E229: 바바라 커리어(Barbara Currier) - "물고기 학교: 퍼포먼스 퍼피 키우기"

So I have fish and he's my youngest. He is a year and a half now and he is a French spaniel. And, you know, I don't know what, what the future is going to hold for him. Of course, I always hope that they're going to do agility. He is really fun. And, you know, we might try some other things with him also. I named him fish. So he likes the water a lot. And so, you know, we're probably going to do some dock diving with him. He also has decided that he loves kayaking. So that's been really fun. I've kind of started into the dog powered sports with him, like, um, Caney Cross. And I want to try some ski drawing with him this winter. My husband wants to do nose work with him and is actually maybe interested in trying looking into some SAR work with him. So I don't really know what the future is going to hold for me and fish, but we're really enjoying him. Awesome. I definitely want to talk a little bit more about him because he's the inspiration behind your upcoming class. So you mentioned you don't kind of know what your, um, long-term goals are with him, but do you want to just talk a little bit about maybe what you've worked on with him so far? Kind of how you approach things when you first bring a new puppy home? Sure. Um, so fish is a, so the French Spaniel is a, is a pretty rare breed here in the U S. Um, they are a very old breed from France and you actually do see them up in Canada also, but they're pretty rare here. There's only one breeder over here. As far as I know, um, they are a pointing breed, even though they're called a Spaniel. So much like a Brittany, um, they're called a Spaniel, but they're actually a pointer breed. They can be trained to flush, but that's actually not what they do naturally. He is very, very, very birdie. He's just a typical hunting dog. And so he is easily distracted by his environment. Um, he also has. An amazing amount of energy and stamina. Um, so getting him into the Caney Cross has been really great. He absolutely loves that. And he is all business. And it's really funny because we'll be running. So if you don't know what Caney Cross is, um, it's when they are in harness in front of you, like a sled dog harness and they're attached to you on a harness you wear. And, um, we use verbals like line out means no tension in the line. And you've got gi and ha and, you know, all that stuff. And, um, so he can be starting to fixate on a bird or something. And if I say line out, he is like, yes, right. And he is back out straight, like pulling. And it's just, it's, it's actually quite amazing, um, how he's really taken to that.

Um, so originally my goals were just like agility, just strict agility with him because that's kind of always my goal. But with him, I'm just seeing a lot of interest in kind of, um, a lot of different things. So I might go down a bunch of different roads with him. In addition to agility, he's done, um, I've gotten slower with him with the agility because he's such a big breed. Um, so not only physically do they mature very slowly, but also mentally he's, you know, he's a one and a half year old intact male hunting dog. So as you probably know, having all those, all those things are working against me at this age. So, um, I haven't pushed him a lot, um, because I, he's also very soft. Um, and so I really like to set him up for success as much as possible. So I haven't done, um, a ton of, you know, hardcore agility with him. I've kind of just been letting him grow up and, and, um, kind of, you know, be comfortable in his own skin. Do you want to kind of talk about, um, just generally kind of how you approach training when you first bring a puppy home? Sure. So I'm very type a, like OCD in my, in the way I train there. I, I, I like, I like everything to be in a certain order. So I'm very step-by-step. Um, so all of my behaviors that I train from when they first come home, um, they, everything builds on everything else. So, um, I tend to do the same order all the time because like I said, everything builds. And so I, you know, I need behavior a to go with behavior B to get the behavior C that I want down the road. And so I'm very methodical in the way I train everything. Um, and it also just makes my OCD, everything having to be perfectly in its spot, happy that way. So I'm very slow in the way I teach things. Um, I have the, I tend to, I like to teach one new behavior a week for my dogs. And then I, um, take those behaviors on the road. So for instance, you know, if I'm, if this week we're learning fit, then I teach fit in a variety of different environments, um, a variety of different ways, you know, motion, no motion, you know, at my side in front of me, you know, and so, so I, I kind of encompass the whole behavior. Um, and I just really focus on that for a week or so before I add on new behaviors. And, um, it's a lot of, you know, for a lot of people, it would just be way too slow for them. But for me, I just, it just works in my head. Like, you know, so I just kind of focus on that one thing and then, and then, and then I continue to add as we go along in weeks, but I tend to like to do kind of one thing at a time at a time. If that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah.

