E107: 에이미 쿡, 사라 스트레밍, 셰이드 화이트셀과 함께하는 R+2.0

that that's actually not always enough. So my focus has been in providing the trainer and the dog with a kind of vernacular where they can, the trainer can say, Hey, are you okay? Do you want to continue? And the dog can, can say yes or no. And then we avoid all kinds of problem behaviors that way. So that's kind of, that's where I kind of got there, was trying to avoid those problem behaviors, but that's my, that's my basis right now. Awesome. Shade? Shade? Sarah stole my answer. More, I guess, consent, but also communication. And it all rolls into the same thing of, you know, making sure you've got buy-in from your learner dog. And when you don't have buy-in, then don't ask for behavior. So a lot about clear communication, how to figure out how your dog is telling you yes or no. So the same stuff that Sarah was saying, I'm not stealing her. But I think we came about it two different ways, maybe. But also, as far as communication, how to get your reinforcement, the different location marker queues, that kind of thing, has really been my emphasis for the last five or so years, for sure. I have to say, I'm pretty impressed that you all managed to explain what I consider to be fairly complex topics fairly concisely. Quickly. Yeah. Yeah. So I know that I have some rough questions here, but totally kind of get that this conversation may take on maybe a little bit of the life of its own. But let's start with kind of the phrase itself. Amy, when you kind of originally mentioned this idea, this positive training 2.0, what did you mean? Well, you know, I was sitting in a car with Sarah. And we were just, you know, kind of just getting to know each other and going over the ways we were thinking about, you know, the training community and training world. And I was really, you know, it was just a thing I said to encapsulate what I had been, have been experiencing as being part of the FENZ Academy. You know, I was there in the beginning of positive training or when it was taking hold. I was a trainer at the time. And it was revolutionary to me to put away corrections and to use, you know, food and clickers and reinforcement for everything rather than telling them what not to do. Let's teach them what to do. And all of that was, you know, mind blowing and training blowing, if you know what I mean. And then fast forward through to today, what I got exposed to by being exposed to trainers at the Academy just looked very different to me. And it felt more like we were doing actually what I thought I had been doing all along, but kind of wasn't, which is really considering the viewpoint of the dog.

Really, really getting buy-in instead of what now looks to me, see, clicker training I was doing or training I was doing before looked more like, or feels more like, it's still going to go my way. I still want you to do these things, but I will make it worth your while. Right. And dog empowerment was not talked of, but more, yeah, sure. The dog has choice. He can do the things and get the cookies and really kind of nothing else. He's not going to not do the things because we've made the environment more sterile or we've changed the training environment to have nothing else in it, but me. Right. And that felt a whole lot like consent, says Kate Birkenberg, Kate. But now that I'm getting exposed so much to these great trainers, Sarah and Shade, have influenced me a lot. I really started to see that actually asking the questions and respecting the answers you get of, do you want to train? Can you train? Which Sarah can really go into so much more. And now what I'm asking is, do you feel safe through the play? I feel like it's that where we're moving as an industry, at least some of us and some of us in the academy and other places are saying, I really need the dog to be able to make a choice here and say, yes, I want to do this. And not because you're holding up all of the reinforcers that I desperately need. But I also want to do this because I enjoy it. And we're asking dogs, I think now, to tell us the information that we need. Can you do this? Do you want to do this? Do you feel safe doing this? So I think what 2.0, at least in my mind, I'm like, hey, it's like we're in another phase. I'm going to call it 2.0. It's a way of really considering the dog for me and being willing to examine our own systems and habits and reconsider if they are actually empowering enough. That is not to say that dogs then therefore always get choice, exactly the choice they want at all times. It's not about being more permissive. But it's about actually asking a question, respecting the answer, and working with what we have. And there's techniques that follow from that that a lot of people are working on. But I'm seeing it more as a way of saying, can I shift my philosophy a bit and get even further from the traditional mindset that says you have to? Because I think positive training in the beginning was saying, well, I still want you to do it, but I'll make it worth your while. And now I think I want to say, do you want to do it in the first place? Not just because I have huge magnets and huge lottery winnings for you to have, but what else can I be asking you about this?

And I know, Sarah, you have a lot more ways of doing that and shade both of you do, and you've both influenced me a lot. So that's kind of where it started. And I'm excited about where it might go. Sarah, do you want to kind of pick up from there? Sure. A lot of what Amy said applies to me as well. I was a crossover trainer, so I had learned how to do all kinds of forceful, nasty things to dogs once upon a time. And when I first started really kind of, quote unquote, converting to positive training, it was all about what I left out. It was all about omission. It was all about, well, I'm not going to use the prong collar anymore. I'm not going to correct in XYZ instance anymore. I'm not going to use an ear pinch anymore. And that was kind of, that was 1.0 for me. It was like, what do we leave out? And now, to me, it's not about that at all. It's about what we actually do. And when I first came into positive training, a lot of what Amy said, again, applies to me. It was still very regimented and controlling. It was just doing so without those aversive tools. So again, it was, you know, make control of the dog's access to resources all the time. And then that way, you control all the assets that the dog could want. And because of that, they work for you. So they're no longer working for you because they're afraid not to. But they are working for you because they kind of have to, to get the stuff that they want. And then especially in my sport, in agility, we make that we intentionally make the resources, the reinforcers, very, very important to the dog. So I'm thinking about, you know, your typical kind of toy obsessed border collie that is, is that a ball on a rope is literally a life or death situation for this dog. And like, I strongly feel that Felix thinks that, that the ball on the rope is life or death for him. And I didn't even really do that on purpose, but he just kind of came that way. And, but a lot of people are doing it on purpose. And I learned how to do it on purpose. And then we, then we restrict access and then we say, oh, but I control it. Now you have to do this thing or you can't have this thing that you are literally desperate to have. And for me, positive training 2.0 is let's not leverage desperation anymore. Let's not only focus on what we're leaving out. And just because you are not popping the dog on a prong collar does not mean you're actually being a kind, compassionate teacher to this animal. And being kind and compassionate towards them has to do with literally asking them the question of, Hey, would you like to do another repetition to get the ball on the rope?

