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[00:00:00] Hey, everyone. Welcome to fostering excellence. Inability the podcast. I'm your host competitor, coach and mentor Megan Foster. I help agility enthusiasts focus on the small details of training and behavior while still having a clear understanding of their big picture goals. Join me as I take you through key elements of dog agility, training, competing, and teaching, and how you can take action today to start improving your skills within the sport.
Let's get started.
Hey, y'all. This is episode two in my mini series on puppies. Today is going to be all about what you should or shouldn't be doing with your puppy when it comes to raising them with dog sports and agility in particular, in mind. that first question, what should, and [00:01:00] shouldn't we be doing is so massive that it will be impossible for me to completely answer.
So I want to give you my process, my thoughts on this and that there is a lot of information out in the world for us to consume about what we should and shouldn't be doing. And that can be really overwhelming and have us constantly contradicting ourselves over and over again. It can also make us feel like we don't know what we're doing and that our own previous experiences don't matter.
And I'm here to say that it all matters. And in particular, with puppies, I am a huge advocate for finding. someone to follow that you trust and share similar values with [00:02:00] because that's baseline, all you can do. There was a time where puppy diaries and following, uh, really good trainers and competitors following their journeys as they raise their puppies.
And I think that that is valuable in that we get to see kind of the. Inside scoop of how someone very successful is raising their puppy, but it doesn't teach you the nuance. Of what it's going to be like when you have your puppy, because it will be such a different experience for all of the things that I'm always talking about, uh, on this podcast.
And so finding someone that you trust and who's training philosophies and values that you align with is a really great place to start because it's. Going to be easier for you to kind of connect the pieces of the puzzle that you need to connect. If you are kind of following in this footsteps of someone who shares [00:03:00] the same values as you, but if you're following along.
The process of a trainer who you don't really align with, or you aren't sure that you understand their philosophies or the methods that they use. It's going to leave you feeling a little bit stuck. You're going to have those feelings when you go out to replicate their training sessions and it doesn't go the way you expected it to, it's going to leave you with those feelings of.
Inadequacy. You're going to feel like you don't know what you're doing, or your puppy is broken or you're not good enough, or your puppy's not good enough. And I want to do my best to set myself up to avoid that at all costs. I don't want to start training my puppy feeling like will never be good enough.
And so that's where I want to start is that I can't tell you what you should and shouldn't be doing. I'm gonna try and give you some more tips throughout this podcast, [00:04:00] but find someone that you trust and admire and how they interact with their dogs, how they compete with their dogs and see if they have a process that you can align yourself with, because that is a great place to.
However, the second question that I want to address is about specific skills that I prioritize teaching puppies in order to avoid problems in the future. And again, I don't have a great answer for this question, other than everything, everything that I teach by puppy is in order to avoid problems in the future.
And. , I can't predict those problems with any amount of certainty, but I can observe my puppy in the moment in every moment and, and see how their personality is evolving, [00:05:00] where it's taking them. So if I have a dog that is. Naturally, very excited by things that move and sudden noises like they're interested in tracking it and watching it and getting very excited when they see it, that dog has a higher priority to me to learn how to.
do an acceptable behavior when they see something exciting when they hear something exciting, because I know that a future problem could be that the dog has a very hard time waiting outside the ring and agility. So my priority with a puppy that's easily aroused by things that move and sounds and things like that.
Is to teach that dog, those skills right then and there, so that as they are exposed to more things that move and more things that make noises or whatever is causing the potentially [00:06:00] problematic behavior, they're able to access a skill that I have been teaching them. And so. It's going to be different.
What I prioritize with every puppy, because everything that I do is based on what they're telling me they need in that moment, same goes for any sort of training skill. If it's a toy skill, I'm not gonna put control on my toy skills if I still need to build desire. But if I have a puppy that has a ton of desire and I can see that they.
Are kind of leaning towards wanting to hoard the toy. That's gonna be a priority for me because I don't want that habit to be, I don't want that behavior to be rehearsed so that there will be a habit forming. Right. So everything is about observing who they are in that moment and [00:07:00] addressing what needs to be addressed at any given moment.
So I'm always everything that I teach. a puppy is in order to avoid a future problem because the puppy will not be a puppy forever. Eventually the puppy will be a full grown thing with a big body and maybe a big voice. And they'll go through a period where they don't have a very big brain to match their very big body and their very big feelings.
