E84: 사라 브루스키(Sara Brueske) - "나에게 새로운 성견 평가 및 입양하기"

I have a few Border Collies, a Border Staffie. I do breed Australian Coolies as well, and so I have four of those. And I have a Labrador Retriever. So lots of dogs. Yeah. How many of that current mix are rescue dogs or dogs that you got as adults? So I have five of those 12 that are either rescue or rehomed dogs. I wanted to touch on that a little bit before we get more into this. I kind of lump those dogs in together, whether they were adapted from a shelter or a rescue organization or if they were privately rehomed. And so five of my dogs have been acquired through one of those means. Edgar, I have a Boston Terrier, Shih Tzu Mix. I adopted him from a local animal shelter when he was about five or six months old. He was turned in because he had to have double cherry eye surgery, and his family couldn't afford that. So I had him. Then I have Taboo, my Border Collie Staffordshire Bull Terrier Mix. And she was rescued from a little bit of a neglectful situation. Her owner had too many dogs and couldn't properly care for him. And then I have Kickstart, who was a private rehome, as well as Knockout Nelly, my Labrador, who was a private rehome. And then Zuma, who was my very first Frisbee dog. She's a Border Collie Mix who was adopted from a herding breed specific rescue up in Minnesota. She was found as a stray in Missouri. So you're kind of in a unique position since your dogs are your job and they earn their keep. And I'd love to talk about how you evaluate potential dogs to determine if you think they'd be a good fit for sports. And maybe you could start by kind of talking a little bit about general temperament. What kind of temperament do you want for a sports candidate? And how do you begin to evaluate if a dog has that temperament when you're meeting them? Yeah. So I do a lot of evaluations for potential sport dogs. I am approached quite often by either rescue shelters or private doctors who want a dog evaluated to see if they think it's a good sport candidate. And so I do have a bit that I'm looking for versus what I think a normal average sport handler could handle. And so what I'm looking for is pretty excessive as far as a temperament soundness of a dog because of what I do. We do perform in front of thousands of people. A lot of times they're waving corn dogs in our dog's faces. There's a lot of loud noises. It's an unpredictable atmosphere. And so I really need a very stable temperament dog. Somebody who has crazy high drive for toys or food. One that has a nice natural handler focus where I don't have to really spend a lot of time building that relationship.

So for me, that's really, really important is having those things. So the natural handler focus, food drive, toy drive. I want to see all those. I would love it if a dog has a natural retrieve, meaning I throw something out and they automatically reorientate back to me because that's the last I have to teach them. And I love it if a dog already has tug because tugging is a huge thing for every enforcer. So what other traits do you look for when you're evaluating a dog? I look for personally a very environmental stable dog, one that will perform anywhere regardless of the distractions. So when I evaluate those dogs for myself or even dogs that people bring to me, I always try to evaluate them in a new location. Somewhere that doesn't have a lot of distractions because I don't want to really put them to the test, but somewhere they haven't been before rather than in maybe the foster home's backyard or a dog park that they frequent or something along those lines. I want it to be a novel location for that dog. And the other thing I want to do is I want to make sure I observe that dog. I don't want to just interact with them right away. I want to see how long does it take for them to seek out attention for me? How long does it take them to stop sniffing one spot in particular or to stop looking at the birds or that sort of thing? The other part of it, I want to dive back to that handler focus is I don't really necessarily worry if they don't interact with me, the new person, the evaluator right away. I want to see how they interact with their established handler. So this doesn't work so well with shelter dogs because they typically have many handlers that work with them, but maybe dogs that are in a foster home situation or a private re-home situation. I want to see that they're engaging easily with their handler, their owner, foster, whatever it may be. Or are they fighting for their attention, that sort of deal? Do they immediately engage and start playing with them in that new location? You kind of said in there how long it takes them to refocus on you and stuff like that. When you talk about, you know, time length, obviously anybody who hears this is going to go, okay, so what is a really long time and what's kind of, you know, a reasonable amount of time for a dog in a new environment to, you know, need to absorb things? Yeah. I was thinking about this before I came on here. It's such a gut instinct when it comes to these sort of things. I don't want a dog that takes minutes, obviously, but maybe they sniff one spot and they check