And we just kind of build, and I've learned a lot from shade, especially when it comes to toys, about how to build that kind of language that we can literally ask them when they're ready to do the next thing. So, and I don't, you know, I do actually have toys all over the place, but I don't have balls on ropes all over the place. Um, that's mostly because I think there'll be bloodshed if I did, um, not really anything else, but, um, it's not about restricting access. It's not about, you're going to be in a crate for 23 hours a day. And on that 24th hour, you get to come out and work. Um, and a lot of early positive training, especially in my sport looked exactly like that. It was just don't let them have anything unless you gave it to them because, because they did what you said. Um, and it's just not about that for me anymore. It's about asking them, Hey, do you want to do this? Can, you know, can you do this? Are you okay to do this more than anything else? And what's been fascinating and rewarding for me is that I'm not only getting the same awesome high power agility work that I got before, but I'm going to say it's even better because I've got this great language where I know that this dog isn't actually able to do what I'm about to ask him to do. And therefore I'm not going to ask him to do it. Um, versus before it would have been, we'll send them for the weave poles an eighth time because they just failed it seven times in a row until, until they get it. Um, and that's, I mean, that's how people are training agility. Okay. And the new wave is let's not do that anymore. Let's actually say, Hey, are you capable of making that weave pole entry right now? And the dog can say yes or no. And then, wow, not only is the person going to get reinforced by that beautiful weave pole entry, but the dog's going to get reinforced for doing it right. And now everybody's happier or we're going to take a break and then we're going to come back to it later. And I'm going to ask you again. Um, so that's, that's what it looks like for me. Very long winded, but you knew that would happen. That's hard to know where to stop. Shade, what about you? Uh, do you have anything to kind of add there? Well, again, they stole my answers. Uh, so I can just not say anything. But no, I, I wrote some notes down. I know. And yeah, actually we all need to thank ones because onesie has been the, the dog that has really taught me to listen, uh, to when the dog says no, because when I override his no, bad things happen. Um, so we can all thank him for my degree of learning in the last six years.

Um, but anyway, um, sometimes, um, how I describe my training evolution is leave it to look to offered. Look, and I started as a balance trainer, whatever we want to call it. And I taught dogs to leave it, um, with some correction. And I wanted to make avoidance around something. So if I was, um, you know, telling them to leave a piece of food on the ground, then I would correct them. And so teach them, leave it meant or else. And then I learned that there were different ways to do it. And so I would teach the dog to do behavior. Um, look at me instead. You see that thing, I'll tell you to look. And then you look at me. And now my training is, I mean, if we want to call it 2.0, it's more like you see the thing and I get default attention back without the coerciveness either of telling them to do it or the, or else to back it up. So I kind of look at my training like that. And it's really, for me, I don't know if it's, this is expanding on, on what other people are saying because I like the consent and the buy-in from the learner too. But for me, it's just really all about shaping, um, and, and getting that offer behavior from the dog and reinforcing that. So it's really about the reinforcer. It's really about observing my dog, uh, and seeing how, um, they can offer the behavior. And then I reinforce it so that what happens is instead of seeing a dog and telling them to leave it or to look, they see the dog and they automatically turn the attention back to me. Um, and I just love that kind of evolution of where I've, where I'm trying to teach and what I consider myself now. Um, and it's something that Sarah said about the balls on rope. Um, you know, we're, we're kind of originally taught to restrict access. And I was just thinking as she was talking about that, how I used to have yard toys and training toys and the training toys, my balls on the rope or my tugs were never left around. Um, I had my normal yard toys, which are around the dog to pick them up. Uh, but I have my training tools and now there's no distinction there. The tugs, I mean, if it's not raining, the tugs can be out lying around and the dog can grab it and play with me. And I just think how I'm not getting any less focus from my dogs for allowing them access to the toys that I train with. So there's, it's just so less about, it's more about them choosing and more about me making myself reinforcing and what's going on with that rather than the actual toy that I have to deny them and create that life or death situation, like Sarah said. So anyway, so that's, um, and I do want to, cause I always say this, um, I am, I consider

myself right now, one of the most positive trainers that I've ever been. Um, and I really want that buy-in and that, um, choice from my learner. And like Amy said, it doesn't mean that we're permissive. Um, and I think sometimes that needs to be said. It doesn't mean that, um, it doesn't mean that I allow my dog to drag me around on the leash. Um, just, I'm thinking of my dogs. It's, you know, I can still say, Hey, we're not going over there. We're going over here. I can still be a leader. Uh, you know, at risk of, you know, using all these words that have all these other meanings. Right. It's, it's like, I do want you, I do want to train my dog to give me his paw and consent to have his nails done. My youngest puppy doesn't like having his feet touched. She doesn't want his nails done. I can train that, but I can also say, Hey, sweetie, right now I'm not going to listen to you that much. I am going to wrap that paw and do it. And I don't think that the two are mutually exclusive. And I think that sometimes needs to be brought up, uh, is that I can, you know, do your nails on the porch, uh, because they need to be done while I take, you know, three months or so or longer, um, to teach you in the garage on the training table to give me your foot. You know, so I, I think that there's still room for both of that. Um, and I, I really, really love that we're asking for consent and getting that. I love that. I mean, Shane, you know, what you just said just now reminds me exactly of what we think about when we're, when we're, you know, thinking about raising children or dealing with children at all. There are times when it has to go my way because I'm the mom and I said so, or I'm the teacher or whatever. I'm the adult here. And I said, this has how it has to go. And there are times when I want to give you choice so that both you are empowered and you feel like a respected member of this team. You can have a voice, have an opinion, say no, and also to, to start developing that in you so that everything is not you receive and I, and I give you do what I say and I tell you what to do. You know, in what you were just saying about the nails or about not being permissive, I was thinking there's a, there's a great difference between having school and having living, living a life in a general way. When I'm doing school with a dog, I'm going to teach you a thing. Here we are sitting and I'd like to do school right now. I'd like to explain something or have you engage with me in a thing. I want the dog, we want the child to have a choice. They don't want to right now for whatever reason. Well, okay.

