E234: 사라 브루스크, 사라 스트레밍, 페트라 포드 - "훈련에서의 압박"

Hi, I'm Streming from here on out. And I have a bunch of dogs, but the three that I claim are two border collies and an Icelandic sheep dog. And I've been doing agility and obedience competitively for just over 20 years. And my background has a lot to do with that, with sport dog training, but also with just coaching owners through tough behavior problems in their pet dogs. And I taught a lot of pet dog training group classes as well, once upon a time. And now I really focus most of my attention on behavior concerns in performance dogs. And so when it comes to pressure, which I'm sure, you know, we're going to dive into at length next, but it's certainly the many different forms that it can take and the many different kind of definitions of it have always been sort of present in my mind. But like Petra, I also started in competitive obedience and it was not something that we talked about a whole lot. So it's an interesting thing for us to dive in on. Yeah. Yeah. So speaking of that, I think the idea of pressure in training can maybe have some different meanings and sort of factors in a lot of different ways, especially when we're talking about competitive sports, right? So I think it makes sense to start with the most obvious form of pressure, kind of just the pressure to perform in a ring. What are kind of some of the ways pressure is part of that competition picture? And I know, Shremmen, you were going to start with kind of how you view pressure and what it is. So how'd you go for it? Yeah. So first of all, I think kind of getting on the same page as far as what we're talking about, and we may not all be on the same page, which is why panels are fun. I think of pressure as competing motivation. So anything that is a competing motivator to competing against the motivator that you would like to be at the forefront of your dog's mind, to me, would count as pressure. And I think most of the time when we talk about it, what we mean is, you know, if we, if we understand that a motivator is always the dog is trying to get something or trying to get away from something. So they're either trying to avoid or acquire. Then when we talk about pressure, I think usually we'd like them to still be thinking about acquisition. We'd like them to still be thinking about getting the reward, getting the payout, but we get seeking avoidance as that competing motivator coming in. So we start to see them care more about getting away from something than getting to something. And I think we call that pressure a lot of the time. And when it comes to the ring, those, those things that they might want to avoid or other

things that they want to acquire, like maybe there are dogs on the outside of the ring that they want to go say hi to, or maybe there is a sandwich on the steward's table that they are interested in. So maybe it is still in that kind of acquisition state of mind, but it's not, it's not the state of mind that you want because you'd like them to still be thinking about your payout and your agenda and your activity. And you get these competing motivators that kind of come in. And what's so hard about the ring is that we have to leave all of our big guns outside of the ring. So then we don't have anything on us to compete with those things. And so if it's, it doesn't matter if it's, I want to avoid the judge and that feels yucky to me, or I would rather go eat the sandwich off the steward's table. Cause that seems like a better idea than what your idea is. Um, those are both things that we have to deal with as part of the competition picture. I think that lays it out well, but let's see if everybody kind of agrees. Petra. Oh boy. Well, I think when I, when I break it, when a dog has a problem in the ring, I, I want to break it down and say, okay, what is the root cause of the problem? Um, and I've started to look at, um, actually break it down even more as, is it a distraction, which I view, which I, um, handle one way, which I think is now that I heard Sarah say, it probably is more of the same, but my mind, I treat a distraction one way. Um, because to me, when my dogs are distracted, I feel like it's more like they're curious. Like they're like, Oh, what's over there. Ooh, that's pretty interesting. Um, and when my dogs feel pressure, um, I don't get the same response. They kind, um, it, they just kind of internalize. They want to either get away from it or they kind of freeze. Um, so, you know, my, for example, my girl, Zaina, if she finds something interesting, she'll look at it, but she's not going to be like concerned or, um, she's just like, Ooh, check that out. Um, but if she's standing there and there's something behind her and the judge next to her and she feels pressure from that, um, she looks very different. Um, so I kind of, I guess split those out a little bit. I don't know. Um, yeah. So to, to kind of see if I can bring them a little bit into alignment. Um, it sounds like almost you kind of put distractions as that desire to acquire bucket that Sarah was talking about. Is that sound right? I don't want to put words in your mouth. Probably. Yeah. Okay. Um, but definitely I see how you're kind of thinking about it a little bit differently, which should make for a good conversation.

All right, Bruce, can you weigh in? Oh yeah, absolutely. So I really liked the way Strumming put it as, um, kind of competing desires, competing things that the dog might want. And so when I think about pressure, I think about anything that might be impacting my dogs or dividing my dog's attention from the task at hand. So it could be a sandwich outside the ring. It could be the judge standing near them. It could be me being completely different from the way I am in training. It could be my nerves. It could be whatever's going on. Um, the fact that I don't have food on me, that's different. Uh, it could be the dog outside the ring. It could be the fact that maybe the emotional response to the behavior I'm asking them to perform isn't quite there yet. Um, so whatever it may be, that is kind of dividing my dog's attention to me, that is pressure. And so it's something that's completely unavoidable in our training as well as in the ring, especially in the ring or when our dogs are performing. So definitely excited to get more into this. Yeah. Yeah. So to maybe not necessarily define it, but to kind of describe what it is we're looking at, you know, what are some of the symptoms you might see if, um, a dog is kind of struggling with pressure, especially, you know, in that competition environment. Petra, do you want to talk about that a little more? I know you started to touch on it in that first question. Yeah. So I, I think, um, a lot of times I find people label the behaviors like the dog is checking out or the dog is, um, you know, uh, distracted or the dog has a different agenda. I think those are just behaviors that result from the dog struggling with the pressure and not having, um, the skillset to handle it. So I think they'll, I've seen dogs just kind of internalize and freeze dogs will do all the typical, you know, sniffing, yawning, scratching. Um, I've seen dogs appear to kind of wander away, right? I think they're just fleeing, um, moving away from the pressure. Um, that's probably not an exhaustive list, but enough to get started. I'm sure between the three of you, we'll get a pretty good list. So Stroman, you want to pick up there? Yeah. And I think, um, I think the only difference between the way that Petra's looking at it and the way that I'm looking at it is I think Petra has like streamlined it down to looking at essentially that competing motivator I was talking about is desire to avoid desire to get away from like what, like maybe desire to get out of that kind of pressure cooker situation. Um, I do think of it as being kind of all encompassing anything else that is kind of

