E38: 한나 브래니건(Hannah Branigan) - "턱 싯(Tuck Sit)과 폴드 백 다운(Fold Back Down) 이야기"

He will not be titled in confirmation due to, well, disqualifying physical characteristic, which he doesn't like to talk about in public. But he has just started a novice and he finished his CDSP novice title with two high in trials and is looking forward to making his AKC novice debut. I don't even know what date we're on, but very soon, in the next month or two, actually, I think. That's awesome. So I know that for most people, when they start thinking about precision skills, which will be kind of our focus today, they kind of think fronts, finishes, maybe some healing. But I know it's possible to get just as geeky about sitting downs. So I think a lot of people kind of teach a sitting down early on, then decide maybe it's not as clean or precise as they eventually want it to be. And I wanted to ask you how you handle that. So what do you recommend? Do you just stop paying for what you don't want? Do you create a new cue? How do you decide? I mean, those are all really good questions. And I mean, again, so OK, so just bear with me. But I get really excited. So obedience has a lot to do with sits and downs, right? Like if you think about it, the sit is a critical component of so many of the exercises in obedience. So if you think about all the places where a sit comes up. So at every setup, the beginning of every exercise, we set the dog up in heel position in a sit. And then all of the halts, those are sits again, every single front, every single finish. So if you add up all of the sits that happen in like, say, in one utility run, you're into, I did this once and I should have written it down and put it in front of me. But I think, you know, we have something like 12 or 14 fronts and finishes, plus the halts in the healing pattern, which, you know, you're going to have at least one, maybe two halts in healing. And then, you know, maybe seven or eight setups. So you have like 20 something sits. And so having a dog that sits square, sits fluently, sits quickly, and can sit straight, and then we put it into all of these situations, you're already ahead of the game. And if you don't have that, then you're already starting from behind. So having a really clean, square, tucked sit is kind of an important piece that we want to have. And what I ran into, and I think a lot of folks run into, is the way we are taught to teach sit, like in that first puppy class, when you take, before you know that you think you're going to do dog sports, because I think most of us rarely get that first dog with the idea of like, I'm going to go get a puppy and go do competitive obedience.

Usually we get a puppy because we want a puppy. At least that was me. And then, you know, we go to puppy class, and puppy class goes pretty good, we go to the next one, we go to the next one, and then what else could we do? And then we start getting to rally or obedience or whatever. So in most puppy classes, most people are taught to teach a sit by putting a treat in front of the dog's nose, and then you lift the treat and put it back, push it back over the dog's back. And so as the puppy follows the treat up in the air and back, they sit down on their rump. And it's a quick way to lure and teach a sit, and you can get a sit on cue very effectively like that. But it's a sit where the puppy's rear feet stay in place, and the front feet walk back. So that's what we call a rock back sit. And so it's a very much backwards weight shifted behavior, because the puppy is looking up and following the treat over his head. Super fast way to get a sit. And then we'll often teach it down by luring them up into that rock back sit first, and then we pull the treat down between their paws and forward, and they crawl forward into a down. And again, it's a super fast way to lure a puppy into a sit and a down. It takes very little skill on the part of the trainer or the handler, but it is the exact opposite of the mechanics that we need for competitive sports. So it's a lot of people find themselves in a situation where they had originally taught their puppies to sit and lie down in this particular, using this particular movement pattern. And then when their dog is three or four or five, now they suddenly care how the dog sits. And not only is their dog not sitting the way they want them to, but they've actively taught their dog to sit the complete opposite of what they need for participating in the sport. And that's what happened to me. And again, I hit that kind of wall. When I first started competing with my older dog, I had no idea that there was a different way to sit, like sit mint butt on the ground. And so that's pretty good. And I was actually in, we'd gotten her first title, we'd gotten her novice title, and we were competing in open. And I could not figure out for the life of me why on every single retrieve, she would hit me in the stomach with the dumbbell and then end up sitting a full arm's length away. Like, how is that even happening? And I'm just like, I'm just totally like mind blown perplexed. And some random stranger, I don't even know who it was on the, you know, on the sideline says, well, you know, it's because she's rocking back into the sit.

