E233: 메간, 데니스, 스테이시가 말하는 훈련 속 기술의 균형 맞추기

By the time you get to the fifth or sixth dog, it just had to keep the streak going, huh? Right. All right, ladies. So I asked you all here because there's a topic that kind of came up in my tribal class that I thought it would be fun to talk about with all of you. So in class, I talk about kind of this desire to build value both for the push and the value to build, I'm sorry, and building value for kind of going to a target as skills that are on opposite sides of a pendulum. So I tell my students their dog will naturally swing, you know, kind of to one side or the other. And that we then want to kind of take that and work to build value for the opposite end of the arc. And then as we build value, the dog's tendencies may swing in that new direction and we'll have to add reinforcement to the other side, kind of back and forth until we find a balance. And I think I've heard each of you kind of talk about that concept individually in different ways related to the various sports you train and the things you work on with your dog. So kind of starting off with that metaphor, what skills do you see in your own sports that handlers may need to try and kind of balance out for lack of a better phrase, Megan? Yeah. So in agility, I think of, these are the main ones that I think the most about is the dog's ability to balance their obstacle focus and their handler focus. So their ability to seek out and stay committed to the obstacles on their lines while also following the handler's instructions, both physical and verbal. We also have this back and forth and agility of fast pace forward, keeping an extension or keeping your motion going balanced with some control behaviors, contacts, stopping for the contacts, stopping for the table, collecting for the weave pull entries. And we also have to balance which direction the dog is turning in left and right. So there, I think for agility, there's a whole lot of balance needing to be trained for, but those are the main three that I thought of. Stacey? Okay. I, I, I feel like a couple of big things. First of all, it's just kind of the skill of problem solving. Does it nose work? That's really what it is. It's like the dog has to problem solving, counter the odor, and they have to figure out where the hide is coming from. And what you're going to find is that a dog that's really effective at doing that is really able to kind of leverage their history that, you know, the hides that they found before or the assumptions that they've made, but not so much that it becomes ironclad. So what I, like for instance, kind of balancing the eyes versus the nose.

So where we want the dog to use their nose, we also want them to kind of assess their surroundings and to understand how to leverage contextual cues. But we don't want them to leverage contextual cues so much that they, they believe it has to be on the chair or it has to be, you know, on the vehicle and not near the vehicle, things like that. That's kind of a part of it. So we're always trying to kind of optimize that. The other kind of example of where balance is really needed is actually in sourcing because that's where the dog has to actually get to the hide and be able to figure out exactly where that, and to communicate exactly where the hide is located. And if we have too much focus on the source, we can actually get more of like what we call an aggressive response to where the dog is like digging at the, at the hide or causing any kind of destruction. Or we could actually get the, where the dog is so focused. On the sourcing that they kind of forget the hunting part of it. So if it's so much, so much on their alert behavior, then you, you kind of lose, you can lose some of the, the hunt. If you have too little focus on source, you know, you can have, maybe the dog has lack of clarity in terms of what they're trying to do, or, you know, maybe they get a little frustrated or some loss of confidence and you can end up leaving some hides behind. So that's kind of, those are kind of the two main things I would do with nose work. Denise? Yeah. I love those answers. There's so much similarity when I think about sports. The big one in the protection sports is drives and control. So getting a dog to respond to the handler, to respond quickly and accurately. And at the same time, maintaining the dog's love that forward drive to go towards what they are doing. That's the one that like covers everything in the protection sports and is always on the top of my mind every time I train. And on the more obedient side of it, the, um, I, if I use the terminology Stacy just used, I talk about patterns versus unpredictable. So patterns give my dogs comfort, do lots and lots with patterns. Unpredictable makes them pay attention. There's a lot of, um, tension there between those two and keeping them in balance so that the dog is enough patterns to be comfortable, but enough unpredictable to be in the game. And in obedience, it's also drives versus accuracy. So desire and flash and happy, and at the same time doing it correctly. So I think those are the big ones in my sport, including the obedience portion. So I'd love to have you just talk us through a little bit, kind of how you approach your

