E443: 킴 팔레르모(Kim Palermo) - 도대체 ACE 프리 워크(Free Work)란 무엇인가?

like want to learn about i become extremely passionate about it so um dove in deep with my dogs um worked with some clients on it but i i also like i i tend to think about like well how can i incorporate this into the other things that i do right like control unleashed and so i started playing around with those ideas and the wonderful thing about sarah sarah was just the kind of person i mean she was super passionate and like the two of us would get i'd ask her a question or mention an idea i had and the two of us like we'd be like giggling like school girls over like these ideas and we could we'd so easily get each other going um sarah just like made everyone feel special like anyone who met her like she remembered everyone's names their dogs um she really really was an amazing person and and brilliant absolutely brilliant you know i kind of i got to know her through learning but also you know we would i would message her on facebook we would meet once in a while um she was very open to me doing things maybe sooner than where my certification was ready for right so even just teaching this class at um fdsa is a huge honor and um you know she was so all for me doing these kinds of things so um yeah i think it's sad because i don't think i learned everything i had to learn from sarah um but i i definitely learned a lot um and i'm i'm so honored to be able to kind of continue what i've learned from her and you know spread the world's word about ace and free work so i know that's what she would want so okay i made it so for people who aren't familiar with ace and free work who haven't really heard the term before how would you describe what free work is in a way that's you know kind of intuitive and accessible for folks yeah so you know it's funny because i asked sarah once um like what the you know the elevator pitch was for free work like if you had like three sentences to describe what free work was because i never knew how to describe it and she's like well i don't really have one and i was like oh well that's not helpful but um if i were to put it in my own words i would say that simply put this is very very simplifying it uh free work is enrichment that's healthy for the dog or any whatever animal it is for their mind for their emotions um and for their body so you know when i say enrichment i think it's important to think about what that word means it's certainly a buzzword in our industry and when i think of enrichment i'm thinking of something that's calm for my dog so it's not just keeping them busy right it's not just making them

tired it's giving them something to do that's going to kind of calm their nervous system relax them um so that they're emotionally more happy right so um that's what i'm really looking to do and so if i'm gonna so i'm gonna try to describe what like a free work session would look like so i have multiple stations and these stations are for enrichment for my dog so they're either snuffle mats or some sort of snuffling thing it might not be a snuffle mat it could be just like you know wrapped up towels or something like that um and then also like licking you know ways for our dogs to lick so again it could be a lick mat but it could certainly be like i i have definitely used furniture where i will just smear peanut butter um and it got to the point where maybe my husband asked me to stop doing that but um for me it's like any surface i could find i'm gonna i'm gonna apply some sort of licking food um but it's basically so we have these different stations and you can start with like one or two and then build your way up to like usually i would say a free work session for my dogs would have anywhere from like six to ten different stations um they're set up in a way that's comfortable for our dog's bodies so what that means is you know if we think of a dog that is snuffling on a snuffle mat that's on a ground on the ground they have to lower their head all the way to the ground and depending on that dog you know that could be putting a lot of weight on their shoulders it could be putting pressure on their head or their neck um it could be making them so that they have to you know maybe hold their legs out wide or bend them a little bit at the elbow in order to access the food and so what we're doing is we're putting these our dogs in these positions that might not be completely comfortable for them so for free work we're adjusting these enrichment stations in a way where our dog is comfortable so usually that's like a snuffle mat that's like maybe like chest height for my dog so that way she doesn't have to bend down all the way in order to access the food and then i look to see you know are her legs balanced is her top line straight do her ears look relaxed and though that kind of stuff gives me information that she's physically comfortable and then by making our dogs physically comfortable they're also going to become more emotionally comfortable so you know i see a lot of discomfort in what you know someone would consider enrichment i see a lot of frustration also so you know trying really hard to get the food you know that's not what i do i'm making this like

