에피소드 05: 로레타 뮐러 인터뷰

And you can't know why if you don't observe. Do you have any examples where that's kind of happened recently that you kind of give us or kind of talk us through? Yeah. Just recently at a seminar, I actually had a woman that was having some major issues with start line stays. The dog was breaking in trials. The dog was breaking in training. And she was really frustrated because, of course, you know, the normal does everything perfect at home. And so she came into the seminar wanting that help. And what happened was it turned into a, what is your dog's emotional state and are they stressed? And in this situation, the dog was definitely stressed. And so we had to adjust all the training that she had planned for the day to work on the dog's emotional state. And then by the end of the day, the dog's emotional state was awesome. And magically, the dog was able to do a start line stay with no issues whatsoever. So I think it's just about, you know, seeing what dog comes into the ring. And you have to figure out what the main issue is and then go from there. And I make sure I do that with each and every team. So if you go to a seminar with me, you're going to see me do a ton of different techniques and a ton of different things for dogs. Each dog is going to be a tiny bit different or majorly different depending on the dog. Do you kind of see that as a philosophy of how you teach and train? For sure. Yes, definitely. It's all about the dog, in my opinion. And I think that if I can get a person to understand that and to learn how to communicate with their dog, that's the number one thing I'm there to do. Once that happens, everything falls into place. So how did that kind of come about? Like, how did you kind of reach that conclusion that that's really how you wanted to teach and train? I think, you know, I used to do research. And so my years in research taught me that there are always things you're looking for, obviously, or expect to happen. And people are really good at that, right? They know to expect this and they know to expect that. And usually that's not the issue. It's normally those small moments that missing a tiny change in behavior or not taking into consideration the dog's emotional state that can really get you into trouble. I've never met a dog that was bad. I've only met dogs that were trying desperately to communicate with their owners. Sometimes their form of communication is what we want. So it's up to us to learn how to communicate with our dogs. It's hard, I think, for us to get into that mindset sometime that we have to make all the changes so that the dog understands. Can dogs change?

Of course they can. But they are going to communicate with us in the only way they know how. And so for us, we have to learn their language. And I think once that happens, it's amazing how obvious everything turns out to be. So I was doing some Googling and looking up stuff and doing my research before we got on the phone. And I came across a review from one of your seminars where a student was singing your praises. And she mentioned that you have a quality that's really hard to find in a trainer. She said that you were able to work with fast dogs, motivate slow dogs, build confidence in the shy, and calm the crazy. She said that you were equally good at handling both experienced and inexperienced trainers. What do you think? I mean, we've been talking a little bit about the idea of adapting to the dog, but especially that piece in there about both experienced and inexperienced trainers. What do you feel that you kind of do differently that has allowed you to be so successful with a wide variety of dogs and handlers? I think I try to not get myself so much into rules, but more about guidelines. I always tell people I would be that dog that everyone doesn't want. So I'm that environmentally sensitive dog who can stress up or down. I personally am the type of dog that if the leader doesn't know what they're doing, that's going to stress me out. You know, so if a person's learning a front cross, things like that, right? People make mistakes. I only have a number, a limited number of reps. And in my opinion, what's the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. So I can be very food motivated, not always toy motivated, and I can be very oppositional. So if I feel I'm being forced into something, anything, basically, I'll put the brakes on instantly. And if you start to get frustrated with me or I feel like you're not being fair with me, I'm done. So that's how I train people to, I just think in terms of, I don't want to put them over their head. I want to minimize any frustration. And I want to give them a good experience as far as that goes. When I'm teaching, and this is very, very important, I think, is I don't have expectations of a team when they come into the ring. I don't assume that I know what the team is or what they need. I observe them for that moment in time that I'm with them, and I show them the things that they need to work on or change. Again, it all starts with the dog and then goes to the human. And I like to think of it as I'm observing a science experiment. I write down what the team needs in a totally non-emotional way.

