Focus & Engagement Coaching Call for Podcast
===
[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 everyone. For today's episode, I am sharing a recent coaching call that we had inside of the free fans of FX Agility community. If you want to be included in these free coaching calls and join in on the conversation as they're happening, make sure you go to the show notes and click the link and [00:01:00] join the community today.
Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy the conversation.
Okay, so today I want to talk about focus and engagement, which is, you know, everyone talks about it as being super important, but kind of how we get these really well-focused and super engaged dogs is not as, talk is not talked about as much, right? So I want to talk about it and first I want to define it and we'll start with focus first because I think that's the easier one.
But the definition of focus is the center of interest or activity, right? This is easy to apply to dogs, it's what they're looking at, right? And you can kind of observe how intense their [00:02:00] focus. Is on something based on the rest of their body language. So if they are looking at a bird, are they tense?
Are they loose? What are their ears doing? What is their tail doing? Are they getting tall? And then the same is same things to observe if they're looking at a dog, another person and you, right? So their focus is really just what they're looking at. And so this to me is more of a, obviously it can be natural because they can learn to focus on things that we don't want them to and otherwise focus on me.
Their attention, their interest in watching me is mostly a mechanical skill. It's just I start eye contact from the moment I bring them home and I make focusing on me, making eye contact with me, watching me. Something that is a part [00:03:00] of a lot of their day to day and gets them a lot of access to other things.
If you wanna go out that door looking at me, way more valuable in my opinion than say, offering a sit. Right? So I don't do a whole lot of like, sitting at thresholds. ~I'm not saying it's a bad thing. Um, ~but my preference is that they look at me if they would like me to open the door or they should, you know, if they're, if something's stuck under the couch and they're trying to get it and they can't get it, I would much rather them look at me and ask for help rather than destroying my furniture.
Um, little things like that. And then that goes deep into. Everything that I train, right? You bring that toy back to me, you spit it out on the ground, you look at me, I'm probably gonna pick that toy up and throw it for you. Again, everything [00:04:00] about eye contact and making sure that they are watching me for information tells me a lot about what they're thinking about, right?
So if I am trying to do complex training skills, but they are looking at birds, I can pretty much guarantee that they're not going to learn the complex agility skill that I'm trying to teach them. So it tells me a lot about what they're thinking about. And then, like I said about the body language, it tells me a lot about how they feel about that thing.
And so, so that's the focus side of things for me. If we have questions about that, I invite you to share them now about the, the focus, the mechanical skill, the eye contact, the watch me piece.
Do you ever think that this [00:05:00] causes like a problem in agility, like training eye contact so heavily?
It hasn't so far. I, I think that, again, it's very contextual If I, like, there's a huge difference in when I'm standing around and, and waiting for them to offer their focus on me versus when I am running around and giving information. Uh, but that being said, obviously if we do have a dog that kind of sways more toward the handler focus side of things.
Um, that it probably means that this focus on you came easily and then we just know to pivot your agility specific training to be more heavily obstacle focused building. So, but I actually don't think that that's true. [00:06:00] I see plenty of dogs that don't know how or can't, they're very easily distracted and they also lack commitment.
So it's not like teaching a bunch of eye contact makes a handler focused dog. I don't find that to be true. So I guess as long as we are balancing the skillset for the dog that's in front of us, I don't, it should not be a problem and I would not let it be a problem.
All right. Any other questions about the focus side of things? Focus easy.
Just look my way. I will give you information if you are interested in what I have to offer. Yeah, go ahead, rose. So like what if you're running into a dog who's having a lot of difficulty making eye contact with you? Mm. Like what do you do in that type of situation? [00:07:00] What's making it difficult? So that, so let's say I can't answer that question.
Okay. Then we find the situation where it's not difficult and we add and tweak from there. So is it, if it's not difficult in your living room, but it is difficult in your kitchen, what's different between those two places? And then we split. Those differences up and maybe bring some of the environment from the kitchen into the living room, unless of course they're afraid of something in the kitchen and that's why they aren't able to offer your attention, offer their attention to you.
Does that make sense? That's a good answer. Um, ooh, I like, I like having a good answer. That's good answer. [00:08:00] No, it just as interesting, right? Because I think that could be an argument made for like, not as heavy on the eye contact, but it's the same thing like when I set out a bowl, right? Like I want her like bowl of food in it.
I want her to look to me like, how do I get that exactly? Because a dog staring at the dish, I know what they're thinking about. Thinking about the food.
