E227: 뎁 존스(Deb Jones) - "마법사 양성 중: 퍼피를 집에 데려오기"

They're still kind of rare in the United States. And I had even talked to somebody from Australia who was importing some puppies at one time, but the timing didn't work out. So I went on Facebook, as of course you do when you're looking for a puppy. And I said, I'm going to be ready in the spring. Does anybody know of any litters? And I wasn't real specific about breed or type. I said, it's something herdy dog-like. And I actually heard about this breeder from Leslie McDevitt. And she said, you've got to talk to this particular breeder because she's got these great coolie puppies. And I said, and it happens to be, I know this breed. I've known her for 27 years as an acquaintance, but I didn't know that she bred coolies. I knew her as a trainer. And we had actually, Judy and I did a seminar for her probably 2017, 18 years ago. So I'm like, really? She's breeding? And so then I got on and started looking at her puppies and talking to her and got on her puppy list. And so I've been, people are often asking me, what's the difference between border collie and coolie? And I'm like, well, I have a subject of one here. I have a population of one to compare. So I don't know. I can't generalize anything yet. It's like training a border collie. I don't see big differences. He's not quite, he doesn't have the tendency to become over aroused as easily and frantic, which mine both do. But I don't know if that was me or if that was them or if that's the breed or if I've learned a lot and I can do it better now. And so I don't bring that out in him. But that's the only thing. Otherwise, he's fun to train. He's very willing to train all the time, which is one of the things I was really looking for in a puppy. So I'll let you know as it goes along if I can figure it out. But whenever I ask people the differences between border collies and coolies, they're kind of vague and they're not real clear. And you get things like, well, maybe a little more independent and maybe a little more sociable. Maybe. I don't know yet. So we'll see. We'll see as it goes along who he really is and what he's like. What are your goals with him? Oh, yeah. Mike, when I was thinking about it, because, of course, we know you should think carefully about what the puppy's likely to be like to fit what you want. Probably one of my number one things is he needs to be a demo dog for me for all my online stuff, because I need somebody I can just grab in five minutes and get this video done. And then I can put it into a class or a webinar or whatever the case is. And I've been very lucky and very spoiled that I've always had dogs that I could just do that.

And whatever I say, you know, OK, let's get up at two o'clock in the morning and let's have you do this. And they're like, cool, whatever. So I wanted that. I wanted a dog that would be easy and willing to train at all times. I want a dog that's going to be eventually a hiking partner for me. So I wanted a good structure and somebody who had a lot of energy, dog that'll travel with me. I don't at this point in my life have any real competition goals. I've done it. I feel like I've done everything. Been there, done that 20 years ago kind of thing. It's like, no, I don't really have the interest in going back into agility or rally or whatever. But I train a lot of the skills anyway, just because I like to train. Even if I never show it, show for it, that doesn't mean I don't like to train it. The one thing I'm looking at that's new with him, and it's kind of funny because when I told the breeder this, she's like, oh, this is her favorite thing is search and rescue. She said, oh, that's my favorite thing, and I think he'd be really good for it. I haven't done it, but I'm joining a local group starting Sunday. And so I'm going to start to see what search and rescue training is all about with him, because I just have a feeling that that might be his thing. So we'll try it out. Yeah. Yeah. Lots of fun. Yeah. So you mentioned before I hit record, I think that he's 17 weeks now. Is that right? Yep. Just a little over four months. Oh, my gosh. So at this point, what have you guys kind of been working on, or what have you taught him so far? I feel like I have done so much, and yet I have done nothing. It's like a little over two months, and it seems like forever in a second. So I think about puppy training in a number of stages, and you're kind of laying foundation and groundwork in your stages. And the first one for me is just establishing some basic things, like these are the reinforcers that I'm going to use. And I know they're going to be important to me for your whole life. I want you to work for food. I want you to want to work for food. I definitely want you to want to work for toys. I want you to play with me with and without toys. You know, I want us to have a lot of interaction together. I want you to learn the basic rules of the house. And so I think about those kinds of things in the very, very beginning. Long before I teach behaviors and skills, for what a lot of people do, I seem slow. It seems like I'm not actually teaching anything and putting it on cue for a long, long time. But then when I do, which tends to be about nine, 10 months or so, it all comes together really fast.