in with me and then they sniff another spot and they check in with me and then, you know, that sort of deal. I don't want them just head down the entire time. And maybe if I do come towards that dog, I want them interacting with me a little bit, you know, a head check back to me sort of deal. Or if I call them over, I want to see some sort of interaction, some sort of reaction to me seeking out their attention. I don't want a dog that just blows me off because there might be a rabbit smell further out there. Also, if I go out there with cookies, like, do they come out and do they want the treats right away or do they take one and kind of wander away? That sort of deal. Are there red flags or things that immediately make you think, okay, this dog would probably not be a good sports candidate? Yeah. So I have a few red flags that I tend to avoid personally. And then there's some red flags that I tell a lot of people to avoid. Aggression to handling. So this is somebody they know, their handler, somebody they interact with on a daily basis. And that person says, well, I can't really reach and grab their collar. Something along those lines that shows me that the dog might be distrustful of people. That's a big hurdle to overcome. And when you're looking for a sport candidate, a lot of people just want to dive right into the fun training right away. And so that's something that would be a big obstacle for them to have to overcome before they start that sport training. I don't want to see them ignore that current handler. So if that handler is calling to them and the dog is just like, nope, I'm going to go sniff over here. I'm totally ignoring you. Or they're not taking food from that current handler. They're not playing with that current handler. Those are huge red flags to me. That shows me that maybe the drive isn't quite where we want it to be. Maybe their handler focus isn't quite where we want to be. Or maybe it might be an environmental issue. We don't really know in that short amount of time. But it's going to be one of those issues. A couple other red flags would be a reactivity to dogs or people combined with low drive or lack of handler focus. So not reactivity by itself. I have a few dogs that are either human reactive or dog reactive or even environmentally reactive. But because their food drive or their toy drive or their relationship with me is strong enough and that naturally overcomes and allows me to have some way to work with that reactivity. So it's easier for me to overcome that particular obstacle.

But if I have a dog that has lower drive and lower handler focus, it's going to be a lot harder for me to overcome that obstacle in a reasonable amount of time. And the other red flag, we all know that dog sports, it's not just going there and competing with your dog and doing the exercises. There's a lot more to it. There may be travel. There may be going to classes. There might be a whole weekend experience. So your dog is in a crate a lot of the time. And so if I have a dog that can't settle or relax in a crate or they have a previous history of showing separation anxiety or escaping out of crates or any of those type of issues, it's going to be harder for my dog to adjust in a trial setting. And that's very important when you're looking at a sport or a performance dog. And same with what I do with shows. If I'm traveling across states to do a show, I need a dog that can do that and relax that by the time I get there to the show, I have some dog left rather than an anxious dog to work with. I think we said a lot of really interesting bits and pieces in there, especially when it came to, you know, the reactivity not necessarily being a disqualifier, you know, for a dog that you're evaluating for sports so long as you have tools in the toolbox, right, to something so you can work with it. So if we look at Zuma, she is my first rescue dog, a dog I trialed in agility. She has a few titles before she injured her shoulders, as well as I completed in Frisbee with her. And she still does shows with me today. She is very dog reactive. But I was able to use some management tools based on her drive in a trial setting for agility, as well as Frisbee, that it didn't really impact our performances at all. It didn't take a long time to overcome that issue because she was so driven to work with me, as well as having adequate food drive and toy drive for that. And then if we look at Edgar, Edgar is pretty, my little Boston Terrier Shih Tzu mix, he's pretty human reactive. He's very uncertain around people, especially adults. And so that's very challenging for him to perform in front of a crowd. However, his food drive is like off the charts. He is a nutty, crazy boy. And so I was able to help him overcome that pretty easily so that he works on our shows on a regular basis. And he does a great, phenomenal job. And he has fun, which is the most important part. Absolutely. That's definitely not to be undervalued, making sure that they're still having a good time. Yes. Are there things that immediately make you think a dog is especially trainable or traits that

