E230: 수 엘스비와 헤더 로슨 - 레벨 올라가기

And the last thing you want to see is that single ring open up to a double ring. Because then you know that, oh, dang, where's my runners, right? But, but thanks to Sue's class, I did step into the confirmation ring quite confident in my abilities. And that's good. And I only have two points left to get on my girl. And then of course, COVID hit. And she got sick and a few other things. So we're working on getting, getting her prepped and ready, see if we can go back into the ring. She's got no coat right now. So that's, you know, no brainer. You got to wait till she's got coat before you take her in. But that's where I'm sitting right now. And then of course, I'm teaching for Fensi. Absolutely. So for those listening who don't know, part of the reason I have these two ladies on at once is Sue is retiring from active teaching. So Heather has kind of worked it out. So Heather can teach Sue's level curriculum at FDSA. And I wanted to talk about that a bit as part of that. Sue, can you just talk a little bit about why you developed the levels program in the class? Like where did that come from? Well, I was teaching basic obedience and I was teaching confirmation and I was teaching tracking and I was teaching this and that and the other thing. And across the board, people kept coming to work on say confirmation with dogs that couldn't walk on a leash. And they wanted to do obedience. But their dog screamed the whole time he was in the car. So it wasn't pleasant coming to class or just basic foundation ideas that are really needed across the board. But people didn't think about my dog needs basic foundation behaviors in order to play this sport. And I thought, you know, my dogs know these foundation behaviors. Why don't other dogs? And then I started thinking about how I had taken riding lessons. I've taken riding lessons my whole life. I was riding medium to dressage. I was and I didn't know anything about horses. I knew how to how to ride horses, but I didn't know anything about horses from the ground because nobody ever teaches that. How far can they kick? I don't know. It's an important thing to know. Yeah. Do they actually like it when you pet them? Or are you just sitting there thinking you're doing something nice for the horse? You know, and I thought we're exactly the same in in competition sports. And there's nothing that that a competition dog has to know as a foundation that a pet dog doesn't have to know. So then I started writing up the things that I saw my competition people didn't have. And that led to the levels. It's not specific. They're not specific to any particular sport.

But after a while, I realized that with 95% of sports, by the time you get through the four training levels, you're like a month away from a title in a sport you haven't practiced yet because the dog has the foundations. You have the foundations of how to train and the dog has the foundations of how to learn. So that's what I did. So talk a little more about the skills piece. So what skills kind of made the list? What's included in kind of the level one piece of the program? Oh, sit, come. Touch, don't touch. Walk on a loose leash, or at least the beginnings of walking on a leash. If your dog doesn't know how to sit and lie down, you have to control him physically. And controlling a dog physically is never a good idea. And come, for heaven's sake. How can you live with an animal that doesn't come when it's called without a herding dog? So just basic. And can you touch my hand? Because that brings the dog to you and teaches him some way to interact with you. And while they're learning these basic behaviors, they're also learning the ideas of training and of learning. That the dog is not respondent. The dog doesn't wait for you to tell him to do something and then he does it. The dog is in charge of learning. So if the dog wants something to happen, the dog has to give you a behavior. And then you respond to that by rewarding or ignoring. And throughout, I tried to vary the methods we use to get behaviors so that people were learning about shaping and luring to get them thinking about all the different ways there are to get a behavior. And teaching the dog, again, to learn what you're trying to teach, to listen to what you're trying to say. Because talking to a human is, I mean, talking to my husband is hard enough. And humans have the same input that I have. And now I'm talking to a foreign species, an animal that is very patently not us. And I have to figure out how to explain to that animal what I want it to do and why it should bother. So that's what I tried to put into the levels. So Heather, when did you kind of first become familiar with what SUID put together with the levels program itself? Probably, let's say, I'm going to give a guess. About 19 years ago, I went to a seminar of SUID in Ontario. And I had at the time my one-year-old Shepard Luca, who is now gone. And I came away with like, wow, this is cool. And because we had such fun and it was just, it was, I mean, I, you know, we all have our certain background in training and things like that. And I thought it was really interesting because it did set up great foundations.