But I've done a whole lot of work before that to get here. So I'm doing a lot of relationship building. I'm doing a ton of learning how to learn. So learning how to shape, how to target, and even how to lure. That's actually been the hardest thing for him is luring. I never thought I'd have a dog who wouldn't lure with food easily. So I've got the first one. But I also haven't focused on it as much as I have shaping and targeting because I can use those to get most of the behaviors I want. So I'm looking at laying the foundations for him to understand when I put out a prop, what do I do with it? I'm also contrasting something like shaping with Zen work and impulse control and getting that in much earlier than a lot of people started. So I'm working on waiting for turns and not grabbing for things you want, but waiting for permission to get them kinds of things, but in a fun way. And of course, I'm working cooperative care. One of my hopes for a puppy was that he would be a short, smooth-coated puppy. So I didn't have so much grooming. And then of course, I knew that I had to start on nails and be able to do nails very quickly. And he didn't think that was a very good idea at all. He thought he'd be left alone. But I'm very pleased with where we are with that. I've worked on that every single day so that I can now do all his nails very easily and comfortably. You know, and working on things like crating comfortably and quietly. We're working on the quietly. So you may be able to tell we're still working on the quietly. And recalls. So that's the kinds of things I've been working on for this first couple months. I'm just now getting the point where I'm doing a lot of body movement and positioning. I teach a down first. Lie down is one of my first behaviors. The two cues they have are come and lie down. That covers a lot of ground. When you need something, come to me or lie down tends to work. And I work on those and get those on cue. I've just recently put sit on cue. And I'm working on stands. And I'm working on spinning left and right and going around a cone and climbing on things. So we're getting into more physical skills. And he's putting together. He's getting a little more coordinated now and able to do these kinds of things. Whereas before, you know, he was just falling all over his feet. So that takes a little bit of physical maturity to start to do a lot of these kinds of skills that we're working on here. And I'm putting things together. I'm actually putting together like food chase games and Zen games and your recalls and throwing

in little these little behavior chains that will eventually become bigger behavior chains. And at the same time, fading out reinforcers without it even being without him even being aware of it at this point and switching reinforcers from food to toys and back again a lot. So when I tell you I'm tired, I try, I'm always thinking about, even if I'm not training, I'm thinking, what am I forgetting? What do I need to get in here? What haven't I done yet? And keeping them in the right order so I'm not trying to jump ahead to something that's over his head at this point. So I'm doing a lot of work and we'll have a lot more to do yet. So I was going to ask kind of what your priorities were, but it sounds like you mentioned in there your reinforcement stuff. Yes. You mentioned in there the kind of the house rules. You mentioned the relationship and down and come. Is that, you know, am I summarizing well? Are there other things that kind of were a high priority? Yeah, I think my first priority is survival. For him or for you, Deb? For both of us. For both of us. Survival to me means he has to know where to go potty. So I have to do house training. And that to me is number one on my list. So the fewer mistakes we make, the happier I am. And that all revolves around me being on top of it all the time and making sure I'm giving him plenty of opportunity. Also where you can go to relax. And I have a big X pin set up in the living room or in your crate that there are times when we just have to chill out. But sleep is a number one priority for me too. So he started getting me up at six. I'm not a morning person. I got it to seven. I got it to eight. We're now almost to nine. And so my ideal is you sleep until I get up, not I sleep until you get up. And he's getting there really well. It's just that we're not quite there yet. And I sometimes tend to forget about that and stay up too late. And then I have to get up in the morning before I want to. But I want him to realize that, you know, we sleep and we don't get up at the crack of dawn. I also want him, you know, I think about the fact that I want my puppy to trust me. I want him to feel safe. I want him to know I have all the good stuff in the world and I'm going to share it with them. I'm going to be very generous with them with the good stuff I have in terms of food and toys and interesting experiences out in the world. Um, so there's, yeah, those are kind of the main things I start to think about with within the first few weeks or the first few days even is that I have to work on those kinds of things first before I get into the fancy stuff or the fun stuff.