So you mentioned sitting there, do you want to just talk through a little bit more kind of what skills you focus on with, with a puppy? And then do you, uh, kind of modify things based on what the puppy showing you? How do you kind of, how do you approach that piece of things? So I have my basic outline of what I train in and what order, and then from there I modify for the dog. Um, for example, like, you know, when I'm working on leash skills, I'm, you know, I may have a dog that, um, I can see early on, you know what, we might need to be introducing a head halter for this dog. And so I'm going to modify and, and other than just loosely loose, loose, loose leash walking. Why is that such a hard thing to say? So other than just working on that, I may put into, okay, we're going to start with desensitizing to the head halter and getting them comfortable with that and, and working through that. Um, or I may have a dog that doesn't like me. So for instance, I really didn't have to do much loose leash walking with her other than just get her used to wearing a leash. She naturally always wanted to walk at my side. So it was kind of like, Oh, you're comfortable with a leash? Check. We got that behavior. Move on to something else where, you know, fish is the, the great giant puller. It literally picture somebody on the end of a fishing line, trying to like deep sea fish and bring in a whale. That's what walking fish on a leash is like. So fishes had a lot more, um, focus on appropriate leash manners in a variety of environments and that type of thing. So I really, um, will look at the individual dog and evaluate how deep I need to delve into a certain behavior, you know, like self-control issues. If I have a dog, um, again, you know, me, so an ego have always been very, very focused on me. So, um, they weren't easily aroused by the environment and where fish is very, very aroused by his environment. Um, so things that self-control issues have been different with him that I didn't necessarily have to really work those things with some of the other ones. Um, jump grids is another example of something of, I do puppy jump grids when they're about, uh, six months old and that's all just with bumps. And, and then I will do foundation grids when they're a little bit older that start showing them, um, really low, like four inch bars, but it just kind of starts teaching them striding and things like that. And when I start doing obstacle work with them, if their jumping form looks fine, I may not go back and do a lot more like advanced jump grids and master level jump grids with them.

If I, if I like what I see in their jumping form, if their jumping form is not where I want it, then I may go into more advanced grids and, and, and so forth. So I kind of, I do look at the individual dog and adjust where I need it. So you mentioned you kind of have a list of skills and you like to kind of go through them. How did you come to that list? How did you develop kind of the program that you're using? Um, I really like to take notes and I like to make lists because I like to check things off. So I would go to seminars, you know, I, I, I am a kind of seminar junkie. I love to learn from everybody. I think, I think you can learn something from everyone. And so I would, I would choose going to seminars over going to competitions any day of the week. I just love to learn. So going to seminars, I would learn things from other people and, and, and, or see a skill that they had taught and thought, Oh yeah, I haven't taught that. I really liked that. So I'll then come home and, you know, look at my basic outline and, you know, okay, what, what foundation behaviors do they need for this skill? Where would I kind of slide this in? Um, and, and, and so I add things and, and over the years I've taken things away, um, or not put a ton of focus in like early on in my career, when I taught two on two off, um, I did, uh, it's still now I use a nose touch to a plexi target in my beginning foundation training. And when they would start competing, I would still have this nose touch behavior. And I expected that nose touch behavior to stay. It became part of their full on, you know, overall behavior picture into their competition career. At this point, I don't use that anymore. I use, I use the nose touch in the beginning so that they understand, but then I fade out the nose target really, really quickly. So there was a lot of nose targeting behaviors that I would have taught before that have been since deleted from my list because I just found that I didn't need them. It wasn't something I needed to spend a lot of time on because I faded it out so quickly. Um, so it has evolved over the years on things that I, uh, drill or, you know, or, or things that I added in, um, because I learned from somebody else or as the sport evolves, um, you know, back in the day when I first started, we didn't really need verbals. Um, and now, especially for the international level courses, there's a slew of verbals that you want to train and, um, just three dogs back. My border collie had almost no verbals where Eggo, I mean, I started having to make a list of the verbals that he has because there's so many.