I don't then have the right to say, well, yeah, but you have to, because I want to do school right now. Right. Which is different from the dog saying, I'd like my face in the trash. I'm going to say, well, that's not going to happen. You're not going to put your face in the trash and I'll do what I got to do to get you out of the trash. Can you come over and tell Iggy? Yeah. I know the counter argument, which is, well, everything is school and we're always learning all the time. Yes, absolutely. Everyone's always learning. But if we separate these, just in our minds conceptually, we can say, there are times when I override you and there are times when I'm going to tell you, I want- You don't always get everything you want. Even though you want to go through the trash right now after the bones, you still don't get that. You don't get that. But I'm going to make a space where you do get to make a choice. And it's right here when I'm about to teach you, like, I don't know, go to your mat or whatever. And I say, would you like to do the rep? And they say, kind of not really. I have to be, I have to honor that no, which is something I know, Sarah, you go into a lot, which really affected me. It's like, don't ask a yes or no question if you're not going to take no for the answer. You don't want to know the answer. Right. And so I want to take no for the answer. I very much want to hear you say no to me and go, wow, I didn't know you didn't want to be doing this. Yeah. I have to go back to the drawing board and figure out why this is unpleasant or why you don't want to. Maybe you just feel tired and that's fine. If I can't let my partner tell me they don't feel like doing this, I don't think I have a partnership. And I think, I think that's not a fair way to keep going when we're talking about, I control everything in a dog's world, including school and whether you get in the trash. And so I'm going to reserve the times of restricting your behavior for, you know, everyone's going to have a different list about this, right? You're going to decide what is not optional in your world. But when we are just setting up to do some training of some skills or manners or explaining something to a dog. And yet we're still saying, but you don't have a lot of choices to whether you come to school, how I conduct school, whether you like it, which reinforcers I'm going to give you, look, I'm just going to give it to you. You're going to like it. I think we're missing the mark. And, and it's not as kind as we like to think it is because if a dog says, no, I'd rather not right now, we go, oh, come on. Yes, you, yes, you do.

Come on. Just get up here. It'll be good. I'll give you a cookie. Come on, come on. And they go along. And we don't see ourselves doing that. I don't think we're super honest about seeing that. That's the piece that I think is too often missed by our students. So I think we got to reiterate again that what's important here is that you don't lie, that you are very upfront about this is a choice situation and this is a non-choice situation. And somebody asked on the alumni group, like, do you have a cue for a non-choice situation? And I think the, the real answer there is that the entire antecedent arrangement needs to inform the dog that this is a non-choice situation or this is a choice situation. Because what happens is you poison your choice situations when they aren't clear about which one this is. And I have too many, you know, too many students have kind of made this error where they're like, so I asked him to load up in the car and then he didn't want to load up in the car, but we really had to go. So I just went and grabbed him and shoved him in the car. And that's the most damage. You don't do damage when you just go to them and take their collar and say, sweetie, we're getting in the car now. And you put them in the car. That's. Oh, that's a really good point. Cause that load up in the car is not a choice situation in my own dog's life. It's not. But a lot of clients, if the dog goes, oh my gosh, I don't want to get in the car. Then they get nervous. They get out the, they get out the cookies. They try to, they try to, they try to convince the dog to get in the car. That's the most dangerous thing that we do. Cause it's a lot. And then they don't. And I'm just like, you get in the car. Yeah. And then you really poison the car situation. So with feeling. And you're luring and you're luring situations out getting poisoned. Oh, what are you trying to convince you to do now? And how many dogs, how many dogs have you seen that are so suspicious of a lure? Yeah. Right. And that's why, cause we lure them into the bathtub and we lure them into the car and we do all this. And I mean, in the vet, we go, it's okay. Get up on the table. I'm going to give you a hot dog. And you just have to be so clear about this is a choice situation. This is a non-choice situation. And Felix has like two options. Like I will say, Hey, you want to get in the car? And he can say no. And I'll, I intentionally, when I don't need to bring him somewhere, we'll ask him to get in the car and then get to honor his no. And then other situations, I have a very clear different situation.