Got to lay those foundations a little more. So how much of that is kind of tailored to who he is as a, you know, as an individual, as a puppy, um, versus stuff you kind of focus on for all of the puppies that you bring home. Um, kind of like at this point you've, you've, you've had a chance to have enough dogs that you probably do have some things that are kind of just part of the system, right? Right. Yeah, that's a good question. And, um, yeah, I was counting and I think I've had something like a dozen puppies now. I think he's 12 or 13. Um, as an adult, um, some of them I've shared with Judy, we've co-owned some dogs together, um, and had them in the same household and some of them have been just mine. So I've gone through this a time or two and the first few weeks are pretty basic. It's like taking care of a newborn. So everything's going to be pretty much the same. I'm still working on getting them on a schedule. I'm working on getting them comfortable with things in the house and, you know, all that crating and, um, you know, um, stuff along those lines, the potty stuff. So I'm focused on all that, but then I'm, you know, while that's happening, I'm also learning who they are and starting to get a sense of how this puppy is different and what they need that's going to be different than other puppies. So I start to look at stuff like, and start to think about, does this puppy need more motivation in general or more control? So are they really, really bold and outgoing and pushy? Um, or are they more cautious and thoughtful? And so with wizard, he was a little more towards the cautious side, just a little bit, not, not as, as much as some dogs that I've had and that I've had, shelties tend to be overly cautious at times, but enough that I wanted to work on that. And I knew that what I really wanted for him was more boldness. So I wanted to do things that were going to bring that out. And I wanted to be careful to avoid things that might cause him to feel concerned or uncertain in the environment with another puppy, like Zen. When I had Zen, who, who a lot of people know he's very bold. So, you know, whatever, throw him in any situation. He's like, cool. I'm happy to be here. Things are great. Life is good. A little bit different. Wizard is like, huh, what's going on here? And should I be concerned? Or is this, is this a good thing? So I look at that. I look at whether the, as I said, they, are they thinking or are they just doing? And so you have those puppies that throw themselves at everything in life with great

abandon, which is fun, but it's also not good for training because you have to think, you have to slow down, you have to consider your options sometimes. So I look at Wizard and I say, okay, he's good at that. Now I want to make him even to feel even more comfortable in environments and to be more of a doer in certain situations than a thinker. Because as we know, overthinking can be the kiss of death for humans and for dogs. We don't know anything about that. No, I have no idea. Overthinking, I've never done that. I look at, you know, I'm just looking at my puppy as he's, those first few weeks and trying to go, is there anything here that, what are his weaknesses? What are his strengths? What can I build on? And what do I have to help him with? So I, I'm trying to get a feel for that. Is there anything I see in this puppy that's a little bit concerning to me? And maybe it's nothing. Maybe it becomes something. But I'm always a little cautious because I've had a lot of herding dogs and they can be strange. As I've said, I love herding dogs. So I've said it a couple of times, so I don't want to overstate it. I love them. I've had a lot of different ones, but they can have some, some weird tendencies. So I'm always watching for that, you know? Yeah. And I'm always trying to just then adapt my training to do more of what a puppy needs. So with wizard, for example, the Zen work is really easy for him. The impulse control is really easy for him. So the tendency then is to want to do more of it because it's fun and easy for both of us. But I really need to do the opposite. And I need to do more motivational, more enthusiastic, more active, less waiting, you know, less control. So that's the kind of thing that I'm always looking at here. And then I'm changing that as I go through the rest of his training. Which can't be easy. I mean, it's not easy to look at the puppy and go, okay, these are the things that are hard for him and hard for me to teach him. Let's do more of that. Exactly. That's why we end up practicing what we're already good at, because it is really hard to do the stuff that you really ought to do, you know? But, you know, you don't really want to do. So that's what I'm always telling students as well in classes. We just had it in focus games that we just finished up. It's like, yeah, you're good at this. So stop doing that. And they're like, but look how good it is. I'm like, it's great. Now move on to the hard stuff. And they're like, no, I don't want to do the hard stuff. I want to do the stuff that's fun.

