E464: 줄리 플래너리(Julie Flanery) - 행동 훈련이 완전히 끝나는 순간이 과연 존재할까?

a little bit of agility and some obedience still and as more and more sports became available to us um my interest and involvement in teaching and training and dog sports grew from there so i have titled dogs in many sports um i like to try them all i enjoy working with my dogs um and i like trying to see what they enjoy doing about 25 years ago so about 10 years after i started i found the sport of canine musical freestyle and fell in love with that sport and so that's been my primary sport ever since then uh i do have um two dogs right now i have fee she is a mixed breed she think she'll be eight this month seven this month now i have to look at the year i know isn't that crazy yeah i actually i got her uh sarah bruski was fostering her and i saw her um online sarah posted some videos and said i want that little dog and so i brought fee home with me and she has several titles in musical freestyle and rally free and um she currently is actually working in nasda lost item recovery and this last weekend we just got our lost item one excellent title and she's got some points towards her lost item two so that's kind of fun for her right now and then i have will who is a border pop and he is gosh you're gonna like be really already he's almost it'll be three in october where does the time go it's crazy right so he um my goal was freestyle with him when i got him he ended up being like just an awesome little disc dog so we started out doing some disc and he has a couple of titles in disc dog uh we had some injuries and he's had some gastro digestive issues so training's been a little bit slower than what i normally like to do uh he's been also doing some barrel racing which is really fun and has a couple of barrel racing titles as you can tell he likes things that are fast where he gets to move a lot but you know then we have to deal with some of the injuries and so we're doing a lot of fitness work with him we're working through some of his um you know gastro issues which makes a little bit hard but uh i am enjoying working with him and we're gonna we are starting back into our sport training now and i'm working on his uh skills tests for freestyle and rally free so that will be the first step for him into freestyle so that so that's kind of fun so that's what we've been up to awesome so talking about behaviors obviously you've got lots of different things that you've trained but when you think about kind of the phases that you know behavior goes through during training what are they can you kind of talk us through them

and a little bit about how they're different yeah yeah so there are some standard phases that we talk about in training there's the acquisition phase there's a fluency phase there's a generalization phase and then there's the maintenance phase i like to add one more onto that and that is the consideration phase that's the start of it all what are you wanting to train what are the considerations before you start the process why do you want to train this can i train this how am i going to train this so before we even get to the acquisition phase we kind of have to set ourselves up for the process and i think one of the most important pieces of that consideration phase is why why do i want to train this because that's going to train this because that's going to train this because that's going to be your motivation that gets you through all of the other phases so the acquisition phase that's the very start that's where you know we're building some understanding we're giving the dog the information we're showing the dog what the criteria are and the dog is learning that by giving us that criteria they earn rewards so that's kind of a really fun active stage the fluency stage is where the dog is showing understanding that we're seeing some confidence that it says we've done a good job in the acquisition phase of showing him what the criteria are right so the fluency stage kind of shows us that there's understanding there's confidence they can actually perform that behavior that we were working to train in the acquisition phase the generalization phase that's where we start to put a little bit of pressure on the behavior that's where we ask the dog questions i like to call it the green eggs and ham phase right or the fox and socks phase whatever one it is you know can you do it in a box can you do it wearing socks can you do it here and there can you do it anywhere so that's your generalization phase and we're asking the dog to do the behavior that we acquired through the acquisition phase that we built confidence and understanding in in the fluency phase and now we're testing that understanding and confidence in the generalization phase so context changes the environment changes duration distraction all of those things that we think of as generalizing that behavior and then of course we have the maintenance phase the maintenance phase is lifelong the maintenance phase never really ends and in actuality the generalization and maintenance phase are i think tied together as much as the acquisition and fluency