So, you know, the sport evolves and you evolve as a trainer and things get added in. And so that's kind of how I continue to, to evolve my, what I train and what order. Or do you want to elaborate at all, uh, kind of on the order piece? Like why there are some skills that come first or some skills that come later or. Sure. So I start off with life skills, um, and then I move on to, so there's my, my list in life skills. So it's just basically life relationship skills, everything that, that puppies need to know, you know, um, just how to be a good member of society, how to be a good family member. Um, you know, walk on a leash, sit down, stay, you know, go to a place, um, just, you know, the, the, the common things that we teach puppies. And then, um, I move up to body awareness because puppies have no concept that they have a hind end and they, they just, I mean, they just don't like, especially the bigger, the breed, the, the more disconnected their, their hind end is from their front end. And for those of us that are really interested in the performance sports, whether it be agility or obedience or rally or shifts in or, you know, dock diving, anything like that, our dogs need to be fairly aware of what their bodies are doing and when they're, you know, where they're, they're putting their feet. Um, and so I, I will start to work body awareness, um, usually around four months. I start to, I start to do some body awareness stuff with my puppies. Um, and then from there, um, I work on the individual obstacle training, like introducing them to the tire, introducing them to the tunnel, to the table, just individually them learning those obstacles. And then from there, I move into more of the, um, sequencing and handling, you know, teaching actual handling moves and putting things together. Mm-hmm. So what about the, the super young puppies, any tips on kind of working with those baby babies who come home at like, you know, those, that eight or nine week phase? Yes. Yeah. So short sessions, really, really short, like two minutes short. Um, their, their minds are, they, they just can't, they just can't last. I mean, they're, they get so tired so quickly. And then when you have a puppy that's tired, they're not retaining anything that you're usually just getting bit and attacked and because they're just over threshold or they just go find a corner and they lay down if you have a lower drive puppy. Um, so really short sessions and a lot of play, like they're just, there needs to be a, just a lot of play and just learning to play with your puppy in the beginning, learning what types

of play they like. Some dogs are very toy motivated right from the beginning, some, you know, personal play, right? Like, you know, some like to chase your hands, some like to crawl all over you, you know, just kind of building that relationship with your puppy and just, you know, laying on the ground and just playing with them is super, super fun. One of the things that I see in, in agility specifically, um, that always kind of makes me go eek is, um, for some reason, a lot of people like to get these really young puppies and bring them home and they just start doing things with them at a young, you know, like they have them home a week and, you know, they come to me and they're like, oh yeah, he can wrap a column like 27 times. And I'm thinking, okay, does he know how to wear a collar yet? Cause there's that. So, so I think that sometimes we just, we, even though we get them for a particular sport, we bring them home immediately and it's like, they're into bootcamp. Like, okay, you're going to be on world team by the time you're a year. So we've got work to do. It's like, maybe just enjoy your puppy for a little bit. Like, you know, all that stuff's easy to train. Like you got all the time in the world, like just kind of get to know your puppy and just let them grow up, let their brains grow a little bit and just, you know, let them be puppies. Cause it's a very short amount of time. Yeah. Yeah. It really is. They're not, they're not little for very long, especially not that little. They're not, I mean, I look back now at fish and fish was not an easy puppy. He was, you know, he was a big puppy to start with. So everything was just like hugely, like I always laughed at the videos that Denise would put up with, you know, with teaching a velociraptor to cuddle and things like that, because that was exactly what it was like trying to cuddle or, or just be like, have quiet time with fish. Like he's sitting on my head or, you know, he's eating my ponytail or, and I, and I'm just, I'm like, Oh, this is fun and relaxing. I'm enjoying this so much. Cause that's puppies. Yeah. Yeah. Is there anything you'd kind of adjust if you had a puppy or kind of do differently? If you had a puppy that came home a little bit later? I really don't. I tend to stick with my, whether I get an eight week old puppy or, um, a 10 month old rescue or a 10 month old puppy that, you know, just came later versus, you know, return to a breeder or whatever. I tended to start exactly the same way. Like, you know, if I get a 10 month old in or an eight week old puppy, like for housebreaking,

for instance, if I don't know what their history is, even if I, if I get a rescue and someone tells me, Oh, you know, their house broken. Okay. I'm still going to start with taking you out every hour and I'm going to set a timer. And I feel, I, I basically take it as a clean slate. Like, I don't know anything about you. So we're just going to pretend, you know, nothing. And we're going to start right from square one. So again, I know that because everything builds as I'm going, I'm, I'm, I'm a huge stickler for foundation. I feel like if you look at the, the four areas that I teach, I look at them as a pyramid. And if you foundation and life skills are kind of the bottom of the pyramid. And if you don't have that, and you start going to all of the sexy, fun things that everybody likes to train, it's all just going to fall apart because you don't have the basis. You don't have the base, the foundation to hold it all together. So really doesn't matter what age they come to me. I kind of start the same way with all of them. So kind of looking through your class syllabus, I noted that I noticed, noted, you have a couple of fitness focused things on your list to work with performance puppies. So I was really kind of curious about those. Can you share just a little bit about why you add those in for your, for your baby dogs? So it's more body awareness versus fitness. I don't really start fitness stuff until they're about six months and older. In the beginning, like the first couple of things that I will teach is more like things that aren't unstable. So like the fit pause and things like that, anything that's like inflatable with air, right? They tend to be more unstable. I am not a big fan of young, young puppies on unstable objects because I just feel like nothing is connected yet. And I, I, I'm so paranoid about injury because I've had a lot of them and I worry about unstable, a lot of unstable stuff, um, of, with joints that aren't connected joints that aren't real stable themselves yet. So it's more body awareness for me. So like perch work, you know, stable surface, learn to put your front feet on here, learn to put your back feet on here, um, ladder work where it's in the ladders just flat. Like I have an agility ladder, so it can be elevated or it can be flat. I just do it flat with the puppies. Like learn to put one foot in each rung as you're walking along and don't touch the ladder. Um, so it's more just learning where their feet are going, understanding that, you know, your front feet can do one thing while your back feet are doing another. So it's not so much fitness.