If you taught her to tuck sit, that wouldn't happen. And I'm like, what are you even talking about? Like a sit is a sit. And, and then, you know, and, and now, now, of course, it's, it's really obvious, but it was not obvious in back then. I don't know what year that was. And 2010 or something. And, and then now I recognize, well, what was happening was she would come in with the dumbbell, bam, punch me in the stomach with it, because that's kind of her style. She's still like that at 15. And then instead of leaving her front feet in place and pulling her, her pelvis and her rear feet under there, which would leave her close to me, she would leave her rear feet in place and then walk her back feet into that rock back sit. So she would be a full body length away from where she started when she had that dumbbell, which we were still able to qualify, but it was an expensive deduction that I could have avoided with the, the correct sit mechanics from the, from the beginning. So what do you do in that situation? Well, I can tell you, we can still fix it even in a five-year-old dog. But it is a lot easier to fix it sooner rather than later. So, you know, starting with a five-month-old dog is a lot easier than having a five-year reinforcement history of rocking back into the sit. But we can actually still, we can still teach the dog, no, I need you to, I need you to actually do this differently. I need you to support your weight on your front legs and bring your hind legs underneath you for this behavior. It is hard because it, I think you asked earlier, should we put it on a new cue? And that would certainly be ideal because I do think that a rock back sit and a tuck sit, and the tuck sit is what we're looking for where the front feet stay still. And a rock back sit is the one we don't want for the purposes of a halt, a front or a finish. They can be easily defined as different behaviors because there are different body movements, there's different muscles involved in moving the dog through space to achieve, even though it looks like the same end position, there are different, very different movements that get the dog there. But with, like, say you have a dog that's in open, that's in a retrieve, there is no sit cue there. The cue is the context of you're doing it in a retrieve. So it's a part of the cue is that the dog has a dumbbell in her mouth, and part of the cue is you standing there with that formal front posture. And those aren't things we can change. So we do have to recondition that old cue with a new behavior, which is harder than if we were starting from scratch.

But we can still do it, which is cool. And that's why I get so kind of excited. You know, it often seems like everybody wants a tuck sit, nobody really knows how to get one. So do you want to kind of explain why people go so crazy for a good tuck sit? And then you walk through a little bit kind of what a tuck sit is. But if there's anything you want to add there for anybody who doesn't know? Yeah. So because a tucked sit leaves the dog's front legs in place, and this is, I'm actually having a little harder time with this than I expected, because normally when I talk about this, you can see me, and I can wave my hands and have a whiteboard and, you know, video visuals and stuff. But so with a tucked sit, the difference is, if you imagine your dog has four legs or should, mostly have four legs, most dogs have four legs. And to sit, they bring their front and hind legs closer together, because the, you know, the back is parallel to the ground, and then we put it on a diagonal. So the dog goes from being rectangular shape to a triangle shape. Now, he can either do that by leaving the front feet in place and bringing the hind feet closer to the front feet to shorten that base, or he can leave the hind feet in place and walk the front feet back. So either the dog will, since we measure where a dog is, like by, so for our purposes, for our sport, because this is fairly arbitrary, but it is what it is. Because in obedience, we are measuring the dog's position in space based on where the dog's shoulder is. So when a dog is in heel position, we are measuring that the dog's, you know, our observable criteria is that the dog's shoulder stays next to the human's leg, underneath their shoulder, hip, or heel, depending on how tall your dog is, compared to how tall you are. Yeah. And so if the dog is standing in heel position, then his front feet are in line with your front feet. You only have two feet. You're with your ankles, with your legs. The dog's front feet are in line with your legs. And if the dog leaves his hind feet in place to sit and walks his front feet back, well, now he's going to be actually out of heel position because his shoulder will move backward in space. If he leaves his front feet in place and tucks, which is where the word tuck sit comes from, tucks his hind legs up underneath. So he walks his hind feet closer to his front feet. His shoulder stays in one place, stays in a plane. And so he stays in heel position. So for all of our setups in heel position, all of our halts, all of our finishes, we need that tuck sit so that the shoulder stays in place,

