E44: 에이미 쿡(Amy Cook) - "생각하고, 계획하고, 행동하라: 훈련 계획 세우기"

Um, if you follow me on Facebook, you'll, you'll see lots of pictures of her being made out of rubber. Um, and both of them do agility, uh, and I'm a fooling around in my downtime. Um, I'm, I'm playing with team stuff. I think, I think between the two, if the two of them were one dog, we were good on team one and two, but they're two dogs. And so that doesn't work. So I'm, I'm filling in the hole that they go there. They're, they're, they're a blast. Everyone follow them on Facebook. They're so much fun. I have to agree with that. Um, I definitely love all the pictures here. So yeah, cute puppy pics. Now I know that you're probably most well-known at FDSA, uh, for some of the stuff I mentioned in the intro, your reactive dog classes that use your play-based approach to treating reactivity. But I kind of want to focus on your science of training class today, because I know it's coming up. So to start us out, do you want to just share kind of a basic summary of what the class covers and what it's all about? Yeah, sure. Um, I love this class. This one is so fun to teach. Um, it was first conceived of as a kind of in, in concert with Denise's. Um, the art of training class. And we wanted to throw in first the science of training to get people all on the same page about what the fundamentals are, but also how to get these mechanics in your body, how to get these details really solid before you go ahead and deviate from them and experiment and try to do different things that are outside, um, of those experiences. Um, so what my class is really focusing on is tightening trainer technique and finding these little areas that I think we don't spend really the time on that we neglect, um, either because we're just not sure if they're important or we're kind of maybe not so good at them. And we practice the things we're good at a lot. Right. Um, and, and so this, I really want to make sure we get right down to them and really understand them. Um, the class assumes that people have a very basic understanding about birth condition. You don't need to be able to do it chapter and verse and assume some experience shaping with a clicker, but that's about it. Um, and you know, I found that as I was growing as a clicker trainer, there were all sorts of little, little holes I find little areas of where I thought maybe models conflicted or didn't really match, or how do I get this done when I've heard of this? And I would always keep little notes about that. I think maybe waiting for some future audience when I could, you know, you know, finally pass that information along.

So that's sort of what this class has become for me. It's my baby in that way of like, I, I aim to be practical and so much of the scientific approach to training dogs gets lofty and gets, and gets, uh, intellectual. And I want us to get down to be clear with your body, be clear with your clicker, be really clear with your parameters and what you're doing, because that ultimately serves your learner. Right. Um, and there's no better place to learn that than, than chicken camp and trying to, trying to learn how to train chickens. I tell you, it's really humbling to train a bird very much. And I think that leads us really nicely into the second thing I wanted to ask you about, because I happen to know part of the answer. So I wanted to talk about the name of the class and the second half of that name is Think, Plan, Do. So I wanted you to maybe share where that came from and a little bit about what it means. Yeah. Um, so, you know, you can Google Think, Plan, Do, and you'll, you'll see that it's sort of a phrase. It's just a phrase that a lot of people use in a lot of different industries and domains. It's a organizational psychology phrase, the motivation phrase, but to us, to dog trainers, that phrase is highly connected to, to Bob Bailey. That is a Bailey-ism. And it's what I feel he, he, or at least for me, what I really took as one of the main takeaways from, from, from going through all chicken camp that, that is, that is often missing in dog training. We don't spend a whole lot of time thinking. We don't spend a whole lot of time making our plans. We spend our time doing. We pick up the clicker, we get the treats going and we just start training. Um, you know, with a, with, with a nod thrown at what we think we're training this time, of course, but, but really when you train chickens, you spend a lot of time making a plan and thinking it through before you ever bring that bird out on the table and try to train something. Um, and so as a, you know, an homage to the great Bob Bailey, I think the place to start to improve yourself in training is to think something through, to really have a plan, even if it's kind of a plan that doesn't work, you'll, you'll find out, but make a plan, uh, before you do anything. Don't have just a loose goal because that's not going to be optimal to your learner. Your learner is just at your mercy, right? They're just there to receive all the things you're about to do and the better you are at doing them and the more concrete your plan, the better the experience is for your learner, which is ultimately really our highest goal. I think it should be.

