E159: 바바라 커리어(Barbara Currier) - "위브 폴을 배우고 사랑하기"

Terrier. Now she's pretty much the princess who just does whatever she wants. She's retired from dock dive. We almost lost her a few years ago. She basically went into acute liver failure on us, and so she miraculously bounced back from that, and so she just gets to do whatever she wants to do when she wants to do it. At this point, she's pretty spoiled. And then my next dog is Blitz. He will be 11 in May, and he's my border collie. He is a retired agility dog. He's also my service dog. He is a medical alert dog for me. And he also kind of gets to do whatever he wants. He's kind of my golden boy. He's perfect in every way. So he's actually... We started doing Connie Cross together in the last year, which is a sport where the dog is attached to you by a harness, and they run out in front, kind of like a sled dog, except instead of attached to a sled, they're attached to you. And it's like competitive 5Ks, and they pull you. And I really despise running, and I never thought I could love running as much as I do when he's attached to me. So we've been doing that, and that is super fun. Um, my other dog is Miso. She is a six-year-old miniature poodle. Um, she was my international competition agility dog. Unfortunately, we had to abruptly retire back in November. Um, we went to World Team Tryouts and got some pretty bad news when we got home that she had degenerative disc disease, and so her career became suddenly over. Um, so now she is in retirement, and she's been doing a little bit of running with me, um, and she enjoys that, and hiking, and basically just whatever she wants to do except agility. And then I'm getting a puppy in May. Um, I'm getting a French Samuel puppy. So I don't know if you've ever heard of a French Samuel. I have not. They, they're actually a pretty rare breed in this country. They're a very old breed in France. There's only one breeder in this country. Um, and so as far as I know, I'll be one of the only people in the country doing agility with it. So we'll see how that works. That sounds like fun. It's always new to try. It's always fun to try a new breed. So. Oh, I love trying all the different breeds. It's just so much fun. Oh, did I miss Eggo? I missed Eggo, didn't I? You did. I did. Oh my God. I, how could I almost forget my waffle? So Eggo is actually my youngest right now. Um, he is my English working cocker and he is two and a half, and he is currently my agility dog. Um, and he has big shoes to follow with me. So, um, but he's doing really, really well. He's been competing now for about six months. Um, and he's already in the, um,

highest levels in AKC and he's just an absolute goofball and I adore him and he makes me laugh every day. Wow. I can't believe, um, you've already been trialing him for six months. I think I saw the post when you first, uh, first competed with him and, um, I can't believe that was already six months ago. You know, it might not be, it might not be because I only trial about once, maybe twice a month. So though it's six months, it's probably only been maybe six trials. So it, that's probably why it doesn't feel like it's been that long because it's not a lot of trials. So he, um, he's, he's moved up pretty quickly, much quicker than I expected actually for as goofy and immature as he is. They grow up fast. I know. Right. All right. So I always feel like I kind of have to like stick in a disclaimer when I'm talking about agility since it's not a sport I've played in, but I wanted to talk to you about your new weaves class. Um, love them from the start. So I know that, um, even as a non-agility person, I know that there are a lot of different approaches to teaching weave poles. Can you kind of talk a little bit about what approach you use for the class and why? Sure. So I use two by twos. Um, I've done all the different methods. I, you know, I've been doing agility for about 25 years now. And so I've, I've kind of done all the different methods and my personal favorite is the two by twos. Um, so the thing that I love about the two by twos is not from the very beginning. It not only teaches the dog to bend, but it also teaches the dog to bend at speed. One of the biggest problems that people have with weave poles is the dogs will learn to get entrances. But once you add speed, into it, the bending back into the second pole, once they get the entrance is really hard. And so some of the other methods out there, they teach the dogs to go through the poles really, really fast. But once the poles start to close and the dogs have to bend, they're going to lose something, whether they lose their speed or they lose the accuracy of being able to hang on to the poles. Um, and so the thing that I love about the two by twos is that they learn both things right from the beginning. Interesting. I hadn't actually thought about how that would affect the dog actually learning to do that particular motion with their body. Cause it is kind of specific. Interesting. It is. And it's super unnatural. I mean, it's the most unnatural thing we teach them to do in agility. You know, if you think about dogs in their natural, you know, dogs out running in the