easy and relaxing for my dog i'm not making it super difficult for them um and so you know that's what my my session is going to look like and they're my dogs are on their own so it's completely the dog is independent um unless you're like me and you want to just stare and watch them like they're like a tv show or something they're like obsess over every little thing um but they're they're independent um as your dog gets more you know skilled at free work sessions you can incorporate yourself into it um but initially it's just the dog on its own and then you're also varying the foods um so i use i probably use maybe like four to five different kinds of foods for every session so i try to go for like something soft something small something crunchy something big um i've even used like spaghetti because it's like a little unique for them right it's a different texture and same goes with our licking foods i'm not freezing them or making it difficult or anything um but i'm trying different things because i can also use free work to gain information about my dog like what's my dog's preferences i'm amazed by how much my dogs appreciate crunchy treats and i just like i've always been that person that i'm like you know go to the food store and get like chicken breasts and cut it up and that's your dog treats and like my dogs are like no i want crunch like and i had no idea until i started doing free work um so that's kind of what it i it's so hard to describe but that's essentially what it is um and what it does is it just kind of builds our dogs like we're building body awareness um we're lowering you know their their arousal resetting their nervous system we're toning their body in such a very simple way this isn't like a fitness exercise right i'm not looking for my dog to do these big stretches and such but with all of my dogs i have noticed a difference in their toning um especially their core muscles and it also builds better patterns in the way that they hold their bodies so when we set these stations up properly we're teaching our dog to use and move their body in the way that's going to be most healthy for them and then as they practice that it becomes more and more natural for them in the real world um so you know for example my puppy sunday i call her a puppy she's turning two next month but i think i can still call her the puppy in the household yeah she'll just be the puppy until i get another puppy i guess um so it works yes so um i do confirmation with her and i would say like

i know i'm supposed to do like the cavalettis and the like you know do all this toning and stuff to get her body prepared all i do is free work and then i take her for hikes and her body looks amazing like straight top line she's a beautiful gate um and i i really think it's because like i've raised her on free work so since puppyhood she's just learned to use her body in the best way that she can um and then finally we can eventually use free work to work on other skills um you know so if we go back to my puppy sunday right now i'm using free work to kind of work on some of her leash feelings because she gets she feels some you know pressure and frustration when she's on the leash because she's really not on the leash all that often in day-to-day life um so i'm using free work to show her hey the leash isn't that bad because we do have to get into the confirmation ring next month and so the leash has got to go on yeah yeah so what benefits do you feel like free work offers uh dog sports teams in particular yeah um oh my gosh just so much i think for one thing it's just an activity your dog can do that isn't training right it isn't a sport so we're often looking for ways to keep our dogs happy keep them emotionally sound keep them physically sound and and this provides that for us um you know i have a snuffle room um which is essentially always set up for free work so for me it's actually quite easy you know i'll fill it every day and so my dogs just like have that activity that they can do so if i don't have time to train them they have that um if we had like let's say we did a training session it was kind of a challenging one i can then allow them to decompress with the free work session i can have them warm up with the free work session and then i also will take stations on the road so when i go to trials i'll bring like one raised snuffle mat or maybe sometimes i get a little carried away but you know it doesn't matter so but i always have some of that with them so that you know before we go into the ring i can help my dog relax essentially warm up her body warm up her brain by having her do a little mini free work session um you know right on one or two stations it also really helps our dogs like dogs that have big feelings so if they're reactive on walks if they if they're fearful and they tend to shut down it allows them to just kind of like it i think of it almost like meditation for us or even yoga like it's that thing that like i can't tell you why meditation works but it does right it's a there's a reason why we're we're all supposed to do it um

and so it helps our dogs in that way it's it's their own independent time where they can relax use their noses do something that's very natural um and so we can kind of help with any sort of big feelings arousal all of that i also find it helps a lot for um understanding my dog's food preferences and also building food drive so and i know that this can be something that's important um for our sports dogs or even it can lower arousal around food so it can go either way right so um i'm gonna have to pick on sunday once again um when she came to me she's a very emotional little girl that's why she ended up in my house and she really doesn't have much of a appetite in general and so i would actually feed her just on a raised snuffle mat um all her meals that's how she ate and it was so adorable like i would just always have it set up in the kitchen where i keep the puppies and she would just like once she started to really enjoy the free work she would just like walk over to her station and sit next to it and be like more please um so it helped for her to build food drive and even now like she's still like a little slow to sometimes eat her meals so i will just feed her her meal via free work so i'll sprinkle kibble and i often get the question well what if my dog eats raw food my dogs do so i just put that on like a lick mat like a raised lick mat um and she gobbles it all up so it's really good for that and then also we can use it to bring arousal down around food so a lot of my students my control on leash students we've used like raised snuffle mats to lower arousal in trial environments in classroom environments because the snuffling itself or the licking we we've had um some students just like feed their dogs completely by with licky food um for control on leash because that just slows their thinking down brings their arousal down um and then finally you know i i think it's it's been talked about a lot recently through fdsa like with denise in this recent online conference about like our dogs physical structure and how that impacts their ability to to participate in dog sports and i mean this is just it provides so much health for the body and strength for the body um body awareness confidence in the body um ability to move properly so it's going to help you with that also so just to to kind of dig a little deeper here can you talk more about how free work is different from more like traditional cue based training and maybe you know how they can complement that yeah sure so i don't think of free work really as training um and even when i like at the beginning

