E144: 크리시 슈란츠(Chrissi Schranz) - "단 5분의 훈련 시간으로 더 많은 것을 이루고 더 큰 즐거움을 누리기"

This term, for example, we've got gold students who have plenty of motivation, but they're so busy and there just isn't enough time to train. So we're looking at their schedules and finding hidden pockets of time and turning those into training sessions. Just two or three additional sessions a week make a difference. We also have golds who have time, but they're struggling a bit to find the motivation to train or to decide what to work on. We all know that feeling too. Sometimes you just get stuck in a training rut and it's really hard to get out of it. In this case, it's all about making training fun again. And I release a new game every week. And those games are among the least serious homework assignments you'll ever get. They're really centered around having as much fun with your dog as you can. And they don't take more than a few minutes. So in your class description, you mentioned kind of the idea of creating training plans. So I want to kind of dive into that for a minute. But we've talked before on the podcast about how important it is to keep records. Julie Flannery mentioned it, I think, last week or the week before. But if somebody is kind of pressed for time, they may understandably be a little less likely to keep that training log. So how important is it to have a training log when trying to create a training plan? And then any tips for keeping those records even when you're really kind of pressed for time? For people who have a specific goal in mind and maybe they don't know where to start or they don't know how to start or maybe they've been working on something but they feel like they haven't been making any progress. That's when training plans and record keeping really help. Whether you need a training plan or not really depends on what you're working towards and also maybe on how many dogs you need to keep track of. And whether you're someone who likes making plans or not. So not everyone will have a plan and that's okay. What I do find really important is to plan when you'll train in any case. That's almost more important than what you'll train. Because our dogs love to be trained and training helps our relationship. So the dogs don't really care whether we are training just for fun or for a certain goal. And then in order to get them their training time, I like to identify specific time slots for training sessions and then stick to those time slots. If someone has more than one goal, we'll narrow it down further. For example, Mondays after breakfast and before work, you'll work on that healing class from your library that you've been meaning to work on.

Wednesdays in your lunch break, you'll play the weekly game from the class. And Sunday before bedtime, maybe you'll work on counter-conditioning your dog to the clippers. And once things are scheduled this way, people will then share their videos of their respective sessions. So for gold students, the homework thread becomes the training journal. I'll give feedback or they will themselves point out what they think the next step should be. And when the respective, so when that day, the training day, the next training slot comes around again, it's easy to just go back in a gold thread, read through what happened last time, and pick up where you left off. And if you're a bronze or a silver student in 5.5, make sure to join the Facebook group and post your videos or your training logs there. It's really, really helpful to share these things and have something to go back over. And it's motivating to share that progress with others rather than just taking notes for yourself. So I know kind of personally, I have a hard time, especially when I'm creating a training plan for a short session, right? Because it's hard to know exactly what I'm going to kind of get through. So what other sort of things do we need to kind of take into consideration when we're creating a plan or trying to think about like this process when really we're looking at work training for maybe a few minutes at a time? So let me share what works for me. Okay. My dogs have a calendar. It's like this family planner kind of calendar where you have several rows, you know, where you can put, it's meant to, for you to put the name of your children there or something. And every dog gets two rows. That's for two behaviors that we're currently working on. For example, Mick has been working on his down. I make record keeping super simple. I wanted to fit into that one little row, that little field next to the day, the current day in his row. And in order to do that, I need to decide on a single criterion to track. So first, when I had meamed him off the food lure, it was the hand signal. One session would have 10 reps. And I'd count out 20 treats, one to rework the down with in position, and one reset treat per rep to get him back up. And then I'd count how many of those 10 times he lied down on the first hand signal. That's the only thing I tracked. Until I got eight out of 10, that means 80% lie downs on the hand signal alone. And once I hit 80%, I'd raise criteria. And in my calendar, in his row, I would just write down 70% or 7 out of 10 or 60% or 80%.