I don't actually do a lot of fitness stuff. I start to introduce the fit pause and the, and the balance discs and all that stuff around six months. But even then it's more introduction, um, getting them used to that things may move underneath them. And, but I don't actually get into any real fitness with them until they're probably more nine to 10 months when things are starting to get a little more stable. And then again, it depends on the breed. And like with fish, cause his growth plates weren't closed until about 16 months. I didn't really do anything other than look at this object. It's super weird and has weird bumps and it moves a little bit under your feet. Okay. That's cool. You're good with that. Okay. We're going to go to work on something else. I didn't, but so he's just now started doing more fitness oriented. Okay. Now we're going to work on building your strengths and targeting these particular muscles, because I know everything is stable at this point. Mm-hmm. So you kind of talked a little bit about this earlier, but I wanted to kind of go back to it a little bit. At what point do you really begin thinking about those sports specific skills and kind of working those into your regular training plan? It's usually about six to eight months when I start fine tuning things. Um, so for me, um, like sit, for instance, because I don't tend to do obedience. Um, I will, when I teach them sit in the beginning, if they're a little bit crooked or a little bit forging, I personally don't care. Um, and even in like my lecture, when I talked, when I talk about sit, I, I will say, you know, if you're, if your plan for this dog is obedience or rally, you probably want to be a little bit more, more of, you know, aware of them forging ahead or because that's going to be something that's going to affect your sport down the road. For me, it doesn't affect my sport. Um, so I don't, I'm not a huge stickler about that as they start to get older. Um, then I might work in more. Um, so for instance, for me with a sit with a lineup, if I'm lining them up in front of an obstacle for, you know, for a lead out, I don't, if I put them in a sit at my side, I want them to stay in the position at my side that I put them in, not like forge around in front of me and sit. So that's the type of thing where I'm, where, you know, no, I put you at my side. So this is where you're going to stay. You're not going to forge around and try to look at me. Or if I lead off laterally, you're not going to move your body in turn to follow me. You're going to hold that sit.

But in the beginning when they're young and they're just learning the actual behavior of my butt goes on the ground and that makes mom happy. Um, I'm not a huge stickler about, you know, everything has to be perfect because at that point I just want them to think that this is a fun little game when my butt hits the ground, mommy gets excited and gives me cookies. Right. Um, I want to talk just a little more about your class. Is there anything that we maybe didn't get into or anything else you just kind of want to share about the class itself or who it's for? So it's really for any puppy. Doesn't matter the age. I have had a few people send me emails that they were concerned that they were like their puppy was going to be eight weeks old and will they be able to do anything? It's actually geared for you bringing your puppy home. I mean, the very first exercise that we do is literally like my puppy comes home and I, and, and I give them 24 hours just to be like, okay, so this is your new world. And then the first thing we do is we go out and we play this, which the, the name game, which is the first assignment. So it's designed for the very first thing you do when your puppy comes home, but it doesn't matter if your puppy is eight weeks old or six months old, or even you just got a rescue and it's a year old. It doesn't matter. This will work for any puppy. If your puppy is a little bit older or, or, you know, they may know some of these behaviors already and that's okay. If they already know some of these behaviors, then you can up the ante. Like if they already know sit, great. Do they know sit from your side? Do they know sit in front of you? Do they know sit on both sides of you? They do great. Okay. Do they know sit if you are walking with them? You know, can they do it in motion? Can they do it? Can they hold a sit while you move ahead? You know, what's their sit stay like? So there's ways to, um, even if you have a dog that knows some of these behaviors, we can always up the ante and, and make it a little bit more challenging, um, and kind of push the envelope a little bit with some of these puppies. But it doesn't matter if you, if they're not going to do agility. Cause like I said, this is the first, basically the, the first, cause there's, this is a part one and a part two. So part one focuses on relationship life skills and body awareness. And so those two things work for any dog sport out there. It's the same thing, no matter what sport they're going to do. It's not just agility related. And because I'm not sure if we've said it, the class is officially called the real name