I literally take him by the collar to the car and I tell him to get in the car and I put him in the car and there's, and there's not a choice. And then in another situation, I ask him, do you want to go in your crate? You want to go in the crate in the car? And I get to honor his choice. So I just set it up on purpose to where it's very clear to him. And that has, that has actually made him just so much better about loading up in the car in general, because he knows that in this situation, he gets to stay, he gets to stay home if he wants to. And in this situation, he doesn't. And he, which is funny, because like, I never take him anywhere bad, but he's just, whatever. And that clarity thing is really something that Shade has, I think, asked us to really raise the bar on. Really elevate. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm just thinking, and thanks guys for all the kudos. I'm like, I'm lost in my own thoughts here going, huh, maybe I should ask my dog if they want to go. I'm going to ask them later on. Well, I mean, Shade, what, you know, what you contributed to me, you know, as far as the clarity, the, the different marker signals, I mean, you're the one who explained it more to me. I don't know origins or anything, but, and, and even, and, and Sarah too, the thing that I get from both of you is that aside from this philosophy of, of, yes, we should respect dogs and give them choice and there should be consent. Those are all ideas and guiding principles, right? But it doesn't get us down to, okay, well, how do I do that? And what you both do is say, well, I know I can come up with ways of how to do that. I can make a threshold test and say, can you do you, you know, tell me where you are in this, right? And both of you have that. And, and, and, you know, and Shade, like, I'll just be super clear so that I can read what your answer is to it. It's not an ambiguous answer of, well, I don't know what you've asked, so I'm just going to go along. And we don't want that, right? We wouldn't want that with people and, you know, and, and Sarah. And, and so I think one of the jobs, and maybe this is a later question, but one of the jobs of us, all of us going forward, you know, in a philosophy, as we think about this philosophy is what kind of techniques help us achieve this? How do I ask if a dog feels safe while I'm using play? How do I ask if you want to go in the car? Maybe we'll come up with different cues. Maybe it'll be the front door says you can veto. The back door says you got to go, right? It's up to us to find ways to make real these philosophies so that other people can't, don't

just sit there with like, well, that sounds like a great philosophy, but I don't know how to do it, right? Because that's how I felt when positive training took over. Don't correct dogs anymore. Or, okay, what do I do? Um, you know, here's, here's a clicker. Here's some cookies. Let's work on it. I didn't have as much clarity. And so I think that's our job now is to say, well, if we're thinking of this in new ways, we still have to quantify this with the exact things we can do, which I think you're both really great at. Well, because I feel the same as, as in positive training, you know, so there's such a recipe. You told your dog to sit. If they didn't sit, either, you know, draw up on the leash or push their butt down. Uh, and they, and you knew what to do. And if you had good timing, then you could train it. Sit, collar pop up, dog sat. Okay. Or didn't. And then you knew what to do. When I first, I remember like 10 years ago, asking clients to like get there or 15, maybe, um, asking the dogs to get their dogs to sit before they came in the gate or whatever. And of course, you know, we didn't have that collar pop anymore. And the dog was like, I can't sit. I need to sniff over here. I need to do this. And I remember thinking I had nothing to give them because to me, it was very obvious that the dog was not in the right mindset to sit, um, or to hear you. Um, but because we didn't have that correction, we're like paralyzed and not knowing what to do, you know, and now, cause we don't have the, or else was taken away. Yeah. Does that make sense? So, and now that threshold test of mine is entirely because it's clear criteria. Your dog either does this or they, or they don't. And then the student knows what to do. And I think we, we got better in positive training. If we can call it 1.0 with, well, what do I do if I can't correct? We got better. We filled in techniques better. We thought about management better. We, we have come up with more guidelines, better, better stuff than we had in the nineties when I was trying to figure out how to do this. Right. And you know, it's, it's developed a whole lot. Um, but what I'd like to see now is if we're shifting a little bit in the way we think about it, that you have choice. I can't just leave that there and say, well, give dog choices. They'll, people will go, um, I'll never get anything done. Right. Right. Quantifying that with, well, this is how you give a choice. I think we'll serve everybody really well. And that's, that's, um, what I, that's watching you guys. You two in particular, but it was certainly other people.

But since you're both here, you're in my mind. Um, do that really showed me, oh, that, that is how, like, okay, that's how you respect a dog's choice. That's how you ask a dog to give their opinion, which is something I would have been thinking I was doing, but I really wasn't, or I've been wanting to do or talking about, but I'm not really doing it. I really appreciate that. You say, well, here's how I ask for a choice. I teach this and present this and I, um, respond this way to the answers. And the more we can quantify that, you know, the more, you know, you know, like Sarah Owens, Sarah Owens is saying, Hey, let's reconsider impulse control. Well, that's all well and good in theory. And we should, we should always reconsider everything in theory, but then put some technique to it and see what comes of that. See where we go so that we don't leave people who are listening to this with a sense of, yeah, that's great, but I can't because I don't know how to do it. Well, we need to be practical about it and say, this is what you do, you know? Right. So Sarah, we've lost Sarah. I'm just ready for, cause I think we've all kind of led Melissa right to the next question. I was going to say exactly that. I think that, um, that we've arrived rather nicely at our next question, which is, you know, I'd really like to get a sense of where you guys see the industry today, kind of both generally, um, you know, where is it behind the curve? Maybe we're a little ahead of the curve, you know, what do you think kind of looking at the bigger picture where we are in that range of kind of 1.0 to 2.0? Well, Sarah can answer. I have an answer, but Sarah hasn't spoken in a while. Basically what everybody just said, which is that the positive dog, the positive reinforcement based dog training industry as a whole is still too focused on omission, still too focused on don't do this, this, this, which is funny and ironic because we're telling you to quit, quit teaching dogs like that, right? Quit teaching dogs, like don't do this, this, this instead, tell them what to do. And then what I find, you know, and this is just me talking to dog trainers, looking at what people are saying on the internet, looking at dog trainers websites. What I see is them proclaiming loudly what they do not do and not saying what they're actually going to do. And when I observe dog trainers classes, um, I, that's also what I see. They're not actually teaching people what to actively do. And so that's where it's behind the curve is that we have to quit preaching, quit preaching