And then I work to solve the problem. As I said before, I'm all about the dog. So people ask me all the time, you know, how do you work with people who are not open to change? Because I get that in seminars sometimes. And people are amazed, I guess, that I can get people who are normally like, I don't want to do this and I don't want to do that to change. And to be honest with you, from my standpoint, it's very simple. They see the dog change and they change. And so I think that that's a really important thing. Another thing for me is just my experiences. So I've had so many experiences with all different types of dogs and teams, and I need to make sure I thank the people that have really helped me with that. And the big, big group of them was my very first set of private students. So I like to call them my Island of Misfit Toys. And that's actually a good thing. They were all people who were ready to give up agility. And they came to me and asked me for lessons. The dogs were frustrated or had behavior issues. The people were frustrated and it just wasn't fun for them. One of my examples is one of my dearest friends. She had a lab. And the first lesson, she put the dog on the start line and led out to two jumps and said, OK. And the dog spent an hour chasing birds. So these students, they taught me so much. And their dogs taught me so much. And I wouldn't be here without them. You know, I'm still giving lessons to all of them 13 years later with their newer dogs and just seeing that type of evolution. You know, and I'm all about what the dogs have to teach me. So every dog I've had has taught me something. You know, I've had the range of dogs. People always say, oh, border collies, they're all the same. And, you know, I've had one really good border collie that was a nice mix of high drive, but totally could control herself. She was great between training and trialing. She didn't change. The rest of my dogs, I've had a range. So some of them are scared. They were unmotivated. Some of them were over threshold, losing their brains. And each one of my dogs has also taught me so much. In my opinion, they really are the best teachers. They're super consistent. And we can learn a lot from them if we just choose to listen. So kind of talking a little more about your dogs and switching gears at the same time, I guess. Denise mentioned that you have what she considered a different approach to raising puppies, at least those first couple weeks and months after you bring them home. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, I can. I thought she'd maybe do that. So this doesn't sell books or DVDs.

But when I get a puppy home, I don't normally do what everybody else does. I don't instantly start training them. I observe. So I'm sure you noticed that the word observation comes up a lot in this interview. But I observe my puppies. And, yes, I do some playing, so like normally with or without toys. And I get them out. But I do a lot of watching. And I write down things. And what that allows me to do is it allows me to get a baseline for this puppy. So I know what the ins and outs of the puppy are. I believe with each training session, you're changing the dog. And one must always realize that when they're training. So I think it's so important to know exactly what you have. You know, what's the, I guess, base model, so to speak? Are they timid? Are they bold? Do they problem solve well? Do they get frustrated easily? All those things come into play when I work on how I want to train that specific dog. And the only way you can get a totally sterile idea of what the puppy is is just to observe them those first few weeks. It's really quite fascinating. And you'll learn so much about your puppy. You know, it's not that you're just letting them do whatever they want. But, you know, a lot of trick training and stuff like that, I just don't do the first few weeks just so I can really get an idea of what kind of puppy I actually have. Is there anything specific you look for in a puppy that kind of, then you're trying to validate or not validate or what have you? You know, people always ask me if I want doers or sinkers. And personally, I'm okay either way. It doesn't really bother me. What I'm looking for usually in a puppy is I want to see that they're taking on the world. They can be cautious if they want, but that they bounce back. I want to see a puppy that's curious. But, you know, the one that just throws themselves into situations, I don't necessarily, you know, care about that positively or negatively. But I just want a puppy that's going to bounce back from things. That's, to me, the biggest thing. Because the bottom line is, for me, in competitive sports, you can have the most amazingly structured dog. And the dog can move just perfect. But if they can't handle noise, if they can't handle flags flapping in the wind, people behind them, things like that, it doesn't matter how well they move. All that matters is that they can't compete if they're like that or they're going to be a challenge to compete. So that's really what I'm looking for. And if I get a puppy that's not quite how I want it, the nice thing is I can get a good sense for where they're at.