training specifically kind of with balance in mind or to kind of, you know, work towards that concept of balance. Stacy, you want to start us off? Yeah. And I just actually want to build it. I love the phrase that, that patterning versus the unpredictability, right? That that's actually, I use that a lot in the problem solving because, or I sometimes call it assumption busting, right? So, you know, dogs that get very focused on objects are going to have a really hard time actually getting to source because they're going to be thinking more, uh, you know, that has to be on an object. So if I find a dog that's very object focused, what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to put a hide kind of in the environment near the objects. So if the dog starts to realize, you know, yes, they can trust their eyes to some extent, but they really need to think about the odor and what the odor is doing to actually get to source. This way, you know, you can kind of keep the dog a little bit on their toes, but, you know, it's still the, you know, there's still the context of there's still, you know, objects in the search area that can kind of help them to kind of gravitate toward maybe more potentially productive search areas. So you start to use some of that. I love that, Stacey. Yeah. There's so much in there because it's confidence building. What a great way to build confidence while still using unpredictable expectation. Exactly. So you can, you can actually have exercises where you start to build that confidence where you do kind of similar hides. And then you kind of throw a little bit of curve ball, but you do it in such a way that, you know, the dog is going to be successful. Then the dog goes, Oh, wait, you know, it just kind of rocks it back a little bit. They start to get, just be a little bit more careful with what they're doing. That's, that's a huge part of how I train. I've also used patterning. So for instance, if I'm going to teach threshold hides, right? So there's a hide near the start line of the search area. What I'll do is I'll actually pattern on one side. So I'll pattern on the left, for instance, I'll do several searches with just the hide on the left because the dog gets a little bit more focused on, you know, a more of like a directional pattern versus just kind of like just doing hides at the start, you know, start line, but then I'll throw in a hide on the right just to kind of help them to, you know, kind of break free of, of the, of the, that dead set pattern, right. To, to, to try to, try to help them be a little bit more fluent. Those, those are kind of just big examples.

Megan, do you want to talk a little bit about your piece? Of course. I think it's going to be, it's going to actually look pretty similar to what Stacy's talking about when I'm trying to kind of swing the pendulum in one direction, I'm more likely to use patterns and predictability, boost the dog's confidence. Like, yes, I know the answer. Yes, I know the answer. Yes, I know the answer. And then as I observe that, oh, right, we are swinging in that direction. Maybe they, the, we're swinging a little bit higher towards obstacle focus. I am going to start to, to sprinkle in the opposite as needed. So if I'm trying to build obstacle focus, it might be that I'm using the predictable focus on the obstacle two out of three times and sprinkling in the handler focus skill one of the three times, just to make sure that we don't swing too far. And, uh, it's way on my mind right now, as I observe sprint and who she is as a puppy and as she's growing, um, that I, I look at the dog in, in life and what they're gravitating towards in life. You know, if a, if I've got a dog that is, uh, it's very good at staying put, then I'm not going to spend as much energy into reinforcing staying put. I'm going to put more energy into building the forward focus and the drive of that dog. And as I start to see it change, I'll sprinkle in the opposite. Um, so simply put, I'm, I'm always including both, but I'm influenced by the dog's personality as to how much of each. Denise, do you have thoughts to add? The answers I just listened to, I could have given those answers. So if we just substituted some of the details in the sport, but to me, confidence is number one always. So the first thing I need is the dog. Sure. They're always right. And then, so Megan's word is to sprinkle. And then I look at it and I try to sprinkle in a little bit more control. Like if that's showing an issue, but I want the dog believing the right. I never want my dog to think that we're changing direction. So those changes are small and gradual. And every single session, actually, frankly, every minute of every session is constantly adjusting according to how's that dog doing. The less confident the dog is, the more I'm going to spend on their strengths, their patterns and the slower I will be about pulling in some of my other interests, the more confident the dog is, the more quickly I will say, I gotcha. You didn't think about this possibility, but it's a game and it's fun. It's not meant to be, I got you like for hot. Now you're going to suffer. I want the dog to always win.

But the more confident the dog is, the more I want them to remember that they might actually need me for details. And that's, that's kind of, that's kind of the same route. I think the other two ladies just gave. So do you guys think that all skills, everything we teach our dogs have this sort of opposite behavior or kind of, you know, another piece that, that we have to balance things with? Megan? Megan? I, I do. I do think that all of these skills have their equal and opposite reaction. And we, we see it a lot of times, or I see it in agility. I can tell where people are at in kind of their foundation training, because that's the skill that the dog wants to gravitate towards. That's the skill. That's the current strength. And if you maybe get stuck, if you enjoy teaching one particular skill, so you kind of default to that particular skill, you might be causing its opposite to grow weaker and weaker and weaker to the point of it being a problem later on. So yes, is the short answer. I do think every behavior kind of has its opposite function as well, that we're smart to pay attention to. I agree. I had to think about this one a lot, because you told us that you, you were going to ask this question. And the thing I came to is that different sports have different parameters. So there's always an opposite behavior, but some sports, so for example, in Mondio ring, the obedience is much looser than it is in AKC. So the weight I place on that balancing act is much greater. In Mondio, the balance is actually between the dog independently problem solving, because there's a lot of generalization. You don't know what the scenario will be, just that the dog has to be able to do, let's say, position changes. But for all you know, the dog will be on top of the deck and you'll be underneath it. So the thinking is less about the dichotomy of precision elements and more about really understanding the skill. So I do think by sport, you're going to have more or less worry within a behavior. I don't have to be as precise in Mondio. Now out of habit, I still am precise and who knows what I might do later. I think some sports, especially like, so you look at agility where competitions are won or lost by truly fractions of seconds. That's when whenever contests are super close, scores are super high. That's, I think, when that balancing act gets tight and you really notice it because tiny differences and erring one way or the other mean you do or don't succeed. Whereas in sports that have less of that, maybe they're less competitive.