about how all these tools are mean, quit, you know, just shut up and tell them exactly what to do in real time with your clients. And then we can help people to, to see real behavior change in real time with positive reinforcement, because you're not doing that. If you're just standing on a soapbox talking about how prong collars hurt, like, right. Like, of course they do, but who cares? Like, it's, that's so not important. If you're not using them, then stop talking about it. Exactly. If you, if you hung the prong collar up 10 years ago, why are you still talking about it? Talk about, talk about what you actually do right now. Um, and trainer, our industry, it's, you know, it's starting to happen more and more that people are putting real videos out of themselves, training dogs, talking about what they're doing or with your clients, that biggest place, I think, cause we are in a teaching role. Um, I think we've kind of figured out a lot of things with our dogs as far as, you know, what do I do when they don't sit? You know, like that's, that's like a no brainer at this point, because you probably didn't even ask them to sit in the first place if they couldn't. Right. Right. And so you changed your environment. Right. It's like way, way back up the chain. What do I do if they don't sit is like an irrelevant question at this point for us, but for like a normal person, it's not. So that's where like, yeah, shades ready to work. My worked up protocol. Like these are all, they were born of trying to teach people very step-by-step processes so that we can say, do this, do this, do this, do this. And now if they do all that, now you can ask them to sit and they will. Yeah. And they will more than sit. Like now you can ask them to run that master's level course and they will. Yep. Yeah. I've been doing it with pet clients. I've been saying things like, you know, if I say, you know, I say, sit, the dog doesn't sit and they feel, I know what they're feeling like, oh God, you know, a dog didn't do it or whatever. What's the trainer going to do? And I frame it as I'm glad she told me she couldn't do that. I'm really okay if she's not following any cues because I'm not even considering them cues. I'm considering them all tests. I said, sit, she couldn't do it. Great. Now I know I need to shift what I'm doing. It's not, I want her not to sit if she couldn't, if she was in the place where she couldn't do it. It's, we got to get, we got away from command. I told you to do it and now you're obedient. And we went to cue. I cued you to do it, but you still have a response that you have to do to that cue.

I'm going to keep training it. I'll train it, you know, and I'll motivate you, but it's still a cue and you respond to it. And if we, I'm not saying solely and only in every time, but if we can think of them as tests in a way, I've said, Hey, sit. And I got not what I expected out of that. I can be grateful. I can say, Oh, interesting. Well, that was, that's fascinating. Let me, let me see what's going on here. Right. Rather than, Oh God, you're not trained enough. Let me drill it more. Or, you know, Oh God, you didn't do what I want. Now you've found out that doing what I want is optional. Right. These are, these are old thinking. And I just tell clients, this is, this, this is just me testing what's going on with her right now. I said, sit, she couldn't, I'm going to shift some stuff up. Um, to stop thinking of it as I told you what to do and now you have a response and you have to do it. I think it's very hard to get rid of that mindset because we're like that as people anyway, regardless of dog training, you know? Um, and so pushing against that. Well, it's like, I turned it. This is just what I thought of when you guys were speaking. Everything in our environment shapes us to think that way, Amy. So like I told the effing Apple TV last night to turn the volume down and it wouldn't. Right. And I'm like, you're so smart, Apple. Why can't you figure this out? Right. And you get frustrated monkeys banging stuff. Like everything in our environment shapes us to be like that. So then we have to like unlearn it, put it aside. And for shade and I, um, you know, working with sport clientele and the people, you know, they paid their money, they showed up at the trial. Like they, they don't want the dog to say no in their home. Like that's, like, that's a big deal to people. But if my dog finds out he doesn't have to do the work, I'm like, yeah, your dog does it. And the question I always get, I kind of teach, I teach worked up. And then I also teach hidden potential, which is like the total other end of the spectrum, like dogs, sniffy, et cetera. And the hidden potential, the worked up people's question about consent is always this. They're always like, my dog's never going to say no. And my answer to them is, but your dog can now say, I can't. Yeah. And there's a big difference between no and I can't. And you have to accept both of those answers. Right. And it's the same with the hidden potential type dogs. Like those dogs also might just tell you, I can't, or they might say no. And the biggest question from the hidden potential crowd is like,

but if the dog learns, they get to say no, they're never going to say yes again. Like, well, my response to that is, and isn't that interesting? Yeah. And it doesn't tell you a whole lot. And I think that's where we, you know, where we're trying to get to is helping people to understand that it's safe and okay to give them this language. It actually will elevate your training and their performance. Cause you know, in the case of the worked up dog that says no on the agility line, that's, you just saved yourself from knocking 19 bars out of 20. Okay. Like that's what you do. And then running off course over there. A deeper hole, right? Stop digging, right? Or the shovel just came out. Or killing themselves on the equipment. Like if these dogs are not okay, they're going to get hurt. And then the hidden potential dogs, you just saved yourself from your dog sniffing for the entire standard course time. And then the buzzer went off and you had to go collect the thing. Like, do you really want that? And now they do it the next time too. And in class a little bit, cause now they feel pressured. Cause you didn't listen. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, you know, helping people like every, I've to date, a hundred percent of my students who have actually embraced this concept and ran with it and understood it have loved it and reaped amazing benefits. But getting people over that initial fear of giving the dog that kind of control is not easy. Right. We don't see them as partners. We really don't. And in a lot of ways they're, they're not in the sense that we do control everything, but, but we also control everything for children and we don't intend them to just become automatons that do literally everything we say always. Usually most of us. I was going to say, I don't know, Amy. Well, okay. You don't become a whole functioning adults at any point, you know, if we decide that. And, and so just because we have a whole bunch of control doesn't mean we can't give over a whole lot of it where it's possible. And certainly sports, right? Sports should be one of those places where we can say, Hey, you, you, your vote matters here. You know, you get to say. And your performances from your dog will actually be better if you tell them that. And that's, cause that's the fear is that they're like, well, if I give my choice, my dog a choice on toenails, I might, they might have really long toenails and that sucks. But it doesn't, it doesn't look like that in sports. Right. It's like a dog who actually performs better because you were able to ask them if they are capable of doing what you said. It's like what shade said about onesie.