phases are tied together you're always going to be going back and forth between those two and just like in the fluency and acquisition you might have to step up take a step back so they're not um i don't think of them as distinct phases even though in the training world we kind of talk about them that way i think they there is some overlap in each one of those phases and i think it's common for us to need to go back to the previous phase you don't you don't start here and when you're done here you go here and when you're done here you go here it doesn't actually work that way training is is as you know training is messy right and so these systems or labels that we put into place for the different phases of training they they sound cut and dried right they sound cut and dried but they're really not and we have to be willing and able to kind of move in between those or stay on the line a little bit before going more into the next phase so yeah so based on that is a behavior ever actually finished if so like what does it mean for a behavior to be kind of finished i'm done training that yeah yeah um so no just no well just no no actually that's not true so whether a behavior is finished or not is really truly in the eye of the beholder okay so it depends on the behavior it depends on how you're going to use the behavior what what you need the behavior force for example if you are going to be working in competitive sports at a high level then a behavior being finished is going to have way more steps and criteria than maybe if your behavior is um i want my dog to lay on a mat in a cafe and i can give him a chewy and lots of rewards for doing it so the the cafe dog may be finished because you're happy with how that the result of the training the behavior that you have is what you need for that environment he has a chewy he's happy you can reward every now and then you might consider that a finished behavior yeah whereas a different behavior um it needs to be on verbal cue there needs to be no hand signals it needs to be done in a difficult environment then you have a lot farther road to go before it may be finished and as we talked earlier that generalization and that maintenance phase are ongoing throughout the life of the dog throughout the behavior can you just talk about that just a little more julie yeah so for example in my sport um i need to have behaviors where there is very little latency they need to respond very very quickly because in my sport i'm and my dog are performing to music

and the music doesn't stop or slow down when we slow down and so um good response to cue low latency on verbal no hand cues um is really really important in my sport and so we're always trying to build the skills even when they're done my dog can spin he can spin very well next to me very well in the training building very well out in the park very well when other dogs are around can he spin within a sequence very quickly with no latency that takes a little longer and a little more work and that may never be finished because i'm always changing the sequence where i'm putting the spin so i don't you don't keep the same routine throughout your freestyle career so that's gonna that is an unfinished behavior because i'm always putting it into a different context or a different sequence right and i have a very high degree of criteria that i have to maintain for that behavior so i can say my spin is finished because my dog will respond to cue responds quickly and they complete that behavior in one sense the behavior is finished in another sense the context that i need to use it in how i go about generalizing them and maintaining them the behavior is not going to be ever finished does that make sense to do yeah yeah i think it does yeah um yeah with that in mind the next question makes a little bit more sense but you know why do you think so many trainers kind of love that starting phase that early stuff you know starting to work on new behaviors but now we kind of struggle to get it over that call it finished or call it you know kind of into the maintenance phase yeah yeah yeah because it's magic because it's magic because it's magic when the dog is like oh oh i get it it's because we are working with an entirely different species i mean when you think about how amazing that is that here we are communicating to an animal having a reciprocal training process here where we can convey sometimes very complex criteria to this being that doesn't speak our language i mean that's magic and the more that the the the reason we do that so much the reason we have a tendency to start new behaviors all the time and maybe not go into the more difficult aspects of those other phases is because it feels good it's magic i swear i think everybody out there listening knows what i'm talking about when their dog like gets it for the first time or we're having success so we get into a rhythm which is also why we have a tendency to get stuck in our behaviors because success feels good and when we push to that next layer to that next phase generalization the fluency phase then oftentimes errors are going to

occur and that doesn't feel so good so if we do get stuck and we often will because that's part of training rather than kind of push through that we have a tendency to start a new behavior because that feels good and we are reinforced by that feeling of magic when the dog shows us that we have just taught them how to get that reward because remember the dog that's why the dog is in it right to get the reward but it ends up that we have actually communicated in a way with an entirely different species and no other animal i mean yes we have we can train cats and we can train horses and we can train exotics or we can train we can train just about any animal out there right but i kind of feel like with a dog it's kind of different like in the training process we are building a relationship as well as training or teaching a behavior right it's more of a reciprocal process especially in some of the methodologies we use in terms of shaping and things like that so so that's why we keep starting new things because it feels good when we do that and it feels good for the dog and we see the dog is engaged and happy and enjoying the process and once we start to move into some of those other phases and we start putting a little pressure on the dog on ourselves on the process on the behavior then it's not quite as fun as it initially felt and so that's why we kind of do that so how do we know if you know a behaviorist on track even though things maybe are looking you know a little messy or you start to get some errors versus like a behavior that's really stuck where you need to like stop and maybe read the tutorial training plan you know when should you maybe push through something versus like stepping back and and you know doing some re-analysis well i think that i think you know that question kind of is multi-parted because um the first the first part of your question was say that again lucida how do you how do you feel when you're stuck or how do you how do you know when you're still on track yeah how is it how is it how do you know it's still on track even though it's getting messy yeah so one of the things that we have a tendency to do is we are often the culprits in get our in getting behavior stuck okay we have a because of what i just said about it feels good when the dog is succeeding and everybody's engaged um we have a tendency to stay at the same place for too long and we don't move ahead to the next criterion and the dog is being reinforced over and over and over again and uh that is a really easy way to get stuck um so the first thing you want to do is kind of look at