If they are struggling to give you eye contact, obviously the first things I'm looking for are the things, the en in the environment that are stopping them, and then I'm also looking at why should they. So if, and, and this, like, this is also big when I'm puppy raising because obviously we have to live our lives and get work done.
But a huge, thing that I did with Sprint was I kind, and [00:09:00] it's changed as she's gotten older, but I made it very clear I had clear boundaries over when I am available and when I'm not available. Because if your dog is struggling to, you know, make eye contact with you and focus on you and come to you for information, you have to also make sure that you're available to give information when they ask.
You know, raising puppies is not unlike raising toddlers. So if a toddler was coming up and saying, hi, I need something, hi, I need something, hi, I need something, and you never reciprocated that, they're eventually going to stop asking you maybe, or they're gonna go find someone else. And I see that in the dogs as well, that, you know, when I'm in my office, the only answer is be under the desk in a bed.
Chewing on a thing or sleeping. And currently she's on, she's there chewing on a thing. ~Um, she only, uh, ~those of you that have been on my calls before, you know her one service [00:10:00] is stopping the calls when they've been going too long or she thinks that I have been sitting for too long. Her one service, to my humanity is that she gets me off the computer if it's been too long.
But otherwise, she, she really only, you know, she might ask for water if her bowl is empty. She might ask for a snack every now and then because she knows I have them up here. But for the most part, she knows that I'm not available in this situation. But when we are outside this office, pretty much always, if she comes up to me and she has something to say to me, I tend to listen.
And she's the dog that I've done that with the most and. I would say that she is the most engaged and the most likely to be like, um, excuse me, I have a problem. I know who can solve this for me. And she's over there, so I'm gonna go find her. She is the most [00:11:00] likely to turn to me for help with anything.
But Terrier will just fend for himself almost always. And you know what? Of course, maybe it's a little bit more naturally who she is, but I do think that like providing that part of the relationship for her helps a lot. Okay. So a part of them offering their interest in us is returning that interest in them.
Okay. ~Any other focus, thoughts, questions, ideas, concerns?~
~Okay, ~because the engagement one's kind of a doozy, right? So we are going to define it. And of course if you just define engagement, you get all those, like, you know, you promise to get married and you have an event to attend. You get all those definitions. But when you talk about learner engagement, which is really what we mean when we're talking about getting engagement from our [00:12:00] dogs, we're talking about getting engagement from them as a learner, right?
And again, we don't have like a list of things that we, we do and we've studied in animals, but we have a ton of things that we know about maintaining human learner engagement. Okay? Because learner engagement is behavioral, cognitive, emotional, and social. Behavioral, cognitive, emotional, and social. So learner engagement is the active, motivated, and sustained involvement of a learner in the educational process in encompassing behavioral, cognitive, emotional, and social dimensions.
Right. That's, I like, if we were to describe the picture Perfect dog. We wanna train, [00:13:00] it's that right. Active, motivated, and sustained involvement. Hmm.
Okay. So behaviorally, we
behaviorally, we want the learner to be active, actively participating in the activity, right? We want them moving with us. We want them returning after the rewards. We want them diving into the behavior that we're teaching. We want them active. And of course, we're in the behavior side of things. We're also looking for those good body language signs.
Loose body, soft eyes, waggy, you know, they don't all have to be like super serious all the time. [00:14:00] You know, they can be serious in their work, but the surrounding layers can be a little bit softer, should be a bit playful. Cognitively we're seeing an effortful investment in the learning. So like, I don't know that we could say like, this dog cares about learning a backside, but they can be like, I know learning is a good thing for me, therefore I'm going to put my best effort in, right?
If us as people sign up for a class like, you all are all here because you have made an effort to invest in this education, so well done. We bring the dog to the table, right? Like they're not driving the car. They're not saying, Hey, it's time to go to agility. But when they get there, I would like to see that they have some effort to give to the situation, right?
That they want to try and they want to play the game [00:15:00] emotionally. Obviously we're looking for that. They have interest in the activity and they have a positive attitude towards learning. Again, do they know that they're learning? No, they, they're like, I'm playing a game with my best friend. We're, we're cool, we're having a great time.
That's, again, we're seeing that in how they move their bodies, how they show up, how much effort we're seeing the whole picture of like, yeah, I wanna be here and I'm having a great time. And then socially, this is kind of, when we're talking about people, we're talking about like, can you engage with others about the thing that you're learning?
