제목: E212: 로라 워드비(Laura Waudby) - "오비디언스 데뷔하기"

So Zumi is a little bit mad at me right now with all the chaos going on in the house. But he's doing a lot of pouting. But hopefully, we just actually did our first agility trial since the pandemic started. So that made her happy. And I'm hoping we'll get back into the obedience world. We need to finish up her utility title. So I'm hoping later this spring or early summer, we'll start getting back into that. And then I said, I had the corgi. He can't forget the corgi. He's still kicking. He sleeps all day. But he is here. And he seems oblivious to all the puppies and chaos. He just kind of sleeps in the middle of everything. So he's just kind of there. Still a very barky boy. But basically, he just kind of lies there in the midst of chaos. Are you thinking you'll do obedience and agility with both puppies? Are you thinking one for one thing, another for another thing? Or are you just going to see where life takes you? Well, at this point, I'm planning on doing both agility and obedience with both of them. We'll see how that actually plays out in my life right now. But that is the plan. Gotcha. I have a lot of babies. So I also have six baby chicks in my house right now because my preschooler is obsessed with birds. And so I got her chickens. So I have lots of babies in my house. A whole house full. You're definitely outnumbered. Yes, very much so. So I wanted to chat today about preparing a dog for their first time in the obedience ring. What options are out there in terms of organizations? And then how similar are those? Can you kind of prep your stuff and be okay to compete in a couple? Yeah. So I live in Minnesota where there are four active organizations. And so depending on where you live in the country, we'll kind of determine what's in your area. And of course, there's obviously each country kind of has their own organizations as well. The ones that I'm familiar with are AKC, UKC, ASCA, and CDST. And I've stewarded it in all of organizations, but I only compete in AKC and CDST around here. And I know we're SeaWigs as well, but I haven't actually done anything in that organization. I've heard there's some really cool, like I said, the tunnels in that and some really unique stuff. But generally, all the organizations that I'm familiar with are very, very similar. If you train for one, you're basically training for all of them. At the novice level, basically, you have your healing pattern at your base, a figure eight, a stand for exam, a recall, and then some type of a stay or more than a Wednesday. So then you're healing your exam, you're recalling your stays.

And the bigger differences are basically whether parts are on or off leash. Maybe there's a recall over a jump, like in CDST or UKC. There may be a difference as to whether there's a group stay or whether that stay is kind of on leash or off leash. But your core exercises are basically the same. Some dogs might have an easier time competing in one over another. So group stays are definitely not for every dog. So if you want to avoid group stays, CDST is really nice. It doesn't actually have any group stays. And there's some differences depending on who's putting on the trial, kind of what competitors are attracted to that. So my stretchy dogs always prefer CDST because it's really, really laid back versus AKC. I like competing in a lot, but it can be harder for some dogs because it brings a lot of tension in the air there. So it can kind of take some time to get used to for the dogs. But basically, you can pretty easily take your dog and jump from organization to organization without any problem whatsoever. As long as you train those like four solid skills, your healing, your exam, your recalls, and your stays. There are some subtle differences in organizations that that's really going to affect your scoring as much as it's not. Oh, sorry. Not as much as whether it's going to be an end cue or not. And generally, I recommend for my students that they train for the stricter organization. So basically, that's whether or not you're allowed to give a verbal cue or a hand at the same time. AKC is strict that you can only give one cue. Most organizations allow you to give both at the same time. Some other organizations allow you to praise your dog in the middle of an exercise or even give treats. So basically, if you're training for the stricter rules, you're especially going to have no problem leaping from one to another and not getting confused about when you can do this and when you can't do that. So basically, look to see what's in your area and just go to a trial. It doesn't really matter what organization you started. Kind of get a picture in your head of how it works. Yeah. And if you see one, you're going to be very familiar with the next one. Fair enough. Kind of thinking about that first trial with the dog, right? How do you really kind of wrap your head around whether or not your dog is actually ready to step in the ring? What can we do to evaluate where our training is, kind of where we're at? That's kind of a million-dollar question.