so that the dog starts and finishes the whole action in heel position. And then front is the same basic idea that we're measuring front by how close the dog's front feet are to your front feet, your hind feet, your feet, feet, feet, your foot feet, your human feet. And so I need the dogs, once the dog places those front feet there, I need them to stay put and I need him to bring his hind feet up underneath him. And so how well he can manage that action is part of how we're scored on those halts, those finishes in those fronts. So being able to have that set of actions move the dog from a standing position into a sitting position is really pretty important for performance. For good scores and performance, at least. Well, for good scores and even to the point of an enqueue. So for any of our fronts, that threshold between points and an enqueue is the dog has to stop with an arm's length of you. So you have to be able to reach the dog's collar or reach for the dumbbell without moving your feet. And of course, if you have a Chihuahua, it's not going to make a big difference because, you know, a nine or 10 inch dog can sit nine or 10 inches further away and that's not going to make that much difference. But if you have like, I don't know, a big, let's say German Shepherd or other longer dog whose body length exceeds the length of your arm, then your dog could actually conceivably start off standing as close as possible to you for a front and end up sitting in enqueue territory. If they sit back further than you can reach. So it's, it's, it is important for the scores, but it may also actually be the difference between a title and no title. So I think a lot of people, even people who know they want to tuck sit and understand kind of the difference, still really struggle to actually get one from their dog. So what, why is that so hard? Well, it's, so all, most of the dogs that I work with, that I have seen, I don't want to, I don't want to claim all dogs in all of the world, but the dogs that I have had the chance to work with either in person or online, usually offer, like they fall on a spectrum. They'll offer a range of sits. So we'll see a sit that is 100% tuck the front feet plant and stay put and everything about the dog's weight moves forward into that sit. And we'll see dogs that 100% rock back where no matter, like it almost seems no matter what the circumstances are, the hind feet stay put and the dog walks back into the sit. And then most dogs are somewhere in the, in the middle. They'll offer some of the time they'll tuck into the sit, some of the time they'll rock back.

And we'll even see sort of a, what I consider like a hybrid where they'll, they'll almost move like on a diagonal and they'll rock back with one front foot and tuck with one hind foot. And so they'll end up a little bit crooked, which also of course affects the, the, the straightness of the front or the finish. Um, and so for, for some dogs that conveniently kind of fall in the middle of that spectrum, it's just a matter of setting up a situation where the tux it is a little more likely. Maybe we're luring them into a tux it or even just reinforcing them for the tux and not reinforcing for the, the not tux. And there are, and there are dogs that you get it for free. So after my, my, the dog where I learned about the difference between rock back sits and tuck sits, um, my next dog Gambit came with a tuck sit. I did nothing. It was lovely. Um, it wasn't a dog, right? It wasn't, the universe loves balance. So that was, uh, that's how, that's how they say. And then you'll, I'll, I'll tell the story about my third dog following that. But, um, but yeah, Gambit came with a tuck sit. So he came at nine, 10 weeks old. If he sat nine times out of 10, it was a front foot planted tucked sit. So that was pretty easy. Then I could just selectively reinforce those. And then all I had to really worry about was, was straightness. Um, but then my next dog was the opposite. Again, the universe loves balance. And it was actually, it's kind of funny because it was around, it can, around the same time. I'm really becoming aware of these things. I'm refining my shaping skills so that I, I, I actually can, I have the mental space to, to pay attention to that kind of detail. And she was the complete opposite. If she sat at all, it was a rock back. It was a real rock back. Like she'd move like one and a half body lengths backwards into that sit. And I was like, well, that's okay. Cause I'm a dog trainer and I can fix everything if I just love it enough. And, um, I'm just kidding, but, um, but I felt like for sure this is a solvable problem. And so I was like, well, I'm going to lure her into a tuck sit and I would put food on her nose and I would follow the very best, most effective luring motion up and forward. And she would rock back away from the food into a sit. And we would both just look at each other with like, you know, rumpled brows. Like, why aren't you doing this right? And why aren't you doing this right? This is how we sit. And, um, and it was, it was actually, I started to kind of freak out a little bit. And, um, and I took her to see a local trainer that was, um, very experienced in obedience

