E272: 로라 워드비(Laura Waudby) - "링을 위한 긍정적 CER 만들기"

I didn't realize you were over on TikTok. I'll have to go follow you after we get off the call. Yeah. Not many people are. So you can be one of the first. Well, there we go. So I think you mentioned in there a little bit about the trial prep stuff. So I know your class on ring confidence is on the schedule. Why is ring confidence something that we need to train? Well, if you want to trial the dog, even actually just for virtual trials, there are a lot of pieces of formality that make it different than just how you run your practice sessions. Usually we only focus on just the skill pieces that need to be tested, such as teaching the dog how to heal, how to retrieve, you know, how to sequence agility obstacles. But in a trial, the time actually spent doing those skills are pretty short compared to all the other stuff that goes in a trial. You know, how are you going to enter the ring? How are you going to move to the start line? And obedience, the time between each exercise is a huge piece where we lose a lot of dogs. And so it's really important to train those stuff. Generally, when we're doing something new, actually, even if it's not new, it just kind of helps to learn exactly what is going to happen. Because anxiety tends to lessen the more you know what to expect. So I really like social stories or social scripts just for myself, even I get really anxious in public. And so they kind of describe the routine of what is going to happen at different places. So like the most common example for people, you know, is like you go to the airport. You need to know what is going to happen to security. You know, do you take your shoes off this time? Do you not take your shoes off this time? What's going to happen? They actually may even make social scripts out there for going to Costco, you know, all those different types of routines that you need to know. And for our dogs, doing this trial prep is basically providing that social script for them. So they know exactly what is going to happen. You know, how are they going to warm up? How are you going to move from warming up to approaching the ring? How are you going to enter the ring? How, you know, what should the dog do when a judge approaches you? There's so many little pieces that we need to kind of teach the dog what to expect so that they are not anxious in those settings. So when I think about kind of this big picture of ring confidence, right, and all the pieces that you're talking about, it seems to kind of break down into two columns almost, right? So the specific skills that help our dog kind of handle the challenges of the show ring.

And then like this idea of like a positive conditioned emotional response. So I'd love to, you know, talk about each of those. So to start us out there, can you start by like sharing some examples of the skills? I know you mentioned a couple of them just a second ago that we can build that actually help our dogs handle the pressures of the show environment. I recommend making a list of kind of all the things that happen at a trial before you go in the ring, during the actual work. It's a pretty long list. So in my ring confidence class, I have a lot of that. And then there's actually a ring confidence two class by Denise as well that goes over even more stuff that is not in my class. Because it really is a pretty long list. It is very doable, though. You just kind of do one thing at a time. So some examples of things to think about is, you know, how are you going to enter the ring? So in obedience, in rally, you're probably going to heel into the ring. You're going to move past the steward's table. So you have to take into effect, you know, how is the dog going to focus past all those people? Maybe the toys on the table over there. You're going to be heeling up to a judge who's going to be talking to you. So kind of all those little pieces. In agility, you have other things to think about. So maybe you have to work on the ring steward calling out your dog's name before you go into the ring, because that can be really, really distracting for your dogs. You have to decide, you know, if there's maybe a push gate to open, are you going to wait right at that gate? And if you have a sensitive dog, do you want the dog to, once you get there, to kind of maybe paw touch the gate or poke it with their nose to tell you that they want to go in right at that moment? Or if you have like a really pushy dog, maybe you want to teach them that when you get to that gate and you put your hand on it, that they should pause, collect themselves, give you eye contact to let you know that they are mentally ready to go into the ring. And then you enter the ring. So just kind of, you know, what do you want that picture to look like? What does your dog need? Again, that more excitement building, that more kind of calm, collected focus. That's the other thing to think about is, how are you going to handle delays in the ring? Maybe it's a very small delay where your dog's already in heel. You're not quite sure the judge could tell you to go any second. Do you have little things they can do in heel position to keep connection with you, such as maybe a chin rest, maybe a quick nose bumps to your hand?

