E289: 켈리 스나이더(Kellie Snider) - "구성적 공격성 치료"

But I got on this listserv and met looking for help with my parrot. And I found a bunch of parrot trainers that were on a group. And a couple of them, Doug Cook and Linda Morrow, her name is different now. But they were clicker trainers with exotic bird shows. And they basically emailed me how to work with my bird. And the goal was not to treat the aggression so much as just to teach her to do other things that she would have fun with me doing. So I taught her to turn in a circle, to hang upside down, to put little toys in a little plastic basket, to pull a little wagon. And her whole attitude changed. I suddenly became this fun person. And I got really hooked on behavior at the time because it's like, how cool is that? So they recommended that I read Don't Shoot the Dog by Karen Pryor. And I read it over and over. And I read everything that was available at that time, which wasn't a whole lot. But I had become friends with Marion Bailey through that listserv. But she and I became friends through email. And she said, you know, if you really want to learn about behavior, you should go study at the University of North Texas. I lived in Dallas at the time. And she said, just that's what you need to do. And I, at that point, I hadn't finished my bachelor's degree because I kept changing degrees and didn't know what I wanted to be, even though I was long past growing up at that point. But I went back to school, finished my bachelor's in behavior analysis. And then I hadn't had enough yet. So I went ahead and got a master's in it as well. And that's where the CAT research came from in my, it turned out to be my graduate thesis. Awesome. So what about the field, like, pulled you in and convinced you to, like, go back and get the bachelor's and then a master's degree? Like, what is it about behavior analysis that kind of hooked you? It was a really streamlined way of understanding how we all work. Because behavior analysis isn't about human behavior or animal behavior. It's about behavior. And for whatever species you're dealing with, there are certain things that are the same. I mean, like, if I was going to train a horse versus a tiger, I wouldn't be feeding the horse meat. I mean, yeah, I mean, I would be feeding them what's relevant to them. That part is different when you're training different species. And a lot of their various natural behaviors that they do are different. But if you follow a behavior with something that's worthwhile and valuable to them, you're going to see more of that behavior in the future. That fact is true across species.

Everything from amoebas to humans to, you know, blue whales, presumably, if we could get a hold of their reinforcers. So, I was also raising children. I had small children at the time. And two boys. And it changed the entire way I raised my children. I had been raised with a very punitive parenting style, which was common when I was young. And I didn't want to raise my kids that way. But I was kind of getting stuck in a super permissive kind of parenting style, which starts leading to problems. Because you really do need them to do certain things and not do other certain things. And being, starting to learn about how, you know, just the basic science of behavior works, I was able to completely overhaul how I was raising my children. And it was a lifesaver. It meant that I didn't have to use punitive methods with my kids. But I could still have well-behaved kids. And it was, it really just changed my life. And theirs, I would presume. One of them's here, I can ask him later. That sounds like a good plan. That beat him using Thanksgiving dinner conversation, for sure. Yeah. I was like, honey, how did dog training impact your life? Oh, man. Or parent training, I guess, at that time. Yeah, right. So if folks know your name, kind of mentioned Kat a little bit. But it's also possible maybe they know you from your book. So Turning Fierce Dogs Friendly, Using Constructional Aggression Treatment to Rehabilitate Aggressive and Reactive Dogs. Or the method, Constructional Aggression Treatment. So if I understand correctly, you kind of debuted that approach in your thesis. So why the choice in your thesis to kind of focus on aggression and reactivity? That was just, I actually, when I decided to get my master's degree, my plan was to work with parrots and issues related to parrots. But one day, we had a behavior analysis lab, and it was an animal lab. We called it ORCA, which stood for the Organization of Reinforcement Contingencies with Animals. So I started being involved in that from the time I went back to school as an undergrad. And we met once a week. And Dr. Jesus Rosales Ruiz would come in, and we would talk about what research we were doing or what projects we had going on with animals. We worked at some zoos and so forth. And I worked primarily with animals in their homes. But he, one day he came in and he said, is there anybody who would be interested in working, doing a project with aggressive dogs? And by this time, I had gotten to know a ton of dog trainers, because that's your main animal behavior category in the world, especially online.

