E255: 메건 포스터와 바바라 커리어(Megan Foster and Barbara Currier) - "어질리티 장애물 훈련"

whatever she wants whenever she wants basically and then miso uh is my retired world team dog she is a eight-year-old miniature poodle she just turned eight yesterday um so i'm struggling with the fact that she's getting older because i don't like that but she is now doing um barn hunt which she loves um so we're kind of having fun playing in the set work with her and trying that stuff out and then eggo um is my four-year-old uh working cocker and he is um newly retired from agility um but he is now doing nose work and barn hunt and fast cat and dock diving um so we're kind of doing all the things with him at this point and he's loving all the little new adventures that we're doing and then fish is my youngest and he will be two in march he is a french spaniel he is enormous and has big feelings about all the things and he is doing nose work and barn hunt um he also does connie cross um and we do a lot of like the tough mudder obstacle course races with him and with echo actually um and they just love it they're super fun and they as long as they're busy they're happy i love the facebook pictures you post and all the candy cross stuff you do it's awesome so and whenever there's a photographer there i'm like oh i'm gonna be broke this weekend yeah um so as i kind of mentioned in the intro i do want to talk agility today you both have classes this coming term on teaching different obstacles and so um i think maybe we could start there so and have you each maybe share just a little bit about your class and what it's actually on kind of what exercises you'll cover barbara you want to go first this time uh sure so my class is on stopped contacts um so two on two off or four on uh with a heavy emphasis on teeter the where we do cover the a-frame and the dog walk um but it's a strong emphasis on the teeter because that tends to be the one that's going to give dogs the most problems um so the course is really centered around creating creating drive and love for the obstacle and independence so that the handler is not in the picture at all completely independent they can be leaving the dog while they're doing their job so that they can get to the next position on course and be giving the dog all the information in a timely matter okay for total beginners problem solving yeah it goes you can it's good for either if you have a retrain if you have a dog that's struggling and you want to retrain but it's also step by step right from the very very beginning to a dog who's never been on the teeter yet or any of the obstacles

for that matter megan yeah so this time around i'm teaching my wheat pole class which is i've named not your average two by twos uh just because there are a couple of very popular methods out there for using two by twos and we've full training and i've taken yet another spin at that and it starts from the very beginning where you don't have to have any prior we full experience and we work each team up at whatever pace that they need to go to the process where we start adding in all sorts of proofing layers with different reinforcer distractions different handling distractions layering in that independence and giving the dogs the power to complete that obstacle on their own and all the skills that they need and giving the handler the confidence that they need to know that the dog will actually be completing the obstacle correctly um yeah i think that covers it excellent um so uh i think both classes kind of cover topics where sometimes handlers maybe struggle a little bit to kind of explain to their dog what it is they're really looking for and kind of what that final criteria is supposed to be i thought i would ask you guys each kind of what the aspects are of the particular kind of stuff that you're focusing on um that tend to be hard to teach what where do people tend to kind of get stuck or stumble um megan you want to take this one first yeah there are so many different layers to teaching weave poles that i kind of find that the biggest struggle is that trainers or want to take on all of those layers at the exact same time and so then when the dog is struggling or there's a problem happening they're not certain which piece of the puzzle is causing the problem so the dog has to be able to seek out the correct gap of weave poles to enter correctly they have to collect to get in and stay in they have to you know dive in and keep weaving regardless of whatever the handler is doing or whatever other obstacles right and then they have to follow the handling upon the exit of the weave poles so splitting out kind of those four main elements and focusing on one at a time and then as each of those elements is mastered putting them together into more of a finished product uh is kind of how i approach those things but you barbara quite a few um in contacts so um for all three of them um movement uh so a lot of people when they're training the contacts they they inadvertently include themselves in the dog's picture of what the bottom behavior should look like and so the moment they try to move away or

