Understanding Pressure as Distractions in Training
===
[00:00:00] If you train, compete, or teach dog agility, you're in the right place. Hey there, I'm Megan Foster, creator of Fostering Excellence and Agility. Join me as I share key insights on all things related to dog agility and help find your team's path to excellence and unlock your best year yet. Let's get started.
Hey there. Welcome back to the podcast. Today I want to talk about pressure and give you a quick overview of how to prepare our dogs, how to compete and compete well under pressure. So first, let's define it in my mind, [00:01:00] anything that. Keeps the dog from performing a task or multiple tasks is pressure. Uh, I think that terms like distractions and triggers can be used interchangeably here, and maybe we're thinking about pressure as the. Combined impact of multiple distractions or multiple triggers can be, oh, that's a lot of pressure, or a little pressure, but ultimately we're, we're talking about the same thing. If it distracts your dog from performing in the way that you expect, or if it triggers a different set of behaviors that maybe you'd rather not see, it falls under the umbrella term of pressure, in my opinion.
So how do we train and prepare our dogs to compete with this [00:02:00] combined amount of distractions and triggers in the competition environment? So first and foremost, we need to observe our dogs around stimuli that could be distracting or triggering. Away from agility. We have to know how these things in the environment impact our dogs naturally in order to make a training plan for them.
So things that I believe become distractions or triggers in competition, it can also happen in training. Anywhere you go is novelty. So something in the environment that is new to them or they did not expect to be in that environment. People, dogs, and noise. So any of that Separately, I need to know how my dogs natural response is to those things [00:03:00] in order to create the training plan that's going to be most beneficial for that dog.
So first, is their reaction to it, positive or negative? Are they curious about it? Are they excited about it or are they concerned or afraid of it? Right? I need to know if they are generally okay around this distract or if they are feeling some not so great feelings about it. So I need to know, is there general reaction to the stimuli?
Positive or negative, or is it more neutral? Do they kind of go, oh yeah, that's a thing, and they can quickly dismiss it and get back to doing what they were doing before they saw the person, before they saw the dog, before they heard that noise. I also want to observe the impact on my dog's arousal, that [00:04:00] seeing the person, the dog, hearing the noise, seeing the new thing.
How does that impact their arousal? I can see it in their body language. I can see how they take food. Is the way they take food changed? Did they go from gently taking cookies to now sharking my fingers? Did they go from sharking my fingers to no longer eating? So anything other than normal, I just want to be aware of.
Okay, um, can they relax after an introduction of a distraction like that? , This observation piece is a huge part of how I socialize and raise my puppies, especially, it's a little bit of a tangent about, um, maintaining a healthy range of arousal levels, but I need to know. How all of these different things impact my dog individually away from training [00:05:00] because if they cause my dog to not be able to eat or relax for whatever reason, either positive or negative feelings, I need to know that because introducing that into my agility training will derail my agility training.
If they can't do basic things like. Offer me some focus, eat food, relax on a blanket with me because a person and a dog are standing nearby playing a game of tug on their own. Then they're not going to be able to do complex agility behaviors with a dog and a person tugging on a thing, not without some amount of fallout.
So just bare minimum I need to know. How my dog reacts to these things away from agility. I know that I said that a lot, but that is really, really, really important to me. Okay, so remember that overreactions. [00:06:00] So barking and lunging towards something or trying to escape from something. Those are what I would call overreactions.
And in my opinion, they need a behavior modification plan with a behavior consultant or other appropriate professional, because inserting those. Things into your agility will negatively impact your dog's ability to perform and potentially poison the experience of agility for them. So if we see those overreactions, we want to pivot and talk to a professional about that.
Okay. Otherwise these reactions that are normal, that I would expect to see that is very informative for me in how I layer in these types of distractions to my training so that early on, [00:07:00] if I know that my dog is very excited about people. I first need to develop a training plan that produces a certain amount of neutrality to people because people will be a part of the agility process, right?