And so. all of those first skills are trying to prioritize problems in the future. I do tend to focus more on what I refer to as essential skills. I do focus on those first. Um, so that could be how to eat food in different environments, how to play with your toys in different environments. And that includes all of their marker cue training.
Uh, I put a big emphasis on. Collar skills and loose [00:08:00] leash walking and stationing and downstairs just because I can use those skills in everyday life. And I need my puppy to be familiar with those things in order to progress any other skill. So I suppose those are the things that I prioritize kind of for every puppy, but everything else is about observing, thinking about it.
And then moving forward. Trying to determine what does this puppy need in this moment from me? And then the second half to this question from the community members were what skills are easier to teach? To puppies versus adults. And I think these are connected because it's all, it all comes back to learning history and habits that have been formed.
So one argument is that it's easier to teach everything to a puppy because it's a more clean slate. I'm not having to, [00:09:00] uh, try to replace any previous learned behaviors. However, I do think that there are certain skills. Need to be put on a dog later when their brains are more completely developed, but I wouldn't start there.
Right. So even if I took a two year old dog with a clean that didn't have any previous, uh, formal training, I still wouldn't begin with the. High level skill that I think only an adult brain should accomplish. I'm still going to start with the small tasks that I expected a young puppy to be able to handle.
So I, I still kind of lean towards everything is easier to teach to a puppy that doesn't have previous learning history doesn't have any other ideas about what they should do and things like that. but I would start the [00:10:00] same in the same place. If I were given a two year old dog with no formal training, before I get into some more specific questions about training plans with puppies and what we should, and shouldn't be doing, I want to address this fear of screwing things.
we have all of these questions wrapped up in should or shouldn't I, and it all comes from a place of fear. I believe fear that we are going to. Make them slow fear that we're going to confuse them fear that we are going to cause them to drop bars, fear that we are going to, uh, override our natural motion cues.
When we teach them a specific verbal cue fear of not being good enough fear of not being advanced enough for set event or. Not going at the same pace as our litter mate. [00:11:00] Right. We have all of these, these fears kind of wrapped up in failure and that's real and that's human, but also it's garbage. And I wanna just like drag that over to the trash can and let it all go away.
Now that is so much easier said than done, but we can't focus on what hasn't happened. right. We can only, we can focus on the things that are right in front of us and that we can be aware of and that we can observe and then we can move on from there. So if we stick to that initial piece of advice in mind of observe your puppy in that moment and prioritize what your puppy needs in that moment, you are less likely to dig a hole that you cannot get out.
When we run into these brick walls is when we are blindly following someone else's guidance without [00:12:00] taking a look at the learner that is in front of us. That's when we end up following the instructions of an online class or something that you've read or consumed some sort of content that doesn't align with your values as a trainer.
that's when you can potentially start digging a hole that you can't get out of when you are put in a position to ask your puppy to do something that you know, that they are not prepared to do. This is sometimes what happens when we go to a seminar or a workshop. And we assumed that. Based on the description of the workshop that our puppy fit into the skillset, but there were some hidden prerequisites that weren't really talked about.
So you're now in this situation and your puppy doesn't have the skillset for this workshop or this camp or this seminar. And now. You might be in a [00:13:00] position to ask your puppy something of something that you know, that they cannot do. Those are potential holes that you may dig and may not be able to get out of very easily.
So if you are always putting kind of the puppy's behavior first and foremost and or most, and observing them in the moment and responding to what they need in the moment and are willing to. advocate for who they are in that moment you are going to do just fine. And that is a values piece. That is something as a trainer that you have to adopt in your values, that when you sign up for a class or sign up for a workshop, whether it's online or in person, that you are going to stay present with who your puppy is and your capabilities of a as a trainer as well.
That being said, we're going to get ourselves into [00:14:00] situations that we are not proud of every now and then I have. Done it with every single dog that I've owned. I've gotten myself into a situation where I was not a good enough advocate for my dog in that moment. And I was hard on myself in the moment and I could feel it happening and I still didn't have the courage to speak up and make that change.
And as crummy as it felt in the. , it was an incredible amount of motivation to make changes to how I taught my expectations of students. When I have them in front of me, making sure that I'm not putting them in uncomfortable situations, that they're not prepared for. It made me, uh, more aware of prerequisite skills and.
