E221: 낸시 갈리아디 리틀(Nancy Gagliardi Little) - "어질리티를 배우는 데 필요한 것"

We have lots of trials and lots of great trainers and wonderful students and a great owner. And I do privates and classes there. My dogs, most of them have been border collies besides the first, the lab. So I think I was looking back and I think I have trained and competed with eight border collies now over the years. Currently, I have Lever. He's a border collie. And he is working in herding, agility, and obedience. I play around in obedience. I may get back in the ring again. Who knows? Poe is Lever's daughter and she's two. And she's working on herding and agility. We're competing in agility. She's one of the dogs that was actually ready to go when the pandemic hit. So she's doing really good because I've had plenty of time to train her. And then I have a little rescue chihuahua poodle mixy mix, eight pounds. And her name is Differ. And she's been training mostly in agility. And I've been kind of toying around with, you know, kind of doing a little obedience with her. Who knows? We'll have to think about that. But anyway, that's a little bit about me. Yeah. I hadn't actually realized she had poodle in her. That's kind of funny. I don't see that way looking at her. No, no. And I guess, you know, that she could take the chihuahua coat. But yeah, yeah. She's a great little dog. Sounds that way. I wanted to chat today, kind of talk about your upcoming FDSA class. So to kind of jump in, is there a story behind why you created the class? Kind of what inspired it? And I guess we should start with what it's called, right? Yeah. So the class is, I'm not exactly, is it glue? I know it's glue skills. I'll check the exact name. I'm not even sure what the exact name. But it's my glue skills class. The glue for future agility stars. There you go. I know I had a couple names for it. This will be actually the third time I've run it. I believe I've been running it every six months. And it's been really popular. I'm very happy. I wasn't 100% sure that people would really like this because these skills are not necessarily the sexiest skills to teach. For agility training is so exciting. And the dogs love it. And the handlers want to get right down and start training it. So I wasn't 100% sure how people would take it. It's been a really important bunch of skills for me to teach my dogs. And basically what inspired, why I created it basically is that it's, you know, the, as you know, the agility environment is really difficult for the dogs. That, especially at the trial, but even classes can be that way. And seminars, there's a lot of seminars and great instructors, clinicians traveling around when, when they can.

And in order for the dogs to be able to handle and learn, they've got to have some skills on them to deal with that high energy. People running, dogs running, loud noises, you know, like the teeter in the tunnel, barking dogs. And there's just tons of stuff going on there. Just a really challenging environment. So that's one of the things is how can we get these dogs to learn better, to be able to cope better? And then the other thing is there's, there's plenty of really good trainers around the country that know how to train obstacle skills, but they struggle with focus issues. And these are good trainers. I mean, and we all struggle with focus issues in some way or another. But with these skills, it really helps the dog be able to understand and, and be able to cope with the environment and to learn better. Um, so I was thinking about the skills I've taught my dogs over the year that, that kind of helped them cope during all of these things. And, um, I always referred those skills as the glue that built a foundation for learning, but I kind of shortened it to just glue skills and people seem to always like that. And it just, it makes sense because it kind of holds everything together. The other thing too, is it's also, it's not just the skills for the dog. And I think, um, you know, we'll talk about that a little bit later too, but, um, it's also the handler learning how to communicate effectively with their dog. That's super important to me. Um, and as, as you know, the dog has the final say as to whether the handler is being clear or not, so there might be, you know, some minor, there might even be some other skills, you know, depending on the dog. I think I've, um, added some depending on my various dogs, you know, what I see, they might need something else, but basically I have some core skills that, um, that are important to me, um, to teach the dog. So, um, yeah, so the one thing I want to mention too is, you know, a couple of things is these skills are, they're not, you know, they're not just critical for agility. I mean, I developed them mainly for agility because the dogs struggle so much with the environment, but they're also really good for any dog sport. Um, all dogs can benefit from these skills. It's just agility dogs benefit the most. Um, the other thing I just want to mention here really quickly too, I made a note here about differ. It's been like a year ago, like in late March that I got her, you know, as a rescue dog. And the reason why I got her is while the pandemic happened, um, everything was shutting down