Maybe the rules are a little lax or you're probably less aware of it, even though it's always there, but it might not be quite so on the top of your brain. I love the way Megan and Denise are really kind of talking about this. And I have to completely agree. And I think, actually, as you go up the level of nose work, it becomes more and more clear that you need to have that balance. And you start to see that. So, for instance, you know, kind of like, you know, Megan's talking about, you can kind of tell where, you know, how people are training based off of seeing their dogs. And, you know, you see that with nose work, too, because how you set your hides or how you, you know, how you how you handle your dog is really going to determine. It creates all that history, right? Because all that history is really a predictor of how the dog is going to search in the future. So, for instance, if you get really excited about high highs and you keep putting, you know, all your hides up high, your dog is going to forget to search low. So, you know, as you start to move up the levels and the problems really start to get really complex, it's so important that the dog has the concept, right, that they can rely upon. And those concepts are really based off that balance because they're going to need that balance to be able to solve the higher level problems. But, yeah, I think, you know, you really all the skills that you see that kind of layer into a lot of this problem solving, they all have kind of that two sides of it. And you're really trying to it's almost like you're trying to optimize that you're trying to optimize the dog's ability to, you know, yes, it could be high, but it could also be low or, you know, yeah, there could be converging odor or there could just be one high and let's move on. So you're really trying to kind of weigh a lot of that stuff as you go. But there's absolutely there absolutely seems to be a balance, I think, in all the skills and those work. I think as the dogs start to get more fluent in their behaviors, I actually have seen the dog start to self-regulate a little bit. Which is really kind of interesting. They start to, you know, if they have that variety of experience to fall back on, it's almost like they can almost, they start to, you start to see that that balance kind of come through. And they're actually, I think it enhances the problem solving. So personally, I've kind of always interpreted the phrase train the dog in front of you to be basically what we're talking about. So since that's Denise, your phrase, I'll let you go first.

But I'd love to kind of hear from each of you if you feel like the two concepts are one in the same or we're talking about two different things. Kind of that idea of training for balance versus training the dog in front of you. Me? Okay. So this is another one I really had to think about. And I've decided, and I'm perfectly happy to be steered a new direction with more thought. I think they're two separate things. But they are so tightly linked. Because the personality of the dog, a dog who comes in with a lot of confidence versus low confidence. It's a dog who's very forward and excited, high in drive versus a dog who's more reserved or what we may call it internal sometimes. Those qualities are separate from whether or not the dog is sitting, coming in too fast on a recall, so is crooked, or too slow on a recall, so is too far away. But they're related because the kind of dog that's inclined to come in really fast happens to have certain personality types. So I think you're kind of, without even maybe recognizing it, you know that when you get a certain dog, you'll be looking at it and you'll be saying, this dog is insanely interested in playing tug. The food drive is a little bit low. The kinds of skills I'm probably going to want to spend more time are maybe a little less time on that tug and a little bit more time on the food, food play, food games. So I don't think I could ever tease them apart. The two ideas, the personality of the dog and what you're doing to balance the personality. Because I want my dogs to be very confident, very forward, but not so forward that they forget they need me. So that balancing is always there. And it does influence which skills I think are most likely to err in one direction or the other direction. And I do think a lot of those things show up kind of early. So by 8 to 12 weeks, you're already seeing certain things and your brain is saying, yeah, this is probably where we're going to put our energy. So kind of they're two different concepts, but in order to actually apply any of it, you need to kind of intermingle them. Is that my understanding you? Yeah, I think that's fair. I think the personality sets the base and then the skills go on top of that. You're all, I mean, every dog, if it's in the same sport, is going to need the same skills in the range. But I think the way you end up getting there is going to vary dramatically according to what the dog brought to the table in terms of their innate temperament. I like that. Megan? Yeah, it was difficult to, I'm glad I didn't have to go first on that one.

But it was difficult to kind of piece out which is which. But I think having my own thoughts and having listened to Denise, I kind of want to say that train the dog in front of you might influence how you go about training for balance. Right? How I'm going to set up the training session might be, I might always be training for balance with that plan of I'm going to do this two thirds, one third kind of ratio going forward or a 50-50 ratio if the dog's more experienced. But how I set up the balance. But how I set up that training session, how I reinforce, how I react to unexpected responses, how I react to changes in the environment. That's going to be more deeply influenced by the train the dog in front of me. But I'm always training for balance. Anytime I think up a training session, the balance is the big picture of what I want it to all look like. Train the dog in front of me is how I get there. That makes sense. Whew. Good. That's a relief. Yeah. Yeah, no, these questions are very good. And they've certainly actually stopped me and made me think about not just the topic, but how I communicate this topic to other people. Because I'm sure we all look at dog training. We all look at dog trainers. And we all sometimes have that little discomfort in us that says, I want to help this person. There's a piece missing here. And I can't quite put my finger on it. And I think sometimes the conversation we're having right now might actually get to the heart of where I'm feeling something inside of me that is making me watch the session. And might relate to this. That's kind of a sense of, yeah, you've done such a great job. But then there's that part in the back of my head that's thinking, but I see that this could cause a problem for us in a few months if we don't start doing these other things. And trying to help people without, sometimes I'm not even sure what I'm looking at or why I'm feeling discomfort. But something in me is saying, something needs to get changed a little bit here because I'm afraid that with this dog, with this dog's temperament, like forging. Great example in healing. Some dogs, I can look at them at eight weeks of age and I can say that dog is going to spend the rest of our life battling forging. And other dogs, you can tell really early on, this dog is going to struggle with lagging. And those are not about the sport. Those are about qualities I see in the dog or the dog interaction with reinforcers.