And then from there, I can design, you know, some training, whether I'm building confidence or building some control into the training and things like that. So it's just a really good place to start and get a great idea before you start training something you may or may not have wanted to know the dog. So after those first couple weeks of observing their behavior and kind of getting to know them, do you mind just telling us a little bit about kind of how you approach those first steps of building a relationship and socialization and what training you do do with a young dog or a puppy? Sure. Yeah. If you would compare how I used to train versus how I'm training now, it's really changed a lot. So like I said, with each dog I've gotten, it's taught me so much about this. I guess for me, it's all about in the beginning, just being there, which I know probably sounds kind of weird. But just the act of being with the puppy is so much more important than teaching tricks. Now, I have no problem with teaching tricks. I love teaching tricks. I'm going to usually start with basic tricks like ways and things like that. I think it's a great way to get your dog's brain worked and teaching them to be resilient and keep trying. But honestly, it cannot be a replacement for just being with your dog. But I'm going to work on, you know, I have dogs with a lot of motion sensitivity. Obviously, they're all herding breadboard or collies. And so I'm going to work on a lot of motion desensitization as far as, you know, look at me games and getting them to redirect automatically. And that's the first thing I teach all of my puppies is they see something they want. They immediately look to me. And that's the foundation, obviously, for recalls and foundation for attention and things like that. And I'm going to be working on that the entire time they're growing up because it's really important that my dogs don't look at a jogger and say, oh, great. Taken off now. Thank you very much. I don't want that. And so that's going to be a big one. But as far as, you know, tricks, whatever you want to teach your dog, if you're playing with your dog, I'm happy. Right. And but for me, a lot of times what I see with my students is they have a working relationship, which is great. That's what you want to build. But sometimes I see some of it lacking in the actual just relationship of being with a puppy. A good example of this is my youngest border collie gig. She's two now. But when she was six months old, she tore a muscle in her shoulder after a freak accident where her leg got caught in a metal crate.

And I had nothing to do with her. Yeah, it was it was tough, you know, a six month old, very high drive border collie puppy. And I didn't have much I could do with her. If you're familiar with shoulders, they're just really a pain in the rear end to have to rehab. And the only things I really had that I could do with her was I could be in an ex-pen with her and just kind of sit with her, pet her. I could nap with her, which she didn't sleep much. And I could do some little little tiny playing. Like I call it bitey face, you know, or the puppy like kind of bites at your hand type of thing. And that was it. I couldn't teach her anything. And it kind of broke my heart when this happened, obviously because it happened, but also because this puppy was by far my most independent dog that I've ever raised. She was an eight week old puppy and she would just run away. Right. So when I put her down, I'm thinking eight week old puppies, they come with me. Yay. Right. Nope. Gone. See ya. Bye bye. And so I spent months going, this is going to be horrible when I get this puppy out of an ex-pen, when I can, you know, put her on a leash and take her for leash walk. Because all I had was just the act of being with her. That's it. And without tricks and training, could we bond? And the bottom line is, yeah, she's the most bonded dog I have. And so just being there in the moment with puppies, no expectations, I think is key to having a great relationship and build a foundation for all the tricks, training and things like that that you want to do. You know, socialization is also key. Right. But then again, I'm just there. I don't force the dog to interact with the environment. It's just kind of one of those. Here you go, puppy. We're at the park. What do you think? Take them. Let them take it all in. No expectations. And, you know, when I'm doing training, as far as the actual skill sets, like I mentioned before, there are doers and there are thinkers. The doers just like to go. Right. And then the thinkers are always trying to analyze stuff. And I like to take my training and make the doers more into thinkers and vice versa. I do a lot of drive training with my dogs. And what that does is for the dogs that are thinkers, it makes them more into a doer. And they grab at the toy. Right. And they, I say, kind of go a little feral for a while and get that drive up. And then the doers have to put a little bit more control, control their drive. And I think that that works great with all of them. And everything is going to be tailored using that information that I gathered in the first few weeks of having that puppy.