dividing that dog's attention, like Bruce B said. And so symptoms that are going to pop up are going to be, you know, at, you know, the first big thing we're going to notice is that the dog is maybe not doing the thing that you wanted them to do. So looking away during healing, um, maybe, uh, walking through that contact zone instead of stopping when we asked them to stop, you know, things like that. Or maybe, um, a situation that just popped up for my partner at a trial this weekend was that somebody had spilled their entire treat pouch right at the ring exit. And her super young dog, as he came around that corner, got a little air scenty, a little sniffy, which is so super not normal for him. And so she was kind of like, what's going on? And then come to find out somebody had spilled an entire bag of treats, like basically in the ring. Um, so I'm going to say, you know, that, that moment of him to check out and sniff and kind of look around for that food, um, is a response to that pressure of that treat pouch. I'd like him to smell that food, see that food, keep working. Right. And I think that if he were more, um, seasoned, he certainly would have her other dogs didn't notice it. A lot of dogs didn't notice it. So when they're struggling with pressure, they are splitting their attention. They're not fully able to focus on the task, respond the way that I believe I've trained them essentially. So if I give my dog, um, you know, if I give my dog a cue to maybe sit up from their down and they snap back to attention, they're like, oh, you said something. And they try something else. Like, they're like, was it a stand? Is that what you asked for? You know, they, any, any, to me, any sign that the dog is seeking, um, either relief from something, which is, I think a lot of what Petra's talking about. Or seeking to get something else rather than being very much the picture that I believe I've trained for. I, I could call that struggling with, with pressure. Brucey. Yeah, absolutely. So I think they covered, you know, all of the bases, but kind of just to summarize it. So any kind of like, um, degradation of criteria or degrading criteria, I can't get that word out today, but, um, elapsing in criteria, latency to cues, uh, sniffing, um, that sort of thing. And, uh, or I have a story since they covered those symptoms so well, um, famous. My one Malinois has a lot of, um, a big reaction to pressure and trial situations. And even though I try to replicate that and we'll kind of get into that later, but replicated and training as much as I can, a trial, she knows when it's a trial and when it's not.

And so, um, her big thing is she likes to go sniff or go and find donuts on the judge's table and eat all of the donuts. Yes. That happened in a trial. It was fantastic, but it's okay because it was during the defensive handler exercise. So all she had to do was come back when the decoy hit me to bite the guy. And she did, she ate her donuts and they came back and bit the guy. So, I mean, it worked. That's a fantastic story. It's like, people are always so worried about what's going to go wrong. It's like, you really can't plan for it. No, no, no. You can't. There were not supposed to be donuts on the table and she found them. It's fine. So you started to go into it there a little bit, but I'd like to kind of talk about how we can maybe minimize some of the pressure that our dogs might feel. Stramming, I had you down to go first. So do you want to, do you want to launch us off on this one? Sure. First of all, Iggy, my older border collie officially would like to, um, participate in Mondia ring after hearing that story, but, um, ways that we can minimize pressure. I think it's so important for us to focus on what we can control because there are so many things in the trial environment that are just going to be there that we just kind of have to train for. The judge in obedience is creepy and too close to you. The, um, the everything in agility, it is so loud, right? The dog in the next ring is loud and the dog running before you is loud. And I mean, loud, not only in noise, but like everybody's energy in there is just big. And that can be really hard on some of our dogs. And so helping to minimize for me would be certainly preparing them, um, which I know we're going to get into, but essentially preparing them for the things that we know are going to be hard, that we know are going to add some pressure. Um, so that those things are not hard. In addition to the donuts that happened to be on the table that we didn't mean for it to be on the table. Or I was at an obedience trial once with my first dog. And, um, during our run, another ring had finished and they started to rip up the mats and rip up the duct tape and he was horribly sound sensitive. And so that was too much for him. He had a total meltdown and, you know, I maybe can't prepare him for that because I didn't know that was going to happen, but if I made sure that I had prepared him for everything I could prepare him for, which I certainly didn't know how to do at the time, um, then perhaps he could have been able to cope with, with that. So minimizing also to me comes down to, have I met all of this dog's wellness needs?

I know I'm a total broken record and I always come back to that somehow somewhere, but, um, have I made sure that this dog has been appropriately exercised this week has had, um, his, you know, enrichment needs met this week, you know, have I helped him on that kind of holistic basis to make sure that he's been able to do something that is hard for him? I mean, I know that my dog Felix does a lot better in anything that I ask him to do. If he got some off leash exercise beforehand, um, or at least plenty of it during that week. And for your dog, it might not be off leash exercise for your dog. It might be, um, that they got to do some shredding, shred your junk mail this week and that kind of thing. So I think those are ways that we can minimize pressure. Excellent. Bruce B you want to take it from there? Yeah, absolutely. So, um, one of the big things coming from the performance industry is that you can't prepare for everything that's going to happen. Um, and, and in the sport I do monitoring, that's the whole point of the sport is you can train for 99 different scenarios. You show up on trial day and it's the hundredth one that you didn't even think was possible, but it's still within the rules. And so I tend to overtrain. I tend to overgeneralize those ideas and make sure that my dog is well, well, well prepared. Um, I just did the train everywhere challenge for the last month where everybody was supposed to go out to train their dog, or maybe even just go for a hike with their dog or hang out on a patio somewhere where they haven't been every single day and putting in that legwork, because if you do put in that legwork, when that weird, unusual thing has happened during a trial, well, your dog's already seen a ton of weird, unusual things. They're not going to be as bothered by it as if they weren't exposed to as many different things as possible. So we can sit here and say, and it's much easier to sit there and complain that, oh, my dog has a trial nerves or my dog has, you know, whatever. But at the end of the day, did you put in that legwork? Did you get your dog out into a million different environments and expose them to those things? When they're not competing and making sure that they're comfortable with them just being there. And so I think that's such a huge thing. I also really like, um, training in a trial environment. So my puppies are there, um, as long as that's safe vaccines, blah, blah, blah, but my puppies are there making sure that they can hang out in that trial environment. They're getting used to those noises, um, before, after a show, a performance, if I can sit