And so from the very beginning, everything I would do with a dog who's going to likely lag in healing, in my mind, would be set up to offset what I think is going to be a future problem, which is quite different than everything I would be doing with that dog that forges. And this is a very hard concept to communicate to some handlers. Because they're like, but shouldn't I just train for perfect? Kind of. Yeah. Kind of. It's why we can't have a recipe book, right? Why there's not an instruction manual. Yeah. This is the art to training, right? It's the art. It's the constant evaluation. It's, you know, constant rebalancing. So where my head went with this question really got into kind of an assessing for dogs, right? And it's understanding. Because I see a lot, you know, there's a lot of times people, you know, ask questions on Facebook. You see us a lot, you know, and they ask the questions. And, you know, like, so for instance, you know, they have a problem, right? So let's say, you know, why does my dog false alert, right? And what you see is you start seeing people provide solutions. And I think when we start thinking about training the dog in front of us, it's that missing piece between the problem and the solution, right? And it's a lot of that has to do with how do you assess it? And how do you do some root cause analysis? And how do you kind of assess the dog's emotions? And how do you assess the dog's understanding? And how do you assess the dog's performance? And then how do you then weigh that against kind of that whole perspective of how do I balance out all these skills and capabilities and ability, you know, and ability to work the problem? And how do I optimize that into what I'm looking for? And it's a little bit kind of like you're sculpting the dog. And this is like, that's really kind of like the art of all this, right? It's like, it's a little take a little off of here and a little off of there kind of thing. And I think that for me, a lot of that root cause analysis is, and a lot of that train the dog in front of you is all about how do I get from what does my dog look like here? Or what problem or what am I seeing here? And what do I do with that, right? And a lot of that has to do with that assessment. Um, so that's kind of like where my head went. Uh, but you know, it's just, it's just such a big question. A huge question meeting. It's just, just a large, you can have a whole podcast on it. Just that piece, huh? Yeah, totally. And Stacey, your point about when somebody on the internet says, this is what my dog is doing. What should I do?

And how quickly, um, less experienced trainers jump in with a solution and how slowly experienced trainers jump in with a solution. Because the experienced trainer looks at that and says, to answer this question, I would need you to write something close to a novel on all of this stuff, your dog's history. And so we tend to step back and say, well, I, I don't know. Um, there's so much here. And then the less experienced trainers are so quick because they trained a dog or two or three. And they tend to think in terms of what they've seen, which separates it's, and that's such a vital part of it that it makes me queasy. It does, because people don't know who to, like, what, what, you know, what advice to take, right? And I, and I think, and a lot of times they're like, oh, well, you know, I could do, you know, whatever. And it could actually make things worse, you know, and it's, and that's the hard part, right? Um, yeah, my personal favorite is when I see those, I usually say, well, here are some of the things I would be thinking about. So rather than giving them advice, I'll just say things like, is the environment right for the dog? How much time did you spend at such and such a step? And I'll just ask questions and then I walk away from it. And I think sometimes that's a better approach because it lets a person start to recognize the root things they should be thinking about rather than, and often they'll come back and they'll go, oh my God, that just, I have a plan now. I get it. And I didn't even have to do it for them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You see, you see that a lot. It's just, it's a focus on, but you know, people, I think sometimes it's like they want that quick, that quick solution. It just sounds easier, doesn't it? Um, rather than really kind of doing that assessment and, uh, and doing that root cause analysis. Um, not in the long run, of course. Absolutely. And, you know, I wonder if, uh, so this goes back to your earlier question, Melissa, about, is it the same as train the dog in front of you? And then what Megan said about all dogs need the same balance, but how you get there varies. And those really are now, the more I think about it now, it's almost obvious to me that those are two completely different spectrums. When you're problem solving, you've really got to know all of that stuff in that background. And you cannot give that to another person if you're not seeing it, if you're not looking at what's happening with some eye to where you would go. And so you would want to encourage a person, I think, to be separating out those dimensions.

