에피소드 03: 한나 브래니건 인터뷰

She and she has, I want to say, 25 or 30 arch points, all in utility. She has some personal spaces with other dogs that have caused me to be a little reticent to put her back in the open stay ring situation. So I haven't quite decided what I'm going to do with her in that area yet. And we may just kind of rest on our laurels there. She did this year, just finished her CDSP arch where, of course, there is no group stay. Right now, we're doing our main focus with her, with me and her together, is in expanding our agility skills. So we've been doing a lot of playing in agility and doing some trials in that. And then the baby of the family is Rugby. We think everyone on the internet knows. And he is, let's see, he's currently training in obedience and, of course, also rally and then also cross trains in agility and fly ball. This past year, he debuted in CDSP novice and picked up his first time trial and was basically awesome. So I was really, really happy with how he's working there. And I think we're going to set our eyes on going into the AKC novice ring this coming year. I need to look at my schedule and actually see when I have a weekend available to aim for. But he likes to do a little bit of everything. So we're hopefully going to be competing eventually in all three of those sports, all four of those sports, and maybe a little barn hunt, maybe a little nose work. He is a terrier. So I feel like I feel compelled to at least show up. Yeah, exactly. Take advantage of those instincts rather than always working against them. I think he would definitely enjoy barn hunt. Congrats on the high end trial. That's very exciting, especially with your baby dog. Thank you. Yes. Now, I'm lucky because you're here in North Carolina, not too far from me. And I had the pleasure of actually attending one of your workshops. I think it was at Lap It Up. And you tend to describe yourself as a dog training geek. And I think you started the workshop out by kind of mentioning that. So I wanted to ask you to tell us a little bit about what you mean by that. Yeah, I usually apologize in advance when people have it in person. There's no editing involved. You know, honestly, it's more in the more modern sense of the word geek, really, rather than the original definition. But all I really mean by that is just that I'm sort of inordinately fascinated with dogs and behavior and learning, possibly to the point of obsession. And I really love, you know, like I love really digging into those sort of like microcosmic details of the behavior and really looking at how things can be broken apart atomically and how they're

all interconnected. And that's, you know, that's really sort of what I spend my Friday nights doing. Watching videos in slow motion and trying out stuff and just really like, okay, obsession is probably the right word. Yeah. So I'm guessing you didn't start out that way. How did you get into dog sports and training and kind of into being interested in all this? Yeah, that was, I'm not even really sure. That was kind of a complete accident. Um, I think like a lot of trainers, I had a pet dog who was a rescue, um, and he turned out to have more challenges than I knew how to handle. And so through the process of, of learning more about training and learning more about dogs to figure out how to help him so that he would stop biting me, um, I got kind of like hooked on, on this concept of training. And then somehow that turned into, you know, once I have a dog, had the dog that I could take for walks around the neighborhood and be relatively safe with, then, then I had to teach him to retrieve beer from a fridge. Um, that, that one in all honesty was also, was also to impress a boy. So, um, who then I then married. So it turned out to be worth it. Um, so after the, after the beer retrieve, then I was like, well, what can I teach him next? And, um, and so we tried a little bit of agility, but that was going to be a lot for him, um, behaviorally to, to manage, to handle that environment. And we kind of just ended up finding our way into an obedience, a UKC obedience trial. And I still don't even really remember exactly how that happened. Um, but there we were. And then I thought, well, that was kind of fun. What if I got a registered dog? And I started from scratch because of course, if you, if you buy a purebred dog or, or in my case, we're given a purebred dog, it's absolutely a guarantee that there'll be easy to train for sports. Right. Absolutely. That's, that's everybody's favorite line. I think that may be the first time I've ever heard somebody, um, get into dogs to impress a boy though. Well, I mean, I did get the dog for his, on his own marriage. It was the, it was the beer retrieve that was, was really, yeah, to really, to show him up. That's how, that's how I impress boys is I prove that I'm better than them at whatever the thing is. And it's actually kind of a funny story because, so my husband who I was dating at the time was a computer engineer and, and for, um, his project in college, his team was making a beer robot, a robot that would basically retrieve a beer. And I said that I could train my dog to do that faster than he could make a robot do it. And so I did. And I was right. I know. Right.

