E198: FDSA의 2020년 총결산

And it is targeted at the pet parent, what I call an engaged pet parent. So that is a person who's not a dog person. Like if you're listening to this podcast, you're a dog person. And it's not the average person who went and got a dog and never takes it to training. And it just sort of exists. It's that person in the middle who really wants to do right by their dog, but doesn't want to be a dog trainer. So we have that now for them. And we had boot camps, which until Terry reminded us at the, as we were talking this thread, forgotten all about them. Boot camps were designed to give FDSA students more of an opportunity to practice really fundamental skills in person by having instructors or pairs of instructors travel around the world teaching boot camps for two days. And we did exactly one. And then COVID happened. And so all of the rest of the year that was scheduled, we had to cancel all of them. But these aren't dead. They're just on hold. But we did start the boot camp program with the videos and all that. And we will get back to it. So I don't know. Is that enough for one year? It certainly felt like enough. Sounds like a good start to me. Yeah. So I do want to kind of talk about each of this a little bit more, kind of starting with Lemonade Conference back in May. So do you want to just kind of talk about what happened that kind of led to the conference? Yeah. So COVID was sort of ratcheting up right before, I don't know, I guess that was February or March. And we were looking at our own in-person conference. You know, I am not a risk-averse person in general. I'm actually a fairly risk-taker person and pretty willing to go forward. But I was very risk-averse about COVID. The idea that we might hold our conference and people might get sick there was beyond my tolerance. And so we actually decided to cancel camp fairly early in the process rather than taking our chances. And so as a result of that, I was able to talk with IABC, who was in a similar boat. They also had a conference coming up. And so we talked about it together. What do we have to offer? If we both cancel our conferences, that leaves people with not only a hole in education, but more importantly, a hole in community. So what can we do? Can we do anything? Are we fools to even be having this conversation? Yes. By the way, the answer to that is yes, we were. But by the end of that conversation, each of us went back to our organizations, our staff and said, hey, can we make some lemonade out of lemons? Can we host something together that will give our community something to feel good about? And that's what we did.

So we went ahead and hosted the online lemonade conference. It was enormous. It was extremely popular, way beyond what anybody even began to envision in terms of worldwide participation, the sheer volume. I don't know. Do you guys remember how many presenters we had? What was the deal on that one? A lot. It was a lot. 54, I think. 54 sessions, I think. Yeah. It was huge. And I just want to add that this was mostly planned on Friday the 13th. I didn't even know that. It was because I was on a plane coming home on Friday the 13th, March. And so I just remember that date specifically because I checked on it when I booked the flight, asked my husband if he was okay to fly on Friday the 13th. And instead we planned a conference. Well, we did. We certainly did. Teach you to book flights, Terry. Actually, it worked out pretty well. You guys had a lot of that stuff worked out for me. Any kind of big takeaways from TLC? Well, one thing I would say is it's probably not a great idea to plan a conference in two months. I mean, we did it and it worked. And Melissa, I know for a fact you took the brunt of a lot of that. But I also know that a lot of the volunteers, both on the IABC side and the staff side over at FDSA, got hit pretty hard. And so I will say it again. Thank you so much to all of those people who volunteered and who helped in various capacities on both sides. Because I think in some cases people thought they were signing up for a relatively minor job, which ended up being a rather significant job. And while we really, everybody did their best to make that work out. We added additional people. We did all kinds of little things. We so appreciate those people in the community who made that work for us. So generally don't organize a big conference with a three-month lead time. It just happened. We didn't really have a choice. At the same time, I think what you could say is sometimes a takeaway is sometimes you just have to do it, right? And so we did do it. And it was a little painful. But at the end of TLC, I felt that there was this enormous change in the community in terms of kind of a cooperative. And there was just so much stepping up that took place across the industry. And I'm really grateful for that. And I appreciate how people made it happen. So that was fantastic. And I think the end result after the conference kept people going at a really difficult time, which is what we were hoping for. So my big takeaway, it's ironic because it's two parts. One, don't try to do a conference in three months. But at the same time, sometimes just go ahead and take those risks and great things will come from them.