and I thought, well, you know, I have this new class coming, um, and I could just, you know, teach all the skills to a fresh dog, you know, rather than using my dogs to demo it. So she was like four and a half months old, I think, somewhere around four. I can't remember exactly when I got her. And also she's a small dog. She's eight pounds. Um, and you know, I thought, well, okay, it's totally different. Um, that's why her name is differ. She's smaller and it will be good because all, you know, the videos and the learning will be on, you know, a dog that's a little bit, a different approach for me. Um, and then as I was telling you before we started recording, um, she started trialing this weekend after all the, you know, the training I've done with her, with these, with the glue skills and then building on that. And she was amazing. She just went above and beyond my, um, expectations. She was, you know, focused and ready to go. And yeah, I couldn't have been happier. So she's pretty much the dog in all of the videos for this class. Awesome. All right. So we've talked about kind of the inspiration and you mentioned that there are all these skills kind of included. So what are they? Let's go for it. Okay. So, yeah. So the, my, one of the most important skill to me is what most of us call standby, um, which is basically a default eye contact behavior. Um, that's super important for me. Stationing, um, where the dog has a place to go to wait until they're called off or released from, um, they learn to wait, a release and a wait skill, which kind of go hand in hand. And in order to have a nice weight, the dog really has to understand a release cue. Um, I have transport skills that are trained skills. Um, they're not just things that you just do to your dog without training them. They need to be trained. A downstay is super important to me. Um, even a small dog can do a downstay in spite of what people think. Then I have some things with the collar. I have a collar give. So the dog learns to come to my hand instead of me grabbing the collar. The dog brings the collar to me and, um, collar and leash pressure kind of moving the dog in space. Um, so they respond to that. And then one thing I added would differ is, um, you know, and this, this is things that people struggle with small dogs is they don't necessarily want to be picked up. So I do, I work pretty hard at, um, consent to pick up, um, the little dogs so that, that they accept it. And they, I won't say they're reinforced by it, but they allow it. You know, they do want to be on the ground, but so I, I've added that.

And then one other thing that's more, um, it is part of my glue skills, but it's more training that happens before trials. It can happen before, um, it can happen during when actually we train this in this class, but, um, I do this training a lot of times closer to the trials, or at least review it again, because it's more important. Um, the remote reinforcement teaching the dog to accept that, uh, um, reward is not on you. Um, and that's something we can start right away, but then refresh a lot, um, down the road right before trialing. Mm-hmm. So without these skills, you know, what kind of problems tend to pop up if dogs kind of haven't been through the program, haven't really thought about, um, or if their handlers haven't really thought about kind of the need for these base behaviors, um, you know, what can go wrong? Yeah. Um, so the, you want me to go through each, each of those? Up to you. You can do a couple or you can do each of these if you want. Okay. So like, so the standby, I found that the more I teach this to dogs or the more my students teach it to their dogs, the better the dogs understand duration because standby is basically default eye contact and the dogs learn. And they learn from the behavior of the handler that something's coming. Um, so instead of offering behaviors, they wait for cues. And I want that to be the default instead of just the dog saying, oh, nothing's going on. Well, here, let me try this. And as you can imagine in agility, that can be very confusing if the dog thinks that, you know, they should be offering different behaviors. It's offering behaviors isn't a bad thing, but when you're trying to teach skills, it may not be exactly what you want. Stationing is going to prevent issues. Again, duration issues. It's going to help you with start lines, start your dog with start lines. It's going to help the dog with the environment because it ends up being a fairly safe place, um, for dogs that have environmental issues or focus issues where they're, you know, kind of watching everything in their environment that really helps them feel safe. It also helps them to self-regulate. They learn to be able to control their, um, energy. Sometimes they're a little bit high. Sometimes they can pull back. Um, and the other thing that I find is that it is going to prevent some, um, unwanted behaviors, um, in some of the training. Um, you can just eliminate that by sending to the station. So there's lots of things there that stationing will prevent. So the release or the weight, the release weight, um, again, that's going to, uh, prevent