woods, right? I mean, we see them jumping things, climbing things. So that's all supernatural. What you don't see them doing is weaving between trees. So the fact that we're like, you need to weave between these 12 poles and Oh, by the way, you can only enter on your left shoulder. It's super, super unnatural. And so breaking it down right from the beginning, it's, you know, it's, I've just found that I just get better results with the two by twos than I have with the other things. So kind of heading into the class, are there, are there skills that the dog and handler should have already? You know, what do they need or where should they be in their training kind of before they start working on weave poles? So this class is teaching them from the ground up. So other than it's great, if they already have an understanding of being able to do some jumps and tunnels, because we add that in once they're on six poles. And then again, when they're on 12 poles, we add in jumps and tunnels because they have to be able to do the poles in sequence and speed coming off of other obstacles. Weave poles are pretty much the last obstacle that I teach when I'm teaching a dog agility. So when, when I'm teaching my own dogs, they already have all of the rest of the equipment. So it's easy for me to then add the weave poles into some sequencing. So it's the people will get the most out of the class if they can at least do some jumps and tunnels that we can add in. Other than that, the only major important thing for this class is that the dog not be any younger than 14 months and they be done growing. Because weave poles are really, really hard on their bodies and you don't want to put dogs that are still growing that their growth plates have not closed. You don't want to be asking them to do weave poles. So can you talk me through kind of those first few steps when, when teaching weave poles? Like let's say my dog has never seen the poles before at all. So I set them up. Um, and then what, how do you start? So you start with the two poles and you basically just kind of angle them. So the dog just sees just a straight, there's two poles and they're going to walk right in between the two poles and you just reward them. You, you, I, you can use a toy. You can use for food motivated dogs. I use big chunks of, uh, string cheese. I use the white stuff because it's easy to see in the grass. It doesn't crumble. Um, if you're going to, you know, for the people that train outside or whatever, um, it's easiest to use a P of food that doesn't crumble because then they don't spend a lot of

time sniffing, looking for it, right? They just go in and grab it. So I'll just throw a, a hunk of cheese out when they walk through the two poles. Then I start to angle, close the poles. So it's more, they're walking straight on and they just have to, they, it, it, they define the entry a little bit more versus just walk between these two poles. And so I just slowly get it to that point on the two poles. And again, I reward, but what I don't do, I may have to, depends on the dog. Some dogs just will turn and walk in that direction. Um, when you circle them around your body, the way that I do other dogs, you need to be a little bit closer and just kind of show them once or twice. But then beyond that, I make sure to get way out of the picture. Cause right from the beginning, I want it to be very, very independent of me. I don't want to be having my body show them where to go at all. I want them to be thinking it through. Oh, I go between these two poles like this to get that reward. Because for weave poles, the end result that I want is I want to be able to think about weave poles as a straight tunnel. When I send my dog into a straight tunnel, I expect that they're going to go in one end and come out the other. They're not going to dig out the middle of the tunnel. And so I expect that with weave poles, when you go in pole one, you're going to exit pole 12, regardless of what I'm doing or where I'm going. And so right from the beginning on two poles, when they're just walking through these two poles, I want to get myself out of the picture as much as possible so that they are thinking it through and they know independently what they're doing to get that reward. Okay. So, um, so literally first step is just getting the dog to walk between the poles and then starting to, um, I guess increase the difficulty of the angle and then getting yourself out of the picture. Am I kind of summarizing that? Pretty much. Yeah. I mean, the more you, the, in the beginning, it's just like, they're just walking down a channel and the more you turn the angle back. So it's a little bit straighter. Um, the, obviously they have to think a little bit more of, Oh, these, like if they were walking, how do I describe it without seeing it? Yeah. So basically if you were walking towards a straight line directly out in front of you, if that was the two poles, like if you were standing, looking at the two poles and you only, they're in a straight line in front. So you only actually see one pole because the other one's