So I don't know. Two sides of the same coin, huh? Indeed. Anything on your end, Terry? Just it really was a cool experience to have the warm, fuzzy excitement and to be in those live sessions and have people so happy to be there and learning. And once again, just totally reinforced how valid online learning really can be for everybody. It's the success of our school. But it was really cool to see it come together in a virtual camp like that. So TLC this past year was a replacement for camp. That said, do you guys want to talk about the plan for next year, TLC? Yeah, the refill. The refill. How could we not do it again? Right? I mean, it was such an amazing experience that you knew it had to happen again. Everybody knew it happened, had to come back. So it is coming back where our dates are May 7th through 9th. And we made some real effort to bring in some new faces, maybe some people that are not well known within the industry, but who offer a lot, some really promising future stars. And we made an effort to find some kind of fresh topics, new directions. So you'll definitely want to keep an eye on that. The presenter list is out. Do you guys recall the name of the Facebook list if they search the Lemonade Conference 2? Do you think that'll do it on Facebook? It's an event page off of Finzi Dog Sports Academy page. So if they go to our regular page on Facebook, it'll show us one of our events coming up. Super, because the list of presenters would be there. I can also stick a link to the event page in the show notes. So if anybody wants to, they can pull up the show notes on their phone or whatever you're listening to this on and then click on the link there and it'll pop up for you. Melissa, do we know yet when the website will be up again? Updated for the new year? The website should be up mid to late January. The target date is January 15th, but I'm not promising. It should be on time, though. We're doing good. The back end's coming together well. And then registration happens in mid to late February. So things are happening. Things are definitely happening. It's a great lineup, you guys. You'll be really excited to see all the instructors and the topics that are on tap for this year. Yeah, I think so. I think so. There's definitely some faces I can't wait to see and some topics I'm super personally interested in hearing about. We should clarify that we're not going to be totally insane this year and run till midnight. No. We do learn. We have something over cucumbers. We do learn. So we did condense that a bit. But actually, I don't think we dropped our number of people. We just reorganized. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

We'll have more rooms going at any given point, but it'll be slightly shorter hours for the day. So a little more choice-making for attendees, but everything goes in the library anyway. So what about for camp, guys? Do we know yet if it's happening in 2021? Yes, we do know. Well, hopefully we know. We're really hoping it's going to go. We are booked into Albany, Oregon on October 15th to 17th, 2021. And it all just really depends on COVID. We'll probably have to make some decisions. Late spring, early summer would be kind of our deadline for that. Denise, do you want to talk more about what we're thinking with that process? Yeah, it's a similar thought process to last year. We are not going to take risks with our students or our staff. So that really is the bottom line. With that in mind, there are certain things that simply have to happen or camp won't be able to happen, which would be terribly unfortunate. Everybody has to be able to have access to the vaccine. And that's just not optional. We can't have most of the people are maybe safe. The local health departments have to 100% say it's totally acceptable to hold large events. If the CDC is saying we don't recommend, even if it's legally allowed, if it is not recommended, we will not host the event. If, unfortunately, some of these new strains we're hearing about that may be spreading faster or maybe aren't covered by the vaccine, or we discover that the vaccine doesn't last as long as we would want, any of those would cancel camp. And, you know, of course, we don't want to cancel camp, but we really don't want to cause harm. So that's sort of the bottom line. We will take the conservative route. We are hopeful, but we are going to be conservative about the matter. So fingers crossed. Hopefully we'll get to go. And hopefully it's late enough in the year that by October things will be starting. We'll have a much better picture and things will be, you know, slowly recuperating in the world. Now, that said, whether or not 2021 goes forward, there are definite plans announced for 2022, right? Yeah. Yes. If you want to share. We're heading back to Ohio, May 27th through 29th, 2022, back at the Eukanuba. That's right. Yes. The Eukanuba Center. So we've been there before. It was a really, it was a pleasant place for us to have our event. So that is 2022 for those of you who are more central East Coast. And then I know we chatted a little bit before this about if camp doesn't happen in 2021, you guys said we'll probably return West Coast in 23. Is that right? Yes.