And then I'd easily know if it was time to raise criteria or if I should still stay at the same level. And then at the stage where I'd add the verbal cue, I'd do the new cue, old cue approach, where you first say the new cue, the new verbal cue. And then you pause per second. And then you do the familiar hand signal. And at this stage, I'd track how many times Mick laid down on the verbal cue alone without needing the hand signal as a reminder. Again, that's all I tracked. And that's all I wrote down in my calendar until I got eight out of 10. Then I'd raise criteria again, starting to add distance and so on. So I guess my tip is if you're working on something specific and you only have little time, pick the most important criterion and focus on that one. Aim for 80% correct responses. And if you work in 10 rep sessions, that's really easy to calculate. And the moment you meet your 80% mark, you focus on the next detail in the following session. That makes record keeping really simple and not overwhelming. And it gives you a clear plan of when to raise criteria. It also sounds like it really helps with that just one more problem. Oh, yeah. Yes. Counting your treats or setting a timer. Super, super helpful. So I was going to ask if you could kind of talk us through a sample training plan, but it sounds like, you know, you've kind of done that. So is there anything that you would add or any additional tips that you have kind of on that piece of things on setting up the training plan? Yeah. So if I, so I mean, a 10 treat session is really, is over really quickly, right? So if I want to do a little more, I'll do a 10 treat session and then play for a minute or two minutes, do another 10 treat session, play for a minute, do another 10 treat session, just to keep mixing things up. I know in the class you also get into motivation, right? You mentioned that a little bit earlier when you were describing the class. And I want to talk about that a little bit. What kind of motivation issues do you often see that kind of lead people to sign up for the class? I actually did a survey once on that on the FDSA alumni list. The most common obstacles to motivation, if I remember correctly, were perfectionism, decision fatigue, and just the general loss of your training mojo. Perfectionism means that you have a goal and you have time. But you feel like you're never good enough or the session never goes well enough or you're scared of breaking your dog. And so it's just easier to not train in the first place. Decision fatigue is what happens when you feel like there's tons of things you want to train,

but you just can't decide which one to start with or which one to focus on. I think that often goes hand in hand with feeling overwhelmed. And I mean, that's not surprising, right? There's so many little choices we have to make on a daily basis. From what to have for breakfast and what t-shirt to wear and what route to take for the dog's morning walk, what to have for lunch and what friend to meet for coffee and which brand of yogurt you want to buy. And the ability to make decisions is a limited resource. There's only so many small decisions you can make on a given day without feeling depleted. And the third one, the losing your training mojo. I feel like that comes up a lot, especially at this time of year. It sometimes goes hand in hand with winter depression. It gets dark early. It's cold and wet. And then the holiday season is coming up. And it makes you feel lonely if you have no one to spend it with. Or if you feel like you don't fit in with your family. Or maybe you're just appalled by the consumerism that we're all immersed in. I'm sure many of our listeners are familiar with that feeling. You're just tired and down all the time. And training your dog seems like a big chore. And sometimes that's just too much. Right. And all these things are actually quite common. We've all been there. Or many of us have anyway. So if you're listening and that's you, you're in good company. So how do you actually take and address those things? Can you kind of walk us through an example? Let's say your training obstacle is the inability to decide what to work on. So you feel guilty for not entertaining your dog. But you're also paralyzed because there's so many things you could do. The games in Finding Five take care of this issue because they just tell you what to do. You don't have to make a decision. The game will make the decision for you. Or if it's a concrete training goal you're trying to decide on, we'll talk through it. And then we'll prioritize. Sometimes I'll just ask questions and students themselves realize what they want to focus on or what they want to tackle first. And sometimes I'll make a suggestion. Sometimes it's amazing how much it clarifies your own thoughts when somebody else starts making suggestions to it. Yeah. When someone just asks the right questions, right? Yeah. Or maybe even when you just start writing these things down yourself. Like even before I read, sometimes people start writing and oh, all of a sudden it becomes much clearer. Right. Right. You also kind of note that you'll help folks figure out what to work on and which dog they

want to work on it with if they only have like a few minutes training. And I'll be honest, that sounds a little like magic as somebody with two dogs here. So what's the secret? I love the multiple dog dilemma. We get that every time finding five runs. Actually, there have been people with cats and parakeets, not just dogs who are competing for training time. This time, this term, one gold student has five dogs. Now that's a lot of dogs. And she was struggling with who to train when. And we found a very simple solution. All the dogs go to work with her. And there's usually time to take a five minute break and train dogs during the work day. And now every dog has a day. And on his day or her day, that dog will be trained for five minutes. She just decided to start with the oldest dog on Monday and end with the youngest one on Friday. And now that there's a system, the need to make a decision has been taken out of the picture. Right. So that makes just an easy, clear. Yeah. Yeah. I like that a lot. Okay. So I'm switching topics on you a little bit again. But I think we all kind of know, theoretically at least, that short training sessions are kind of ideal for our dogs, right? Can you talk about that a little? Why short sessions are better or maybe better for our dogs? Mostly because dogs have a short attention span. And so do we. If you train for a long time, your timing gets worse. And your dog gets more tired. So very often, the longer you train, the less you'll get out of the time you spend training. Um, and also if we train for like half an hour without interruption, we tend to just do the same thing over and over again. That's not necessarily helpful. Um, if you're working on a new skill, you need to evaluate your progress and then decide whether you're doing what you're doing is working or if you need to change something. And maybe you're asking too much of your dog or maybe it's time to raise criteria. Um, also dogs get bored if we keep doing the same thing over and over. So, um, it's a good idea to just take breaks, uh, evaluate and then maybe pick back up again or have another short session the next day. Mm-hmm. So let's say I have a really big goal in mind, like a sport I want to compete in, or maybe, you know, I want to earn my team titles. Is it possible to achieve something big like that if all I can find is a couple of minutes each day? Uh, absolutely. Yeah. Especially with things like team because they don't require you to drive anywhere or set, set up lots of equipment. Um, when finding five ran last year, or maybe, maybe that was two years ago. Uh, I'm so bad with keeping track of time.