Like what's your dog's temperament? Because if you apply that solution, you're going to wreck your dog. Right. You know, sometimes that's just a really bad choice. Right. You've got to get real curious about the problem. Yeah. Yeah. So you've got to know your dog's temperament. In addition to knowing the problem, it's just not enough to say, well, my dog's flying off the teeter or look at me taking over your territory there, Megan. You've got to know why and who is that dog? Because you could have little fundamentally opposed solutions that would be perfect for different dogs. And the more experience you have with any given behavior, you can come up with so many more reasons why the behavior might be failing. If you've only had two dogs worth of experience with training a teeter, you have a very limited amount of reasons why it could be going wrong. So you have to look kind of outside your scope of experience sometimes. So getting curious, asking questions, that's always going to be my way forward through a problem, especially if I don't know you. You mean there are people out there you don't personally know and haven't seen their dogs? That's right. And they still ask. So kind of to flip all of this on its head for a minute, are there times or even skills that are sort of situations where we don't want balance, where we actually want to kind of train a dog to kind of tend strongly towards one end of a spectrum or one end of that pendulum swing versus the other? Megan, you want to start us off? I was so disappointed when I had to go first for this one. I couldn't. I tried to keep my brain just in agility because I couldn't think of a time. I couldn't think of a behavior that I trained for agility that I don't personally want the other side of that, at least a little bit. Right. It may not be that I want control behaviors all of the time. I don't want the dog running the entire course thinking about stopping. But I want to be able to access it when I want to access it. And I do think there are some situations where we can look at a handler's big picture and say, yes, I want to swing towards one end of the spectrum and kind of let the other side fall to waste. And that might be if I'm working with a less mobile handler, I need that obstacle focus to be higher and some of that handler focus to just fall away. I need that dog's natural ability to follow motion to kind of go away because it's not going to be there or it's not going to be there to the level that a dog would naturally expect.

Or another situation that I thought of is if you teach the dog to automatically converge on your line, anytime there's an obstacle between you and the dog, it's going to be more difficult to teach the dog to keep distance and stay lateral from you. But if you know you don't want lateral distance and to be able to layer obstacles, then fine. Let that balance go away. But you have to know your big picture and you have to know a lot about the sport and your handling style and your dog to know if that's what you want. So I would be I'm very cautious to. Not keep a balance. So I've been sort of exploring the space of the pet dog world a lot lately and talking to a lot of pet dog trainers. And the conclusion, the rather radical conclusion I've come to is that pet dog owners do not want to train dogs. They just want dogs to live with them. And then the conclusion I came to from there, because 95% of people do not train their dogs. Like if you put out a survey of all Americans doing the dog and you said, did you train your dog this week? The actual percentage that would say yes would be minuscule, less than 1%. And then I think, but these people manage to live with their dogs. So how is this possible that most people are functioning? Maybe not the way I want to live, but they are living. And it comes down to habit. And so then I was thinking, the reason we are dog trainers, people like us, is we actually enjoy tweaking, maintaining, messing with behaviors. And we are aware that if we don't tweak and maintain and create balance, it's going to slide one direction or the other. Somehow it's going to slide in ways we don't want to see. I would say in the world of sports, there will always be balance to maintain in everything I could think of. But in life, the vast majority of things that I want are habit. Go to the bathroom outside. Don't talk to me about that. Don't chew my couch. Do not take the food off my counters. Like there's all these things are just habits. And I don't even call them training. Just don't see things you don't want to see when they're young. Get it in their head that we pee outside. And let habit become the life, the way you live with your dog. So in that sense, I want no balance at all. Because I think it's how most people want to live with their dog. Rather than telling their dog what to do and having their dog rely on them and maintaining behaviors. They just want to live and they want to exist. But in the dog sports world, which is why I'm a dog trainer. Because I'm passionate about dog training. I love training my dog. I don't want to just live with my dog.

Then we would just look at each other. Where would that leave us? So I want to be exceptionally involved. In training, I'm going to say balance and everything. In life, I'm going to say as little as I can get away with. I agree with that. So this is a hard question. Because I started thinking about this. And I'm like, you know, I would say 99% of, you know, what I'm going to train for. Yeah, it's got to have a balance. But I also wanted to kind of think about balance doesn't mean 50-50. I think sometimes we start thinking like, you know, it has to be 50% this way, 50% that way. And I started thinking about the skills. And I'm like, well, maybe it's kind of like 90-10 in some cases. Like, you know, I want, if I want my dog to find a hide, I have to have 90% focus on hunting. The dog's got to have the desire to go out and hunt. But there still has to be that 10% of when they get to the hide, they have to kind of, you know, they have to stay at the hide and not continue to hunt. So there's, you know, I think the balance isn't necessarily 50-50. So sometimes I might shift the balance. I might want the balance a little bit stronger on one side than the other. And kind of, you know, maybe very heavily weighted on one side or the other. But then there's also the aspect of, and it goes back, actually, that your comments about habit, Denise, really kind of triggered a thought for me. Because a lot of what we do with helping the dog to understand, you know, that they're searching is all about routine. Because when we're searching with nose work, every single time the dog comes to the start line, the search is different. But there's never a single search that's going to be identical to a previous search. And even within dogs, like a whole run order of dogs, the search is actually going to vary dog to dog based on air current. So if my dog comes to a new area, and, you know, when we go to a trial, the dog, you know, most of the time, you know, especially if you're doing things like NSASW, the dog has never seen the search area before. So there's certain habits that I need to have that help to inform my dog that they're going to search. So starting releasing off that start line and getting that dog engaged in the search immediately, that's a habit, right? So I really, that really, there's really no balance there that the dog, we want the dog to kind of come to the start line and just have that habit of becoming engaged in the search. So I think to some extent, there are some habits that we definitely want to make sure that there's