Young dogs or any dog and any team actually needs to have happen before they progress. [00:15:00] All of those moments made it easier for me to be an advocate for my dog later on. So we just have to take in those moments. Yes. They're crummy. Schedule yourself a little pity party. There's not a puppy I've ever raised that I've not at least.
Once in their puppyhood locked myself in my room all by myself, threw my head on the table, had a good cry about it and then wiped it all up and got back to work. It's never happened to me that I haven't felt that way. At least once in the raising of a puppy or a young dog. And sometimes it comes up again, even when they're adults, it's life.
It's that opportunity to get better that we have to focus on. there's one more question from my community that kind of speaks more towards the mindset of training puppies and what we should, and shouldn't be doing. And it [00:16:00] is how do we satisfy the eager agility handler while we are working on and prioritizing skills that are not directly agility.
And I think this one is incredibly important to really sit with yourself and think about because. Again, as our sport has evolved, there is no shortage of puppy, agility, foundations, and basics, and all of these things that have young dogs doing very impressive agility skills. And I'm not here to say that you shouldn't do that.
I do that as well. I put a certain number of foundation skills on my priority list as early as possible. Just because I really like doing agility. I love training agility. Uh, I hope that my dogs love training agility. It's on the priority list, but it's not the highest priority because we have to go back to.[00:17:00]
what my biggest priority is, and it's avoiding potential problems in the future. And so again, I have to sit with myself and go, is this the best choice for this puppy right now? And it's really fresh in my mind because when sprint was sprint is now 13 months old. So when she was about eight months old, I, she had a really good understanding of all of her essential skills.
She had really great reinforcer skills. And so I was starting to introduce more agility foundation related skills, and she just really took to it. Obviously, she, she loved it. I loved it. I was having a great time training her. She really enjoyed the training, but it did get to a point where I could start to, she see the shift of, oh, you're getting.
very, you're getting higher than you've experienced before, and you're not a hundred percent sure how to handle that. [00:18:00] And so I started to see more errors in our training sessions than I would have liked. I St I started to see a bit more barking in my training sessions than I would've liked. And so at that moment, even though it was gut wrenching to go, you know what, we need to take a break from.
We did take a break from the, the things that I wanted to be training so that I could focus on what she needed in that moment, which was an, an opportunity to grow up a little bit more. She needed an opportunity to advance her essential skills in more environments. She needed an opportunity to learn how to self regulate when she wanted to do the thing that she and I both love more than anything.
she needed that skill. I obviously need to learn that skill with every dog that I train. And so now she's 13 months old, the training sessions, they are more [00:19:00] seamless. They, they go faster with fewer reps. She can piece together those foundation skills so much more easily than if I had asked her to do. at 10 months or at 10 or 11 months without taking that time to step away from agility.
So it, it really is about understanding that. , this is a marathon and that the gains are not gonna be immediate. We won't always see that there is improvement. We will not always have that exciting flashy video to post on the internet. That gets a lot of attention. And believe me, I know that because I know which videos that I post on social media that get more engagement.
And they're usually the ones that have more exciting agility related things. They're not the ones where it's kind of the behind the scenes [00:20:00] training skills that I know are gonna pay off more. When we start competing and we travel to compete and are at big events, I I know, and I can trust that those will pay off.
And so if you've experienced. that before it's a little bit easier to trust the process and know that this is what I need to focus on in order to succeed in the future. If you are new to agility or if this is one of your first puppies or something that is when it goes back to find someone that you align with their philosophies and trust.
It is kind of impossible to just pull this out of the air. Right. But if you can see someone that you admire taking the time to not rush agility, but to prioritize other skills, to set their team up for future success, and they [00:21:00] have a way of making that accessible to you and you can follow along, that's worth everything.
right. So look to the people that you admire, if you are completely unsure how to do this, but it really is all about the dog that you have in front of you and learning to be a really solid observer, right? Dog training cannot exist without observation skills, at least good dog training can't exist. So that that's where I want everyone to start is to just.
Take a step back and look at what's actually happening in front of you. So now I have a few questions that I wanna answer about the actual training plans for puppies. How do I plan training for a puppy and how does it train? How does it change as I get to know the dog? So I've talked about this for the last 20 minutes.