or help the dog with duration issues and obviously start line, um, issues, not, not waiting for the proper cue and even stopped contact issues. So let's see. Transport, um, is basically going to help clean up some messy training. It's going to allow you to be a little bit cleaner with your training, maybe. Um, um, and it's going to, for the dog's sake, it's going to, um, keep the dog focused and eliminate unwanted behaviors between repetitions. And the down stay is my go-to. I use it a lot in agility. It's, it takes a while to get the full behavior trained in that, in, in that environment. Especially I use it when I wait for, um, uh, in the queue for my run to happen. But most of the time, my dogs, as a young dog pose, um, I started her in the queue waiting on her station. I did that for a while because I knew she wouldn't be able to handle the down stay. But I gradually worked a little pieces of the down stay in, and now she can wait, um, in the warmup area in the queue, um, for, you know, waiting for a turn and she can stay in the down stay. So that's an important thing. It's important. Um, if you want to listen to your instructor or, um, a clinician is to be able to stick your dog into a down rather than just having them running around or, um, losing energy or losing focus. So that's a super important one for me. Um, and the call or give, as you can imagine, it's going to prevent that darting away, um, and not really understanding what you're doing when you're bending over. Sometimes the dogs can't predict what you're going to do. You're, you're quickly grabbing towards them. They're not really sure what's happening. And, um, so I like to have that knowledge for the, from the dog so that they always know what's happening. Um, and then pressure on the collar and leash. You just, you want them to be able to, um, move about and not be resistant to that movement because there's a lot of things going on in, um, the agility environment. You have to navigate through crowds and different areas and, um, you don't want a dog that's pulling you. Um, so that helps that. Um, and then I think, you know, the remote reinforcement I talked about a little bit, um, that's gonna, there's a lot of stress, um, it, in dogs when they're running agility, they don't really know when the reinforcement's coming. Um, there can be slow starts and there can be arousal issues at the trials because, you know, they're basically taught trials, no rewards in the, in training, always rewards in the ring. So, you know, handlers have a tendency to just kind of throw that on the dog.

So I like to start that a little bit early cause there's a lot of layers there. Um, and, and also so handlers can see how important it is so that they do it later on and they revisit that later on. So did I, I think I got everything. I think so. All right. Let's drill in on some of those in particular. So start with the, um, the focus weight standby behavior. Do you want to talk some more about why that's so important kind of for our agility dogs in particular? Sure. Um, I definitely want to talk about this one because this is one that's under most people's radar. Um, and I don't think they understand how confused dogs can be. Basically the standby behavior, as I talked before, it's a default eye contact and it helps the dog with duration. Um, so it's, it's basically teaching the dog to wait for a hand or cue and the presentation or the cue for that behavior is a quiet handler that makes eye contact with the dog. And when that happens, I will, I want to do is teach the dog that, that something's coming, that there's information coming, that there's a cue coming. Um, and, and I want the dog to learn that, you know, that quiet handler eye contact means something fun is going to happen or interesting. Um, and the way we do it is just a long history of rewards for the dog learning that we break it down. Um, but what, what can happen is, um, it has a huge impact on the start line, um, because of the release cue. It's, it's, it's one of the core pieces in my, um, start line class, um, because of the release cue. What, what can happen is if they don't understand quiet handler eye contact, what can happen is, um, the dog starts throwing behaviors or the dog thinks they're wrong and they need to be doing something. We kind of end up training our dogs to do that because what happens a lot when a dog makes a mistake is the handler stops. They, again, quiet handler looks at the dog and pauses and the dog's like, oh crap, I need to do something else. And then it's a big guessing game by the dog as to what they should be doing. So they end up throwing behaviors out and then all of a sudden they hit the behavior that the handler wanted and the dog gets reinforced. And so what we end up doing is teaching the dog that when there's quiet, handlers, quiet, eye contact, they are, they need to throw another behavior at you. Um, and so that ends up being, uh, very, um, conflicting cues to the dogs to expect them to be able to pause and wait for handler information, but at the same time throw a behavior because they're wrong. So I want to clean that up and I want to make that, um, the dog understand that, um, or not

make the dog, but help the dog understand that when the handler's quiet and there's eye contact, that means something's coming. So pay attention and, you know, and something fun will come. So that's going to have a huge impact and it'll have a big impact on any dog sport actually. Um, so that's why that one is really important for me. I'm not sure if that made sense to you. Yeah. Yeah. So it's kind of the idea of understanding to almost understanding stimulus control, right? So the idea of understanding kind of to wait for the cue. Yeah. Yes, exactly. Cause I, you know, I don't, it's important not to teach these dogs two different things. We have to be able to tell the dog if you're shaping, you should be able to tell the dog that by how you approach shaping that that's what's happening. We don't just want the dogs to like throw behaviors at us. We want them to understand that there is something coming. And so exactly it's stimulus control. Basically it's putting something on a verbal cue, um, and, and having the dog understand that that's coming. What about, um, transport techniques? Did you want to talk a little more about that? Sure. So yeah, transport. So those are important to me too. And, um, I think I mentioned it before, it's, it's really important to train them and not just, um, just move the dog from one place to another is basically, um, one of the most important ones for me is basically like a treat magnet. Um, you know, being in, and you have to actually train it. Most people, what they do is they kind of lure the dog. Well, it is a lure, but they'll kind of, you know, lure the dog with food in there, you know, just in front of them to try to draw the dog towards. And this is completely different. This is basically food on the nose and the dog keeps nibbling at it. And, you know, I really go into a lot of detail how to do that. Um, move, being able to move the dog from one place to another so that they don't lose their focus. And then basically, um, that, that helps set the training up. Um, and there's many different ways to transport. Or basically transport is just taking a dog from one point to another, you know, basically moving from, and sometimes it's not much movement at all. Um, so the treat, treat magnet, there's also tugging. You can do that. But, um, when you do use tugging, you've got to have some good toy skills and no conflict. If the dog's got to be able to release the toy easily, um, picking up a small dog, if you reinforce that enough, um, and they, that can be a method of transport.