Exactly. And that's how it happened. I mean, I think that's a great story to, uh, to tell. Um, now I know that at FDSA, you, one of the, like your big series is the skill building series, the obedient skill building series. So I wanted to make sure we talk a little bit about that and the role of foundation skills overall. So do you mind talking for a moment, kind of how foundation skills turn into obedience exercises and kind of why they're so important to start out with? Sure. I think, I think the skill building series is kind of a, it's an interesting place to start because it's, it's not structured the way most people who are used to competition obedience training expect. So your, your average obedience club will typically have, uh, they'll have, you know, maybe some kind of introductory class, um, if you're lucky, or they may start right out with novice, but they'll have, you know, like a novice class where you learn how to do novice. And then you go to the dog show and you get your novice title. And then you start attending the open class and you go to the open classes and learn how to teach that. And you get your open title and then you go to the utility class and you learn how to do those exercises. Um, and that's really what most people are expecting when they're thinking about the, you know, sort of a training progression, but that's not how the experienced elite dog trainers actually train their own dogs. That doesn't, nobody, nobody who's really successful, um, in obedience teaches that way. So, or trains, trains their dogs that way at any rate. So when we designed the skill building series, the, the goal was really, or the, the, you know, our priority was let's set up a series of, of training progressions that actually mirror the way we would actually train our own dogs. So, you know, when I get a young dog and we're, we're, I intend to compete with them, that dog in obedience, I don't start with novice. I actually start with most of utility. So, you know, one of the first things that I teach a puppy is sit discrimination. And we get started with some of the beginning steps that are going to become go outs and directed jumping. And, um, and, and also, you know, things that, that will lead into healing. But, uh, but I'm not, I don't wait until I have the, the novice titles. We're actually, you know, mostly almost teaching it in reverse, right? So with the skill building series, we've done very much, we've done that. So like the skill building one class, we're giving you the building blocks for, for

sin discrimination, for directed jumping and go outs for the retrieve for signal, drop on recall, um, all of the jumping related exercise, all of the retrieving related exercises and getting, getting those, those first steps trained. And then as we move through the progression of the, of the classes, we, we build on those and we start to put them together, um, and the form sequences that become the exercises. So it's, it's a much more logical progression from a behavior standpoint, assuming that you're planning to take that dog into utility at some point. The way that I think about it is really like, well, sort of like Legos, right? So like if you, if you open up a box of Legos, which I was just playing with a minute ago, so that's what my, where my mind is. There's really only like five or six different types of Lego blocks, right? So they come in lots of different colors, but there's really only a couple of different shapes. There's the ones with like the two dots and then there's the ones with the four dots that are kind of square. And then there's the six and the eight and the 12. And using just those blocks, um, you can really build almost anything, right? Like anything from, from a millennium Falcon to a dining room table. Um, and it's just by putting those, those blocks together in, in different orders and, you know, repeating different ones. And I'm kind of getting lost with this metaphor. I don't know where I was going with it, but, um, yeah, yeah. Okay. So, so my point is that, that all of these exercises really only break down into kind of a handful of, of behavioral units that we can then sort of change the colors of, right? Like we can, we can put them together in different ways and we can modify them in kind of cosmetic ways, but there's not that many, um, there's not that much really to teach. And so if, if we concentrate on building these really strong ubiquitous units of behavior that go into all of these advanced exercises, well, the exercises don't, don't turn out to be quite that hard, right? So it's, um, the challenges in getting those really strong little individual units. And, and then I can build, you know, lots of different things, um, out of those. So, you know, a dog that really understands concepts of targeting, um, really understands the concept of stimulus control. I can teach a new behavior with a target, fade the target, get a cue on it really, really fast. And it's a strong behavior because they really understand how, how it works and how we're communicating that way. So, so it, it, it's a large part of, of what we're doing when, when we're talking about