leave the dog while doing the behavior the dog wants to break their contacts because they don't realize that you know the handler's leg has become part of the picture of what the dog sees um so that i find is a big problem um some dogs are very noise sensitive or motion sensitive so the teeter can be very scary to them for either the noise part or the movement part and even though teeters are supposed to be the same across the board they're just not all teeters sound different they they feel different they tip at a different place um it doesn't matter how much we try to regulate it they're just different um so that can be a problem for a lot of dogs also um vague criteria for the dogs in the rule books it says that the dogs just need to get one toenail in the yellow well that's super vague um and so when people try to you know either cut corners um because they want the fast results or they just don't know which happens often when we first come into the sport just getting something in the yellow is super vague for the dogs and when you add arousal you add the trial environment that one toenail in the yellow becomes no toenails in the yellow and it just becomes launching um and so that's that's a tough one um and then independence doing the behavior um without the handlers being there knowing what their job is regardless of what the handlers are doing where the handlers are going um all of that so those are the struggles that i see a lot in contacts and i know megan kind of talked about this a little bit in her last answer but i know that for for kind of both the contact obstacles and for weaves weaves there are lots of different ways that people kind of approach that training um so i wanted to have you guys just detail for us a little bit more kind of how you address it or kind of how you um start the process and kind of what that process looks like um barbara you want to go okay continue what you're saying sure um so like i said in the beginning um this course covers stopped contacts there's obviously running contacts also um and in stop contacts you have um two on two off or four on depending on the size of dog uh some people also will do four on the ground like somewhat four on the obstacle somewhat four on the ground so there's different there's different thought processes um to it mostly what i teach in this class is two on two off or four on for small dogs on the teeter um and i use a target method um so that that it gets actually faded out very quickly um but i use it so that even going

forward um particularly in like you know if i'm working on a course that has sharp 90 degree turns off of a contact the dogs tend to start to figure out where they're going and so a lot of times they want to come off the obstacles on the side and so even if i'm you know working with a dog that understands contacts knows their job you know sometimes they need a little reminder of yes i know that you know we're going to be turning but i still need you to come down this contact straight and so it's easy for me to bring the target back out and be like remember you had to go down and target that that's where i need your feet or your nose or whatever um and so they're like oh yeah yeah it's that thing so i like to teach that in the beginning so i have it to pull back out in the future but like i said it gets faded out very quickly um i don't when when they're in when they're competing at that point you don't see them doing any type of nose target or foot target because it becomes muscle memory but it's a nice thing to have to be able to pull out to help remind them of um positions if they're starting to question it for one reason or another mhm megan yeah so like i sort of touched on earlier i the the weave pole class that i teach is primarily a two by two method which simply put is you start with two poles and then when two poles are mastered you add two more poles and then when four are mastered you add two more except i kind of draw my ideas from a lot of the different weave pole methods that i've used and seen across the last couple of decades so as far as entries are concerned i have broken the entries into i want to say six kind of quadrants really so working the dog from three different main positions and the handler in a different position from the dog so because not a lot of times on course the dog is coming from one obstacle from one direction and the handler's already positioned somewhere else so the dog needs to be able to find the weave poles when the handler isn't right next to the dog but we also need the dog to be able to find the entry when they are on the same line as the as the handler and we have to teach them to find it whether the handler is on the dog's left or on the dog's right side so we break all of those entries up into the quadrants and we work on those different quadrants throughout the entire six weeks because the reality is some dogs are going to need some quadrants more than others depending on what types of courses that they'll be running and what their agility goals are some dogs are going to need a lot more distance to their entries and a lot more

independence than others as well then we also look at when we add weave poles and i think this is kind of the the magic that i've seen happen with this particular iteration of weave pole training is that when we add weave poles we back chain them together rather than forward chaining them together and so when i start adding weave poles i actually look at the the first two poles that we've been working on i actually look at them as pole 11 and 12 versus one and two and then we add poles back and as we add poles back then that means we can start working more on the exit and so then we continue layering in different types of handling and working on that dog's ability to stay in the poles no matter what the handler is doing and then we add in more and more entries as we go along so it kind of starts with nothing and each week we just add another layer until you have 12 beautifully independent and confident weave poles excellent i think there are probably almost as many ways out there to train both contacts and weaves as there are dog trainers who teach it so for sure yeah you're both nodding at me there's there's definitely a method out there for every type of dog and it's not one method works for every dog like you know so if something isn't working for you try something else because there's definitely there's enough methods out there that there's something that will fit for you and your dog a hundred percent and every time like i've taught especially this we pull class in particular i we start with the basic exercises and then you kind of see the character of the dog and you see this in the in the way the handler likes to train in the way they like to communicate and you go yeah i know it says to do this lecture next but maybe you should go here first and let's see how that's going to work and then we'll circle back around and add that in so it's on paper it's going to look like i use the same way forward with every team but the where each individual brick gets actually placed might look a little different so those those gold threads are literal gold yeah we've kind of teased some of this stuff as we've just been kind of having a conversation today obviously kind of beyond the basic obstacle just being able to do the weeds or just being able to do the contact behavior there's a lot more that goes into it right pre you can plug those things into an actual course and compete successfully so what are some of those other things can we break them out can we kind of name them talk about them for a minute megan yeah i think we can

