E271: 사라 브루스키(Sara Brueske) - 몬디오 오비디언스를 하려면 무엇이 필요한가?

With all of those different protection sports, they all have their own little emphasis. So IGP really focuses on precision and the way the dog bites and how it barks and what is the dog feeling in those situations. French ring really is kind of pitting the decoy against the dog. So it's kind of like a sparring match, but like a really, really high precision speed sparring match. And then Mondio ring really focuses on generalization of training and environmental stability, as well as control in all sorts of different scenarios. And so we like to call it the dog trainers protection sport because instead of just teaching healing, well, we have to teach healing through obstacles, past food distractions, you know, all sorts of really weird things you never think of, up ramps, down ramps, you know, all sorts of different things. And so it's a really cool sport because you don't really know what's going to happen on the day of the trial. Each of our trials has a theme. So I have a theme coming up for our trial that we're hosting in July. It's going to be an America trial, obviously, because July 4th. And so we'll likely have lots of flags. There'll probably be some gunfire because America and, you know, some fireworks going off and stuff like that all during the trial. For like the exercise for food refusal, we'll probably have a cheeseburger because, you know, America or some hot dogs or something like that. And so we try to cater our trials to themes so that you have a general idea of the distractions and the difficulties that might be presented, but you really don't know what they will be. Um, so the other main difference between the sport IGP, uh, formerly known as Schutzen and Monteuring is with that sport, you do have the three different phases. So you have tracking, obedience, and then protection. Well, Monteo, you only really have obedience and protection. However, there are like scent elements in Monteuring. So you have to do a handler's scent discrimination exercise. They have to search out the decoy using their nose. So you do still have those odor specific exercises. But the main difference is that you don't put the dog away between the phases. So in IGP, you do your tracking in the morning, then your dog goes back in the car, you drive to the obedience field, you do your obedience, and the dog goes back in the car, and then they come back out for protection later. Well, in Monteuring, your dog is on that field the entire time. So they do obedience, they do their jumps, and then the decoy comes straight out in the field.

So in the upper levels, you can count down beyond the field and your dog actively working for about 30 minutes or so. And in the lower levels, like level one, between 10 and 15 minutes or so. And so it's kind of like a long endurance type of a game as far as that goes. It's a really, really a fun sport. And while it is a protection sport, USMRA, which is the United States Monteuring Association, they actually have a special program for obedience and obedience and jumps only. So that's where a dog, like I could bring out my border collie who doesn't do the protection side of things and just get her OB or her OBJ titles and go through the levels that way. And when they do that, they actually take the exact program that the protection dogs are doing, and they just stop it before the protection. So it's really, you're doing the same challenges, you're doing the same difficulty things, you're still focusing on environment, and it's a lot of fun, but you don't have to have the protection aspect of it. The other thing is that right now to do the protection level or the protection phase of it, you would have to have an FCI registered dog. And what that means is that they are registered through the AKC or your country, your home country of origin kennel club. So if my dog's from like Canada, it would have to be the CKC. However, we are lucky enough to have a five-year variance on that that's restarted this year. So until 2027, any dog can participate and get USMRA titles. They just have to be judged by a USMRA judge rather than an FCI one. So we get into some technical things there, but we did get a variance so dogs that aren't registered, they can actually still participate, which was a big question last year because we weren't sure if we're going to get that variance extended or not. So yeah, any dog right now can do a Mondio ring. Long story short. Limited edition title. You can only earn it for the next couple of years. Exactly. So the biggest aspect of Mondio that's kind of different from other sports and venues is how drastically and intentionally different one trial is from another, right? So can you share a little bit about how you train for the unexpected? Oh, yeah. We watch a lot of trials. So especially like the national level or the world championships, we watch those for ideas because generally at that upper level, then it trickles down to our club trials because they're like, oh, I always have this challenge and it looks really cool. For instance, I might watch a trial where the retrieve object is a hula hoop. And so I'm going to go buy a hula hoop.