and, and she basically had me do the thing I was already doing and, and it still didn't work. And so I took her to see a seminar with another, a nationally recognized, very successful obedience trainer. And, and she helped me problem solving. We tried a couple different things and she couldn't get her to lure her into a tuck sit. And we tried a couple different things. We put her on a platform and there was no, there was no tux. I may well have asked her to fly, right? There was just, no matter how good the food, no matter how talented the, and skilled the, the luring hand that held the food, we could not get her into a sit or we could, she would sit all the time. It was just a rock back sit. And so I put it on shelf for a little while, like, I don't know, seven months because I, I couldn't put it a cue on this rock back sit because I was going to compete with this dog in obedience. And, um, and so I made like a really nice mental block for myself. And the, the piece that I realized was missing. So then I go, so this is my, one of my primary defensive strategies is, is research. So if I, if I don't know what to do or I don't like the answer, I I'll go and I'll let's, let's just do more research, right? We can learn more about it. And that'll, and that's better than acting and actually making a decision or doing something. So I go and I start watching a lot of video of dogs sitting and I start watching dogs in person and trials, you know, coming into a front, talking and saying like, what are they doing? What are they doing that my dog is not doing so that I can break this down into its individual motions. And the, the first thing that I'm seeing that these dogs do that's different is that the dogs that tuck into the set are shifting their full body weight onto their front legs before they even bend a single knee. And my dog was doing the exact opposite. Her head was coming up and she was pushing her body backwards. So her whole weight was rocking backwards onto the set to get into the set. And so, well, then what happens if your weight's shifting backwards, you're going to tend to move your body backwards. If your weight's shifting forward, you're going to tend to move your body forward. So what I needed to do was get that forward weight shift. So I started experimenting with the, what are places where I get that kind of weight shift? And, um, I tried a lot of it because again, luring just wasn't, wasn't working. So I, it couldn't get a full sit, but I could put her front paws on like a target or a low platform or a step. And she would lean forward over that step.

So then I had the weight shift and I could reinforce that. And that turned out to be kind of the pivotal behavior to get a tucked sit out of this dog. And then that's, and then of course I, because I'm a good scientist and so we have to test it. So then I tested on all of my local clients and then I tested on all of my online clients. And so, you know, dog after dog, this is, this is the piece for all of those dogs that are just seem to be incapable of, of tucking into the sit. Once we get that forward weight shift, not a sit, but just a standing forward weight shift where they lean their weight onto their arms, their, their front legs, our arms. Um, you can tell I do a lot of projection and just, just during when I'm, when I'm working through these problems. Um, and if you could see me on video now, you would see that I am doing all of these actions with my own body on my desk and chair. But anyways, um, so yeah, so once we get that forward weight shift, getting the tuck sit becomes really pretty easy. And if we try to somehow skip that, it's really hard to get the tux it and everybody gets frustrated. So that was the piece that finally clicked into place. And there's lots of ways to get that weight shift. Um, but, uh, the, the front feet planted lean your weight forward, um, and watching her shoulder muscles, um, at this time she had like really no coat. She has a lot of, a lot more coat now, so it would be harder to see, but I could see her shoulder muscles actually working as she leaned her weight forward onto those front legs. Um, and being able to mark and reinforce that and then work from there into the sit. Then from there, it was just like rolling a ball downhill. It was really easy. That's awesome. So my next question was going to be, can you break it down and, uh, explain kind of what comes into teaching it? But I think you've got that covered unless there's anything you want to add. Yeah. I mean, really that's the, that's the main thing. It's, um, if you, if you can, if you can find a way to tap into that weight shift, um, I, early on, I was using a lot of front foot targeting. Which required the dog have a huge reinforcement history for sticking their front feet to a target because still front feet is part of it. Um, since then I've discovered a few shortcuts. Like for example, um, using a, a front edge, like a step, like I use the front step on my porch or I have, um, into the training space that I use has a, like a, uh, just like three steps, um, into it. So there's just a front edge. It's not, it's not a full platform because I don't care about the side to side, um, limitation

