E470: 페트라 포드(Petra Ford) - 대회를 위한 교감

dog is all in the dog is voluntarily letting go of the environment if the environment's very powerful the dog is at least voluntarily making a really big effort to ignore it and attend to me or the task at hand um yeah so that's what i would say is my definition you mentioned in there that you know sometimes it's possible for them to be looking at you but to have split attention or you know the way i usually think on think of that is you know the lights are on but no one's home they're kind of staring at you but not paying attention really um so you know how do you know when the dog is genuinely engaged versus when they're kind of in that you know staring blank phase oh yeah well if everyone could just borrow zayna you would know because she is the queen of staring right at me like she'll be right next to me looking at me eyeball to eyeball and thinking about something over there and i can tell because either her little nose like goes off to one just the tip of her nose goes off to one side and i'm like zayna and she's like fine or her ears or sometimes like you'll hear something and her eyes get really big and she's like i'm looking at you i'm looking at you but i know she's not paying attention so the way you know is it's no different than when you're having a conversation with someone right so you're sitting across the table from someone you're looking at each other you're talking that person's um phone's in their pocket or nowadays it's not even in their pocket but you know let's hope it's in their pocket it dings they got a text and you can see in their eyes that even though they are looking at you they're wondering who sent them the text right um or you're talking to someone all of a sudden you're like they're not even listening to me how do you know they're looking right at you you can see it you can see it in their eyes you can see it in their face so i can easily see it in my dog's faces i think the key to that is i am looking at them very intently all the time again because we're having a conversation right so i'm looking at my dogs moment by moment and saying are you with me and they either are or they're not right and then a few another minute or two moment goes by and i'm like you still with me you still with me maybe i'll hear something in the environment i'll look at my dog you still good right um and so i can tell by their eyes by their face by their expression predominantly i can also tell by how they respond to cues and by their work right so if their work is really crisp and sharp and fast and responsive they're fully paying attention right um i also kind

say all right if i train in my garage and nothing's going on and my dog's like really fast really brisk um and giving me a lot of energy and then let's say i go to a new building and their work is yeah it's flatter it's just not quite as energetic it's not quite as fast it's not quite as crisp well it's because their attention's split right um they're not able to give me everything they have because part of their brain is on the environment they're not fully engaged um so really it's very keen observation right um and not just of the dog's face um but also their behavior it sounds like then that it might look you know more than a little different i guess from dog to dog kind of you can do have to know your dog and what your dog's engagement looks like is that accurate i would say so but i still would say what what what they would have in common is um first of all you know consistent eye contact right um and consistent when like ears up kind of like body leaning towards you energy towards you and also like response to cues now if my dog in my living room and that's where i train all the time and i say sit and it responds slowly well then i don't expect it to respond quickly somewhere new but if it's responding very promptly and quickly to sit in my living room over a period of time then and i go somewhere else and it's not responding like that that's a difference right so if you see a difference then you could surmise that your dog is well then your dog is not fully engaged when you are thinking about training engagement is it is it like a skill that you think about building is it something that you look to kind of capture because the dog already offers it naturally to some degree is it both like how how would you classify it i mean honestly i teach it i start teaching it literally very young like seven weeks old right because it's just it's a trick right it's just initially it's just they're offering a behavior right um and then i just build on that slowly over time over time over time over time it has to be taught because look let's be we have to be very realistic right like i think a lot of people struggle with engagement and get very frustrated over it because it it sounds like or i think people have this idea that the dog should love us so much and we should have if we have a really great relationship with our dog then our dog is going to want to choose us well that's not realistic right because they're animals and what what the way they interact with their worlds like every day all the time is they look at things they smell things they listen to