so you know with with piecing any obstacle obstacle together there are some handling skills involved right the dog has to be able to follow the handling from wherever you're starting before the obstacle to the obstacle and then follow the handling after the obstacle and and we will get into that in the class a little bit how your handling affects weave poles and how we can kind of make that work for your current communication system or look at bigger picture of what handling skills you might want to add to make weaving easier for you and the dog but i also think we need skills surrounding how to reinforce the weave poles and a variety of different ways and how to reinforce these obstacles so that it's easy to transfer those paths to reinforcement to the other obstacles and getting that reinforcement further and further delayed so that the dog isn't just looking for the reward every time they exit the weave poles so i think those are the main two things anything you'd add to that barbara uh well for context um there's a lot in in this class um everything's kind of broken down into you know games um it's all a lot of games that are building blocks into the major big picture you know at the end of the day the major big picture is having independent contacts that they drive to the bottom the handler's doing whatever they want the dog's doing their job until they're released you know and then we ride off into the sunset together um so where you know the first things that we have to look at when we start this class is can the dog do simple behaviors for instance sit and down when the handler is in motion because if they can't do those simple behaviors how are we going to be expecting them to do this contact behavior you know come over this contact come down go into their position while the handler's racing by and running up to something so um you know we start with teaching them to ignore handler motion and continue with the job that we've asked them to do um and then we need to work on body awareness and body control um you know being able to control their body as they are coming down an a-frame that's harder for some dogs than others a lot of times depending on the dog's structure you know we've got dogs that are super front end heavy we have some breeds out there that are you know 80 percent of their body weights in their head alone so you know they want to roll down the a-frame so we need to work on body awareness and and what and how they can control their body safely so that they can do the a-frame and the and the teeter and

not have any issues with that um and then we need to work on handling you know having them understand the handling going to the obstacles handling going off of the obstacles and then also we address um what to do when we get in a trial situation if you know if they don't do what we're asking them to do what do we do now um you know where where do we go from there how do you fix things if problems start to arise how do you catch things quickly before they can become a huge problem that type of thing i feel like that's such a big piece of specifically contacts right like how not to break them once you actually start trialing with your dog yes because it's very i mean it's so common that you get these beautiful contacts and training and then it just goes to crap when you start everyone just gets pulled into you know the dogs become aroused we didn't do enough proofing you want that cue you know oh but they got a toenail in we were clean yeah but we just totally let them go with their criteria and now they're confused we have this criteria at home but this is okay at trials you know and you so it's just it's all the things that you know it's just really important that they understand students when they leave this class understand what they're looking for how to stay consistent and what to do if they if things start to go off the rails yeah and like you're saying before like no matter how much we try the equipment is going to be somewhat different so now we're adding that piece in yep to the mucky whatever that her dogs do or do not understand absolutely yeah we've been talking about this a little bit but just to kind of isolate it i feel like i feel like we're doing a good job today of maybe getting slightly ahead of my questions but that's okay that means that they flow correctly um how much do you guys actually go into teaching the various bits and pieces and some of the proofing and some of the um you know different approaches and obstacle independence and commitment had how much you guys go into those things kind of in your class and at what point do you really kind of teach some of those skills do you layer them in as you go um are they something you kind of teach after the dog has the basic idea of the obstacle can can you guys maybe talk to that a little bit and barbara i think it's your turn to start us off yeah so uh as i was saying before you know my class is made up of a lot of little games and they all build on each other and so right from the very beginning we start to proof all of the behaviors as they're building so all of the games will build