is school of fish, raising a performance puppy. Right. Uh, I wanted to make, I wanted to make sure I, at least I was like, I don't, I don't know if I actually named the class earlier in the questions. Um, all right. So I kind of want to round everything out with one last question, um, which is if we were to kind of drill down everything we kind of talked about today into one piece of information, you really wish new puppy owners or folks listening kind of understood and took away from the conversation. Um, what would that be? You know, I think it would be to enjoy the journey with your puppy because puppies are hard. Puppies will take the best dog trainer in the world and humble them to a pool of crying mess on the ground. Puppies are hard and, and you will probably cry because of your puppy. I, I, I think if I look back, I think I've, every single puppy I've ever owned has brought me to tears of frustration at one time or another. Do you, do you agree with that? Have you been there? Oh goodness. I think I probably have. I've only brought home. I mean, I leave. I was the only dog I brought home as a puppy puppy, but, uh, but yeah, they're just because well, you know, it's like one day you have this perfect angel and then as they start to get older, they start to get independent. And then, you know, you do all this work and then, and then like around eight months, they become little devils, like, you know, sit, what is sit? And I'm this name that you keep yelling at me. I don't know. Like everything just goes away and you're like, oh my God, where has the last eight months of your life gone? Did I not teach you these things? And it's just, it, they can be really, really frustrating. But I think, I think the thing that people need to remember, um, and Denise has been a great one to help remind me of this a lot of times. Um, and Deb, Deb Jones has been another one to help remind me of this a lot of times. They grow out of a lot of the things that drive us crazy as puppies. Um, and so I know a lot of us think that we're ruining our dogs or, you know, that this is going to turn into a major behavioral problem and oh my God, but they really do grow out of a lot of things. Like fish had this one behavior that he did that used to make me insane. When I build courses, I like to let my dogs be out there in my field while I'm building the course, but they're trained not to take any obstacles while they're out there. But fish, and he's, you'd think he was a border collie fish wanted to herd me the entire time and attack all my equipment as it was moving.

And he's biting my tunnel bags and he's dragging them like, and he's picking up the numbers and running around them and he's attacking my tunnels. And I'm thinking, I'm like, well, this is not behavior I want you to have. So he was banned from the agility yard. Um, he lost his privileges about four months old and just two nights. I was out building with my husband and, and, you know, he's a year and a half now. And so I'm like, we're just going to see. So I let him come in while we were building the course. He tried once when I was dragging the weave poles to attack the base of the weave poles. And I said, no, sir. And he stopped. And then after that, he was just a normal dog. He didn't attack the tunnels when we were moving them. He didn't attack the tunnel bags. He ran around with his toy. He laid down under the apron. And I was looking at him like, look at you, you grew out of this. What a good boy. So they really do grow out of a lot of the things that you just want to kill them for when they're puppies. And so, you know, puppies are hard and you have to give yourself grace and know that they do grow up. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, we get trigger stack too, right? Because little puppies tend to mean we're not sleeping much and we're maybe not doing all the self-care things that we usually do because they can't be alone long. And yeah, there's a lot of bits and pieces there. There's a reason they're so dang cute, right? There is. Yeah. And, you know, we're so lucky that we have our instructors page where we're like moral support for each other. Cause I can't remember how many times I posted on there and was like, guys, oh my God, this dog is going to kill me. And everyone's so support been there, been there. You'll be fine. You'll be fine. And I remember telling Denise, like, I feel like I have a chance if you're going through this too. Like, you know, I consider Denise one of the best dog trainers in the world. And if she has struggles, it makes me feel like, okay, I'm not doing everything wrong. Fair enough. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Barbara. It's been a great conversation. Oh, thanks for having me. I always love coming on. Absolutely. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week with Sue Alsby and Heather Lawson to talk about the training levels program. If you haven't already subscribed to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzie Dog Sports Academy.

Special thanks to Denise Fenzie for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty free by bensound.com. The track featured here is called Buddy. Audio editing provided by Chris Line. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training.