not necessarily balance on that is that yes, you know, this is this is how we start. And this is, this is how we search. The other thing is, for instance, I don't want my dog peeing in the search area, right? That's also habit, the habit to, you know, hold them, you know, hold their bladder. I mean, seriously, right? Because that's going to get you disqualified. So, you know, so you might have that build that habit or build that routine into, you know, getting your dog prepared before you go to the start line. So I think there are some things there that we don't necessarily want that balance, but it kind of goes along with the lines of habit or routine versus the more the nuances of performance, right, which tend to be more of a balance, which may not necessarily be a 50-50. Also, now you're making me think about emotional reactions. I want my dog to love working. There's no balance there, right? Just love working. And so you're right. You're hitting on the sort of the emotional side as opposed to the skills and behavior side, which is pretty darn critical. Right. Right. Because that's also the key to engagement, right? So, well, it's a big part of it. You know what? You want your dog engaged when they're, you know, and that part of that, I think at least in nose work, it becomes a habit. The dog coming to the line engaged does become a habit. Yeah. And when you talk about conditioned emotional response, that's really all it is. It's an emotional habit. Yeah. Yep. So speaking of emotions, that segues us very nicely into our next question, ladies. It's almost like you did that on purpose. I want to talk about arousal kind of through this lens. So how does that sort of factor into all this stuff that we've been talking about? And Stacey, since I know you kind of have stuff you specifically talk about in terms of arousal for nose work. Do you want to go first? Sure. Sure. You know, there's definitely a balance there because, you know, when you come to this, you know, I was just talking about start line. If you come to the start line with too high of arousal, and I kind of want to think of, you know, people actually don't see arousal. That's the other thing. People see energy, right? People see focus. People can kind of interpret the dog's engagement in search. So that's kind of what they're looking for. But if that energy is too high, you know, you're going to start to see some behaviors that you don't necessarily want to see in your search. You know, maybe it's a little bit more frenetic, you know, which might mean, you know, maybe you missed your threshold hide.

You know, maybe you have partially worked hides and the dog goes, oh, wait, there's another hide over there. And they leave the hide. When you have a little too much arousal there, you start to, that really impacts the dog's performance. But then, you know, you also have, if there's too little arousal, you know, that's not so great either because there, you know, you might see the dog gets, you know, way too interested in the environment, maybe some distractions. Maybe the dog starts a fringe alert, which means basically they're alerting not close enough to source, like they're alerting away from source. Lack of, you know, connectivity between the hides. So they find one hide and then they kind of lose their focus, right? A lot of that is arousal based before they start to search again. You know, all the mistides, that kind of thing. So a lot of that, you know, when I start to think about balance, I'm trying to balance the dog's arousal, right? Which is basically the Yerkes-Dodson curve, right? You're trying to balance that arousal, trying to find that optimal point so that the dog isn't giving you kind of, you know, crazy behaviors that results in reduced performance or, you know, kind of lackluster behaviors that also reduces performance. For those who aren't familiar with the Yerkes-Dodson curve, do you want to give us the explanation there? Sure. It looks like a bell curve, right? So it looks like a bell curve. And what is a bell curve? Well, it looks like a bell curve. And what you're going to find is that as arousal increases, performance increases, and it gets to a point where it's at an optimal point. But now as arousal continues to increase, performance decreases. So that's really, we're trying to, that's almost like a visual pictorial of what we're trying to achieve by trying to get that right balance. And for nose work, the biggest part of that is making sure you have that on the start line, because that's the biggest predictor of your performance in the search is your arousal actually on the start line. Megan? Yeah. What Stacey said. Yeah. That's what I want to say. But because it all applies in the exact same way. We, when we're stepping into the agility ring, we absolutely, you can see it when you leave the dog on the start line. If you go to a competition, you can predict pretty well how this round is going to go based on the dog's state of mind on the start line. You know, if they're looking around on the start line, they're looking behind them. We can assume that the arousal level is too low. That the, all of the context clues that told them, hey, you're doing agility today, didn't