So I was like, well, that's, I didn't say anything at first. Nobody else said anything. Keep in mind, I was in my mid-40s at this point, and everybody else in the room was in their 20s. And I'm like, man, that sounds really cool. And I raised my hand, and I was like, I'll do it. And I think Jesus was taken aback a little bit. But it ended up being a really cool ride. It was, we just had a blast. So that's how I got started. It was Jesus' idea, based on some other research that he had done. And my first research project, I think, that I participated in, involved fearful llamas at a little zoo we worked with. And they needed to be haltered sometimes and moved around. And, you know, people needed to be able to hook them up, and they were afraid of people. So what that project involved was kind of like cat, but it was basically letting them be far away from us. And then if they made any kind of little braver move, like looking at us, taking a step forward, anything like that, we would drop a piece of food of their choice. It was usually, most of them liked yams, just raw yams. So we'd drop some yams on the ground and walk away. And we were able to train them to come toward us. And then once they would come toward us, we would clicker train them to get the harness on. And so that was a very similar project. There had also been some work done with some goats and some sheep doing the same, oh, some cattle from a herd. So these were all very similar, but they all involved the use of food. So one of the things that we were looking at was, is the food really relevant to the training of the new behavior? Is it just the distancing? Is it the fact that we go away when the animal does something preferred? Or is the food part of the reinforcer? So we separated that out and found out that the food really had nothing to do with it. It was all that opportunity to get some space from us. We were the aversive stimuli. And so when we walked away, that was the reward that they were looking for. Interesting. So for those not familiar with constructional aggression treatment, can you kind of talk about how that is similar or different to kind of what you were just describing? Well, all of that really is constructional. But the constructional approach is a way of looking at behavior where you are focusing on building replacement behaviors as opposed to getting rid of problem behaviors. So we really just changed the focus. So typically, or historically, people working with an animal with aggression or fear or whatever. Let's just use aggression as the example.

If you're working with an animal with aggression, there's a tendency to go straight for punishment. Dog does something aggressive. We either slap a shock collar on him and shock him or we hit him or yell at him or, you know, yank him away by the neck. But it's always in an attempt to stop the problem behavior, to break it down, to get rid of it. Or we may do give them medication to try to make them less likely to perform aggressive behaviors. Now, I am not opposed to medication for when it's appropriate for a lot of situations. It can help the animal get it. It can help you through the training process in some cases. And some animals seem to benefit it, just like humans do, just from being on certain medications in cooperation, ideally, with a vet behaviorist. So that's the big difference, is the difference between breaking down a behavior and building up replacement behaviors. It's like, you know, back in the 90s when I was learning about clicker training, one of the big central, and I think this was from Don't Shoot the Dog, but one of the big things that we always said was, what do you want the animal to do instead? So you've really got two categories of training. One is when you're trying to deal with a problem behavior. So aggression, fear, you know, whatever the problem behavior is. And then you have training up new behaviors from scratch, like sports behaviors, like, you know, weave poles or lure coursing or whatever it is. Because these, well, I wouldn't say lure coursing is something that they've never done before, but you're not going to find that many dogs who are automatically doing weave poles on their own without having been trained. So, yeah, there will be very few, I would say. So it's a different way of looking at it. How can we help the animal learn new stuff to do in this situation where they currently behave aggressively? That makes sense. So you started to explain in there, I think, a little bit kind of why the word constructional or kind of like what it means in this use case. Can you just elaborate a little bit on that? Sure. Constructional basically means building a new repertoire. And it was specifically taken out of construction work by Dr. Israel Gold Diamond back in the 1970s. And it was basically, we don't want to break down behavior. We want to build new behavioral repertoires. So that the, we want the animal to have a lot of really good, safe options to aggression. Ideally, options that are easier for the dog to perform than aggression. More agreeable behaviors. So that they choose to do this other thing.

Because not only does it work for them, but it's easier. So they, they will audit. That's kind of how all of our behavior works. If we, we see that something's getting a result and it's easier than other alternatives we have to get that result, we're going to do the easy thing. That's just the way behavior works. And so that's what we're, we're trying to just harness the, the natural tendencies of any behaving organism. And, um, instead of making it like some magical thing that we do, we're just like, oh, I know that you want that thing to go away. So we can make that thing go away. If you do something else. Um, I think kind of as an aside, I think we get kind of caught up sometimes in worrying about, about it not being the dog's choice to engage in this training. And I'll, the reason I'm saying that is because it comes up a lot when I talk about this. But the thing is, we brought these dogs into a human world. And if they're going to get along in the human world in a way that's beneficial for them and a way that is beneficial for us, we have to help them get along in the world that we're into. We have to help them over that. We have to help them do something difficult, um, in order for them to be successful in the human world that we are forcing them to live in. Right. Right. That makes a lot of sense. I know this kind of wasn't in my list of questions, but you mentioned in there that, um, you kind of build up, uh, an easier behavior. Do you just have an example of like what that might look like? Um, just to kind of put that picture in my head. Sure. So when we start training, we've got some problem behavior like aggression that's already happening. And it's happening in a situation like a stranger shows up and the dog is like, holy crap, I don't want to deal with that stranger. So I'm going to try to drive them away with my aggressive behavior. So when we start, that's, that's what they're already doing and it's working really well for them because nobody, very few people stick around when a dog is lunging and barking at them. They at least give them a little space, if not a lot of space. Um, so the aggression that they're showing is working great, except that everybody's miserable. Mom, dad, dog, stranger, nobody's happy. So what we do when we're, um, doing the work is we have these decoy people, these helpers or, or people with dogs. Um, and they show up pretending to be the stranger that the dog is worried about, but they stay below threshold. They stay far enough away that they're not getting a big emotional response from the dog.