We will make every effort if it gets canceled for 2021 to make sure that the 2023 camp is for sure someplace on the West Coast. The reason we can't move 2022 to the West Coast the way we were able to this year is because of how the centers schedule. So we couldn't do that. We would either not be able to schedule at all for 2022 or we had to choose and then put down that deposit and make that happen. So that's why we're not just pushing off Albany every year. But we would for sure come back in 2023 then. Because we really miss them. It might be awesome to see everybody. Camp is one of those. As much as TLC is a wonderful bonding experience, when you go to real life camp, it's a totally different animal. And it's really fun to see all those people that we see online and actually meet their dogs in real person, meet the instructors in person. Absolutely. It's a huge bonding event. And we'd all love to get back to it for sure. Anything else you guys want to cover about TLC or camp? The only thing I would say is I hope you're able to attend. We make every effort to make the price exceptionally reasonable and fair. And we do offer scholarships. So I certainly hope if you can attend, that you attend. Either online with TLC or in person with camp. And we will do what we can do to make that happen for you. Yeah, we should actually mention, especially with the online camp, that scholarships are going to be a big factor again this year. Because we know how many people really needed those and utilized those last year. Yeah, I don't even know how many we gave out. But we gave out a lot of scholarships. And we're grateful for every single person who took one and came to camp and took the benefit from it. We want you there. And also, the way we do our scholarships, we basically ask if you need one. So nobody wants to see your tax return. So this isn't an embarrassing event. And nobody asks you personal questions. If you need a scholarship, you say you need a scholarship. And that's really the end of the conversation. And we are grateful to have you there. It's no different than that. We want you there. So certainly, if you want to be there, I will be extra disappointed if you say you didn't come because you couldn't afford it and you didn't want to take a scholarship. That, to me, is a disappointment. So camp wasn't the only thing that got put on hold this year. You kind of mentioned initially boot camps. And we originally planned to launch and host a bunch of boot camps this year. Do you want to just kind of share an update there on what the plans are, what they were, what you're thinking? Yeah.

So Deb and I, Deb Jones and I, did the first boot camp back in North Carolina. It was so fun. It was really great. Melissa was there, actually. And I don't remember how many people we had, but it was just, I can't even describe it. It was almost like a mini camp. It had a lot of just good camaraderie and a lot of excellent learning, hands-on time. So we do want to get back to it. The basic criteria are the same. We will be conservative about it. But as soon as it appears that people are safe to travel and that we can go back to those boot camps, please keep an eye out. We will bring them back. But I think it's fair to say that that won't happen until the very earliest, the end of 2021, because then we would have to schedule them. And more realistically, I think 2022. Okay. All right. So we talked about the conference in May. We talked about plans for camp. We talked a little bit about boot camp. Kind of later in the year this year, we then launched a brand new online training program, the Pet Dog Training Online Program. Do you want to kind of talk about where the idea for that program came from? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So this is a joke, but it's actually not really a joke. So Melissa and I were sitting on the floor at the boot camp while Deb was doing some speaking. And then there was a little break. And I don't remember exactly how the conversation started, but something about be pretty cool to offer some videos online for the average pet person just to fill in those gaps. And she looked online and she's like, oh, look, pet dog training online. The URL is available. And I'm like, well, buy the URL. We'll figure out what to do with it later. But what do you do with the URL called pet dog training online? I mean, it's kind of, I think it's self-explanatory. You do pet dog training online. So that's what we did. We did that. We made a pet dog training online program. So we just filled out the URL and it's basically designed for your friends and your neighbors and your coworkers and random people who ask you for help. You know, they they're struggling with their dog. They're looking for a dog friendly solution to their problems. FDSA is probably a little too intense for them, a little too much for the average person walking in the door. These are those quick one hour videos where you can feel safe referring people to them because, you know, the methods are going to be comfortable for you and hopefully easy for the average person to understand. So terminology was kept simple, but not it's not watered down. It's simply given in language that is appropriate for the average pet person.

So far, we're getting great reviews on them. People seem really excited about them, happy about them. I know that we arranged something for FDSA breeders, people who are involved in the school and in the FDSA breeder, what do you, a Facebook group online to be able to provide a bit of a discount for their puppy buyers. And they are taking advantage of that. So that's kind of exciting. If you are a person in that group, go ahead and send a note over to help at Venzie Academy.com and we'll get you registered as an FDSA breeder. So you can, you can take advantage of that. But so far, the program's going really well. We're pretty excited about that. I also know kind of in terms of price point and what's involved, we made kind of a point to make a gift certificate friendly. Tara, do you want to talk a little bit about that? Sure. We have the individual offerings, as Denise discussed, but we also really worked hard to make some packages that are super attractive for pet people and for even our regular students who are just looking at these topics. So we have sort of two different sections. We have sort of mini starter packs and then we have a group pack. The starter packs are two related topics. So if you're bringing your puppy home, it's sort of the socialization and welcome puppy, how to prepare your house and that sort of thing. And the price point on those are $29.95. And then we have a bigger puppy pack, which is a five pack. And that would be $65. And we coincidentally have gift certificates for both those amounts that you can send to your favorite people. And I know I have sent one for a friend of mine already who got a new little adorable puppy. And she is loving having the information. And it's helping me because the questions to me are really cut down. So it's actually really good for everybody. So it's fun. It was a gift to you, Terry. It was a gift to me. It was definitely getting her in the right sort of headspace to be able to deal with a puppy. And, oh, my God, it's not going to kill me because it's biting me. It's just playing and really understanding. For somebody who's a first-time puppy owner, this was super, super valuable information. And I might add to that as well. I actually looked at a couple of them just randomly. I haven't seen all of them. But there's a lot of really valuable information for everybody, not just the brand-new pet person. There's some really good stuff in there. Awesome. Do you want to, because I know you get asked this all the time at the help desk anyway, just tell them where they can go to click on those gift certificates. Sure.