there on the sidelines of a halftime show with my puppy, you bet I'm going to be there and they're going to be playing tug and they're going to do all the games that they already know and love so that we can help transfer that emotional response to that new environment. And they're not going to be as bothered about it when they're an adult. So putting in that leg, we're getting there early, staying late, training between your runs, doing whatever you have to do to make sure that you are putting in the time, because I feel like that is the biggest part as far as making sure your dog is prepared, not just complaining when it doesn't work, which is what I tend to do 99% of the time. Petra? I agree with both of them. Um, I definitely, um, feel that my dogs work really hard. So it's super important during the week that they can blow off steam and just kind of have like a really well-rounded life. I am huge on generalizing concepts. It's, I, it's absolutely impossible to prepare for everything. So, um, I go, my dogs go, um, a million different places. I don't allow people to have excuses that they can't do it because you just, you know, you just have to get out there. So I, um, I'll take a concept like, um, a game I play where they back into pressure, for example, to a platform. So it's this game. Um, and then I have them play that game in tons of different places so that they kind, they just generalize the concept when, um, there's pressure behind me, I back into it. And that's a super fun thing. And I have seen, um, my dogs over time, generalize those behaviors in some like crazy unexpected ways. Um, and so I feel that if you get your dog to that point, that when they encounter that, um, in the ring in a different form, they're able to just kind of make that leap. And I also think it's super important. People have a tendency when their dogs are struggling. So for example, if someone, um, healed their dog into the ring, the dog feels pressure and the dog gets a little weird. The handler likes to go up here and lean over into the dog. And that will put, that puts even more pressure on the dog. Um, so I think it's also really important, um, when you're in the ring, um, and, or prepping even to go in the ring to be really mindful of what you're doing so that, um, you're in any way you can taking some pressure off instead of, um, inadvertently adding even more pressure. Um, when you say, uh, back into pressure, can you just describe a little more what that looks like that game? Um, so for years, um, I, we had, I didn't really realize it was pressure, but for example,

if you healed into a wall, um, of course your dog was going to want to look at the wall. So we would play games like, um, heal towards the wall and I would release the dog. And so the closer the dog got, the more it would anticipate the release and push up into me, or I would say, touch the wall. So as I got close to the wall, which was a really brilliant idea with my current puppy, he just like wails himself into the wall. Now I'm like, all right, that would be. So, um, so we have way, I have ways to make it a game to move forward into the pressure, um, in a fun way, always releasing them off. Um, so, uh, zeal had an enormous, enormous amount of trouble dealing with pressure behind him. Um, and there's a lot of pressure behind the dogs and obedience and, um, in the higher classes, you leave them there, um, which was even worse for him. I said, well, you know, I don't want to teach him that he just has to stay there. I'd like him to think it was a game that as he felt pressure to back into it, just like I teach them to move forward into pressure. So, um, I teach them to back up to a platform, like it's a game. They love it. Um, and then very carefully I teach, um, I add, so let's imagine there was a person and I put the platform, not directly in front of the person, but, you know, move it a little bit away and then have my dog stand. And when I give him the down signal, my dog downs and backs up to the platform. So in essence, he's backing towards the person that's giving him, um, the pressure, but that's not, I don't want people to just run out and do that. Cause that's not like the whole game. I don't know. You kind of backed me into the corner now. I'm sorry. I was just, um, trying to hope, hopefully clarify that we're talking about spatial pressure. Oh, I meant like this moving back into it in a way that's fun rather than just having to stand there and tolerate it. Yes. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. So on that note, kind of on the track of things we can do to train for it, um, Bruce, can you pick it up there? Yeah, absolutely. So I love what Petra said about, um, using a behavior that they love a game that they love, and then using that to introduce the concept of pressure and the fact that, you know, it's fun to move into these things and you don't have to avoid it. And so I do a lot of the same thing. I use a lot of different pattern games. So I make sure that I have a game, a couple of games trained at home where my dog absolutely loves them. Their emotional response. When we started playing the game is exactly where I want it. The energy level is exactly where I want it.

And there aren't, they aren't important things. So it's not my healing. It's not my position changes. It's not my retrieve. There are things that I'm okay. If the dog messes them up, because I'm going to use that fun game and start showing them and introducing them to the idea of pressure that could potentially happen in the ring. And so those are the games I take to new environments. Those are the games I play around new people around distractions, like other dogs or food or anything like that, that my dog might really, really want. And it can be simple, like a treat toss game, you know, get it. Get the treat, get it and go back and forth that way. It can be a fast down. If your dog really loves slamming into their down, you can just use that. It can be toy marker cue discrimination. So if you're use a multiple marker system, can your dog discriminate between striking the toy and the fact that you're going to throw the toy and their cues for that. So just simple, easy games that you can incorporate into your training and using those in a way that helps boost your dog's confidence. That way, when they see the pressure, they're playing a game they know and love. And it's not going to be something that they're unsure about. They're not going to be like, Ooh, what is my mom going to ask for me this time? Or, Ooh, I'm going to have to do that really hard behavior. I'm not quite sure about yet, but instead they're going, Oh, it's the get it game. I love the get it game. And they're going to stop thinking about that thing that that was causing the pressure. I know back to you in the corner before Petra, but do you want to kind of talk a little more about things you can do to kind of train for it? I totally agree with what Sarah said. I've done tree tosses. I do a lot of tricks. My dogs love tricks. Kind of what she said, anything that gives them a positive emotional response and that they think is super fun because that activity then overrides, um, the pressure actually for zeal as giving him his offering cue for some reason really changed the state of mind. So, um, if he feels pressure and I just ask him to offer behaviors that makes him super happy and then all the pressure magically disappears. Um, so offering tricks, um, games, and it's, uh, I agree with Sarah too. I don't, uh, use formal the exercises. I wouldn't do it with healing until my dog already understood the concept. Then I would bring it into healing. So I do easy, fun, um, games and just teach them how to deal with the pressure that way. And then it translates really nicely to the, um, exercises later. Streming, you want to add to that?

Yeah, I think, um, it's really, obviously we should be training to a high level of fluency under a variety of different, um, situations and scenarios. And I love, you know, both Petra and Bruschi talked about getting the dog in a lot of situations that are arguably harder than the ring and making sure that they're fluent in all of those situations. I think that's really important. Um, the one thing that I will add is that sometimes what makes these competing motivators that pressure, um, such a problem for us in the ring is that we don't have our reinforcers present. And so the competing motivators become kind of the most salient thing for the dog. So actively training for, uh, actively training reinforcement strategies that the dog understands as far as, you know, I try to teach my obedience dogs. When we pass through the ring gates, there is no more food in here, but your food is over there and I could send you to it at any given time. Um, and we have a ritual about how to get it and, and those sorts of things. I think when we train deliberately for the fact that the reinforcers will not be present, we do a lot to help ourselves, um, with this because so much of the time, all it is, is that we, we maybe weren't aware of the fact that something was going to be hard for our dog because we've always got, you know, the cookies flowing or the toy on our, I mean, if I'm holding a ball and rope, like the building could collapse and Felix probably wouldn't notice because he's staring at the ball on rope. But, um, if I ask him to heal with the ball and rope is over there and I've asked him to leave it and come with me and do his work, I'm opening. First of all, that's pressure in and of itself because the ball and rope is life or death when you're Felix. But, um, I'm opening then the door to see kind of what my dog's true feelings about the situation are because I'm not able to mask it with reinforcement. So I think training actively for the fact that the reinforcers will not be on your body is an important piece that I can add. So we talked about kind of training it intentionally, but I think a lot of time, um, you know, we can kind of add pressure unintentionally or accidentally in training. Uh, so I wanted to see if that kind of matches your experience and then hopefully assuming it does, um, you can maybe talk about some of the ways that can come into play. Uh, Petra, you want to start us off? My experience is the way to accidentally add it is, um, if I'm basically, if I'm not super mindful, right? Because, um, if I'm very mindful, then I'm really paying attention.