at this point. I really actually want the dog to feel comfortable leaning. And we tend to feel more comfortable leaning if we've, if we have space to spread out sort of, um, but like a, a front step, um, preferably one that the dog has like already existing in their environments. Like if you have like a, uh, your living room has, um, a lot of my clients have like the sunken living room where like it's one step down into like their, their living room space. I don't know if that makes sense. Um, so a lot of folks seem to have that, um, or, or a step and on their porch. Um, so your dogs already are used to this in their environment and it, it doesn't take a lot of extra training to teach them to, to stand on the top of the step and to lean forward. And the visual I have in my mind as I'm, I'm shaping towards this is, you know, if you've ever tried, if you've ever tried to lure your dog into a bathtub or lure a horse onto a horse trailer, um, or, or you lure your dog off of the dock into the lake, it is amazing how long the dog or the horse's neck can stretch forward without a single paw or hoof stepping into the bathtub or onto the trailer. And if you, if you pull them forward over this edge and they are sufficiently motivated to stay on the edge. Now with a bathtub or a horse trailer, there's a, there's a negative reinforcement contingency, right? They don't want to put their feet in the trailer or in the bathtub. But if it's, if it's just, we fed them a bunch of times for staying up on that step, um, and then we present a target or whatever a little bit further forward of that, they're, they're going to be a little bit used to having their feet up on that. So we can use positive reinforcement here. And as they lean forward without stepping down, they lean forward to get the carrot, to get the treat. Um, you'll, you'll actually see their front legs take the weight and their back feet start sliding forward up underneath them. Um, and when we start getting that, because they're, they're leaning as far forward as they can without moving their feet in order to not just flip, you know, flip head over heels off of the steps there. Their haunches come up underneath them. There's no weight on them yet. We have to fix that later. But again, that's, it's that first action of moving from the stand, shifting the weight forward and letting that pelvis come up underneath them. We can capture that. And, uh, and then it's really easy to shape from into a set from that point, but trying to get a set from the stand without that weight shift is really, really hard.

Um, so we get that, that first little activation, um, energy, that first step. And, and then it's, and then it's all really very easy. So I wanted to ask a little bit about age. So what age can you really start working on a behavior like that with a puppy? I know I've seen kind of mixed recommendations in the past. I'm just curious to hear your take. Yeah. So I think, you know, with, with puppies, um, it's, there's, there's a happy medium as with everything. Right. So I'm, I would definitely put a lot of energy into making sure that that puppy was really confident and able to shift weight forward and back is like a balanced proprioceptive kind of thing, which I think people do, or it's becoming more common, more popular, um, as part of our puppy raising, like to getting them used to different kinds of surfaces, getting them used to using their body in different ways. And just a forward backward weight shift, um, with the standing puppy is very, it's low impact. Um, it's, uh, you can do a whole bunch of them in a very short amount of time. You know, keep a really high rate of reinforcement, really keep it really positive, really simple, very easy for the puppy. Um, so I would put a lot of energy into that forward backward weight shift. Cause then whether you're, whether you're looking for that tuxedo or you're looking for the, the fold back down, um, having a puppy who can confidently balance on front or back, um, and, and control that movement is going to find any of the other actions that we want to teach easier. Um, I don't want to put a whole lot of, and really this is more of a human problem. I don't want to put a whole lot of pressure on myself or on the human side for getting like a perfectly square sit, but I want to be setting up situations where I'm encouraging the mechanics that I do want, because it is easier to, to teach these correct mechanics when you have that brand new soft, moldable brain central nervous system to play with. Then it is with a, you know, a four or five year old dog who's been sitting a certain way for several years. Then you have that, that reinforcement history to overcome. Um, so I think following good puppy training, you know, procedures of short fun sessions, you know, just, you don't have to do, it's certainly not, you know, 10 minutes of sitting, but, but, you know, do three reps here, three reps there in between while you're working on teaching them to play with you and cultivating your reinforcers. So again, you're teaching them, you're teaching them about their body.