I mean, if you, if you want your dog to heal, they still have to know how to be in position on a leash and loose. So you're giving them the regular everyday living foundations. And that's what was, I thought, yeah, that's, that's lacking, right? Um, because your dogs only have a certain, um, working, you know, or what let's call professional lifespan. And then they become, you know, part of your family and they're retired. So you got to eventually live with these dogs. So if all of a sudden they've been doing all these sports and then they're not doing anything and they don't know the rules or they don't even know the basic foundations, um, they become really hard to live with. Um, and I'd much rather, you know, have a dog I can take anywhere and do anything with, um, than just, you know, for one specific entity, like, you know, like the obedience ring or the agility ring. I still have to be able to manage that dog in my life. Um, and that's why, um, I probably, um, I probably didn't realize until kind of now, um, that I'm sort of talking to Sue and I've, you know, known Sue for a number of years is that that, that one seminar actually shaped the way I teach my, all of my dogs. And I teach other people, my pet dog classes, my in-person classes, it's very much how the team titles program is set up as well. It works on the individual foundation pieces because without those individual foundation pieces, you're, it's like building a brick house on a sand, on a sand base. Eventually it's going to come crashing down because the bricks become too heavy. And without that, you know, solid foundation underneath, um, it's, it's not going to happen. And I like it because it, it, it gives, um, people a way to explain in small incremental steps. So the dogs are successful and the dogs, uh, basically appreciate the human and then the human appreciates the dog. So that's where, that's how I got into it. I have another one. I think the, uh, the foundation of the levels actually came from, uh, riding lessons. I, I rode in Seattle in a place that had everything ready for you. Um, there was one guy that worked at this place whose entire job was shaving horses. When he was done shaving all the horses, it was time to start on the first one again. And when you went, when you went to ride, your horse was there, it was groomed, it was saddled, it was ready to go. And then I went to Los Angeles and I went to a place and I got there and the woman said, okay, see that dirty white horse over there. That's your horse.

And in that shed over there is the saddle and the grooming equipment, go catch your horse, groom her up, saddle her up and let me know when you're ready. And so I got started. And then I went back to her and I said, um, there's a problem here. There's nothing in that shed, but dressage equipment. And, uh, she said, yeah, I said, but, but I don't want dressage. I specifically signed up for a Western trail. And she said, no, you're taking dressage. No, I'm taking Western trail. And she said, okay, let me put it this way. If you take eight weeks of dressage and you're not happy, I'll give you all your money back. Free riding lessons. Okay. So I did it. And at the end of the eight weeks, she said, okay, go over to that, uh, ride over. To that gate. Put your hand on the gate. Don't let go of the gate, open the gate, go through, close the gate. Walk away. And I did that. And she said, okay, that was Western trail. Yeah, but I didn't take any Western trail. She said, dressage is the foundation of riding. And that kind of festered with me for another 25 years. And then the levels showed up. So it kind of pulled those pieces together for you in terms of, um, how you thought the pieces build, right? Right. That's actually a good point because it, it, it sits and it festers and it builds and you start to see and, and you kind of go, you look at something and you go, hmm. Okay. And then it's packed away. And then you look at something. Hmm. Packed away. And then to finally, you go, oh, aha. If I do this, this, and this, it's so much easier. And it's a smoother ride. So to speak. I went to do a seminar once and it was a four or five days. And one of the things they wanted was they wanted me to do some agility. And I said, are, are you people crazy? I, I, I'm a, like one step above beginner agility exhibitor. I, I just go and play around with agility and you people live in a big city and I bet you have a hundred high level agility competitors and you really don't want me. No, no. They, they insist. They want you. Okay. But you tell them that I don't know a damn thing about agility compared to other people. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, I got there. I got there. We spend a half day working on agility and you know what? There wasn't one single agility problem in the whole bunch. The problems were, he breaks the start line. Hello, that's not agility. That's a sit stay or a down stay or stand stay. It's a stay. It's duration. It's self-control. For a handler and dog. It's got nothing to do with agility. He goes to visit the stewards. That's focus. That's not agility. And the whole, the whole half day went like that.