I'm looking at my dog and I am actively every second reading. How's my dog responding? What is my dog thinking? Um, and then hopefully I can be a really good trainer. Um, but I'm human. So if I am not in that space, um, then that's where I think things can accidentally accidentally go awry. Um, I think a lot of people, um, add pressure when they have, um, when they're not reading the dog. So either within the training session, they have a specific goal. I want to achieve this. And they're focused on that and not seeing what's happening, um, in the dog's planet as they're going through that. I also think that when people, um, set goals, like for example, they train one way and all of a sudden they signed up for a trial and now, um, they're more worried about pushing through, um, when they're doing an exercise instead of, um, reading that, uh, oh, my dog's in a little bit of trouble here. I need to work this out, um, first. So I think some of those, um, situations can happen. Shermie? I think that we certainly add pressure accidentally all the time. And especially, you know, if the dog's really sensitive, you're not going to be able to plan for everything. Um, I'm looking at Felix again on that one, like, like when I fell down doing agility the other day and the dog had to take a break in the car. I mean, he was very upset. I fell down when he was in the weave poles, grass is wet, planted to do a turn down. And I went, listen, not the first time, not the last, but he happened to be in the weave poles, which happened to be a calculus problem for him. And so he, then when we went to try again, was walking through the weave poles, which I can't have. So he had to have a little break and he came out strong. And I think that's actually an important part of the experience is that I noticed, oh, wow, that really affected you. I didn't think it would affect you that badly. Let's go ahead and give you a break and try again later. And knowing him, he's six years old. I know that the smartest thing to do is always just to take a break rather than try to get through it in that moment. Um, but just like Petra said, we add pressure when we're not paying attention. Like if you're not being mindful, then what you're doing is thinking too much about your agenda and not enough about what you're seeing happening. How many of us have gone into a training session? We have an agenda. We have a bullet list. We know what we want to get done today. I mean, this is literally my sickness, right? I know what I want to get done today. We're going to get it done.

But, um, if you go in there like that and you allow that agenda to cloud your eyesight and not allow you to see what is actually happening with the dog, then you're, you're really going to add, um, just a lot of yuckiness that you don't want to be adding. So I think paying attention, being mindful, having your plan, but knowing that the dog dictates what the plan's actually going to be always, um, is, is how we can avoid accidentally adding it or just noticing when we have, and then taking that break or stepping back or breaking it down. Sort of like that saying that a plan never survives, uh, first contact the enemy, right? Like we need to rewrite that somehow for training. Yeah, pretty much. Well, I completely agree with everything Petra and strumming said, um, and that it is definitely a by-product of just not paying attention and not be mindful in your training in that moment. Um, so instead of kind of hashing on that, again, I think I was going to talk a little bit about, um, some ways to avoid it and some things that work for me. So one thing I really like to do is I'll go into a training session and I tend to work my dogs for their meals. So if I like, I just worked vibrant for her dinner. So I've got like a cup of kibble that I have to get into the dog and I can do handfuls at a time. She doesn't have to work for every single piece of kibble, but instead of going into it thinking, okay, I'm going to work on shaping her sit pretty because that was like the big test today. And when I think of two or three other behaviors that we can work on, they could be behaviors she already knows. And as soon as I get to a stopping point on that sit pretty, I immediately move into those other behaviors. So now I'm not like, oh, I have to keep training because I haven't gotten all my kibble in her or I bet I can push this to the next level. If I get to the level. So she lifted up both paws. Great. We're going to stop there. I can let late in learning do. It's a thing. And then I can come back tomorrow. It's going to be even stronger. And now let's go work on your foot targeting and your hand touch and these other simple behaviors so that I'm not feeling pressured myself to keep working on that one behavior, which ultimately adds pressure to that behavior itself. The other thing I really like to do is if I have my puppy, and this is kind of an important thing with puppies in my opinion, and I'm sure it might be a little controversial, but it's something I feel pretty strongly about. If I have my puppy and they genuinely love training.

So I've worked hard on their enthusiasm, their engagement's really good, and I'm feeling comfortable with how they are behaving in like a shaping session. I will purposely push that session longer than I should because I want them to experience that in a way where when I am mindful about it, and I want to be able to see how they react in that situation. And I want to show them that it will end. Like, just keep pushing. Just push one more rep. Because we all know we do one more rep. So I might as well show my puppy that it's okay to do one more rep and stick with me just a little bit longer. I promise you're going to get a giant jackpot at the end. So this is something I purposely do with my puppies whenever they're mentally ready for it. So Vibrant's 10 months old, 11 months old now, and she is just finally mentally ready for this. And so I'm starting to push a little bit more in those training sessions where I can go, yep, pushed it just a little bit further than I normally would. She handled it just fine. Awesome. Maybe tomorrow or the session, you know, the following day, we'll push it just a little bit further. And I'm starting to raise those expectations a little bit just so that she can start experiencing that. And I think that's something that's missing a lot in training lately is that people aren't teaching their dogs to put up with that pressure for when we accidentally put it in. Go ahead, Petra. So I love, love that you just said that. I do that. And I think another reason I kind of do that is because a lot of the dogs struggle when we start chaining, right? So they're in the ring and when they start and they're going and going and they're not getting information and they start to struggle. And a lot of dogs, like they don't know how to just push through. And so I think that's, that's also what's happening. So I do that like with my young dog. Now I just, I'm not, it's not even, I want another rep because I want them to just, I'm like, come on, you can just give me a little more. You can do it. And then he does it. And I think that over time, they just learn to push through a little bit. And I think that's an enormously important skill. It's something that deal didn't have. And when I put that in, it was like a game changer for him. So I think, yeah. So anyway, that's it. I just was so excited. Yeah. Well, I was thinking about this because, you know, I'm looking at my, as my two OG dogs, my original dogs are laying on the couch, napping. One of them sleeping with her eyes open, which is really freaky, but that's what she's doing right now.