To maybe dive a little bit more into that, what kind of things should people be thinking about before they begin to plan out a specific training session? Like what kind of, what kind of factors or what kind of things should they take into consideration and kind of think through? Well, going in order first, you know, spend, spend time thinking. What specifically are you trying to do in this session? What are you trying to do with your dog in general? But today you're thinking of, I have my 10 minutes. I'd like to do something. What specifically, not I need to improve the retrieve we're working on. What specifically really have, have that in mind? And is it realistic for you today? Um, cause you, you can have a long goal, but the small part you're going to work on right now needs an entry point. Um, and that needs to be thought through. Also, as you're, as you're picturing that, what don't you want in this picture? Let's say, oh, I know something we all don't want. How about barking? Right? You don't want barking in the middle of your tree. You don't want barking in the middle of kind of both of the things. You know, there's all sorts of things you can write a list about. Um, think ahead of time. All the stuff you're not going to want, because if you see some of it, you don't want to be thinking, oh, I don't know what to do with that. Or, oh, I think I'll ignore that. Or, oh, uh, I don't, I don't know what to do with that. I'll, I'll go past it. Um, maybe going past it is going to be the right thing to do. It really depends on too many factors for this answer, but you shouldn't be caught going, oh, oh, I don't know what, oh shoot. What is, what is he doing now? You should think ahead. Okay. If he barks, this is what I will do. If I start to get whining, I'm going to, I'm going to stop. Um, think it out about what this training is going to be like so that you're not frazzled. You can concentrate. You have a plan. Even if the plan isn't going to work, you find out you'll be more settled. Um, and you should also think at least right then, what is your learner like today? Think about where they are, what they like best from you in terms of your speed, your clarity, um, how they need you to be. And are you, are you feeling that today? Are you, are you there? Are you in a place to provide that today? Um, settle down so you're in that, in that good place. It'd be a whole lot less confusing, um, for your learner. And, you know, if you have to think during the session, when you're training, you will slow down and you'll build in pauses and pauses build in lapses of attention from your learner

as they start to go, uh, hello, what happened? You don't want to be thinking a whole lot during it. And, you know, you don't want to leave those spaces. Um, and I think it has an effect on, on all of us when we do that, even if we just do that by default habit, our learners get, get pauses built in or get some frustration or, or confusion built into it. And then we do too, cause now we're like, we're feeling the clock ticking. We're feeling the dog looking at us. And like, uh, uh, what am I doing here? Thinking calms everybody down, I think ahead of time. So that's the, that's the thing. That's the first part. After you really sort of thought it, as, as do as best you can, you're going to have to come up with a plan. That's at least this one session. Um, a lot of people do is they, they look for a kind of a grand plan. I'm going to be teaching the retrieve. Like, okay, that's not a plan. What are you teaching? Um, literally this next one minute of your time with your dog. Um, and you need to think that through in detail. I even suggest people write it down. I make people write that down for homework. Of course, in the class, you write it down in the forum. Um, and you may decide later that writing it down isn't necessary, but if you don't write it down and find out it is necessary, you'll, you'll feel sorry about that. So write everything down. Um, the kinds of things you want to have in your plan are what am I going to do about, oh, let's say, uh, my environment. Have I picked an environment that's conducive to my goal? Um, am I going to have a cat strolling through my environment? Is that going to be okay? Or is that going to really, really matter? Um, so no, I need to plan to, I'm going to train my dog to do this behavior and I'm going to do it in this room on purpose. You, do you know what you're going to do? Do you have a plan for what you're going to do when your dog's nose goes to the floor because you didn't clean the floor ahead of time? Do you need a clean floor? Maybe you don't need a clean floor because you're going to be working on noses going to the ground and you, and you have a plan for what you're going to do when those goes to the ground, right? So you don't care about your floor, but maybe you want to really clean the floor. Think that out. Thinking and planning, right? They go together. Your environment is really going to matter. How about also how much time are you going to spend? And how do you know when you spent that time? Do you have a timer? Um, how long is too long to train? How long is too short to train? Um, that's different for everybody, but I say go pretty short.

