E35: 셰이드 화이트셀(Shade Whitesel) - "반려견 훈련에서의 장난감"

And how do you go about teaching the dog that you really can be part of that fun? Well, the dog, when they're going away and they're chewing it, they're really fixated on the object itself. And so they're thinking that the object itself is fun. And what we need to do is we need to teach the dog that they need us for the interaction. So they need us to activate the toy, whether that's tug or whether we're throwing it for them to chase. And that is more fun. And we need to create more value for that rather than the dog taking the toy away and chewing it up in the corner. And one of those things that we need to do is figure out how to play in a way that the dog likes. It really starts there. And once they figure that out, once you figure out how to play in a way the dog likes, they bring the toys back to you automatically. And then the value building for having you in there just works. The problems come when we expect the dog to play how we want them to play. Like, for instance, how another dog we have played or like what our sport wants a dog to play like. And then it's no longer play. And the dog may have other ideas of what they consider play. So it's important to take what the dog offers you and then reinforce that by giving the dog what they want, which is normally possession of the toy. I find a lot of people just don't want to give the dog the toy because they're so afraid it's going to take it away and chew it up because that's what they do when they're babies. But in order to get what you want, you kind of have to give the dog what they want. And a lot of times in the beginning of training, that's giving them possession and honoring that and being okay with that. So later on, and this affects right at the beginning, is you also need to think about the tugging itself. One of my favorite things is to tell handlers to make it 50-50 when you're tugging with your dog. And that means that 50% of the time the dog pulls you around, the other 50% you pull the dog around. So most of the issues I see with dogs in handler play is that the handler is pulling the dog around 95% or worse. And then the dog doesn't think you're fair. They don't think they can beat you. So when you finally let them have the toy, they leave. And that's kind of what they're kind of saying in their opinion of how you're playing. And it's not all that fun for them. So sometimes that's hard to hear. You know, we got to start with just little tiny parts. It is on some respect a little funny that, you know, kind of the dog wants the toy, but the person wants the toy too. Right. It's a little bit of conflict there.

And you need to learn how to, like the words that's occurring to me is cooperate. I'm not sure I mean that, but compete in a way that each creature has fun with it and compete in a way that the dog thinks they can win. And maybe look at it that way. Not that you're just tugging them around because you think that's what they should do. So you mentioned kind of the dog has to think it's fun. And we're talking mostly tug and fetch here. So what kind of cues should people be looking for in their dog's body language to make sure their dog's enjoying the game and actually having fun? Well, they kind of really have to be all in. So I'm not going to really describe what their actual body language looks like because that's probably different with each dog. But one of the things that I don't like to see is a dog that I think is frantic or hectic. And so I want to see a dog that's calmer than frantically tugging backwards. So I think many handlers are conditioned by their sport or what they've been exposed to to think that a dog that is frantically tugging backwards, growling and thrashing is happy. And I'm not sure that that's always the case. Might be frantic and hectic and not so happy. The simple thing to ask the dog is, you know, when you let them have it, do they like it? Do they run laps? Do they come back and play with you, in which case they like that type of play? Or do they race away? So that's kind of what you're looking for, the actions that they're doing, rather than like their actual body language. Because I just think that's open to a lot of interpretation based on people seeing other dogs play, things like that. It's really what does the dog do when you give it and how into it are they? So yeah, that's what I'd be looking at. Looking at tugs specifically, what are some of the common mistakes maybe that people make, either in your toys class or kind of in general? And how would you address them? Well, the biggest thing is we have to remember we're bigger than the dog. And so we tend to overwhelm the dog with the tugging, especially if the dog is young or if it's smaller than us. I mean, you know, really what I see people accidentally doing is they're dragging the dog all around and they're never allowing the dog to drag them around. And the dog has to affect you. They have to feel like they can pull you down and get the toy or make you move or make your hands go loose or something like that. And then the other common thing is people never give the dog the toy. And that's just a big deal because they're scared that the dog might not bring it back and so they don't give it to them.

It's a teaching thing. It's teaching trust around your hands near toys, hands near the dog. My dog thinks hands are good. He thinks they're for shoving toys into. And that's what I want dogs to learn rather than being overwhelmed. So that's kind of why I'm really big on letting the dog have it and then choose to come back. That gives me information on how I'm playing and if the dog likes that. With fetch or with ball play, are there common mistakes you see people make? Yeah, they start like they get really concerned with the dropping, which we have to get the dog to drop it. But they start commanding it and cueing it and verbally making the dog do it and using a little bit of coercion to get the dog to come back and drop it. And those I'd say, what I want my dogs to figure out is that their dropping activates me. So when the dog drops a toy at my feet, that activates me to bring out another ball in sight and throw it. Or that's what I want them to look at the owl as rather than this thing that has to be commanded. So dogs will tell you a lot about what they think of the game when they're coming back to you. So people get really concerned with dogs circling, with arcing, all that kind of stuff, and it's good to notice that. But when you're training that, it's okay as the dog works it out that, yes, I can come back and drop it. So, yeah. So that's a little bit of a common mistake. Everybody kind of probably has heard the idea that you should start with the fun and then gradually add work in. So can you talk a little bit about that? How do you decide when and where to add work to the game? Well, I have like a rope fetch game that I teach with rules where the dog has to drop it. The handler has to have a marker word and eye contact has to be added. And the dog needs to know that they dropped the ball to make the other ball in sight. So it's kind of a two-ball game, but you have to make sure that the dog understands that they're dropping, produces the other one in sight, and that you're not bribing or prompting them with the one in your hand to drop. So once you have that basic thing for the chase game, then I would feel confident adding some behavior skills, so either obedience or agility. With tugging, the dog needs to be bringing it right back. But also with tugging, the dog needs to have the self-control of not just jumping all over you. That self-control with the tugging is a big thing. So I want to physically cue the dog to jump on me when it's allowed.