directly behind it. Does that make sense? Yes. If that's the way your poles look, the dogs then have to actively try to figure out how they're going to get into that on their left shoulder entering that. So that's much more difficult than if we have the poles turned so that they're looking at the pole and they see a pole on their left and a pole on their right. Does that make sense? Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. I'm so glad. One of those things that it's hard to kind of describe in words. Yeah. So working on questions, I kind of looked through the syllabus and, um, you know, it kind of feels like you're adding poles pretty quickly. So from two weeks to four weeks to six weeks to six poles, all kind of in those first two weeks. So I wanted to ask, um, how do you kind of figure out when the dog is ready for that next step for you to add those additional poles? What does that look like? So most dogs actually learn this really, really quickly. Um, there are others, there are some that struggle more than others. Um, so you really, it's very dog dependent, but I will make things harder when they have about a 90% success rate. I'm okay with mistakes happening. Um, that's how they learn from them. But when they are 90% correct first try, then it's time to make something a little bit harder, whether you're closing the poles a little bit more, um, whether you're asking for a little bit harder entry. Um, but that's pretty much what I go by when their success rate is around 90%. Gotcha. I noticed you also kind of call out separately adding motion and then adding handling. So how are those two things different? And then why do they need to be, you know, kind of separately addressed? So in the beginning, when we're teaching the poles, we wanted, we want to be doing as little as possible, um, because we want the dog again, to know what their job is without any influence from us. So a lot of people right from the beginning will add motion. So they'll move forward with the dog. The problem is, especially for a dog that has lower drive, they learn to follow your motion. So if something, so say you needed to do a rear cross on the weave. And so you're not ahead of the dog. The dog is going to slow down because they've paired their behavior of being in the weave with you up ahead, almost motion wise, almost like drafting. Like if you, if you know anything about car racing, like you were drafting them through the poles because they were following you. So it's really important that they learn from the beginning. This is your job without me doing

anything. And then we add in the motion first, because not only do for the lower drive dogs, will they become dependent on our motion, but for the higher drive dogs and a lot in the large herding based dogs that we have in this sport, they are easily distracted by motion. So doing weave poles is really, really hard. And when we add in motion too soon, it becomes very difficult for them to focus on the task at hand. And the fact that, Oh my God, mom's moving. Oh my God. And so, so many things can happen. So we want to make sure that they understand their job first without any motion. Then we can add motion. Now motion is just you moving forward. And we started at the walk. Can you stay in your poles while I'm walking? Can you stay in your poles while I'm jogging? Can you stay in your poles while I'm running full bore and leaving you? Like, you know, can you do that? And we start all that on six poles because we don't want to make it super hard on 12. Then from there, we add handling because not only is handling motion, but handling is changing sides on the poles. So now we've added two different distractions for the dog. So, you know, rear cross, can you drive ahead of me and go in the poles, even though I'm behind you and I'm now going to cross sides behind you? Can you stay in your poles while I'm front crossing at the end of your, of the pole? So I'm doing a turn in front of the poles while you're still weaving. Can you do that? Can you stay in the poles while I'm blind crossing them? So now can you stay in your poles while I'm running across the face of the poles with my back to you? So all those things are very, very difficult. And so you don't want to add them all at once before the dog truly understands what their job is. For those who are, you know, listening to this and considering the class, they have a dog who's an agility prospect and they need their wreath poles taught, you know, what else can they kind of expect to work on? Or is there anything else that you kind of want them to know as they're debating signing up? So I'm hoping that they're going to have lots and lots of fun because I'll say that out of all the things that we teach our dogs and agility, we've pulled is my number one favorite thing to teach. I love it so much. And I love to watch the dogs really problem solve and figure out what is expected of them and this little puzzle that I have presented to them. So the other thing that we address in this class is the different entries. So many people, when they're first teaching we've pulled, they stick to the pretty easy,