Go 30 seconds to a minute. If you, if you don't have an answer to that question immediately in mind, don't go more than a minute and then find out. You might find out it's longer, but don't start longer and find out you should have gone shorter. Um, so in your plan should be how long you're going to train, um, and how are you going to measure it? So will it be by time or will it be by number of treats? Count out 20 treats. And when you're 20 or gone, you will stop and you'll reassess. It really matters that you keep things short because you can get into the weeds, right? Like really fast. You're cooking for something, you're training for something, you're dog off for something else. You're like, Hey, that looks great. And you kind of follow it along. And so you're not training what, not only what you intended to train, but now you're maybe getting some behaviors you really are not going to want in your final picture. Um, it's not good to just keep going as long as you like. You need to stop and review what you can reassess and, and, and stick to it. Um, and your plan should be for what are you going to do with your dog when you stop? I find people rarely put this in their plans, but it plummaces them when they start to, to kind of go through the session. You, okay. I said, let's say you can train for a minute and then you're going to review your video. Well, your dog wasn't done in a minute. I was having a good time. Hopefully, uh, what are you going to do to make sure your dog can stop while you review? Um, if you stop it entirely and just put them up, that's kind of no fair, right? So knowing your dog and what they're like and what their challenges are, you will have to find a way to stop and keep your dogs happy with the fact that that's happening. Um, and maybe ready to go again. And that might be a skill you want to install way before you start training on the actual behavior you were planning, right? Um, you're going to plan certainly criteria and you're going to plan, you know, exactly what is correct and everything else that is not going to be correct. And you're going to have to set up so that the correct behavior that you're looking for is what you're going to be getting. It takes a, it takes a lot of thought and a lot of planning more than people usually give credit for. And that shows up as soon as we start seeing videos like, oh, I didn't realize I didn't even think about that. Oh gosh. So it's really, um, all the time spent thinking, all the time spent planning makes the minute or five of doing very seamless, really smooth and really successful for your learner.

I find don't just keep going. Don't dig a hole. Stop and think. I think you kind of hit on a lot of different pieces there. And I know just even from, uh, you know, kind of keeping up with the FDSA Facebook page, right? Like people tend to really struggle with all of that. They tend to really struggle with planning out their training sessions and figuring out how to break things down. And no wonder, cause we start training in the dogs. They apparently forgot to read the plan. So, so I wanted to ask you a little bit more about kind of how you balance that. That concept of having something that's detailed enough, but also keeping it flexible enough that, you know, if a dog shows you something you weren't expecting or the dog in front of you that day is a little bit different than the one you usually have, how you can kind of roll with that. You know, I think making plans and being detailed is not natural to a lot of us. I was going to say all of us just because it's not natural to me and that's not fair. I'm no example for people, but I think it's really common for us to just, you know, go with things as we see them. And I don't think that's a bad trait at all. We should be able to think on the fly. We should be able to, to roll with changing conditions. But when you have a goal, a specific goal, um, and you're shaping, there's not a lot of room for improvisation. I don't think you should be, I don't think the word is flexible, but I, that I want you to be exactly in, in the training session that you're doing. So you've set yourself a minute and you're working, I don't know, on the hold of the dumbbell, right? And how do you do it? I showed you something else. If things didn't go exactly as you, as you planned, don't keep going. So stop and think about that because maybe you do want to go with it. Maybe you do think that is a way better idea. That's a way better way to explain that, say to my dog or, or she's getting something I didn't realize she's getting. And I like this a lot better, but stop for a second and really think about that. Um, because you just spent time thinking about this plan and it was a good one when you enacted it and whatever your dog is coming up with, maybe it may not be. And I don't think you should just run with it. Stop for a second, really think about it. And now start again with your new idea or with the new thing your dog is doing. Um, because if nothing else, even if it would have been fine, if you'd gone with it, if nothing else, it gives you the discipline, the habit of, of not just saying, Oh, great idea. Go, go, go. Let's just click that.