And I'm like, I've been reflecting a ton on their work ethic and their resiliency and training. I'm like, you know, I've had a bunch of puppies come through and a bunch of dogs and raised a bunch of dogs since them. Um, and for whatever reason, there's things that I messed up for sure. You know, they have really horrible impulse control. Their duration is God awful to add to any behavior. They are shaping fiends. They'll offer a million different behaviors before laying down the first one. Their verbal hue discrimination is non-existent. Um, but their work ethic and their resiliency to push through pressure and training is unlike my other dogs. And so I started thinking like, what did I do different? And I was, I was a novice trainer. You know, I didn't know about pressure and training. I didn't, I knew about it, but I wasn't paying attention to it. And I wanted my dogs to be amazing and do these amazing things. So I pushed them in training. Um, I was satisfied with, I was, that's the other thing too, that I've been reflecting a lot on is I was satisfied with more simple behaviors. But by the time we had gotten to the more advanced behaviors, they had built up that resiliency really, really nicely. And so now it's something I've started to methodically put into my puppy foundation. Um, so to kind of go back through something, I think we talked about this a little bit already, but the difference between having those reinforcers and not having those reinforcers, right? So we talked about the symptoms that we tend to see in the ring when there's pressure applied. Um, but what about, um, when we do have our reinforcement, when we're in training, what are the symptoms that may kind of pop up that may mean we're adding pressure in a way that we didn't intend to, um, that maybe it's kind of working into things. Strang? I love this question. Um, because I think it's really important for us to be thinking about the fact that, um, our reinforcers themselves can layer pressure onto our dogs. Meaning, um, if we, if we think about go back to that original idea that I think of pressure as a competing, anything that's a competing motivator to the motivator that I want the dog working for, then if I'm using a super high stakes reinforcer for my dog, I could actually be introducing the competing motivator of relief essentially. So if they are so desperate to get to the thing, then am I still operating in a positive reinforcement contingency? If their kind of primary emotion is relief when they finally do get the thing and that can come into play.

If I am utilizing starvation, um, and obviously starvation is kind of a, a big word that I maybe, maybe it's not the right word, but if I have, if I do fast the dog, um, like brewski feeds her dogs for her meals, that doesn't mean that they don't eat if they don't work. Right. So there are people though, who do operate that way that they don't eat if they don't work. Um, or for instance, or, you know, certain toys or certain activities or whatever, like we can create desperation. We can create desperation even through being kind and, and totally taking care of them, but they just, that's kind of who they are. Uh, like Felix with certain toys. Um, there's very much, you know, he looks like an addict to me. He looks like he is desperate to have the thing, not necessarily just desiring the thing. And so when I maybe ask my dog for a tough behavior and the payout for him is life and death, then I'm putting a whole lot of pressure on that behavior just with the potential for the payout that is not necessarily helpful to me. So it's kind of like, um, you know, if, if we, if the person is doing something that we believe we can do and the stakes are high enough that we want to do our best. So I always bring it back to like a high stakes agility run. So maybe a, uh, agility national final run or something like that, because that's something I understand is that. Okay. I've got a ton of pressure on me to get this thing because I want to do well. I want to win. I want to whatever, but if you said, and also if you don't get through that course clean, you know, we're going to shoot your dog or everybody you love or whatever. Right. Like if you put that kind of pressure on it now, I'm not actually looking to acquire. I'm looking to avoid again. So now, um, it is the wrong kind of contingency that I didn't have interest in. And a perhaps less dramatic example would be that, um, early on in Felix's life, I made the mistake of trying to train him for some husbandry procedures, like toenail trims for a toy. And I actually just did it one day. Cause I was lazy. The toy was there. The nail trimmers were there. I needed to get this done. I had used food up until this point. And so I said, let me just do it for the toy. And I mean, he was, he could not do what he could do for food. He, it is a hard behavior for him. Um, all husbandry is hard for him. And when I made the stakes that high, when I said, and your payout is this thing that you care so deeply about, he was no longer, no longer able to do it. And he showed me so many of the same behaviors that we might see if the dog is experiencing

external pressure from the environment. Um, I mean, he was vocalizing, he was taking his foot away from me. It was, it was a mess. And it was, it just became very clear to me in that moment, how silly of me to ask him to do this thing. That's, that's very hard for him to do. And to put that much at stake for the other end for him. So to me, I think we can, you know, specifically make pressure a part of the whole thing that we're training by saying, oh, and what you get in the end is this thing that you care so desperately about that you think you'll die. If you don't get it, when we do that to them, which we do all the time, honestly, in the, um, our plus sport training world in particular, I think we do this to them a lot because what happens is if you find that nice middle ground, you just get a dog that, um, will work really, really hard, give you really, really everything that they have. Um, and, and so I'm always trying to strike that balance and get that super hard work. And like, uh, Bruce and Petra mentioned, get that resiliency and get that, um, ability to push through because you want the thing bad enough that you will push through while actively trying to avoid putting them in a situation where they feel like it's life and death and they feel like they can't do the thing that you're asking them to do. Did I go way too far down, down a rabbit hole? I actually want to kind of have you pull some of that apart a little bit. That's actually part of the reason I include the question. Cause I've heard you talk about this in your podcast. And I think it's a valuable part of the conversation to include, but I'd like to have you, if you, if you don't mind to talk a little bit about like, we may not see that, right? Like, especially a newer trainer who maybe doesn't know how to identify what that looks like when it's happening to them. Um, so to put back to the idea of symptoms, like what behaviors is it that we'll be seeing in the dog or in ourselves or what, what does it look like when that's actually what's happening kind of under the surface? So I think that it looks like a lot of, um, a lot of trying too hard rather than not trying hard enough. So if the dog is checking out, sniffing, leaving, this is probably not your problem. Um, if the dog is, like I said, Felix would vocalize and he would, he would try to do the thing really, really, really hard. Like he would slam the paw on the target and vocalize at the same time. Like he's just trying extra. He's giving more behaviors and they're not helpful behaviors. Uh, the word frantic comes to mind.