But that's, I think, the key is we help them balance out their challenges with their skills and strengths. And then we get something that's really nice in terms of a dog to work with. I'll say that that concept's been on my mind a lot lately. Just this idea of balance, right? Because I think it's true for both traits, kind of like you're talking about, but also for skills, right? So Denise and I have been talking about it a little bit. And I think Stacey mentioned it in something that she wrote or was talking about around needing to balance out our dog's natural tendencies versus kind of whatever the other end of that spectrum is so that we can build value in the right places and get the actual skills where we want them. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting, too, how at FDSA, sometimes we're all working on the same general idea, but from different angles. And we don't even realize we're all doing it until we start to talk about it. And I think this is one of those concepts. It's like it's time is here somehow. And it's one of those things that we're looking at in a lot of different ways, which is really cool, which is why I like working here. But I think people would think about these kinds of things. And it's fun. It's for sure something we'll be chatting about more in the future because I've got some thoughts and kind of working on the back end. But all right. So to go back a little bit in our conversation, I know you mentioned relationship. And I know that's a big thing for you early on. But I think it's kind of an ambiguous topic. You know what I mean? Yeah. Oh, that's a little vague. So when we kind of break that down, what does that actually look like? How do you like what is it that you're doing to actually establish a good relationship with a new puppy? That's a that's a good question, because you're right. It's a very, very vague term. And it means it could mean anything or nothing. It's hard to really know. I think, first of all, how that I want to be important to my puppy, that I want to matter a lot to them. Um, and to me, being in a relationship means I have to give them a lot of time. And so time, both in quantity, which I've been doing, um, and it's been easier to do, especially since I am retired from full time teaching now, it's been easier to do. So quantity, but also in quality, we have to have activities that we do together that are valuable and that my puppy enjoys. Um, so I like to think of myself as, as making myself, um, interesting for my puppy, setting myself up and a partnership with my puppy. So he wants to do things with me.

So he enjoys being with me more than anybody else and more than the other dogs that he's around. Uh, and that takes work. It doesn't just naturally happen that, that he, that your puppy's going to want to do that. It, I spend time every day with him alone. I get him away from everybody else and we're just hanging out informally playing, you know, strolling around the neighborhood, having an outing every, every few days, at least with him where we go someplace new together and we do something. I'll typically go to Starbucks or somewhere along the lines and I'll, um, get him a little cup of whipped cream, the pup cups they give you. And then we'll go sit somewhere, you know, out in public and he'll have his whipped cream and I'll have my coffee. And so just kind of the hanging out thing to me with the two of us, um, keeping him relatively close to me most of the time. But now we're also working on, you can be away from me even when I'm right now and it's not the end of the world. Um, so I'm just, I'm just trying to start to build that with experiences and also with our training that I think builds a lot of it, that if you have regular consistent training sessions that the puppy really enjoys, that's going to build so much value into him being with me because I give him something to think about. Um, I give him mental challenges and as long as he can figure those out and work those out, then he has a lot of fun with that. And I think that builds on our relationship as well. So yeah, I, I think I've been thinking about this a lot more with this puppy than I have with others just because I've never really tried to sit down. Well, I have tried to write down what I do with my puppies because I have a book about it from like 11 years ago. Um, but now even more so I'm trying to get it all out and track of it and think about what is it that I'm actually doing? Um, because when people ask, I want to be able to tell them. And so there's a lot of thought, a lot more thought going into this time, but there's, and then there's something with the relationship that's beyond food and toys. You know, there's, there's definitely something more than the external reinforcers I can give you. Um, and so I think it's like in a human relationship, why are you in a relationship with anybody? Typically because it's pretty reinforcing naturally to be with them. Um, except when it becomes not reinforcing to be with. And we know that happens in relationships too. So it's, there's, there's a lot of it that's kind of, uh, invisible that things that we're