I'm going to make sure my dog can do a retrieve with that. The cool thing about the generalizing to a whole bunch of different distractions or elements is that once you start generalizing, the dogs tend to get pretty good about generalizing in general. And so that means that if I generalize to 15 different retrieve objects, that 16th, 17th, 18th one, it's not going to be that difficult for my dog. And so we just make sure we're training something different every single time, especially once those core behaviors are established. I don't like doing the same challenges over and over again because that's not the sport. And so, yeah, mixing it up, getting ideas and really, really sorry. For those of you that aren't sure what's going on in that background, that is my four-month-old daughter contributing to the conversation. She felt the need to pigeon. She's like, I do, Mario. I was out training this morning, so I know all about this. Is there anything in particular that you do with young dogs to really ensure that they build that confidence for the novelty? Yeah, absolutely. I like to teach my young dogs different pattern games so that when I do go to new environments and I do have different environmental distractions out there, my dog's not doing the actual behaviors they'd be doing in a trial and potentially messing those up or getting negative feelings towards those behaviors. And so, you know, like treat task games, choose to heal, super stuff that isn't super formal. And then I bring them a lot of different places. So I try to find like jungle gyms to work on. I try to bring them in as many dog-friendly stores as possible. Halloween is my favorite time of year because like every store has Halloween decorations set out. And those things are pretty great as far as environmental distractions. So you'll see me with my young dogs, like just walking around the giant inflatables, even at Christmas time, that sort of thing, just to help them feel confident and powerful in those situations. And yeah, just not asking them too much because already that distraction is so hard for them. And just a bunch of different things, everything I can find. Yeah, all the places. All the places, all the things. Can you talk us through the exercises that you cover in your Mondio obedience class at FDSA, kind of what they are and what each sort of looks like for Mondio? Yeah, absolutely. So we cover all of the obedience exercises for Mondio ring, everything but the jumps and the protection exercises. We also include the check-in.

So for each trial, when you walk onto the field, you immediately go and talk to the judge, tell them who you are, that sort of thing. So we cover how to train that as well. So the exercises for obedience are healing, down stay with distraction, position changes, food refusal, the retrieve, the send away, and then little wood, which is Mondio ring handler scent discrimination exercise. And each of those sounds pretty much like what it is. Obviously, little wood is not very descriptive at all. It's called the search for an object. And so with healing, it's not worth very many points, but you know the healing pattern when you watch dog in white, which is the example dog that goes before everybody else at the trial. And so that's the first time you see the healing pattern. It'll include two stops, and it might go over an obstacle or through an obstacle or something along those lines, but it'll have a left turn, a right turn, and an about turn as well. And then for the down stay with distraction, that's an out-of-sight down stay for one minute. So the dog is in and down. The handler goes out of sight. And then the distraction is whatever the judge wants it to be for that trial. So it could include people playing catch with each other. I've had gunshots in some of the distractions, that sort of thing, all sorts of weird, weird different distractions. And then the difficulty changes by what level you're on, but they're never going to be closer than five meters to the dog. So you don't have to worry about anybody touching the dog or anything along those lines. And position changes. It's sit-down stand, but it could be in any order, and it's only a verbal cue. So you can't give hand signals along with it. And then the distance is dictated by which level you are in for how far you are away. The dog could be on something. The dog could be in something. They could be on an incline or an angle of any sort. Typically, they're not anything wobbly. Like, I haven't really seen that. And then the handler could be in any position as well. And then food refusal. Dog's in and down. And then the food is presented to the dog some way. It could be by a person dropping it. It could be an RC car driving the food up to them. We even had a donut on a fishing pole at one of the trials I was entered in. So the donut was cast in front of the dog and then reeled, like, so it drug along the ground in front of the dog. Like, that was really tricky as well. And then the retrieve could be any object. It could be over an obstacle. As long as the dog can physically pick it up and carry it, that is a good object.

Squeaky toys, hula hoops, you name it, we've done it. And then send away is run straight and fast between two markers and then recall once you get past that point. So there's no, like, a send to a down or send to a sit. They just have to cross a line and then the handler recalls them from there. So when you talk about all of those, I mean, some of them sound kind of similar to some of the things you might see in, like, an AKC sport or something like that. So how do they compare to, you know, kind of their similar components in other sports? Yeah, so the emphasis for monitoring really is environmental stability and then making sure you generalize your training. So a lot of the other sports really focus on precision and making sure, you know, you want the dogs head to be a certain way, you want the positions to look a certain way, that sort of thing. And monitoring is more about just surviving the test the best you can. So you can get quite good scores without having super flashy obedience, which is really nice. It just has to be functional. So a lot of people like me, I want flashy and functional. And a lot of times that flashiness actually helps my dog be functional. So, for example, the retrieve, because I don't know what that object is, it could be a squeaky stuffy toy. I mean, it could be a jolly ball for all I know. And my dog loves jolly balls. But because the retrieve is so precisionally trained, he knows how to bring it back without going into toy mode. He knows his job in that exercise. And so even though we don't have to have a perfect retrieve, so the dog doesn't have to hold it, you just have to grab it after the dog sits. Dog doesn't have to be in front position, it can come back into heel position, or even just sit like kitty corner to you. It just has to be a functional exercise. And the same thing with the position changes. We do put a lot of emphasis on not moving forward or backwards. But as far as like, whether it's a tuck sit versus a rock back sit or something like that doesn't really matter. The only thing is, is your dog can't move more than a half meter forward or backwards. And so again, it's all about functionality versus precision in the sport and making sure that you just survive the test. Making it through to the other side. Yeah, exactly. So out of all of those, kind of the two exercises that I think are maybe most unique are the send away and the food refusal. So can you share a little bit on how you would approach training the send away when it's impossible to kind of know what you're going to be sending the dogs towards, Mondia? Yeah.

