에피소드 71: Daisy Peel

I took some classes. And then it was kind of off to the races. So I kind of came to agility backwards from pretty much everybody else. Most people in agility have a dog and it's naughty. And it's jumping on their furniture and jumping over fences. And somebody says, oh, you should do agility. Your dog would be great at it. Like, you know, you don't need to be a dog trainer. Just go do it. Your dog's jumping. It's fine. That's all it needs to know. So I kind of came at it backwards. And that's how I got into agility initially. So did you start right away with the border collies? Or did you go a different route? I started with the border collies. But it was an accident. It was accidental. Because when I went to the library, there was a book on border collies. And there was a book on Australian shepherds. And in the border collie book, they were all black and white. And the border collie book, basically the whole book was telling you about how you should not own a border collie. They were for serious people only. And you were not good enough to read one. They were not, or to own one. They were not for the casual pet owner. And the Australian shepherd book had all these dogs that were different colors. And they went on and on about how it's just like a border collie, only it's easier to live with. Which is bullshit. But anyways, so I went to the shelter. And the dog that I found was red and white. Now it had a tail. So I thought, well, that's kind of weird. And I know that Australian shepherds don't have tails. But it's red and white. And border collies only come in black and white. So it must be an Australian shepherd. So I'll take it. So that's how much I knew. Well, but I mean, that was not, it wasn't easy at all back then. And as you say, books really, I mean, that's how the knowledge, you know, that's, you read it in a book. And it's like, yeah. And you never, you never even ask yourself, well, who is the person behind the book? Like, who is the outer? Like, how much that person knows? Nope, not at all. No question. I mean, it was a book. Someone, they got it to, someone to print it. So it was probably true. Yes, exactly. Oh, my God. Yeah. So it became apparent pretty quickly that it was a border collie, not an Aussie because of its behavior. But whatever, I wanted to do agility. And border collies and Aussies, I knew they all said they were the best at agility. So that was what I was going for. I guess, you know, I think it's normal every time anybody starts into something and kind of opens the door, so to speak. It's all excitement. But when did you realize that it's a serious, challenging sport?

Or how long did it take for that to kind of sink in? I was pretty serious about it right away and much more serious than the people around me. Because, again, most people, they just wanted their dog to not chew on their furniture for at least one day a week. And that was kind of the deal. And I was, I mean, I was a super nerdy kid. I never played sports. I was in the marching band. And just something about dog agility in particular really tickled me. And I, from the get-go, I was serious. And I think within the first, yeah, it was within the first couple of years. Because I remember in 2001, there's an agility magazine called Clean Run. And, of course, I subscribed to it and I read it religiously. I can't tell. Yeah, yeah. It does still exist? Digital only. They don't print anymore. Yeah. And so in 2001, in the fall of 2001, there was an issue that came out. And it was the USA World Team issue. And they had gone to Portugal that year and they'd won gold. And it was a really weird year because they had all the, and I found all this out later, but it was a pretty interesting year because it was 9-11 happened. And then they went over to Portugal and they won the gold medal, which was pretty tough for the USA to do because we didn't have YouTube. We couldn't look at the courses from overseas. We really didn't know what was going on over there. So they, the team would go over blind and hope they had the skills to compete with the Europeans. So that magazine cover came out and it had all these cool pictures of world championships. And I mean, mind you, I'd gotten my first dog to do agility in 98 and this was 2001. So by then I had another dog and I saw that magazine. I was like, that's it. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to be on the world team. That's me. So I was pretty serious from the beginning. How was it? Were the rules different from, from what you were doing in the States compared to the worlds? Or the, the Europe? The rules. I don't know that it was the rules that were so much different, but the course design was very different. So the, um, and yes, the rules were different and they're still pretty different in the sense that in the United States, you can get a championship title without ever winning a class. And that's true in all the organizations. I think, I think in USDA, you have to win a couple of classes in a couple of games. Um, and in UKI, the same is true, but in the American Kennel Club, you can get a, uh, an agility championship without ever winning. And you can advance from the novice up to the highest levels without ever winning.

And in Europe and the rest of the world, you only can advance to the next level. If you win or place, you have to win a few classes or place in more classes to advance. So it's a pretty, it, it ends up creating a pretty different end result. Yeah. Higher levels. Mm. And it, it places a different emphasis on, um, speed versus consistency and accuracy and those sorts of things. Were you, were you all the time in, in, uh, Ohio or were you somewhere else at the time? No, when I started, I lived in Oregon and it was pretty, it was pretty isolated. Um, so I didn't, I kind of had to, I had a, I had a couple of good instructors, but I had to figure a lot of stuff out on my own. There wasn't online, online education just didn't exist. There was a little bit later, I latched onto a really good instructor who lived in Ohio or still lives in Ohio. Her name is Linda Mecklenburg. And one summer before school started, uh, when I was still on summer break, I drove out to attend a summer camp that she held. And by the end of the summer camp, I was just begging her to take me on as a student, a long distance student, which involved me recording my training, burning it onto a DVD, mailing her the DVD and then getting email feedback. It was pretty committed. Very different. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Yes. Those were very different times. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Wow. And okay. Uh, um, I was, I was still in California back then. And they had a few groups, like I was in Northern California. There was like few pretty good groups back then. Um, I used to have. You probably were, the Bay team was probably one of them. Yeah. I can, I'm so bad with names, but like sometimes when I hear the name, I kind of like, yes, but a lot of times I just horrible with names and faces. Yeah. Dog training is different, but yeah, I have a lot of. Bay area was a pretty big hotspot. I would drive down there for competitions. Nancy guys. Nancy guys. Yeah. See, this is what I. Yep. She was a world team coach for a long, long time. And before she was the world team coach, she was a very successful competitor in her own right. Um, and she was one of the. But she still do. Do you know? Yep. She's still, she's still competing. She's not coaching anymore, but she still competes. Um, and she still teaches. Yep. And I remember, I, I'm almost a hundred percent sure that it was her. She would come cause we would do. Well, it was called shoot home at that time. Not IGP. Yep. You know? Yeah. Because she had. And, uh, and she used to come to my club sometimes just to give a few bites to the border colleague, just to, just to kind of take the, you know, just to do something else, you know?

Yeah. And that, that was how I found out about, um, you know, fast forward to just a few years ago, that was how you popped up on my radar because, um, I started looking into Michael Ellis's content and I started getting really interested in bite sport stuff. And so I started watching people like Michael Ellis and watching people like you because I had a couple of, uh, my dogs were pretty young at the time. My current dogs, they were two. And I really liked the, um, I really liked the commitment to toy play that the bite sport people have where, um, there seems to be a much more, much more committed to building motivation and engagement and, and structured toy play. And the structure. Yeah. Yeah. Before you start teaching behaviors and in the agility world, there's this big rush to kind of one up everybody by showing off all of the behaviors that your little itty bitty puppy has learned all the tricks. Um, and I was that way too for a long time, but these days I've, I've shifted quite a bit towards what the bite sport people are doing, which is teach your dog marker cues. Sure. But there's no need to be teaching a puppy lots and lots of behaviors when you've got so much motivation, engagement, um, structured reinforcement stuff to train first, and then you can teach them anything. Have you tried with a different breed at all? No, I've only owned Border Collies. I had, I worked, I did work with a Terrier very briefly. It was not for me. Um, I, I keep telling myself, I'd love to own a Malinois, but for the moment it's just Border Collies. Yeah. Yeah. I am the same. Um, I, I wish someday I have this time and I have like, at least I breathe that always pop up in my head. And I'm like, I so want to have one. Um, but, um, why, what is with the Border Collie that it's so brilliant in, in agility? I mean, it's just like a different. Yeah. I think because there, there's so much, even when nowadays people teach lots of verbal discrimination skills on an agility course. So, um, front side of a jump backside of a jump left, right, all this stuff on a verbal, but there's still so much, uh, body language that's involved. So when you watch the people at the highest level, they're running their butts off and using a lot of really subtle physical cues to get the dog around core. So acceleration, deceleration, lateral motion, slight shifts in shoulder presentation, which arm they're using. And, and the Border Collies are so good at anticipating your next move. Cause that's what they do with the livestock. And they're so watchful and sensitive to pressure.