And the dog is going to be aware of them and see them over there, but not be so worried that they have to behave aggressively. And in this space where they aren't worried, but they are aware, there are going to be some other behaviors that occur. So you're going to see, they may exhale, you know, that thing that they may do the boof and they may, um, turn their head or they may look at their owner. Like, why is, what is this person doing here? Anything that they choose to do that is not aggressive, not fearful and not self damaging. The helper will now walk away when they do that alternative thing. In the new version of cat, we have a lot less instances where dogs go over threshold, but on the occasion, when they might go over threshold instead of immediately walking away, like a normal stranger would do, we'll have them wait for just a minute until some alternative shows up. And a lot of times that will look like a little head tilt or like look at mom or just like, you're not acting like most people do. Like the dog is like, I don't get you. So they do something else. And that's when you walk away. So you're looking for any alternative to aggression, um, that would be okay for that animal to have in their regular life. And we're also not looking for one particular thing. We're not looking for just a head turn and we're not looking for just a sit. We're not looking for just look up at mom. We're looking at any of that stuff that the dog chooses to do instead of behaving aggressively. Okay. That really helps. It helps kind of put that picture in my head. Um, I know you've gotten, you know, some pushback because, uh, you're talking a little bit about negative reinforcement. Um, can you... Tons of pushback. Let's just say that. Okay. Well, well, I want to kind of give you a chance to address some of that. Right. So can you just share a little bit about how that kind of fits into this picture and maybe why? I'll try. Okay. Um, and I am going to talk about it in the, in the webinar. So that will be something that listeners may want to tune into. When you're learning behavior analysis or, um, quote unquote, positive dog training, you learn about learning theory. And so you've got the little quadrants of positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment, negative punishment. And we, a long time ago, back when I was starting, it was already a thing. Um, we have kind of made these into almost religious quadrants. So we have positive reinforcement. It's always perfect. Nothing can never go wrong when you use positive reinforcement. That's what the angels use. That's what, you know.

So we kind of had that attitude. And there's a good reason we have that attitude. And it's because positive reinforcement is fabulous. And there's a ton you can do with positive reinforcement that is healthful and appropriate. And we tend to think of negative punishment as, oh, that's not that bad. And we tend to think of extinction as, oh, that's not bad. The problem with negative reinforcement, I mean, uh, negative punishment is typically we use it in the form of timeout. And timeout doesn't work very well in terms of changing behavior. Um, I go into that in a lot, a lot more in the webinar, but, um, I prefer to use a very casual timeout. It's like when the owner has just about had it up to their ears and they need a break or when the dog is being a total toddler and they can't calm themselves down and they need a break. That's not a real behavior analytic timeout, but it's an appropriate use of timeout in my humble opinion. Um, but timeout as a training tool is really difficult to, to use. So, uh, to use effectively. And then of course we have, um, positive punishment, which is hurting your dog or causing them unpleasantness in some way. And we really try to avoid that, um, for good reason. Um, because if you're going to take an animal that's already concerned about its environment and then shock it, hit it, yell at it during a time when they're already concerned about their environment, you're just going to cause them more harm. And it's not going to necessarily improve the, it's not going to improve the behavior. It's what it's going to do is help your dog learn to shut down in certain times and it's not good. So, so then we get to negative reinforcement where, um, it's made my life a living hell. Uh, it's a bad no, no. So, also in terms of thinking about the behavioral quadrants. And the reason for that is that in order to perform negative reinforcement, some sort of aversive has to be introduced. So, so you, so this, this aversive helper is introduced as part of the training. Now, when I was doing the research, I let the dogs go over threshold way too much. There were a few reasons for that largely related to the research itself, um, and, and being able to get certain kinds of data, but also just because this was a new procedure, I was not highly experienced as a dog handler. And I did let the dogs go over threshold. I admit it. I apologize. I repent and, um, and things are different now. So people have come along since me and done more work in this area. And what they're doing now is really, uh, keeping that threshold cleaner.