Or if it's going to be a long delay, again, do you break the dog on a heel? Do you play with them? Do you put them between your legs? Do you pet them? What should you do in each of those moments? So again, it's kind of a really long lesson you break it down, but you just, you straighten one thing at a time and you can get there. So on the flip side of that, what is this kind of the idea of a positive emotional response? What is it? And, you know, why might we want to work on that also? Well, a conditioned emotional response is going to happen regardless of what we do. Anytime you go somewhere, you're going to have a response to that place. Again, for both us and for our dogs. And hopefully training time has a really positive association with you and your dog, where your dog loves to work with you. They love to do the sport. But then when you go into the trial environment, the dog kind of learns that everything is a little bit different. You don't have food on you. You are probably really stressed. Your dog quickly learns that, especially in obedience, that another person is giving you an order. They're kind of commanding you around the ring. And so all of that can feel really differently. So with a dog who already has developed more of that negative response to a trial environment, I want to recondition them to have a positive response. So I do a lot of going into the ring and having a party with them, a lot of playing with them. And that's kind of nice, too, for a dog who has never traveled before, just so they can have that really happy start. But it's just extra important for the dog who has had those bad experiences. So we're going to very gradually add challenges before we have the party in the ring. But I like to start with the challenges being on the outside of the ring. So the dog, we're healing up to a lot of pressure, maybe distraction outside of the ring. As soon as we enter the ring, we have a big party. So we're going to keep that association that the ring is this really happy, easy place that stressful things don't happen there. And then we gradually add challenges inside the ring, but always to a level that the dog has already trained for. So it's hopefully very, very easy for them. Will a positive conditioned emotional response just happen if we focus on training kind of the individual pieces and the skills? Or is there, you know, really more to it than that? The short answer is yes. So I mean, technically, as we train the dog the skills and start putting it together, the dog will know what to expect.

And again, knowing what to expect will greatly lessen their anxiety in the ring. But we do have to be very careful that we're not over-challenging the dog. We're not rushing it and always adding something harder to the ring work. Because again, if we rush it, they're going to develop that negative association to the ring. Even though we're trying really hard, like, yes, dog, we're having a party. We're having fun. But if it's really, really hard to get there, it's going to overpower the ring. So it's not going to be that happy spot. So I mean, yes, they can just focus on the skills, but we do want to take it pretty slowly. And the more the dog already has that bad association, the more you really want to work on conditioning. Just the ring equals just a fun place to play. No pressure. Nothing else. And that's very gradually adding stuff to it. I know recently you shared two videos on your Facebook page, and I'm going to guess you probably also shared them on Instagram and TikTok, of you working on ring entrances. One video kind of each with each of your young dogs. Can you talk a little bit about your setup? And then I know that the two dogs you're working with have fairly different personalities. Can you also maybe talk a little bit about how you adapt training for each of them? Yeah. So I very recently started doing some more like people pressure to Lutz and Jenny's ring entrances. I've done ring work for a while with them. My general setup is kind of the same as what I've done in the past with them. So basically I set up some ring gates. I add a table in front of it. I add some chairs in front of it to kind of mimic a trial. If I'm on in public with a dog, I kind of just use what I got. So at Home Depot, I like using those orange accordion gates. Those are really nice ring gates in public. But generally, you just make a ring entrance. And then you start to add a little bit of pressure to that. And so some of the ones I've done recently with Lutz and Jenny is I've added a lot of spatial pressure. So I've made some really narrow aisles for us to try to get to the ring. I've had us healing directly towards a table and then turning to go into the ring. So they're healing and really towards a barrier, which is a lot of pressure for the dogs. It's easy for them to look away. And then I start to add some people pressure to that. Because especially for both of these dogs, that part is going to be very difficult for both of them for opposite reasons. Lutz is basically a golden retriever in a border collie body, but one who doesn't really like food. But very, very people friendly.

He wants to maul them with love. I've spent most of his life just working on can you eat cookies while a person is at a distance. And that was very difficult. But now he's gotten better. So I'm starting to add people pressure to the ring entrance itself. And for him, I'm using a lot of different people. And a challenge that I know that he can succeed. I'm actually typically using a toy reward for him for this because a cookie reward, I don't know if he'd quite be able to do that. So it'll be really good feedback. I want him to know that he can eat cookies, but he's working for a toy right now. But just been working on can he heal up to a person to get into the ring? I'm starting to add the people talking to him, people staring at him, which is very hard because once they're looking at him, he wants to go kind of say hi. So for him, I'm using a lot of different people. And again, the whole goal is that you do not get to greet people when you're working. And then for Ginny, she's kind of the opposite. She does not want to attract people she doesn't know. She's a little bit nervous around people she doesn't know. Definitely does not want to be petted by other people. And so for her, I am using one person for our ring entrance work with pressure. So I'm using actually just my mother, who she knows very well because she lived with her. And we're working on learning that, yes, you can heal by her. You can ignore her talking to you. So I want her really, really comfortable with the setup and knowing what to expect and having no issue with that. I want to get to a higher level with my mom before I switch in somebody new. Because when I switch to somebody new, I'm going to go back several steps as a person further away. So there's no pressure at all. Basically, for both dogs, I want them to learn that people are just like furniture. They're not exciting. They're not scary. Just you ignore them. And we do not interact with people at work. Because even when I build up to the interaction pieces, like a judge approaches them to say hi, even for the exam work, when a judge approaches to examine them, I want them to know that it has nothing to do with petting. It is just a distraction. And their job is to keep focused on me. So I'm going with both puppies. They're kind of doing the same stuff. It's just I'm a lot more picky about who I'm using with my more nervous dog. That makes a lot of sense. I think it's really interesting to kind of hear your thought process and why kind of you're approaching those things in those ways. So I know we've talked a ton about ring confidence.