are must-haves when it comes to potential sport dogs? Yeah, I think those are actually two very different things. So I think of a dog that's especially trainable. I think of a dog that is far on the spectrum of like, this dog is going to be easy. I can get this dog in shows really fast, or this dog is going to make a fantastic trial dog for somebody without having to do a lot of additional training on top of the training required for that sport versus a must-have. So for must-haves, I've kind of mentioned those already. I want to have some drive for either food or toys, preferably both, because it's a lot easier to manage arousal levels and that sort of thing if you have both of those drives. But depending on the sport, one or the other works great. And then an environmentally stable dog would be nice to have so you don't have to overcome a lot of anxiety issues, as well as a dog that is okay being crated in a strange situation, or a dog that at least doesn't have a history of being anxious in a crate so that you can start from scratch with that. For a dog that's especially trainable, when I'm evaluating them in that new environment, I want a dog that acclimates super fast. They know the game of fetch. They're throwing their ball at me immediately, or at least throwing it at their handler immediately. They want to engage. They want to play regardless of their surroundings. That to me is like the best dog. One that's focused and engaged with the current handler. One that plays with me easily without even questioning it. They're just like, somebody throw this ball. Somebody play tug with me. Somebody give me a cookie. And one that doesn't disconnect despite the distractions around. So if another dog happens to walk by, they're not like, oh, hey, let me go check out that dog. They're super laser focused onto what we're doing. And there have been a few dogs I've evaluated that. That's what I get. They walk onto the field. Leash comes off. And they are throwing their toys at me ready to play right away. And then there's obviously dogs I've evaluated that don't connect with me at all or they're handlers. And they're completely distracted by that new environment. You know, we'll get to this a little more later on. But I think that that's really the key between, you know, what people think of as drive versus, you know, what's actually useful drive. But before we get there, I wanted to ask kind of what you think when you're evaluating a dog, what do you think is likely a kind of a fixed behavior in adult dog?

Something that, you know, would require a lot of work to modify or change and kind of comparing that to something that you think is really realistically probably pretty easy to modify or change. And how do you figure that out, especially if you only kind of get a brief time to do your initial evaluation, really meet that dog? So everybody has kind of has experienced at one point where whether you're working with somebody's dog or you have a rehome rescue dog or it's your friend's dog or your spouse's dog or whatever it is, where the dog acts a certain way with one handler acts completely different with the second handler. And so it might be something like, oh, my dog only barks at strangers when my wife is walking him, but he doesn't bark at strangers when I'm walking him. And so it's kind of the same thing when you adopt an older dog. It's a blank slate. It's an opportunity for you to start off from the right foot. And if you know that that dog has potential bad habits, like maybe dropping, we'll take a Frisbee dog, for example. They love Frisbee, but they drop the Frisbee 10 feet away from you so you can't ever grab it in a timely fashion. So you know your dog has that problem. The retrieve's broken with their current owner. There are steps you can take to prevent that from occurring in your new game with your new partner, especially if you know they're going to have it. And there are steps you can do to train them to do it the right way right off the bat. So it's the same thing with any kind of behavior problem, in my opinion. If you know the dog that is really reactive towards men, there are steps you can take right away to set up good experiences with men, prevent the bad habits from creeping into your new relationship, and take that step forward right off the bat. And so for me, there's very few problems that are fixed behaviors when you're adopting a new dog. And it's beneficial knowing what those are. But if you don't know what they are and they crop up and you see them, immediately you can change what you're doing because your dog doesn't have a set routine with you. They don't have a relationship with you yet. And so it's your chance to really kind of mold that relationship and those habits into what you want them to be right off the bat. And so I think the only one that really comes to mind as far as one that's difficult to fix are those crate problems. Once again, it's really hard to change the picture of being crated to a dog without some serious intervention.