doing just because we're together, you know, and, um, ways that we're managing to coexist together. So I'm thinking about all of that stuff. No wonder I'm tired all the time. Gee, you make it almost sound like maybe there's another book in the future. Um, well, I've got to finish one. Well, no, I got one to finish before I get there. Fair enough. Fair enough. Um, so, uh, so, okay. So we talked a little bit about relationship and I want to talk a little bit about the idea of like choice versus structure, right? You're talking about balance. Okay. And I know like a lot of people, especially in the positive training community, you talk about puppy and how do you make sure puppy doesn't develop bad habits. A lot of that's management, a lot of that structure, right? But also like ultimately we want to give our dogs a lot of choice. So how do you walk that line, especially with a, with a puppy and then, you know, how and when will that kind of evolve or change as he grows up? Yeah. I think of choice and structure with puppies, just like you would with kids. Um, I don't give them choices unless I'm fine with whatever they, whatever outcome they choose. So, you know, if there's something where I don't care what your choice is, like we're going to go out for a walk, we get to the end of the driveway. I typically let my dogs decide which direction do you want to go left or right? I don't care. We're going to end up back in the same place anyway. So pick, you know, pick a direction and we'll go that way. And, um, so that's a choice that they get to make. I might let them choose between the toys they want or the bones they want to chew on or, you know, here's two, pick one and you can have whatever. But I don't give the, I don't let them make decisions. I don't think they're ready to make. And I always set it up so that they're most likely to make the choice that I want them to make anyway. So I'm pretty manipulative about setting things up so that what they, what I want turns out to be what they want. I will not them realizing it. Of course, um, I always give them choices if they, if they want to train with me or not. Um, from the very beginning, you're never, they're never forced into a training session. You can train, you cannot train, whatever. You know, it's all the same to me. If you don't want to train, I'll give you a handful of cookies and we'll go do something else anyway. But that rarely to never happens because training is so reinforcing in so many ways for them. So I'm, I'm big on management. I manage the environment very carefully. I'm always observing what the puppy's doing.

I'm, I'm never, they're never out of my sight when they're loose. Never, because that's always going to end badly. I have baby, we have baby gates everywhere. It's like locked down around here most all the time. And it's almost as soon as we'll get done with all of that, with one puppy, another one comes along and we go back into the whole thing again. So we have many, many baby gates. But I do, I don't want them to make bad, to make choices I don't want. Because then that's when they become habit very, very quickly. So I don't ever want them to start. I see wizard looking up at the kitchen counters and I'm like, oh no, right off the bat, he's never going to be in this kitchen with an opportunity to get up on those counters. None of my other dogs have tried. And so I'm pretty lax about that. I leave food around all the time. He's one who will do it. I just know he hasn't done it, but I can tell his intention just looking at where he's focusing. So I'm not going to let that happen. I'm not going to let him loose in the kitchen when there's anything in there because I don't want it to start. So that's not a choice. You don't get a choice as to whether you get on the kitchen counters or not. It helps you kind of fall back into rules. I have my rules. You have yours. Things I don't care about. Other people care deeply and that's fine. But I care about my kitchen counters. So we don't do things like that. So I don't give them a lot of decisions. I try to build good habits. I try to build in what I want and to keep out what I don't want. So he doesn't have much choice in those kinds of things. But I've found that if I do that for about the first year, then I never then I don't have to worry about all of that anymore because now I've established the patterns of behavior day to day that I want. So where does he get decisions? He gets decisions in whether he wants to train or not. And he has yet told me he doesn't want to train. I have seen times when I go, I need to stop training you because your brain is not in it anymore, but you're still trying. So that kind of decision when we're doing cooperative care work, he gets to make choices about whether I continue or whether I back off and do something easier. So I read his body language throughout that process to decide when to do more, when to do a little bit less. And I think letting him have that kind of choice is really empowering that he goes, oh, okay, you're not going to force me. Well, go ahead, do it. No big deal. Whereas if I push the issue, then we're going to get resistance.