Not one single agility problem, just basic foundation problems. Yeah. And I think that's, that's the thing that, that, um, that drew me to levels and started to incorporate, you know, that kind of mindset when I was teaching classes and why I sort of jumped at the chance to, to, to step in and try and, and fill, um, Sue's shoes with the levels is because that's, you've got to have those basic foundations and you've got to recognize where the problem originated from so that you can go back and, and sort of, you know, remortar, uh, you know, and redo it and, and set it up and say, and re-explain shoots and ladders, re-explain it to the dog so that the dog goes, Oh, aha, I got it. Right. And then you can move on. But without those, those basic foundations, as Sue says, you, you, you're not going to progress. And that's why you see all the top people, they have those foundations in, in place. And, but the people who come and sometimes learn from them, um, haven't started out. They've just gone, Oh, agility. I want to do that. But they don't have the foundations to work with in, in the very beginning. So I think it should be part of almost any program. You have the, you have to have your foundations before you can do this. And that's why even with my pet dog people in class in person, they all say, Oh, we want to do agility. We want to do this. You can do that. Well, you come to the right place. And they kind of look at me going, huh? And it says, you need sit, stay, you need distraction training. You need voice control. You need to, we want to do agility. Exactly. Right. So it's just like, no, no, no, no. You have, you have to have these basic things in place, not only because it's, it's good for you and the dog and the communication, but it's also can be a huge safety factor in a lot of different sports, right? If the dog is out of control, you're going to have a dog that gets hurt on the equipment or even a human that gets hurt in the process. Um, and, and so you really, you have to, you have to understand basically how everything fits in together. Right. So that, that's what, you know, that's why I like levels. Another one was the, uh, for me, another light bulb moment was, uh, I was going to do a seminar for new fee people, uh, because they knew I had Portuguese water dogs, um, who do water training. It's not, it's not exactly the same behaviors as the new fee water training, but it's water training and my giants had done some carding. And so they wanted me to do one day on water and one day on carding. And okay. Three weeks before I left, I thought, you know,

I'm taking a Portuguese water dog to this seminar and I'm going to spend a whole day teaching, drafting. Maybe I should teach my dog drafting before I go to this seminar. Well, she, she'd been through level four in the, in the levels. And, uh, by the time I got to the seminar, three weeks after I started training her, she knew pretty much everything there was to know about, uh, how to pull a cart. And two weeks after that, she got her first drafting title. And the only reason she was able to do that was because she had, uh, the foundations of learning and being trained. She could focus on the job. She knew what I was trying to tell her. She was willing to try. So. Yeah. And, and that's the, that's the good part of it is because you're, you're taking it in, in steps that are logical both to you and to the animal. And so when something is kind of out of the ordinary, yes, we were setting them up to succeed when we're training, but we're also teaching the dogs to kind of think as well, because they're, they're able to pick out the steps and, and to go through piece by piece. And, and it's, and it's built that solid foundation. So it's kind of like when, um, uh, if you're teaching a, uh, a duration nose touch or, you know, the chin rest for the confirmation. Um, I mean that, that chin rest or duration nose touch was, uh, can be passed into so many different areas and sports, scent work, confirmation, um, you know, cooperative care, everything that you want to do. It even is a great way because it teaches something as simple as duration of a behavior. Like the nose touch can transfer into even the first time doing a moving, a moving stand. Uh, I remember the first time that after I taught the concept to Piper of the duration nose touch, and she understood how to actually stand still without movement. And I thought, Hmm, I wonder if the bad thing to do, but it's like, I wonder if, and so I, you know, we did a little bit of healing and I gave the signal stand and I kept walking and she just, she nailed it first go around. I mean, how often my Portuguese water dog, that was so cool. So it was, it was kind of like, okay, um, that works. And that was because she had all the little bits and pieces and she just kind of went, okay, yep, got it. I stand, got that. Uh, I can do it for a little bit of duration and we, we've worked through all the distance distraction and all those different pieces. So it was just a matter of putting all the pieces together and it worked right off the bat. So kind of giving them the well-rounded concepts as well as the skills. Yeah, exactly. You can build new ideas in action in the dogs.