And I really wish that I had a crystal ball for a lot of my students because they seem like really agonized and stressed on whether they should enter or not. And in some sense, you don't really know until you go. The easy part to evaluate is going to be your exercises themselves. Does your dog actually know the exercise? And probably a little bit beyond. So I want my students to have heel work, not just for that basic health pattern, but can they heal a little bit longer? Can a dog do an exam where maybe the judge is a little bit obnoxious as they're going over the dog? They're either stopping their seat as they're approaching or touching them longer. It's just a little bit more. But basically, the exercises themselves are pretty easy to tell if your dog knows it or doesn't know it. Another easy part to kind of prep for but is often overlooked by most students is your ring prep routine. So does your dog know how to watch you set that reward down and go somewhere else to train to look out any cookies on you? Does your dog really know that a judge is going to approach you and talk to you? Have you trained for that? Does the dog know that a judge might even follow them while you are working? So when you're healing, the judge will be walking somewhat near you, not super close to you, but there is going to be someone in that ring. And those pieces are all very easy to train for. It just can be hard to do and are usually overlooked. There's a lot of stuff on that ring prep list. But one of the hardest pieces I find that really is hard to evaluate is, is the dog going to be comfortable when you arrive at that trial and you walk in the ring for the first time or not? And depending upon where you live in the country, that can be really hard to evaluate. Not all of us have another dog who's trialing. Like, I'm kind of lucky with all my dogs is that I was able to bring Luke to his first with agility trial. I was able to bring him to his first trial this weekend. And obviously, he's a puppy. But there's no way we spend most of the time just, can you eat cookies? There's barely in the entrance versus anywhere near the ring. And so when you have a puppy growing up in an environment, you can kind of see how are they doing in the space or how are they not doing. And not everybody has that luxury. There's things like fun matches and run-throughs, too. We can kind of tell how is it going to be in that type of environment. Do they look relaxed? How long does it take for them to be ready to work? Some of the kind of things that I'm looking at that can be hard to evaluate.

And so back to, like, evaluating, if you don't have that ability, I would recommend going to a lot of different places to train. So if you take your dog to a dog-friendly store, like a hardware store or a garden center amongst the parking lot, are you able to read your dog and how long does it take to be comfortable there and give you good quality work? And then can you go out and work there, too, without the treats constantly in their space? So those are the kind of things that I'm looking at when I'm deciding is a dog-ready at trial is, I mean, the exercises, the ring prep stuff, but then really the biggest thing is the stuff, like, to be relaxed and comfortable in an environment itself. And that's not always easy to tell. But hopefully you're going to get some good idea of that by going to those different places. So I think that's kind of a lot. But basically, again, putting it down to is the dog comfortable in an environment, what's their attitude going to be, and what's their focus going to be? All right. So for this next one, you know, I've kind of been reminded of this recently. You know, I can't speak to all the different organizations out there, but we attended a confirmation trial recently, right? And kind of have had to learn that routine and how it feels to walk in and what's going on and where you're supposed to go and how to check in at the ring and all those kind of crazy things, right? So can you talk us through what that might look like for an obedience trial? You know, other than the bits that are actually in the ring itself, which hopefully, you know, are pretty well-defined in the rulebook. You know, kind of what is an outline maybe of a typical day that you're trialing? Yeah, it's really hard to go into a new sport. So props to you for doing that, because you can feel very lost in your ride somewhere where you've never done it before. And really, it's even harder now with COVID, because we're staying further away from everybody. People aren't always willing to approach you, even if you look a little bit lost. It's because they might be trying to keep their distance anyway, or they're not sure if you want them to approach it. So it's a lot harder now with COVID to kind of get that comfortable feeling in that environment. Basically, so when you arrive at an obedience trial, unless it's absolutely raining or freezing cold, I highly recommend that you leave everything in your car. So it'll take more trips to get everything. But that way you can walk in the building with just you and not your dog and not all your crap.