And a lot of that has to do, well, they're not even calling it a threshold anymore. What they're working with a threshold implies a physical specific distance. And I actually used to use markers on the ground to remind me not to go any closer than this. But what is happening now is we look at the dogs, um, that point at which the dog is aware of the, um, aversive stimulus. The person, the helper, the person, the helper. And between that point and the point at which they might become aggressive, we're staying in that little window. And the goal is to never go so far that they start their aggressive sequence of behaviors. Um, and as a result, well, the training is super boring looking. It's still, it's still, it's still quite effective. I will say back in the day when I was doing it all rough and, um, not perfect, we learned so much, but it was also incredibly effective. I mean, from the very first dog I worked with, we had a dog aggressive dog that had always been dog aggressive. And by the end of the first day of working with her, we had her loose in a room of five other dogs. Now, I don't think I would have the, um, nerve to do that again today. I would probably be more careful. I was, um, pretty courageous when I didn't know any better. But, um, um, but we were, it, it was amazing how much that opportunity for that dog to be off leash around other dogs gave her. Because she, the other dogs, of course, will do things if they're dog savvy dogs. Like my greyhound was part of the group. We had done all the work with my greyhound and she was in the group of five dogs. And we let them, we didn't just let them all out like a herd of dogs. We just let one out. Then we let another out. We let them, you know, get used to the situation. And my dog, the little dog, we were looking with, working with a little terrier. Um, and she, um, was starting to get a little stiff and iffy with my dog. And my dog just stopped what she was doing and looked over her shoulder and waited. And when the little dog realized she wasn't getting a rise out of her, my dog walked away. Like, it was like, wow, she already knew what to do. I should have just been asking her the whole time. So, um, so again, I would not recommend that that is a way to do it on your first ever day of working, um, this procedure. However, it amazed us both. The way grad school usually goes is you, you, um, you go out and do some stuff and then you go back and show it to your professor and you both watch you on video and you discuss what you did wrong, what you could change. And, um, it was like weak.

Like I, and I was getting so many people that wanted me to work with their aggressive dogs. So I was getting tons of opportunities to try it. And it was like week after week, I'm having success after success with these dogs. So to me, it became really important that we started sharing it. And we, uh, you know, we started, we did a, our first seminar in, um, 2006. I hadn't even graduated yet. And, um, um, um, anyway, it went on from there, but you know, it, um, I think my, just a big frustration that I had was that everybody was so hung up on the term negative reinforcement because it was in the square that was labeled bad instead of here's a situation where a dog's behavior is already under the control of negative reinforcement in the environment. It's already, nobody trained the dog to be that way. It's already that way. So we know one really important thing, and that is this dog needs distance from the things that it's concerned about. And the aggression is how it has figured out to get distance. And so there's a problem there. And what do we need to do to help the dog look at the environment in a different way and help them find out that, yeah, there can be something scary there, but there's a lot of other ways you can deal with it. This doesn't relieve the owner from their responsibility to be their dog's advocate, obviously. But we start putting some of the control and choice back into the pause of the learner so that they can say, oh, you know, that time the other day, there was that scary guy who came up and all I had to do was like turn and walk the other way and everything was okay. Let me try that. That was way easier than lunging and growling and trying to bite and getting choked on my leash because I'm lunging. And so that's kind of what we're looking for. We're looking for an opportunity to let the dog choose alternative behaviors in a safe environment. Yeah. So you mentioned it can be super effective, super fast. Are there dogs that you wouldn't use this approach with? Are there criteria that you consider when you're evaluating whether or not to use cat with a particular animal? Yeah. So when we're using cat, one little bit of information that may be helpful here is that cat isn't just about negative reinforcement. It can also be used with positive reinforcement. The goal of cat is to use the functional reinforcer. So if you've got a dog that's lunging and growling and the result is that other people go away, then you know that you want to use a training procedure that makes other people go away. And that going away is negative contingent going away on certain behaviors.