The gift certificate link is actually on our homepage right off of the student resources section. So go ahead. And if you have any problems, you should be able to go in, put your email in. It will email you the information for the gift certificate with the code and everything that you get. If for some reason that doesn't show up, just give us a shout out to help at FennsyAcademy.com. And we're happy to search those down because sometimes the internet gods like to eat things that we don't want them to. But we are happy to help you out. And they're super easy to use. And like I said, just if anybody needs any assistance, just reach out to us and we can help you with those. So Terry kind of mentioned a couple of the topics in there. But Denise, do you want to just expand a little bit on what type of topics are included in the program, what the videos cover? Oh, gosh. Every time I'm asked this question, my mind goes blank. But I do know when we were thinking about it, we were saying things like, okay, what does a new person want? Well, they generally want some very basic obedience. So, you know, sit down. They want to recall. Who doesn't want to recall, right? What do they do about puppy mouthing? If two puppies are roughhousing, are they aggressive? You know. So we try to cover the things that we hear all the time anyway. You know, what do I do about with a new puppy? Or how about a new adult dog? You bring in a new adult dog, right? And maybe it's a little fearful. So how do you handle that? So then there's very basic stuff on counter conditioning. So we tried to go through and hit on those things that you probably get asked about a lot. If you're a dog person, when your neighbor gets a new puppy, you know, how do you teach loose leash walking? So that's really what we try to do. And then there's a couple of fun things. We have a new one going up called Rough and Tumble, which is sort of parkour for pet people. Very relaxed. You know, not a lot of rules. Not meant to be about competition, but meant to be friendly and safe and somebody getting out there with their dog and having a good time. So that one will go up in about a month, I think. So I know the video just came through. But, yeah, keep an eye on it. There's all kinds of fun stuff over there. For those kind of not in the know, there's a way to get a free video, right? There is. I don't even know which one's up there right now. But I do know if you go to petdogtrainingonline.com and click on the Get Email Updates button, you will end up on the landing page, which gives you free access to one of the videos for 30 days.

Sadly, you do not get to pick your video. But we picked for you. And, of course, we picked something good. So go check it out. See what it is. And tell us what you think. Yeah. All right. So I know in addition to the pet dog training online thing, we made some changes to the Pet Professionals Program. Do you want to talk about those? What people can maybe expect going forward? Yeah. We did stop the Pet Professionals Program when COVID hit because I think so many people just were trying to keep their heads above water. And it just felt inappropriate at that time to really be pushing that when most people wanted to survive. So we decided to take that program down for a short period of time. And the good news is dog trainers have recovered because there's this thing called COVID puppies, right? Everybody went out and got a dog. So the good news is dog trainers have many have evolved and found ways to make it work and are nice and busy and thriving. However, as we were organizing the new program, the pet dog program online, what we realized is that we were creating an awful lot of overlap between the two programs. And so what we decided to do was kind of shrink, I guess, the Pet Professionals Program. We sort of had a blowout sale where anybody could buy anything through a self-study option. And then we selected about 15 or so that were not duplicated at all in the pet dog program. They are run at a more sophisticated level to the pet dog trainer, the professional trainer. And those will be offered soon on the same page as the Pet Dog Training Online Program. They'll have their own tab. Terry, when do you think those will be up there? Hopefully by end of this month, if not for sure, by mid-January. Yeah. So you can keep an eye out for those. I'm sure we'll make a big fuss about it when they go back up and everybody can go check them out. That's not the only program, though, that's changed a bit this year. We kind of alluded at the beginning that team has had some fun stuff going on there. Do you want to talk a little bit about the new programs? Yeah. Canine Cooperative Care. That's Deb Jones' baby. You have levels one through three. You also have a plus level. And it has to do with it's not you don't have to get them all right and you can edit pieces together. But what we're looking for is that your dog can comfortably go through basic procedures, that you can look at your dog's ears and your eyes and trim nails and do things like this. So check that one out. And the Nosework program is really looking for those foundation skills.