on each other and we slowly start to put the pieces together to form the the main picture of the finished contact behavior but as we're going along we already have been proofing those behaviors so then when we get to the full picture of the contact behavior we're not throwing anything new at the dog they they've already seen oh yeah we're doing that proofing stuff oh okay all this stuff is you know it's all it's all very familiar to them we just and we only we're only changing things slight you know small amounts at a time so that the rate of success is very high contacts can easily be they can be boring if not done correctly and so the dogs tend to you know want to find other things to do um or they get stressed um so i like to try to keep it fun for them challenging but not so much that um we have a high failure rate it's really a lot of success involved with them and then um you know they all it all comes together you've got the big picture and um it's it's pretty awesome how everything builds and all of a sudden you're like look i have a full teeter when did that happen you know and it's just and it because you know you had all these little things and then the dogs just like oh yeah full teeter got it check not a problem you know and it's just it's really exciting to see it just come together very quickly for the dogs because of all the layers that we built into it along the way awesome megan yeah so definitely layering in different types of reinforcement distractions or handler distractions building that independence pretty much from i won't say day one but pretty soon after that you're going to start changing the picture pretty frequently i think one of the biggest detriments in weave pull training is that the picture doesn't change quickly enough often enough and so while we might get a dog to weaving six or 12 poles very quickly if those different types of situations where the handler is how much they're moving what's happening after what's happening before if those things aren't layered in soon enough the dog can and some dogs habituate faster than others but they will habituate to this is how weave pulls happen um i see this if you and it can happen with any method if you stay at two poles for too long or if you're using channels and you keep them open for too long so my kind of first goal is to get the dog to the place where they can weave four poles at competition regulation pretty soon into the training so that it at any point i can at least tell the dog this is where we're headed this is where this is what it's going to look like

and i don't have to stay there i have the liberty to you know increase the distance between those gaps rotate those gaps i have all of these uh tools and so that as i turn up the intensity of one layer so if i really want to work on building distance or speed and i don't want to focus on the precision of weaving i can always make the weaving easier but my dog still knows what the end result is going to be so i can always remind the dog hey i know weaving was like super easy today because i made this one thing harder but then the next time we do that the weaving is not going to be as easy i'm going to make the weaving a little bit easier because you're okay with this challenge so as you layer it in you have the ability to turn one challenge up and turn the other one down and but always kind of relying on that the dog understands the big picture and knows what the end result is going to be and like barbara was saying you just kind of wake up one morning and you're like holy moly the dog is weaving this is amazing and um that's kind of that's just kind of been the experience whether i'm teaching it online very dedicated you know for six weeks or teaching it in person when the students only see it once a week you just kind of go oh they get this and i think that comes from folding in all of those different layers and showing them this is the same game you it's the same game it just looks a little different but the same answer will win like you are it gives the dog like that confidence that i know how to win this game no matter what is going on before or after or during um so day one 100 independence commitment all the things excellent um and i like that you're you're both kind of have that approach right so it's not that um it works for some things and not for others it's kind of building it regardless of what the obstacle is regardless of what the challenge is um making sure the dog kind of understands the pieces before you put them together and then also i think um you both made the comment that then you wake up one day and it's just like it's there and i think that's the sign of like okay so you're shaping the people and the dog not just the dog yeah putting little little steps where everybody can be successful until suddenly the final picture all comes together which is excellent yeah um so uh you both have been talked about um from the ground up how you would teach it but i wanted to also ask about if somebody kind of has the basics they they have a dog that maybe knows weaves in some situations at some times in some ways or

knows contacts you know sometimes at home like they kind of got the basic idea um but they're struggling with some piece of it um kind of would the class still be helpful for them should they do goals they get custom advice should they take it at bronze so they can kind of pull out the pieces they you know maybe need help with from the class without necessarily instructor tailoring um some of that stuff and and you know kind of how you what you'd say to somebody who maybe kind of has some of it but but they're struggling with one or two pieces um megan yeah uh i definitely believe that the class is perfectly suited for any team that wants to either train weepholes from the beginning or plug in some new skills or enhance their weephole behavior um as far as the gold students go they do have to be willing to kind of go back from the beginning and humor that route for me like i said i'm i'm gonna start everyone in the same spot but i have that ability to go yep you've got this let's just let's start working on this layer let's pull in this but a lot of times i actually find that their basics are good but the basics weren't split down quite enough so that there are some like microscopic holes in the understanding that the dog just needs to go oh yeah that is the same thing and once you kind of connect those dots they're like gangbusters and they don't and they don't really need me anymore so i would say if you're retraining or struggling with one or two particular things and you really want that very specific yes do this now do this now do this gold spot is for you if you are a great questioner of material and then you can create your training plans from there silver spot is going to be plenty for you because you'll be able to ask questions about okay if the dog is kind of doing this what do you think what do you think the next spot would be and as a silver spot i can kind of signpost you two golds that sound similar um but also if bronze is more your speed because like keeping up with classes i know the struggle is real yeah i do have a teaching assistant this term for the weephole class um so lynn madden will be available in the facebook study group to to help people answer some questions signposts to specific goals she's great um she was one of my original weephole graduates and she does such a great job helping students so i think it it's so it's well rounded enough it can work really well for pretty much anyone what about you barbara for contacts so yeah absolutely um both whether you're