Um, just doing a lot of extraneous movement that I didn't ask for that maybe isn't, um, that certainly isn't part of the picture that I wanted. And then the other kind of diagnostic that you can always do is reduce your value of reinforcer and ask the same question. And now what does the dog look like? Okay. So if I, so I put the ball and rope away and I went and got some Charlie bears, which are, you know, my dogs pretty much give a Charlie bear, like a B B plus, um, and said, all right, can we do this for Charlie bears? And he was like, okay, deep breath. And I actually let him play with the toy first too, which is another part. Like I let him kind of satiate and then we come back and I just ask him the exact same question for a lower value reinforcer. And I think I talk high stakes, low stakes, but people, um, use the word value a lot. I think it's so asking them about, okay, can you do it now for this lower value reinforcer, this thing that's maybe not life and death for you. And now am I actually getting the behavior I want? Okay. If I am, then that's the right level reinforcer for the job. I think really, really frequently we think highest value, most loved, like we want the dog to associate those feelings with our sports. We want those dogs to associate ball and rope feelings with, um, fetching the dumbbell. We want them to, we, we think that that's what we want, but when it looks like frantic, when it looks like trying too hard to their detriment, asking the same question for a lower stakes reinforcer, if the dog is then able to take that deep breath and give you the thing you're asking for now, you're talking a more fair level of reinforcement. So behaviors that I know are difficult, like husbandry behaviors. I am not going to ask for with something that, you know, like with bacon, right? So like my dog, Idgy would pretty much do anything for a piece of bacon. And I usually use bacon for her when we go to obedience trials. Um, it's like, you know, I'm going to an obedience trial if I'm cooking bacon and, but I wouldn't ask her to stand for a vaccine for bacon because I don't think she would feel like she could opt out. And I think I would see a lot of behaviors. I don't want to see if I did that. She's a lot less complicated than Felix. So I still think I'd get away with it, but, um, but on principle, I don't. Yeah. And I think that's important kind of note to end on before I kind of switch people here, but, um, just the idea that it also matters on who your dog is, right? Like knowing your dog. Brisky, you want to pick that up?

So kind of going back to the symptoms, um, you know, they are a lot of the same ones that we would see with the external pressures. Uh, it could be avoidance of the handler and avoidance of performing the behavior. It could be a degradation of the quality of the behavior. It could be latency in response to the cues. Um, it could be, um, full on disconnection. If that's your dog, you know, if you have a more sensitive, softer dog, they might just say, F it. I'm out of this. I can't do this. Um, or the franticness. Yes. If you have that type of dog that spins up, then absolutely that franticness. When I see it, you know, in the sports that I play, the reinforcers on the field and my dog, and it's the top reinforcer. It's the dude in the bite suit. It's the guy with the sleeve. And I don't have a way to, you know, I, I have to push through that because my dog has to perform the same quality behaviors, whether they're reinforcers on the field and they have access to it or not. And so for that reason, um, you know, teaching them to really like the quality of the behaviors, there's a lot of different ways we go about that. Um, but what I see with that is a magnetization towards the pressure. So the pressure is the guy in the suit. The distraction is the guy in the suit. My dog desperately wants that guy in the suit. Like that's what he's been bred for generations to bite is that guy in the suit. Um, that's his favorite thing in the world. And so I see a magnetization. I see him staring at the guy. I see him drooling to get to that guy. And I see a lot of frantic responses to cues, but not the same quality of the behavior I'm looking for. So instead of a heads up heel, I might get a heads up and then look down and heads up and then look down, um, so that he can keep an eye on the guy in the suit, um, and those sorts of things. And so we might have falling out of our recalls. The recalls aren't there. His out might fall apart. All of those things that are associated with, uh, you know, high level control. That's what falls apart when, um, when that pressure that those reinforcement pressures are there. Okay. Okay. So I think, um, just kind of building on that, like what, um, historically, um, anytime the dog struggled again, the word pressure was not used. The answer was always, um, tug more, make them crazier. And then that was always, um, defined as that's making the dog happy. The dog is, um, in drive the dogs. That's a good thing. And so people, um, really struggle with being able to, um, look at a dog and tell the difference

between the dog being in a state of conflict, like anxiety, um, really stressed out. Um, and a lot of people will say, oh, look, that's, um, you know, the dog is being energetic and the dog is happy and, um, they really have a difficult time telling the difference between the two. And I think that's super important, um, to be able to identify that. And, um, they will, I think people also have a problem. They'll have that reinforced on them, whether it's medium value or super high value and the dog will perform. And so because the dog performs, the person doesn't even recognize, or, um, it's masking the pressure, right? The person doesn't see that the dog is under pressure. They're like, oh, well, he's doing it with the reinforcer. And then when that reinforcer is not on them, um, and the dog struggles with the pressure, they're like, oh, what happened? You know, he, well, he, he's all, he's not doing that behavior because I don't have food on me. Um, when it's really that the food was masking it and you didn't recognize that the dog was feeling pressure. Did I just go completely off topic? Did I just go on it? No. Okay. Um, no, you're sent a lot. So, um, yeah, I want to dive in a little bit. Cause you said in there, it's super important to be able to tell, right. When the dog is super happy about the reinforcement versus when the dog is, I mean, just to reuse kind of that label frantic, right? Like when the dog is actually just super stressed. And so they're using that tugging or that, whatever, almost as a release, right. Do you have any like simple ways of, even if it's not simple ways of kind of figuring out which it is, what it is you're looking at? Are there, are there clues in there? I think the dog probably if at all past in order for the dog to think clearly and give you their best work, um, they really should not be that adrenalized because even if they're, um, my dogs that adrenalized because I'm tugging with her favorite toy, just period, like not even in context of asking her to do work. But then if, if I get her that excited and then I say, okay, let's work now. Um, she can't really concentrate the way I would like her to. So more and more, I think I, to make it a little more easy for students is I just, they shouldn't really even be that aroused or excited regardless because they're not going to be able to think clearly and give you their best work. So there's a higher likelihood they'll make a mistake. And the mistake really was my fault because I got my dog in that state. And so that's really not fair for me to say to my dog, well, that that's, um, correct.