When she overrides his, no bad things happen. And it's the same with Felix. When I override his, no, when I override his, no bad things also happen. They're just different things. Cause my sport doesn't involve biting people, but, but it's true. When I override his, no, it does not go well after that. It doesn't. And you know, we need to train people in what not going well looks like. Cause it's often very subtle at first. I think it's Sarah somewhere that had a video of a dog just doing a bunch of reps of, I think just get, get on the platform, get a cookie. And at one point the dog was asked, get on, there was a small hesitation and the woman cued it again and the dog did it. And then the time right after that, the dog just sat. Was that you? Yeah. And I saw that and I went, oh man, I've asked a second time before a lot of times. Totally. And I'm not saying, Hey, never ask a second time, but it's, it's not, it's not about always's and never's's. It's about, it's about, there's a subtlety to know sometimes. And we're going to miss that subtlety if we're not telling people how to see it and how to ask for, for behaviors. So I'm like, yeah, the dog did say no. And I would have missed that. I totally would. It's really, so it's really interesting. Cause I just, I just taught like three seminars in a row. So I have all this, like, you know, you establish the game skills and then you add agility equipment or you add a sleeve on the ground for the protection dogs. And they, they're so subtle. They, you know, like say you've got a chase game where the dog like brings back the ball, drops it at your feet, chases the next one. You add an agility jump in there. And the very next rep, the dog drops the ball 10 feet away. Right. I mean, it's just like right there. You had a good chase game. You added an agility jump and the dog goes, that wasn't his reinforcing. And, and then, or if there's a sleeve in the way, then the dog arcs away from the sleeve or something. And it's just so, those little subtle things. I mean, maybe it's not a no, maybe it's a maybe. Um, but it's just so cool. And I have it in my brain of just, um, dog after dog in the seminar saying that was hard. That's what I call it. That was hard. Yeah. Right. And that's more the frame of, I can't not, not fully failed. I can't, it's not like I don't want to anymore. I do want to, but. Well, then that's just about what you ask for next. Like it's not necessarily, okay, you don't want to train anymore. That was the biggest thing I learned from you, Shade, working with Felix is that he's very, he's never just going to quit agility. Yeah.

Like he, but with his toy stuff, I can watch and he, yeah, if he holds onto that ball like a second longer than he normally does, or he drops it a couple of feet away as opposed to right at my feet. Like I have to observe that he just told me that what I just asked him for was really hard. Yes. And that's what I want people to learn because it's not that you don't do it. It's that you take that as information and you adjust your training session and you go, Oh, I thought that was easy. Just jumping one jump, but you told me that was hard. So I need to think about how to go forward from this. You know? Yeah. Yeah. It's not been a two way street. That's a two way street. And I don't think we're very good at that. We're very good at the one way street. You respond to what I did, but you're saying, I'm going to see how you just did that and make my next adjustment based on exactly what you said. We, we don't listen near as much as we like to think we do. Especially my fork. Well, yeah. Yeah. It's not about giving dogs a lot of choice. Well, that's true. But even in places where we think we are, you know, in general positive training, I think in a lot of ways where, you know, we're not, and this is one of the ways I'm not really listening to what you just said to me. I heard, it's like dealing with a person who heard your argument, but they're still in the, in the motive, but I have to convince you. So I heard your argument, but I'm going to convince you. That's different from, I heard your argument, oh, oh, I heard what you just said. Oh, okay. Let me take that in. Let me shift something. All right. We all know those conversational styles and, and mistakes we can all make, right? This is not, training is not about persuasion. Exactly. And I think we get into persuasion mode of, come on, it's going to be great. Come on. You're going to love it. Come on here, do it. And that's, that feels like a monologue. It feels like, like I'm not really listening at all. And, and after a while it's, it's becomes one of those, I cannot unsee kind of things, right? Once you let your dog talk to you about it, then you see them talking. You're like, oh no. Right. Uh-oh. Yeah. So I think that brings us really nicely kind of to our next question, point of conversation, whatever I want to call it at this point, which, you know, I think we've talked about a lot of different pieces now, and I kind of want to summarize them, maybe pull them together, collect them into some ideas here. So if you kind of look at the things that we've been talking about and pull out, like, what are the big themes here?

What do we think kind of the big topics are when we look into the future of positive training? I mean, I think we've talked a lot about consent and communication, but kind of like, how do we add to that? What do we, if we had to title those things or group those things up kind of together, how would we, how would we do that? Oh, big question. The big themes as we look into the future, I think, um, again, quit training by omission. Think about what you're actually doing would be to me, hopefully a big theme. Um, and then everything we just talked about, about like, accept the answers that the dog is giving to your questions and then roll with those answers. Like, it doesn't mean, you know, if the dog drops the ball three feet away, instead of right at your feet, that doesn't mean never send them for that weave pull entry again. It means, oh, that weave pull entry that I thought was easy was actually hard. So that just means that I need to split a little finer, help him a little better to understand that. And then I can just be a better trainer in that, in that light. And as far as the industry and looking into the future of positive training, again, I think it's about teaching, teaching actual techniques and actionable steps as opposed to, you know, preaching about, we don't believe in dominance and we don't use a prong collar. Like it's, it's so it's actually tired. Like, let's just stop. It's, it's over. Move on. Talk about what you're actually doing, because if the positive reinforcement based trainer, you know, just preaches to their client for an hour about the equipment choices that they've made that are poor and what quadrant they've been working in. Um, and then, but nothing gets done and the balanced or aversive based or whatever the hell you want to call the other trainer comes in and actually shows the person real behavior change in the hour that they paid for because they successfully suppressed whatever that behavior was with their aversive tools. Um, you just lost another person to that kind of training because you preached at them instead of saying, here's what we're going to do. I can't believe we haven't learned that really yet. God, why? That's been going on. We've enjoyed not to do that for so long. Right. So instead of walking in and being like, oh, well, here's all the reasons the prong collar is wrong. Be like, okay, great. Leash your activity. So we're going to use a front connection harness for this instead. Like you just say, you just say for your problem, this is the best tool as opposed or whatever tool you want to use.