of this class we're going to kind of work individually on teaching calm snuffling and teaching calm licking but i don't think of that as training like we're we're teaching our dog these skills um where i incorporated into cue based training is my use of it with control unleashed so if we think of you know and where i really started seeing this was like i was thinking like let's think of like the up down pattern game so you place a treat on the ground the dog eats the treat they look up at you you mark you place another treat on the ground and there's a lot of repetition there right so the dog is lowering their head all the way to the ground eating food looking up all the way at you looking all the way down that's quite the workout for their neck right and for their body depending on the dog and so we can incorporate free work into our control and leash skills to make them more physically comfortable so that could be with a raised snuffle mat um also leslie mcdevitt who also uh she knew sarah well and and liked the idea of incorporating free work into cu she created the lick and learn which is like a little like um like essentially like a lick stick right it looks like a spatula or something and you just smear lick food on it and you can hold it so that your dog's physically comfortable um and they can still play these patterns but without lowering their heads all the way to the ground and as a side benefit and as someone who has chronic pain it means i don't have to lower all the way to the ground to put the food down so we're providing them structurally with more comfort um and then we're also using those ways of accessing reinforcement to lower arousal if it's through snuffling or licking so um so we have that too so you can take the concepts of free work and apply it to really nearly any sort of cue based training that you're doing um and and you can get so creative about it it's kind of interesting to think about it that way almost as a series of principles that you can use to influence how you arrange situations in training once you've kind of absorbed them yeah it's it's everything i do with my dogs now it's with the like a ace mindset so um i think you know kind of when i went through your class treatment and stuff one of the things that kind of stuck with me was this idea of what does it mean you know for a dog to really feel safe when making choices and kind of the way that free work might benefit that so can you talk about that and maybe how handlers can support that idea of safety

yeah sure um i what i love about free work is it it's quite independent and and i say that like i love it but i also like i like to be involved with my dogs right and i like engaging with them so um there's a love hate there but um it allows our dog to have that independence and they're making all their choices there we're not saying go to the snuffle mat first or eat this treat first they are able to make all those choices on their own and i mean that's just so empowering on its own to be able to do that and work independently and then it's really so cool when you do actually start to incorporate yourself into the free work sessions and like the dogs are like oh you can be part of this too um and it's just like that's just rewarding also i had a session recently um where sunday like wasn't really showing a lot of interest in food and she wasn't really interested in doing free work so i just took one of the stations i took like a lick mat and i sat down on the ground and i just held it and me being there was like enough to kind of get her like oh we can do this together and so she started on that station and then she ended up going off on her own and and finished up the the free work session all by herself so it's kind of like it allows our dogs to have this level of independence and then this engagement that doesn't require it isn't based on training um and even some of the work that we do that i've done with sarah is a lot of like kind of moving from station to station with your dog and the hardest part for me was not like waiting for behavior right not marking for something like you really want to kind of just be like part of it not like the reason the dog's making the choice and that was extremely challenging it still is that's still hard for me um and especially with this like leash work with sunday that i'm doing but it's really cool because we we kind of teach our dogs that they have a lot of um ability to make their own choices and and it's just so cool in that way have you seen it change the way that dogs like think about or seem to approach like novel situations and stressors is it like you know confidence building is it curiosity building you know can you talk more a little more about those aspects yeah all of the above um so yeah it's definitely like i think every puppy should be raised with free work because i do think it really teaches them a lot about exploring you know i think we underestimate the importance of what it means when our dog takes the time to sniff slowly and um explore their environment and i don't mean just in a free work session like