Let's just go, which is maybe really natural to you and can get you in the weeds. And, and it won't, there's a downside if you just stop and say, let me think, let me think that through for a second. Here's a, here's a, something for you to chew on dog. Um, let me think about this and really decide if that's the way I want to go or, or, and you might realize, wait, there's a downside to that. Actually, that's not the way I want to go. It looks good for a second, but hang on. No, I want to stick to what I'm doing. If you have a careful plan, your criterion will be so tight. The little piece you're clicking will be so, so specific and the rate of reinforcement tight, which I'm sure we'll get to in a bit, will be so high that you'll, the session will be going exactly toward what you were, you were headed for. If you, if you planned it well and if you're executing it, there isn't going to be a lot of room for experimentation. Um, that might be different from when you're hanging out with your dog and just fooling around, but that's not training toward the goal. And this is sort of how to get from A to B specifically, right? So I say, don't be flexible. Which is a weird message. I realize, um, but you know, if you, if this stroke of brilliance happens to you, there's going to be nothing wrong with thinking it through before you follow the path. That's my opinion right now. So I want to talk about the review piece a little bit. I know that most of the FDSA instructors strongly endorse the idea of videoing and reviewing their training. I know Denise in particular has come out in strong, strong favor of it. So I wanted to ask why that's helpful and what people should really be looking for when they do go back and watch those videos, which of course is everybody's least favorite activity of all time. Everybody's least favorite activity of all time, because we can't not look at our messy house and what we chose to wear. And, and of course, how sloppy we just trained that, right? I mean, that's what you're going to find. That's what you're going to find. And you know, the videos are super helpful, super helpful. And, and I, yeah, I, I have always underestimated how helpful they are. I think if every bronze student videoed themselves just like a golden, watched it back every single time, they'd be shocked at how much they'd get out of a bronze level of instruction. I really believe that. It's amazing what videos can teach you. If you can remember that this is all in support of you, right? The point of videoing yourself and looking at it is not to give yourself an opportunity to

shred yourself and notice how much you suck, right? That's not what we're hoping that you learn from, from video, um, video review. Um, I think in, in this specific context, my video is helpful in everything I teach and everything we all teach, but in this specific class, I think what I'd be looking for is, Hey, okay, I made a plan and I predicted what my dog would be like for this minute and how, you know, tight, how shaved my criterion was and what my rate was going to be. And you should look at that video to say, did I do that? Did I do that at all? Did I get in these 15 cookies in, in 30 seconds? Did I do that? How much was I moving? You know, we, we, when we're using marker, uh, marker words or marker sounds to train our dogs, we have to really isolate them. It's still, well, did I do that? Uh, you can see clear as day, whether you moved first or clicked first, right? The video doesn't lie, but your memory does. Totally does. But, you know, did, did I follow the plan and was the plan a good one? And in looking at the video, I think you can often go, oh, absolutely not. That is not where I need to start with her. She's way more confused about that than I thought she was. I thought we were in a good place. And that just enriches your next plan. So you stop, you revise your plan. And with that new information, your next session should be much better. You often don't need anyone to tell you what went wrong because you can just look and go, that is not what I was planning at all. That's not what I meant. And also, I think you should really look at what your dog says because you don't see it as clearly in real time. You just don't. I don't, I think we're always trying to get better at that, right? To see right then and there that your dog is not feeling great about it or that your dog is confused. What does your dog's body say in this video? Especially on a different angle. You're just looking at them head on. And if you get a video from the side, you can see maybe more. It might tell you that you need to slow down or shift your feeding choice where you're reinforcing so that you can be more clear. You know, it might tell you to speed up. You're giving way too much time in between. And they're starting to dance to their feet and whine or whatever it is. And if you look at it and you still don't know what you're doing, you can see that there's a disjoint to it, but you're just not sure what's wrong. You have something to show somebody. You don't have to train your dog again to show them what's wrong. They're having your dog experience it. You can say, hey guys, what am I doing here? What is this?