You start noticing it everywhere. Um, I had six 4H kids, five of them, um, walked right through a gate into the, into a pen. Uh, it was kind of a weird latch, but five of them looked at the latch and only that goes there and open the door. And the sixth one just went there and tried to open it. And then she just started shaking it and looking back at me and going, it won't open. It won't open. Like, honey, look at the thing, figure it out. she, she had never had to actually sit down and figure something out for herself before. And she had no self-control. So we worked on figuring things out and self-control while I was trying to teach her about the animals. Yeah. Yeah. Because, and, and also that's actually a good point because she had none of those sort of little basic foundations, which led to frustration. Right. So without those little individual steps, and this is what, um, you know, even with, uh, and why I like, you know, the individual steps and, and picking out the, the, basically I think you're teaching the ABCs, right? You can't ask your dog to write a university thesis without their ABCs. They need to know how to take those ABCs to a sentence, to a paragraph, and then you write the thesis. But, um, even in my, my concept classes, um, I find that once the dogs understand the process, their whole frustration levels go down, everything. They're not barking. They're not shifting. They're not doing, they're waiting patiently. They get the information highway is open and, and they're getting clear communication. And that's probably one of the best things I like about levels is that it's clear communication. Imagine going through life as this child who had no way to be in control of her environment. All she could do was poke it and be frustrated. That, that's a terrible way to live. And yet that's the way we train dogs forever. Just, just sit there and be frustrated. I don't care. Yeah. It's not super fair to them. So we've talked about this a little bit already. Obviously levels goes pretty deep in a, um, in a way that's kind of easy for both the trainer and the dog, right? But you go pretty deep into some of the concepts that dogs really need to be successful in almost anything you want to train. I mean, you talk about chutes and ladders, which hopefully one of you will elaborate on that just a little bit more here in a second. Um, so I'm kind of this idea of Zen, some impulse control ways to actually get behaviors, right? So what your options are for training. There's a lot of concepts kind of included in the course. So, um, can you each kind of talk us through maybe your favorite concept? I'll have Sue go first and then. My favorite.

Heather go first. The one I like probably the most is the chutes and ladders. Although I don't use shoot. I kind of use, you know, that word. Yeah. Well, you know, that's, that's my inside voice. My outside voice obviously, you know, is, um, is different, especially from in a class. But right. I think that's a really easy way because then. It takes the, uh, focus off of, um, well, the dog did it wrong or, um, I'm not getting it or the dog's not getting it. It's, it just says, whoops. Okay. Let's go back. Let's explain that again. And you go up and then you, whoops, let's go back and explain that again. And it allows you to switch up a little something if you need to, but it takes the blame game out of it because you're, you're making it more of a, Oh, no big deal. Right. Versus getting frustrated at the animal, um, or frustrated at yourself. Right. It allows you to, to focus on the individual steps. And I think that's part of the whole levels program is the individual steps. And obviously if you're having to do a whole lot of, oops, you know, shoot, then, you know, you have to stop review, you know, change something in it because obviously it's just not, not working, but it, it sets you up to be able to work your, um, your, the basic behaviors that you're teaching in almost any scenario. So no matter what you're applying it to, if you're getting a lot of, Oh shoots, then you've got to, you've got to go back. If you're getting, you know, you've gone up those ladders, that's, that's great. That's fantastic. Obviously the communication is clear. So you're on the right track, but it gives you information, training information, um, in a very easy, you know, non judgmental blaming, uh, situation. So for listeners who haven't taken the class, who maybe aren't familiar with the concept, can you talk a little bit about what the shoots and ladders analogy is there? What is it actually talking about? That's, that's Sue's thing. Okay. We can let Sue do it. Okay. Uh, it's based, it's not based on, but the, the game is a good description, snakes and ladders or shoots and ladders, um, where you go along one step at a time, and then you hit a snake or a shoot. And oops, you slide all the way down to the bottom. And that to me was a good analogy because what we want to do is train and the dog's doing great. And then he hits a part where he doesn't understand. He can sit, stay for five seconds and, but he can't for six. So you work up to five and he breaks and you go, darn. And you work up to five and he quits. And you're like, dog, are you stupid? And he's going, what do you want from me? And everybody's going crazy. But instead of that, you shoot back down to the beginning and you say,