things that's how they process their environment it's how they feel safe and the things that are very very inherently self-reinforcing to them are things in the environment right like motion smells sounds that's inherently very valuable so if my dog is out in the environment and the environment is giving them stimulation like that's valuable to them like on a scale of one to ten at a ten not for nothing me standing there i'll be lucky if i'm a three or four you know i don't know right if i have a reinforcer enforcer how valuable is it is it an eight or a nine because if it's a four or a five it's not going to outweigh the ten right so we have to make um our we have to build over time value for everything we do with the dog value within the reinforcement value with our communication we have to teach the dog if you give me your engagement it's going to be worth your while i'm going to make it worth your while and i'm going to build on that over time and then we can start working on you know okay when it just when here's a small distraction oh you ignored it look i'm going to give you a bigger reinforcement event and your dog starts to go oh it's worth my while to ignore that and give you my engagement and then you just have to build on it and i it's something that needs to be worked on forever because the reality is again the environment is highly either reinforcing or scary so for zeal the environment people were always like uncomfortable right so i had to work on that his entire career for zayna the environment is so inherently fascinating that i am always going to have to remind her and show her that i can offer something more valuable because if i don't or can't she's like i'm out you know i got i got this i can entertain myself over here um and then there's dogs you know everywhere in between but it's something that is taught and worked on forever so you kind of started to talk about this in there and i'd love to have you a little deeper you know what what is it that does make it so that a dog you know can or will choose their handler over everything else that's happening around them you know when you step in that competition ring you're not necessarily have those reinforcers so can you talk to that a little bit yeah so one huge piece that i talk about all the time is just clear communication right because as you know from a relationship right any relationship you're in um family members friends whatever if the communication is poor it's really frustrating and it the relationship struggles um if the communication's really clear

and you listen to that person right because as humans we're horrible dog listeners right we like to tell them what to do and then when they clearly give us information that they don't understand or they're confused or they're overwhelmed we don't hear it at all um so if we listen and the communication's good the dog is going because dogs naturally want to please us right um so that's huge then we have to make our reward events um reinforcing so sometimes people do things that they as humans think is reinforcing classic one is um now this is not every dog but a lot of dogs we're like wow we bend down and we pet them and the dog jumps away going dude don't do that please and we just keep doing it and so the dog's not finding that reinforcing so you think you're reinforcing the dog and the dog's like oh god she's gonna do that crazy stuff again like right yeah um so i have to say for my dog for this dog because it's very different for a lot of my dogs are different um what does this dog find reinforcing right and then i have to um also find things so for example for zesty um praise is okay for him but he likes motion so if i move i do motion games like i sidestep to the right and he dives into me um he loves that that's reinforcing for him so i build that in so i'll say yes that's his marker instead of just handing him a cookie i do the game i build that in and then i'll give him a cookie right so now i can use this motion game in the ring kind of as a reinforcer to bridge the gap right um i think with dogs confidence and knowing their right is self-reinforcing so zaina in the ring gets a kick out of doing a task and then she comes in and she leaps in front of me and she sticks her little chest out and she's like ha i did it and i did it really well right uh-huh and that's it she's feeling really good about herself um because she's like i did it i did it i did it right and she knows because she really understands her job again because the information's been really clear it's been trained really well it's been proofed really well and she's like look at me i did it and zesty's um like getting like that too like i recently i just showed him the other day and he did signals and he came flying in i was like oh god he's not even gonna like i didn't even think he was gonna stop in front like he just leaped up in the air and then he finally he did in the last second i was like he's gonna take me out because he's like me i did it right and he's like or they leap and give me extra bounces in their finish that i didn't ask for