have i conveyed to the dog next steps and have i done it in a way that is easy for him to be successful so have i split the behavior down in a way um oftentimes i like people are surprised i think when i say i only want to see maybe three or four good reps reps that show understanding of that criterion before i increase my criterion increase to the next criterion um i don't do six seven eight nine ten reps he can always drop back down but if i get stuck in this asking for the same thing over and over and over again the dog is going to get there so that's one thing i want to look at is am i the culprit am i the one that got the dog stuck there by repeating the same criterion too many times if it has lots of criteria within the behavior within the steps i want to go back though to you asked uh on the first part of that question though you asked about how can you tell if when it's really stuck is that what so if it's yeah go ahead i was gonna say the whole question was you know how do you know if a behavior is still on track on track even though it gets a little messy and then how do you know when a behavior is you know genuinely stuck and you should maybe rethink your training plan so the way you know if the behavior is still kind of on track even though it's a little messy is is the dog engaged is the dog willing is he wanting to give you more is he showing you that he's trying to get it right because if you have that even if it's a little bit messy um in general if you do your part and maybe take a couple steps back you can work through that challenge once the dog starts to disengage though starts to get frustrated starts to um throw other things at you those are all clear signs of a lack of understanding it's not that they're unwilling it's that they're unable because they don't have the information they need to drive the behavior forward so that's on us but we have to be able to recognize that if the dog is engaged though if they're happy if they're trying they're getting it right most of the time but sometimes they're not it's still kind of on us right because it just says we are not being as clear as we could be to take the dog to the next step so yes we have to sit back and rethink i think that most all of us have heard or said um and as trainers i know fdsa trainers we all tend to say two errors in a row take a step back right when we're working with specific criterion so we can we say that but sometimes we don't always do that right we're like okay well you didn't get it that time but let's try again okay let's try again suddenly you get six reps in and you've been

asking for the same thing six times and the dog has been failing six times in a row but they're still like i really want the cookie so i'm gonna do it again i mean we have to at some point kind of follow our rules and say yes he's trying yes he's working hard but man six reps of the incorrect response is not training right if you're not progressing you're not training so we want to make sure that we are assessing not only each rep but assessing the um the the seat the number of times that we've asked the dog the same criterion and that that's true for both what i said earlier about if they've done the exact same thing five times in a row and it's correct then why are you asking for it a sixth time let's go ahead and ask for something more if you're asking for something five times in a row and it's incorrect why are you asking for it again right it's the same answer on both of those questions um and yeah training is going to be messy and yes sometimes we're gonna you know it's funny because um it just brought me back to something in my one of my classes this morning someone had said uh you know how students often like to assess their own work which is great i love it when the student assesses their work and lets me know what they see and uh she was saying that yeah he's doing really well but boy my my marker timing is off and i didn't have a clicker and i my food is all over the place and i didn't really and i i bet that would really help that if i clean some of that up yes yes that will really help because all of that is how we communicate to the dog and what we're really saying is if i clean up my communication maybe my dog would understand better right if i'm talking to you and you're not understanding what i'm saying it's not on you to figure that out it's on me to be a little bit more clear so so yeah it is messy and we do get caught up in the training process in the number in the session itself with doing the reps and getting through and then all of a sudden things go awry but we don't instead of taking a step back and saying geez i've done five reps in a row and i'm getting the exact same thing either good or not so good we need to step back and say all right what do i need to change to push this session forward a little bit so thinking about that right like so if progress has stalled and you mentioned like you've gotten you know you've done five or six reps of the same behavior um whether that's good or bad um you know how do you figure out the issue is criteria shift if it's the mechanics if it's motivation if it's