Sending a dog, um, could be a method of transport because basically, and I've used that a lot for training with differ. I don't know what I would do without the stationing, the transport, um, using stations. Um, cause basically I can set up different weave entrances and know precisely what I worked on, you know, the previous rep. Um, and I just basically send her back to the station and we start again, same thing with contacts. So that, um, those things all need to be trained in. There's many, many different ways to move the dog from point A to point B. All right. So we've talked a little bit about, um, standby. We talked a little bit about transport. I think, um, the class also goes into kind of ring entrances and exits, right? So I, I think most people kind of get why those are important, um, being able to enter the ring and exit the ring well, but, um, can you kind of talk about what it is you want to see there and then how you actually go about teaching that as a skill? Sure. Um, there's a lot of confusion about ring entrances and exits by the dogs. Um, because like I mentioned before, the handlers don't always teach the dogs to work without rewards on them before going into the ring. And that just means that, you know, the dogs learning that agility ring in trials has no rewards. So we, we want to be able to set the dog up so that they have some knowledge of how they're going to get reinforced because the rewards are going to be outside of the ring ultimately. Um, and that is going to create, if they don't have this training, it's going to create a very unfocused dog. Maybe a dog that's going to start slow and, and fast, or it might be a dog. Like if you're leaving the toy outside the ring, it might be a dog that just seems over aroused and unresponsive, you know, during parts of the, the, the run. But some dogs are going to adjust to that completely, but I'm really big on just training it from the start because there are many dogs that don't adjust to it. And so what I do in this class is I teach a remote reinforcement marker cue. So basically that is a cue. That means we are going to reinforcement, whatever that is. Um, I, I do start everyone out with food and for some of the dogs, like pose, my pose, she's not very reinforced by food. I mean, she's fairly reinforced, but the toy is a huge reinforcer for her. And so, um, once I've, once you teach the food, you can switch to toys as well. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to layer in the training completely by building like a strong understanding of how that occurs.

And the first step to all of that is teaching the dog that the reinforcement is going to happen by moving away from the reward. And so what the handlers do is as they move away, which is really hard for people, they're moving away from the reward, they market, and then they move back to the reward. Um, and I've got a specific way to do it. That helps everything. Um, I was interesting enough this weekend, I was watching, um, because they, in UK, this was a UKI trial that I went to this weekend, um, would differ. And, um, many of the dogs were that in, in UK, you can have, um, you can go, um, it's called NFC, not for competition or it's just for exhibition only. Um, you can go in there with dogs and run to a food box. Basically it's kind of an enclosed area where you can put your food in and just periodically run and reinforce your dog. But what I saw handlers do, and this is why it's so confusing to the dog is they don't tell the dog they're going at all. They just praise them and they run that direction. And how confusing is that to the dog that every time you start moving towards the exit, you know, what you're training them there is that you're going to the food. So, you know, I, I'm, you know, that's, that's something I feel the dog needs is a marker to know that that reinforcement is available. And we just, you know, go into a lot more detail doing that. I like that. And I mean, I can certainly see how it'd be super confusing for the dog, especially because, you know, typically if you're going to train agility, you go in the room and you're there for a while. You don't just like do one run and leave. Yeah, exactly. Um, so I can see how it'd be super, like not what the dog's expecting if that's not your normal routine. Um, right, right, right. It catches the dogs by surprise. And, and I think at first they're like, oh, okay. And, and then pretty soon they start, I mean, they, dogs figure, figure out what's it, figure it out quickly that, you know, wait a second, all the treats are on this side of the gate. And then when I go in, there's nothing. Okay. That gets, that's not fair. Not only that, but you know, I want to help the, I want to help the dogs learn, you know, that it, it is accessible, you know, but you know, this is how it happens. Yeah. And not only that, but if the dog loves agility, then the exit starts to mean agility is done, which still doesn't make trials fun. Right. Right. Right. You have to balance that out for sure. Absolutely. If the dogs that really want to do agility, um, but you still have to give them something for the exit too.