Okay. So when we're talking socially with the dogs, I don't expect us to be like, okay, lesson's over. Go talk to your little friends about the lesson you just learned. That's not what we're looking for. But I do think, again, back to a. What I was talking about with focus, I, it should feel [00:16:00] a little bit like a conversation the two of you are having.
And again, if, if you're not new to me, this is not a surprise that it does feel that way. Between me and Sprint, we're like, in my head, she's answering back because she's always like, yeah, I think that's a good idea. And no, I don't think that's a good idea. She, we do have our social time together and I think that that's important that it feels a little bit like that when we're talking about engagement.
Okay. Do we have questions, thoughts, comments about what engagement is? Like as a definition? We'll get to functional in a sec.
Okay, so functionally I believe that creating what this [00:17:00] dog might look like, right, this active and motivated and interested, and has a positive attitude, I believe that we create that dog by consistently showing up with good things for them, good ideas for them, and clear rules to the game so that they can win at those good ideas to get those good things right.
I think we create this type of dog.
By having good things that they want, toys, food, praise, pets party that like the social side really comes into this. So [00:18:00] first we have to know what they like. Then we have to consistently provide things that they like, and as we are adding kind of learning and work and tasks to this, the path to getting those things that they like needs to be clear for them.
When we're talking about human learners, techniques for increasing engagement are about the teaching techniques that we use. Right. So it might be
just how we teach, how we deliver information is going to make something more or less engaging for a human learner. [00:19:00] Teaching that is tailored to the individual learner will be easier for them to engage with. So this is a biggie. This is why you have to know what your dog likes and how they function and how they interact with you as a, as their guide, as their mentor, as their friend, as their teacher.
How do they, how do they like to interact? Um, obviously gamification is so huge in human learning right now, but isn't that like everything we do with our, with our dogs is helping them level up. Helping them unlock the next level a little bit faster and faster and faster and gamifying it for them. So really, for me, gamification is like, dynamic training sessions.
So not just repeating the same thing over and over and over again, but changing little things about the session throughout the [00:20:00] session to keep it more interesting. Also increasing engagement in human learners is a, is really like if it, it has to be supportive. If the learning is not supportive, the human engagement just drops.
So I believe we can apply the same thing to our dogs. If the learning stops being supportive, we see the engagement go down.
Okay. Questions about what engagement is.
Do y'all wanna know how we get it?
Yeah. [00:21:00] Now I'm talking. Okay. So first and foremost, safety and comfort. Okay. So like when and, and kind of reaction to rose's. Answer rose's question earlier. You know, I have to assume they're not afraid of anything in the environment. Okay? So safety and comfort comes first. So when I have a puppy or a dog, or, you know, we're, we're trying to fix this engagement thing.
I need to know where they feel safe and comfortable. So this might be certain rooms in my house. It might be a certain spot in my backyard. It might be a few locations that I've figured out that they feel safe and comfortable. Okay. That I know that I can take them. And their baseline body language is that [00:22:00] loose and relaxed because if I'm trying to start from a place of I'm scared or I'm concerned I have to work, I mean, I don't even know if I could work twice as hard or twice as long and get them to that place that we just talked about and described about how they are interested in putting forth efforts and active in the learning process.
Right. So baseline is safety and comfort. I have to know where they feel safe, where they feel comfortable, where their body language is, is nice, loose, relaxed, happy. If we can give, if we can label those things right, I also have to know what they like. Okay. So primarily with, like when I'm bringing home a puppy [00:23:00] or I'm, it's a dog new to me.
The first two or three weeks is mostly just figuring out what they like. Do they like me? Do they want to inter interact with me? Do they like toys? Do they like food? Do they like, pets? Do they like, throwing themselves upside down in my lap for belly rubs? Like, what do they like? Because if I take them to places where they feel safe and comfortable and I give them things that they like, they will learn to predict that.
When I go places with my friend, good things happen to me. I feel safe, I feel comfortable, and they shower me with amazing prizes.
I mean, I think that would work on all of us. Yes. That if the expectation was I'm going somewhere where I feel [00:24:00] safe and confident and comfortable, and then prizes appear for me, they will start to kind of bring that like, did you, did you bring the things? Did you bring that treat? I like, did you bring that toy?
That squeaks the way I like to squeak it. Did you bring the mat so we can get on the ground and. Play flippy floppy. Donna, did you have a question? Totally. Feel free,
And all of this is before skills exist, right? So one way that is kind of easy to fake skills, especially with puppies, is little on the flat handling games where they're literally just following a piece of food in your hand. So it looks like front crosses to us, but the puppy's just following food. It looks like little lap [00:25:00] turns.