God, please don't send me emails about the front connection harness. I only didn't say gentle leader because shame. Wrong quadrant. Wrong quadrant. Wrong quadrant. So you just say, or flat buckle collar. I don't care. You just say. Cookie. Oh, okay. You got a problem. Sweet. Here's how we deal with it. First of all. Here's how we deal with it. Here's how we deal with it. First of all, we're going to use this piece of equipment. We're going to use this food. Here's exactly what I want you to do. Start teaching people like that. Shut up about quadrants. Shut up about equipment. Like I hope that that's the future of positive training because I think industry will then take the turn. Start to produce results. Stop talking about what everybody else is doing and start showing it and doing it. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Shut up and show off. Right? Like just do it. Just do it. Shut up and show off. Yeah. I like that. And I promise I won't take clarity, Shade, if you were, so there won't be someone's told my answer if you want to go or if I could go next. I don't know. Do you want to go for it, Shade? Industry-wise? Oh, no. Go ahead, Amy. Oh, well, I was thinking, I think that we left behind, we bathwatered and babied relationship in training. And I, you know, I remember, I remember arguing the other side of it. I need a relationship with an animal to train it. And it's quite true. I don't need one to click or train. I don't, you know, I'm sure I don't have a relationship with the hyenas I tried to train on the campus, right? You don't need one to be able to have loops in the click or train. But I think we were so afraid of using the relationship word and thinking about that because that's what traditional training was really leaning on, right? My, you know, you do what I say because I am your leader. You do what I say because I'm intimidating in a relationship kind of way, you know? And so we took that out and said, no, we can just use all the principles. And I feel like at some point, at least for me and what my observing people and things, I feel like it got or can get a little clinical and a little unconnected and a little vending machinish. Not always, not everybody, but there are times when it really looks like that to me. And what I would like us to reconsider is, I mean, it's all running through everything you've said, you know, asking for consent to saying, I have a relationship with you and I'm interested in your opinion, right? I think we should be exploring, of course, this is my thing with play, what your relationship is with your dog outside of what you can give them to reinforce new behaviors and what it

is to be in relationship in conversation with an animal and not just in how you can explain something to them, right? Listening to somebody is being in relationship with them. And of course, playing with somebody is being in relationship with them. And being in relationship says, I will respect your boundaries. I will ask if you want me to do this. Being in relationship says, I will get to know all the ways your no looks. What does your no look like? Do you like it when I do this or not? Do you want to do this? This is all, these are all relational pieces. And it's very much a lot like being with children. You are constantly listening to them and looking at them and telling them through your actions that they're valued, not just through your words or just by providing food and shelter and clothing and school, right? We put that all aside because it's not the way you're supposed to train. You don't train with a relationship. Well, okay, sure. But it doesn't mean that it's not something we still can't focus on and develop or ask questions about and try to mine and see what we can't get there. Not to be necessarily better reinforcers as trainers, but to be possibly better listeners or just better partners, right? Because it doesn't have to be all about me. A relationship is two-way. And sometimes training is kind of one way. And so I think that could be, if not incorporated whole cloth, at least explored in each individual team as we move forward in positive training. Yeah. Maybe it's also thinking about reinforcement as other than just food and toys. Yeah, there's that. I mean, because it is your whole relationship, at least my relationship with my dogs is made up of me taking them on walks and running and in the car rides. And I run with my dogs and they don't get any food or anything when I'm running with them. You know, so thinking of reinforcement as stuff other than what we use, primary reinforcement wise. I think, you know, when I bring that specific concept up to my students, they either know it or they don't. They either know that other stuff is reinforcing to their dogs or they have no concept. It's all about food, food, food. And so I think we could maybe do a better job of teaching that too, that reinforcement is lots of things. So, which I think we're all trying to do as well, you know? Yeah. Right. Yeah. And super clarity. I mean, I really think that your stuff on how to be incredibly clear has to be. I think we start there. Right. You know, like Sarah saying about the, you know, sometimes it's a choice point. Sometimes it isn't.

Develop, you know, making sure the antecedents are different for those. And me, I'm just all about clarity. We start there. And once we have clarity and good mechanics and good antecedent arrangements, then we start asking those questions. I think your stuff really calms the dog. If they know exactly how things are going to go, you know, it's a form of control. I'll let you see how all of this is so that when you make your choices, they're informed choices, right? Your clarity really adds to their ability to make those kinds of choices. Yeah, definitely. I know that Shade needs to get out of here in just a minute. So to maybe just round things out or end things here, I did just want to give you each a chance to kind of talk about your pet project or whatever you're experimenting with or working on like right now, kind of whatever you're excited about. And Shade, since I know you need to go, do you want to go first? Oh, you're going to make me go first. I feel like we talked about it. Well, my pet project right now is, I just did a new class in Fensi, Spaces in Between. So I'm just, that was my new project for the last three months or more of thinking. So my new project right now is to not do that class. Do you want to explain? I don't mean that in a bad way, but I'm just like, I'm so enjoying the fact that it's nice out and I want to go for a walk and not make another lecture. That isn't necessarily what you wanted to hear. What is my pet project? My, it's always communication. And about being practical and giving students ways to figure that out. And this whole class, the Spaces class was about kind of the ready to work. How are you doing, dog? You know, the threshold test. Just trying to figure out and giving your dog skills and predictable rituals of how to deal with either life or how to deal with trial situation or seminar situation to make that easier. And just really all about what we talked about this last 45 minutes. Just, you know, how to listen to your learner. I just think that's so important. It's been my, my big thing for the last couple of years for sure. And developing ways to pass that on. Like I always listened to them, but developing ways to teach that to other people, because that's important to me. It's not enough that I know how to, I want to pass that on and have other people know how to listen to their dogs, listen to their learners. Anyway, that's my big thing. All right. Sarah, do you want to dive in? Gosh, pet project. Really, you know, like Shade said, onesie has made her kind of who she is right now. And I, Felix is really the same for me.