I know what I have. I can start my training program adjusted for each puppy. Of course, I have general guidelines, right? Like, so dogs all need to start line stay. But how I get to that finished product isn't the same for each dog. And then also when they're young, I'm not much of a record keeper. I kind of have a tendency to not do that. Because if I put things down in records, what happens is my type A personality says, okay, in this session, you must do dumbbell retreats. But the problem is sometimes the dog changes the program and you have to adjust. So I tend to not write down plans for stuff. But I will for my young dogs, and I do have a book for each one of my dogs the first two years of their life, I reevaluate my dog each month. So I treat it just as if I was evaluating a new student's dog, right? So dogs change constantly. And they should because you're training them. And so I want to make sure that, for example, the timid dog that I had at eight weeks has not gotten more timid or I need to definitely change something. And if I had a high drive dog, let's say that I put too much control on, so the dog won't do anything on its own, then I will adjust my training to get them to party a bit more. And it's all about that balancing act. Dog training is definitely an art in many situations. And so it's nice to be able to look back and then be able to somewhat predict or change things to make sure that I'm progressing in a way that takes me where I want the dogs to go. Now, when you say you evaluate them each month, do you have a specific way that you do that? Or do you just kind of reflect on, like sit down and reflect on how they've been the last couple of training sessions? Or kind of what's your process there? Because that's really interesting. Yeah, so what I do is I kind of go through a series of little situations. So, for example, I'm going to write down the dog's weaknesses. And what I do when I'm doing this is I don't read the previous month because I believe that it kind of will make you change things. So I just say, what is the dog I have right now, today? If a student brought this dog in, what would I say about it? So what are the dog's weaknesses, whether it's a skill set or something like that? What are the dog's strengths? What do they know? What do they not know? And resiliency. So does the dog bounce back? Does it care if there's a mistake made? Things like that. I work pressure work with my dogs. So people behind my dogs to prepare them for trialing. And I always take note of how the dog's handling it. Do they care about the pressure this month? Do they not?

At what point does that bubble happen where the person invades their pressure and they don't like it? Things like that. So I'm looking at those skills. Delay of reward. Are the dogs able to work through that as far as you not having any treats or toys on you? Because that's something you definitely have to work on before you start trialing. And things like that. So I'm looking at individual skill sets, but also just the overall picture of is the dog in drive? Are they staying in drive? Are they emotionally happy? And are they resilient and bouncing back? And if I see anything that doesn't make sense or when I look back the previous month that I noticed that they, you know, did something where they kind of backslid a little bit, then I'm going to adjust things. I just started working on that actually with my young dog Gig, who has suddenly started when the weed poles are in situation. She will, instead of going to the weed pole, she will come back and try to redirect to me. And usually it's my sweatshirt, which is not an appropriate behavior. And she wasn't doing it a month ago. And now she's doing it now. And so I'm in the process of saying, okay, that's a big change. I have to figure out, you know, how to make that better. And for her, it was just mainly an over threshold thing. So we're working on different levels of threshold and she's getting it. So next month, you know, I'm probably going to have another thing, right? Because dogs just continuously change things. And that's a big thing I always think of in terms of is instinctive drift, right? We're always training against instinctive drift. So weed poles, dogs don't weave stuff in nature ever. And weed poles break. Stopped contact break. Why? Dogs don't run down hills and slam into a sit or a down. They just don't do it. And so usually those are the things that are going to break. Those are the things that are going to show up most often in those journals is, okay, the weaves are bad this week or the A-frame contact was bad. And normally it's not necessarily jumping or handling or tunnels. Usually tunnels don't break. But it's just those behaviors that the dogs really have to go against what they instinctively know and do naturally that have a tendency to kind of break down. And so you're going to see those. But if I see an emotional thing in the, you know, in the looking through stuff, what I'm going to immediately do is I'm going to say, okay, there's an emotional aspect to all of this. Everything else stops. And I must deal with that. And so it's just, you know, those are things I've encountered.

And it's just really good because I think a lot of people, you know, I see people that come to seminars and they say, my dog is a bar knocker or my dog is stressy. And a lot of times I'll end up asking them, well, the dog I see is not stressy. So when was this dog stressy? And, you know, when they actually, you'll see them kind of sit and think. And they'll go, well, like when he was six months old, he was stressy. Okay. Well, he's changed since then. Right. And so it's a nice way for us as trainers to be able to let go of stuff because we have a tendency of holding on to things way longer than the dogs do. And the dogs are just like, you know, I know I was sensitive six months ago, but I'm not now. I'm good. I'm cool. And so then you can train that dog, which could be a totally different dog. I look at my dog, Lynn, as a young dog. She was an analytical, reminded me of Sheldon off Big Bang Theory, super analytical, super thinky, didn't like to try a lot. It was tough. She was sensitive. And now whenever anything goes wrong, very vocal and it is completely my fault, all of it. And I like that. I want a dog to respond to me and say, you know what? You caused all of this. Especially a dog like her, who was the type that would just lay down and go, I'm not going to do anything. I'm just going to lay here because I don't know what's going to happen. And so, you know, she's not at all the same dog. And so that it's just neat to go back and be able to see that. And then the nice thing about having all those journals is you get another puppy and you can compare and say, OK, so my clink dog who had over threshold issues. Is growing up a lot like my current young dog gig. Who also has over threshold issues. And I can actually take those two journals and compare them. And I see a ton of similarities. So it's a nice way to predict a lot of times what you're going to have. And then you can kind of copy some training along with it. So and it gives you a sense of whether what you're doing works or doesn't work. And exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I normally I tell people if you're going to try something, you know, different with a method or whatever, give it two weeks. See what you have. See what's happening. If you have some little steps forward, that's great. You know, don't expect something huge. If you get something huge, awesome. But if you notice steps back, then it's time to reevaluate and to say, OK, this isn't working. And most of the time we get so stuck in patterns of working on usually our strengths because we want to make ourselves feel better.