even like out for a walk or something like i'm looking for calm relaxed exploration and sniffing and that tells me that my dog is comfortable in their environment um and that they're happy um it was when my dog jane earlier this year she got spayed and it was like maybe day three she started like sniffing on our little walks and i was like yeah that's what i'm looking for right she's feeling more herself she's sniffing and stuff um so it kind of just builds that practice of doing that behavior and doing natural dog behaviors and so then that's going to just give them more confidence when they are in the real world to explore it's going to give them that physical confidence right to maneuver things and move around them um and then certainly we can incorporate different we can even incorporate novel items into the session and what i like so much about it is we're not using the food and certainly not using training to say you must interact with this novel thing instead we're just putting it there and allowing them to make the decision so often what i'll do is like i you know i usually put some keto boards down but sometimes i'll put like a different texture down or something and um i was working on my dog's arousal around sheep so i put some sheep wool into their session and so it was just like little ways of incorporating things i also started because my my two collie girls have some feelings about my flock my my chickens and ducks and stuff so i was bringing some shavings into the free work session so i'm just allowing them to kind of discover the world but in the comfort of that free work session um and with no pressure whatsoever to interact and then i've just seen you know sunday in particular she was as a baby puppy uh very had a very hard time with novel situations um and i mean her confidence is just i'd love to know who she would be if i hadn't done all this work right so it's like i can only guess but i mean she's an extremely confident little dog she came to camp with me and everything and i think people heard her because she does bark but um she was very confident in the situation so it it certainly helps with that yeah super interesting do you talk about it that way because it reminds me you know of hearing leslie mcdowitt talk about some of the control unleash stuff when i've seen her present in person and i can see as you talk about it just how obviously they would fit while still being distinct things you know yeah yeah it's it's pretty cool how well they fit for people who you know kind of want to begin exploring this concept what are some simple

ways that folks can give it a try even if they you know never done this before yeah i would say the first thing you could do is just set up like a station or two and just see what your dog thinks um so when i tell people to try this out like there's a few things i i suggest they look for um on the dog's body and that kind of tells us that the station is comfortably arranged for them so you want it to be raised up so that they're not lowering their head too much like i said and usually what happens is when we find that perfect height we get a straight top line and now every dog is going to be different and every dog's built differently and your dog might not be able to get a straight top line but what we're looking for is the least amount of roaching or you know sway in their back that we can get we're looking for some balance in their legs so front legs like i want their shoulders and their you know their legs to be directly under their shoulders i want to see straight hawks i don't want what we often see is like this angulation in right so like the chest kind of goes over the toes and then maybe the rear toes kind of go under the abdomen right and that's the dog kind of supporting their body their core and their back so i want to see more balance more structure um so i'm looking for that and again it's we're not always going to get it and and i love one thing that sarah said recently um when i was learning from her is it's not looking for perfection it's looking for possibility and i i just love that because um you know i i kind of over i overanalyze my dogs not even kind of i do and like sometimes i really get hung up on stuff but then i have to remember like like jane's back looks so much better than it ever has and if i happen to neglect free work for you know maybe i'm like traveling a lot for two or three weeks i see a change in her back so it has to remind me that even though her body isn't perfect it's better when i'm doing free work so so i'm looking for those two things kind of that balance in their their four legs a straight top line and then i like to look at the tail for emotional relaxation and also how much tension is in the dog's body so i've got you know my collies they've got nice swishy tails so it's pretty easy to tell with them but like i've got my mini poodle when he moves around his tails up and it's it's pretty stiff in general what i'm looking for is just any sort of softness so a lowering of the base of the tail and then if the dog has long hair you can see a softness and like the way the hair moves because like even their fascia

is going to influence how their hair moves tightness in their muscles is going to influence that so i'm just looking for softness and usually i'll look for the tail in the tail for that so a lowered tail i'm not looking i don't want to see tension in the tail and again this might take time right like the first time you do this the dog might just be like whoa this is great it's a party and their tails up the whole time what i'm looking for is that softening and that relaxation so that's i mean that sounds like a lot but really just like we're looking for a straight top line balanced legs soft tail so we're just adjusting things and that's either adjusting the height adjusting the food adjusting the ease of accessibility of the food right so we're just kind of tweaking things until we see those those things in our dogs you'd mentioned kind of using um free work to work on sunday's leash feelings so how can free work you know dovetail with other training goals things like leash work or agility prep or obedience cues kind of some of the other things that maybe folks listening to this work on with their dog yeah so for the example of like sunday with her leash feelings um what i'm doing right now is i'm attaching actually it's not even a leash i've i'm taking yarn long yarn and i'm looping it through her collar and then i'm just kind of allowing that to be part of the session and i'm kind of just standing there holding the yarn and in in addition to that um one of the kind of ace practices that we do is called lighting the way and this is essentially like using our body the way we're you know where we're looking where we're standing and a lot of us who do sports like we already know this stuff right like if you want your dog in heel position you know don't have your your shoulder go back or you know there's there's ways we understand how to use our bodies and so this part actually came quite naturally for me but we can essentially guide our dog from station to station with our bodies and then i can incorporate the leash into that and then the tricky part is not pulling out my clicker and being like yeah you did it right right there um because i really want to honor what free work is and keep it sacred this isn't when we're training um but in addition to that like um you know when i think of agility prep i had one student in my big feelings class um and she was using one free workstation as essentially like a start button opportunity for her dog so he would get over aroused in doing the weave poles even just during