you know how do you start to diagnose what maybe is stuck there and get it back on track so a very smart man once said that when training goes awry you should look at reinforcement criteria and timing and that of course was bob daly and what he's referring to are the reinforce what are we providing to the dog are we providing enough value rate of reward value of reward to keep the dog wanting to figure it out timing that's the timing of our marker are we clear to the dog why the reward is being earned the dog can't give us a behavior and earn reward if they don't know why it's being rewarded okay and then the last one is criteria is our criteria too high too low can we adjust that criteria to get better rate of success so whenever i struggle or the dog is struggling i look at those three things and the first thing i usually go to i won't say the first thing but oftentimes i'm pretty confident most of the time that my timing is good i'm fairly confident that my criteria is appropriate though that's not always true the easiest thing to change first though is your reinforcement your rate of reward and your value of reward if you change that and you see improvement then you know that's what it was if you don't see improvement now you have to look at either timing or criteria and i would look at criteria first i would lower that down to what you know your dog is going to be successful at and you base that on your previous reps or previous sessions right my dog did it great when i had the criteria here and then you start to build up from there ensuring that your your timing is good in both your your uh delivery and your marker um delivery is another thing that you can change to make things more clear to the dog so um where and how you deliver your reinforcement can convey information to the dog and can set them up so that they are more likely to be correct on the next rep changing your environment can absolutely help the dog be more correct on the next rep because that's always going to be our goal how do we help the dog be correct on the next rep because success begets success so that's always going to be our goal so uh when you start to think about you know some of the other stuff that maybe goes wrong what role does frustration play you know for dogs and handlers when we're kind of working through some of those rough patches when maybe the thing that we're seeing isn't exactly what we want yeah we had you and i had a little bit of frustration getting started for this this session today right

we couldn't get the mic and camera to work and so i was feeling quite frustrated but really when we're working with our our dogs um and even you know this is true when we're working with other people when i if i were working with you uh but when we're working with our dogs frustration um or when we observe frustration either in the dog or in ourselves it acts as kind of a yellow light a yield sign that says we don't want to push farther frustration is the manifestation of a lack of understanding so when we see frustration when we feel frustration the first thing you want to do i won't say the first thing you want to do because there are a lot of things you could do but the goal is to eliminate that frustration right so we're not going to continue what we've been doing we can't continue what we've been doing because that is only going to maintain or increase the frustration so we need to take a break we can end the session we can go into a game we can reward anything and everything to get the dog's energy and engagement and buy-in back up and both of us feeling better the goal is if you're starting to feel it that's your yellow light that's your sign that's your yield sign that says we need to change something to change the emotions here because nobody is going to want to keep training if that's the way it makes you feel so it's up to us to recognize that and start to change both of our feelings and that might be cueing something easy and give a ton of rewards it might be going to a game of food well it might be a food scatter it might be a game of chase and then into maybe an easy behavior could be any number of things but the goal is to eliminate or lower that frustration to a level where the session becomes enjoyable again so if we're thinking about some of the more complex behaviors right like i know right now for example your uh joy of healing class is happening i was talking to amy miller earlier today about about the class um you know how do you my joy of healing class i know you do how do you like maintain enthusiasm while you're increasing precision and reliability like what does that look like you know for some of these more complex behaviors we're thinking about that from the higher level training perspective right so there are a lot of things to do and there are a lot of things not to do the more you can break down a behavior the less difficult it is the more difficult to behavior the less likely you are to have that animation and excitement and joy so making sure you're breaking down the behavior in appropriate pieces is one thing that you can do