Um, and also selected to respond to the whistle cues at a distance that I think they're, and they're, uh, the way they're built, they're just kind of uniquely suited for the sport. Um, when the, when agility started, what the, was it right away the Border Collies sport or, or was it a little, you know? Yeah. There were a lot of people when I got into it, I started with the Border Collies. Um, but there were a lot of people really early on who had boxers. Cause the boxers really enjoyed, I think because they really enjoyed playing. Dynamic. Dynamic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I know that Nancy guys had some, I can't even remember what it was called. It was a big German breed. Um, it almost looked like a flat coat retriever, but it was a. Um, yeah. Yeah. See, this is me again with name. I know exactly what breed you're talking about. It was like something burger or something like that. Yeah. But, uh, so boxers were pretty popular. And then at the lower top heights, Shelties are pretty popular. Yeah. Shelties. Yeah. Um, and now at the smallest heights, Shelties and Papillons and, and nowadays working Cocker Spaniels are pretty popular as well. They're pretty good at it. They're pretty quick. Like what is the, the optimal age on average where, you know, okay, these are, these are like my two years that I really need to make it because before that it's, you know, hit and miss after that, it's like, okay, now we're very calculated and, and it's going downhill. But what is the, what is the optimal age for agility on average? It seems like, um, most dogs hit their stride around three or four. They, you know, they, they, they've been competing since maybe two and a half. So they've been around to enough different places that they're pretty seasoned travelers. Um, they, they're mature. So I would say four to eight, nine, if you're lucky, they can still do it, but they're not, they're not as competitive speed wise. And the bigger they are, the harder it is because jumping is just, it's pretty hard on their bodies. Yeah. Yeah. There is a, I mean, there is always, uh, like we, you know, because I'm in a different sports, but, but I do hear from time to time that even, you know, agility training and agility as a sport gets kind of under the, the scrunity of, uh, you know, the, the animal rights. And because it's, because of what you're saying that it's difficult on the body and, and supposedly, you know, let's ban agility kind of thing. Is that there were, there've been a couple events throughout the years, uh, big national events that I have been to where there'd be an announcement made that, you know, you, you

need to be mind, be mindful of who's in the crating area. Um, they would post security guards and you'd have to have a bracelet to make sure that you proved you belonged there because there was word that people were going around opening up kennels, which always seemed ridiculous to me. Like, how can you say that you're an animal rights activist and like, how can you be for the welfare of an animal that if you're going to turn them loose to just like get killed in the street or something like, come on, give me a break. But by and large, that's not really a huge deal. I don't think. No. Yeah. Yeah. I see the protection sports are under siege. I mean, it's not the, it's like in Europe specifically, it's, it's becoming very, very difficult. And and unfortunately, the agility world's a little behind bite sports, I think, because, um, we kind of all, it sort of seems like we're all these different disciplines are kind of on a similar track where, um, you know, 20 plus years ago, we all got introduced to the miracle of clicker training and thought, Oh my God, we can, we can accomplish all this stuff without using harsh punishment. Let's do it because why wouldn't you? And then you can get pretty far with it. And then, um, I think the bite sport people came to it, have come to it before agility and obedience probably, but you realize you can get really far without any aversives, but you're not, there's going to come a point where you're going to have to employ their use. And then at that point, you don't want to go back to the trash that you were doing before you discovered clicker training or whatever. And so is there a better way? And so I think the bite sport world, which is part of why I've kind of glommed onto it is that you guys, I think are ahead of us in terms of, all right, well, we know we need to use aversives and punishment, but we don't want to be shitty about it. So what are, how can we do it in a way that the dog's prepared for? Um, they know how to escape these things. They know how to avoid them, you know, all that stuff. So I, you know, what has been very interesting and it's something that, uh, when we decided to have that conversation, I, it's always every time I'm like, Oh, well, what should we talk? And every time this always comes to my mind and it's, um, about like, I not anymore simply because I don't do too much lessons, but there was a time that I would get agility people, not even high level, just like a, just a normal person, not even necessarily with a border collar, but they have a dog, they love their dog. They want to do something and they get kicked

out from agility places. Very like this is for, for some reason, I think I helped a couple of people and next, you know, you know, they talk to each other and somehow they start coming and all it was, they, they kind of get kicked off, kicked out from different clubs because they cannot control the dog, but nobody wants to even attempt to control the dog. Right. And the dog is not necessarily a, like, it's definitely not a killer dog. It's just out and about here I am, you know, until somebody has to say a little bit more firmly, just not, not okay. Stop, you know, that's, that's, um, and that's part of what has happened. What's been happening more and more in the sport is that as we've gotten, as a community, as we've gotten better and better about developing motivation and drive and engagement, now we've got all these dogs that we've really worked into a heightened state of arousal and we take them to a competition and we have no, a lot of people don't have any strategy to keep the dog from, I hate using the word reactivity, but to keep the dog from acting like an idiot on the end of the leash because there's no, there's not been any strategy to, um, institute any consequences for that behavior and it doesn't get addressed. And the, the advice usually is, well, just move the dog further away from the ring until it calms down and give it a bunch of cookies. And, and that's not really practical because you have to get to the ring if you want to compete. And so I think that's, we're, there's a lot of, um, tension in the community at the moment to solve these problems that we've created. And I think we're kind of right on the cusp of, of that next step. That's cool. Yeah. Especially, I mean, I mean, let's say, okay, if you, if it's somebody that has already devoted all the time and it's able to go to a high level of competition and, and somehow clearly they are making it and they're willing to put up with it. And it's some, maybe, maybe it's not as easy, but it's working out for them. But for the people that just have a normal dog that want to do the sport and not being able to, then what is left for the dog to have as an outlet and the people get kind of disappointed and bummed out and, and what is left going around the block on a flexi lead and what ends up happening is, um, what comes to most people naturally, which is the, some sort of mistake happens or the dog is wrong or the, and the handler gets frustrated and we'll start yelling no, or, you know, hands on the hips, social pressure,

that kind of stuff. And so even if you say that you don't want to use any punishment and you don't want to be mean, you get into the ring and you get aroused and you don't really have a strategy for what to do when things go sideways, because you've only ever been taught how to train behaviors and how to reward the dog and never there's the other side of things has never been addressed. And so there's a lot of that that happens. Handler goes in the ring, something happens. Um, they get frustrated and angry. Certainly it's happened to me before, or they do something really subtle, like slump their shoulders or sigh heavily. And the dog is so unprepared for that kind of social pressure or omission of reinforcement that the dog just quits and leaves. So we have a, the combination of, um, dogs that are pretty insensitive to any sort of correction. And then also on the other side of things, dogs that are just practically traumatized by the slightest hint of, Oh my God, it was wrong. I don't know what to do with this. It's pretty interesting. And, uh, we, we had, uh, I had Dr. Stuart Hilliard and Forrest Mickey at my place back in December. Yeah. I, I, I, so they, yeah, they didn't really know much about agility. So I had a fun run the night before we started. And so some local people could come and, and just normal agility people come and do their thing so that they could watch. And it was pretty interesting because Stuart's, the first thing he said was, I have, I am so surprised. I have never seen so many dogs have such a traumatic response to such low level omission signals like disappointment or shoulder slumping. And these dogs just absolutely melt. And he said, we, we don't see that because we prepare our dogs for that. We know they're going to encounter it in the work and we prepare them for it. But in agility, you get somebody with their two-year-old dog that would, you know, Oh, your dog's gonna be great at agility. It jumps the fence, go for it. And the dog has had no training and they've not been prepared for that moment where they're going to be wrong. It's pretty interesting. Yeah. What is a common way when, uh, like, I mean, I'm sure there is like, just like with every training, there is quite a few different approaches and, but, but like, for an average beginner and average coaching kind of more standards, standards-arized coaching, when the dog decides to, well, they kind of answer that question where I was going to say like when they, when they're just, you know, sitting in their crate and just doing anything to just completely

empty themselves before they ever come on the field. What, what is a common practice and, and what is okay and what is not okay in the agility circles to, to control the dog in, in some way. So, so it doesn't behave like that. And, and so it can actually give it cookies, function, give cookies. Okay. I mean, I mean, and to some extent, that's a good strategy. You want the dog comfortable in a kennel. Um, but at some point, at least in my opinion, the, you want to reinforce the dog for good behavior in its crate, but also at some point it's going to behave inappropriately and that behavior needs to be corrected. Now, some people, uh, there are all sorts of different ways people might do that. Um, and depending on where you are or what class you're in, you might get lucky and someone would say, well, you know, throw a, throw a can, a soda can or a water bottle filled with beans or coins at the kennel to get the dog to be quiet. So sometimes you'll get that as advice, but a lot of the time that there's no mention of any aversive correction or punishment at all. It's primarily focused on, well, give the dog a frozen Kong or give the dog more cookies or run the dog five miles in the morning before you go to the show to burn it out, that kind of stuff. Yeah. Some kind of deflection and differential reinforcement. What about when, um, when they're just really just way too exuberant and they cannot contain themselves to even get direction in the beginning? Like, like, like, let's say I'm, I, I go to, to a club and it's like my, whatever, fifth class lesson. And I have these dog that's just off the walls and I'm trying to at least pause for a moment to tell them to do something, but it's very difficult. What would be the common tactics that people would, the agility trainers would that result to? So if it's a, if it's a beginning class and the dogs are spending some time in crates and they're coming out one at a time to do some basic behaviors, it's pretty common to have a visual barrier that you might put up in front, like a, you know, a cardboard presentation board or something like that. Um, or if it's, uh, if it's in an agility context and there's, there's typically only one dog loose at a time. So it's pretty, the environment's pretty sterile to begin with. Um, the advice might be, well, you just need to, you need to dance around more. You need to wiggle your toy more. It's pretty, I think it's getting better, but it's, it's, you'll hear a lot of times, well, you just need to be more interesting. Like, well, what the hell does that mean?