straight on entries. And I go right for the hard entries right from the beginning. So really the only time that the straight on entries are a problem is when you are sequencing because speed is involved. So right from the beginning, I teach the more difficult entries. So they're easy for them right from the beginning. They're like, Oh, yeah, this is what we do. Because it also builds up muscling along their spine that they need to hang on. And then we address the straight on entries with speed once we add in some sequences. And then also right from the beginning, they're going to have independence in their poles. So they'll be able to leave them in their poles and get to their next place on course so that they can tell the dog where they're going and have the utmost trust that their dogs are going to do what they know they've trained them to do and do well. Shifting gears a little bit. In addition to the weeps class for April, you're also doing a class on teeters and contacts. So I wanted to ask, first of all, is this class appropriate for all contact agility obstacles? And then how do you kind of approach teaching contacts? So we do address all of the contact obstacles, but there's a heavy focus on the teeter, because that's the one that most dogs tend to have problems with, whether they have noise sensitivity or height sensitivity or motion sensitivity. So the teeter is usually the problem child amongst the three contact obstacles, but we do address all of them. And it's really the way I teach contacts is really done with tons and tons of small games. So it's all broken down into small pieces that create the large finished product. And so all the games are super fun for the dogs and teach them competence and independence. And again, that they're doing this on their own without help from me so that I can trust them to do their job so that I can leave them on course to show them where they're going next. Does the class kind of start the teeter from the ground up? Are there skills that folks need before taking the class? No, this one does it right from the ground up. So they don't have to know teeter coming into it, or if their dog has teeter issues, and they're trying to work through them. So really, this class is great for any of the dogs. Again, you want to make sure that their growth plates are closed because it is contact obstacles. But it's good for a retrain of a teeter. And it's also good for the dog that doesn't know the teeter yet at all. Can you share just a little more kind of on the approach you take teaching contact and teeter skills? I think in the description,

you mentioned that you use kind of two on two off as kind of the method for these particular obstacles. Yeah, there's two methods for contact training. There's two on two off, and there's running contacts. So in this class, we're teaching two on two off, which means their back feet are on the obstacle, and their front feet are on the ground, and they stop and hold that position until they're released by the handler. And so we do lots of, like I said, lots of small games. And the more criteria that you put on a behavior, the more it's going to hold out over long periods of time. And so dogs don't, as you know, dogs don't really understand gray. They understand black and white. So instead of just saying, come down and put one foot in the yellow, that's really, really gray. And so but by saying, come down and your back feet go here and your front feet go here, it's much more black and white to the dog. And so you're going to get a faster performance, because they know exactly what's expected of them versus an ish performance where as long as this kind of is in the right place ish, you're good. I like that and ish performance. The so the sample lecture that you share on the class, I think is the first assignment, right on motion override. And I wanted to ask about that. Can you kind of explain, first of all, what motion override is, and then talk us through that. So how you teach it? Sure. So as I said before, you know, the sport is dominated by herding breeds, which are very motion sensitive. And so it's really hard sometimes for dogs, when they see motion, to continue to do what's been asked of them. In handling, motion is one of the first pieces of information that we give our dog in what we're doing. So as my friend and fellow Fensi instructor Loretta says, motion go that way, go that way. So what motion override teaches the dogs is that I'm going to ask you to do something and it doesn't matter that I'm still moving, I need you to continue to do what I asked you to do. So I teach this with him with my puppies at a very young age. So basically, I start with just something as simple as a sit in a down. Can you perform a sit and a down while I'm moving? And eventually, can I be in a full run and ask you to sit or lie down and you will ignore the fact that I'm running, I'm not stopping and perform those behaviors. And what that translates into are contacts that you say, say your verbal for your contact behavior is touch. So they're coming down the A-frame and you say touch, and you're just running by full speed all the way to your next position, not stopping, not slowing down. And