So it pays to not only take the video, but to just have the ego strength to say, hey, I'm not perfect. Nobody is. None of you are. Can you all kind of help me with this? And I think that's how we all approach it here. You know, it's why the trainers, all of us show what we do and show when we don't do it well. It's because we're all in the same boat trying to improve ourselves from wherever we are. And video keeps us frequently, really honest, right? If you lie to yourself, and again, we all do on some sort of level, right? If we think it went well and it really didn't go well, the one who pays is your learner. They may not know what's going on. And their mind is a valuable thing. Their willingness to do this stuff with us is valuable. And when we're clear and we're motivating, they're having a lot of fun. And when we're not, those take a hit. And we don't even get less in the game. And there's nothing worth that. There's no precision. There's nothing you have to train them that's worth their attitude. So keep holding your own feet to the fire is really, it makes you better, but it's really in service to your dog. As you were saying that, I was thinking, gee, not only that, but forcing yourself to watch your videos really helps ensure that you keep them short and your training session short because nobody wants to sit there and watch themselves for eight to 10 minutes. No kidding. Oh my goodness. I hadn't videoed myself playing with dogs before teaching the play class. And I'm like, do I do jazz hands with everybody? Is that what I do? Am I just as jazz hands? You're like, no idea. No idea. Yes. Keep them short. Keep them to the point. And, you know, dogs think way faster than we do. They're going, their clock speed's way higher. There's a lot going on for them. This is cross species modes, right? So the heavy lifting is for us, not for them. So we got to watch ourselves. Right. So you've kind of broken up the syllabus for the class into six specific topics. So I wanted to dive into this a little bit. You have observing the learner, reinforcement, CERs, conditioned emotional responses for anybody who doesn't know the abbreviation, mechanics, ABCs, and naming behaviors. So I wanted to ask you a little bit about each of those. Why is observing the learner important? And what kind of things should people really be looking for when they are doing that? Observing the learner may be my, like, top biggest, maybe past Think, Plan, Do, take away from Chicken Camp. Oh, my God. Because to be able to click when you need to, to be able to mark exactly what you need to,

you need to know what your dog looks like when they're doing something well and right before they're about to do something well, the thing that you want. Because it takes you a second to get that sound out of your mouth or to get that thumb depressed onto the clicker. And that time is lost. You will be late if you don't know really precisely what your dog looks like right as they've decided and right as they're contracting the right muscle to do the thing that you want, that you're trying to get them to do. And, I mean, I learned that. I learned that by clicking my dog. I was trying to teach her to tug open the fridge. And I kept clicking when she was tugging, but the click would come just slightly too late. And she had finished tugging when the click sound happened because the tugs were little short tugs, as you can imagine. And I kept being just imprecise. And I remember I asked Bob. I explained in more detail than you guys need here. I asked, you know, what am I doing? He didn't even need to know. He said, observe your learner. I was like, what? What? I'm watching her. She's tugging. I'm clicking when she's tugging. He's like, what does she look like before she tugs? What does she look like when she's about to tug? And he was right. What I was missing was contraction of neck muscles, shifting of weight, all the stuff that was right before and as the behavior was commencing. I saw a full tug and clicked right as it ended because that's how long it took my brain to send my thumb the signal, right? And I learned from that so many pieces. So let's say you are shaping a down and there's lots of ways a dog can get into a down, right? There's so many. There's many that we like and some that we don't. You know, you have to think, what position am I looking for first and how exactly do I want them to get into it? Do you want them to fold back? Let's say you want them to fold back. Fine. You want that one. Well, do you know what it looks like exactly when your dog does that? What any dog looks like when they fold back? I mean, listeners who are listening right now, picture it. What happens? You know, does it begin with a nose dip? Is that what kind of starts for a fold back? Or does the head stay up? Do you know? Do you know what your dog does? Maybe it starts in the shoulders. Maybe it's the hind core. Maybe it's... You know what? Maybe. Because you're not going to click when the dog gets all the way down. You have to break this apart if you want that precise behavior. And so you need to know what this natural behavior, what this behavior looks like for your dog.