do it for them. Didn't, didn't give them those. Yeah. I want to be here feelings. And then you also see those dogs that it gave them those feelings, but they kept going and it's not going to be a great round, right? They're just going to continue. And I think now it's back to knowing your dog, but once. So each behavior we've determined has this balanced spectrum that we're on one, your dog is going to tip one way or the other on that spectrum when they're under too high of a state of arousal or too low, right? So some dogs are going to what people refer to as stress up or stress down, but what's that look like in their behavior, right? So some dogs might zoom versus some dogs might sniff. Some dogs might go off course versus some dogs might get more refusals. So when the dog is outside of that optimal state of arousal, they're going to, everything's going to be off balance. They're going to tip towards their, um, the, the side of the scale that their temperament draws them towards what they're naturally inclined to be doing. And I mean, we can also talk about the handler's state of arousal and how that's going to impact things, especially in something like agility where the dog's every move is being cued by the handler. Um, so yeah, something's going to suffer if they're not in that, that perfect state. Denise. God, I feel like I hang out with such smart people. Can we do this every week? Can I, can I just sit here and just listen? I don't. And then you keep saying my name. I'm like, damn, I'm still thinking about that. Um, in my opinion, the number one predictor of whether or not a dog is going to have a good run in obedience in particular is the dog's attitude and arousal level walking up to the line. If it's too high, the dog is going to struggle. It's going to go too fast. It's going to lose precision. It's going to go before it's set. If the dog is too low, it's going to require two cues. It's going to get sucked in by the environment. So I do know that I used to tell people that when I would walk into the obedience ring and look down on my dog, I usually had a pretty good idea right then how things were going to go, which doesn't mean we always qualified. It just means that I could look at the dog and know if the dog was in the right mental space. So with the dog that's experienced, very well-trained, comfortable, we're probably going to do okay. And the good news is that when I look down on my dog looking good, I calm down. So that brings in Meg's point about my confidence skyrockets when I'm looking at a dog who's got that let's do this look. Uh, and all of a sudden I'm there to show off.

Right. Whereas when I look down on my dog and they're not actually looking back at me and I, you know, now I fall apart because I know what that means or the dog won't sit. That's always a huge cue, right? Dog won't sit on the start line. That's bad. Um, and then I start to fall apart, which certainly somebody has got to run the ship. Okay. So if the dog looks at me and I look like I'm freaking out and I smell funny and whatever. Um, so the whole idea that arousal is also not just balancing up and down, but are you managing your dog? And especially in a sport like agility, which is so handler driven. I think one thing that can make a handler really amazing and great as a person who can manage their dog, even when their dog's arousal level is tweaked because they're so fast, so quick, so responsive. They can actually manage the dog when it's on the verge of out of control completely. Um, in sports like obedience, you have a lot less flexibility. Once you're in there, that dog actually does have to get through the exercises on its own. However, having looked at it, it's not that unusual. If you're in the ring, like in utility for seven or eight minutes of that seven or eight minutes, you're probably actually working for only about two. The rest of the time is moving between exercises, sending your article, setting up. There's a lot of other stuff that goes into it. Then it does matter. Your ability to connect with your dog and manage that arousal up and down is going to be critical. In the bite sports, dogs that are too high, they don't let go. It's that simple. And actually, when I think about training, I probably think more these days about arousal than anything else. I spend a whole lot of my training sessions. Okay. You're too high for the toy. You're losing your brain. What happens if I throw cookies? Is that going to get you? Can I get you that way? If I put cookies on the floor, will you even eat them? Like I, I spent a lot of energy trying to figure out what is your arousal state? Cause sometimes it's internal. So it's not as obvious as you might think. Um, sometimes it's external. What can I tweak? And I find that if I can get the arousal level to the perfect place, my dog is going to rock it. They're going to rock no matter what they're going to rock it. If it's things they know, if I'm trying to teach them new things and they're in that really great mental space, they're going to do really well. So it tends to be what I talk about the most these days. And it's probably where with my own dog, I spend the most energy. When I go to a new environment, is this the arousal level I want here?