So if the dog has bad experiences in a crate to the point where they're trying to break out, they're not settling, they're spinning, they're barking, all of those anxiety type behaviors, and you take that dog to a trial or anything like that, that's a picture that's always going to be the same to them. And so it's difficult to take that from their old home, those bad habits that are developed, and then flip flop that to a dog that's perfectly able to go anywhere and be crated. So that's one of the ones that I struggle with personally, as far as looking past it when I adopt a dog. I think when it comes to things like drive or energy levels, a lot of the times rescues or shelters may think a dog with a lot of energy necessarily is a dog with a lot of drive and therefore a really good sports dog. Is there a certain amount of reading between the lines that needs to happen when looking at descriptions for dogs? How do you decide if a dog is even worth kind of going to take a look at? It's all reading between the lines. Everybody is so fantastic at spinning things into a good way, or they like to overshare the truth. And then you're like, okay, well, you know, they'll say, oh, my dog has so much energy. They're literally jumping off the couch or over the couch, or my dog has so much energy, I can't keep them contained in the backyard. They love to jump fences. Or my dog loves to play so much, he plays with other dogs nonstop. And so all those things to me are pretty red flags. So we have a dog that is just crazy in the house. That doesn't necessarily mean that they enjoy playing with a handler with balls or tugs or anything along those lines. And so a lot of times I'll ask those people, I'm like, okay, do they love to play fetch? And the person will be like, well, I don't know. I've never tried. And so that's kind of a red flag there. Like, okay, so now I have this dog that has so much energy, and they've never learned to put that energy into a useful game. And so now they've created their own games, jumping around over the couch or jumping out of the backyard or something along those lines. And the one where, yeah, he plays nonstop with other dogs. He needs a job to do. He just never stops moving. Now they've kind of created a dog that is hyper-focused on playing with other dogs. And they've learned that if they want to expend all this energy, they have to go interact with another dog. And so you get those dogs that are really excited about playing with other dogs, but they have no real human interaction history built up. And so those ones are red flags to me.

But as far as, like, things that I love to see, I want to see somebody tell me that the dog is obsessed with their ball. And once they say they're obsessed with their ball, I'm like, I need to meet that dog right away. They're crazy about their ball. They play fetch nonstop for hours or something along those lines. They carry the ball everywhere with them, something like that. Or he'll do anything for a treat. If he'll do anything for a treat, that's probably a dog that has pretty high food drive, most likely. And so I'm crazy about those dogs as well. And the one thing I tell everybody, anybody that contacts me regarding a dog that they think might need a sport home, I say, send me a video. I want to see a video of the dog playing fetch if he knows how to play fetch or tug if he knows how to play tug. Or taking food and showing off whatever tricks he knows or something along those lines. I don't want to see a video of him interacting with other dogs unless, like, there is a concern that the dog is going to be reactive or anything along those lines. That doesn't interest me as much as showing those drives. And a lot of times we just want to see unedited videos of that. Two minutes unedited of trying to play with this dog is all I want to see. I think most people, whether they're adopting from a rescue situation or a rehome situation or, you know, unless you're kind of walking straight into a shelter, it's probably pretty possible to get those two minutes of video footage in this world of smartphones and, you know, whatnot. It absolutely is. To get kind of an idea. And even when I'm contacted by shelters, a lot of the time they'll say that they have a dog that's crazy about toys and we should come out and evaluate. Most of the time they can get us video, even 30 seconds, of them playing fetch with the dog because they're doing that anyway. And so with our cell phones nowadays, it's really easy to get that. And so it's – and generally they have some sort of play area even if it's inside. We can evaluate dogs pretty well as far as that goes. So let's say that you get a dog. You don't know their training history, right? You don't really know anything about their history maybe. How does that impact what you do with them in terms of training? And maybe how does that process compare to what you do with a brand-new puppy who obviously is a clean slate? It is exactly the same as a new puppy because even if you get a new puppy and they're a clean slate, they always have those built-in fears and anxieties and drives and happinesses