and I always throw my hands up in front of my face. When I, when I say this, go, let me explain that again. And we start right back at the beginning. I say, can you stay for one? Can you sit? Can you stay for one second? That's great. Can you stay for two seconds? Great. And we get back up to five. If he breaks again, shoot, we go right back down to, can you sit? And then pretty soon he's going to say, okay, I'm being paid for sitting here. Right. And so he sits through five and all right, we made it. Good dog. We can keep going one, one square at a time until he hits another snag. And sometimes he'll climb a ladder. You go, no, wait, I can sit for 25 seconds, but you don't believe it. You say, okay, that was great. You did that. But we're my, my, my game. Pawn is still way back here. We still have to go one step at a time. And we're still going to hit shoots. And we're still going to slide back down. And sometimes when you really know your dog and you're going along great and, and you look and you think, okay, I think that was just a little glitch. Let's only slide back halfway. And explain it again. And if he, if he goes on, when he gets to where the mistake was, you keep going. And if he doesn't, you know, you made a mistake and you slide right back down to the beginning. That's shoots and ladders. Awesome. Did you, did you think of a concept that's your favorite, Sue, that you want to share? Oh, Zen and touch. I think together. Because they're opposites. That you teach. At pretty much the same time. How do I separate these two things? And one of them, the touch requires the dog to do something, not to be responded, to be operant. So the dog has to do something in order to get something to start the game with you. And Zen don't touch my hand is the opposite. You have to stay away from this. And the Zen part is the more you want this, the harder you have to stay away. And you actually get the dog. You'll notice this, the better the treat, the farther away the dog wants to stay. I was trying to take a picture of my dog. I had a sandwich on a plate on a coffee table. And I was trying to get a picture of the dog sitting right beside the coffee table with her head over the sandwich. And I couldn't get it. She's like, no, get the behind me Satan. She wasn't going to go anywhere near that sandwich. I said, it's okay. It's okay. Come here. Come here and sit. She's like, not a chance. I didn't fall off the turnip trip yesterday. Just, she really wanted that sandwich, but she absolutely could not go anywhere near it. And the first time you see, I had, had a dog that was just all over the place, a golden retriever. And he, he couldn't think, he couldn't listen.