If you were more, if you knew how to be more interesting, nobody would have to tell you to be more interesting. So you, you get coaching, you know, just be more interesting. Like, well, what the hell does that mean? You know, and what, not getting specific cues, like, okay, well, get up on your toes, move your feet around, crouch down into an athletic position. Don't, don't wiggle the toy, move the toy. Like that, those sorts of things typically don't happen. And you typically just hear, well, you just need to be more interesting. You need, just need to be more interesting than dirt. Which doesn't really do much for the trainer's self-confidence. Because all the years. Yeah, you're just putting, yes, very true. That's so true. That's, that's so true. It's like a, it's a good way for the coach, the instructor to just kind of squash you. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it, it, it, it's kind of also an interesting landscape because if, if you decide that you're really obsessed with the sport and you want to make it your livelihood, there's really only a couple of ways that you can make a living in the sport. You can make a living teaching or in agility, you can make a living if you own a facility, renting it out or making it with it. So there are a lot of people. What about sponsorship? Does that not? In the States, there's not a ton of sponsorship. Okay. But there, there ends up being a lot of people teaching because they, they gain some success with their own dogs who maybe really aren't teachers at heart. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Even, even if it comes intuitively, you're good, but, but to actually translate to somebody else what's going on and how to do it, it's, it's a different story. How, how often would be like, how often is enough to train to once, once you're on a certain level, just for, to maintain the level of competence, how, how many sessions per week or, or what, what does it take? I, I try and do a little training every day. It's not always agility equipment. So the dogs might not be doing jumping every day, but I'll be doing something every day. So some days I'll go out and set up a course that I usually, I'll find a course on Facebook, especially from like the, the judge that's going to be the judge for a tryout event or world championships. You can find their courses from competitions and they've all got grids on them. So you can use the grid system and set up the course exactly in your space. So I usually do that. I'll have a course set up so I can walk in and analyze it and kind of figure out what the skills are that are required.

And so some of the days of the week I'll be trying to run the course with the dogs or run sections of the course. Other days I go out into the arena and just do heel work. And we don't do any equipment because they get really object oriented really quick. And then they, they don't really want to watch the handler. They just want to do the objects because it's so fun. I like that. I'll do a lot of that. And yeah. And then other times I'll go out or I'll even do it in the house. Some discrimination work where I'll set the dog on a station and put some objects in front of them and challenge them to discern which object I want. And it's tricky because in agility we have. Think before you do. Think yeah. And it's tricky because in agility we have nowadays the dog could be looking at a jump, but they could be asked to take the jump going forward. Or they could be asked to run past the jump and take it backwards. And the handler's physical cues look the same. And you know, when everybody's moving and running, your physical cues are pretty overwhelming. And so unless you've got a dog that's really sharp with their verbal skills, at least for mine, which is probably something I'm doing as a trainer or maybe the dog's natural ability, those verbal skills seem like they require more attention. But they, they are definitely a good thing to have, right? Yeah. Yeah. They have to. And nowadays I start that training with marker cues. So they have to know the difference between get it and strike. So if there's a toy in my hand. What age would you start this kind of training? Or not what would you start, but when do you think, what is the age? Again, we're speaking average. What is the age that you feel a dog starts to actually understand that? Not just doing it because, oh, okay, I'm going to do this, but actually there is some purpose behind just doing it. I think pretty young. How old? Pretty young. Because when they're really young, now that I've gotten on the marker train bandwagon or marker cue bandwagon, I think that the food markers, I think you could probably start really young. I haven't had a puppy since I started all this, but I would imagine, especially with a little border collie puppy, if you take it home at eight weeks, I would be willing to bet by the time it's 10, 11, 12 weeks, it would know the difference between good, yes, and search. Yeah. No problem. Because they're so hungry. Yeah. Toy play is going to take longer because you have to develop all the interest and then you can put the structure on it. So maybe not until six or seven months.

I know I'm bombarding you with questions, but I'm sure it's interesting for everybody because I'm genuinely curious to talk to somebody that's doing agility in the modern times and a high level. And to go back to the question of how often you train and you mentioned that you would, whenever opportunity is, you would not miss a day. But do you find sometimes when you, for whatever reason, a week has gone by, is it better or worse when you start? Like I will tell you with, and I'm not talking protection dogs or sport. Like I am talking, again, kind of generalizing here with any dog that I train, I find that sometimes, actually not sometimes, most of the time I should correct it. But I think that kind of break, assuming that there are no calls in the training. It always seems very beneficial to where, like, I'm always like, these are, the next two sessions are just amazing because of that excitement of, okay, we're back at it. But is that more or less in agility? For mine, it's kind of a double-edged sword because they are so excited to be doing it again that I can predict that they're more likely to make mistakes of enthusiasm. Right. And containment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But if it's a dog that's a little bit lower on the arousal spectrum, then I can for sure use that to my advantage. And I, but they don't have to, it's pretty interesting because for mine, to avoid that problem, just getting them onto the training field a little bit every day kind of avoids that, even if there's no training that happens. Like today, when you and I are, when you and I are done talking, I've got my arena heated to about 40 degrees. It's like 15 degrees out. But, so I'm going to take them all out into the arena and we'll probably just do laps and maybe do a little heel work and maybe toss a toy. And even that is enough so that when I do want to do some more serious training, they won't be complete idiots. Do you have anybody else ever do training with the dogs or it's you only? Not walking, but actually like, and not just running a course for fun just because it's a friend, but like actual. I, I frequently train with my girlfriend and once in a while we will switch dogs and do a little training, but primarily it's primarily me. And the more, the more involved I get with a dog, the less likely I'm going to be to let someone else work it. Right. And the less likely I'm going to be, I don't even want to play with it. Yeah.

And it's not even because with the play part, I get a little bit nervous that, that they'll do something and the dog will hurt itself, like jump for a toy and, you know, do something stupid. Right. But I, I just get a little possessive, you know, like my current dog that I made the world team with this last year. I'm much more hesitant to let someone else run in because I just feel really possessive. And, and also we're kind of on a, on a streak. Yeah, totally. And that's, totally get it. Of course. Of course. I mean, for my dogs, I, I, when they get really old, I always tell people that they, my dogs always die two or three times. They, the first big loss is when they get retired from competition. And that's usually for me, it's a big one because it's such an intense relationship. Yeah. That when they get retired from that, it's just, you just miss it. And then the next, the next one is when they get too old to go on walks. So that's kind of the next really, it's a big bummer. They can't go on walks anymore because they're too old. And then the third one is usually they actually die. But that first one is the worst one. Yeah. That's so true. I, I just had a, I don't know if it was yesterday or the day before yesterday. I was, because again, I mean, you, well, you're cold. I mean, we're, we're like the, I'm, we're having that podcast for everybody that's going to listen. This is like this, the, the coldest, no ice storms all over the country. So that's, that's what's happening. But in Florida, we like the cold weather because, you know, we were just begging for some cold weather to where we can trade longer than 20 minutes. And so we, I, I, every morning I'm so excited. I load up four dogs and I go tracking and I have my, I think he's, I want to say he's 12 now, somewhere in there. He was going to do his last world championship and he tore ligament two weeks before the competition. And that was that. And it was like, you know, the whole buildup for all the training and all the competition and everything was leading at least in my head to this one competition that never happened, that it was two weeks short from. So it was devastating. Speaking of, you know, the, the first death, as you were mentioning, it just came to me just like instantly. And, but then two days ago, normally I would just let him out. He's the first one to go out and I have a big, like 10 acres. So he's the first one to go and check everything in the morning. Well, this morning he comes out and he's just standing by the car. And I'm like, okay, I think you want to go tracking.

So take him with me, you know, and we do tracking and he's just so excited. He hasn't done this probably in four years. And it's like just a big smile on his face. Do you, which is hard with when agility dog gets old. How do you, what do you do? Because you clearly cannot do all the crazy stuff a young dog will do. So what, what is left for them in, in. For mine, I do a lot of, cause I don't really have time to do nose work or tracking or anything like that. And I also, I don't like doing things unless I can do them well. So I'm not really interested in farting around with other stuff. Um, so I usually, we do a lot of heel work, a lot of tricks, you know, and they, they seem pretty happy to just be engaged. They, I don't think they, I really don't think they care when they get retired. They, as long as they have time doing activities with me and being engaged, I don't really think they care. If I have a retired dog at a competition with me, I will sometimes take them on a dry run. So I'll take them out, get them warmed up, you know, trot them around just like I would have done when they were competing. And then take them to the ringside, like we're getting ready to go in and do all the things that I would have done before we go in and then skip the run, obviously. And go straight to all the things we would have done after the run and then take them away. And they, I think they think it's pretty much the same. They didn't actually do the agility. They just did all the other stuff. Dogs, right? Yeah. Yeah. They're pretty thrilled with it. Okay. Daisy, I have another really good one. How long would it take you? Let's say you're walking into some agility arena and you see somebody going in. How long does it normally take you to put different people in different levels of knowledge and abilities? About 10 seconds. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is always very interesting for me. You can usually see it based on how a dog and handler go into the ring to the start line together. You can usually tell what their start line behavior is. Do they put the dog in a sit? Is there a lot of nonsense coming out of the handler's mouth? Are they having a weird conversation with the dog as though the dog understands? Are they trying to coax the dog to stay? Do they start the run even if the dog breaks their stay? Yeah. That stuff usually reveals itself pretty quickly. Yeah. Yeah. I feel the same. I think once you are on a certain level, it doesn't take much to see, okay, this is something to watch or, okay, I know where that's going now. So I mean...