You know, that's why with pose, the food wasn't enough, but the toy was, and that's what she was used to being reinforced by when I would train as a toy. Um, so it's got a Trump agility. Mm-hmm. All right. So while those are all dog skills or skills, the dog learning class, um, I know you also cover a bunch of things that handlers learn throughout the class. So I want to talk about a couple of those too. Um, why, why is kind of the learning to plan and organize efficient training sessions, particularly important for handlers working towards competing and agility with their dogs? Yeah, actually, I think it's important with all dog sports, but, um, yeah, but in, in agility, um, there's so many agility obstacles and, and so much handling for the dogs to learn in this sport. I really want the handlers to think about what they're trying to teach. Um, so I think, you know, learning, you know, learning to set up the environment to help, um, break everything down and teach those skills is super important. And, and I really want people to understand how, you know, a lot of unwanted behaviors can get built into some of the training that they, you know, from the training that they're doing. I want them to really understand that. And I think with some of the things that we work on, um, in class, they start realizing that the power of that, um, most agility trainers aren't planning their sessions. Um, and, and they just kind of go out and run some sequences, you know, even in the backyard, even if they have something to do, a lot of times the dog just gets overworked. Um, and it's just, it's for the sake of the handler kind of learning things rather than the dog. Um, and I know agility handlers love to sequence their dogs. Um, and many times they do that before the obstacle's even fully trained. Um, that's hard. Um, obstacles aren't performed, you know, they're, they're not really teaching the dogs to perform the obstacles like the contacts and weaves and other things independent from the handler. Um, and then that ends up biting the handler later on when they've got to babysit the dog throughout the course. So I really want people to think about, you know, breaking things down a little bit more. And I think we can kind of layer in a lot more independence, um, by the dog, more commitment to obstacles, things like that, that, that aren't possible when the handler is babysitting the dog. The other thing, and I, I kind of touched a little bit on it when I talked about how, um, I was watching the UKI trial this weekend when people were running to the, the reinforcement

with their dogs, the dogs were learning that motion towards the exit means that the reward's coming, which is not what you really want to teach the dogs because in agility, many times you're moving towards the exit and that you're just, you're just going to go back, you know, back onto the course again. And motion is such a big part of agility. It's just super important, important for me to ensure that the handlers are not confusing the dogs. Um, you know, I want the communication to be really clear, um, verbal cues, like release cues. I want to make sure that there's no movement or patterns from the handler, those kinds of things. So I'm really paying attention to, you know, what the handler needs to improve on to help the dog. And every team is going to be slightly different. Um, so, but we just start kind of where they're at and move forward. Makes sense. Um, I know in the description, kind of the line that maybe will catch some folks by surprise, you mentioned that speed is not important during learning. So I wanted to, uh, take a minute and just ask you to elaborate on that and kind of explain what you mean and why that's true. Yeah, that's, yeah. Thanks for bringing that up too. It's a great question. Um, because this is like a, it's, it's a, it's a huge thing for me. Um, trainers, humans, actually, I think we all naturally want to control the dog first. I mean, I'm guilty of that too. It's like, um, you know, we, we want to help the dog too much and, and that's going to include attempts to get the dog more focused or to rev the lower energy dog up. I see that a lot where people are revving the dogs up somehow trying to get the speed on the dog because they think about agility is about a fat, it's a fast, you know, it's a fast game. It's about time. We got to get these dogs working, um, you know, when they're higher and get them revved up and get them faster. But the dogs have to, you know, I don't, you know, if you were ever, um, learning something new, like a soft four program or something that took a lot of thought, maybe that's just a, maybe that's a bad example. That's not a movement example, but you know, maybe you were learning a dance is not a good example for me, but in somebody's trying to rush you because it's got to be done at speed. Um, you know, you've got to be doing this faster. Um, that is so hard. You cannot learn that way. And I think, you know, we end up, you know, pushing our dogs into speed traps, um, you know, too quickly and they can't really learn. Um, and I think that it's important for them to learn the obstacles first.