You've also got your class on taking team obedience training into the open obedience ring on the schedule. So I thought I'd ask if you could talk a little bit about how directly those skills carry over. Well, the team skills in levels one and two really lay the foundations for pretty much any advanced obedience work. We start working on that right away. So even though we're not doing the specific exercise that happened in open, we're still working on a lot of those core pieces. So like the baby retrieves is still started in level two, you know, your fronts, your finishes, jumping without needing the person to walk forward, your baby heel work. And some of the pieces where we've actually already even started to combine in team. So like the command discrimination is one that will hopefully be pretty easy for my team students in some sense because they already have a distance work with their position changes. And a really big part of that is the pause in between positions. So a lot of dogs in a trial, you know, we have to wait for the judge to tell us when to give the next command. And a lot of dogs will either start to anticipate in those pauses or actually more common in a trial is a freeze. They freeze because there's all this pressure starting to build. They don't know why they're not being praised. They don't know why the next command hasn't been given yet. And so they start to kind of freeze up. And so in team, we have those pauses built in, very tiny pauses. But hopefully the dog is starting to get used to that. So those are kind of some of the foundations that will help you as we prepare for open obedience. Can you walk us through how some of those level one and two skills combined to build open exercises in particular? So two big ones that I want to talk about are the cone sends and the backups. I think I use a cone send for actually almost all of the open obedience exercises. I use it for the broad jump. I use it for teaching the retrieve over the high jump. And I use it for the drop on recall foundations and for position changes as well, actually. So I'll talk about one of the games I use it for. So one of my most favorite games is for a baby drop on recall, where basically you're combining your position changes. You're combining positions at a distance with a position in motion for that game. And the cone is a really easy way to start because once you send the dog around the cone, if you give the position change cue when they're at the back of the cone, they're already collected as they make that tight 180 degree turn.

And it's an easy way to add just a tiny bit of motion in at a distance for me to start. So basically the dog goes around the cone, I'm cueing the down right as they are at the back of it. And hopefully they're learning to lie down right at the cone. The cone also acts as kind of a little bit of a target like, oh, I lie down right here. And then I can progress that to make it harder by adding a second cone or more distance. So now the dog doesn't know when they're going to tell them to drop that. Maybe I send them around the cone and then I turn and I send them around a second cone or even a third cone. And then I start to kind of vary where I tell the dog to drop. And then after they drop, I can reward them. I could even send them to go back around the cone behind them to kind of have another intermediate behavior between I down at a distance and then I turn and I go behind. So I've been going further away from mom before I get my toy, before I get my food to kind of help build some of that distance and prevent creeping there. And of course, in backup is another really great team skill in level one that I can apply towards some of the open skills as well. So I might have the dog back up after doing the drop on recall. So again, they're moving further away from me. Or I might have them back up after doing each position change. So again, they're moving further away from me. So those are kind of two foundational pieces that we use from team one to kind of help build some of the more advanced exercises. So I was looking through the syllabus. If listeners have a lot of the skills for team one and two, even if they don't have the team titles yet, could they still work through the class? Or does somebody really need to be working through the team program in order to benefit from the class? We don't need to have done any of the team testing at all. It is recommended to have the same foundations, though. So you don't have to have taken a team class. You don't have to have the team class in your library or have any of the titles. But there are some prerequisites in the syllabus that I do want down. Primarily going around a cone and distance is a big one because I've talked about it. I use that for a lot of the open skills is going out around the cone. You know, you're going to want some backing up to a target, positions at a distance. And probably the one that most people don't train a lot of is the Zen Bowl work. I use that for some exercises as well. You don't have to have it really advanced.

But I do want the dog knowing that if you put down a container with a reward in it to at least not move towards it and offer you eye contact. You have a minimum that skill. So bonus points if the dog can do a simple behavior like a chin rest or a position change with the Zen Bowl on the ground because I'm going to kind of build off of that. But basically, you are welcome to join the open class if you have done none of the team skills. And it's gold. I would like a little bit of those prerequisites. But just take over the lesson. Most of you guys have been training it already. All right. So anything else that you would like to share about either class, who should take them, or anything else that you're working on? I think the big things I want people to know for the rank confidence work is that anxiety lessens when you know what to expect. So the more we prepare our dogs and ourselves to know exactly what is going to happen in a trial, every little piece, it'll help you feel a lot better because you know how to handle the dog in those moments. And then the dog can relax because it's not unexpected. So everybody will be calmer if you kind of teach all those little pieces. All right. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Laura. You're welcome. And thanks to our listeners for tuning in. We will be back next week with Loretta Mueller to talk about agility basics and the importance of timing. If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice. The 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. Music.