And then kind of look to see how are the rings laid out and where you might want to set up your stuff. Because it's going to be really hard if you take your dog in with you when you're trying to balance your dog, meaning to stare at all the things and meaning to kind of stand on people's way while you're also trying to check in and trying to find a place that's great. So leave everything in the car. Go in the building. And then you can check in at your wing. So if you're doing AKC and it says afternoon on your premium of or your judging program of when you're going to show, that means you cannot start before noon. I can't even tell you how many students I've had show up at a trial at like 7 or 8 a.m. and they don't show up until like 2 o'clock in the afternoon. So definitely read that judging program. And you can try and calculate times per dog. There should be a calculator somewhere out there. I think it's like 9 minutes per dog. I guess now I don't know if that's bad. But it's like 9 minutes per dog or something like it. Maybe 8 minutes per dog. You can kind of judge your time that way. And non-COVID times, I like to get there maybe an hour and a half before I go. But I'll pause both an hour before I go just because my dogs tend to get a lot of escalation time. Which is also partly why I'm not trialing. I'm doing right now with COVID rules because she cannot handle going straight from the car to going in the rain for 10 minutes. And then walking into the feeding system. She needs more time with that. And until they shouldn't be that time whatsoever. So basically, you go in. You check in. Check with the steward. They'll mark your little name off the list. And you kind of see how long it is before your turn is going to go. And then you can set up all your stuff. Get your dog out. When I first get my dog out of trial, I do a lot of walking around. Because my dog kind of likes to do a little sniff walk. And I have them go sniff all the things. I'm very careful not to bother other people or dogs or crates. Stay a little bit away from the dog working in the rain. Sometimes I get them a little bit too high or not ready for that. So you might need to just go to a quiet corner, kind of chill in a mat for a little bit, and then go back out to your crate. Basically, I do the exclamation walk. Most of an obedience trial is going to be sitting around. So it's not super exciting. You'll see the whiteboards kind of within the steward crossing off each dog. You kind of just be reading a book for a little while.

I do encourage you, at least especially when COVID is kind of done, is to talk to other people and don't just whisper. People are so afraid of talking in obedience trial. And I hate it. I try to be basically as loud as possible, not like super obnoxious. But I don't want it to be so quiet that any real noise stands out. I don't want the poor person who's opening up a bag of treats for their dog to suddenly feel like they just ruined the dog in the rain because that crinkly noise was the only thing going on in the room. Or the person who's setting up their crate and that tiny little, you know, metal cling interrupts the dog in the rain. I want it to be enough noise that nothing stands out. So definitely feel free to talk to people. Don't feel like you have to be hush, hush, hush. Okay, so you heard that. Basically, when it's your turn to go into the rain, there will be a small briefing for a novice. The judge will tell you the healing pattern. If you're a novice aide, depending upon the organization, the judge might invite you into the rain that you will walk the healing pattern too. And that kind of just starts from there. And hopefully you have a good warm-up routine and you'll kind of know how to kind of get your dog out again to go into the rain. So I was talking about warming up. It's certainly not uncommon at a trial, at least in my experience, folks kind of warming up their dog, right? Repeating an exercise over and over and over. And sometimes, yeah. Before going in, you know, for some dogs, that's going to maybe warm them up. And some dogs, it's maybe going to tire them right out. So how do you kind of find that sweet spot? How do you learn, you know, what your dog needs to warm up without being, taking it to the point where they're totally tuckered out and they have nothing left for the ring? Yeah. Yeah. First, if you go to the sample lecture for this class on the FUNSY website, it is actually on this top. They basically, what I do when I arrive at a trial with a dog, how do I warm them up? So hopefully everything I say will be covered there if you guys want to take a look at that. But basically, so I always talk about when I first get to a trial, I have a little of that acclimation walk where I just just go, snap, we're not going to work whatsoever. Again, I might just be just turning on a mat for a little while. Then my next time with my dog, I call it kind of my pre-warm-up warm-up. Basically, my goal is to see how long does it take for my dog to be ready to work. But hopefully they're already somewhat acclimated to the trial at that point.

Usually we've been there for probably at least 15, 20 minutes, I'm not a half hour or so. And I'm going to evaluate again, how long does the dog need ready to work? So that way I know before my actual run, I have a good timeline of that. And then when I do work, then it's going to be super easy, happy stuff. I'm not going to turn my dog because they're not going to magically learn how to heal in those few minutes before they go into the ring. Or their stay is not going to magically be fixed. I see a lot of people trying to stick issues and that usually just try to turn off the tension. Because I have a dog who are not the most confident. I know if they kind of screw something up, I don't want them. I just don't want that added pressure on them before I go into the ring. I want them to be super easy, happy stuff. But they know how to do this really, really well. I know exactly what I do, but it depends upon my dog itself. But if my dog needs motivation, I might do more jackpot work. I do a lot of jackpot work with Vito where he would watch. We set the reward down. We would move, you know, maybe five feet away. Ask for very small behavior. And then run to his reward just to show him that, yes, this still holds true at a trial. That we can work away from them and we run to get them. And it's all super happy, lots of cookies. It might be some energy tricks. Or it might be more calming stuff. Again, depending upon the dog, it might be more of a different chin rest. Or some easy stretches. Or just some really easy work. And then, again, that's kind of my pre-warm-up warm-up. It's very short, maybe like five minutes back. And then go back in their crate to kind of chill again. But I use that to kind of gauge how and how long it takes them to work. And then how it was for work. You know, do they need more pumping up? Maybe we're calming down. What do they kind of need? So then for my actual run, I use that guideline. So Vito roughly needs about eight minutes before, when I took them out before we go into the ring. So I guess what I'm telling you is for engaging is my actual run, which is roughly the same as what in my pre-warm-up. It's a slightly more fine tune, depending on what I found out. Like it might be more motivational. It might be more calming work or energy work. And then after that little warm-up, then I go into my, let's put the rewards down and get ready to go into the ring, basically, in the next 30 seconds. The next maybe minute max. Yeah, but definitely no drilling the dog or anything like that. So what about the opposite problem?