um you need to have that accuracy and precision uh and you need to have that animation and energy and joy and all the things we want to have our dogs um and it's okay i actually i do this in my joy of healing class because healing is a very complex very difficult behavior for a dog to do and for a handler to teach so i actually separate those two pieces out a little bit and i allow for um i won't say lesser accuracy or precision um okay i will say that lesser accuracy and precision when i'm working on a little bit of animation it doesn't mean i forgo my criteria completely but for me maintaining a level of energy energy and enjoyment during the process um actually is going to what helps you build that accuracy and precision um don't drill that's a big one when we're working accuracy and precision we have a tendency to want to drill get it right like if they don't get it right we ask for it again we ask for it again we ask for it again and remember there's that five or six rep rule if they've done it wrong five times in a row why are we asking for it again yeah we are not being as clear as we could be you know it's a theme here clarity clarity matters builds enjoyment on the dog's part okay um so yeah i think obviously accuracy precision are incredibly important aspects of our competition training they are also um things that can be difficult to convey i like to use props and aids as much as possible because they create the correct response in the dog and every time we have a correct response in the dog we get to reward yay we get to reward and the dog is giving us that criteria we're building a pattern of correct responses so in building precision and accuracy i use a lot of props and a lot of pattern training i don't want the dog guessing where that accurate and precise position is there's no reason for the dog to guess we have so many ways we can convey to them what earns reward and they will figure it out through our patterning through our communication using crops through our rate of reward and our value reward because your props will do nothing if the rate and value of reward are not appropriate for the skill you're asking them to do the difficulty of the skill that you're asking them to do so maintain that really high rate of reward while you're working your precision and accuracy is going to give the dog more reason to want to give you that criteria so that's the main thing and then work them separately you know build off of them sandwich them together have your your

precision and accuracy few reps yay now let's go do a game of food bowling let's do some hand touch healing let's do around a cone and back to heal sandwich those two pieces together once you work them separately and the dog will put them together so that that's how i work my my healing program anyways i want the dog to be happy animated i want him to be engaged i want him to choose to heal with me there and so it's my job to make sure that i'm not drilling that i'm not overfacing them that i'm not creating frustration that i'm being clear in my criterion using different props or whatever i need to do to convey that information and then keep my rate and value of reinforcement high and um i think i think you'd be really really happy with the result of that uh so we were talking about this a little bit before i hit record but you know how do you figure out what signs are that maybe a dog is starting to understand the behavior maybe a lot of times people like start to see the behavior with something that looks like a high rate of success right so we're working on a more complex behavior and we get to the point where the behavior is being offered pretty consistently and we're excited about that but just because the dog is starting to understand the behavior maybe doesn't mean that they're really fluent yet like how do we mean what signs that we're kind of like in that spot and maybe not at the point where we would like to think where we can start being like cool we can name this and we can call it done and we can you know we're getting it we're done yeah and and actually i think it'd be really good if you gave the example that you gave me so go ahead so like huey and i are working on his rebound behavior and um i can get that rebound behavior with a high degree of success right so like if i set it up right um we can get that behavior with food and i can get that behavior you know five times out of five in that setup but if i work on that behavior and then go work on something else like just jumping over a leg now suddenly he doesn't remember the rebound behavior and he'll offer me jumping over a leg maybe because it's less effort maybe because he doesn't understand right for whatever reason we lose it of course there's a lot of reasons yeah yeah yeah um so he definitely doesn't have like the behavior to your definition of fluent yet um but we want to get there so like what what are some signs maybe that that's where somebody is with the behavior i guess right so remember we talked earlier about how those phases can overlap sometimes and my definition