So I think that [00:22:00] that sort of answers this one, but I also want to add that. I am making sure that I have a. Variety of locations I can train in as well, that are safe for this puppy. And so that's a big part of it is that I am taking the puppy to different places, empty parking, lots, uh, busy parking lots, uh, parks during different times of the day so that I can observe different levels of busyness, just so that I can.
Put my puppy in an, in some situations that are safe, that the puppy's able to be in, that I can observe their behavior more frequently because we, if we only stick around at home, we may not have the full picture. We may not have all of the information. . And so that is one way that we can get stuck and maybe surprised when [00:23:00] we only train in one situation.
We don't have a lot of things to observe. We don't have a lot of changes to observe. So we might have this feeling that the puppy is. You know, and the puppy is progressing and feeling very comfortable, but then when put in a different situation, we have some unexpected responses and that can leave us feeling pretty stuck.
So my dogs are mainly homeschooled, right? I do most of their sport training on my own, but I do now take, and it's taken me a long time to learn this, but I do take, uh, quite a lot of effort now. Sprint and my other dogs to go different places. It's not a class. Uh, it's not SP it's not a dog show. It's not a dog facility.
It's just different places so that I can have more information about who they are. So it's not even [00:24:00] your typical socialization outings where I'm having them meet other dogs and meet people. But I am. Getting them in a wide variety of environments so that I can observe who they are in each of those environments and make training plans from there based on that.
So it can tell me a lot about what I need to be working on. the next question is, what am I looking for to know if a puppy is ready for different kinds of training and when they aren't ready to answer this question, I have to quote Sarah strumming is my favorite quote of hers. And it is how do you know they can't do it?
They aren't doing it. And that's simple and a little bit sassy, but it applies here. Because if my dog is doing it in a variety of locations, I know they're ready [00:25:00] for the next thing I know. They're ready to introduce more. They're ready to progress that skill. And again, I am now leery of only seeing that skill mastered in the one environ.
Right. So my terrior Shrek was trained primarily just at home and at the facility where I taught and he really, really struggled and still struggles to generalize, to novel locations and environments. So that's something that I really changed a lot about how I train when I brought sprint home so that I want to see that the skills that I have at home, she can do.
that skill with a li at a little, uh, little less intensity or a little lower difficulty level at a new, at a new location. And then the next time I go to that location, it needs to look [00:26:00] nearly identical to, or as close to as the same at home before I progress it. So I want to see that I'm getting the same behaviors, the same responses, the same level of intensity, the same level of engagement in a variety of locations before I.
Crank it up at home again. And so my training will look a little bit staggered throughout their life. And I just have to know that at location at home base, it looks like this. And at location one, it looks like this location two, it looks like this and that. I have a, that I'm able to bring the context of something that they're really good at to a different location.
They go, oh, I know this one. And they can show me their skills very easily. and if they can't do it, I know that they're either they're that something is either missing in their training or they're not as comfortable in that environment that I thought. So this is a [00:27:00] really big deal in that. And that when I have a skill that I think is I'm gonna use the word mastered.
So let's say, uh, my dog is a ma it has mastered eating food from my hand. My puppy is like, every time I give my marker Q yep. They reorientate to my hand, they take the food, they eat the food and they refocus on me immediately and it's fast and it's snappy and it's very consistent. Every room, every room of my house, they can do it.
They know the response to that verbal cue. And then I go to location one and it doesn't look like that. Am I going to say, oh, they just need more practice on yep. Or am I gonna say, they need more exposure to this environment. They need more acclimation to this environment. They need more comfort in this environment.
So being the answer is they [00:28:00] need more acclimation in that environment, by the way, because. If they can do it at home, they, they do know the skill. If you're, if you're the same and you're splitting it well enough when you take that skill somewhere else and they say, I can't, that gives you the information that you need of it's environmental.
You need to let them acclimate in that space a little bit longer. Maybe you need to go to easier location first and test it to. what might need to change. So the short answer is if they're doing it, they're ready for more. If they're not doing it, you need to look at why they aren't doing it.
The next question I have is. how much training and how often am I training puppies and, well, I'm the younger, they are, the more [00:29:00] frequently they're getting trained, right? Because. They only last like 10 or 15 seconds. And then you give 'em a break and you let, 'em go potty and you play or let 'em chew on something.