practice right like barking he would um run through them before she cued him and usually he would come out before he was at the end of the six or 12 poles and so we incorporated some like up down at that station and then ultimately like a little start button and then she would cue him to do the weaves and oh my gosh it was like night and day like suddenly he's like doing these beautiful weaves and he's not barking at all and we just kind of took those good feelings the low arousal that the snuffle brings incorporated a little bit of cu and we just got this like beautiful work so we can just kind of adjust it in so many different ways i use it a lot for anyone who's familiar with like my opt-out stations that's essentially a free workstation and with that i'm kind of giving my dog the opportunity to opt out uh really at any time um which might sound a little counterintuitive but it does actually work um and we just we do that with free work so my dog can say i'd rather go snuffle right now comfortably than do this skill because you just confused me with your you know human nonsense or whatever it was so um yeah there's so many ways we can incorporate it into that kind of stuff you mentioned confirmation and structure earlier uh can you talk a little more about how kind of that fits into the free work piece like it sounds very gentle and so i think a lot of people feel like they have to do more fitnessy type things to see a result so just can you talk about it a little more yeah so if i think of so i have collies and they're a free stacking breed so if we're thinking of confirmation um so they kind of essentially have to stack themselves i can't really hand stack them so by using free work you know i would adjust the height of the stations i often use like i mentioned using cato boards i often use like a platform in front of the stations which kind of helps my dog kind of like put a little bit of weight forward and then it they straighten out their hawks a little bit um they look beautiful i love how they look when they're set up like that and so essentially sunday has practiced over the past two years how to stand in this naturally balanced way so then when i get into the show ring that's just how she stands you know when i go out for a hike and she like stops i can't even tell you i hike with my friend and it's like probably two or three times during our hike i'm like oh my god look at how beautiful she is right because sunday's just standing there um but she's just learned to naturally hold herself

in that way that's using all the right muscles right and and so balanced and grounded also like she's just the way she balances the way she's standing she just seems so secure with like how she's holding her body and how she can move her body and of course that's going to help my dog in the confirmation ring but also you know the obedience ring or the agility ring the more i can kind of give my dog that you know confidence in their body the better and then i had mentioned like with jane with her back like uh her back tends to like she's got a long back so it kind of sways a little bit it dips a little bit um and especially when i haven't done free work in a while and i mean this is i still i hike my dogs daily so this is despite like all the hikes and everything when she does free work just the way she's standing and holding her body it's using the right muscles so our dogs tend to if they have some sort of pain or discomfort they're going to use other muscles instead to compensate for that right um and so if our dogs are doing that and they're constantly kind of overcompensating then they're gonna we're gonna see it in the way they hold their bodies and here we can allow them to practice holding their body in a comfortable way and we can like if they have pain or discomfort so my miniature poodle has chronic pain he's got ibdd and he's got like so he's got neck and back stuff um by doing free work i'm kind of building those little muscles around his spine and around his neck and i'm creating fluidity there i'm loosening his muscles a little bit so there's less tension and there's so much more softness in his body now and and so those little changes are what i'm looking to accomplish now if i were to give my dog a frozen topple and they're like you know got their paws wrapped around it and lowering their head and their butts in the air like and they're getting frustrated and they're using their jaw a lot like i could be causing a lot of tension i could be causing a lot of discomfort i'm not allowing my dog to practice using their body in the best way that they can if if that makes sense yeah absolutely i kind of just to pull apart another like piece that you'd mentioned um you were talking about kind of preferences and tendencies and things that we maybe don't see in more structured training and you mentioned like the crunchy treat thing what other types of things do you see free work you know reveal about your dog's preferences or their tendencies or i mean you're even just talking about like the way they tend to