of fluent is is the dog showing a level of understanding and what you described to me is he is showing a level of understanding but he isn't showing the level of understanding in all of the contexts that we're going to want him to show it under he's showing it under a very um uh defined set of circumstances yes right so so he's fluent in that defined set of circumstances correct we could pretty much count on it you said seven out of seven seven out of eight whatever we can get that behavior that says to me the dog understands the behavior but then we started adding a little more pressure onto that maybe a new context maybe it's right after um the leg jump which is more fun more fluent more reinforcing and so now that we lose some of that um understanding or the ability to to give you that behavior so that's where we look at the where those two overlap the fluency and the generalization and we very gradually have to add little bits of pressure and we look at what are the times like you gave a very specific example of once you start jumping the leg then the rebound goes away right well let's look at those two behaviors to me it makes perfect sense that you would lose your rebound if you're training both of those behaviors back to back or in close proximity to each other because they're very similar behaviors right they're very the dog is doing a lot of the same things all by a little bit different yep and uh i would guess that the reward placement is very similar also um the context is all very similar and so that can be really really difficult for the dog to discern so for a bit i would not train those two things back to back or together because that's where you're having the issue right yep then i might train the rebound with another behavior if you're getting doing well there maybe throw in one jump if the dog struggles go back to just the rebound reinforce at a higher rate or a higher value maybe lower the reinforcement value or rate on the jumps right maybe the dog has so much value in the jumps even though you're cueing the rebound he's like yeah no i think i'm gonna do this one instead because that is way more fun and i get paid way better and i've got the history of that reward is like sky high and that rebound is really hard compared to the jump so i am going to opt to jump here it may not be a lack of understanding it may be a choice yeah the dog is making given those circumstances but either way if that were happening to me i would probably break those two apart for a while see if i can build up more um generalization for the rebound uh before i added

the jump back to back to that you'll get there you will get there it's just you're not there quite yet so there's no point in continuing to do that if you're not quite to that point does that make sense yeah yeah yeah yeah makes a lot of sense all right so if somebody listening to this um um i'm gonna avoid raising my hand if somebody listening to this has a long list of partially trained behaviors now they're kind of sitting on the shelf they've been working on them maybe on and off but what's the first thing you'd encourage them to do to start moving one of those towards completion to actually pull it off the shelf and you know dedicate themselves to getting over that finish line yeah i am the queen of unfinished behaviors do we have a support group for that we need one yeah we do need one and again we've talked about the reasons why that is sometimes it's not only is the process of training or continuing moving forward to the process of training not only is that difficult for the dog that's hard for the handler right we have to plan our sessions we have to figure out what we're going to do next we have to like move into a harder phase um but really i think the the the biggest thing is going back to that consideration phase why why do i want why do i need this behavior what is it about this behavior that says i have to train it and maybe you don't maybe you say you know that behavior has been on that shelf forever and i don't really need it i don't really want it but you know this one over here this one is gonna be this one piques my interest so you know basically find your why figure out what it is why is it that you want to train a bit choose one i don't know give me three behaviors and i choose one yeah that's not very fun but it's not very why is it not very fun to train well the last time i did it he had a lot of failures okay well let's just pull it down let's see where he's at maybe all you do is say okay here's a list of three behaviors i just want to see where my dog is at on these three behaviors because i haven't worked them in a while one of those behaviors is going to stand out to you one of them is going to be like that was a lot more fun to train than these other two we all have different motivations in what behaviors we're going to train right some we need for competition some we want to show off to friends and family some are safety issues some you know recalls we got to do that recall right um and so i think first off find your find your motivation um and that will help a lot in determining which of

these behaviors and again i i will tell you matter of fact um i wish i could i have a sign over here and i wish that i could read it but i've got my wrong glasses on um but basically it talks about the fact that if you're not if you're not working through your dreams every day if there's something you want you're not working towards that end goal every day then maybe that end goal isn't as important as you once thought so sometimes there's some you know you have to look inward and say what is it i really want do i have to train that behavior do i have to do this particular thing you know we all we all have our motivations and our whys and sometimes we just have to figure out what's important to us and if it's not important that's okay that's okay if it is important then what we're going to do is we're going to take that down and we're going to make it as easy as possible for both you and your dog we're going to build as many successes early on as we can for both you and your dog to make it more enjoyable because we put it up there for a reason right we put it up there because we weren't having a good time training it so we have to bring that back down and we have to rebuild that fun and that joy enjoyment and training and that means making it easy making it fun and then build your progress from there so we're talking about all of this because you've restructured your six-week class your mission accomplished class into a three-week format so can you talk a little bit more about like about the class first of all like what is it and what you're covering and then like who might want to sign up and um i think it might also be useful if you talk a little bit about what kind of behaviors people could maybe work on sure so the mission accomplished class i uh put on the schedule several years ago because exactly this i you know there were a lot of people and myself included where we would get behaviors started and we'd have a lot of behaviors started but we wouldn't have them finished or they'd be almost finished but we weren't taking that next step into completion generalization maintenance phase um they were they were not useful to us now granted some people that's okay training is part of enrichment for their dogs no reason to finish anything if the process itself is enjoyable yeah but others we like to complete the behaviors maybe we are going to compete and we need these behaviors to compete maybe they are safety issues and we need these behaviors to make sure our dog is safe maybe they are our enjoyment of life behaviors where i want to go take my dog to a cafe