those foundation skills is establishing these kind of, uh, you know, we're looking at kind of, I think kind of two categories, right? There's the, there's the movement skills that I need the dog to know how to use his body in a certain way. So I need him to be able to shift his weight back and forth and I need to be able to control, um, his body and then use that to form these positions and understand the communication strategies that we're going to use to communicate with each other. And once I have those things, I can build so much out of it and I get very excited. So sorry. Um, no, absolutely. So, so, so that's, you know, that's my goal. I want to take this like really mystical, challenging utility exercise or, or any of the obedience exercises. I think healing is more mystical than sin discrimination really, but that's, that's just me. And, and can I, you know, how can I break that down into its atomic units? Like, what are the, what are the things that the dog needs to know that then I put together that makes that healing picture, makes that sin discrimination picture. Those, those blocks, those little individual Lego blocks are really very achievable for, for anybody. And that makes it, it takes away the, that, that mysticism element, right? And it just, it, it makes it very actionable or practical training. Um, and then it also then makes it easy to put them together. And then when they break, take them back apart and fix it and put it back together again. I think that leads really naturally into the next question, which is how does having strong foundation skills really help when it comes to proofing and problem solving? When you get to that point where you're starting to prep for competition. First off, I don't love the word proofing, but I know you're using it and I'm okay with that. Um, I like words like fluency enhancement, um, just because it puts us in a little bit more of a positive reinforcement mindset. Um, but, but I understand what you're saying. So, so yeah, so having, you know, having those really strong units of behavior, what I, what I love about that is when I, when I think about training and exercise in sort of a modular way, then if something does break, it's really easy for me to separate out the broken piece and figure out what's, you know, what's wrong here. What, what does not understand? Cause the problem with teaching and it's just as much a problem when we're working, you know, human to human as gosh, we're working, you know, between species, human to dog is, is are, are they actually learning what I'm teaching? And the answer is not always yes.

So, so, you know, when we start putting together more increasingly complex, uh, behaviors and, and, and chains of behaviors and sequences, we'll often find out that, that no, actually what I was laying down is not what he was picking up and I need to figure out where that miscommunication happens and what I need to do to clarify that. Or is there a legitimately missing skill here? You know, just from a mechanic standpoint, my dog can't do the thing. Um, when I've gone through the thought process, the mental process of breaking that complex sequence into individual behavioral components, then that really saves a lot of time when I need to go back and kind of debug, right? So like, what, why is this, what is wrong here? Um, and I can check, I can pull it out and I can say, okay, is unit A? Nope, looks great. Unit B looks great. Unit C, absolutely perfect. Unit D, oh gosh. Oh, this isn't, this isn't right. It's all right. This is where I need to, to spend my time. Um, so it really, it, it really saves a lot of time because I've done all of that thinking in advance, right? Well, during, during the original training process. Uh, I mean, the, the behaviors are always functioning as behavioral sequences. That's not something that we've invented. It's has a lot more to do with our approach for how we're thinking about it and how we go about thinking, uh, teaching it, um, that has the advantage. Mm-hmm. So to take that and kind of, um, I don't want to take it from conceptual to practical, but kind of to take that idea just to that next step, is there a common problem that students run into again and again, where maybe you can kind of talk us through having strong foundation skills might help? Like, so the vast majority of, of problem solving, um, issues that, that people bring to me, um, come down to exactly that thing. Like there's a, there's a piece, there's one of those components that was not well understood that the, the, you know, the human part of the team thought they had taught and the dog was not learning exactly what the human thought that they were teaching. And in fact, I, I've, I've dropped the term problem solving or troubleshooting from my, uh, from my workshop materials just because it, it, again, it often, it so often puts us into that, into that mind space, which then makes it really hard to, um, to take a proactive approach to, to, to the training, um, when we're trying to come up with a training plan. But, but, you know, that's, so, so really common example that I'll get all the time. Um, we get it online, I get it in person. Um, so it's a drop on recall. It's a really common one.

Um, it's, it's, you know, relatively easy to squeak through, you know, like you're novice and then you get into open and there's a really big monster on that drop on recall and catches a lot of teams and a lot of teams struggle with it. And so people coming to the dog is, you know, classically they're not dropping when I call him or he's dropping very slowly or he's creeping forward, um, or he sits or he just stands and stares at me. And, and it's a, it is a complex exercise. There's, there's a lot going on there, both biomechanically and behaviorally with that exercise. We give a cue, come, and then we interrupt that behavior with a cue to do something completely different. Suddenly stop and lay down, which is weird. And so there's, there's a lot of, a lot of stuff that can go on there and, and it's a fairly complex training process. And when we have that kind of complexity that opens a window for a lot of emotional problems, um, when the people get frustrated and the dog gets frustrated and confused. And so there can be a whole lot of baggage there. And what often it comes down to is that, uh, you know, we start peeling away the layers and digging on what's actually broken here is it turned out the dog didn't actually have stimulus control on the down itself. Right? So, um, the, the handler thought, when I say down, the dog understands to lay down. And of course we're kind of on thin ice from a cognitive science standpoint, when we talk about what dogs know and what dogs understand, but we're, we're going to go with it. And, and what frequently has turned out to be the case, um, like we could read a book about it is the handler has taught the down, um, with some kind of lure or prompt, nothing wrong with that. That's often how I teach it myself. Right. But as part of the training process, if we're using some kind of physical gesture to teach the dog to lay down and it's assuming that it's not a legal one that we can use in the ring, which in the case of a food lure, of course you can't. And under no circumstances for the drop on recall, can you step towards the dog, put your hand in front of his nose and push point towards the ground. Right. That's not a valid two, uh, in any venue that I compete in. So most of the time we transfer that either to a hand signal and the classic hand signal of course is the, you know, one hand straight over hand head, like a traffic cop, uh, or verbal down plots, whatever. And so we have to do some kind of fading of the prompt or lure, um, that, that extra illegal physical gesture, which often involves some amount of dropping of the head and shoulders