learning it from the ground up or you're needing a retrain um two of the most common problems that i see people coming in for retraining whether it's online or even my in-person students are um creeping on contacts that's like the number one one i get a lot um their contacts used to be good and now they're starting to creep down the down ramp versus drive all the way to the end um or something happened with the teeter and they either got scared or they never fully were taught to drive to the end and ride down the tip a lot of dogs want to drive to the tipping point ride it down and then go into position um and especially for small dogs that can be problematic because every teeter tips in a slightly different place and so when the dogs will pattern to i get to this point on the teeter and it tips because that's what their home one does they'll get to a trial and they'll get to a certain point and the teeter doesn't tip and they just stand there because they're like well it's supposed to tip now so if you know so we can definitely address those problems um because like megan was saying oftentimes i find just going through the games um because again you're going to start just the same way everyone else does we find where those small holes are in the games as we're going along and you know oh yeah that's okay that's one of the issues that's where this started to go downhill um and so you'll find those holes in the games and some dogs will move through things much faster you know there'll be many dogs where i'm like oh yeah this game you guys got this one okay on to the next exercise where another dog i mean you know no let's let's take a look at this one a little bit longer we need some more work on this um so for gold spot um yeah either a retrain or um somebody that uh is learning from the ground up and even i actually have some people that have contacted me about they have running a frame and but they really want to do a stop teeter and would it still be okay and absolutely like i said this class is actually very heavily emphasis on the teeter because that tends to be the most difficult one for people um and so it's fine if people have running a frames and that's not you know we don't have to address the a frame with that particular team um if you just you know if your teeter performance could be a tiny bit better but you're really not unhappy with it but you're always looking for ways to maybe improve it then bronze might be for you because you can just see what you know maybe there's some games i have that i do with my dogs that's a little bit different um that you

haven't done with yours and that might help build a little bit more value for the end and you know do a little refresher so bronze might be better um if they're good with their questions and they're good at self-regulating then silver works great too so really it's it's you know kind of how you work best you know if you need someone to keep you accountable and help you with problem solving and what's the best road then you know gold might be the better option excellent all right guys so kind of one last um question to kind of round us out uh if we were to kind of drill everything we've been talking about down to one takeaway or one piece of information you want to you know impart on listeners as we close things out what would that be and barbara you get to go first this one um you know i i really feel like this with all my classes but the most important thing is to go at your dog's pace not trying to stay at the speed that the um that the assignments get put out you know i i don't know for megan but i would assume this might be true for her i know with me my in person stuff you know some it doesn't always go as fast as the six week courses go um but you know we're on a six week time schedule so we're moving this out but you know if you're if you're doing your own dog or in person it goes a bit slower we don't you know it's not usually this fast so don't get sucked into trying to skip over steps or move through steps before the dog is ready because you feel like other dogs in the gold spots are moving along faster you know getting sucked into that is only going to create more holes and you're going to get to the end and not feel like you got what you wanted out of it or you're just going to be taking our classes again because you found some holes along the way so really you know go at the pace that your dog needs you to go at megan yeah i was kind of feeling and thinking on the same wavelength um because it's true when i look at the syllabus and the amount of material and then we put that like all right get this done in six weeks absolutely not there's no like deadline pressure to get that done it's you the plan the six weeks will give you a start to finish blueprint that if you follow it you'll you'll your odds are you're going to end up just fine uh better than fine most likely um but when you are actually training you have to take that individualized approach you have to look at you know do i want to be training this every day can i train this every day does my dog need to be doing this every day is there some other

uh way and also just being willing to look at a lecture and go if this is an optional one does this serve me especially in my class with some of the uh different proofing layers if you tell me that your version of agility doesn't look like that and you're not going to need that you don't need to do that assignment this week but if in six months you decide oh i do want to do that version of agility you know where to find the material and you know how to add in that layer so it is definitely a take it one step at a time and listen to your dog and listen to your team and and work through the material in a way that works for you all right well thank you both so much for coming on the podcast thank you for having us yeah it's fun it is and thank you to all of 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 fenzy dog sports academy special thanks to denise fenzy for supporting this podcast music provided royalty free by bensound.com the track featured here is called buddy audio editing provided by chris lang thanks again for tuning in and happy training o