And that way, when they want to come back right away, but they're also looking for that signal that they're allowed to come back and shove it at you, that's kind of they've got some self-control in the game and some thinking in there. It's not just a frantic thing. When I see that, then I say that you can start to add simple behavior skills. And so you've got the rules, and you can start adding behavior skills. And your focus, especially at first, is to add the skills to the game. You don't want to just go out and run an agility sequence and reward the dog with the ball. You want to basically put the behavior skills into the game itself. So it might look like you throw the ball for the dog a couple times, and then you cue a jump. And then you throw the ball for the dog a couple times, and if you're doing obedience, you might cue a sit. And then throw it a couple times, and then a hand touch. So what you're doing is you're adding those behavior skills in gradually, and you're keeping in mind that it's about the play and the reinforcement of the play. And then as back gets easier for the dog, you can start to make that reinforcement of play thinner and thinner. And then when you start doing that, so that leads to a whole other thing, basically, where eventually you're going to want to thin the reinforcement schedule so you can get some stuff done. You don't want to have to, for the rest of the dog's life, have it three ball throws for one sit. Right. But that's what I call a tell, where assuming you've got all your games really well taught and the dog is bringing back the ball, your dog's tell are what starts to deteriorate when your rate of reinforcement is too low or the environment is too hard or the behavior you're teaching is too hard for the dog. And so in a fetch game, a lot of times what the dog will do is, let's say, you only gave them one ball throw for the sit and they thought that was kind of cheap, then they'll arc on their way coming back to you when previously they would have run straight back to you. Or they'll not drop the ball quickly. They'll chomp it a couple times. So those are the things that the dog will start deteriorating, the game skills would deteriorate, and that's what I call the dog's tell. So in tugging, the dog may start growling on the tug or it may jump on you before being cued or re-bite the toy. All those things that you've hopefully trained past in your game skills when you were trained in the reinforcement will then start to resurface when you add things, behavior skills, too quickly.

So like thinking of behavior skills as work and the game skills as the fun and the play, your game skills will start to deteriorate if your work is too much, in the dog's opinion. So that's kind of – and then you want to figure out as a handler how your dog is telling you that. Because we each have different ways they tell you that. Like a border collie will usually always give you the ball, but they'll usually arc. Arc. Arc is usually what a stereotypical border collie will do. Whereas a German Shepherd will always come back to you, but they'll stop dropping the ball. So different types of dogs have different tells. Gee, I wonder if I've ever seen that behavior before. Maybe a little. Yeah. Anybody who's had German Shepherd has seen the – drop? What's that? The chomp, chomp, chomp. Yep. Chomp, chomp. Exactly. I know kind of before we scheduled this to have you come back on, we chatted a little bit about the idea that you've spent a lot of time lately thinking about training loops and kind of how they feed into how a dog feels about a training session. And I wanted to dive into that a little bit. But before we go too deep, just to make sure everybody kind of knows the terminology, can you explain to a little bit what a training loop is and why it's really important for the dog to feel good about the training session? Well, I'm not sure the technical way of describing it, but for me right now what a loop is is think about behaviors as a three-part process. You've got first the dog doing the behavior, let's say it's sit, and then the second part is he's collecting his reinforcement, let's say a treat. And then that little part between the treat and when you cue sit again is what I'm calling a reset. I'm sure there's another technical name for it. So you've got behavior, collecting reinforcement, and a reset. And what I've really been interested in, so all that forms a loop because once the dog resets back to you, you can then cue another behavior. What I'm really concentrating on nowadays is that little part of the reset because we train it. You can start paying attention to the dog noticing you and then cue or reward or something. But that's where it all starts to deteriorate. You've got your big loop, and what you're doing is you're seeing if the dog decides to do the behavior again or connect with you. So things happen right there where they'll start to deteriorate. And what I mean by that is the dog will start sniffing, they'll start glancing at the environment, and all those are little signs that the dog, how the dog is feeling. So with treats, you give the dog a treat.