And it's interesting because at the moment and for quite some time the Germans have really on the international level the Germans tend to really dominate the sport and they're pretty interesting to watch because they are not interesting to watch if that makes sense. They're usually not very loud or flashy or verbose. When you watch them walking their dogs around outside the ring their dogs just kind of look like potatoes. They're not lunging at the end of the leash. They're not real animated. It's very German, right? They just go into the ring, they do the job, the job is good. You look at the clock and you wonder how did they post that time because they're efficient. And so they I think for a lot of people unless you're pretty skilled yourself, that kind of skill doesn't draw your attention. I'm sure it's the same in bite sport, you know. Yes, for sure. The team that looks kind of boring, they're actually probably more skilled. Yeah, for sure. This this goes all the way back to like I'll tell you a very funny story of I've said this and my neighbors are shooting like crazy. I don't know if you can hear hopefully not too loud, but there's like just crazy here. It's like New Year. Yeah, which is cool because you know we train dogs. Yeah. I mean we can be 1am doing barking and long bites and crazy things and my neighbors are so good. Never like, never a problem. But then they decide to just shoot and I have no idea what they're shooting but it's crazy. And yeah. What was I gonna tell you? Yeah, with trainers and competitors of you know walking on the field and I guess it's something to do with also presence and giving your dog the comfort that you're gonna lead instead of this chaotic of like okay me, you, who, how. And that is always the one that kind of I got it. Just let's be in control, right? Yeah. It's and agility is kind of interesting because I think it's naturally so much fun for the dogs and they do for sure start to get the, even though every agility course is different, they're all similar enough that the dogs start to get a feel for it. And you can have a team run a course or lots of courses and it looks for all the world like the handler is directing the dog. And they kind of are. But, but not really because as soon as the flavor of the course changes or as soon as an actual skill is required, it all falls apart. And, and even with my dogs there, there are some tests that I constantly insert into my training to make sure that there's still a back and forth of I cue it, you do it, I cue it, you do it, I cue it, you do it. And I,

because I don't want to get into a situation where I'm cueing a behavior and the dog's doing the behavior, but they would have done it anyways because that was the most obvious behavior. So I'm constantly kind of testing and poking at that and make sure that their behavior is always contingent on my cues. And I think for a lot of people, they, you can see what looks like an amazing run and it probably is an amazing run, but there's a pretty big element of luck to it because the dog's not really paying attention to the handler's cues. Just kind of looks like it. If that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Totally makes sense. I mean, we have similar stuff, not, not, not as, as, not as a, you know, uh, uh, complicated as agility course, but you know, there's still some directions that we need to guide the dogs, um, in, in protection sports, um, being at the level you are at in competition, how often it's you that messes up and not the dog. Hmm. I mean, that's kind of a tough one because at the end of the day, it's always my fault in the sense that it's, you could have done it a little better. Right. Right. I could have done a little bit better. Or there was something in the training that led the dog to believe that this is how it should be done. But in the moment in a run, I guess, maybe let me put it better. Like you have to, you have to walk the course. Yeah. You have to, you know, put it in your head and now it's a goal time. And, and there is a, just a, just that split of a second, and then you self-correct and everything goes, but there was that enough of a confusion and delay that that's kind of, I guess what I'm asking how often things like that happen. Hmm. Not that often anymore. That's amazing. I mean, I, I don't, I don't have clean runs all the time. And it, uh, it's interesting because if you were to see me at a local competition with my dogs, you would probably wonder how do I ever make it onto a world team? Because at the local shows, I'm not as interested in winning as I am in kind of testing the boundaries. How, how much can I push this behavior? What's the dog's interpretation going to be? Am I reading the line properly? Um, you know, maybe I'm going to try a riskier handling move, but when push comes to shove at a big event, I'm less likely to, to make those errors. It still happens. It's still kind of, and it still kind of pisses me off that at big events, I, my stupid big brain still gets in the way. That's kind of, you know, like the whole mental stuff. Yeah. It's a big deal. I mean, for me, I tell you like my experience and the more I compete,

the harder it gets instead of how people would think, well, you've done it so many times, it should be easy. It's like, actually I feel way more pressure the more I do it, that I put it on myself. Yes. That, that kind of disrupts the, the flow that I know that I can have. Yeah. Yeah. Like last year at world championships, I, I did not do as well as I could have. Um, my dog was, he was, he really rose up to the occasion. You know, the, the arousal level was, it's like being at a concert because it's one ring in a stadium, everybody's watching and he did really well, way better than I thought. But I would just, I'd have a moment where I would blink or I would go into my head and look away or he was watching me more closely than normal. And so the first three runs were just not really what I had wanted at all. And then the fourth run, and this is what really chapped me, the fourth run, the last run, when all hope of any result is basically gone is of course my best run. And so like the whole, you know, the whole like week after that, I'm like, God damn it. How can I figure out how to get into that mindset of sort of creative hopelessness for the first runs? Like, why do I have to do shitty until there's no hope? And then I can go into the ring and my mind is out of the way and have these really good runs and other competitors are really good at it. Um, better than me for sure. But that, yeah, that's what keeps me coming back really is like, can I get to a big event again and master that? Yeah, it's that, that the perfect run, as you say, it's always that. Yeah. And it's the cool thing about dog sports. When you really want it. Can you have a perfect run when you want it so bad and you know that wanting it is going to make it worse? Right? Yes. That's perfectly said. I've tried, uh, I mean, a funny story, like there was a, a world competition and, and somebody decided to offer me to smoke a joint. Oh boy. Right before I go under the field. Could be good or bad. It was really bad. I mean, it was okay. It was like nobody could tell. But for me, I, I did not know. I just somehow it was out to pilot, but it was like, I had no control. Like it was just very, very weird, uh, uh, thing. And, and, but yeah, as I said, no, nobody knew. Like if, on a sideline, it looked okay, it's everything is okay. But in my head and next to my dog doing obedience, and then it was over all of a sudden, I was like, oh yeah, bad idea. How, how often? Or at least you needed, you needed to maybe practice. Yeah. Try something. Yeah. Yeah.

Good idea. Go compete that way. Right. Yeah. Since then it's like, no, that's not happening again. Yeah. How often do you dare to change something more dramatically in your training with your seasoned dogs? Yeah. These days you have to be prepared to, to change things all the time. So it used to be that the courses didn't really change much for the length of the dog's career. So once the dog had the skill, this or that skill, they were pretty well set for the entirety of their career because the courses were pretty homogenous, but now there are trends that come and go pretty quickly. And so the dog has to know the skill really well, but you have to find ways to teach them skills that I'm not sure how to say it, but you want, you want their understanding to be granular enough that you could tweak it in a small way when the nature of the skill changes on course. So for example, um, for the last couple of years on agility courses, there's a skill that's been really trendy called a bypass where there's a jump between you and the dog and the, you're running this way, the dog is running this way and they are not supposed to take the jump. They're supposed to pass it by. It's called, and it's called layering or bypass or whatever. That's for the last year or so. So everybody's dogs have gotten really good at layering these obstacles. So the handler's here, the dog is here, the obstacles here, and they don't take it. And inevitably, you know that all a judge has to do to challenge people is to then say, well, now I'm going to set something up that looks like you want the dog to layer it, but actually I want the dog to take it. And so you have to have ways of being able to prepare and account for that. Like, I want my dogs to be good at this layering skill. But I also know it's only a matter of time. As soon as everybody gets good at it, then the, a smart judge is going to start designing the opposite. And so you have to be flexible enough and your dog has to be a flexible enough learner to change those things. They're just, they can, they can really evolve the sport, any sport, um, or they can keep it kind of flat lined, um, depending how, how they set up and what their ideas are. Have you ever, are you, are you a judge or have you ever thought of being coming on or? I was a judge for a few years for one of the big organizations. Um, I don't, I don't know how judges and course designers do it. It's, it's a very labor intensive process to design courses. It takes a lot of time, um, because you