And that we have a tendency to lose some of that stuff. And so this just kind of keeps you on track and keeps you honest about, you know, what you really should be working on with the dogs. And you mentioned, and I just think this is important, so I want to emphasize it, kind of the idea that sometimes we get stuck on labels for our dogs that no longer apply to them. And so we continue training a dog that's no longer the dog in front of us. I just think that's so poignant and, like, crucial for people to understand that they need to actually look at their dog for who they are today and not be judging the dog they had six months or a year ago or when they were six months old. Exactly. And it's hard for us because we get wrapped up in this emotionally. And we have such a great emotional connection with these dogs that we just, yeah, we get stuck sometimes. And I'd be the first person to say that I've gotten stuck on a couple dogs. And it just, it's hard for us to let go of it. Meanwhile, the dogs are changing, but at the same time, they're getting treated the same. You know, if you think about when you were five years old versus now, you're definitely not even remotely the same person you were probably at five. And, you know, you had a foundation temperament, but in general, you've changed a lot. And so I think it's just really important because that's what I see a lot of when I do just problem-solving seminars or stress seminars especially. I see people that come in and they are already stressed about something that hasn't happened yet. And then, of course, that feeds down to the dogs and then that makes them stressed. And I think that dogs, in general, they're either affected by their environment or they're not. And so if the person's stressed and the dog is the type that gets infected by the environment, then you're going to have a dog that's going to react differently. And if you can just stop and say, you know what, your dog is not this stressy dog anymore. It's amazing when you change the person how much different the dog changes. And it's very cool to see the dog go, oh, okay, this is good. And then the confidence comes out. And I've had my share of not confident dogs. I've had my share of scared dogs. My 10-year-old dog, Gator, who's been to finals many, many times, doesn't like people and doesn't like cameras. And that's what happens in the finals. And he runs and he's a good boy and life is good. But that's due to training and due to trust. And the fact of the matter is now that he's 10, he doesn't care about anything.

But as a young dog, when he was, you know, 18 months old, he cared about everything and all things were horrible and children were bad. And now he'll play tennis. You know, if someone wants to hit a tennis ball or whatever, he'll play with a kid. He doesn't care. And so it was up to me to say, okay, Gator, you know what, he's pretty normal now. And so it's easy to get stuck there. And so it's just that book, you know, like I said, I only do it the first two years. But in reality, I probably should do it a lot more and a lot longer. But it just gives you the ability to say for most people, wow, you know, we've really come a long way. And I think that's really important for people to be able to see that. Yeah, I feel like that's definitely a lesson I've been gradually absorbing. My shepherd can sometimes get awful environmentally sensitive and barky and all that other stuff. And we've done a lot of work on it. And she's come a long way and it took me a while to, you know, actually realize how far she'd come and realize I didn't have to be quite so nervous all the time. Exactly. Yep. I wanted to kind of round things out the same three final short questions that I've asked everybody so far that's come on the podcast. So the first one is what dog-related accomplishment are you proudest of? Wow, there's so many. I have a lot of moments with my dogs and my students' dogs. It's really hard to pick sometimes. I would say probably getting a silver medal at the USDAA, Cena Sports World Championships with Clink. She's my 11-year-old. She was a dog that at six months I was told would not make a good agility dog because she was so over threshold. She screamed every single moment on course. Every photo I have, her mouth is wide open, slobber everywhere. And she was a dog that I would have called a bar knocker. And, you know, I have a story about clings that I always tell people, especially when they're struggling. And it was during one of my runs at a regional after I was a little frustrated with her because she'd been knocking a lot of bars. And I bent down right before the run and I kissed her on the forehead, which I didn't normally do. And I felt her whole body relax. And she went on and ran and got a silver medal. And I realized at that moment that she was not a bar knocker. She was a dog that was really anxious and really, really wanted to please me. And as long as she knew that, she was fine. And so overnight at a regional, my entire thought process changed about her.