they're going to know, okay, mom told me to touch. That means my job is come down, stop with my front feet on the ground, my back feet on the obstacle and wait for her to release me regardless of what I'm doing. And so that's where the motion override comes into play is if they can't do it with something as simple as a sit or a down command, doing it on adding agility and the whole mindset and the whole arousal stage of agility is going to be so much harder. So I like to start this game early on with these, with the simple exercises. Gotcha. I like that. And I think that's, I mean, that's an important skill no matter what your sport, right? Like having the dog understand they should do the behavior no matter what. Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. Kind of thinking through these two classes, right? So both behaviors, both contact behaviors, excuse me, and weave poles. I assume that you kind of have to think through what you're going to do when it comes to maintaining them over the long term. So first of all, is that true? And then can you talk a little bit about how you make sure those behaviors continue to kind of look crisp and, um, and are strong, even when the dog is like actively trialing? Yeah. So the biggest, biggest key, I preach this to my students all the time because everybody gets sucked into it is staying consistent. When you start trialing, everybody has these, these clear guidelines and criteria in place for the dogs when they're in training. And then they get to the trial and they get caught up in that atmosphere of queuing and wanting to win and all the criteria goes out the window. And so then they wonder why they're losing their, their contact. So the most common thing that will start to happen, um, is dogs will start creeping down to their contacts. And so my students will come to me and they'll say, Oh, they used to drive down and it was so great. And now they're creeping. And my first question is, are you quick releasing on your contacts? And they'll, and they'll kind of sheepishly look at the ground. Well, maybe. And I said, that's what caused it. Because the problem is the dogs become ring wise. They learn what is expected of them in trials. And then what's expected at home at home, they get in trouble if they don't come all the way down. And so they might be taken off and then they get a chance to do it again or whatever. But at trials, people get caught up in the, you know, Oh, I want to cue, you know, Oh, a Paul was in, or they stopped for on it's close enough. We're still clean. I'm going to release them. So then the dogs start creeping down

the contact saying, are you going to release me now? What about now? What about now? How about now? And they just creep their way down. And then the handlers get mad. And I say, well, it's not the dog's fault. You got gray on your criteria. And so now they're questioning it. So it's really super important that you don't get caught up in that. And that you think going long-term, what your end result is. I'm always thinking with my dogs, I'm always hoping for world team dogs. And so when I'm bringing up young dogs, I don't get caught up in the whole queuing thing because my, I'm always looking long-term thinking if I'm in the finals at world, do I want to be concerned about their contacts or their start line or their, well, there's no table at world, but you know, anything that has an impulse control. And the answer is no. So local trials, I'm going to make sure that I continue to work that. And now that we have fix and go and the FEO and AKC and stuff, there's so many ways to be able to work those behaviors and, you know, have the dogs be able to be rewarded right at the trial, which is so awesome. I'm so glad that they finally did that. And then I continue at home in my training to really, really highly reward super wonderful contacts and continue to do distraction training with them. You know, can you hold your contact if I'm throwing the Frisbee as you're heading down to the end? Can you hold your contact while I have one of your friends tugging at the bottom of the contact? So I, I do all those things to them at home to try to test them and, and, you know, push them out of their comfort zone, heighten their arousal to try to mimic more of the dogs that I have at trials. So this one's a little bit, a little bit of a change of topic, but I w I was looking through, you know, your classes and your website and stuff while prepping questions. And there was a line on your website that really kind of caught my eye. And it mentions that you're a strong believer in teaching dogs how to fail, but to continue to learn through their mistakes instead of kind of shutting down. And I think, I think it's a skill that a lot of people really struggle with. So before I let you go, I just wanted to kind of ask if we could talk about that a little bit. So what is it about your approach that helps with that? And how do you kind of build that in a dog? So I, I have a, I, when I bring new dogs along, I'm always very conscientious to not create learned helplessness in them. I really want my dog to be able to problem solve