because they're like so proud of themselves so if you build like a lot of confidence into your dog um then a lot of the behaviors and and i treat my individual behaviors like tricks right so my chains become a series of tricks then some of that stuff becomes self-reinforcing um and that's you know super valuable in the ring because the ring is you know very very challenging yeah so dogs they really want to be right they really want to make us happy um we just have to a lot of times like my biggest challenge always is how do how do i become a better communicator with this individual dog right because if i can communicate well i would almost say that's like three quarters of the game yeah yeah it's not easy though of course not if it was you know everybody would be out there kicking butt but um so let's say handler's been working on this you know they're getting pretty good engagement pretty consistently in training how do you know when a dog or a team is ready to take that engagement you know outside of like their training facility or what have you and into that real world and really kind of the harder distraction levels like how do you judge that so what i've been doing now is i um so i would say not even up till not even that long ago and i i did this myself and taught it was we teach the behaviors really well in an environment the dog knows right and then we take it elsewhere starting with something like maybe not super crazy distracting and then build from there but i have i would say in the last maybe year and a half two years change that and seen some pretty phenomenal results and if you think about it it makes sense if i train my dog and teach it the exercises and engagement in what i would call let's say like a clean environment right um then my dog learns in this context i do these behaviors then one day i go okay you know these behaviors now now we're going to add some distractions and the dog's like whoa you completely changed the context right and that's hard because dogs are not good at generalizing so what we're doing now is and i'm having my students do is take their puppies and i'm like just start training them out wherever you are bring them to class with your other dog bring you take your other dog to the parking lot or the store you bring the puppy um so my training partner like we set up all kinds of crazy proofing scenarios and when we train in the building um so we'll um put random items out we'll have toys moving around we'll change the picture all the time right

we just train the puppy there um when we're training the puppy i would have my old dog out and my old dog would be running around or i'd be doing retreats with him so the dogs are learning to just um focus around distractions right out of the gate it's been absolutely fascinating within like what i would consider a very relatively short amount of time like a year old um some of these dogs are going they see somebody coming or they see it or they notice a distraction is in the area and in response to that they immediately like give their um owner intense concentration so that distraction is cuing engagement so the dog goes oh it's a distraction that means i give you engagement um it's it's absolutely amazing and these dogs are really resilient really confident um and their engagement is phenomenal so i think that the sooner you get your dog exposed to distractions now again not overwhelming a dog i'm not saying take a dog that's just learning engagement and put them in the middle of the hardware store on a saturday but out on the part out of the far end of the parking lot right or a different training building or like i said wherever you're going to go with your other dogs and they just learn to work in those environments so i was going to ask kind of how you begin generalizing those skills but it sounds like a lot of it is just taking whatever you're working on on the road is that accurate yeah so i mean if the dog is just learning engagement per se right where like they're just learning that if i look at you i get the cookie if i look at you for a little longer i get the cookie um then that's what i would do in the new environment but yes whatever i'm teaching my dog now keeping in mind i may need to simplify things a little bit right um or if my dog's learning how to heal at home and i try to do it in environment and it can't okay well can you do tricks then instead and the dog's like oh yeah i can do that cool that's great we can do that or can you just do some basic engagement games great that's good enough but you're at least you're working on something and you're working on it in this distracting environment um i think it depends on the dog's age the dog's um you know how much training it's had i think if you take a puppy and you're good with your training you should be able to take it wherever you want and just teach it whatever you whatever you're working on wherever you go right if you have a dog that you've been training a while and they have not been to new environments well then it's

going to be a big change for them you're probably going to have to simplify what you ask them to do right um you're probably not you're not going to get the same quality of work or they're not going to be able to work at the same level when you go somewhere distracting so just lower your expectations ask them for um work if they can't do it ask for something easier can't do that ask for something even easier there will be something they can do you know and then um i just look to get a little bit of success a little bit of focused work and um and i'm good i'm out for a dog that's kind of been through a lot of this you know during a competition day are there key moments when you kind of check in on your dog's engagement like moments when you really just want to make sure okay is my dog still engaged are we still on the right track i never break engagement so my contract with my dog is when we i will do acclimation that's huge and very very important and it's important that we do enough acclimation um recently i've discovered that the majority of people are not spending enough time on acclimation right and so there's like okay here's your acclimation time and then they're cueing the dog to work and the dog's trying to work but it can't because it didn't have enough time to um you know it didn't have enough time to satiate on the environment and then let go of it so they need enough acclimation time um once my dog looks at me and says okay i'm ready to work i am engaged with my dog my dog is engaged with me and that doesn't end unless we're done working and i say we're done and you go in your crate or i have a cue where i put my dog down um and they lay on their hip and that's just kind of like a standby cue right like hang tight i need to get something or hang tight i need to look at something but other than that we are connected 100 of the time so i'm looking at them they're looking at me i'm focused mentally on them they are mentally focused on me can you you mentioned acclimation in there can you just kind of define what you're talking about or kind of describe it for folks yeah so um you kind of you have a couple of options i prefer motion right um so my dogs are on a cue that they've been taught that means walk next me on a shark leash bless you thank you um because that's a safety issue right like if i'm at a trial and there's chaos going on i want my dog close to me so they walk next to me um but it's not healing and they and we just walk around and they can look to their heart's content um at some point