He couldn't do anything. And first I got the Zen. I got that through. And then I taught him to touch my hand and it took a long time. And it was like the scene in, in the Helen Keller movie, miracle worker, where the water pours out on her hand. And she realizes that that's called water. He touched my hand. He got a treat. He started screaming and spinning all around the room. And he'd come back and bought my hand and get a treat and scream and spin and bought my hand and get a treat. It's like the very first time in his life that anything made sense. And that was just marvelous. So teaching the dog self-control and teaching the dog to be operant. Those are the two important, really important ones. So I'd also like to talk about, just cause I know that the levels kind of break things up into surprise, surprise levels. And we're, you know, they kind of break things up into pieces and you're talking about kind of moving through the squares. And so I'd love to also have a little bit of a conversation about when you know, it's time to keep moving. Right. So like when you're at the, your dog is clearly hit a point where you're ready for kind of that next step, or maybe you're ready to graduate to the next level or how we can kind of tell when that's the case versus maybe when we need to stay where we are for a little bit longer, or even make things a little bit easier identifying those. Oh shoot moments. So Heather, I'm going to let you start this one off, but can you just talk about that a little bit? Kind of how, you know, when the dog is doing well, how, you know, when the dog needs things made easier, stay at the current space, kind of how you're judging that. Oh, I know it's a big question. Yeah. Because it's so, it's so dog dependent, dog team dependent, um, and circumstances. And so if, well, the analogy, I guess is okay. We have kitchen training, right? Everybody does. The dog performs beautifully in the kitchen. Um, and then they take it out. Uh, you take your dog out to the backyard and you expect the exact same behavior that you got in the kitchen in the backyard. And then people are so disappointed. Well, you won't do it when we're out in public. Well, no, because you have to start from the beginning and train it. Yeah. Shoot. You gotta go down. So I guess that's, you know, that's what I like about the levels is that it's kind of like, um, explaining to people, um, and to the dog that, Oh, you know, that thing that you were doing in the kitchen. Well, you can do it here. You can do it there. You can do it everywhere. Um, and, but it's not going to be exactly the same right off the bat because there's so many other different, um,

environmental, you know, distractions and, and everything that's involved. So it's, I kind of liken it to, um, you know, for training purposes, I take a look at, okay, here's your tree and each branch is a different behavior. And the leaves on that branch are all the different kinds of situations or scenarios, distraction, duration, all that kind of stuff with every thrown, everybody, everything else thrown in. And you can't just train, sit on its own regard and just deny that all that other stuff happens because, Oh shoot, it does happen. Um, and your dog has to understand that they still have to perform no matter what's going on around them. So I think it gives people, um, sort of a, a clear way to judge when to move forward. You know, if you're getting lots of, lots of shoots, you got to stick where you are, right? If you're getting more ladders, um, beware that you're not getting too many ladders. Um, but if you're getting consistent ladders and, uh, you know, when you change location, you change distraction, change anything about that behavior, you don't slide all the way down to, you know, you get, you're back down to shoots again, then you, you can pretty much decide that you're making the right decisions. But I think the shoots and ladders tells you when you can move forward. And, and the common thing nowadays, if you're getting 50%, stay where you are. You need more. If you're getting, you know, 70%, maybe you can get a little bit, add a little bit more criteria to it. And if you're nine, not, you know, 9%, 90%, you can move to the next level, but that's kind of hard sometimes for people to, um, equate. But if they're, if their dogs are consistently going, oops, sliding back down and not able to do it, that's a much better way to give information to them because then they know that, again, it's not the dog's fault. It's just a new scenario and new thing. So again, it's, it's really dog dependent and handler dependent and everything else. It's involved in how much work that people are putting into it. If you just do a couple of sits in your kitchen. Oh yeah. Okay. He knows it. And I hate that word. He knows it. Because how do you know he knows it? He knows. I know. It's like magic wand. He knows it. You know this. And then you take it out and then he goes, well, he, he knows it. He, he knows it. But does he know it in this situation? Have you trained in this situation? So that's, you know, that's where the, the, the levels come into play. That's why I like it. When you, when, when you just decide to go out and train something, when I was a kid, one of the first books I read on how to train a dog said, you take your dog, no leash or collar.