and have him do a down stay on a mat while i drink my coffee and not spill my coffee everywhere each time i need to go take my dog to a place so um because i felt there was a need for people to i don't know have a place that they could be supported they could be coached to get through the like you said the rough spots if you don't know how to get past the rough spot that's a reason you might put it on the shelf because you just don't know what to do max yeah so i wanted to provide an experience for people that could come into a class have behaviors that they started either got stuck didn't know how to complete for whatever reason weren't able to complete those behaviors and i would help them look at that find their motivation and help coach them through the rough spots so that they could finally say mission accomplished i finished this behavior finished as in what that means to the handler finished and ready for competition or finished as in ready for the cafe finished as in ready for you know competitive obedience or finished ready for therapy work that's up to the handler right where we go with the behavior is not is not the same for everybody it's not stagnant so that's what this class it's basically handler's choice class um i do have several lectures i think 15 lectures that talk about some of the things we've talked about today they also talk about some processes putting a behavior on cue building duration all of those things so they have a list of lectures they can refer back to after the class is over but then during the class we are actively working on the behaviors that you would like to continue to move forward on and complete so handler choice driven bring your behaviors i will help coach you through the rough spots awesome are there any limitations on the types of behaviors that people can play um yes and no i mean i'm not an expert in all in all dog training fields there are activities there are sports that i do not know anything about um so i am good at problem solving and training uh but ideally it would be some maybe something that i have taught before you've taken classes from me before you want to finish out those behaviors um most sports uh if you give me background and what your goal behavior is and you're stuck i can help you get through that process just know that i am not an expert in all sports imagine that you've done a lot of them though you have done a lot of them i have done a lot of them and having a background in freestyle actually really um helps me be good at problem solving how to

train behaviors because uh you know our the number the type of behaviors that i can train for freestyle is literally endless i get to choose the behaviors i can train anything i want i can train as many things as i want which i do um and these are oftentimes freestyle baby behaviors are behaviors that aren't read how to's are not readily available online because there's freestyle is a very small niche and not a lot of people are training for it's i'm so thankful now with the internet we're seeing more and more but there was a time when you know it was freestyle desert out there uh so a lot of us that are in freestyle have gotten really good at problem solving and figuring out how to train behaviors efficiently because we have to train so many of them and we have to train them fully to verbal cue with with no latency and all of that so yeah you know between that you know i in this class matter of fact right now in my joy of healing class i have a student um who who they're kind in their country the criteria for healing is very different than what i'm used to and uh she's doing it for a type of field work where the head shouldn't be up where the dog should be wide where the dog is free to look around so that's a very different criteria than what i'm teaching in class but she and i are working together to come up with um the exercises or adjust the exercises so that she can get what she needs for her sport yet still have some of that animation and joy that she also wants to teach her dog while healing that's awesome yeah so we'll figure it out bring bring us what you got we'll figure it out awesome all right well thank you so much julie for coming on the podcast to talk about all this thank you for having me it was really fun awesome i always have fun talking to you too so and thanks to all of our listeners and our viewers now for tuning in we'll be back next week this time with dr amy cook and josephine linderstrom to talk about the power of touch in positive dog training if you haven't already subscribed to our podcast either in itunes the podcast app of your choice or over on youtube to be sure you never miss another episode today's show is brought to you by the fenzy dog sports academy special thanks to denise fenzy for supporting this podcast music provided royalty free by bensound.com the track featured here is called fun audio editing and video editing provided by chris lang thanks again for tuning in and happy training