And I went from thinking she was a tough dog and a dog that didn't always listen to a dog that just really kind of had a Dennis the Menace. Right. I'll fix it. I'll fix it and do it faster. And I learned a lot from her. And so for her to be able to get on a podium at the World Championships, USDA, and get a silver medal was just, to me, an amazing thing. Because I already knew she was awesome. But then the whole world got to see just how cool she was. And so for her, that was huge for me as a trainer and then also just as my relationship with her, for sure. That's an awesome story. I like that. Thank you. So our second to the end, I guess, question is what is the best piece of training advice that you've ever heard? I've gotten to work with so many amazing people, you know, in obedience, in herding, in agility. And I guess, you know, I don't know what everybody else has said, but to me, one of my most cherished and amazing statements that I've heard was from Ray Hunt, who is a horse trainer. And he said, you must realize the slightest change and the smallest try. And so meaning, reward the effort, acknowledge that the animal is trying. And if you choose to recognize that smallest try or slightest change, that's what makes or breaks your training. And if you don't notice that small change in the dog, then they do one of two things. They either give up or they get harder. And they say, you know what? I tried. You didn't acknowledge it. Therefore, meh, I'm good. And for me, you know, if you ever own a dog like that, they do that. They just go, meh, whatever. I'm going to keep doing my thing. And so for me, it was huge because, you know, we get so stuck in a world of criteria. Right? Criteria, criteria. Did they meet criteria? When in reality, you think about it, it doesn't matter how much training your dog has. It doesn't matter if their wee pulls are spotless. Right? It doesn't matter any of that stuff. If your dog is in the wrong emotional state, that training will never show. And so what they're doing is a lot of the dogs, they are trying so hard, but then they don't get rewarded. And then that causes a lot of issues. And so that's why I always have kind of a graduated reward system that I do with my dog. So I'll use either lower value, higher value treats to differentiate. I'll choose the way I play with the dog. And that way, these dogs always get rewarded for that effort. And I acknowledge those small changes in their behavior. And I don't ask for too much too soon. And I think that that keeps the dogs confident.

It keeps them, you know, feeling like they're a champion because that's very important. If you want a dog to be confident and feel like they can conquer the world, you have to tell them that they can conquer the world. And so if they give you the smallest change, then you reward it. And you have a dog that's going to try even harder the next time. And so for me, that totally changed a lot of my training. Because before, an example would be if my dog didn't do six weed pulls. And let's say they were in a novice trial and they're a baby dog. I would be frustrated. And if they continuously did it before I get this little nugget of information, I would go home and say, Okay, my dog has a weed pull issue and I'm going to go train the weeds. But in reality, is it a weed pull issue? Or is it the fact that the dog's not emotionally right? Most likely it's because the dog's not emotionally right. So you actually have to deal with that. So what does that involve? It might involve the dog doing three weed pulls and you clapping and having a party and leaving. But that's not to criteria. And so for me, it was just a huge eye opener that the dogs know how to do these skills. It's just we have to have them in the right emotional state so they can actually perform the behaviors that they've been taught. And that's just, to me, a cornerstone of what I think of when I'm training. So it's just been huge for me to have that statement and understand that and apply it to all of my training. I think that's one of my favorite questions in the whole podcast because we always get such great responses. Totally different and fantastic. So thank you for that. Cool. Yeah. And the last one is, who is someone else in the dog world that you look up to? Again, you know, I've had a lot of chances to work with so many people. And I'm probably going to go outside of the box here. But for me, it's going to be in the herding world. My mentor has been Kathy Knox, who's a Border Collie enthusiast and herding. And she trials. She's the first person to really get into my head that there's always a reason the dog does something. And I think that's really important to understand because we have a tendency to say, well, they didn't do this and they didn't do that. But in reality, we should say, what are they doing? Right. Because they're obviously doing something that you don't want them to do. So we have a focus on that. And so there's always a reason they're doing stuff. And for me, before I met Kathy, it was just like, do the thing that I tell you to do. Right. And then it changed from there.