and understand that making mistakes is not a big deal. Now I don't allow them to fail multiple, multiple, multiple times. I watch them because I don't want my dogs to get frustrated, but in life, mistakes are made and we learn from mistakes. And so I am okay with my dogs making mistakes. And so Ego actually, I've always felt like this, but Ego was my biggest challenge for this because from a puppy, he had zero tolerance for failure. If he did not immediately get reinforced, even right from a 10 week old puppy, he was gone. He just left. He just took off and sniffed. So I really had to stop and look at the way I trained and how was I going to need to adjust to him? And because I, because we've pulled in particular, the dogs make a lot of mistakes in we've pulled. And if they're going to shut down after one mistake, we've pulled, they're going to be very, very frustrating. And I want them to, to be more like, Oh, I made a mistake. Okay. Okay. I'm going to try again. I'm going to try again. I'm going to get this. I'm going to get this. And, and I'll adjust. Like I said, I don't, I don't want them to fail repeatedly and become frustrated. Um, but I also, when they do make a mistake, I am, I remain very, very upbeat. Um, I'm never, I never, never, never punished for anything like that for mistakes. Um, so for instance, if, um, Eggo breaks the start line, if I'm leading out and he breaks the start line, I, and he, I turn around and there he is. I'm like, Oh my God, what happened? What happened? Let's go back there. We're going to try that again. And his tail's going nonstop. And he's like, okay, okay, this is great. And so he doesn't get away with breaking his start line, but he understands that. Yeah. We're not running this course because I put you in a stay and I expected you to be in a stay. And so we're going to go back and we're going to try this again. And so when I put him back in his stay, I may race out to the second obstacle. And if he holds a stay, Oh my God, that was amazing. And I'm going to run back to him and reward him and play tug with them or whatever. Um, so he has really learned, um, that making the mistake is not a big deal. He's going to try again for me. And, um, but I did have to, I had to break things down really, really down in minuscule, um, behaviors for him, for him to, to be able to function with being able to make a mistake and bounce back from it. Um, and I also had to learn that I couldn't, things had to be super short and I had to jump from one behavior to another pretty quickly because he got super frustrated very quickly.

And so I would, you know, ask for, I would, so a sit, for instance, I shaped those. And so I would wait for him to sit. He would do it. I would give him his cookie and then we would run off and play frisbee. And then I would come back and wait for another sit reward. So I made them, so we didn't like sit down and this five minute session, we're working sit. It was just once the behavior happens, we're off, we're going to go do something else. And then we're going to come back. It was very, very, very short for him. Uh, I have to say, I've definitely seen a little bit of that with my, uh, English Cocker too. So it might be a Spaniel or a Cocker thing. We'll see. You'll have to tell me after you get the, uh, the new puppy, but the Spaniel trait. Yeah. I'm wondering that because don't you agree that they're a very soft, hard dog? Yes. They're completely resilient about things and super, super easy to get frustrated and, um, really sensitive to other things. Yeah. I've, I've been amazed at like how much of an oxymoron he is. I mean, he's like really a soft, hard dog. Yep. Yeah. Levi had a, um, an X-pen basically fall on top of him as a puppy. And he was like, what? Oh, that's nothing. You know, like totally bounce back. No problem. But, uh, there are some things where it's like, wait, no, I didn't get that right. I'm totally going to get frustrated. My favorite thing that he's actually learned to do from, he's finally getting great. I mean, he's three now he's finally starting to mature, but, um, my favorite thing that he will do for me now is if we're in a training session and he has the option of going to a bed in the middle of the training session, if I'm not being clear enough, he will go lay himself on his bed because that's a reinforcing behavior and he knows he'll get paid for it. Excellent. Yeah. Then I know I need to stop my training and reevaluate my plan, but yeah, absolutely. Very, very, uh, punishing to me. Well, yeah, but, but, but I love when they like, when they learn these little ways of communicating so clearly to us, I just, I mean, really as dog trainers, they really are the absolute best trainers. Yes. Yeah, totally. They will make you be a better trainer. That's for sure. Um, exactly. So I didn't mean to take you off your track there. You're talking about, uh, but I go and kind of breaking things down. Was there anything else you wanted to kind of say on that, on that note or, uh, or did you kind of cover your points? Yeah, I think we covered it. Okay. Then just one final question. So what's, um, what's something that you've learned or been