It looks like little flicks on the ground, puppies just following food. So for, especially for like most puppies like to move around and Got it. Okay. Donna? Um. So I can, you know, I can show up where they're safe, they're comfortable. They are like, Hey, did you bring so and so? And I can be like, I did bring that here.
Here's a little bit of that. And also here's a little front cross on the ground, and then here's more of that. Right? Most of the time we tend to think skills first, and we build a lot of skills and we hope the engagement comes with all the skill building. But if I build the anticipation for great things happening first, the skills are a lot easier to build.
This is [00:26:00] really apparent when I was teaching, in-person classes because of course I wanted my students to bring their puppies as soon as they they could because, so we could start on these things, but also the class environment was the hardest environment for those puppies to learn in yet because they didn't have this first, right?
So if I were to do it all over again, my, like the very first puppy class would probably be primarily online to build this so that when they come to an in-person situation next, they're a little bit older and they already have the foundation of my human, takes me places where I feel safe, comfortable, and brings all of my favorite things.
Because if they know that first everything else is so much easier because I can always [00:27:00] be building. Skills at home in my living room so that on the day when they're ready to combine more things with just the engagement piece, it's there and it's easy. But if we think of this, I don't wanna call engagement a skill because I don't want it to be, drilled or like some checklist item because I feel like it needs to be more conversational between you and the dog.
But if we build that concept, if we, and I also don't wanna say relationship because I don't want it, it's a piece of the relationship. But I don't want to assume that just because your dog is having a hard time engaging with you in a training space, that you automatically have a poor relationship with them outside of training.
Right? And so, um. Relationship can get [00:28:00] tossed around in this conversation and it can make things a little bit sensitive. So I don't re, I don't want that, to be what's heard, but I do think engagement as more of this conversation between you and the animal, and it should extend to more areas than just training.
But if it's, if it's happening away from training and it's not been brought into training, that could be a sticking point. Right. And a lot of times the sticking point is that you may be overcoming some things in the environments where they're not a hundred percent comfortable, they're, they don't feel a hundred percent safe.
And that can kind of degrade the engagement conversation that you might have in other places. Does that make sense?[00:29:00]
So I like to have three to five locations that I have deemed comfortable. If you have like a public park nearby, that could potentially be three to five locations in one. So like the, the park that's just down the road from me, it's literally three minutes, just a straight shot.
It has two fenced in dog parks, one that's little, one that's massive. So one usually only has about one dog, maybe two if they're in the same household. The other one much bigger, could have multiple dogs for multiple families in there. At one time I never had like, and, and there's distance around them so I could, and that's just not the dog park side, [00:30:00] next to one of the dog parks is a tennis court.
It is kind of enclosed, so you can't really see through, but you can hear all of it. Um, skate ramp with like, and they just keep making it bigger. So skate ramps and like, I don't know, it's crazy. Um, playground soccer fields, baseball diamonds, 2 2, 3, 3 baseball diamonds. It's massive. Right? And it also has like a walking trail that backs up against some like, machinery shop.
So it's like always noisy. But like if I went right now, it is probably busy. You know, sometimes if they've got, I mean, baseball season's starting, so like when they start playing baseball or if they're playing sports on the weekends with kids. Teams. It is crazy. It's crazier than any agility trial I've ever been to.
Crazy, right? It can be insane. It can also be Monday and it's just [00:31:00] opened and I'm the only one there. So public parks like that have such a wide range that they could be all five locations in once. So if you find yourself a public park like that, it is a gold mine and you should train there once a week.
But if engagement is difficult, you should be training there three times a week as much as you can. I don't know, I just pull out arbitrary numbers. You do what you can. There is no perfect. But having those locations that you have gone and you have observed the dog's body language and they are okay being there.
Then you go back to them again. You show them that you have great things for them. You do that a few times, and this is just, again, it's just in town. It's just a few minutes away. I have to go to the post office. I'm gonna drive by the park. I'm gonna do my 30 seconds of, [00:32:00] Hey look, I brought you here to this place where you're safe and comfortable, and we're going to have a rapid fire party with 15 cookies real quick.
We're gonna have a great time. I'm gonna put you back in the car. I'm gonna go to the post office and I'm gonna continue on my day. That's what it looks like for a month or two with a puppy, right?
It is only after we have, we have given them a reason to want to have that conversation with us. That I start expecting them to push me for that conversation. Right. It's very easy for people to assume that Sprint is a border collie and she came with, oh my God, tons of work ethic and focus and attention.