I think it's probably, um, a little bit of a different challenge. Um, like with ring sports, like you said, you can't get that person away, but we definitely have more control over that in certain sports. And I feel like if a dog is that aroused first, we should calm them down a little bit, or ideally you shouldn't really even throw them over the cliff to begin with. Um, so I think that's where kind of, um, I've been taking it with people because I just think it's easier, it's more concrete that way for them. I like that. And I like kind of where you, um, ended there, just the idea of it also matters on the, like what your sport is, right? Like what picture you ultimately need to do well in the thing that you were choosing to compete in. I think that's an important point to kind of touch on. All right. So I want to shift gears a little bit here, uh, not to open a whole other can of worms, which it may, but I know it's not just our dogs, right. That can really feel pressured in training as handlers. It's super easy for us to feel pressured during training to pressure to, um, maybe from your training colleagues or your training partners to try methods. You maybe don't agree with pressure to perform or to have your dog maybe perform at a certain level, um, pressure just to be our best training selves, even right. Like to bring our best self for our dog, every single training session, even pressure. If maybe our dog just isn't achieving the same thing as a friend's dog, who's the same age or as their litter mates, um, you know, kind of maybe are. So now that I've given you a whole list of all the various things that we can get stressed out about, um, do you have any tips for handlers who are maybe feeling some of those pressure points and, um, thoughts on how they can maybe work through some of it? Brusca, you want to start? Oh, yes. This is my favorite question. Like I told you before we started recording, I had answered every single question with the fact that handlers feel so much pressure and all the various ways they feel pressure. Um, it is something I think about routinely and often. Um, yeah. So anyway, like you mentioned, social media is a huge, huge part of this. Watching your dog's litter mates is a huge part of this. And so I, I've been trying to really tell my friends and tell people that, you know, listen to me, like it's all about quality versus quantity, like train things, but like, don't, don't be pressured to train the most fancy advanced things right away. Like take time, build that relationship for sure.

Um, but the one thing I want to say is the pressure to perform at a certain level. And I kind of want to share a little bit of a story on this. So when I got hired at Purina, I was relatively new to the disc dog world. And so the disc dog is what got me into Purina because it's mostly a Frisbee show. There's duck diving, agility and tricks, but mostly you have to be good at Frisbee, freestyle Frisbee. And so I had been up in Minnesota and in Minnesota, there's a fantastic disc dog community, but most of the players up there don't travel and compete with other people in the nation. And I had just started traveling. And so I wasn't at like a high, high level. I was at a medium high level. Let's call it that like proficient, but not like the most advanced player. And suddenly I got this dream job that all these disc dog players want, where you just play with Frisbee with your dog every single day. And suddenly all this pressure was on to prove that I deserve that job. Right. And so it was insane. I, I internalized that pressure. I stopped competing in disc one. I was playing it every single day. So you kind of get burnt out, but that's merely an excuse. The fact was, is I didn't feel like I was as good as I should have been to have that job. Obviously I was good enough to be hired for other reasons, but maybe it wasn't my disc dog skills. And so I ended up working on those skills over time. And what ended up happening is there was this saying, and I think about the same almost daily. Still a performer told me you're only as good as your last show. And that messed with me so hard because we know training dogs that you're going to have off days. You have a human in the equation. You have another living being that in the equation that it's going to have an off day. You're going to have bad shows. You're going to have bad competitions. You're going to have bad trials. That's life. You're not as good as your last show. If that's the case, my last monitoring show was nationals and we did horrible at that. And so if I went into this next trial thinking about I'm only as good as my last show, that's what the mental management part is, is just going to degrade everything. And that pressure is just going to eat away at you. And so for that reason, you're not as good as your last show. You're as good as the sum of your relationship with your dog. Are you out there having fun as your dog having fun? Is your training speaking for itself? If you miss an exercise, who cares? Work on it, but don't, don't beat yourself up about it. Look at the whole picture. Is your dog happy? Are you happy? Are you having fun?

And if that's not a good answer, an answer you want to hear, well, then we need to work on some mental management strategies and make sure that you're feeling good about your training. You're feeling good about the thing that you're devoting weekends to and days to and hours to training because otherwise that pressure is just horrible. Anyway, off my soapbox, very passionate about this. Petra? Yeah. Yeah. So mental management, mental management, mental management, really. I preach it constantly. And in spite of all my preaching, I really don't think people get it and go practice it. I work on it every single day. I feel that people, their dog training is very emotional. It's like their dogs are an extension of themselves and they put so much emotion into everything. If the dog failed, they failed. You know, they just, it becomes all about them. And I think it's super important that you just really have to completely separate that. But it's not, it's not easy at all. It's super hard. I feel a tremendous amount of pressure. Always. Always. And I just have to work on it every day a little bit so that I'm always aware and I'm always paying attention. And I'm always making sure that my personal head trash does not get enmeshed in my dogs because it's not their responsibility. You know, to have to be an extension of my ego or my insecurities. And I, I've been working on mental management stuff in general for many, many years. And I think if people did that for their dogs, they'll see it also helps in, in their everyday life. Like, um, when I, when I started training Tyler, I was a horrible handler, a horrible competitor, everything that they tell you not to do. I did. I will get sick. I was a nervous wreck. Like I was a complete disaster. So, um, at my dog training school, they, um, were having a seminar with a woman come in, Jane Samoy, um, on mental management. So of course I had to run out and get the book. I had to prep for the seminar because I was like super crazy. Um, so I go through the book and I'm like, holy cow, like every chapter that said, you know, you shouldn't be doing this. You could do it this way. And said, I was doing all of it wrong. Like all of it. And all of a sudden I just had this epiphany. I'm like, I am asking my dog, like my, my ultimate goal with this dog is for him to, you know, be perfect, do all these crazy behaviors and to do them super, super well. And then how come I'm not holding myself to the same standard? How come, you know, I can't ask him to do it and me go in the ring and nervous wreck. Like that's completely unfair.

Um, so that day I started, um, working on all of those things in the book and I literally did the activities every day. Um, and it took me like a full 10 months till I was to a year till I was able to, um, kind of, you know, turn all those things around. And that's, um, that at the end of that year is when I went to the, um, my first nationals with him. And my whole goal at that national was that I would do my mental management strategies and not mess those up. That was my goal. That was my only goal was to stick to my game plan. And I stuck to my game plan and as a result, and I really believe because of that, he won because I held my end, um, of the bargain, you know, I held up my end. So, um, yeah, people need to work on their stuff, work on your stuff, people. Um, I, everything that's already been said so far, and I will add, and I do, this is so important. If you're going to be competing, if you're going to, if anybody's going to be looking at your training in any kind of way, um, you should do yourself the favor of like Petra said, really digging in and doing this work. There is work to be done. It isn't just, well, tomorrow you will have a different mindset than you have today because you've decided to yet garbage. Okay. It doesn't work like that. It is as hard as anything else you will do. And it is really hard. And the other thing that nobody likes to talk about is the fact that it's, uh, it's, it's never going to stop. You're never going to be finished. You're never going to show up at a trial every single time. And just absolutely know that you and your dog are the best and that you're going to win. Like it, things come in, things change. So I think two things are really important. One is that you should be very selective with who you surround yourself with. Um, build a community that holds you up. If your dog sport friends are not in your cheering section, they're not your friends. Um, and that, that includes, you know, what you share with everybody on the internet. Like, you know, we just live in a weird time where like when I was first learning to train dogs, like YouTube didn't exist. Social media didn't exist. Like this wasn't, that wasn't there. So I didn't know if my training looked the same as somebody else's or different. Um, and in a lot of ways, we have a lot of advantages because we can learn so much from anybody. Somebody can be in Sweden and I can learn from them. And that's amazing. But also, um, I see what everybody else is doing and that can sometimes cloud my judgment because I question myself a little bit more.