So this is actually like the great debate in monitoring is how do you train your send away? And so you'll go to a trial and you'll see this amazing send away and everybody goes up and like, so how do you train your send away? And there's always a good debate. And then the national that we entered, Creech and I entered last year in Colorado, there was three dogs that did really well with the send away because a lot of times the judge will kind of mess with it. So the send away is a certain distance from the markers. And oftentimes the judge will put objects on the ground on either side of that path to kind of draw the dog towards it. So maybe it might be a IGP blind or just some objects scattered around that look like toys so that the dog is kind of drawn to the corners rather than that straight line. Or they might do the little wood. So the handler will go down and place the little wood. They do that exercise. And then on the same line, now they're doing the send away. So the dog might go and search for that object rather than doing the send away. So there's a lot of little tricky things judges like to do. And at the national level, there was only three dogs that got the send away in the situation. And one of them was Creech and I was chatting with the other handlers and listening to what other people said when they chatted with them. And all three of us had trained the sendaways different ways. So it really doesn't matter like how you train it. You just have to generalize, generalize, generalize. So a lot of people will train to go to a place. So a target, a front paw target, like an upside down bucket that we use for pivot work. So they'll send to that. Some people like to train their dogs to go put their front feet up on the fence. So they'll go up, put their front feet on the fence, wait for the release to a toy. And then other people like to place a toy. And then I'm just sending my dog to a toy that way. So I'll have a toy hidden along the fence line. And so all three of those methods just teach our dogs to run straight to the fence, either to perform a behavior or to find the toy for them. And then after that, we just have to really proof our recall. So making sure that our recall is the most important thing ever to our dog, because especially with the method I do, which is find your ball along the fence, and a dog that really loves his ball like Creature does, that recall has to be the most important thing. Because the worst case in that scenario is he runs straight, I recall, and he doesn't come back because he's busy looking for his ball. So again, that's something I have to prove.

There is one other method I do. So I have two different sendaways trained. And it involves a bird launcher. So I have a bird launcher, which they use in a lot of hunt training. But I put a ball in it instead of a bird. Don't need that level of distraction. The ball's in it. And I have it set at an angle behind like one of the sendaway markers, so that it'll shoot out right into the middle of where the dog should be. And so I'll point my dog to it. I'll tell him go. And then as he's dedicated to that sendaway and whatever distance we're working on, I'll pop the bird launcher so that ball just pops out right in front of him. And so I like that method if I don't have a fence to send my dog to, because really the tricky part about the other method is, you know, finding somewhere that has a fence that I can put that ball on, because that fence really does act as the target for the dog. So long story short, there's a million different ways to train the sendaway. There's really not one method that's better than another. I really like playing with a bunch of different methods. And in the class, I do teach different methods. So you can kind of figure out what works best for you and your situation and your dog, and then use that method to train it. Awesome. So obviously, like an important piece of this, right, is the proofing and generalization piece. So how do you approach that so that it's truly proofed and truly generalized? So when you go to a place the dog has not been, they step in the competition field, they can do it. Right. So there is one advantage. If you train at a club trial, a lot of them have open field the day before. And so that's the time where you go, you practice your sendaways, you kind of guess, okay, this makes sense for the judge to do the sendaway here. And that's one way to go about it. However, if you trial at a national, you're not allowed to go on the field as a competitor before the event. So there's no open field. And it can't be a field that has had a trial, you know, recently on it. So there's no practicing or anything like that on this field beforehand. And so what I do when I'm prepping for a trial is I go to as many different fields as I can. I'll go to a park. Just this morning, I went to a baseball park. And I put my sendaway along that, you know, the home run fence. The outfield fence. That's what that's called. I put my ball along there. And then I did my sendaway at that place. I just do one just to show my dog that, yep, here in this situation, the sendaway still happens. Still run straight to that fence. Your ball will be there, I promise.