She [00:33:00] really liked to focus on anything that moved leaves, birds, what's that kid doing over there? What's that dog doing over there? What's like, anything that moved was fine to get her attention, to get her focus. The conversation between the two of us took all of this that I'm talking about. It didn't come for free.
She would totally leave to chase leaves. It was great. Had to work through that. So it's only after they have. A very good understanding that I do have good things for them, that I start asking will they ask me for the good stuff, right? Because in the beginning I'm just, I'm getting 'em outta the car and I'm showing them I have good things for you.
It's worth it for you [00:34:00] to check in with me and use that eye contact thing that I've taught you in so many different contexts. Then I will go back to those same places and I will put them and we'll, I'll have a little setup, and this is where the acclimation piece starts to come in because they've been here a million times.
They feel safe here, they feel comfortable here. They've been given lots of great things here, so now I set them up to check the, check this place out either. They can sniff, they can look around, they can watch from a station, they can do all these things, but eventually they're gonna go, Hey, you know, the last six times you brought me here, we you had fun stuff.
Do you, did you forget? And I'll be like, no, I didn't forget. I did not forget the good stuff. And I give them good stuff and we [00:35:00] pack up, we can go home. Most people ask for work too soon, right? We, if we jump too far ahead now, we've made it not clear. Remember, part of the engagement bit is that access to the good stuff has to be clear.
And they have to be capable of winning that game. They have to be capable of accessing those things, right? So it, it's very, very, very small at first. So tiny. It feels like you're not doing anything. Sydney asks, should our safe spaces like that have lots of distractions or distractions in our yard?
Enough? They don't have to have a lot of distractions. But if you, if, if all of your locations are kind of at the same level of distracting, then you know you might [00:36:00] plateau, right? Or if you go to somewhere where there is a lot going on, they may struggle to bridge the gap because now there's too much for them to filter, process, categorize.
Am I comfortable here? Am I safe here? Like, if there's too much for them to do that and go through that checklist in their head, they will take too long to acclimate. And if they take too long to acclimate by the time they are like I. Okay. I feel, I feel okay now. They're probably too exhausted to do anything, to be honest.
So it doesn't have to be all crazy town, but we do want like a range. You know, when I have my locations, I kind of list them in difficulty because some dogs struggle with too, if a place is too quiet, because then you can like hear a pin drop and that's [00:37:00] harder than kind of active noise going on the entire time.
I, I, I think a, a lot of times it, that's kind of what happens is we give them the freedom to acclimate, but if it's 20 minutes of acclimating, they were doing something like that whole time sniffing and processing and filtering and categorizing. So for me, if they were taking that long to get to a place of, oh, I, I wonder if you brought the good stuff, that location is too difficult for the level that that conversation is ready to be at.
Right. So we, and we see it because it's also kind of cumulative when they've been like, like, so time doesn't always make it better. [00:38:00] Again, if the, if the environment is too difficult, more time probably won't help. Like we need to turn down the intensity of the environment. And that's kind of what I love most about like the public parks, that kind of change with the day of the week and the time of day.
And also being able to create distance. So, like golly wins. Sprint was a puppy. She could not watch human sporting events. Basketball was the worst. Like the ball, the sound hitting the court. So it was the ball moving and the people moving and the sound and the everything is so fast. Like who, that was a special kind of hell for me when I was walking through, uh, green Lake in Seattle.
'cause I felt. Tho those were, those were the situations that I wanted her [00:39:00] in outside with a lot of variety where she could be exposed to a lot but didn't have to interact with much. She's just like, oh yeah, there's geese over there. That doesn't matter. There's people over there that doesn't matter.
There's basketball over there. And that definitely matters if you just wanted to know what matters to me mother. Uh, yeah, exactly. Like we all, all the dogs have their one sport. I think that just like, drives 'em crazy. And basketball was a thousand percent sprints. Um, and, and so you, you, so like every time I went down there, I would have to take a different path.
Adjacent to the basketball courts, until she could function around basketball, courts, baseball, she could take a nap. Volleyball, not a problem. And, and so because I could not expect her, I would never expect her to be able to work near [00:40:00] basketball if she couldn't relax and like chew a bone around basketball or play flippy floppy with me around basketball, right?
So that, that's the like, baseline conversation I want to have. And like, so that's what I mean when I am looking for like, do you feel safe and comfortable here? Do you feel okay to lie down and chew on a bone here? Do you feel okay to just engage in the environment like a dog so sniff rather than. You use your eyes and your ears and your movement to engage with the environment.