You take it out to the sidewalk in front of your house. You say heel and you start walking. If the dog doesn't come with you, you go and get your dog, put it on the sidewalk, say heel and start walking. I think one thing, the levels do is, uh, they, force you to know what's ha, what you're going to do and where you're going to go next. What's the next step in this? So it's like shape. The levels are teaching you to shape by shaping you. This is where I start. This is the behavior I have to start with. I want to sit, stay the dog standing there. Thank goodness. He's looking at me. What's the next step? Well, maybe he could bend his back legs. I'm not just going to wrestle him into position and yell, stay at him. I first, I have to get him sitting and it teaches you that. And when you, when you have a clear idea of what you're going to teach next, what's the next step in getting where I want to go, then you can start seeing, well, we failed. He's not sitting yet. Or he sits three times. I asked him to sit and he sits once. Well, he obviously doesn't know that yet. So we're not going to be teaching sit stay yet. So that's, that's how, you know, if you just keep Heather, Heather said it. Well, if you just keep failing, shoot for heaven's sake, go back to where the dog isn't failing all the time. If you're never failing, you're never pushing the envelope. You're just going to get stuck there forever. Okay. He sat that's PT, but now you've taught him that every time he sits, he gets to pop right back up because you'd never moved on. So. I think when it started 80% was 80% correct was the benchmark, but just, you know, the third time you shoot it at this point, you got to start thinking you're not doing well. So stay down lower for a while. That's all. Yeah. And I think people are afraid to, you know, they expect, okay, he's got it now. I'm going to take him out to this new location and he, you know, he, he's got it. So he should be able to do it. And they're afraid to go back to kindergarten as we kind of call it in, in my, or my classes, go back to kindergarten, but don't stay there too long. Just do a quick review and then start to work it up. And your dog will tell you when you've reached that point where they don't understand anymore. And then you can slide down again, explain it again, and then go up. But, you know, you have to sometimes go back and review, go back and review, go back and, and help the dog push beyond what they have learned so far. Um, and I think, you know, people kind of miss that. Um, in some respect, they don't, uh, they have these high expectations that he, he knows it, he should do it. Um, yeah, not so much.

Every time you change something, every time you add a distraction or every time you make something more difficult, you should make every other part of it easier. Exactly. Yeah. If we're going to work on the distraction, let's work on the distraction. Sarah, my giant schnauzer is getting ready to go back into shows after sitting out for almost two years. And I discovered that he has completely forgotten that not everybody on the planet has to love him and wants him to clean out their noses. So we went to, okay, he's supposed to do this in a, in a show stack. He's supposed to be looking tall and magnificent. Well, we went to the park yesterday and I put him up on a bench and asked him to lie down. And that's all he did. Well, people walked by just lie down on the bench and don't get stupid. And I paid him for that. And then people started coming. Oh, what a pretty dog. Can I pat him? And I said, not right now. Thanks. We're working on not petting. And a little kid came along and he was like, well, why can't I pat him? You know, sometimes you get ice cream when you want it. And sometimes you don't. I said, well, for him, this just isn't an ice cream day. I like that explanation. And the kid just can, I get ice cream every day at grandma's. Yeah. Well, I'm not your grandma kid. So we didn't work on show stacking. We didn't work on showing his teeth. We didn't work on getting his ears up. We didn't are leaning forward or any of that stuff. All we did was lie on the bench and work on. Yes. People can walk by you without paying attention to you. You don't have to get stupid every time somebody looks at you. Yeah. In other words, you put him into think and learn zone and right. You know, and concentrate zone no matter what's going on around you. And he did his job. One thing at a time. Yeah. One thing at a time. I'm not going to set him up in a show stack and then get mad at him because he can't pay attention. I know he can't pay attention. So we're just going to work on that one thing. I like that. All right. So I've got kind of one more question. But before we get to that, I just thought, Sue, I'd give you a chance to share what you're doing in your retirement. What are you up to these days? Well, in my retirement, he's the giant schnauzer is working on tracking and he's working on herding, but not with me. I'm working on driving while I sit in a sulky and working on draft excellent and some nose work and just working on getting the dog, getting to train my dog again and compete and confirmation, of course, getting to compete with my dog again, which I really didn't have time for. And getting my life back together. I don't know.