There will be people outside the ring that you have to navigate. There will be people inside the ring that you have to navigate and that the dog has to ignore while one of them follows you around and. M puts their hands in the air and says things potentially, and they need to be able to ignore that and still do the task at hand, which is running agility with you.
So if they start out super excited about people, your training plan is about building neutrality to people and then layering in the neutral response to people. To your agility behaviors, and this can and should [00:08:00] happen as early as you can. So as soon as my dog knows how to chase a cookie back and forth, it's like the very first game in my handling skills program is go get that cookie now.
Come back and go get that cookie. I am going to ask a friend, Hey, can you stand 10 feet away and look at your phone while my dog chases a cookie? It might be. That simple, but eventually I'm asking that friend to run back and forth parallel to my puppy that's chasing the cookie, because that's a way more difficult thing than they will ever specifically see, but is adjacent to running in a two ring event.
So we're taking each of these pieces and if we are. And thinking about how would layering a distraction into this exercise make sense? You don't have [00:09:00] to necessarily do the things that they will see in competition, but they will be so used to novel things happening to them during training and it being none of their business, that when they show up to a competition, they won't be as impacted by the things that they see there.
When I don't have access to people, I fall back on the use of my reinforcers to provide these same types of distractions. So if I can't have someone sitting in a chair playing the role of ring crew, I'm going to put an open bowl. An accessible bowl with a couple of cookie cookies in it, in that chair, and I am going to work around that distraction because while it is not this exact same impact on my dog's behavior, it [00:10:00] is the same goal.
I do have the same goal of the dog needs to know that the treats are there. And still be able to focus on the task at hand and perform it to fluency anyways. So the dog might have a stronger interest in the food than they would ever have in a person. And I think that that is playing to your advantage so that then maybe they care even less about the person because it's the per the thing in a chair is not a bowl of food.
So if you use pre place rewards for your typical agility skills. Why not also use them for your distraction training?
So I told you this was going to be quick because I want you to take some time and think about what is pressure to your dog right now? What is currently distracting your dog [00:11:00] from being able to do the thing that you want them to do? Or what is triggering behaviors that you would rather not see?
I want you to take some time to learn about your dog's natural response to those things. Can they relax? Can they. Eat food, can they play with their toys around that specific distraction? And then you can start forming your training plans because I I have to start from a place where the dog's behavior is not changed whatsoever. And then I ha have to modify the distraction in a way where the dog notices that it's there, but it is not negatively impacting their performance. I, so if the dog doesn't notice, it has no reaction [00:12:00] to it.
This is currently not a distraction, but we are at the, the neutral line. It's not having an impact on your dog's behavior, that's great. We have to know where that is in order to set them up for success. But we want to push the limits a little bit so that the dog notices the distraction, but can still do the task anyways.
So I'm akay if they look at the distraction and look back if they may be flicking ear towards the distraction. Or even if they slow down while doing the behavior in order to process everything that's going on around them, but they are still successful. That's the area that I'm looking to train in when I'm adding layers of distractions and combined layers.
So increasing the pressure, that's the level of intensity I'm looking for when I'm making a training plan. If [00:13:00] I push too far and the dog can no longer perform the task. Or I push them so far that they overreact me. Like maybe they, they leave, they don't even stay with you or they opt out of training in another way.
I, they have not learned anything. They have learned that the pressure does impact their behavior and the pressure does change how they perform. So you always wanna be working in the zone where they notice that something in the environment is different, but that they can be successful anyways. So I want you to do a little homework, do a little observing because the better we are at observing their behavior out of the context of agility, the better we are at setting them up for success in agility, and also we are better observers of their behavior in the agility context as [00:14:00] well.
Okay? So you have some homework. Let me know how it goes.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, I really appreciate some feedback. You can leave me a review, engage on social media or share this with a friend. I hope you'll be back to listen to my next episode. In the meantime, you can find all of my offers on my website, fx agility.com. Happy training.