And then of course, yeah, if they can just fall asleep even better. But that's kind of what we're looking for in terms of environment, I think, because then dog shows are easier, right? [00:41:00] So, and it's very popular to like, go to dog shows and do this, and it, it is not completely problematic, but there's a, a, again, like a dog show, there's no way to turn that intensity down unless it's a really nice outdoor show that you can, you know, move closer and farther from.
But if most of us are dealing with indoor events, you can't really control that intensity. You can wait for the class to be over in their course building or they're doing walkthroughs. But you, you, you don't have, you don't have as much liberty. You don't have as much freedom. So I wouldn't start building the conversation at dog shows, start building the conversation of engagement [00:42:00] elsewhere, especially if we think that there might be some fear or discomfort.
You don't want that. Getting attached to dog shows, sydnee, is there a benefit to going to trial environments, even for short amounts of time? I think I was sort of answering that as you were typing it. ~Um.~
~Yeah, so ba basically, ~if you can find those like perfect times where it's not completely chaotic and she is able to be soft body language and silly and relaxed, and you can have that conversation then because we can't control it at dog shows, the next, you know, step might be trying to find a more intense non-ag agility environment.
So that might be watching a kid's soccer game, right? Assuming they're not [00:43:00] terrified of children and people, right? Like, you know what I mean? But we there, there's just a little bit too much like it has to be dog related or it has to be agility related, or it has to be agility specific environments for it to.
Work, and I don't know, my study of Sprint is that it's actually better to not Sprint visited one dog show as a puppy and it happened to be an outdoor event. And then she went to one other dog show about three months before I debuted her.
But she did not visit any agility facilities during agility events otherwise until she was [00:44:00] competing. So there, there's, there's just a lot of room to,
So the environments we choose, think about it in terms of intensity of activity and amount of activity rather than agility specific. Okay. So I love human sporting events, obviously. Other, other dog sports can be a nice split too, especially if we're trying to like, add dogs to the equation, but not as much intensity.
So other types of training classes, other types of, competition events. Right. And if we're trying to like. I think maybe in terms of intensity, getting closer to the kinds of dogs we'll encounter. So [00:45:00] the dogs waiting in line for barn hunt are usually the same type of intents as the dogs are waiting for agility.
So if we're trying to, you know, again, try trying to get to the splits of, okay, they can handle human only intensity really well, but I need more exposure to dog type intensity. Barn hunt is a nice place to just go sit and see if you can do a down stay, and like let 'em sniff a rats, like it's not gonna hurt them.
And then obviously flyball that is, I think, more intense and more crazy and more loud than a lot of agility. So even just. Being, kinda working adjacent to a flyball practice. You know, reach out to your local Flyball team and see if you can just like watch practice and enter that [00:46:00] location into your engagement conversation
to a fitness class, like a strength and conditioning class. Would, yeah, absolutely. Because it's pretty low intensity. It should be low intensity, but it does require a certain level of, of engagement and, and, access to reinforcer is gonna be pretty easy in, in that type of class. So, absolutely.
I love that she handles the barn hunt blind. Well, because I have seen some seriously who worked up dogs in that situation. So there, there's, there's a lot we can do. So, does anyone have a question about anything I've said,
and we'll start to wrap this up.[00:47:00]
Okay. So to conclude, remember that focus for me is mainly a mechanical skill. Of what are they looking at and what does their body language look at look like when they're looking at that thing? So what does their body language look like when they're looking at me for information? The engagement conversation is kind of multifaceted.
It's a conversation. It's about the dog feeling safe and knowing you have things that they like, that they want access to. And how we bring that [00:48:00] conversation out of the home and into other environments needs to look really small at first. And if we spend time making it very easy to have this conversation in other places, it goes really fast at how well.
They start to be able to have the conversation in busier and busier environments. It's kind of like, oh my, I love this. The, uh, the, the last time I was at Disneyland, I we're in line. We must've been not in Disneyland, we must've been at California Adventure maybe, and we're in line and the Mr. Potato Head is, it, it's like part of the, because the line, you know, wraps around the whole park and so you're in the line for Toy Story and there's a like 10 foot tall [00:49:00] Mr.
Potato head and it's talking to you and you know, we're all kind of standing around and there's this one kid and he is completely just. Only focused on Mr. Potato Head. He has no idea that there's anything else going on except for Mr. Potato Head. And some staff members needed to walk by and his mom says, Hey, get outta the way.