Um, so surround yourself with people who hold you up. People who, if you don't have, you know, people that you can say, this didn't go well, can you look at it with me? And can we talk constructively about how it can go better? Um, then, you know, that, that can be a personal problem that you maybe can't take that kind of feedback from people. And that's something to think about, but it could also be just who you're asking. Right. So I could certainly show my mom, any one of my training videos and she would be like, that's amazing. That that's right. That's not, that's not helpful. That's not who I would share a training video with to get better. Right. But then I have a very close friend who's a really, really fantastic trainer. And I know every single time I show her something, she will kindly and beautifully hand my ass to me on a platter. I mean, every single time she will say, well, here's everything that went wrong. And every single time it is amazing because she always delivers it with kindness. There's it's not, it's not padded. It's not sugarcoated, but it's not mean. And so we have that relationship that then I can grow and get better. And I get better every single time I do ask her for help. But I recognize that there are days that I can't ask her for help too. And those are also the same days that I shouldn't go train the dog. So if I check in with myself before I go train the dog and I go, you know, I am not feeling great today from a mental health standpoint. Maybe we go for a walk in the woods instead of training. And I think we all need to kind of give ourselves that grace a lot of the time. And when it comes to competition, I mean, if you are going to compete, you owe it to yourself and your dog to do some work on mental game. It doesn't that's not just for people who want to win national championships. That's for anybody, because if you paid money to go to the thing to do the thing, you are competing, whether you say you're competitive or not. And so if you are going to go there and you are going to have your training and your performance judged by a third party standard, you are competing and you owe it to yourself and your dog to do a little bit of work on that. Because I am sure that we can all agree that a lot of our students really run into problems when they show up to do their agility run or their obedience run or whatever it is. And they're a completely different person than they are in training. And their dog is like, I don't even know who you are. So I can't do the thing that you've taught me to do because I don't even know what's going on with all of this.

Right. And if the dog is sensitive and is feeling a lot of pressure from the environment anyway, like they have to be able to hang. They're hot on you. They have to be able to rely on you to be the driver of this car. And these are skills. This is not just people are not, you know, to my knowledge, I don't know anybody that was just born an amazing competitor. It talks to anybody that you consider an amazing competitor and they're going to talk to you about their demons and they're going to talk to you about fighting all of those things and how it takes this really. To me, to me, it's like this surreal other level, like brain place that I need to get to, to perform the way that I want to perform. And it takes so much practice. It takes understanding what it feels like and then going out and practicing it. And I think the only way that we get there is through work. And the only way that we get there is, and this goes for the training as well as the competing, because maybe you just want to train it. You don't want to compete, but you're holding yourself up to standards, whatever they are, is if you have to learn that you have to separate your self-worth from the outcome. Like you have to know that you're enough without that blue ribbon or then you, then you'll never be enough with the blue ribbon. Right. And so, so you have to make that decision and work on that every single day so that when you get to the dog show, you can access that place, that kind of mindset. And, you know, like Petra was talking about, there's, there are people that can teach you this. There's actually a lot of resources on it because it's kind of a thing that everybody needs to do if they're going to be competing. So I just can encourage anybody who's going to be training to any kind of standard that they're being judged against to certainly do that work for themselves and their dog. I'm just going to jump in real quick because what you said was so awesome about work, like that it takes work. Like people say, well, I read that book. Well, just because you read it doesn't mean, and you, and you do have to work on it forever. When I think about how long I've been working on it just for performance. And very recently, like literally last night, I had my first call. I it's you know, I kind of hit, I'm hitting kind of a bump here and I hired a coach, you know, because it never just, you don't just get up one day and it's like, oh, you know, yeah. It's all easy from here on forward. Like it's it takes constant work. But, you know, we owe it to our dogs and and you owe it to yourselves, really.

All right. I want to kind of round out this conversation, which has been amazing, by the way, just by having you each kind of drilled things down into one key piece of information. You want people to understand or kind of leave them with kind of that final thought. So what would that be? Petra, you want to start us? Oh, I guess it I guess maybe I cheat and make it to I think people need to really be aware of pressure and how it impacts their dogs. And what I've been like hyper focused on the last couple of years is. Creating a scenario where the dog when the dog feels pressure, they see it as a game. And instead of creating a negative feelings that they have a positive condition, emotional response to the pressure. So that's what I'm playing with. It's hard to do. We talked for like ever. This is like, let's talk for an hour plus and then simplify it, please, in one sentence. So I think that the really, really big, important thing is just protecting your dog's attitude is should be paramount. If the dog is still having a great time, if the dog still thinks they're right. Nothing is broken. So to me, it is about making sure that your agenda does not get in the way of seeing that maybe that attitude is slipping. Like hold that hold the the picture of your dog's kind of emotional state that you want to be looking at. Know exactly what that looks like to you and then hold that as criteria. It always needs to be there for you to move on or make it harder. Go ahead, Prisky. Yeah. So I guess I want to go ahead and talk about just being prepared and making sure you're doing the work. So whether it's doing the work, making sure that your dog sees the pictures of those pressures that you can control and that you are expecting. And generalizing enough so that when something, you know, unexpected does happen, they have the mental capacity to push through that as well as putting in the work to make sure that your mental management game is on point as well. So making sure that you are doing the work on both sides of that leash for the dog as well as yourself. Excellent. I think it's a great place to kind of leave things off. So thank you all for coming on the podcast. As Sarah Strebbing said that we covered so much ground. It was an awesome conversation. So thank you all for being here. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, everybody. Thanks, Melissa. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. We will be back next week.

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 Fensy Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fensy for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty free by Ben Sound dot com. The track featured here is called Buddy. Audio editing provided by Chris Line. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training. Today's show iso.