have to make sure that the courses adhere to the rules of the organization and you have to design for the space that they're going to be set up in. And then, uh, judging itself is pretty labor intensive. Um, so I, I don't do it anymore. It was just, it was just a lot, but I really, it really gives me more respect for those judges that are out there doing it. And especially for, um, for a judge that's going to be judging the world championships or the European open or a big competition, they get very busy. They get asked to judge all over the world. Everybody wants to see as much of their work as they can to prepare. So it's, I, I don't envy that experience, but a lot of work. Yeah. Very, very similar with the protection sports. This is kind of the same. It's, it's tough one. And I, I used to be a judge and I'm like, I can't, I, and, and yeah, this, this is, uh, it's kind of interesting one. Um, ready for my next question. Yeah. So, you know, when like Mondioring and IGP, we have very basic jumps compared to agility. Yeah. However, there is some different requirements like in IGP, you have the challenge of the dog actually going for a dumbbell and coming back with the dumbbell and speed is matters. So you kind of design or create a lot of drive for the dumbbell to where the dog is like, okay, screw the jump. I'm just gonna just go and grab the dumbbell because speed matters and, uh, very often or not very often, but frequently there, there, there, like, like, uh, IGP trainers, competitors will go to take lessons on jumping with their dogs that are not capable for some reason. And there's many reasons as we know, um, to, to do, to learn something from a utility trainer. What, what is, what kind of skill you guys have that we probably are missing out on? All right. So some of the, I have to say some of the jumping that I see for, um, I think it's Mondia where they have to jump, lay down and then jump again is kind of hard for me to watch because they, the dogs look like deer when they jump because they're taking off so close to the jump and, and the jump is so high. So typically what I want to see is that the dog's jumping arc is centered over the bar. So if they're jumping in extension, that means that their takeoff point is pretty far away from the jump and their landing point is equally far away. And the, the peak of their arc is centered over the bar. If they, and then the other thing I want them to learn is, so that would be extension. The other thing I want them to learn is collection. So if they're really close to the bar, I want them to

jump more vertical and land really close to the bar. And I'm pretty picky about it because there are ways that a dog will try and accomplish that task naturally. So I usually use myself as a barrier. So I'll be standing on this side, the dog is here and I lure them over the bar. So they come over and then they land parallel. And there, there are a couple of picky little details that I usually try to hit on, because what I really want for my dogs is to experience ways of jumping that don't come to them naturally. So I kind of set it up so that they can't employ a natural jumping effort. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I get it. Yeah. Yeah. So I have all sorts of little gymnastics exercises that I put them through so that they know all of these different mechanical skills. And then I also want to make sure that they can employ those mechanical skills in response to my physical and verbal cues. So if we're running hard together and I'm running past a jump, I'd like to see them extend. But if on approach to that jump, they see me decelerate or move laterally, I'd like to see them add a stride on approach and jump more collected and mirror my movement. So there's a lot of that as well. You can't really do that until they have the mechanical skill and they know, oh, she's slowing down. I should jump this way. So like if I totally get this, but I guess it's such a different, at least in my head, it's very different. Even the purpose of how jumps are approached. Like even compare, like you have the, in Mondioring, it's a one meter and 20, it's the max. In IGP, it's only one meter. But the difficulty of the IGP jump is again, the retrieve part, because you want the dog to be, it's not big. The big one is for the, on the flat. The, the, the one with the jumps, it's, it's nothing. It's like, I don't know, it's less than half a kilo. I don't know what it is, but, but it's just that, you know, you, the dog's mind is focused on two things and speed really, really matters. You want to see that dog very committed and very explosive in and out. But at the same time, there is an obstacle that they have to acknowledge. They cannot just say, I'm just going through. To where in Mondioring, you don't have that. You just have the jump back and forth without, without that, go and get something and do it very fast. Right? So these are already very different skills. And from what I'm hearing in agility, you actually have even some crazy combination of, of two or three different styles of jumping, depending on what's coming next.

Yep. And the dog's angle of approach varies. So if they're, if the dog is going to slice a jump, then that means they have to be able to change leads and change leads again, just to take the jump. And most of the time the handler's running straight when that happens. So how do you teach a dog? Hey, you have to change leads twice and slalom through these uprights, but I'm just going to run straight. How long does it take to explain the different jumps for a, for a, a good trainer and a good dog to kind of, to get to a somewhat fluency level of understanding? I don't, I don't start teaching jumping until the dogs are maybe 10 to 12 months old. I think probably six or seven months, but, but I think a year or so I would say before I would, maybe two years before I would say this dog is fluent. This dog is reading the line, adjusting its stride. It doesn't appear surprised. And there's a genetic component to it. So there are some families of dogs that are just wicked, talented jumpers and smart and you, they want to jump. They have all of these, um, different ways that they're comfortable jumping. They're comfortable getting close to a bar before they lift. And then there are other dogs that are just, they can be functional jumpers, maybe even smart jumpers, but it's not the same. And then there are other dogs. And I don't know if this ever happens in IGP, but there are, there in the Shelties and the Border Collies and the Papillons and a couple of other breeds, there are some dogs that very clearly either have a depth perception issue or a vision issue and they take off early and then they crash and then they start to stutter step and then they're done. That's 100. Like I have, um, my, my wife's dog was a super, super competition dog and he had in insane difficulties jumping. And it was exactly what you said. Like he would, when you, when you put a camera sideways, he's clearing the jump literally like, I cannot show you like, I mean by a... Their, their jumping arc is usually before the bar and they're coming down. Yes. And they can do that when they're young and they're powerful, but when they misjudge and also often... And then it gets in their head. Yes. And now it becomes a double problem, right? Yes. But before that they can be, it's a, it's, it's kind of problematic because they can be very competitive. Because when they jump early, it's, it's faster. So they can be very competitive when they're young and powerful. Because they land faster. They land sooner. And they, and then those dogs get bred because they're winning.

And they get bred young when they're winning. And then they get to be five, six years old. And now they're adding strides because they're not as powerful. They're not as confident. Maybe they crashed a couple of times. And then they have this problem. And, you know, meanwhile, they might have a hundred puppies out there that are going to have this problem. Or some of them will, not all of them, but some of them will. It's for sure genetic. For sure. For sure. Very, this is a very interesting one. You know, the way I solved that and, and unfortunately, it was so late. Because, um, yeah, she, she just didn't, she wanted to do it how she wanted to do it. And all I, all I was thinking is there is just something with the vision and he's just not like that is, and eventually it worked. And all I did was I just put a, put a, like a placemat. And it's like, you, you cannot jump before you step on the mat. And that was it. You know, that was it. And I think for, for something like IGP where the jumping is really predictable and it's just the one jump, I think that those solutions can work really well because you just teach the dog, look, you just close your eyes and jump when I say, but in agility there, it's just too variable. Yeah. It's impossible. That's true. Yeah. And also the lighting makes a difference. Um, if you're outdoors and you're on grass, they seem to do better if you're indoors on artificial turf and the lighting is very even and the surface is very even and there's no ground bar, it's very problematic. It's pretty interesting. And the other interesting thing is that a one-eyed dog does not seem to have this problem. That is interesting. Mm-hmm. So I've seen a few one-eyed dogs that don't have this problem. So it seems to be, it's not that they don't have depth perception because of course a one-eyed dog has no depth perception. They seem to do okay. There's something faulty with these dogs where they're reporting to their brain is just leading them astray. But, and yeah, it's crazy how you would think like, let's say, you know, you will like in, in when we do protection and you have a, you know, a long bite and, and the dog is going with a really good amount of speed and now it has to judge when to jump as they're coming at each other. Like, like everything is in motion and somehow they manage that, but not the jump. Yeah. Well, but the, the, the object that they're coming at for the bite is lumpy, right? It's a person. So it's got some depth to it and the jumps are flat. So they, they, those dogs in agility that have that problem, they have that problem with the jumps,

but they don't have that problem with the weaves, the vertical poles. They have that problem on the contacts. They usually take off early and hit the contact on approach really low. And they also sometimes, um, if the handler asks them to jump into their arms, those dogs will often jump low. So you might see that I imagine in the protection sport with a dog that you wanted to aim higher and can't get it to aim higher. And it's consistently taking off early and hitting low when you, maybe you want an arm and it's just misjudging type of thing, but, right. But people are lumpy and so they're easier to assess. And in agility, if a person stands next to the jump, the dog can judge it much more effectively. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. How, how, um, how would you, I mean, that's almost like, shouldn't be even a question what I'm going to ask, but how much can you help a German shepherd, a show line, German shepherd that is just structurally not sound to make this kind of jump and they know it already. What, what would you, where do you go with that? This is going to be an unpopular opinion with the agility people, but I would not do agility with that dog. I think, I think that's pretty unfair. Right. Because they're clearly stressing in a, in a, in a different way. If we're talking about the kind of German shepherd that's super over-angulated in the rear and has a pretty sloping top line, um, and kind of wobbly in the hawks, I think it's, I think it's pretty unfair, but I mean, do it if you want. They're in agility. At least there are, there is the option to jump the dog at a lower height. So at a minimum I would do that. So if it's a big dog and it typically has to jump 24 inches, according to the rules, at least jump it lower and make it a little bit easier on the dog. You know, if you, if you want to have fun with that dog, then your goal should be to have fun with that dog for as long as possible, which means protecting their body, which means minimizing the impact of those jumps. You know, it's not like a border collie that my border collies are 21 inches tall, but they only weigh 38 pounds. They don't weigh anything. You know, a German shepherd is, might not be much taller, but could weigh twice as much. Three times as much. Yeah. No question. Do you see border collies sometimes that just don't enjoy the jumping? Not because of physiological, but just like some, somehow, like I'm like my Mali Noss, for example, I mean, if I come on the field, they just, and I'm sure your dogs sometimes just self run the course or just cause it's cool. And, and my dogs,