Nothing, hey move or whatever. Like trying to get his attention, saying his name and like nothing, nothing was going in because there's a 12 foot tall, it keeps getting bigger. Every time I talk about it, he's massive. And his lips, everything is moving. It's the most crazy thing you've ever seen. This kid doesn't know his name because there's a Mr.
Potato head talking to him and his mom had to physically reach out, grab him and move him. And the kid was still like, what Just [00:50:00] happened to me? And if you have not experienced or seen that at dogs, involved with dogs, you haven't been involved long enough. Right. Like, just wait five more minutes. You'll see it because that's what they feel like sometimes that kid wasn't prepared to see if Mr.
Potato head and still have to follow instructions. So that's engagement in a nutshell. Um, do you work sprint off leash much at the park? I do now. You know, a huge part of sprint's, adolescence was BM mod work because of her fear of strangers. So she did a lot of protected work. So I often would have her agility leash on or her regular leash on the collar, but she always wore like a harness [00:51:00] with a long line attached to it as a backup so I could practice the art of.
Removing her leash and kind of taking, taking that piece off, but protected setup is that she always had a backup line attached to her. Now, I don't think twice about it because she'll tell me and she'll be truthful. And, if she makes a mistake now, I can truly believe that it's something she wasn't sure about in her adolescence.
If she made a skill mistake, I a hundred percent had to assume it was something in the environment that she was uncomfortable about. So it's, I, I think it is important to know what your dog will do when they are off leash. I do find that a lot of people don't know. What will [00:52:00] happen if their dog is free in a space.
And that can lead to some anxieties when we're talking about taking them off leash at a trial. So we, we do have to know that, but I'm not saying we just go let them free and find out the hard way We gather information. And when I started taking her off leash for real, I had a backup bodyguard person and I knew everyone there.
So if I really needed to, I could be like, can you stay there but not move? Can you just stand there? So, and o obviously hers was an, an extreme case 'cause we were working on BM mod and stuff, but, I didn't truly give her freedom until I had a very good idea that she was gonna stick around.
Sydney is continuing to go to agility [00:53:00] class where it is a challenge, but still, always productive. So if we know that the environment is more of a challenge, so that intensity is cranked up, then we just want to make sure that the path to reinforcement is even more clear.
I don't want them having to guess or wonder, or I want the, the answers so obvious to them so that they're learning that the game is still winnable even when Mr. Potato Head is talking to me. Right. Because, like I said, that kid did not know his name in that instance, and I believed it. Right. And yeah, mom was a little bit frustrated and I like, you know, trainer behavior brain completely took over in that moment and I was like, Hmm, yeah, he didn't know his name in that moment and I believe that he didn't, he also couldn't hear in that moment.
He was deaf and did not know his name in that moment. [00:54:00] And I know our dogs can feel that way sometimes. Uh, Donna asks, have you found that Dogs age can impact this process since Sage turned one year? Things she wasn't afraid of or didn't care about? Oh yeah. Welcome to adolescents, my friend. Sprint started early at around seven months and lasted, yeah, I'm sorry.
I would say like, depending on the dog, like six, seven months. 2, 2, 2 and a half years. Is adolescence. Right? You're a little bit better. 'cause she is like, honestly, she's a girl. Like, I know that's stereotypical, but like, does anyone disagree? So there's absolutely. Like God, hormones suck the life outta everything and they make things scary.
Yeah. I really, you know, the good news is [00:55:00] like, this is what I tell people when they're going through adolescence. I go, like, I ask them, did you, do you like your puppy? You know, tell me all the great things about your puppy's temperament and I, and they can list off all these great things about their puppy.
And I'm like, great. That's still there. It's just being blocked and overshadowed by puberty. And we all know that sucks. So this is where like when we're in the throes of adolescence, I really lean on supportive. Like I just, I offer a lot. Even if like, everything's been going great, they're so skilled, they're so brilliant, they're so mature.
I don't care when they start being hormonal and moody and things are scaring them. I just, if I've been kind of well balanced, you know, if, if there was like a, I just become more supportive. [00:56:00] You need more help, I will give you more help. You need more, reassurance. I will give you more reassurance. You need more distance from that thing, babe.
I got you. Like, so we just, we think, oh my God, we survived puppy hood. Great. No, you don't get to relax until they're like two and a half or three. I'm just here to say that four is like the most amazing gift to the planet, ~um,~
~Carol. ~So, um, with a two-year-old boy, my question is, when you say supportive, am I hearing you right? Making it easier also because I wanna understand when you say supportive mm-hmm. What that would look like with Zeus. It depends a little bit on like what they're struggling with. I would definitely say like s more supportive, more in like what they're having big [00:57:00] feelings about.