And a lot of my students, I always tell them, if you can go to a natural clinician in the herding world, so somebody that just uses the dog and just uses the sheep, so no harnesses or ropes or anything like that. But they are the most, in my opinion, talented clicker trainers you will ever witness. Their timing is amazing. They understand exactly how and when to reward. And their placement of reward, it's not based on where they can put it. Right. You can't just tell the sheep, go over here to point B. They have to know at that exact moment when the sheep are right and what to do instantly to help the dog or to reward the dog. And so I always think in terms of, you know, can you imagine if your reward had a mind of its own? Like trying to train a terrier with a live squirrel would be an analogy that would, you know, be quite fitting. And so these people, they have this amazing ability to teach these dogs using extremely high value reward that is instinctive, that is bred into them. And they can get these dogs to totally understand what behaviors they want and use that reward in their timing. And they're just a good clinician. They're going to do just what I do when I go to a seminar. They're going to look at the dog. They're going to read the dog. They're going to figure out what the dog needs. And again, you change the dog, you change the person. And it's just an amazing thing. And I think for me, that's where the passion comes into play is just to see where, you know, I always joke that it's like the dogs are sitting there trying to decipher things because dogs in agility read motion first and then they read verbal second. So verbals are a second language to them. And so they hear human, human, human, human dog. So a person suddenly does something that they go, oh, my gosh. Right. So if you've ever watched a movie that's been in a language you don't know, and all of a sudden they say one word that you do know, it's like this sudden, you know, understanding. Wow. Oh, I get this. This is what you want. And so for me, that's the key is I don't want to present the dogs with questions as far as handling goes. I want to present them only with answers. So they say, okay, I've got this. There's no thinking required. And to me, that's an important part of it. And you can't present the dogs with answers in quite the, I guess, the best way possible if you don't understand what language the dogs are speaking. So suddenly you start speaking dog and these dogs just go, oh, my goodness. Thank you. And I see it every single weekend I teach. The dog's just changing and then the people change.

You know, I have people come in that are, you can tell they're ready to quit agility. You can tell that if this dog doesn't do something that's going to give them a little bit of hope, they're going to quit. And people always say, don't you get frustrated with that with people that are, you know, no, I don't get frustrated with them. And the reason why is they just, they're at their wit's end. They don't know what else to do. They're lost and they've tried everything. People have told them, you know, a big menagerie of what to do and none of it's worked. But a lot of times it's because people tell you to do stuff based on what? Human. And I'm trying to convey to people, learn dog. And it's so much easier. Everything becomes so much easier. So then these people do something. And usually it's, you know, it's a minor thing. Like don't bend over or, you know, make eye contact or look at the right place or use your hand this way. And they, you see the people who go into a situation and they're, you know, very worried and frustrated and you can see all of it just melt away. And it's just such a fascinating thing for me as an instructor to be able to help people on that, you know, level. And we're not talking just, you know, backyard enthusiasts or weekend warriors. We're talking world team people. It's all the same. It's these little things usually that, you know, cause the issues. And so for me, I've learned from herding clinicians and people like Kathy Knox and Ray Hunt that those little moments are the ones that really matter. Those are the moments where trust is built. Those are the moments that really open up that light for the dog to understand exactly what you want from them. And then from there, all those little moments build up into a fully trained dog. And so we have to concentrate on those tiny moments in time and we have to observe and pay attention so that we can get to where we want to go. Gee, that makes me kind of want to go see a herding seminar. They're pretty cool. I'm telling you, it's pretty awesome. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining me, Loretta. And thank you to our audience for tuning in. We'll be back in two weeks with a retired obedience judge, Nancy Gilardi Little, to talk about dog sports from a judge's perspective. If you haven't already, subscribe now on 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. And the transcription is written by CLK Transcription Services. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training.