If I have to wait to retirement for that, I'm in trouble. So I figure just kind of round out our conversation. I would ask you each, if we were to kind of drill down the conversation today into one key piece of information, you really want listeners to understand kind of what that would be. So if we were to leave people kind of one nugget that we want them to walk away with, what would it be? And Heather, do you want to go first? Only one nugget. Oh, darn. Foundations. It's the foundations, the beginning pieces, not going too fast too soon, but not getting stuck and staying where you are for too long. Because otherwise you can't move on. And the dog believes that that's just the behavior and that's the way it should go. So I think with levels, it gives you such a solid foundation for anything that you want to do. But most of all, it creates that communication, that two-way communication between you and your dogs that you can, you know, so that they're easy to live with and that you're easy to live with. I know that my dogs have benefited greatly from the levels thinking and taking things in steps and keeping the rules in place without, you know, the need for restructuring, you know, their whole life or my life around, you know, their unfortunate behaviors or anything. They've all come along through the levels program. And I would send my dog off to live with anybody, no problem. And I don't think that they would have any problems with it because they don't, they're not misbehaving dogs. They're easy to get along with. They're willing partners. And I think that's, for me, sort of the basis of levels is that I want a willing partner. And by taking my time and explaining to my partner or my teammate what it is that I'm looking for, they're more willing to participate with me. Heather took my answer. Oh, sorry. In a roundabout way. It's just like covering a whole bunch of other things. But yeah. Foundations. Foundations. If your dog doesn't have a foundation of how to live with humans, how to control himself, how to be respondent instead of operant, he has no control over his life. If you don't have the foundations on the dog, you are living on the edge of control. It's never my job to control my dog. It's the dog's job to control itself. It's my job to set things up so he can be successful. And without foundations, I have nothing. And I think actually you just touched on something, Sue, and that was control. And I don't know where I heard this before. Maybe I actually heard it from you. The more you try to control the dog, the less control you have. Absolutely. Right?

Because you're better to put in those foundations, teach the dog what it is that you want, and manage them so that they can, you know, that they're learning and that they're correct more times than they're not. So that it then they make, the dogs begin to make good choices. So, you know, people say, well, you know, like the leash is your control of the, is to control your dog. No, it's just a safety line. It's just there to keep your dog safe in the big bad city. And to keep them maybe from, you know, chasing after that bull that they shouldn't be chasing after. That goes back to foundations again. But, you know, it's control, it's working, it's living with the animals because after all, we're asking them to play all these games. They would probably much rather just roll in that cow pie in the field than, you know, than do anything else. And, you know, so we're lucky that we can actually have that two-way communication to, you know, ask them to participate with us. You know, another place where I learned about relinquishing control, two places, skiing and riding. in both cases when I got going a little too fast when I started feeling a little out of control my instinct is to stand up and lean forward and in both riding and skiing that's exactly the wrong thing to do because in both cases it makes you go faster faster the way to get control is to sit back sit down and sit back and relax and I've had so many people say to me I need my dog to do this I say okay take the leash off no you don't understand I can't get him to do it with the leash on like I know you can't get him to do it with the leash on so take the leash off and they keep going around and around this because they think the answer is more control from them and I'm trying to teach them that the answer is more control from the dog yep more responsibility to the dog right I think that's a great note to end on so um I want to thank you both for coming on the podcast this has been a fantastic conversation thank you it was fun I'm surprised we managed to get it in in an hour because we both really got going oh we can we can have a whole conversation outside of this one I tell you it's just it's just like you know it's us two Canadians it's just yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep I think it was good I think you guys uh you built up each other really nicely so it was a good conversation um and thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in to listen to it uh we will be back next week I'll have Sarah Bruschi here we'll be chatting about retrieves and um disc routines if you haven't already subscribe to

the podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to run next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available today's show is brought to you by the Fendi Dog Sports Academy special thanks to Denise Fendi for supporting this podcast music provided royalty free by bensound.com the track featured here is called buddy audio editing provided by Chris Lang thanks again for tuning in and happy training you