And then as they start learning all of these different things, you know, the, the different positions and, you know, independent obstacle, obstacle performance, they become a lot more confident. And that's when the speed picks up. And actually then when speed picks up, then you start seeing some errors, um, because the dogs are moving faster. And like, you know, we were talking about weaves earlier before you started recording and, um, weaves are an issue when the dogs start getting confident that they can fall apart later on. Um, my dogs, they've all been fast and I have never, I've never pushed any of them for speed. Um, it just causes more mistakes. And, and I just, I don't want that many mistakes in my training. I want, I want a confident dog. And I think with less mistakes, um, they're, they're going to trust me more. Um, and I don't think any of the dogs really like to be revved up, um, myself. I don't like to be pushed for more speed either. Um, some of that's going to cause slower, more careful, you know, performances, leaving the handler sniffing, that kind of thing. Um, or then, you know, if you have like a high energy dog, it can cause them to run in, you know, more of a frenetic style and none of that's desirable. So, um, so that's why I really want people to think about, you know, let's just let the dog go at the speed that they feel comfortable with learning. And then we move on from there. You're talking about dancing or software, right? But I mean, even learning handling moves, if somebody makes you try and do them fast, the first time you're learning them, like just that's where I'm at with my training. Right. So like that's super fresh in my mind, just trying to learn how to do a front cross for the first time. And like not doing it slow is hard. Absolutely. Yeah, no, you can't. And there's so many pieces to, you know, taking, taking handling. There's so many pieces to the front cross, you know, where are you looking? Where are your feet pointing? What, you know, when, you know, the timing and all these things to think about. If you do that, you know, in real time, you're going to fail every time for different reasons. But to slow it down and focus on one or two things and build on that success creates a lot more confidence as, you know, as speed picks up. Absolutely. All right. So I think we've covered a lot of ground, but anything else you kind of want to share about the class? Yeah, just a couple things. Sure. So I do want to mention that I have an awesome teacher's assistant. And she's actually been one of my local students and a long time FDSA student, Heather Sather.

And she's helped me with this class for the past year and a half. She's awesome. Um, the other couple of things that I want to mention is there is a lot of material in this class and it's going to feel like the first few weeks are a bit heavy, but, um, it does slow down a bit. Um, but I do set things up for success for the handler and the dog with a lot of background reading and, um, things for people to think about and work on. Um, one other thing too, is I get a lot of questions about puppies. Um, and you know, what the right age is, um, we there, you know, obviously if, uh, you know, like can take young puppies, if they're ready to work, um, if they're still, um, really distracted and you're doing a lot of socialization, that's probably not a good move, but usually four months, um, to six months is, is fairly young. Six months to two years is ideal. Um, but there, there's no reason why a four month to six month old can't do this. We just probably won't get through all the material, but there's a lot of good stuff we can do and a lot of really good things to, um, to be able to start with these young dogs. Awesome. All right. So I want to kind of round out our chat with one last question. So if we were going to kind of drill down everything we talked about today into one key piece of information, you really wish everybody listening kind of understood, what would that be? How would you kind of pull that out? Yeah, that was, that's a hard one, but, um, I think it, I mean, training young dogs is so hard anyway. Um, so if you're, if using these skills, if you zoom into like a narrow focus on your dog's training, things are just going to move along much faster. Um, especially when you consider the skills that can help your dog learn, focus, and trust you. If you're building others, if you're building these, um, skills, um, obstacle skills, handling skills from your dog, and you don't have the things that can help them cope with different environments and learning things could crumble down the road. Um, so, you know, I want to urge people to give it a chance. And, um, I know it's not necessarily completely sexy wave. Uh, um, it's not diving into agility training, but I think once you train this way, you'll never look back. There's just, you know, things just move along so quickly. And I look back at the last year with differ, um, you know, cause it's been, you know, she was four, four and a half months when I got her. And that's all that I spent the time on training her. Um, by the way, she ended up staying with me. She's like a foster fail. Foster win. Um, she, she's not going anywhere.

Um, but she, you know, looking back on that, it's like everything came so easy after all of those were trained. Um, after the basic skills were trained, um, it just, it just flew by. She's, you know, she learned very fast. So I just want sometimes the, the little pieces that help the dog a lot that have nothing to do with the big picture actually help that big picture evolve faster. Awesome. I think that's a good place to end. So thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Nancy. Thanks so much for having me. Absolutely. And thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. We will be back next week with Julie Simons to chat about how she's evolved her nosework classes over time. If you haven't already subscribed to the podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzie Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzie for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty free by bensound.com. The track featured here is called Buddy. Audio editing provided by Chris Lane. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training. Thank you. Thank you.