towards the down towards the ground and, or into the dog's personal space, which is a really common way to teach, to teach a drop is we use a little bit of that spatial pressure to push into the dog space, which causes the dog to lay down. And then we, we go through the steps of fading that. And then hopefully we're now completely still and quiet with our body language. We can stand completely neutral, say down and the dog hits the dirt, right? What often happens is the handler thinks that's, that's the process that's happened. But what's actually occurred is that the handler's continuing to do some amount of gesturing with the upper body, either at the same time as they say down or even just before it. And then they get in the ring, they say, come when the dog is 25 feet away, they say down without that little ducking movement of the head and shoulders that has become the functional cue for the dog. And then of course there is no down because you did not give the same cue that you've been giving in training. And classic way to solve that is, well, you call the dog and while they're coming towards you, you say down, if they don't down right away, you lean forward, step into them with or without some amount of intimidation. And then perhaps the dog downs and you can say, good boy, and you can repeat it. Well, we can't do that in the ring. So still doesn't solve the problem in the ring. And, and the, what really the problem really is, is that original piece of the behavior, the down is not actually on the cue that the handler thinks that the dog should be responding to. So for problem solving that you then break that piece out and go back and work on just that piece, right? Right. So what, you know, what we would do to test it then is, you know, well, let's try, just stand there and, and give your cue for down. And so like 99% of the time, if we have the handler across her arms, look at the ceiling and say down, the dog just looks at them hopefully and wags his tail. Right. So I know you're talking to me, but I've never seen that cue before. And if you have them, you know, how would you normally handle this? And they will often, you know, drop their shoulders, lean forward, maybe point at the ground or gesture down. There's some upper body movement and the dog goes, oh, right, right, right. And lays down with or without, you know, emotional baggage, depending on what the last six months of that dog's life have looked like. Right. My standard protocol is, okay, so now we know this is, this is the situation. Let's just walk through the progression that you used to teach it originally.

And so, you know, a lot of times it's a food lure, which is fine. So we'll lure the dog. Great. That looks fantastic. Fade the lure. Now it's a gesture. Dog's still dropping really nicely. Start fading the gesture. The dog's continuing to drop. And then we'll get to some point in that progression where something's not quite right. Like either there's a little bit of a hesitation on the part of the dog or the behavior starts to degrade. Great. That's where we want to act. Right. We don't want to wait until we have a complete failure. We're looking for that first glimmer that there's a question mark. Is it a down? Did you still want me to lay down? And then we shore that up and then continue through the progression from there. So that kind of covers what my next question was going to be, which is what would your recommendation be to a student struggling with this issue? Is there anything you'd want to add there? I just want to make sure that since I sent you the questions in advance, you get a chance to say anything else that you may have wanted to say. I know I cheated. They sent me the questions in advance. I think the main thing is kind of my visualization that I would love to share with people is when we use words like foundation. And I think that's a completely valid word to use because we are building our exercises out of these critical supporting concepts. But we often kind of think of it as like a one and done. Like once I've trained these foundation skills, whatever you consider, you put these particular items in the foundation box and you're done and you tape it closed and then you keep going. And I think that that doesn't really do us any favors. And I really kind of prefer the learning model that will run across a lot in human learning and human sports, which is really more of a spiral staircase rather than like the house, right, with the bricks and then you just start building the house on top of the foundation. But like it's more like the spiral staircase because we're never really we're never done with these behaviors. Behaviors always are dynamic. It's it's you know, it's always we're always there is changing and we're always you know, they're always responding to their environment and processes of reinforcement and punishment and everything else. And so when I'm thinking about it and the way that I approach training and I think the way that a lot of people do, whether they're whether it's conscious or not is is I'm always moving up. I'm always moving forward. We're always progressing. But we're always also circling past these same concepts and refining them and strengthening