they're just like, just because, you know, but other border collies that just kind of not, they're doing it, but, but it's like, you can see that there, there is a little bit extra effort that, the other dogs don't put in the dog. I don't know if I, I'm saying it right. Usually, if you see that, it's because they're, because of the way they're built, it's usually a physical issue. You know, maybe they're a little straight in the rear or the front or they're overweight. But if it's not, if they don't have a physical issue, their hips are good, their elbows are good, their shoulders are good, then probably they're just suffering from a lack of motivation and engagement training or unclear reinforcement structure. I see more and more, especially as the community leans more and more on just reward, reward, reward all the time, they get confused because they make a mistake and they're getting a reward. They make an error and they're getting a reward. The handler's clearly not happy all the time, but the dog's getting unclear information. So I see a fair amount of that where a lack of clarity because everything is getting rewarded, even though clearly not everything should have been. I see quite a bit of that typically. And it's not just border collies. Any dog that is a working bred dog that really thrives off of clarity, they seem to really suffer when the handler is in an effort to make everything fun, rewarding everything. Then it's just not clear. Yeah, that's interesting. You know, the dog drops a bar and the handler says, good job. The dog keeps the bar up and the handler says nothing. So they get confused and then they kind of check out. And that, I see that a lot with, you'll see it with border collies, but then you'll also see it with dogs like Weimaraners, who are quite a few of those in agility. They're a working bred dog. You know, they want clarity. They're serious dogs. Vichla, Golden Retrievers, pretty much any dog that has any interest in engaging with a handler. If there's confusion or lack of clarity, they struggle. For people that don't know the sport, what would you say is the hardest, like not the hardest, but the part that kind of is the unseen part of the sport and the training that people just really, people that are not in the sport are not aware of it. Yeah. Any behavior, well, any behavior that requires training, really. So in the, in agility, it's going to be any behavior where handler motion does not tell the dog what to do. So for example, a sit stay, the handler is going to walk away, but the dog is not to follow

that motion or stopping at the end of a contact, even if it looks like fundamental stuff, right? It is. It's fundamental stuff. But, but remember in agility, most people are not getting into it because they want to be a dog trainer. And most people are not coming to the sport with much, if any dog training experience. They're, they are, it looks like a lot of fun and it is. The dogs look like they're having a blast and they are, and it's pretty accessible. And again, you know, the dog is going nuts and jumping on things and someone says, you should do agility. So they, they, they get into it to have a good time. They didn't, a lot of people don't expect to have to be a trainer. And you know, if you're busy and you've got kids and you've got a full-time job and you have decision fatigue, the last thing you want to do is make a bunch of decisions about, do I reward? Do I not reward? What do I do on my next rep? And of course, dog training, that's all it is, is a series of decisions constantly. So they, you know, they get into it and they're like, I didn't sign up for this. I just want to have a good time. So there's definitely, um, and that's, that kind of like loops all the way back to what I said in the beginning where I went to my teaching classes to learn how to be a teacher. And the teachers said, well, we need to teach people how to think we need to teach these kids how to think. And I'm like, no, we don't. We just need to teach them how to do math problems. I don't care how they think. And now I'm a completely 180 degrees different. Like, I don't really care how successful you are. I don't care if you win big trophies. What I'm interested in is, can I share with you my passion for training? And can I help you make that next step from, I just want to have fun to, do you know how much fun it can be to dig into being a trainer and making all these decisions and getting good at it? And when I was a chemistry teacher, that's kind of what I realized also, like, I'm not going to make all these kids into chemists. That's ridiculous. I just want to teach them how to have critical thinking skills, how to evaluate a news headline, how to look at an article about science and be able to say, well, that's baloney. Can you know, engage in the scientific method, that kind of thing. Interesting. That's kind of like, like, that's just a nuance of something I teach in my dog training school of, you know, how, how, when we talk about just reinforcement and consequences and whatever, and how the, the brain really reorganizes itself, not just based on, on reward or punishment, but on how,

how the actual learning problems are, are solved, like linking sensation prediction, and, and reward into, into one single biological process. Right. And, and then the whole learning strategies basically shape the brain more deeply than, than the reward, the, the high value reward or whatever, which challenges. And what even is a high value reward? Five cookies on the last rep, doesn't have the same economic value as five cookies on the next rep. Right. Like it, reward is not reward. It's constantly, there's economics to it. And so helping people understand, look at the dog, assess is what they just did worth rewarding. And what's going to, in this moment, constitute a reward. Maybe not the same thing that 10 seconds ago constituted a reward. Yeah. There are many ways to look at dog training. Yeah. And learning. And as you said, there's a teacher as well. And, you know, it's a, that, that's the cool part about it. I told my, I told, I was talking with a girlfriend earlier today. I said, yeah, I'm going to do this podcast with, is it Yvonne or Ivan? Ivan. Ivan. It's depending where I am, but it's Ivan. I said, I'm going to do a podcast with him. I don't, I don't really know what I'm going to say. It's like when I teach a seminar or a workshop, I feel like I have, I have no idea what's going to come out of my mouth. It's going to be an out of body experience for two hours. Probably. I know it's going to be fun and I know it's going to be cool. And I know I have enough experience to draw on, to, to open my mouth and say things that will help people. But it's, it's kind of a, it's just kind of an interesting experience, the teaching, which is, I don't know. I don't know about you, but I, I really love teaching and I get a real high out of teaching people training skills. Agility skills is fun, you know, to get together and help people run a course, but training skills, teaching people how to make those decisions in the moment, um, how to see how to make those decisions. That's the cool part, I think. Agility skills is fun. And speaking of this, how do you deal with somebody that, like you, you, you're suggesting and your suggestion is very much on, on spot and very much needed, but the owner doesn't think that even matters for what they're doing. How do you, how do you reconnect and, and calibrate everything? I ask questions. I keep asking questions. I just kind of dig at it a little bit. Um, yeah, yeah. Because in my community, it's, it's mostly women. Um, it's a lot of people who, a lot of people who get into dog training and dog sport are,

I won't say across the board, but a lot of people get into dogs because their social skills with people are, it's more challenging. So then we get a group of those people together in front of other people. And now there's a performance aspect to it. Um, and if you're an adult and you thought your school days were over and now you're in a seminar situation. So a lot of that reluctance, I think, is because of the situation. If it was a private lesson, it wouldn't, I don't think it'd be the same. And so in a, in a seminar situation, I think for me as an instructor, it's important to, um, to kind of know where the students are at with their ego and their level with that stuff so that you can really help them learn what they are capable of learning in that moment. Good. What are the, what, what stands out? Like, you know, you're going to go to, let's say you're going to California for a seminar next weekend. What would be the common topic or, or training problem that's gonna, that, you know, it's gonna be, we, we, we're gonna have to address that. Sit stays. I mean, you, are you talking about behaviors or just general training stuff? Yeah. Because there's, they're kind of different, right? So the common behaviors are going to be, sit stays, recalls, motivation and engagement type stuff, contacts, anything that requires training, but conceptually, usually the real problem is the owner, the trainer doesn't, they're not confident enough. That's not even a good way to put it. They, kids are a lot better at this kind of thing often because they don't care. They don't care about screwing up and adults often are so wrapped up in, am I going to do it right? Am I going to do it wrong? What is my peer group going to think about me? Does my dog love me? I want to put my best foot forward that they're not even really paying attention to what's happening in the moment. Just overthinking to the point that you, you're not processing and guiding. Right. So there's that. That's a, that's a pretty common one. And then once you get beyond that, helping people be comfortable saying, you're going to say yes to this and you're going to say no to this. Well, what if it's my fault? Okay, well, that's not really your concern in the moment. You still have to inform the dog that this was not right. You're not ascribing blame. It's okay to say no. Even if you don't know whether it was your fault or the dog's fault, you still can say, this is not how it was supposed to go. I'm not telling you you're a loser. I'm just saying that's not right. We still need to reset. Correct.