And so I go to as many different parks as I can. I try to get on as many different mondial fields as I can. So it involves a lot of travel. But just really, really practicing it. One of my other favorite ways is to do, and I teach this exercise in the class, is to go to an open field. It's even better if there's a fence all the way around. But to have your toys placed out, you stand in the center, and you have one at 3 o'clock, one at 9 o'clock, one at 12 o'clock, and one at 6 o'clock. And so I can send my dog to the one at 12. He gets that. I turn around, send him to the one at 6. He gets that, send him to 3, and then 9, so on and so forth. And then I can start shrinking that distance between them down a little bit. So now my dog's really like, no, I have to run straight, even though there's a different toy I could be running to right now. So that's one of my favorite ways to really proof it and make sure my dog is running straight and going the direction I ask him to do it. I like that, the kind of around-the-clock idea. Yeah. To narrow in your points and have him really understand the concept of straight. That's neat. All right, so to switch to food refusal, I think people unfamiliar with Mondial might assume the best way to teach a food refusal would just be never let your dog eat it off of the floor. Sure. So is that how you approach it? How do you approach it? That is not how I approach it because one of my favorite games to do with my dog is a treat toss game. And so it's one of my favorite environmental games. So I can go into a new environment, play the treat toss game, and how my dog eats the treat off the floor. It's a great way to see how they're feeling, how quickly they come back to me, so on and so forth. But that's a whole other podcast. So for that, I just make sure that my dog eating food off the floor is on cue. So I have specific marker cues that tell my dog when to eat food off the floor. So get it means I'm going to throw it to the floor. Find it means there's a treat somewhere on the floor. You better find it. And then I have another one. If I want to be working with a lot of food on the ground or sending to a target, a food bowl. So take the food out of the food bowl. It would be nice and straightforward if all we had to do is proof our dogs not to eat food off the floor. That would make our game a lot easier. But we play Mondio. And of course, like hardly ever is it actually just on the floor at some of these trials. So we have to proof for people trying to hand it to the dog.

We have to proof for it falling out of nowhere because sometimes the person's on the other side of the barrier and the dog doesn't see him. We have to proof for it on fishing lines and on remote control cars. So it would be really easy if that's all we had to do. But because it's this sport, we really just have to generalize the understanding of don't eat the food after I give this cue. And so mine is leave it. If I say leave it, my dog's in and down. He knows he's not supposed to go for any food. Even if I try to hand it to him, that's not the time and place to eat the food. He will get a better reward when I come back. And so, yeah, it's not that easy. It's not that simple. You're right. So part of that dynamic, right, is that you're not there. Somebody else is either presenting the food or it's appearing or you give all those different things. So how do you kind of ensure that behavior is fluent enough? The dog's going to refuse food even when you're not actually present. So how do you, like, train something where you're not even going to be there? Right. So I train the picture of somebody approaching because I have dogs that aren't – my melanoms aren't very friendly. They're not social melanoms. I know there's many social melanoms out there and mine are not them. Famous does not like people approaching her. She is – and both of them are perfectly safe working around people. It's just people approaching is really pressure-y for her and she doesn't like it and she hates the food refusal. So for that reason, I actually taught her to eat the food because, hey, it was a reward on the field. It's only, like, five points at level one. Like, go for it, honey, if it makes you feel better. But for her, when I started retraining it after that, I would train the picture of somebody approaching, walking in front of her, and then release to a toy. And now if somebody approaches, they drop the object. It's not food at the beginning. Drop an object like a rock or something and then release to a toy and so on and so forth. And I can build it up that way so that the person approaching actually causes my dog to hyperfixate on me because of the expectation of getting released to a toy. So that's how I kind of worked through that particular thing because that's a really big cue. You know, somebody walking up with food in their hand and trying to give it to your dog, that's a giant cue right there. And my dog can go, oh, that means that my ball is going to be thrown. So I better pay attention to mom because she has a ball. And so that works really well for helping prove that particular problem. Gotcha.