Can your dog search high and low and outdoors and indoors and vehicles and novel locations and novel objects for containers? Check that out, too. I already see that both programs have super active Facebook groups. It's already showing the camaraderie that we see in the basic team program where the students go to great lengths to work together to help each other be successful. So you don't end up submitting videos that aren't quite right. Maybe you miss some rules because rules are hard at first and you don't know them. But I hope you'll check those things out. They're fun and they're a great way to get motivated to move forward, especially right now when people are feeling a little lonely and a little housebound. So that's what we've got there. Do you want to talk about how they kind of complement the previous team titling program? Yeah, team team was it's a lot of fun. And it kind of the basic idea when we did team was really about precision. And the precision was designed to take anybody into any dog sports because learning things like rear end awareness, we're moving on a disc or on a platform. These things are going to matter no matter even in agility. You want that kind of stuff. It's not just obedience. But as time went by, some people really wanted specialized stuff. So they didn't want one nose work exercise. They really wanted to test their skills and we were having so much fun with the basic team program. And the students were so excited about it that why not expand it into other areas and make those available for our students? And that's what we've done. So one thing you kind of haven't gotten into yet, but I know that we've talked about a little bit elsewhere, is the fact that folks only have to register for team once. Right. Do you want to just kind of talk about some of those bits and pieces and how that all works? I don't know. Maybe Terry wants to take that one. Sure. You just have to, anybody can actually register as a user in team, the person themselves. And that puts you on our newsletter list and that sort of thing. But then you actually then pay to register your dog once you are ready to submit for your title. And you can register just once and then you can do any of the three different sports, either regular team, nose work or canine cooperative care. And once your dog is registered, that's it forever. There's no other additional fees other than your video testing submission fees. So kind of the same as like an AKC or something like you register your dog and then you go do the thing. Exactly. Any other plans for team addition?

Anything in addition, anything that's being discussed? This makes me laugh. There's always discussion. Shut up, Terry. Shut up, Terry. Secret, secret stuff that everybody will go, ooh, shiny thing. Usually I'm the one saying, I have an idea. And my team is like, no. And this went for, I don't know why, but Terry's the one who's like, I have an idea for team. And I'm like, shut up, Terry. And this goes back to the whole conference in two to three months. And Denise acts like that's uncommon. But really, that's pretty much how we do stuff. And I was thinking we're brewing. We're brewing for the idea. And then by the time we say, well, let's do it. We've already done enough brewing that it's not a terrible. But yeah, we've got a few things that we're sort of toying with. You know, what happens if? What are the complications? But so you just have to- We have a busy spring, Ed. We'll wait and we'll wait. Maybe it's summertime. We'll look at new stuff. That sounds good. All right. So in addition to kind of all the other fun stuff, FDSI is actually having our annual workshops out right now. Do one of you want to share the details? Sure. We did a poll to our alumni group and asked them which of the workshops that we ran last year that they're really upset that they missed out on. And they gave us a list of what their top candidates are. And I think we have 15, 16? 16. 16 that are going to go on sale on Wednesday, March 23rd. So March, December. I must be still in denial of Christmas happening. So yeah, two days, just after we're taping this, they'll go up and you'll have until Monday, January 3rd, I think it was. There's a newsletter that went out to everybody, but they'll be up on our website. And it's a great chance to get them. And you will get the live presentation. And you also get to view the recording of the instructor feedback that they did to all of the students. So it's a great chance to catch up on something you might have missed out on. And so this will actually come out. We're recording on Monday. The sale opens on Wednesday. And this will actually come out on Friday. So when you guys are listening to this, the sale will be open. And if you want, you can go click over and check those out. Anything else you ladies want to share that folks can look forward to in 2021 or that you want to talk about from the past year? I guess the only thing I would say is it was a very difficult year for so many of us in so many ways. And I'm glad that FDSA was there for many of you because I do know that FDSA provided a constant that really gave people direction.

And I got a lot of responses from people basically saying, you know, this has been a very hard year. And maybe taking a class, maybe with a scholarship, gave them something to look forward to. So I'm glad that the school was able to weather forward a tough time and offer something for a lot of people who needed something at that time. And hopefully next year, we'll just look up every which way. We know that you guys have a lot of choices out there and really appreciate your loyalty and dedication and how you greatly promote everybody, promote the school to other people. We appreciate you doing that. Well, thank you, ladies, for coming on the podcast. Thanks, Melissa. Thank you, Melissa. And thank you to all of our wonderful listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week. Don't miss it. If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzie Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzie for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by bensound.com. The track featured here is called Body. Audio editing provided by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training. What's up? What's up?