That's negative reinforcement. But the situation in which you want to stop a dog from counter surfing, there's obvious management things you can do with that. But if you don't want the dog to jump on the counter, what is the dog? You look at what is the dog getting out of jumping on the counter? Well, 99% of the time it's food. So you are going to use food as your reinforcer for the training. And it's like, it's something that people do all the time. They just don't think of it as constructional, but it is. So it's like, okay, I want my dog, instead of getting up on the counter when I'm trying to prepare dinner and I have all the food out, I want him to go lay on his bed and I'll give him treats for going to his bed and staying there. So he's going to get something that he really wants or she or they really want. And I'm going to be able to cook food. And that is a constructional training setup. Most people that do training already do constructional work in some categories. It's just when we get into the emotional behavior categories that people get worried that we're going over what the animal can tolerate. And I mean, I totally get that. I get that so much. Um, we, we don't want, I wouldn't want to go back to where I started the procedure in 2006. Um, but we don't have to, cause it's, it's streamlined and new and improved now. And, um, and, um, and again, you know, these are principles of behavior. Um, when I started all those years ago with my parrot, Doug Cook and his, and Linda Morrow told me about way back in the day when he would get a new parrot that wasn't tame. Um, that's what he did, but he did it kind of instinctively. It was like the dog, I mean, the parrot would act calm and he would move away from it. Um, and cause he knew that the parrot needed some, to feel safe. Um, in those days, new parrots were being wild caught, which is awful. And we don't like to think about that, but it was the reality. Um, and, um, so he, he, he figured out that by walking away, um, he could help them trust him. And that's what I look at cat, the cat procedure like as well. It's like, I want you to understand that I get you. I'm, you know, I'm, you think of me as a bad guy right now, but I want you to learn that most people are pretty cool. And there are things that you can do that won't, um, that where you can stay safe. I want them to not only physically be safe. I want them to feel safe in the presence of aversive stimuli. That makes a lot of sense. Um, you mentioned in there a couple of times, the new and improved cat.

So I want to just give you a second to like, do you want to just talk a little bit about some of the ways that it's changed? The, the big way that it's changed is, um, focusing on the alert instead of waiting for the animal to go over threshold and then waiting it out, which is what we used to do. We used to, the, the dog would, um, go over threshold and, um, I, or whoever was being the helper would just wait. Um, and when they did anything else, we would walk away. But now we don't get that close. The big, it might happen occasionally that we get that, that, that for some reason, even if we didn't get that close, the dog may go over threshold because there's so much in the environment that we're not aware of, um, that's, it's significant for them. Um, but now we're looking for that alert. Is the dog aware of us, but below the point where they're going to start in their aggression sequence? And that's where, that's like that little sweet spot. So we're going to go away then because we've got a lot of good things going on right there. We've got, the dog is aware of us, a lot of training at, um, I think people are better about this now, but in, in historically a lot of training involved getting the dog not to pay attention to the bad thing. It was like, look at your owner or, um, you know, anything besides looking over there, but, you know, like with Leslie McDevitt's, uh, look at that protocol and, uh, we're basically, we get the dog, we want the dog to be aware that the bad guy is there and then to learn what to do about it. Like, instead of holy crap, they're coming closer. I have to attack them. Um, we're saying, okay, all you have to do is be aware they're tuned in, but they're not pushed so far. Now that's going to be, that comes with its own challenges, which is how do we stay in that little window? Um, it's easier said than done. And for some dogs, the window is going to be bigger than for other dogs. There's going to be, you know, you think of those hair trigger shepherds that, um, they're so aware of every little thing in the environment. It's like nothing gets past them. And so that little window can be teeny tiny. Um, but that's what we're shooting for is staying between noticing and not so far as aggressing. So, um, typically I think, you know, people kind of think about, um, treatments or, uh, approaches for handling aggression, like desensitization and counter conditioning as like the goal is to have the animal be less stressed, right? Or maybe we're looking for a neutral response. Is that, you know, kind of the same as what your goal is with Kat?