and those sort of things that are individual to that particular puppy. If I adopt a dog, an older dog, even if they've had previous training, I don't necessarily want to know it because – and I've done this before, I've adopted a dog that is fully trained and knows frisbee or whatever along those lines. It's not trained the way I would train the dog. And so if that behavior falls apart, I don't know how to rebuild it in the way the dog originally learned it. So I'd rather just retrain the behavior from the ground up and hope it goes quickly if they already know it with my way of training it so that I know how to fix it when it starts to fall apart or I know how to maintain it once – as we go throughout my dog's career. And so if I adopt a dog that maybe has done a pet agility class in the past where they've gone on the agility equipment, I wouldn't handle that dog any different from a dog that I was adopting that was – or a puppy. I would teach it all from the ground up right away. And I know you have a pretty involved puppy protocol that you kind of go through with new puppies too, which I imagine that that would give you a really good sense probably pretty quickly with a new dog, even if it's an adult dog, of kind of where their strengths are and where their weaknesses are and where they might need some work and kind of give you a really good sense of what they need and what they don't need and where their balance is or isn't, so to speak. I guess the only – the benefit of adopting an older dog, if it comes from a private rehome or a foster situation, is like I said earlier in the podcast, knowing those bad habits. So if we're talking like a Frisbee dog, we all hate it when our dog drops a Frisbee 10 feet away from us and we're in a competition and we have to run and grab that Frisbee and we're wasting valuable time. So if we know that our dog has a tendency towards bad habits like that, we can just avoid those and make sure that we set our dogs up for success to counteract those bad habits right away. If they're an adult dog versus like a puppy, you don't really know what bad habits they're going to be inclined to do genetically as far as that. So if I have like a Border Collie that loves to stare at something rather than move towards it and tug, I can fix that right away by my play style with that adult dog versus a puppy. I wouldn't know if they're really inclined to do that behavior. It's funny because you keep bringing that up. It's like, hmm, were you sitting there watching when I was training with Levi this morning? I want to shift gears a little bit.

I know that in addition to your own dogs, you foster. And typically the dogs you foster are dogs that are likely going to be good sports prospects. So I was hoping you'd share a little bit about that. How do you wind up with the dogs you do? How do you become a foster home for the specific types of dogs? I think a lot of people think that maybe fostering dogs would be a good way to find one that's a good fit for them and their sport and whatnot. Yes, fostering is definitely a good way to go. It's a hands-on experience. You're helping the dog out. You're helping the rescue out or the shelter out. Worst case, you're giving the dog a good experience. Hopefully you're giving the dog a good experience by fostering them. And you're learning more about that dog. But I am always one for foster to a dog. I think that's definitely a good way to go. So my network of adopters is it's just sport dog people. I don't have a good network of adopters that are looking for a good pet. All the people I know in the world of dog, they all do agility, fly ball, disc, diving. They're all looking for their next competition dog. And so that's why I really focus on sport candidate fosters versus just whatever dog is in the shelter. Because I've had dogs that have had lower drive that I've tried to foster before. And it takes me forever to find them a home. Versus most people, when they're looking for a pet, they go to specific shelters or rescues. And those dogs get adopted and they get the appropriate eyes on them right away. And so I look for the dogs that I can place relatively easy. The ones that other resources like shelters or rescue groups don't have the network towards. And so it's my little niche area that I can really make sure I need those dogs the right eyes on them right away. So a lot of times the rescues I've worked with in the past, they'll contact me and say they have a candidate that they would like a foundation on or maybe further evaluated or they just don't have an appropriate foster for. And I'll take that dog there. Sometimes it's individual people will contact me. They're struggling with their dog and they want to rehome, but they don't really have the resources. They don't have the knowledge of where to go. And so they'll contact me that way. A lot of local people that come out and watch our show and know that we work with a lot of rescue dogs. They'll contact us when they know of a dog that needs a home that they think is a little toy crazy or nutty. Or sometimes I just see a dog that's shared on Facebook and I think it's a very interesting dog.