And they're, they're kind of the same age too. And, um, Felix, so my pet project is really being a better trainer for him because he really needs me to be better than probably anybody wants to be. You know, I just took him, I just had a gold spot, gold thread of my own for him in my fix at class because I can't give the dog a bath. And, um, in six weeks I got him to where I can hose his back off, um, in the tub. And when the course started, he would have, you know, frantically tried to bite the hose and just been in a, in a state of distress that I find unacceptable for one of my dogs. A lot of my dogs take baths without any kind of consent. Like I put Iggy in the bathtub and I give her a bath and I'm not going to tell you that she enjoys it because she doesn't, but she tolerates it just fine. And it's fine. Felix couldn't be that dog. So I have to carve out time in my day to go train him to stand for a bath. And so we've been working really hard on that. I'm also working really hard on some of his other husbandry stuff. He used to go get a vaccine and the blood draw next week. So we've been really working hard on, um, choice and no choice husbandry types of procedures and really defining that clean line for him because he has got to have that clean line. He cannot. And I think a lot of dogs are like him. I don't think he's special in that way, but he, he's got to have that clean line. And then, um, I would actually like to compete the dog in agility at some point. So we're working on, um, you know, we're going to agility, you know, just a lot of stuff that I really made a mess of, um, early, early on with him when he was like, you know, basically like three years ago, I wasn't paying enough attention to his subtle, subtle, that's hard for me or I can't, um, words, responses. And so I made a mess of a couple of different pieces of agility. And so repairing those messes is my other project. Everybody's ongoing project. And yay for being able to give him a bath. I got to do that with one. Oh my God. It's the same thing. I can make my other dogs do it. And they're like, ah, okay. But one D enters a state of, um, uh, I'm not sure it is stress, but it's like this screaming stress. It's not shut down. Yeah. It's not shut down. He's not shut down. He becomes a flailing monster that I can't bathe. And it's no fun. Yeah. I even tried to do it on drugs. Like I tried to drug him and God, people probably didn't work. But, um, I try and it didn't even, he, he couldn't even do it on a level of medication that really should have made him able to have it. Yeah. So I'm pretty, yeah.

Being able to just hose the back is huge. Um, yeah. And you got there. I think we're going to get there. Yeah. Good. Well, Amy, do you want to round things out? Well, I think I wish I had, um, not gotten any dogs until now. Uh, cause then I'd know. Um, no, they were always undoing all, you know, stuff we, we, we didn't know. Right. But, um, no, my, my, what I've been exploring and working on lately is, is, is more things like, um, getting people to understand the difference between an invitation and, uh, you know, a requirement, a request. Like I'm, I need you to do that. Persuasion. An invitation waits for an answer and persuasion doesn't. And so when I'm, I'm trying to explore ways of getting people to be better players, I'm, I'm trying to mine the things that we already do pretty well. I mean, as a species, individuals aside, as a species, we do pretty well socially. We can tell when people are pressuring us too much. We can tell, you know, in intimate situations when things aren't, aren't quite as consensual anymore. We can tell in, in debates when someone's not listening to our viewpoint. We, we're pretty good at this, except we just don't bring that forward when we're dealing with dogs. Um, and I find, I'm, I'm trying to find ways of making the right analogies, bringing the right stuff out of us. Cause I don't think I'm teaching the skills of play exactly. It's not like do a play bow this way and then tag their button and then, and then turn away and play will work. It's cause it's not about that. It's not a skill. It's, it's a way of being. And it's a way I believe we all have, or, you know, as a species, individuals aside, um, we have the ability to listen to each other. We have the ability to feel when we're not welcome. We have the ability to, to, to, to play back and forth, you know, in a way that's, that's fun for both and consensual. And, and I'm really trying to explore the ways to get people to feel more natural with their animals, um, like they might at least know they should be with children. So as not to run roughshod over, over, over everything that's going on. Um, and it's, it's hard because it's not a recipe. I can just say, do this and then this will work. It's let me tap into you psychologically. Let me find the part in a person that feels more natural with their animal. Um, and it's not easy, but that's what I'm, I'm really trying to, I'm trying to find ways to get people to feel that with, with their dogs, um, aside from being the trainers, the clear trainers that they also can be. We want all the things. I want all the things.

Do it, but do it, but feel more confident when things aren't going well, you know, laugh about it and just look at your animal. It's okay. No, it's all right. This is not world peace. We can slow this all down. You know, um, really, really, really instructive to have my friend Tanya have a baby now a second baby because everything slows down everything. You don't teach them constantly. You don't, um, run roughshod over them ever. You slow down, you watch, you speak kindly, you look, you're careful. You have to consider their viewpoint all the time because they're, they're, they're growing and changing. And it's, and it's, you know, I know it's not identical. I'm not going to say dogs are babies. They're not, but we have a lot. We can pull from proper response to children that we can be letting inform our, our dog interactions. Um, just slow it all down. Um, you know, laugh about it. It's okay. Tomorrow's another day, right? Tomorrow's always another day. Right. Right. All right. Thank you so much for coming back on the podcast, ladies. I think this has been a super interesting discussion and I think that everybody's going to be super excited to listen to it. So, so thank you. Yay. Thanks. Absolutely. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week with Lori Stevens to talk about massage for performance dogs. Don't miss it. If you haven't already subscribed 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. Today's show iso.