So those, that's the most common thing I think is helping people get over themselves. That's very similar. Yeah. I guess it should be similar, right? I mean, it's humans and dogs, right? Yeah. Yeah. I end up teaching a lot more like, like, like an out for a toy, you know, it's like, no, it can, it can now better than that. It's not. And then the kind of like what you mentioned with the sit stay and stuff, and I call it more of a, just a pause. Like there is times that we're just not going to do. And that also matters. Yeah. For, for both of our brains, right? It's like, okay, we're in a moment that we're not doing. And then we will start, but I will tell you when to start, right? Yeah. That, that can be interestingly enough. So I've got, I got a good story for you, because this is, this is a prevalent problem in agility. So two years ago, I decided I wanted to, I was doing a little bit more bite work with my border collies, because it was fun. And I wanted to train them for Mondio, which involves a down stay. So I thought, all right, the weather was crappy. I'm going to go downstairs and I'm just going to start to work on some duration with a sit stay. And all I wanted to do was ask for a sit and delay any marker cue or reinforcement for three seconds. That was it. So I asked for a sit and I stood there and I did nothing with the first dog. And she, her ears dropped and her whole expression flattened and she left the room. So I called her back and did it again. I thought, well, that's pretty traumatic. What the hell? And she did it again. So I thought, all right, I don't know what's going on. Maybe she has to poop or something. And I got the other dog and I did the same thing and got the same result. And I had to stop. And I was like, I gotta, I have to phone a friend. I don't know what just happened. This is bonkers. And in talking it, like, as I was telling my friend, I realized that for years and years, as someone who has tried to be only a positive trainer, my no reward marker was no response, which is the absolute worst thing you can do if you want to teach your dog to persist. Because what I had taught them was, if I do nothing, that means you're wrong and you should immediately offer something else, which creates a way different kind of dog than if I had more appropriately told them, look, I'll tell you when you're right. I'll tell you when you're wrong. If I do nothing, you should assume you're doing the right thing and persist. Wow. So that was a big moment for me. And that was 2024. And I've been doing this since 1998. And

only just then had that realization. Like, what? But that's why we train dogs because there is always this next, like, right. So, so now in the last couple of years, I still, I'm suffering from the effects of that. I've, I've largely kind of pasted over it with the dogs, but they still struggle. And if I do nothing, they will still sometimes assume that they're wrong and immediately try something else, which I definitely do not want. If I do nothing, it means you're on the right track and you should keep doing it. You know, I don't want to have to say tunnel 50 times to get you to take a tunnel. I'm going to say tunnel and then do nothing. As long as you're on the way to the tunnel, I'm going to do nothing until you've done it. And that's kind of immediately as you're talking, I immediately put it back to what you were talking about, the German trainers. That's probably a quality that they, they have, right? And that's why they look kind of plain and lame in, in some way. They're not frantic. And what you get, if you use no response as a no reward marker is a dog that starts to panic as soon as you do nothing. And they try to elicit a response from you immediately. Well, that didn't work. I'm going to do something else. Well, that didn't work. I'm going to do something else until I get a response from you instead of she asked me to sit, I'm sitting, she's not doing anything. I must need to keep sitting. Wow. Good one. It's not ridiculous. So that was when I really got into, I need to use a verbal no reward marker because I can't, how else am I going to teach duration with any behavior? So you mentioned you were for quite some time, a force free trainer. What do you think you are? I would try. I wouldn't say it was successful. Okay. Okay. What, what do you think? Um, like how, how would you describe yourself? Like, I always have problems saying what kind of trainer I am. Cause I, it's like, I'm just doing what I have to do for the moment to bring clarity to the situation. I don't know like how to label myself necessarily. I want to do what works. I, but recently you're getting this lashing out for, for no reason, but apparently it's a big deal in some people's heads. Like, right. I am, I am okay with the idea that the welfare of my dogs is not determined by a single moment in their lives. And I'm willing to accept that moments of discomfort or challenge can contribute to a better welfare overall. Right. And I'm not interested in hiding that or pretending that that's not the case. And I believe that if we try to shield our kids or our dogs from moments of

discomfort, because we want them to be comfortable all the time, all we're going to do is create fragile creatures that cannot cope with any of life's inevitable challenges. Right. And yeah, like, and I want to make sure. Are we judging, are we judging training by, by optics or by the outcomes? Right. And, and I'm, you know, I'm not perfect. I'm not going to claim that I'm perfect. I'm going to screw up occasionally. And it's pretty likely you're going to see me screw up because I'm willing to do it in public. And there are some things that are going to happen in the ring and you're going to see it. And guess what? My dogs are not being abused. They're pretty happy overall. They are drama queens. And they, I have one dog, shit you not. If I tell that dog to come over here and get in the pen in the agility hall and he doesn't want to stop the training, he will lay down, lay on his side, close his eyes and play dead because he doesn't want to stop. So there's that. Yes. So, so, so that's kind of, you know, I don't want to say balance trainer because balance trainer implies that I use all training methods equally and I don't. So I'm not balanced. Balance plus balance is, is a really dynamic process. You know, when, if you stand on a balance beam, balancing does not, does not mean you're standing still you're balancing. Exactly. You have to be moving around in order to balance it. Yes. So I, I think I would like to describe myself as a practical trainer. I, I have goals that I, and I, you know, my dogs sleep on my bed and I love them, but they're also a product. And so I'm interested in Korea. I'm interested in taking whatever dog I have and trying to produce a fairly consistent product. Meaning I like to win. I want to make a dog that's a winner and not every dog is going to get to that place the same way. So we have to have lots of options. So I think I, I don't know. I think practical trainer, pragmatic trainer, real world trainer. How many trainers in agility do you think are similar to the way you think about training? I think there are plenty, but a lot of them don't want to say it out loud. Yeah. It's just very dangerous to say it out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause what happens socially if somebody disagrees, right? Yeah. Um, and to be fair, because there's been such an emphasis over the years on getting better with reinforcement, your timing criteria, reinforcement, which is, as it should be, we want to be good at that. There hasn't been a good way to help people understand how to employ the use of aversive skillfully. And the word punishment has been co-opted

by a large group of people to mean abuse. So you can't even say the word punishment without somebody saying, oh, well that word is poison. Can we use a different word? And for me nowadays, I'm like, no, I'm going to say it more, just say punishment, punishment, punishment, punishment, like Bart Simpson at the chalkboard, just write it a thousand times. It is just a word, you know, Yeah. I'm the same way. A feather could be punishment. That's an aversive experience. Walking outside barefoot is an aversive experience depending on what you're walking on. So, you know what is interesting? We just don't have the skill because we're not willing to talk about it. Right. That's exactly where I was going. Like, like, and I think this is across the board in, in old dog training, the, the, sometimes a trainer would do something that their bubble, their community, they know that they're going to just get crucified, but they're going to do it because they know it works and it works, but then they, they're absolutely scared to share that they did that and that actually worked. But, but they do it. And, and it's a very, that social pressure of conformity in, in, especially in, in, you know, it's like, no, this is you, you're just punishing the dog and, and then immediately goes into fear, intimidation and pain. It's like, how just stop just spilling word salad. Like, I mean, look at my dog. Yeah. And, and for me, it was, it's never been a question in my mind that punishment and aversives are part of living and part of the biological experience. But if you don't have a strategy, if nobody's taught you a strategy, then, then in the moment, you're going to end up resorting to really ham handed methods and they will work. But that doesn't mean we can't be better about it. And for sure, for me that, you know, especially in the last couple of years, with the help of people like Michael Ellis and Forrest Mickey and Stuart Hilliard and watching your content and some of the other stuff, finding ways, not just to be more clever about that kind of stuff, but also figuring out how to prepare the dog for it. And then how to teach other people about it has just been really lacking. And so for me these days, I actually teach my dogs now different responses to a no reward marker in different contexts. And, and a lot of people have trouble even wrapping their brains around. They're like, what do you mean teach your dog a response to a no reward marker? You just say no. And then they stop doing it. That's the punishment. Like,

what do you mean that's the punishment? No, it's just a word. It's only a punishment if it's associated with something and it could be associated with you getting angry at the dog, but that doesn't really help the dog know what to do with it. Right. So these days, in some situations, my no reward marker means return to the beginning. In other situations, my no reward marker means stop dead in your tracks and await further instruction. And in other situations, the no reward marker just means I don't care what you do. Just don't do that. Right. And, and I, you know, I get that there are procedures out there to like, Oh, I could teach my dog a retrieve and I'm not ever going to use any aversive. Okay. Well, first of all, I call it because you're at least going to use negative punishment. Sorry. And it's going to, it's only going to take a year and a half. I'm like, but, but you could teach us in a week. Why would you take a year and a half to teach this? Man, I had a very painful podcast with Susan Garrett. She, she kind of put herself into it. She's like, I want to do a podcast with you and I'm gonna have all my trophies and, and I'm gonna show you that it's doable without ever using anything. It's okay. You know, I understand, I understand somebody that it's like a cancer patient. They need chemotherapy and I don't. So it's, it's almost mean to say that, Hey, I don't need chemotherapy. Why would you? It's really weird, but we had this, she really insisted that I'm about me showing a video of her her working with a dog on a hold on a dumbbell and the dog was apparently chewing prior to, and now she shows how he's not chewing. And I asked incredibly simple question. And for probably half an hour, we went around it. And the question was, so what did you do when the dog actually was not doing it right? What? What? Like, because clearly he was chewing and now he's not. So there is a process, right? There is like learning happens between the success and failure. What did you do right here? And he was just crickets. It was just like going around and around and around. And I kept asking the question from so many different angles until I realized that she either doesn't want to answer it or she, well, I don't know. I was very puzzled. So that, that kind of hits at it for, hits at the root of some of this for me, because at the end of the day, I really don't care how you accomplish the dog training that you want to accomplish. Couldn't care less. Use aversives. Don't use aversives. I don't really care. But don't lie to people. That's the thing that gets me. Don't, don't tell people