This kind of answers what I was going to ask you next, I think, but that's okay. So is the food refusal contextual for the dog then? You know, do you expect after you trained it that, like, if a stranger was to walk up to your dog and try and feed them in public, would they eat it? Like, what do you? So all of my exercises, because they can look quite similar to each other and because of all the different levels of distractions, they are, they each have their own pre-cue, their start pattern, and then the cue for the behavior itself. So there's a lot of things telling my dog what they need to do in each circumstance, which also means that none of this would transfer to real life unless I gave those specific start patterns and cues to help my dog. So it is contextual. We do have our start pattern. So you'll hear a lot of handlers tell their dog, literally tell their dog what exercise is coming. They'll say, this is food refusal. This is food refusal. And they'll handle them in some way when they approach the start line for that exercise. And then at that point, they get the actual cue for the exercise. And the good thing with the food refusal, it's always a down. So you walk up to the line departure, tell your dog what exercise it is, give them their pre-cue. Then you move up to the line of departure, put your dog in the down, give them the cue. So mine would look like this. I would walk up, my dog would be on my left side because that's the way we start, food refusal. So that already cue him in that it's either going to be healing, food refusal, or retrieve. So walk up and I tell him it's food refusal. Then I walk to the line departure. I tell him down, leave it, and I walk away. And so that all right there tells him which behavior is coming up. And so that means whatever food's presented to you, ignore it. I probably have something better. And then we can move on from there. The tricky part with Mondio is that they can put the food refusal at the check-in. So like you literally walk onto the field and you're already doing food refusal when you put your dog in the down to go talk to the judge. And so that changes it just a little bit. And then that's when you have to really think, okay, how can I ensure that my start pattern is still going to happen? I'm going to get my pre-cues in. And even though I put my dog in the down and leave it, now he has to leave it for either the entirety of my check-in or I'm going to tell him to leave it, but I'm going to go check in. And then they're going to do the refusal before I return.

And so now that's a whole like big break between those cues and make sure my dog doesn't forget that. So, yeah, we try to train it to context as much as we can. But then our judges are like, ha-ha, let's just make sure. How can we come up with another twist on that? Yeah, exactly. But that's why we love the sport. Yeah. All right. So I mentioned the Mondio class. We talked a whole bunch about that. But do you want to share just a little bit about who might be interested, anything else specifically about the class, and then anything else you've got kind of coming up on the schedule? Yeah, absolutely. So the Mondio class is for anybody interested in the sport, whether it's to do the full sport with protection or maybe they're interested in the obedience-only title, so the OB or the OBJ. So it is a very heavy class. So there's a lot of content in it because I do go through each of the exercises, and there is multiple ways to teach each exercise. So you get a lot of bang for your buck with this class. However, that also means that you won't possibly be able to work on all of it, like within the time frame of the class. So I always tell people go into it with kind of an idea of what you'd like to focus on. Most people focus on three or four exercises, depending on which time they have, and really work on those things. Pick the ones that you're going to need a little bit of guidance with if you're a gold spot or a silver spot, and then kind of go from there. It is a great class. It's a little overwhelming, so I always let people know that up front. Go into it with that mindset for sure. Yeah, anybody can do it. Like if you have a small dog, you know, the obedience-only track would be the way to go because those jumps are quite high at a meter for the hurdle, and then, you know, the Palisades, like 1.8 or something. I don't remember. I do full height now, so I can't remember what the level one is. So they're really, really big jumps, and that does have a size limitation. There is an alternate to that, but you have to have a club that has those jumps. So the obedience-only track is really the way to go with smaller dogs. There's no less to it. You don't, you know, no big difference on that. So anybody really can do it. It does go foundation to more advanced. So if you just want to help on proofing things and ideas and you're more advanced in your obedience, you can absolutely go that route. Or if you have no idea and you literally are just working on pivots with your healing and you're at that point, you can actually work on it then, too.

So definitely something for everybody in that as far as that goes. Yeah. What else? What other classes do you have coming up? I was just trying to think about that. I do have my disc dog strategy class coming up next term as well. And so what that is, is the Up Dog Challenge is a really cool disc dog organization that has really cool strategy games. And so I kind of break down those and, you know, kind of different ways that you can work those games and how to train those patterns so that your dog goes into it knowing what's going on versus just kind of running around catching frisbees. So that's a really cool class, especially if you just took the Handler's Choice disc dog class. It's a nice continuation from that. You do just have to know how to throw. Oh, your dog has to like frisbees better, even better if they have a return to hand and a drop on cue because then you can really work on the patterns themselves. So that's another good class. Fun. All right. So to kind of round out our chat today, one last question. If you were to kind of drill down our conversation into one key piece of information you want people to understand or kind of walk away from this with, what would it be? That Mondia Ring is literally the best sport ever. And even if you're biased, not at all. Even if you train it every day and you think of all of these cool little challenges and you're so proud of it, you go to a trial and then there's that one you never even thought of. And that's what's so cool about it because now you can go home and work on that new thing. So there's always something new to train and Mondia Ring is a ton of fun and everybody should do it. Awesome. All right. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Sarah. Thanks so much for having me. Absolutely. And thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week. Don't miss it. If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. 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.