And if it's just that their brains aren't functioning because they're in the throes of adolescents. Yes. I don't ask them for PhD level work. When they are no longer able to pass high school. Okay. Right. So it, it's sort of, it will vary and it will change and it will grow, but ~um, so, ~so supportive basically means like, I am, I am, I am here to help you through this.
And what I don't wanna get into a huge habit of is asking for PhD and then having to dumb it down to high school in the moment. So if it is just like, wow, you seem to be having a hard day. I'm just gonna straight up ask you for high school level math right now. Does that make sense? [00:58:00] Yeah. I don't even think we're at high school and that's fine.
That Yes, whatever you are. So like, if you're functioning in elementary, then like. You know, when they're having a hard day, you go back to preschool and you, you bust out the crayons again for them. Right. So you, you just kind of take it easy because their brains are just so fragile when, I mean, their prefrontal cortex has not developed fully yet, and the throes of adolescents, so they cannot be held accountable for any choices they make during this time.
They like, oh dear. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's just, it just wouldn't be fair. I, I will mention again that four is magic. Like the closer you get to four ah, the better it gets. So, so it's a good question. So gen generally supportive just means that, like, if I know that they're gonna have big feelings about something.
I proactively provide more space or I [00:59:00] go to less intense environments. And then if I, I recognize that that's also impacting like how much work that they can do, I might shorten the sessions again, even if like we had been building up to like being able to work for five minutes, I might back it off to three again.
I'll ask for less complicated situations, because I'm, I want to preserve the conversation between the two of us, and I want to preserve the confidence that it builds when they know that we will provide a game for them that they can win, right? And also when their feelings are this hot in adolescence, like this is where frustration bruise.
When you got a moody teenager and they think that [01:00:00] they know the right answer and they don't. Now they're just a sour, moody teenager
and they might carry that to adulthood. If they don't get therapy, they will be a sour, moody adult. Like, has my analogy gone too far? Know,
I don't know this, this boy is different than my first boy. Like he doesn't really have big feelings about dogs or people so much. He is just very curious about everything. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Just, you know, his attention span just at times though, like he can have great attention span at home, but. In new environments, sometimes the attention span is incredibly short.
But I liked what you said about preserving our conversation. I mean, that, um, really resonates with me as something like I can keep in the back of my mind is I'm being patient for two years, that I'm doing something [01:01:00] very good on preserving our relationship and our conversation. You're by conversation.
You, you're absolutely, you're just can Yes. Keep that in the back of your mind. Um, and just like you said, like if, if you're noticing that the attention span is like, is in kind of a, it's very limited right now then Yeah. The locations you choose right now need to be on the less intense side, right?
Nowhere near Disneyland. Right. Like we can't even be outside the park of Disneyland because you can hear the sounds and the screams from the rollercoasters, like Right. You need to be. In less intense locations, but maybe outside Disneyland is possible for him right now. That's kind so that when you do eventually get to be doing things inside Disneyland, he knows his name.
Right? Right.[01:02:00]
Hard work now feels like cheating when you get it done. Right. Um, Tanya asked, do you feel like you're in that never making process stage? Um, I, you certainly can, and this type of work can sometimes feel that way, especially when we have a puppy and maybe things are kind of going well and then they do hit adolescence and, you know, all hell breaks loose and Absolutely.
I mean, I cer like. There, I could pull up the video right now. Um, I I, it, it's not relevant, but there was certainly a moment in sprints BM Mod, and I was working with Sarah St. Trimming and I remember thinking it during the session going like, Sarah St. Trimming doesn't know what she's talking about. This is never gonna work.
This [01:03:00] isn't working. This is so why am I doing this? This is never going to happen. And then, you know, right in the middle of that session, like they're a little light flipped on in her head. And we made progress in that session and I told all this to Sarah. And, so yeah, absolutely. It sometimes feels like you're doing nothing and not making any progress.
And then you can have a moment like that and you still might the very next session be right back in that head space. This isn't working, so and so has no idea what they're talking about. This is never going to change. But for the most part, things are changing. Even if we can't see that they're changing, because we can't see inside their heads, unfortunately.
And as much as I try, they, they aren't talking back in plain English.[01:04:00]
All right. Any final thoughts?
Thank you all for joining me.
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.