this, here's a recipe. This recipe will work. You will be able to teach your dog this behavior using this recipe. But then fail to tell them that there are ingredients missing from the recipe. And when they can't achieve the results that you promised, don't just tell people, well, you must have done it wrong. You need to take the course again. You've done it wrong or you need to do it more. You're not good enough. You're not good enough. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, that don't, that really, and then, and don't do that to people. And then on the side, employ methods with your own dogs that of course work, and then lie to people about the methods that you employ that, that just leaves people feeling like shit. Like they're not good enough. There's plenty of that going around. We don't need more of that. It's disingenuous. I think. It's very disingenuous. That's what gets me. It's like, I don't want to lie to people about what works and what doesn't work. I think it's okay to say, yeah, I screwed up. And if you watch, you'll see me watch me long enough. You're going to see it because I'm not perfect. But on the whole, I think I'm doing okay. You know, and if I don't know how to help somebody, I'm just going to tell them, look, I don't really know. I'll think on it. I'll give you my best answer, but I don't know if it's right or not. I'm not going to, I'm not going to tell people to do something that I know is a lie, especially when it comes to something like a freaking recall. I'm not going to, I'm not going to screw around with a method that takes a year to train when a dog's life is a step. That's another time. There is time efficiency. That is time, really, really, sometimes it's priority. We need this yesterday. Yes. And, and, you know, agility is one thing. If we're going to think about ethics and morals and all that, you know, what are you, what kind of aversives do you want to employ to get a good agility performance? We can talk about that. But, but when it comes to something like a recall that is life or death, the, unless the aversive that you are using is death, it is not, you know what I mean? Like the, the cost benefit that any aversive could be on the table if it keeps a dog from dying. If it keeps a dog from running off into a Florida pond filled with Florida gators and getting eaten. And I, I just, I get kind of riled up about that because it's just, it's dishonest and it doesn't help people. And it, and it promotes a fantasy that just makes people feel like shit. It is. It really, yeah. Like, I think the, the,

like a big part of the, the whole force three obsession is, is not about dogs even. No. I think it's about just protecting that fantasy that the whole world is safe and predictable and, and everything can be handled in life in general without force conflict or consequences. Which is crazy because you can read all these books about cold showers and all this shit that you do to be more resilient as a person. And then the, and then the, but in dog training, no, no, no, no. Any, anywhere you look, I mean, you just turn anywhere and you look and you see it it. And, and, and yeah, it's frustrating. And, and then, and then when it gets to the, the, the hardcore extremism, when we would say, well, that euthanasia before pain, it's like, what kind of, what are you even saying? Like, I think, I think a lot of people in the agility community are unaware of that. I think a lot of people aren't aware that they're, there's dog, there's dog sport, there's dog agility, but then there's this whole world of people who are just struggling to have a pet they can live with and are paying a lot of money that they don't have for procedures that aren't ultimately going to work. And then they're told that their only option because the, this, well, we didn't use any punishment. So good for us. But now your only option is to euthanize the dog. I think a lot of people are not aware that that is happening. The whole. Let's go back to other, this is, I get frustrated just as much as you do with this. If you're gonna, let's go back to dog training. Like if you, if you're gonna give some good advice to, to dog trainers that are like competition dog trainers, regardless of what it is, what are like some of our, your top must have as far as who do you need to be as the person in that team? Yeah. That's a tough question. Because some, yeah, I know it's an interesting one. I I've thought about because like, you know, you have people like you and me that are like somehow they want, and we have this, like, I'm all in. And then you have the people that are testing the water start to like it. But there is something. Yeah. I think one of the big things that I tell people a lot is, it doesn't matter whether you get it right or you get it wrong. Because if, if you get it right, great, you got it right. You can, you can get it right again. If you get it wrong, a couple things are going to happen. You're gonna, you tried, you're going to learn something, and that thing that was wrong in this context might actually be right in another context.

But if you're so wrapped up in being perfect all the time, that you never try anything that might, you might end up getting wrong, you're not really ever going to make any progress. So I think that would be, that would be something I would tell people is to, you know, don't, don't worry about whether or not you're going to screw up. Ultimately, the dog will be fine. We don't care. And you'll have a data point, right or wrong. Yeah. And I also quite often tell people, and a lot of people think I'm crazy when I tell them this, when you are in the middle of a training session or a performance, there is no room for feelings. If you are feeling something, you are not fully present with the dog. And I think that's the thing that I'm really involved in the moment with a dog. Yeah. Acknowledge it. Don't let it just linger. Yeah. Yeah. When I'm really involved in the moment with a dog, I am not aware of feeling anything. I'm not angry. I'm not happy. I'm not sad. I'm just 100% focused on that moment. This is kind of almost a classic one. Do, would you, what would your advice be for somebody that's starting or it's just somewhere in right about getting on a above average level, but as far as who do you learn from and how much time you spend to learn from now all the YouTube videos and the instructions on social media versus speaking a coach and how do you recognize, how, how is it possible to recognize that you're on the wrong path, that you're being bullshitted and you need to really shift gears and find a different trainer? I would say, is it working? I mean, I was pretty fortunate when I started to be in the middle of nowhere without really anybody to learn from because I just had to go do it. And now there's so much information that you could spend your whole life just gathering information. And meanwhile, your dog is sitting there not getting trained. So at some point, pick a coach, pick an instructor, start doing the work. If it works, go for it. But, but also have the patience to give it time to, to, to actually evolve somewhere. Yeah. But then there is, that is why it is or it isn't working. Right. But at the end of the day, you know, even if you're in person in a lesson or a class with a really good instructor, they cannot make decisions for you in the lesson. They can tell you what decision you should have made or should make. But you know, in the end, it's pretty lonely. You have to make those decisions yourself and you have to be willing to accept that you don't know the outcome. So you might as well

just get busy sucking and learning because the longer you wait, the longer it'll take. And there will be struggle. There will be struggle and you just, yeah, it's, it's, it's kind of actually the, in some way it's, yeah, it's the part, the important part. It's how do we, how to come out of, of it. I mean, it's a, it's an intellectual dog training is so fun for me because you can be really intellectual about it. But at the end of the day, it's a very physical experience. At the end of the day, you have to put your big brain aside and all of the training terminology that nobody can agree on anyways. And you just have to go get into the real world and just train shit and try, try, try again. Yeah. In, in the protection sports, trainers are very, there is this, like this insane amount of impatience and, and, and just looking at, okay, the dog is not doing this the same way as the other dogs and you amplify it in your head and you give up on the dog before you ever really give it an honest try to, to, to get somewhere. Not, not, not understanding that every good dog and trainer had not a moment, had moments in this evolution where they got to a very serious struggles, but then there is the, the hard part of, okay, well, that dog really cannot take me where I'm going. And so that balance between no, the knowledge of, I'm going to stick with it versus I'm going to give up too soon. I think this is a, a very difficult place for, for a beginner. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you, you don't, if you, if you haven't had the experience of making all those decisions, how do you even know what decision to make? You know, which is again, I think why kids, junior handlers often do a little bit better because they don't care that they don't know. They're just like, whatever, just, let's just fart around and see what happens. And they believe, and they're motivated and they're more accept. They, they, they're like, yeah, okay. That didn't go the way it should. And the brain just recalibrates and, and you move on and you move on. Very cool. Daisy, I think, I don't know how long we've been talking, but. A long time. This has been great. That was a, a super cool conversation for me. I, I love conversation like this, where they're not, you know, there is no agenda. And we're just talking dogs, you know? Yeah. Um, so thank you. And hopefully someday we, we meet somewhere. I hope so. I hope so. Yeah. I hope so. Thank you so much. Anything, anything to, to finish, uh, as far as any, um, where people can, can find you and you know, anybody interested in agility and so on.

Yeah. I have a online training platform. It's www.theagilitychallenge.com. And that's pretty much it. I like it. Yeah. The agility challenge. Yeah. I like the challenge. Very cool. Yeah. So what is next for you? Where are you headed? What's the goal? I, we have a, I have a tryouts event at the end of February. Um, I don't know how, how quickly you get these episodes out, but I've got an, I've got a big event. Pretty fairly quick. Okay. Well, I got a big event coming out. I don't know if I can announce it yet, but, uh, another big one coming up. In May, I'm going to the Netherlands for a competition. Um, and then I've got a couple of bodybuilding competitions I'm aiming for this spring. So I've got a pretty busy calendar. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's a whole different thing. Maybe we need to talk about sometimes because no, because, you know, taking care of yourself. Yeah. Makes you understand how important it is to make sure that the dogs need exactly the same. There is not much difference of, you know, eating well, sleeping well. Um, exercising and where you are. Yes. Yes. And how you, how you go up without discouraging yourself or breaking yourself to go to, to actually a worse place than where you want it to go. And I think it's very much the same with dogs and people. Maybe, maybe we do this one, uh, in another time. That would be a good one. Sure. Thank you so much for this one. Thank you so much. Okay. Have a great evening. Take care. Good one. Bye. Bye.