You're teaching them how to move their body in space so that they're, they can be safe and they can be confident. Um, and then gradually, and I would start this at, you know, as soon as they're ready to start training. So five and a half weeks, six weeks, um, whenever they're interested enough in, in our food and in our interaction that we can, we have leverage, uh, and, uh, and, or, you know, or eight or nine weeks when you, when you bring them home, if, if you don't have access to them that early, but, um, we can start setting those things up in the context of all the other normal puppy stuff that we would do, um, without, you know, without getting super rigorous and formal about it. Um, I, I just, I'm, I'm, I'm looking at these sorts of behaviors are the function of a well-balanced, um, physical, you know, physically well-balanced dog. And we can start that very, very early for sure. So the other precise behavior I wanted to talk a little bit about is a fold back down. Can you again, just kind of talk about what's the big deal there and describe the behavior a little bit? Yeah. So the fold back down is sort of the opposite of the tucked set. So with a fold back down, um, I want everything about the dog moving backwards. And the two places where this matters is the drop on recall and the signal, the down in the signal, part of the signals exercise in utility, um, with the novice, like the only down that we have in novice is the, uh, the long down for the stay. And it doesn't really matter how the dog lays down in that, in that context. But by the time you get to open, um, the, the drop and recall and the signals exercise, both of those are again, scored by the dogs. Um, well, they're kind of scored by the opposite. They're scored by how not forward the dog comes after you give the down cue. So ideally we want them to drop in place or, or even kind of push back into the down. So it's that fold back down idea. So again, if we look at the dog as having, um, as being sort of a rectangle, we want to flatten that rectangle. Um, and I don't know how many Amazon prime deliveries you get per month, but you may be breaking down some boxes, uh, for recycling periodically. If I have the, like the top and bottom punched out and I'm left with like a hollow rectangle, I can fold it forward or I can fold it back. And so I want our, with the dog, we want them to fold back so that everything about their body, their weight shift is pushing backwards. Their hind feet stay planted for this transition from stand to down. And the reason that I want that is, uh, one in signals, the judge is looking at, um, the

dog starts off in a standing position. You're going to give a cue from 40 feet away for the dog to lie down. And the judge is looking for the dog to lie down without coming forward. And so if the dog pushes back, folds back into that down, then you're good. You're golden. Cause he's not, he's not going to come forward at all. In the drop on recall, we have that. Plus the dog is moving towards you like a freight train. So we need not only for the dog not to come forward as part of his down, but we need him to put on the brakes. And what's kind of cool. And again, I didn't get kind of excited is that the same muscles that fold the dog back into a down from a stand that push the dog back into the down are those same muscles that put on the brakes when a dog is moving fast. So the same muscles that stop a dog who's coming down a, a, a contact on a, on a dog walk. Um, those are the same muscles that are pushing against that forward momentum that are pushing him back into a down. So dogs that have really clean, fast, sharp fold back downs are going to drop really cleanly on your cue and a dog that needs to move his legs forward and out and doesn't need to, cause he can learn this. But if he, his, his habit of moving into a down is to walk his front legs forward and he's already moving forward, hurtling forward through space, then that momentum plus the mechanics of that down are going to carry him, are going to carry him even that much more towards you forward. Um, and that's definitely scoreable. And again, to the point of an enqueue, because if he moves more than maybe a body length, um, forward after you've given the cue, then we're, we're potentially enqueuing. And that's, it's the, that drop on recall is such a common weakness in an open performance. It's something that I've, I've put a lot of attention into because I get, I get a lot of folks that come to seminars and, you know, we're, we're, we're doing really good and open, but we can't seem to qualify on that drop on recall. It seems to be the, the, one of the first things that breaks, um, under pressure. And when we pull it apart and we'll see that, um, certainly imperfect drop mechanics can still qualify, but you really have to have a sharp cue response. And since the cue response tends to, tends to degrade a little bit under pressure, we get a little more latency, a little slower responses. It doesn't take a lot to take it an adequate down and turn it into an, an, an, an inadequate down in that, in that setting. So one of the, you know, certainly we want to do what we can to improve ring stress.