And so I try to I try to avoid ever putting them in a situation where there's going to be resistance to something I want them to do. I want cooperation for anything to be their first response. Like, okay, I don't know what this is about, but whatever. We do a lot of things. You do a lot of weird things and it always turns out okay. So I want to build that in so that they just that their choices are always to do whatever I think is the right thing at the moment. Though I'm pretty controlling that first year or so for sure. But it has worked out for me and it paid off for me. I know other people and I should say this. You know, there's no one right way to do any of this with a puppy. And I know other people do the exact opposite of what I do. And it works out fine for them too. You know, they're very laissez-faire. They're very easygoing about it. The puppy does what the puppy wants when it feels like it. That would not that's not me. And that's not the way I go about it. But their puppies may turn out to be just perfect for them in the bigger picture. So I think a lot of it is just up to what you are comfortable doing or not doing and letting them have decisions in. I think we want them to feel powerful. We want them to feel confident. But I don't want them thinking too much for themselves early on because usually they're thinking stupid thoughts. And I don't want to let them go down that path. Right, right. Have you had to do any work or what work have you had to do kind of to help Wizard integrate with the other critters in your house? Because you've got dogs and tricky and all that kind of stuff. So can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, we've always I've, you know, ever since my first dog, I've always had an existing group that a puppy is coming into. And that's another place where I'm fairly controlling about what happens. And I supervise very, very carefully. I don't want the puppy to have a bad experience with the older dogs. I want the older dogs to dislike the puppy. And so I'm always monitoring what they're doing together. They get some free time together, but it always depends on the puppy's behavior. And with Wizard, he can have maybe five minutes here or there before he does something that just irritates the heck out of somebody. And then he has to go away. And so we're just trying to build it up slowly while I'm watching it. I don't need my dogs to be friends. I wish they would be, but I don't need them to be. I just need them to coexist. And so I'm looking also at age and size differences. And so that makes a big difference when we have a couple of very small dogs and he's going

to be a bigger dog. I have to be very thoughtful about that. I have Zen who's almost 14. So Wizard is not allowed to do anything to aggravate Zen because older dogs get protected. And then we have poor Star who puts up with the brunt of it and she'll survive, but she's not crazy about it. So I try to work on them, you know, out together, supervised. The cat is all on his own. Cat does what he wants. He's used to dogs. He knows how to put them in their place. And he does. And Wizard is learning. Quit aggravating the cat all the time because he will turn around and smack the heck out of you. But I also do work on, we work on things like taking turns, you know, having them all out and everybody takes turns getting treats. I do a lot of group Zen work where everybody has to take their turn with some Zen exercise. So they all have to show control waiting for their turn and then they have to show control within their turn. And I think that's good for a puppy because he's just part of the group. We're going through and I'm doing it with you and then with you and then and they're all right in front of me. So I think that's a really good exercise to get him to learn to, you know, other dogs get things. Other dogs get to do things. You don't always get to do everything. You don't always get to be the only one. Sometimes you have to wait for what you want. I think there's a really good lessons there. When I train him, I'll often have one of the older dogs in the room just doing a stay somewhere. So he's used to other to those dogs being around while he's working. So that's the distraction. Coexisting, again, also gets them used to coexisting without interacting. And that's a lot of what I think about with my dogs now is coexisting without interacting is fine. If you can be friends, that'd be great, but you don't have to be. And I'll do the same with play sessions. I'll play. We'll play with him while the other dogs are in the room, but they're doing something else or they're on a stay or whatever the case might be. And then they get their turn to play while he has to be the one who does the Zen work. Or, you know, we're outside playing. One dog's fetching and I'll do a cookie scatter for wizard and the other side of the yard so that he's learning how to be around them. But that doesn't mean you have to directly do something with them all the time. In fact, it's better not to because herding dogs, I'll start to want to hurt each other. And then it gets really unpleasant when nobody gets to be the one to be the herder. Nobody wants to be the sheep, huh? Exactly.

Nobody wants to be the sheep and then they can run into trouble. So we avoid that as much as we can. So I do. Yeah, I'm careful about that. I'm thoughtful about that. They typically I take him out now for walks with Zen. So mutual walking, I think, is a really good way to get dogs. They're doing something together, but they're not again, they're not face to face. They're side to side and they're, you know, they're each kind of exploring the world on their own. But I think it's good for him to do that with the other dogs that get used to that as part of his day to day life as well. So I'm working a lot on those different things and he's doing well with that. He's coming along. And as he gets older, he's getting to that age now, though, where he's just like wants to body slam everything and everybody. And nobody thinks that's a good idea. None of us like it, including the cat. So he's going to have to we're going to have to keep working on that. And Trix, like, are you kidding me? This is not how we play. But I'm hoping at the stage, it's kind of like how Labradors play, like, you know, just bam into each other like they're pinballs. And and and all the other dogs around here are like, that's that's not normal. Like we're herding dogs. That is not how you interact. Exactly. Go find a retriever if you want to play like that. Oh, man. So you do have a webinar coming up on some of this stuff. I do. Next week. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that? Sure. I'm yeah, I'm excited about this webinar. This is like a wizard's big debut at FDSA. So I'm kind of excited. He's he's in all the videos, of course. And then I'm basically talking about him the whole time. He's already actually was did some work in my chin rest workshop that I just did. And he did well in that. But here he's definitely the star of this thing. So it's called Eat, Play, Love. And that is definitely how I'm thinking about and talking about early puppy training. So this is the first stage of puppy training for me. What you do before you actually train anything. How do we set the stage so that we can train? And it's something that I think a lot of problems people have in training go back to not having done this stuff, but they didn't even realize they needed to do these things. So it's all that foundation you didn't know you needed. And once you did, once you know you need it, you can avoid so many problems in the future. Because I was thinking about things like, why are my dogs all always also food motivated? And I hear people talking about dogs that aren't. And it's like, I kept thinking I'm going to get one that isn't.