them and building on them. And sometimes, yes, you know, picking up gaps and filling them in as we as we discover them because dogs are really good at letting us know when we've left a gap in our training. And so, you know, so that's that's, you know, I think of that that spiral staircase is a really good visualization for me because I do spend a lot of time. So, you know, working on, you know, maybe positions like the mechanics of the positions. Well, I have all of my dogs have sit down and stand on cue, I think. And then it's not it's not a done thing. So we periodically are circling back around. And now what does my sit down and stand look like? Oh, how could I sharpen that up? What if I improve the latency on this one a little bit or or those mechanics are slipping? I need to make sure that my dog really planting his rear end before he pushes into that drop for before we get to the drop on recall. And there's always little things that we can keep keep improving and refining and strengthening as we continue to build on these behaviors and make bigger, more complex exercises out of them. Awesome. And I think that that spiral staircase, I actually haven't heard it used quite that way before. And I think that's really interesting and really helpful even for me to just kind of think through training in that way. Yeah, I invented it myself. I just thought of it. You can call it the Brannigan spiral staircase method. Deal. Done. I'll name the whole episode that. Perfect. So to round things out, I just have three more short questions for you. So to start, what's the dog related accomplishment that you are proudest of? Yeah. So now we're into the beauty pageant section of the interview. Okay. So it's not dog related, but it's kind of fresh in my mind since we've been out of school and home for a whole week. I mean, it's dog related, but not the dogs themselves. I would say that right now at this stage, life stage that I find myself in, I am most proud of how my daughter Harper has learned to invite the dogs for petting and attention rather than reaching out for them or grabbing them. That was something that we've worked really, really hard on for, well, four years now. And it's so awesome to watch it starting to solidify into this interaction that they have. And it started out, it's something we still coach her in. It was very, very coach. We used a lot of tag teach to initiate it because as a toddler, she's very grabby because she is a small primate infant person. And so I was like, we have to invite dogs to be petted. We don't reach out for the dog.

She learned to pat her knee, pat, pat, clap her hands, clap, clap. And then she opens up her hands, palms up and invites the dogs to come and greet her. And what is so cool is she pats, pat and they're like, okay. And when she opens her hand, they clearly make a choice of yes. And they come push their neck and chest into their hands and she can start petting them or they'll just do a beautiful, smooth head turn away. Very canine. Thank you. Not right now. And we're still working on handling disappointment. That's of course, that's something I as an adult continue to struggle with. But watching them communicate that smoothly when I'm cooking dinner and she's sitting there and she sees Gambit and she really wants to pet him because of course, who wouldn't? He's gorgeous. And she pat, pat, clap, clap, opens her hands. And he says, oh yes, please, finally someone to rub me. And he just melts into her hands and she pets him and it's so smooth and just seamless and natural. And that's something that, you know, when I see it, even though it's just one of those little daily miracles that kind of makes me like, oh, I get chills. That's awesome. You share lots of parenting and dog stories online and on Facebook and in other forums. So it's kind of neat. It's all the same thing. Completely the same. So what is the best piece of training advice that you've ever heard? Oh, that was easy. So, um, uh, Leslie Nelson, when in doubt, throw food. And I fall back on that all the time. Whenever there's a question, something weird comes up in a training session or, or, or even at home, I haven't, I don't know what to do right now. That was a very weird behavior and I have no idea how I should handle it. Throw a handful of food on the ground. And while there's gobbling the food, I can think about my solution. And it turns out that there's a whole lot of behavior problems out there in the world that we can solve in very practical ways by throwing a handful of food at them. Both to give ourselves five minutes to think and to give them something else to do. Exactly. All right. So last one, who is someone else in the dog world that you look up to? Oh, okay. So, of course, um, you know, I really admire Denise and, and Deb and Shade and all the other folks, uh, in the FDSA, uh, community outside of, outside of that. I, Ken Ramirez is really somebody that I admire a lot because, well, basically because he's perfect in every way. Um, so I'm, I'm definitely, um, a member of the Ken fan club. Uh, we should, we're going to get t-shirts maybe this year.

I hope he listens to this just so he can hear you, uh, call him perfect in every way. He knows. I've told him. That's awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Hannah. And thank you everybody else for tuning in. We'll be back in two weeks with Shade with Zelda to talk about location specific markers and being a top IPO competitor using our plus philosophies. If you haven't already, please subscribe on iTunes or the podcast app of your choice. And our next episode will automatically be downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzie Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzie for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty free by bensound.com. The track featured here is called Buddy. Audio editing provided by Chris Lang and transcription written by CLK transcription services. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training. Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music