No, you need a treat. But they'll sniff around before they look back at you for the next cue behavior. For toy, that's exactly what the whole toy class is about, basically, teaching the dog how to give up the toy. So they won't give up the toy if that little reset isn't trained or if they think the reinforcement is too thin. So what I've been noticing is that part of her behavior loops deteriorates before anything else. So you'll have a dog that's sitting, but they're glancing away. And so I'm really interested in that because as positive trainers, we really need to notice that because it's telling us that the dog is not all in to the training session. And I want to know that as their teacher right there. So it's just that reset where the dog shows their stress or their conflict or whatever is something that I've just really been noticing lately and trying to train better and also to address when it happens. So you talked a little bit there about some of the things that you've been doing. Is there more you want to say about that? I mean, I know you mentioned you got a little ahead of yourself, but is there more you want to say about kind of what you've been playing with or, you know, kind of what you've been doing? Well, we need to intentionally notice it. I feel like I never noticed it until the last couple years. And so we need to intentionally also train it. So we train the reset. And how we can do that is we, instead of prompting a dog to look at us, we can call it focus. We can call it engagement. But instead of, like, prompting them to look back at us after they've eaten the treat, we can actually wait and have the dog notice us, okay, and then reinforce that. And so that's where we're reinforcing the dog's check-in and the dog understands that it leads to work or another behavior. So with being positive trainers, kind of like I said before, we need total buy-in. And if they're looking away or they're not or they're sniffing or they're not dropping the ball or they're arcing on the return, we don't have total buy-in. And so it's really, I think it's awesome because we can, like, address that there in the training session instead of waiting until our behaviors deteriorate. Hopefully that makes sense. It's like the action the dog does between eating the treat or chasing the ball and then doing the next behavior starts to show the stress of the training session on the dog before the actual behaviors deteriorate. You know, most of the time you don't notice until the behavior starts to change. Totally. We don't notice until the sits get slower or the dog doesn't sit or, you know,

heaven forbid, you know, we notice when the dog stops taking food, you know. But I want to notice that stuff before and I want to address it right then. Because, like, if my dog, like, say he starts chomping his ball and he doesn't want to give it up, then that tells me he doesn't trust me to give him enough reinforcement for what behavior he just did. It tells me it was hard. Like, if I ask for 50 steps of healing and I throw the ball and he brings it right back and drops it at my feet, he's telling me that 50 steps of healing was not hard. If he doesn't drop his ball right away, he's telling me that was hard. And he needs a lot of ball throws and he doesn't trust me to do that. But when you start noticing that, I call it listening to the dog, then it's so helpful for me anyway in my training to know that. And then I can, like, chew another chase. I can throw the ball a couple more times. I can tug a little bit before I ask for 50 more steps of healing. I can go, oh, you can do 50 steps of healing at home. It's not that big a deal. But here, you know, out on the field with lots of other dogs around, this is a really hard behavior. So I just like knowing that kind of stuff. And so I've been really interested in that the last, especially the last six months. Anyway, lots more questions about that kind of stuff as we all train. Yeah. No, I think that's really an interesting concept to kind of think of. And I think you hear everybody kind of say, you know, they have that just one more rep problem, right? And that seems like such a good way to kind of check in with yourself and check in with your dog before you ever get to the one more rep problem. Yes, exactly. And, you know, I think as trainers we all notice this, and we call it different things, you know, focus or engagement or, you know, I'm calling it the reset. So I think we're all kind of talking about the same thing, but we all describe it a little differently. And it's just neat and fascinating for me because I always want to know my dog's opinion. I want to know. So, yeah. So for those kind of interested in learning more about this stuff, how much of this do you explore in the Advanced Toys class since it's coming up in December? What do you focus on there? So the Advanced Toys class is part one, working on impulse control and making sure everyone, the handler and the dog, has their mechanics down. So we work on presentations. We really work on the different marker words. So in spite of the tug in front of your face when I say, yes, you need to take food, that kind of thing.

And then the second part of it is kind of figuring out what your dog's tail is, adding the work to it. Some people can get through that in the regular toy class because I do include it there. But the Advanced Toy class, I usually get a lot of students who really want to concentrate on, like, adding behavior change and things and figuring out how arousal plays a part because the toys, arousal is always there. Of course, yeah. So it catches you by surprise sometimes. So working on it. So, yes, we do really work on that reset, basically, and trying to figure out how individual dogs are feeling about their sessions. Dogs that would do best in class are ones that, obviously, the prereq is the basic toy class, but they don't have to have all the skills from the basic toy class, but they do have to have the basics of the fetch game and the tug game. But they just need to work on the specifics. So, yeah. Awesome. Yeah, it's usually a fun class. Hey, Shaden, I think any class with you would be fun. You're too kind. Well, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast, Shade. It's always a joy to talk to you about this stuff. Good. Yeah, I'd love to. So thanks so much for having me a second time. I feel honored. Aw. So. Well, for all of our wonderful listeners, we'll be back next week. With Patricia McConnell, Patricia will be on the podcast to talk about what she's learned over her time in dog training. Don't miss it. If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice, and you'll 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 Lang and transcription written by CLK Transcription Services. Thanks again for tuning in, and happy training! See you next week! See you next week! Thank you.