stand right like what what do you feel like you've learned about your dogs through free work that maybe you wouldn't have learned through you know more traditionally structured training yeah well definitely you you can learn about discomforts that they might have so if my dog is consistently you know she's got one leg in front of the other or something i know she's offsetting her weight for whatever reason so then that gives me information you know for me personally i work with like a chiropractor and massage therapist for my dog so then i can go to them and say this is what i'm seeing um in free work and so i think we need to work on this so it certainly tells us information about that um and then it does like even when it comes to like is my dog does she go to the snuffle mat first or does she go to the lick mat first and sometimes like i like to also put out um like chew things for my dogs and so that it's an option for them during a free work session so i find that sunday actually likes to lay down and chew a bone first and then start snuffling so chewing is very important to her and i think that's a really helpful way for her to process information um one thing i learned about walt my mini poodle in doing free work he was he's got you know he's 13 years old he doesn't have the best teeth at this point so i'd leave a chew thing out for him and he'd like kind of get weird about chewing on it and then he'd like he would actually lift it up onto one of the stations i kid you not to try to make it more comfortable but it still looked uncomfortable to him so i ended up getting um a celery stalk and i held it for him because i held it up high and oh my gosh he had so much fun just pulling that celery stalk apart so i'm you know i'm like realizing like he loves to dissect things right and pull things apart so now i try to if i'm part of his free work session i'll sit there with like a celery stalk and he'll do everything else and then eventually he'll come over and and pull the celery apart and then he's done that that's that's his finishing point um you know sometimes they'll have like a toy or something in there to see if they choose that um and i also find that like all my dogs have they each have like their own favorite station and what i'm finding is really interesting lately is i played around with so when i was hiking my dogs i noticed like where i hike it's like a mowed path and then long grass on either side well not right now right now it's all ice but in the summer it's this long grass and my dogs would like go off the path and they'd like walk through the long grass

for a while and then they come back and they they kind of just sway in and out and i'm like you know they must really love that feeling of the grass on their face so um i did have a friend make grass snuffle mats for me so that was one thing i incorporated but then i also she made me like these long like strips of yarn like it but it's like really thick yarn i don't really know how to describe it um and so the my dogs have to like put their heads into it in order to access the snuffle mat and they're all going to those stations first so for whatever reason that feeling of something on them um and like also like i'll do things where they have to like push around like little towels or t-shirts or socks or something to find stuff um so you just learn so much about your dog and what they enjoy um it's just so cool and then of course um you know if they leave food if there's a certain food that they don't eat well that's information for me or what food do they go to first that's information for me um so yeah so much that you can learn by by watching them yeah i'm telling you it's better than watching a movie so we're talking about all of this because you do have a class on this stuff coming up in the february term uh it's free work do you want to talk a little more about kind of the class in particular like what pieces of this you're covering maybe who might want to sign up what people can expect to learn some of that kind of stuff yeah sure so i don't know i'm hoping to make this class like really magical because it's it means a lot for me it's such an honor like i said to be able to teach this and for sarah to have agreed to it um i you know of course i wanted to like share with her like my lectures and how it went and everything so i really really want to make this special i think for one anyone can take it really it's it's this is going to benefit every dog out there so um if someone's interested then take it um we're gonna work on i do want to one of the things that i do a little bit differently than the way ace approaches things is i do like to kind of like i said teach calm snuffling and calm licking prior to creating sessions because i think it's important for the student to see what that looks like um and see what a calm behavior from their dog looks like and then we're going to just individualize learn how to individualize the stations for our dogs so how we can set them up in a way that's structurally sound with them and then how to build stations from there um and definitely i'm also going to incorporate some of the ways that

we can use like our other sports or skills or um whatever it might be and how we can utilize free work to help our dogs with those um and i will have a study group also for my bronze students um and it's my ta nicole who's been taing all my cu classes um she's not certified in ace but um she's like the person when i i like to geek out i call up nicole and i'm like i gotta show you this stuff so she knows a lot about free work um because i can't help but share what i learned so um we'll have that going on as well awesome all right any uh final thoughts or maybe key points you kind of want to leave folks with about this stuff um i i i don't think so i just think it's this this would be a gift for your dog if you signed up for this class and learned how to do this for your dog it's it's a gift for your dog and and you're probably going to benefit too but um but yeah it's a pretty cool thing awesome well thank you so much for coming on the podcast kim thanks for having me and thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in we'll be back next week this time with sharon carroll to talk about engagement for differently motivated dogs if you haven't already subscribed to the podcast in itunes or the podcast app of your choice we have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available today's show is brought to you by the fenzy dog sports academy special thanks to denise fenzy for supporting this podcast music provided royalty free by bensound.com the track featured here is called buddy audio editing fred by chris lang thanks again for tuning in and happy training thanks for tuning in ando thanks for tuning in ando