And then I'm thinking, well, maybe it's what I'm doing. And it's not just their natural tendency. So I know some dogs really are naturally not real food motivated. But what could I do to build on what I have? And so I started thinking about what do I do with food? So we get into the eat aspect of it. And I do a lot that I never really thought much about. But when I put it all together, it's like, well, I have this whole thing that I do when I'm thinking about introducing food and using it as a reinforcer. And I never have really just pulled that all apart and talked about it. So when we talk about food, we often say things like, well, use high value food. And I'm like, well, I don't even do that. I try to use low value food. I try to go as low as I can, you know, with food. And then I get cheap with it pretty quickly. And it's the opposite of what most people say. But my dogs will work for dirt. I mean, they'll work for anything. I don't ever have to go high value to get work out of them. So I must be doing something to get that. Or I'm very lucky. And every dog I have has just been highly food motivated. I'm thinking about things now like, you know, introducing a marker system to them, which is something we didn't think about too much, maybe even five years ago. And now it's everywhere. So I'm talking about, you know, marker systems, why it matters. Physically, how you give the food, especially if you want to avoid losing your fingers. Wizards is one of the sharkiest puppies I have ever had from the get go. And now that he's teething, he's actually less sharky than he was. When we got him, I'm like, what the heck? So how physically do I provide food? And what can I do to get rid of this and avoid this unpleasant grabbing of food from me? And there's a lot, a lot of mechanical skills that go on there. And also the marker system helps so much with that, because they can predict where the food's going to be. They don't have to guess and grab, which is what I think a lot of dogs and puppies do. It's like, they're not actually sure. We're not doing a consistent job with how we provide the food. So all of that are things that I've done and have always done and just never really thought much about, like in terms of food. And then the same with play and with toys. I want to play with my puppy. Most puppies will play. But then I see all these adult dogs who won't play anymore, or who will only play when all conditions are perfect, you know, under the full moon. That's it. And no other time will they play. So you can't use play as a reinforcer. And I want to be able to use play as a reinforcer.

And so I'm starting to think about how do I strengthen what we have to work with? How do I nurture it and develop it? How do I put some structure and rules around it? And then the hard part, how do I go back and forth between food and play? And both in training and have them be effective. Because I see over and over again that once the food comes out, the play is gone. And I don't want that. I want my dog to take either thing just as happily. And so all of this goes into that foundation before I even teach the first thing. It's like we're going back and forth between food and toys. I'm teaching them to let go of toys if they have a hard time. If they have a hard time getting motivated to want to play with toys, I'm working on that instead. So I'm trying to build all that along with the relationship stuff that I talked about. I've talked a little bit more about. And in the webinar, I go into some more detail on exactly what I do when I think relationship in terms of how do I establish that? How do I maintain that over time? What does it actually mean to me? And all of those things, I think people jump right over and they go into the next stage, which is teaching them about things like, you know, how to learning to sit or to lie down or whatever that might be. That's actually my third stage of things to do. So I'm trying to, in this webinar, talk about before you teach anything else, here are the things you actually ought to be establishing. Once these are established, then you can go on to teach them about skills to learn and go from there. So that's what it's all about. And I think it's something that hasn't quite been put together that way before. At least I haven't put it together that way. And I haven't seen anybody else talk about it quite like that. So I'm hoping it'll be something that's a little different and valuable to people when they hear about it. Yeah, it sounds like a great webinar for folks where they have a puppy or they're thinking about a puppy, right? Exactly. Because we're all getting our next puppy at some point. Always, always. Next puppy is always on our thoughts. The next puppy will be perfect, right? Of course, we won't make any mistakes. No, we make different mistakes every time. We're creative with our mistakes. We just make new ones. Yeah. Yeah. So other than the webinar, where can folks go if they want to see more Wizard videos and stalk him or follow him? Yeah, Wizard has a fan club now, which is fun. I started a Facebook group just for his stuff. It's called Wizard in Training, Raising a Puppy with a Little Bit of Magic.