I know I certainly become a treat machine when my nerves are up, right? I just feed, feed, feed, feed, feed, even for not a whole lot. Levi probably got an entire bag of cookies waiting ringside when we showed in confirmation a few weeks ago. So any tips to kind of deal with that? And then any tips for kind of sticking to the plan, you know, even when you're nervous? I don't know, but it might not matter as much of you feed off cookies. I know you can get cookies in the ring. So I don't really know. And obedience will definitely bite you in the butt. Because if you're just feeding them cookies outside of the ring, and then you go right in the ring and there's no cookies, you're basically just advertising to your dog with like a huge neon sign that this ring is horrible. Nothing ever good happens. All the good stuff happens outside of the ring. So you definitely want to be careful with that. But basically, I think the biggest thing to help is actually practicing that routine. But again, if you've never been to a trial, you're going to want to at least watch videos and talk to friends. But ideally, you can go with stewards. So you can kind of just get used to that routine. You can kind of calm your nerves and kind of visualize what you might do. But either way, you can practice that warm-up routine with your dog. Practice how you're going to wait outside the ring. Whatever that's going to be. Whether that's your dog waiting on a mat. Whether that's your dog waiting between your legs. Whether you're doing that jackpot practice of having the road at a distance. Doing it by the work and then running to it. But just really thinking about what you're going to do and practice it in different environments can help a lot. I also tell my students to practice what they do when they're nervous. So I know at obedience, I still get really stressy. I tend to get up and down around my chair like 20 times to walk over to the board to see if I'm able to go in soon. And so I can practice that. So my dog doesn't feel like mom is insane. So I can practice sitting up on my chair pacing and going to my down and getting up pacing and sitting back down. Or my dog is just in the crate there. Or my dog is lying on a mat. That way they're not like every single time I twitch, they're not like something is happening. They kind of just ignore that. Or some people just like to twirl their leash a lot. Again, whatever it is. But you practice that and just sub cookies in your dog's face when they're first learning it. Or practice holding your breath when you're nervous.

Just kind of those little things so your dog gives you that part of their routine and isn't bothered by it. Yeah. Yeah. And hopefully, again, when you're pecking that warm and you've done that pre-warm-up warm-up, you kind of know how long it takes your dog. That kind of loses a little bit of stress on your part. So you know exactly what is it you're going to do with your dog when you take them out for real. So it seems like one of the parts that is maybe overlooked sometimes that, you know, we do have control over is thinking about what happens between exercises while we're in the ring. So I'd love to just kind of hear what options there are really for handlers to kind of choose from. And then kind of your approach for training that piece. You know, I think I talk about transitions almost every single time you interview me because it's such a favorite topic of mine. I really think it's such a big, big thing for dogs. But basically, yeah, transitions are generally advancing from one place to another in between exercises. And there's typically the time when the human looks around the ring very lost and confused about what's going to happen next. And then their dog is like, mom has no idea what's happening and they completely stress out, start kissing the ring. Or if I sometimes kind of stress up a little bit, start helping their person. Whatever it is, it just doesn't go well. So ideally knowing when you're watching the other teams of where each exercise starts. So hopefully before you go into the ring, you know exactly where the healing starts. You know where the figure eight starts. You know where the recall, the exam. So that way you can constantly move from one place to another. How do you move it? And it's very dog dependent. And from a judge perspective, they generally don't care. As long as you're not holding up judging. So it doesn't take too long. And that your dog is under control. And I'm kind of lucky that I don't have big scary looking dogs. I have really big, you know, like goofy looking dogs. It doesn't really matter if they're jumping up at me and things like that. You have to be a little bit more careful than you have when you're, you know, bigger, quote, scary looking dogs. But basically judges don't care. So my dogs tend to like a little bit more energy type of stuff. But I encourage a lot of bouncing up at me. Whether you walk forward or backward, it doesn't matter either. So with Vito, I did a lot of walking backwards. That made me feel a lot more comfortable. So he sucked into my space with any type of me pressuring him. So I walk backwards. He would jump up at me.