reminded of recently when it comes to dog training? Probably the one that I'm learning right now, um, with losing, losing me. So, so suddenly, um, was not the way I planned on having ego coming out. I expected to be running me. So at the same time, and she would leisurely retire into her 10, 12 year old this, and he would slowly slide into her place. And that would be that I didn't expect to have my leg amputated and thrown back into deep end and expected to swim. So losing her, like she's my heart and then just jumping back into trials with him and not having her there. I didn't realize as hard it was going to be. And even though they're two different breeds, um, unfortunately he's getting compared to her a lot and I'm, it's not fair to him. And intellectually, I know that. Um, but I'm working, I'm working really hard through it. Um, and I'm learning that sometimes you just have to fake it until you make it. Um, so even though intellectually, I know you can't compare dogs, um, it's, it can be hard. And so what I've done recently is he measures into 14, um, nationally, but internationally, he has to jump 16. And so he came out jumping 16, which he has no problem with. Um, but he's a different dog. Um, he's a boy, he's goofy. He's not as mature as she was at this age. And so he deserves to have his own journey, but taking him out at the international level, I kind of had it in the back of my head. Oh, we needed that cue for quals. Oh, we needed that cue for this, for that. And that just wasn't fair to him because in my head I'd be thinking, well, Miso wouldn't have made that mistake. And it's just not fair. And I knew it. So I moved him recently down to 12 inches. So any of that international stuff is just off the table. And when we didn't have perfect runs, my first thought was, Oh my God, we had such amazing training opportunities out there. And that's where I need to be with him. Not even thinking about international or any of that stuff, because we're not, we're not ready for that as a team. And it's not fair to him. Yeah. He's a baby dog still. He's a baby dog. Well, and Miso was just so much farther along than he was at this age, but she's a girl. She was born serious. I mean, he was born a waffle. There's nothing serious about a waffle. Man, that's a, that's been a wake up call for me, a boy after having mostly girls. Yeah, I get that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So, so that's been my, my lesson that I am learning and trying to really learn hard for him at this point so that I don't, I don't, I don't want to

make it not fun for him because I'm putting unrealistic goals on us. I always admire agility trainers because so many of you do run multiple dogs or train multiple dogs at the same time. And, you know, unlike, I mean, yeah, there's, you know, if you're handling two dogs and obedience or two dogs, um, for some of the other sports out there, like you do have to adapt your handling a little bit, but I feel like with agility, it can be so drastic between dogs. And that's such a, a hard thing to do in your own head. Um, I've always just really admired that skill. Yeah. And it's a learned skill over time. I mean, the longer you do it, the easier it becomes because you're just kind of working off muscle memory. And obviously there's always a timing thing you got to get used to with dogs, but, um, you know, it's, it's muscle memory. So we're not really thinking about those of us have been doing it a long time. We're not really thinking about what we're doing. Like our bodies are just doing it. So it does become easier with time, but depending on the dogs you're running, sometimes it can be quite difficult to jump back and forth between one and two of them. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Barbara. I think this has been super interesting, um, at least for me and I'm sure for a number of our listeners, there were lots of good nuggets in there. So thank you. I hope so. Thanks for having me. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in and we'll be back next week with a discussion on the virtual FENSI team titling program. Don't miss it. If you haven't already subscribed to our podcast and iTunes or the podcast app of your choice, they have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. Today's show is brought to you by the FENSI Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise FENSI 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. Music Music Music Music Music Music Music