So you can do the laundry and then you have to do another 10 or 15 seconds and you just have to keep doing that. But obviously as they get older, they can do 60 seconds or they can do two minutes or now they can do five minutes. So the frequency might be going down, but the length of training might be going up.
And so my. young dogs are doing, oh, my dogs in general are doing some type of training every single day. And how I prioritize, what type of training I do. is mostly about my plans for the location and the environment that I'm going to be in. Uh, so if I'm not going anywhere that day, so I'm not going to have access to my locations, I'm gonna be, you know, just in my house training, [00:30:00] those training plans are gonna look really different than if I visit the agility field.
And those training plans are gonna look really D. Uh, from, if I'm just, you know, I'm on my way to the post office and I'm gonna stop at the park for a three minute training session. So there's not really a right answer, but my recipe involves, um, every Sunday I get out my calendar and I plug in all my appointments first and I'm just looking at a week, just looking at a Monday through Sunday thing.
And I plug in all my assign. my appointments that are time sensitive. And then I kind of go, okay, well, can the dog go with me to any of these? Is there a park or a parking lot or somewhere that I can take the dog? Um, am I going to rent a facility for access to the equipment? Am I going to meet up with my friends at such and such place for such and such [00:31:00] time?
Things like that. So then. Telling myself, okay. For this location, I'm gonna focus on these three things and we'll go from there so that I have a plan in my head for when I get to a location, but it's flexible enough that if the dog says, Hey, this is nuts. I've never been here before, when there are toddlers running around, then I can pivot and, and make the right choices for that dog or that puppy.
So I. would really just, you know, if, if the puppy is interested in training and wants to do things, I am all for that. I let them do things. I don't wake them up to do things, right. The younger they are, the more they need to sleep. Um, so if they're truly having a nap, if they've napped long enough, I might wake them up just to avoid any crate FOMO, but I'm generally letting them kind of call the shots [00:32:00] and tell me about what they'd like to do and, and how much they'd like to do.
And finally, this question about. puppies and what we should and shouldn't do. And I wanted to do it on this one because it is one of those fears is how do we keep up a P's speed and confidence. Okay. And this one is all about everything that I've just been talking about the last half hour. It is about observing.
When is your puppy going there? Fastest? What, what reinforcer do they go their fastest for? Uh, observing the, the moments when they're not going their fastest and trying to decide, is this something in the environment? Is there something that they're confused about? Um, did I progress [00:33:00] this too quickly? So when we see a certain level of speed and confidence in any behavior, what, and regardless of how old the dog is, when we see that level, they show us that they can go fast and they can be confident.
And then we see that go away. That is a big clue for us to go back to those videos and look, and really, really. Go, maybe it means going in slow motion. Maybe it means looking at things that you weren't looking at before. So if you were only watching the dog's behavior, can you watch your behavior? If you were only watching your behavior, look at the things that are happening around you.
Um, sometimes it's some, some change in the environment that we didn't know about. Um, and then you ha you do have to collect a little data, like, okay, well, It was the middle of the day. And that's usually when they [00:34:00] nap, but I was there. So I got them out to did some training anyways. So maybe they weren't really awake.
Maybe they weren't really warmed up. Uh, maybe it's just not, maybe it's too hot. Maybe it's too cold. Right? Like you do have to be a little bit of a detective when it is, you had speed and confidence and then you start to see a little bit less. And I also want you to try, remember be. Master observer, which means you have to notice it before.
It's a problem. Okay. So if you see a little bit slower, a little bit of latency, that's gonna be easier to solve than if you kind miss that. They've been slowing down over a few sessions and now they're walking or now they're completely confused. So you really have to. Hone in those observation skills and look for the tiniest [00:35:00] changes in their behavior, both for the better and worse in order to progress your training in a way that's not gonna dig you any holes that are super hard to get out of.
Okay. That is all for today. The shoulds and shouldn't of puppy training and dog training in general. If you are interested in learning more about my agility training program, my mentorship program, my coaching program. You can send me an email. You can message me on Facebook and you can also go to www dot synergy, dog sports.com/fx agility to learn more and join the wait list so that I can send you all of the information straight to your inbox.
Registration is opening on July 21st. If you're not sure [00:36:00] about if it's a good fit or what it is, or if it would be right for you to join, just contact me and let's talk about it. I would love to share more details with it with you.
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