Um, I'm retraining my dog's recall. He has a kick ass whistle recall. I mean, amazing. Call them off anything, anytime. His informal, just come back to me. Recall. You know what? It's not that good. And what I realized is I taught his recall. It's intense. It's the cue is hard and fast. He comes flying back. But when I'm just wandering along with him, just watching the world go by and I say his name, he's like, I'm sniffing. You know, it's like I never taught him a recall in that level of arousal. And so now I have discovered that I actually have to teach him a new recall, which is your informal. I'm just going to say your name. I don't want to be loud. I don't want to attract attention of the public. I just want it to be, hey, guys, and I want you to turn and come back for a low value, like a meatball, not low value, but not for a toy. I don't want a dog running at you because I called you fast and the dog's now targeting you. Right. But it was a real lesson for me to observe how my dog's behavior changed so dramatically, even in training, just based on how I was handling that arousal level. So it's a big thing for me these days. Wow. You just described why I just said to somebody why I could work my dogs off leash. But if I were to just let them out the door, it is totally untested. With a recall. Because you're not connected in the same way. Exactly. Exactly. But I mean, I just took my puppy. I just did this large area search with her off leash and she was incredible. But I, you know, I don't, you know, but her recall, if she's not working, is not going to be the same. Yeah. Yeah. Perfect explanation. So it's really interesting because it kind of sounds like we pulled apart kind of three pieces, right? So skills, habit, and arousal, and they all kind of intermingle. And then you've also got kind of the dog's innate personality traits, right? Anyway, lots to take away from all that. There's so much. And it also explains why you can be in dog training for a really, really, really long time and stay sucked in. And still feel like you know nothing. Well, I think that the more you get sucked in, the less you feel you know. It's kind of like, you're just like, whoa, you know. You definitely have to have a curious personality of, oh, why? Oh, I wonder why that happened. Oh, well, that was interesting. I wonder if I can make that happen on purpose. Huh? I can. The thing I've, this is totally off topic. Is that okay, Melissa? Can I go off topic? Yep. Okay. Oh boy. So the other thing it, it gets me thinking about is when I watch my dog do something and I go, that's interesting.

And then I asked somebody else, if your dog does this, do you ever see this? So the thing that came up today, the specific thing is my dog was, he's having a hard morning. He's feeling anxious and when he feels anxious, he bothers my other dogs. I don't mean a little, I mean, it's bad. Like he'll walk on Lyra. So it's not like she can just ignore him. So of course I have to intercede. And, but the reason he's doing it is because he's got this little anxious underlying thing. And so he has to be removed. But when I remove him, then the anxiety expresses in a different way. And I mentioned this to somebody and she said, you know what? Last night my dog was bothering the cat. My dog doesn't normally bother the cat. And when I got the dog away from the cat, I noticed that even though I put him on a down stone in his dog bed, I started to notice panting. And then he wanted a toy so he could suck on his toy. And I thought, okay, patterns, pattern. Then you start thinking about, well, do other dogs who tend to bother animals in the house show that package of characteristics? And is it actually underlying anxiety that's driving them to be like the annoying little brother? Um, but that's how you start thinking as a dog trainer. And then you of course have to go out and ask your friends, does your dog ever do this? And then you want to make correlations and how's your dog's leash walking, right? Like you just random things that would almost seem unrelated. And then suddenly they're like, oh my God, the days he's chasing the cat are the days he can't walk on a leaf to space with life. Right. And then you, then you take another layer, which is, well, what's the common factor? It's, I just find that way of thinking gets so interesting to me. Yeah. That handler's, um, contribution to that or the owner's contribution to that. Right. Um, you know, it's just, you know, if your dog is doing that, like, what is your own emotional state at that point? You know, is that, you know, is that a part of it? Cause you know, they're so connected to us. That isn't. Yep. Yep. We could explore this for hours. I was going to say, I feel like we've covered a lot of ground here. So, um, I want to kind of round it out with one last question, which is if you were to kind of drill down, we talked about today into one key piece of information, you really want listeners to take away from this or understand, um, kind of what would that takeaway be? And Denise, I'm putting you on the spot. I'm making you go first. Ah, damn. Um, I think I would encourage people to try to keep a bird's eye view of their training. That would be the thing.

Always step back up, look down. And I think that's your best chance for seeing if the pole, the whole picture is staying in balance. I would say that balance is the artistry of training. That is why there's no real like recipes and training and why the answer to a lot of questions, like, like for instance, if you see these questions on Facebook, right. I have a training question. The answer is it depends. And, you know, to try to think about the cause of issues. And if you're going to assess your dog to see, is your dog out of balance? Either they're from an emotional perspective or the skill perspective, uh, before they, before you actually, you know, try to figure out before you slap a solution on it. That's the artistry. I totally agree. I sprint's registered name is eyes wide open because that's how I want to go about every training session. Um, and I had to pick her registered name before I knew what her name was. So I was like, okay, this is what it's going to be. So that, which is similar to what Denise said, but being curious about what you're seeing, because you're probably, if you, if you think of everything as trying to balance it, you can, I think you'll be able to come up with a solution more quickly. Because I always kind of say, if you can control the, the wrong behavior, you can also control the right one because dogs don't think right, wrong. They just have behavior on a spectrum. So get curious, always kind of look at the other end. Think of everything as an opposite. I love that to kind of round out our conversation. So thank you all so much for coming on the podcast. And this was a fabulous discussion. This was great. I love this conversation. This is incredible. This is great. This is great. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. We will be back next week to talk about pressure in training, how trainers may be using it more than they think, and how to train for the inevitable pressure in the ring. If you haven't already subscribed to our podcast in iTunes, the podcast app of your choice, that our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzie Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzie for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty free by bensound.com. The track featured here is called Buddy. Audio editing provided by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training. Thank you. Thank you.