're very poor at keeping records in our head. This is why we get stuck. This is why we don't know why we're not progressing. Um, but if you have something tangible, even if it's just a quick bullet journal and you have, like I said, when I keep records and I don't keep records all the time, mind you. Um, but when I, when I do keep records on things that I'm starting things I'm struggling with or things that are important to me, those are the things that I'm going to keep records on. Then they are very short couple word sentences that just refresh my memory of what occurred. And the information I have to have is, um, the exercise and the location. Where am I? Cause I want to make sure I'm working in different locations. Uh, what is the skill I'm working? What is the purpose of the session? And what are the results of that session? That's really all I need, need to know from session to session. And that doesn't take more than one or two sentences. And so I'd like, um, folks to, in this class to explore some of the different ways, because just because I'm comfortable writing things out and having a notebook in my training bag doesn't mean the next person is going to be comfortable with that. They might prefer to have their tablet with them and, uh, do it with a software program with Trello or something like that. I'm not comfortable with that. There is no right way, um, and no wrong way to keep records. Um, as long as it's giving you the information you need to progress. Mm-hmm. I think that kind of answers what I was going to ask you next, unless you have something

you want to add, which, which is just, you know, do you have a favorite method or technique? Um, and what do you typically record? So it sounds like you typically record, you know, kind of what you're working on and how it went and, you know, kind of at a high level. Right. I think, I think the main thing that people need to know going into a session and coming out of a session is what is the purpose of this session? I think oftentimes we find ourselves, oh, I have a few minutes to go train. I'm just going to go work my dog for a little bit. Um, and we don't really have a clear purpose for that particular session. Uh, and then the session's over and we don't know what we accomplished in that session because we had no purpose going into it. Uh, other than a vague purpose says, oh, I think I will work on fronts today. But what is it about fronts that you're trying to improve? Because if we're just going into work on fronts, it's likely that we're going to be either reinforcing the exact same thing over and over again and not move us to the next step. Um, or we're going to be reinforcing anything our dog offers just for effort, uh, that isn't going to move us to the next step. Uh, and then the next time we go out and we say, we want to work on fronts, we have no idea what the results of the last session were. So I think it's really important to know what is the purpose of this training session? If that's the one question I think people need to keep in mind when they go out to train, what, why am I doing this today? What is the purpose of this session? And then score, you could score yourself on a scale of one to five. How, how well did I meet the purpose of this session? I've never done that before, but you know, for those of you that are a little competitive or, or like contests, that might be kind of fun. All right, here's my purpose. And I'm going to score myself at the end of this session to see how much I, I met my goal of the purpose of that session. So I think that would be fun. Maybe I'll add that to the class, Melissa. Thanks. There you go. You came up with it all on your own, but you're welcome to thank me for it. I'll take credit. Sure. And I know you got into a little bit earlier, kind of the, you're talking about motivation and celebration and how it's important to kind of have rewards for the handler. Can you just, you know, talk for another second or so about, you know, how those kind of fit into the class and, you know, why they're important for you to have included? Um, yeah, we view our dog successes as our successes and our dog's failures as our failures.

When in actuality, um, our dog's failures, um, are not failures. They are just, uh, information. Um, and when I say failures, I don't mean, I don't mean it like that sounds like, oh my God, he's such a failure. He did horribly today. What I mean by that is that, um, we're adding difficulty and he's not showing the same level of skill with this additional difficulty that he did when I didn't add the difficulty. And so, as I said earlier, we, we tend to put off adding layers of difficulty or complexity because it's not a good feeling for us. We, we don't, we don't want our dogs to not do well. Um, and I think too, that our, uh, sometimes those quote failures again, which is not a great word. Um, we feel like that reflects on us as a trainer and that can actually demotivate us. And that again, it's another reason why we don't progress through our training to towards that angle, but we tend to get stuck along the ways because we have this aversion to our dogs not being successful. Um, and again, uh, hopefully we can split that criteria down to a point where we are still seeing lots of success, but that's, that's not always realistic. It's not always feasible. It's not always what we're capable of, of doing. So finding a way to either get internal, uh, reinforcement or external reinforcement of little successes along the way are a way that keeps us motivated to continue. Something I've been seeing a lot lately that I think is, is really quite fun and cool are people showing videos on social media of, um, a breakthrough that they made. And that breakthrough to some might look, not look like very much, but that breakthrough was something that was a really big deal to that dog and handler team. And, uh, showcasing your breakthroughs, um, on something that was really difficult to get to and getting that kudos from friends, family, though, not so much family, because sometimes they don't really understand what we're doing, but, but, you know, other trainers going through the same thing. Uh, you know, the, the alumni group is a great place to get feel good kudos, um, and understanding of how difficult something that might seem very minimal to one person, uh, it's like, we know how important that is to you. And so we're soupy happy for you. Yay for you. And that can feel really good. So, so showcasing, um, a breakthrough on social media can, um, add to, uh, our feel good moments, even though it was hard to get there. So that's kind of a good motivation. Um, and again, there can be internal things, um, things that you enjoy doing once we finish the session.