And you helped me out with that title back when I was thinking about it. So thank you for that. Absolutely. And in that group, I show my day-to-day training. I just throw up my unedited raw video. It's ugly sometimes. I make mistakes. I'll talk about my mistakes sometimes. Sometimes I don't. And I figure somebody will point them out to me if they want to. But I show the good stuff as well as, you know, the bad stuff as well as the good stuff are the things that need work. Because we all make mistakes in training. We all have bad training sessions. We all have sessions that look like we don't know what the heck we were doing. And sometimes that's okay. And we work it out. Other times it tells us that we need to change the course pretty quickly. So, and I talk about, you know, in that group, I talk a little bit about what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, you know, why this order, why this thing right now is important to me. I show little bits from his outings that we take, his field trips that I talk about. Um, it keeps me from totally spamming my personal Facebook page with puppy stuff and nothing else. So I figure there actually, I actually know a lot of people who don't care about puppies, hard to believe. No way. So I have non-dog friends. Is that allowed? Non-dog friends here and there. Yeah. It's hard to believe. So I, um, keep it all in one place. And then I'll have like this diary to go back to, I figure as well. And, um, people can come and join that group. Anybody's welcome to join it. There's no, no cost to doing it. And I intend to keep it up. I probably will stop posting so regularly by the time he's in a couple more months. So it'd go through like months two to six. So the first four months that I've had him, and then I will probably be less frequent in talking about what's going on with him and what I'm doing there. But that's a good place to start to take a look and to see, um, you know, what I do in the way of puppies. I also have, you know, the focus puppy book out that's been around. It's 11 years old now. And so there are a few things I do differently, but I talk about that in the Facebook group as well. We don't, we, we evolve a lot. And sometimes I'm amazed that the things that I said 11 years ago are still relevant. And sometimes I'm like, what was I thinking? Why did I do that or do it that way? I never do that anymore. So in the group, I'll talk about that. Because once you put it in a book, you can't take it back unless you just stop publishing the book and rewrite it as a new one. And I'm too lazy to do that right now. But I'll just say, oh, I don't do it this way anymore.

Here's what I do instead. And add on there. So yeah, those are some good places to check and, you know, see what I'm doing and how my puppy training goes. Sounds good. Yeah. All right. I want to kind of round things out with one last question, which is if you were kind of think back through our conversation and drill it down into one key piece of information or one key takeaway that you really want all new puppy owners to understand, what would that be? I feel pressure. I feel a lot of pressure now. That's like a huge thing to pick out because it feels like everything is so important with puppies and you don't want to forget anything. And that makes us all kind of frantic and wild. But if I have to say one thing, I'd say, learn who your puppy is before you try to train him and be open to the fact that he may not be exactly what you expected or thought you wanted. Oftentimes they are not. Our view of what our next puppy is going to be often turns out very different than reality. The sooner we accept who they are, the sooner we can then start moving forward with our relationship with them and moving towards some goals with them. But if we're trying to train them as if they are some other puppy, that's never going to be, that's never going to work. That's never going to get us where we want to go. So oftentimes we're training our last dog or we're training the opposite of our last dog, but we're not actually training the puppy that we're looking at right now. So I guess it sort of goes back to that train the dog in front of you thing I've heard somewhere. I've heard somebody around here say that a time or two. Imagine that. Yeah. But it's learn who your puppy is. Don't try to just make him what you want him to be. So that's my advice. I like that. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Deb. You're very welcome. I'm always happy to be here. All right. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. We will be back next week with Sharon Carroll to talk about reactive and hyper aroused dogs. If you haven't already, subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice. The 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 Lyon. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training.