And I'll offer, you know, that I can foster, maybe put a foundation on it. And sometimes they take me up on it. Sometimes they don't. And so they kind of come from all over the place. As somebody who has kind of fostered and owned a wide variety of dogs and breeds, are there similarities that you see? Differences? I mean, anything we haven't gotten into? I think it's just your typical breed differences. I always, anybody who's not taken any of my seminars or classes, I'll always say, you know, if I say something like, yeah, your dog's doing that because it's a border collie or anything along those lines. It's not a bash on the breed at all. Or your dog's doing that because it's a cattle dog or it's because it's a Cooley or a Malinois. Those are just the traits you tend to see. So depending on the breed, I mean, there are definitely things that you see that's similar from breed to breed to breed. And when you see an outlier of that, it's always a kind of a cool thing because it goes against the normal grain for that breed. I think I tend to like a certain type of dog. And so I tend to gravitate towards those dogs, dogs that are just kind of crazy and off the wall, crazy about their toys. But, you know, other than that, there's such a big difference between breeds and dogs that it's pretty crazy. I love fostering. So I get to know so many different dogs. I get a random itching to like foster some, you know, some random weird scruffy dog that I see. And I'm like, I need to have that dog. And part of it's really cool for me because it gives me that hands-on experience with that breed that, you know, I wouldn't have experienced some other way. So, yeah, I definitely want to foster the, you know, the golden retriever puppy that I haven't had a chance to work with one-on-one before or, you know, some other random breed. So it's a learning experience always. So one last question to kind of summarize all of this stuff. If somebody is listening and they're looking for a new sports dog and they want to go that adult dog or rescue route, kind of to bring it all together, what advice would you give that person? If I was looking for a new sport dog or had a close friend that was looking for another sport dog, I would definitely point them towards either breed-specific rescues or sport-dog-specific rescues. Just a situation where the dog is in a home and that foster home has had a chance to properly evaluate them in a bunch of different situations. And that they know that dog's tendencies are not going to be any surprises that crop up on you as far as that goes.

And it gives you a good chance to really evaluate that dog versus a dog really coming from a shelter situation. And I'm not saying you can't find great dogs at shelters. You absolutely can. I've found some amazing dogs through shelters. A bunch of my fosters, Edgar, tons of dogs from shelters. But if you're kind of limited as far as resources and that sort of thing, having those dogs that are in a foster home is really kind of the way to go as far as that goes. There is a few dog-sport-specific rescues out there. Epic Sport Dog Rescue is one of them. And then breed-specific rescues like Midwest Border Collie Rescue or Old Herding Breed Rescue of Illinois or any of those that tend to get those type of herding breeds or whatever breed that they're looking at. If they're looking at labs, like a lab-specific rescue type of a deal. Oh, and just get the word out there. So if you are already in a sport, tell as many people as you can that, hey, you know, I'm in the market. And just be prepared to wait for the right dog. So get the word out there. Contact as many different people as you know on Facebook and say, I'm looking for this. These are the requirements I'm looking for. A 30-pound dog that might be good at Frisbee or agility or whatever it may be. And just see what comes your way. There's also a lot of really great Facebook groups as well. Adoptable Performance Dogs, Adoptable Sport and Working Dogs. Both of them are groups on Facebook where a lot of people will cross post dogs that are available for adoption. Well, thank you so much, Sarah, for coming back on the podcast. This was great. Thank you so much for having me. Absolutely. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week with, and I'm sorry, guys, but I'm probably going to butcher his name until I talk to him and find out how to pronounce it. But we'll be back next week with Mike Shikashio to talk about working with dog-dog aggression. If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in 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. Thanks again for tuning in, and happy training. Thanks. Thank you.