And if you don't spend time observing really specifically, you won't be clicking the very things that are on the path toward the behavior that you want. If you know your dog always puts her head down a little bit first, then her shoulders fold, and then her hind quarters, you won't be tempted to click when you see hind quarter movement at first, which might result in a sit, right? So getting to be a really good observer of what your animal looks like before they perform behaviors vastly, I think, increases your accuracy and gets your timing better. And that's just sort of one example of the many reasons we want to really observe dogs. Because our dogs can't tell us anything except by what they're doing, through what they're doing. And so to be able to talk with them, communicate with them, we have to watch them, I think, really carefully. I think Denise goes through that in her art class, too, from a totally different perspective, observing your learner in a totally different way. So it's really neat to watch this. So the second piece there was on reinforcement. And when talking to Sarah, Sarah Ströming, a few weeks ago, we got into a little bit about how reinforcement differs from rewarding your dog, right? Like they're not exactly the same thing. My guess is that you go a little bit deeper. So how does a good understanding of things like timing, rate of reinforcement, and criteria actually impact our training? I do. I get geeky on it in this. And for me, it's all about clarity, right? So if you want to get from A to B, you have to be able to explain the path to B. And that's all in your mechanics. You don't get any other way to explain that. That's all you have to work with. Your rate keeps your dog in the game, right? It keeps you from asking for these big jumps that are just too big for your dog to accomplish easily. Because if you have to keep your rate up really high, the behaviors your dog are giving you are small and easy to do. They're just little slices, right? So that keeps your dog in this game. Your rate is really important. And that means you have to pick specifically a criterion that allows you to reward at that high of a rate, at a sufficiently high rate for your learner. Everybody's rate is different. You don't feed rabbits at the same rate you feed chickens. Weirdly. But if you pick something too hard, your dog will struggle and your rate will fall. So they go hand in hand. How you pick your criterion, your specific one that you're going to work on now, will impact the rate that you get to work at.

And your dog tells you what the rate needs to be to keep them in the game and keep the learning fun. So it's not just that, hey, I want to work on this one. It is not enough of a slice for your plan. You have to think about how it affects the rate of reinforcement that you have to work with, right? You want your learner plunging forward. You're confidently doing the thing they think that you are rewarding. Just doing something really clear and simple and isn't stuck thinking or worrying or feeling frustrated and starting to whine. You don't want any of that. And so, again, video is you're going to be your best friend here. Your video tells you what your rate is, not your intuition in any way. Your rate is the one you want to serve. And so you pick a criterion that helps you work with that correctly. And then, you know, timing. Well, is there anyone listening at all? Anyone within any of your shot of anything ever going to do with dog training who doesn't know we all have to be better about that? I don't think so. Every one of us is trying to improve our timing, right? Because we're human and we're slow. And we have nervous systems that take a while to engage. And dogs are plenty forgiving, I think, about our lateness. Strictly, I've watched perfectly successful training videos where clicks are pretty obviously late. Like, they happen after the behavior has ended. And dogs are like, somehow I get this. I will do the behavior that was just before you click. No problem. That's wonderful. That's great if your dog is like that. And many of them are. They're plenty forgiving. But almost no other animal I know of is. And we shouldn't really rely on dogs to do heavy lifting like that to figure out what we were trying to do. Timing is our mechanical skill. And we need to practice it. And in fact, timing as a mechanical skill is a Bailey-ism. It's what Bob Bailey says at camp all the time. It's a mechanical skill. And you have to keep it sharp. You have to keep practicing it. All of us are late sometimes. I'm late all the time. When I'm not concentrating well enough. When I didn't see what I thought I saw. Or just, I was late. Because I'm a person. And I don't know if when we're thinking about this, if we think, well, this is a skill that I just need to keep sharp. I need to practice my timing all of the time to keep it really good. It's not something you can just understand and then do well. You have to practice it like a physical skill. And that's where your clarity comes from. So if you can get your, if you can explain what you meant to explain, I clicked on the