And we do a lot of that. May not say it didn't matter with you or dog. But really, she can get a little bit too high sometimes. So I do have her do that a lot depending upon how she is in the range of seeing her both up and down. And so sometimes I will have her kind of bounce at me and jump up as I'm walking. Other times I might have her do more formal healing. But if at all possible, I think it really benefits us to do a tiny release of pressure in there. So I'll very quick, again, bounce into the air or a spin. Whatever it is that kind of just gets them out of that formality for just a tiny little bit. And then back into healing. And again, maybe another really quick release and then back into the human making is to kind of release some of that pressure. If your dog doesn't like play, that's fine too. I mean, think of it as a trained behavior. So even if your dog doesn't naturally like to jump up at you, you can definitely train it. Or you can train them to do, again, the following you as you walk backwards or the shadow handling, like agility, where you're switching your dog from your left side to your right side, just kind of follow you as you move. It doesn't have to be healing. Some dogs really like petting. I don't have big dogs I can pet while walking. So it's not something that I've done with my dogs. But you can definitely do that with your bigger dog if you want. I can like vitally like butt rub. So I would have him do a really quick look to my legs and I would rub his butt. And then we would move to the next spot. So it's typically fine to take like two seconds to connect with your dog and then move. But generally, your best transition moves are going to all be done while walking. So you're not holding up the judging as you get to that spot. So whatever you decide that you want your transition to look like, train it with lots of lots of cookies. As a dog is getting better, I almost always stop rewarding the finish of an exercise and I reward that setup for the next one. So if I'm practicing moving, you know, from healing to an exam or whatever I'm doing, I will have the dog finish their healing, praise them, happily move to a spot number two, set up in the heel and then get lots and lots of cookies. Because I want that setup to be highly rewarding for my dogs and to be a place they want to get to as fast as possible. But again, it doesn't matter what you do. Just train it with your cookies. And it's pretty rare a dog is going to get mad at what you do as long as the dog does it look like they're out of control. What about kind of the silence and formality piece in the ring?

How do you kind of teach the dog that that doesn't mean the fun is all over, we can still have a good time, and they, you know, don't have to worry that you've gone all quiet during a trial? Oh yeah, I definitely made that mistake with Sikorsi. He got worse and worse every trial. And it was from a lot of mistakes. I know that that was the biggest one. But the fact that when I got quiet, he thought something was wrong. And he certainly stressed about that. So thankfully I was able to fix that. I have not made that mistake again. So basically one of the biggest, I guess there's a couple pieces to think about. One of them is in your everyday training with your dog, when you're training skills, is does your dog know the difference between a shaping session versus a cued session? So if you are treating a new behavior with your dog, we often shape it, right? We want them to offer behaviors. And in that case, when we are silent, we want them to do something. But then when we're training behaviors, the dog kind of already knows we work on duration a lot. And in that case, we want the dog to keep doing what they are doing when we are silent and not just to try to throw out a billion things. Because I want the dog to know that in that case, when I am silent, it means that you are amazing. You're on the right track to earn a reward. Please keep doing it. So typically spying the dog is offering behaviors in those shaping sessions, as long as they know the difference in your body language or your setup when you're doing a session. That's kind of the first area I'm looking at. And then the second area in that it makes sure you're actively rewarding your silence and your stillness. One of the games I love from Denise is the exploding tree, which is basically you're in heel position. It doesn't have to be heel position. Basically, you're in a position. You are paused. You're creating a little bit of tension in there. And you explode into a party. So that party happens from stillness. And as you start training that, I like to see that the dog is held up in heel. I'm pausing for maybe two seconds. And I see my dog's mouth start to get tighter and tighter. The dog starts to close. They stop panting. And they're on the edge of their feet, knowing that any second I'm going to explode into a really fun game. That's kind of my favorite game to really work on that silence and stillness. But basically, in general, you want to put those pauses in from a really early stage. Even with the puppies, their pauses are very, very tiny. But I want them to actually expect that everything has a small pause in there.