Um, can you just share a little bit about what you can kind of consider as like success, um, when working with Kat? Yeah, that was, that was kind of a big deal when we started doing this work was, um, we, we were, we, we found that if we kept going long enough, the animal would start their, their demeanor would change. So they would start being more curious. Their bodies would get looser as we were working. Like we might get very close to them in the, in the approach and retreat part, but we're not going to like handle them right away, but we would get, we would get to the point where we're seeing, well, this dog that was super stiff with a, like a rigid tail and, you know, just like on the verge of snarling. And that's the most relaxed we saw him. That's where we started. And, um, as we worked, as we went along, we would find the body getting loose, the ears getting loose. We'd see the head tilt in curiosity. We'd see them start to sniff the air towards the helper. And ultimately all the dogs in the research, except for one got to the point where I could handle them or they could play with my dog. Um, in, um, there was one dog, for whatever reason, we couldn't really get anywhere with him. He had a really bad, I, I'm not a vet. So I'm saying, I think he had a really bad thyroid problem. His eyes just bugged out, literally bugged out. And the owners couldn't get him to the vet because he was so, um, aggressive. Um, they were afraid to put a harness on him. I wanted, I liked to work in dogs with harnesses instead of collars so that we wouldn't end up choking anybody. Um, but, um, he was just a, I don't know why I, we just couldn't get too far with him. But with the other dogs in the study, we were able to go, if it wasn't me as the helper, somebody, whoever was the helper was able to interact with the dog by the end of the, by the end of the procedure, we called that the switchover effect, because what apparently happens is you go from being, uh, a negative reinforcer or something that they want to go away to becoming a positive reinforcer or something that they want to interact with. And of course, if you, when you get up to that point, you've got to be really careful. You're going to see some video at this, at the webinar. That is one of my very early dogs where I wasn't very careful. Everything went great, but you will go, no, that's not how that should be done. And that's okay. Cause I learned, um, time, time went on. People are not the same as they were 15 years ago or however long that is. Um, so anyway, that's what it's a switch over where we do.

You ideally want to go to the point that the dog understands that the helper is not dangerous. Um, it, you can do it sometimes just due to training limitations. You won't go that far. Um, like some dogs that were in New York city and you don't know when people are going to be popping out from here or there and you can't have the dog walk up to strangers. Um, a lot of different reasons that you might not go all the way through, but in an ideal world, if you can get to the point where you do go through switch over, you can, um, get some really lasting and, and heartwarming results. Awesome. Um, so you've mentioned a couple of times the webinar, so I do want to talk about that. So we've got, um, a webinar coming up for FDSA December 1st, which is next week. Um, can you just kind of give us the highlights? What are you gonna, gonna focus on for the webinar and maybe who might want to join us? We're going to talk about a lot of the stuff that we've talked today, talked about today and maybe go into a little more depth about it. Um, and I think that this will be most beneficial for people who work with dogs with aggression or who have one and have some training background. Um, it'll be particularly interesting. I think to people who either participated in an earlier seminar from back in the day or who have just heard things and want to, um, want to know what's really going on. Um, and I think there's a lot of that, there's still a lot of controversy about it, which it makes me sad, but I totally get it because I was trained the same way everybody else that, um, negative reinforcement is bad, but the fact of the matter is it's all how you, how you approach the, um, the delivery. Like I would never try to teach a sit or a weave pole or whatever using negative reinforcement. And a lot of people do use negative reinforcement for new behaviors, new repertoires. And I think that's perfectly incompatible with good training. But, um, if you're using negative reinforcement because a behavior is already maintained by negative reinforcement in the dog's world, then you can introduce negative reinforcement with the goal of giving the dog alternatives that they can perform that are safer and making sure that you stay below threshold so that the aversive stimulus is minimally aversive. You want to keep it way down far enough away. And, you know, learning does take a little bit of stress. I don't know about you, but every time I learned something, there's some stress involved. And so we, we do, we do introduce some stress, but we also introduce opportunities to get relief based on easier and safer behaviors.

And that's the big, the big thing. The big thing. Yeah. I like that. Um, anything else you want to kind of share about the webinar or that you think people should know, um, to maybe help them decide if they want to join us? I think we covered a lot of ground. I think we covered a lot of ground today. I'm like, did I have anything left to do at the webinar? I don't know. No, I think we're good. Cool. Um, so to kind of round out the chat with one last question, I like to just kind of end on this note. If you wanted to like leave people with one last thought, or if there's like a point you really want to kind of drive home a piece of information you really want people to kind of understand, um, what would that be? I would want people to start thinking more about figuring out what the dog gets out of a behavior and less about eliminating the behavior. So instead of elimination, we want to replace behavior. And I think that is, um, such a powerful tool across your training, you know, repertoire, um, and that it makes a huge difference for our dogs. I like that. Well, thank you so much, Kelly, for coming on the podcast. This has been absolutely fascinating and so interesting. So thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate you inviting me. Yeah. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. We will be back next week with Erin Lyons to talk about keeping your senior dog happy and healthy. 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 Fensie Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fensie for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty free by bensound.com. The track featured here is called Buddy. Audio editing provided by Chris Line. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training. Music. Music.