thing I wanted and keep your rate high enough to keep your dog in the game. It will force you to pick a criterion that works. And those things all, they do more than impact your training. They are your training. That's how you're talking to your dog. So it's really crucial that we get some of these tightened up, I think, for all of us. We can all improve. You mentioned in there that it's about clear communication, right? And I think that that really links back to that conditioned emotional response thing. And I know that, I'm pretty sure it was last year, you shared a line that all the instructors have mentioned they kind of love. And that's come up a couple of times since about how we're always working on our dog's conditioned emotional response to the things that we're teaching, whether we're aware of it or not. So I wanted to ask you a little, to explain a little bit about what a CER is and what you meant by that line at camp. Yeah, I think, gosh, I think now that's a couple of years ago. Was it? Boy, it was, I think it was Purina. Was that last year? No, last year was Portland. Yeah, I think it was Purina. Wow. Time flies. I know. Yeah, every time you're teaching your dog, you know, what to do, you're teaching him how to feel. Cool. CER stands for a conditioned emotional response. And that's just another way to say, you know, conditioning is another way to say learning. This is a learned emotion that they're having. And it's just another way to say that that's the way they feel right now. What they're feeling from the situation they're in with you and how you're teaching them and what you're trying to have them learn. They're getting emotions like you are all of the time. And you're folding it into your picture, whether you intend to or not, whether you plan to or not, whether you want to or not, whether you like it or not. You don't get to get away from it ever. Ever. And if you are confusing your dog by accident, if you're worrying them by a slower rate than you intended, if you're frustrating them by a slower rate than you intended or late feelings, if you're not rewarding them well, then the emotions that come up there for them, they're getting learned and they're getting folded into the very behavior that you're also trying to teach. And you may not see that in an obvious way at first, but you can't escape them being in a picture. They're just tied to everything you're doing. So you may as well take control of this. You may as well take control of things and just use it to your advantage and let it make you better. Training first, to me, serves emotional goals. Then it serves behavioral.

Then it serves precision, right? If you are frustrating your dog while you are having a clicker training session, you need to find out why. Find out why you're frustrating your dog. Find out why you're so confusing. Because we want more than anything for our dog to be enthusiastic, right? Cheerful learners. Motivated to be there. And that's on us to create. It's on us to help them achieve that. Too often we put that on them. Why isn't this dog more into this kind of stuff? It's actually so hard to motivate. Well, I don't know. Maybe those things are true. But that's your first job. Your first job is helping them fall in love with you and training and earning stuff and doing things with you. far beyond any precise behavior you're ever trying to teach. And so, you know, if you don't have a happy attitude and a great willing learner, it doesn't matter what precision you really have. It's the way I feel. So getting control of that is something you can do on purpose. In this class, we have an assignment where I just have people create a CER, just out of whole class, just create an emotion. Or, you know, creating, you know, inventing an emotion. Invent a brand new emotion. That's your, come to my class. We're going to invent new emotions. The assignment is you take a neutral item, an item that you prove to me is neutral. A tchotchke from your shelf does just fine that your dog thinks nothing about in particular. And for the week, you try to make your dog really, really excited about seeing this. You're going to create that emotion and attach it to this neutral object. And sure, it's completely arbitrary. It's not something you're needing and specific for a specific training task. But I like people to see that they can take a previously neutral object and get a dog really excited about seeing it. And, you know, we do this all the time anyway. I mean, leashes are neutral until they become signals that we're going to go for a walk, right? And she's are neutral or delicious, either way. You know, except that they signal that it's a work day instead of a dog, you know, fun day for dog day. So, you know, you're creating this kind of stuff all the time, even outside of basic training scenarios. But I give people an assignment that helps them literally create a specific emotional response to a specific thing so that you get familiar with the principles of how that's done. And then we talk about how to improve our training such that our dog always feels really good about what we're doing because that's our goal. That's what we want. We can't keep putting on them that they don't have great attitudes in training, right?