Me too. Anyways, so there was a bunch of us who were working on team and we had a thread in the discussion forum where everyone would share their team progress. And I participated too with Grit. And in the end of that class, Grit earned her team one plus. I think that was the one I worked on. Maybe it was team, ah, anyways, one of those titles. One we're at that point working towards. And I'd been working on it for a while, but just having the accountability of that thread and that class in the discussion forum, which were, I actually practiced a few minutes every day and that paid off. Just kind of having the, having broken it down, having thought about it and consistently applying those, those couple of minutes. Yeah. And feeling like you're not the only one. You were like, it's almost like getting together to train together. If other people are working on the same thing. On the, on the, you know, off chance folks haven't been clicking around the website. There are sample lectures for most of the classes that are scheduled this term, yours included. And your sample lecture is a bit unusual. Can you, can you talk about that? Yeah. So my sample lecture is a board game. It's called proving madness. It's about proving your dog's behaviors in a fun and entertaining way. You choose three behaviors. You believe your dog is fluent in, and then you roll the die and the board will tell you where or in what position to practice the behavior. So you may be queuing a sit while doing a handstand or a spin while your dog is standing in the bathtub. I love that. So what inspired you to create it as a board game? I have a friend who collects board games and he always finds fascinating Kickstarter funded things and obscure cooperative board games. So not the kind of stuff that everyone's familiar with. And we used to play a lot of them and it was super fascinating to me what games people had come up with. Some of those games were intricate and complex and some were political and some were really simple, but incredibly fun. I think that's how I got the idea to create a board game too. I wanted it to be flexible and fun and different from the ways we usually train our dogs. I was looking at it, you know, while prepping questions and it does look like it would be a lot of fun to play and really useful too, because I think it's really easy to kind of get stuck in a rut when you're proofing behaviors and kind of proof the same things over and over again, instead of experimenting a little bit. For those who choose to kind of up the stakes, there are additional rules, right?

So do you want to share a little bit about that, about the alcohol or shot edition? Yeah. Yeah. So there's a drinking game version of the game where you take a shot every time your dog struggles with a behavior or every time you land on a certain field. And depending on the poison you pick for yourself, this will certainly be fun. You can also play with other people, so you don't have to play by yourself. You can play with friends and their dogs. I love that. I just think it kind of adds a neat twist to things, right? Oh, it does. Yes. And also, the more alcohol is involved, the more rewards you're supposed to give your dog. You might become sloppy in terms of chewing, or you may not be able to speak clearly anymore. So we're paying better. Right. Right. So one last question here that I'm asking all of my guests lately. What's something that you've learned or been reminded of recently when it comes to dog training? Actually, last week, Mick reminded me how incredibly adaptable the average dog is. So as I said, I think he hadn't walked in a city or been around strangers for the first two years of his life. And you'd think that means he'd always struggle with certain situations. But that's not what happened. It took him a long time to trust the first person, the first new person after me, and then still a while to trust the second new person. But by the time his social circle had expanded to the third new person, he suddenly generalized that people, maybe they are not quite as scary after all. And he's still a work in progress, but he has really impressed me. And I think, especially as dog trainers, we often see the extreme cases, the dogs who aren't average dogs. So the ones with serious behavior problems that don't just go away by casually introducing them to the scary stimulus. So it's really nice to be reminded that most dogs aren't extreme cases. Most dogs are really masters of adaption, and they will thrive in all kinds of environments if we're patient with them and let them casually get to know the new stimuli. Yeah. I love that. I love that he's adapting so well. And I think it's always good to stop and think about whether what you're looking at is normal or not so normal and how to kind of adjust your expectations based on that. So thank you. And thank you for coming back on the podcast, Chrissy. Thanks for having me. This was fun. And thanks to our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week with Megan Foster to talk about start and end of run routines for agility.

If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. Today's show is brought to you by the 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. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training. See you in the second half. See you in the second half. See you in the second half. Thank you.