And to a point where I begin pretending that I'm waiting for a judge's cue. So that pause might start at half a second. But eventually, every single time I do position changes, I'm not going to be rapidly fired going through them. I'm going to be down. Let's pause two or three seconds. Then do the stitch or whatever it's that I'm doing. But they can be in those pauses in there. So that when you're in the ring, the dog is very used to them. They don't actually expect it as part of the routine. They isn't surprised by it. So that's kind of, I guess, two of these little areas. The third one, I think, is pretty important. It's kind of the flip side of that. It's when the dog makes a mistake in a cue session. Oftentimes, I see someone just kind of standing there and waiting for the dog to fix it. The dog comes in crickety on the front. And they're standing there waiting for their dog. And the dog starts doing a windchip wiper. Going back and forth until eventually they end up straight. And in the hand, they're kind of marksman reward. But that is a pretty big problem because you're not only risking that your dog is going to frantically kind of offer behaviors, but you're also teaching the dog that when you're silent, it meant that they were wrong. And then you just fix it. And that is what can really kind of destroy their confidence later on when you're just standing there quietly waiting for the dog to tell you the next thing. That's why I, anytime the dog makes a small mistake and I'm out of that acute shaping session, I always interrupt it. I try to do so as happily as possible. I really touch the dog and I'm still able to interrupt it. Might just be, you know, go close. And I clap my hands and I play with them for a second. And then I reset them to try again. I just don't want my dog to sit there if I'm quiet. And I want them to be confident knowing that they're doing amazing. They should keep doing it and not to guess whether they need to fix it or not. I think it's other kind of things. One, shaping versus acute session. So it's the dog's health of the difference. Actively rewarding your silence and stillness through games. And then interrupting the errors in the acute session. So I kind of tried to cover the things that, you know, jump out at me. But I'd love to hear, you know, in your opinion, what you think the most difficult part of preparing a new dog to trial is. Can you share that? And then maybe a little on how you approach it? I think for most teams and myself included, I think it's really just making the time to get to those different places in training.

Because, again, the exercises are super easy to train for most people. I don't even have a lot of space in my house. And I can train most things in my really tiny house and practice it. What I can't do and what I really suck at, especially now in my chaotic life, is actually getting in places with my dogs. Whether that's a parking lot or a playground. But one benefit of having the kids is that I can take it into a playground and eventually, you know, set that net loose on a slide or the swings. And then I can have my dog there and do a tiny bit of training in the field while she's busy. But that way I kind of force myself to get out to the weather. It's nice. But just basically making time and doing it. Accountability is really big. And it's a big reason why students take gold classes to have that accountability. But whether that is a gold class or whether you have an in-person friend to do it with you or even just an online friend. Somebody who you can kind of report to and say that, yes, I did get here this week. Or no, I stopped and I didn't do it this week. Let's try again next week. But just somebody to hold yourself accountable. I think that would be the easiest way to do that. You can have a sticker chart if you like sticker charts. You can make a really pretty, you know, thing for yourself to kind of motivate you to get out there and do that. I guess the second biggest thing is going to be people pressure. My dogs, again, I don't get out nearly as often as I need to. But when I do get out, they are pretty used to working in all sorts of chaotic attractions around them. What they don't get practice with, though, is actually people pressure. And I do find that those are a little bit different. Because when things are going on around them, it kind of all kind of blends into the background. They're not really noticing it. But again, being a child, they're typically kind of quiet. And there's somebody like directly walking into our space. And that is what I also really suck at practicing. That's why you kind of need a friend as well. Somebody to be a judge for you. To follow behind you and healing. To talk to you. Into your space and ask you. They're going to ask you if you're ready. All those little kind of things you do kind of need friends for. Or if you're really outgoing and brave. Every time I go to a store, there's people always watching. Employees have nothing better to do sometimes. Sometimes they're really busy. Other times they want to stand and watch me. So I could sometimes say, hey, are you willing to approach me while I'm working on my dog's day?