Their attitude is ours to inspire. And we should pick up that mantle. So the other part that the class covers, and you mentioned this a little bit earlier, is improving your training techniques. So from mechanics to things like understanding ABCs and when to name a behavior. So I want to ask you if there's any one place where people tend to struggle and if you can offer any tips. But it would also be great if you could explain what ABCs are in there somewhere, just because you'll do it better than I will. Oh, the training ABCs in that particular, it doesn't mean the generic term of that, like training ABCs, training big basics. It's more ABC means antecedent behavior and consequence, how to get everything kind of in order. Your antecedent is your cue, the thing that makes the behavior signals to the dog that the behavior is trying to perform that behavior. And then there's behavior. And then there's the consequence. You do those all in order. And people, that of course sounds very elementary. Of course it goes in that order. But people get that kind of thing. There's reasonable places in which that's confused. And so I really make sure that people have each of those elements identified in every one of their plans. But it's not the place I think people tend to struggle most. I think the thing that popped into my head when you asked that was that I think people struggle with the most with doing less. I think we always want to do more. We want to just have one more rep. We just want to say we want to end on a high note. We push and push longer to get there. We think things are going great. We want to keep riding high on how great that was. Let's do it more time. This is awful. Let's get more practice in. People suck. All of us kind of suck at doing less, at stopping ourselves when the time is up, when the pre-planned number of reinforcements have stopped. Stop yourself and look at what you're doing. Almost no one does this easily, willingly, naturally. Oh, it was a great time to stop after 30 seconds. You know, it often doesn't feel right, whatever the time number. It often doesn't feel great to us because we want to keep going. So I think that's where people, you know, I hear, not just in this class, but in all sorts of classes or even in our own training. It's sort of like, yeah, I know I was going along, but I just wanted to show you, you know, or I was just out training with a friend of mine a few days ago and we videoed the whole thing and then we watched some of it and went, wow, that was a really long training session. What are we doing? You know, you can just get caught up in doing it.

And so that's why it's like, well, these are the rules. There's a timer. The timer will go off. You will stop. And it's not to say that you always have to stop exactly when the timer goes off, but it helps us with the discipline of countering something that I think we all will struggle with. I haven't yet really seen a person who's like, yep, it's really easy for me to just go and stop. I don't even want to keep going. No, of course not. We totally want to keep going. So I do focus on getting people to really think about that and not get off in the weeds again. And don't improvise. Don't just keep going. And you'll deviate, you'll improvise, you'll explain things you didn't mean to explain at all. You'll wonder why your dog has no idea what's going on and you'll get frustrated. Definitely not worth it. So get your timer out, get your camera on you and don't show anybody. Just it's fine, but watch it and keep yourself honest. That is the best tip for tightening yourself. Watch it and keep it short for sure. So last question. If you could share just one key lesson from the class, what would it be? Hmm. One key lesson. Well, it's what I built the class all the way around. I'd say spend more time figuring out what you want to do and how it will go than you spend training. Don't take 10, 15 seconds to figure out, yeah, I got to do that and that and that. Okay, let's go dog. Spend more time on the thinking and the planning than you spend on the doing by a lot. If you're new to anything that you're doing, I don't mean new to dog training, although new to dog training too. But if you're new to this task, you're not quite sure how it goes or new to the sport or anything new to a class, mentally rehearse without your dog. Practice physically without your dog. Things that we don't spend time doing, do those things. Because if you think things through and plan all your actions ahead before you pick up that clicker, then you don't pass on as many mistakes and as many, you don't let the dog do as much of the head and left it. And that's what I really want people to take away. That and just quit while you're ahead. Quit pushing. Quit pushing. There's always tomorrow. There's always an hour from now. You're fine. Don't rush. Don't push. Your dog is depending on that. That's what I think. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast, Amy. I really appreciate it. I love it. You should interview me every day. Every day. I'm sure there are people out there who would love that. Careful what you agree to here. Like, subscribe, whatever it is. Share. No. I may try and talk you into it. Oh, God. Thank you.

There's a play button on my chest. You can express it and I can start talking. You know, maybe. Maybe. I'm sure it would fit so well into all the other things you have going on every day, too. Yes. I professionally talk for a living. It's a pleasure. It is a pleasure. I'm so glad you invited me again for a second time. I really, really enjoyed it. I would do it in a heartbeat anytime. Thank you so much. Well, thank you. And I do think it was a great topic for our first thing kind of heading into the new year. Just the idea that we're talking about plans and planning and kind of setting everybody on the right path heading into 2018 will be good. Oh, yeah. Like, it's a resolution of sorts. A little mini resolution each time you bring your dog out. It's almost like I did that on purpose. You stuck to it. No, you couldn't possibly have. You're so clever. Love me. Well, thank you. And thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. I hope you guys enjoyed this as much as I did. We will be back next week. This time I'll have Stacey Barnett back and we'll be talking about nose work handling. If you haven't already, please subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or the podcast app of your choice. And our next episode will automatically download 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 bensan.com. The track featured here is called Buddy. Audio editing provided by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training.

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