I certainly want to improve the stimulus control over the down, but we can buy ourselves a lot of buffer on those very, um, you know, kind of fragile, um, parts of the performance with a down that is, is a fold back down. Because then even if the dog does take a split second to respond to the cue, at least once he starts responding, he's not going to come forward anymore than he already has. Right. Um, so we get a lot more robust performance with a dog that is, and again, we get some overlap there because they're, they're both fluent in putting on the brakes. They're fluent in stopping their forward momentum and they're fluent in pushing their body back into the down. Those things come together and we get those like really flashy drop on recalls, which are also way more likely to hold up, um, under pressure than, you know, a little, a little, uh, less, less sharp drop on, drop on recall. When teaching a fold back down, where do people struggle? And, um, I guess if you have any tips for how they can teach the behavior, those would be great too. Yeah. So again, the, the, one of the problems is how we're taught to teach that down, that the dog teaching the dog to lay down in puppy class is, is counterproductive to, to our goals. It's, I mean, it's truly like a dead end. So if the dog is taught that he has to sit and then lay down, and that's what a lot of dogs learn because we teach them to down from a set, we lure them into the set and then we lure them forward into the down. And then we put that on cue and the behavior becomes sit and then lay down is like one big piece. And, um, and so if, if the dog is standing and you say down, the dog puts his butt down and then walks his front feet forward to lie down. And that's, um, again, that's, it's not helpful. We want that push back into the down. So, you know, one of the first things is making sure, can my dog actually go from a stand into a down without sitting first? That's the first and most important and critical piece. Um, most dogs actually can, if you pay attention, they often lay down from the stand all the time. Um, so we, and, and we can, you know, we can take those moments and we can build on them so that we're teaching a stand from a down because, or sorry, teaching a down from a stand because a down from a stand is closer to a down from motion than a down from a sit is in terms of mechanics, in terms of what muscles are being used and how the body is moving them. So teaching it right off the bat from a standing position instead of queuing or luring the sit first is half the battle.

Um, after that, um, I'm really find that the most effective thing to look at is the hind feet, um, making sure that the hind feet stay still. I was originally, I think a lot of us were originally taught to watch the front feet and, um, and those are easier to see, especially from a distance, but they are less predictive of the ideal down mechanics than watching the hind feet. If the hind feet stay in place, then the dog's body tends to stay in place. If the front feet, the front feet can stay in place, but the dog can still kind of hunch up into a down, which again, tends to turn into a creep forward when we add any source of pressure or stress. Um, so looking for, uh, like it's the opposite of the tuck set. So I'm looking for a backwards weight shift. I'm looking for the rear feet to be planted instead of a forward weight shift with the front feet planted. And we can do this with a target. We can do this with a platform. There's lots of, um, pieces, but again, it's, it's that focus on the rear feet is, um, is what makes the, what I've observed makes the difference between, um, an okay down and like those really snappy, sharp, pretty ones that we all want to, to replicate. You know, kind of just looking again at sits and downs as a group and just the idea of precision. Are there any, you know, common misconceptions people have when it comes to teaching these kinds of behaviors? And can you set the record straight? I think really the, the, the biggest misconception is either that, um, that we can't change it. Like that's just how your dog comes and which is total crap because we can, we don't have to give that away. I'm not going to let you off the hook. We can completely change that. Um, even if your dog is, is five or six years old, we had, um, in, in the last devil in details class, which is where we work specifically on these behaviors. We had dogs that were like nine, 10, 12 years old and we were changing mechanics, which was kind of cool. I did not actually expect that. I would have probably not counseled someone with a 12 year old dog to try and change how their dog lays down. But you know what? They did great. Um, which was really pretty cool. I think so. Yeah. So it's, it's that, you know, this is how my dog comes. He's, you know, he's just not good at, or using a label or, or qualifying as like a characteristic of the dog when it's just a behavior and we can shape it, you know, all behaviors modifiable, including these. And then the other side of that is, well, it's boring. And of course that's not true at all because dog training is awesome and it's really exciting