And maybe it's not an actual improvement in that session. Maybe it's the fact that all I did was I wrote down the purpose of this session today. And that's the first step. Maybe I didn't meet that. Maybe I ended up doing something totally different, but wow, I wrote down the purpose of this session. We're going to go for a sniffy walk. We're going to go get an ice cream cone together. We're going to, I'm going to make my appointment for the massage or whatever it might be. I think it also helps sometimes, um, in your record keeping or journaling or note, note taking to identify what those, um, handler reinforcement, what that motivation, what are you working towards? What, what will you, in what way will you reinforce yourself when you complete this particular task of just doing nothing more than writing down the purpose of this session? Um, and having that, I guess, carrot on a stick, um, can help you be accountable and motivate you a little bit more to, to give it a shot. And just to really think about these things in the end, if all you do is think about what is the reason that I'm getting stuck here and what are some things that I can start to implement? Just thinking about that has a tendency to put us in the mindset of pushing through any little bit of difficulty we might've had in that last session. So I think that's, I think that's really important. I think that's really interesting. And I'm sure Andrea Harrison would have more to say about that. I'm sure she would too. So anything else that students should know if they're, uh, debating signing up for mission accomplished? Let's see. Uh, I think they should know that, uh, in most all the cases, the likelihood of accomplishing your mission in the six weeks is great. Uh, oftentimes when I've run this class that there are just a few things that the students needed to get through and they just needed someone to help, um, motivate them through those last few pieces in order to meet their end behavior goal. Uh, it's important to know that this class is not set up for behavior issues that are generally going to take some behavior modification protocols or long-term, um, uh, modification, uh, work in order to reach benchmark goals. So it's not necessarily set up for that. It is set up for, uh, skills, behaviors that you might be working towards in your chosen sport or just, um, in your personal goals with your dogs. Maybe you're doing trick training. Maybe you're doing obedience, even agility, uh, obviously freestyle, rally free, um, basically any type of skills that you're working to train and maybe you're stuck or maybe you have a

tendency to, you know, grasp at those shiny things and start new things all the time, but never get them to completion. And you'd really like a few that you could say, look, look what my dog can do. Uh, this is a great class for that. And I think it's a really fun class just to see what other people are doing and how they're working through their problems. Uh, there's a lot of problem solving that goes on in this class. And so you might not be interested in some of the actual behaviors that people are working on this in, in this class, but the concepts and the lectures are going to apply to anything that you might be working as well. So you can easily transfer the information to something that you might be working on that isn't covered in this class. And what I hope to do, uh, the first week is get an idea from the gold students of what they're working on so that I can post that into the description so that people will have an idea of what, uh, some of the behaviors that gold students are working on. Um, but also please keep in mind that, that the lectures, the concepts, the coaching that I will be providing is applicable to pretty much any behavior that you want to train and work to accomplish. Awesome. Last question here that I've been asking, you know, all of my guests lately. Um, so what's something that you've learned or you've been reminded of recently when it comes to dog training? I have been reminded recently that it's all about reinforcement and that if we are not able to provide a measure of reinforcement that is of equal or greater value, greater value than the task that we are asking of the dog, that the performance will suffer. Um, and I'm reminded by that because of my own dogs recently, uh, I'm working at a very high level of freestyle and the types of behaviors I'm asking of my dog are very difficult. And the context in which I'm asking of them is very, very difficult. And, uh, the reinforcement value that I am able to provide to her is not equal to her greater to what I'm asking of her. She has some very severe food allergies. And so she, any food rewards I provide are the same. There's no variation in value. There's no hierarchy of value in food I provide for her. Certainly I can give more, but, uh, that doesn't always mean better. Uh, the types of play and interactions and, um, uh, ball throwing or tug or her being able to carry toys or chase toys, uh, any type of reinforcement that I have been working to provide to her. Um, it's become much more difficult. And I think we need to remember as handlers that just because we are giving something to

the dog does not make it reinforcing, does not mean that the, um, behavior will increase in quality or frequency. The dog determines what is reinforcing, um, and reinforcement is not static. Reinforcement is however, observable that if we see an increase in the quality or frequency or likelihood of the behavior, if we see that happy emotional response, when we're providing, um, what we hope to be reinforcement, then we have a good idea that that reinforcement is doing what we hope for it to do. I think oftentimes we start to reward by rote. We expect the dog to continue based on the one or two cookies we give. And as we ask for more and more difficult and complex behaviors, that one or two cookies just isn't going to cut it. Um, we aren't going to pay a brain surgeon minimum wage. And I think oftentimes we ask our dogs to do brain surgery and we want to pay the minimum wage. Uh, and so recently I've been reminded of that in that, um, if I'm unable to provide my dog with a measure of reinforcement that is befitting of the tasks that I'm asking her to do, uh, that those behaviors are going to deteriorate. And it's the deterioration of those behaviors that often tells me that, um, I need to think more about my, my reinforcement and whether that is the bigger piece of, um, my training I need to look at rather than criteria. I think we forget that it's about the reinforcement. So. Yeah. Well, awesome. Thank you so much, Julie. Thank you for coming back on the podcast. I had fun, Melissa. Thanks for having me. Me too. And thanks to our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week with Nancy Glarity Little to talk about handler behavior in obedience and how it can make or break you in competition. If you haven't already subscribed to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice. Do 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. Thank you.