So you certainly can ask other people in public to help you. And that's really hard for me as a big introvert as well. All right. So we're talking about all this because the Novice Smart class is in April. So it covers all this stuff. Plus quite a bit more. I was looking over the syllabus. And I was like, I'm not entirely sure you managed to put it all in there. That's so much stuff. But do you want to talk just a little bit about what else is into the class? So basically the class is kind of like two different parts. We do the exercises themselves. So every week we'll talk about whether I think it's healing the first week. And then it might be fixing your front. I don't remember exactly what order. We do front. We work on your exam. We work on your stage. We work on set up as well. And then the other kind of half the class that each week we also talk about at least one or two ring prep areas. So we'll talk about actually how we'll have the dog wait outside the ring. Or we'll talk about directly interacting with the judge. You know, the judge asks you if you're ready. How are you going to respond to the judge? Can your dog begin to ignore the pressure of the judge walking behind you? That type of stuff. You know, time between rewards. It's kind of a big one in leaving the rewards outside of the ring. None of those topics are going to be super in-depth because it is kind of more a broad-based class. But it will get you a good start for it. And then from there, you might find that my dog needs a lot of help on leaving the rewards. So then maybe take a more deep dive class such as like doing cookie jar games or my buy-by-cookie class. We'll go over things more in depth. This is kind of more of a broad overview of here are all the things that you need to train kind of in one spot. So a good opportunity to kind of get in there, see where your dog is at almost, and figure out what needs more attention and maybe what's almost string ready, right? Yeah. Okay. What else do students need to know before signing up? Are there skills they need kind of on board coming in? You know, how would you talk about that or describe that for someone? Well, I think I have it as a prereq that students should be able to get a 170 on that dog, which is your minimum qualifying score, in their backyard with cookies. Kind of, I don't even know if that's true anymore because I have added quite a bit to this lecture each time I've taught it. Basically, I have that there because, again, we're not going super in-depth into exactly how it's doing from step one.

So if you really want to work on something, it's kind of nice if your dog has some good pivoting skills, but we will meet you where you're at. Basically, you don't even know the foundation that you might, that you don't have. So be very kind for someone to come in thinking that, oh, they have a front, you know, they have a recall, they have this. And then I help them out to understand that your dog kind of knows it, but really we need to go back to step one. And that's absolutely fine. That's not a big deal if you find that you're nowhere near where you thought you were. Or if it is a surprise and your dog actually really is amazing and you just need this tiny little push that you guys can do it, that's absolutely fine, too. So there's not really any official prerequisites as long as you kind of know that we're technically not going over the very first steps in this class. Hopefully, the other lady has a little bit of, again, a little bit of healing, a little bit of understanding of kind of some funds and things like that. But otherwise, you guys are welcome to join us. And if you think you might be trying by the end of this year, then I would definitely take this class. It is only offered once a year. Okay. So last question here. It's a question I ask everybody lately who comes on. So what is something that you've learned or been reminded of recently when it comes to dog training? So I don't think anything really profound. It's that every dog is so, I've always been reminded every single day just how different my two puppies are. And obviously, there's two very different breeds, you know, a boricoli and a toller puppy. But it's also just them. And I know that every time we get a new puppy or a dog, we like to compare them to the last puppy or what we remember how that last puppy kind of went. Or it's just because they're littermates, right? How often do we see their littermates on Facebook or Instagram? And we're like, oh, I wish my puppy did that. But every dog is just so different. So Loot and Mayhem are two months apart. So there's a little bit of a difference, obviously. I don't know how young they are. But they are in so much different places. And I take Loot out to public. We are just working on, can you please eat cookies here? And not try to maul everybody with their love. Because he's basically a golden retriever and a border collie with his love of people and dogs. But also extremely not food motivated. So that's a really big challenge. And with Mayhem, she's like, I will eat all the cookies. And I will totally look amazing and focused. But she has different challenges.

Like she really sucks in the crate right now. So she's not able to really do as much of going out with me. Because she can't stay in the crate in the car. And she just has lots of different things that they're good at. And things that they're completely opposites on. And I know that our journey can look so different with the two of them over this next year. And hopefully it will all balance out. But there's no way I could compare the two of them. Even remotely right now with where the skills are at. Because every puppy is so different. It will be really interesting to follow your journey with the two of them. And see how things develop. Because, you know, like you said, they're very different dogs. Obviously, he's the same trainer. Yes. And hopefully Lute will be better taking cookies next time we talk. But his toy skills, like he was born knowing how to tug and drive for toys. So his toy skills are insane over any other dog I've ever had at this point. But almost anything else is not really further behind. But basically, yeah, there is not where I would have another dog with his actual skills. But mayhem is very different. So we are nowhere near that level in toy skills right now. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much, Laura. I really appreciate you coming on. Yeah, it was really fun. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week. Don't miss it. If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzie Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzie for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by bensound.com. The track featured here is called Body. Audio editing provided by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training. Be right. Thank you.