and having clear criteria and like a shaping plan, like dogs love that. They love clear criteria. So I think there's this idea of, of, you know, well, if my dog doesn't sit square and I try to teach him to sit square, then he'll hate, you know, he'll hate me. He'll hate obedience. Everything sucks. The world sucks. And, and that, that's really not true. It's all the same game to the dog. So it's, then it becomes a matter of how can I set this dog up for success? How can I break down the criteria so that they're reachable by this dog on this day? How can I set up a shaping session that takes me from what my dog currently does the highest probability, highest probability version of this behavior to what my goal of that behavior is and being really clear about what each of those steps look like. And when we're doing that, um, if you get as excited about shaping as I do, um, which most people probably don't and hopefully don't for the better end of the world, but, um, then, you know, we have these little training projects that we can do. And, and I've not met a single dog that didn't get more motivated with clear criteria, you know, as long as they're reachable, like having more clear criteria versus, um, where we do get in trouble, especially with things like fronts and finishes is if, is if we're using the word enough, uh, in our criteria or particularly in our head, like if you're working with your dog on fronts and you're, and you're watching your dog come into a front and you're asking yourself, is that straight enough to reinforce? As soon as we're saying enough, then yes, we're absolutely creating frustration because if you are thinking, is this straight enough? You are too late in clicking. Um, you're too late to reinforce whatever has already happened to make, uh, to impact the outcome. Um, so, you know, again, breaking the movements down and having it really, really clear what exactly am I reinforcing so that you can mark that instant. And when we're that clear and we're, our timing is that good, there's absolutely nothing to lose in being in, in, in building that precision. Um, we'll only, we'll only create more motivated, more clear dogs that love training because they know exactly what they're doing and they feel good about doing it and they can earn that reinforcement. So you kind of snuck in a quick mention there, the devils in the details class, and I know it's coming up again and somehow we managed not to mention it before then. So I want to talk about that for a second. Can you just tell us a little bit about the class, what it is? Yeah.

So, so the devil in the details, I think the title kind of, um, effectively describes it. This is definitely a dog nerd class. Um, it is written for those who enjoy, uh, a certain amount of hair splitting that love, like peeling away all the layers and seeing like what muscles are moving and what's the physiology behind this behavior and how can I, um, you know, manipulate and adapt my training sessions to, to effectively change the behavior that my dog is doing. Um, it's definitely not for like a casual, uh, brand new dog trainer. It would be like, most people would be bored by it. Um, the right people are going to get like totally pumped because it's really very nerdy. Um, and what we really do is we look at these core behaviors, which, um, are certainly critical to obedience, but also to a lot of, um, like the conditioning and trick behaviors that we want to do involve a lot of the same mechanics. And so can, can we look at what are, um, you know, what's really going on? Um, if we're, if we're having a problem with teaching a particular behavior, what is the dog doing that, that needs to be changed? And what are the muscle movements that we need to activate? How can we put together a plan to systematically activate the right series of muscle movements to take the dog from a stand into that beautiful tuck sit to square up any like straggly feet or, um, crookedness, um, and, and build, um, this kind of awesome sit down and stand. Um, so it is, it is six weeks on sit down and stand. And, um, and you'd think, how could you spend six weeks on that? And I could easily spend 12 because there's just, you can just keep going. There's such a rabbit hole there. But, um, but there is, I mean, there's, if you, if you've had trouble teaching a tuck sit and you are interested in behavior and you're kind of a behavior, you feel like you would maybe qualify as a behavior nerd, then this is a great class for you. Um, because we will, we will absolutely get a tuck sit, um, out of, out of your dog. Um, I feel pretty confident in saying that, but, um, but we do, I mean, we do dig, we dig pretty deep in terms of mechanics and physiology and criteria and, um, breaking things down, um, to get that, uh, cause that's what the dogs need from us. And that's offered December this time, right? Yes. December. It's in our December session. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast, Hannah. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. And thanks to our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week with Julie Simons. We'll be talking about handler scent discrimination and AKC scent work. 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 Buddy. Audio editing provided by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training. Thank you. Thank you.