my dog checks in and says hey um looks at me like okay i'm good and then i'll ask the dog all right can you work let's see we start our warm-up if the dog can start my warm-up we're good to go if the dog starts it but like keeps losing engagement then i'm like yeah you're not ready we need to walk around a little more now for some people they prefer to stand still maybe for their dog that works better and the dog just looks around i don't like the dogs to like stare at something because a lot of times that's if they're doing that for an amount of time it's self-reinforcing like if i let zayna stare at something interesting she'd never come off that because she's like oh that's fascinating wow right so i that's why i prefer to keep moving with my dogs but if for some people standing that works fine again it's the dog takes in the environment until the dog says i'm good with that right which means separately you have to teach your dog how to offer engagement right so we teach that separately so the dog knows how to do it so basically the end product is i walk into a new location or i walk into the trial building i put my dog on cue i say with me we walk and at some point my dog looks at me and um will start offering me behaviors at that point i know they're ready to get started um but for you know especially early on and for some dogs it could take 20 minutes right over time it gets shorter and shorter i mean my dogs literally now will walk into like a you know a busy hardware store look around like for 30 seconds if that and then look at me and go all right i got it let's go let's start working right um but at the beginning it takes you know it can take a really long time yeah you mentioned earlier uh that you know kind of once your dog is checked in you kind of stay checked in as well can you talk more about how important it is you know how important our handling is in creating and keeping that engaged dog and maybe you know what are the do's and don'ts when we're talking about that for competition yeah so that's incredibly important right um i can't tell you how many times um i see the um trainer looks away the dog goes oh you looked away i'm gonna look away not because they're being naughty but they're like i guess we're looking around right and then they look back and then they're like hey dog what are you doing and i'm like uh you broke the connection first right uh-huh so again it's a contract how can i say to my dog hey you must look at me if i'm not paying attention to them that's

completely unfair that's not a partnership it's not a team right um when i when people start doing this they're like oh my gosh it's really hard like my head hurt it's yeah so imagine how hard it is for the dog it is hard for us to maintain focus for that long then they do it at home then they go to a new location and they're like oh my gosh i kept getting distracted i couldn't concentrate i said exactly this is what your dog is going through but so just like the for the dog it's a skill for us humans right that we have to learn and build and develop and get better and better and better at right um like there'll be at a store and they'll hear a noise and they look and the dog looks and i'm like what stop looking over there look at your dog right and also too like i how do i know what my dog is doing or thinking or experiencing and how do i know what information to give my dog if i'm not looking at like i like i like how do i know i don't so i have to be looking at my dog so it is 100 percent like i whether i'm giving a seminar or teaching i will a hundred percent i'm fanatical about the handler it's your job it's your obligation you must stay focused on your dog right and i understand it's hard and it's challenging but you have to work on that right and you can't say to your dog hey dog what are you doing if you're not doing it right and video is great for that because can't lie right if your dog looked away and you backtrack your video four seconds and you looked away first well we know where the problem came from yeah that's funny you know and if you watch people in the ring like dogs look they have no idea what is happening like they don't understand oh this is a trial this is important there's a cue there's a title like all they're doing is following cues and context right so they're in this building they're in this ring the strangers in the ring with them um you know you're giving if you suddenly disconnect from the dog i see this all the time like look away or leave just walk away and the dog's like ah wait for me and the second the handler disconnects watch the dog's face the dog immediately gets concerned immediately the dog's like ah what happened you know because in that moment you left them adrift you're assuming they know what to do next like oh just follow along no the dog's like wait give me a cue tell me what to do and connection is also an emotional anchor like i'm supporting my dogs like i'm looking at my dogs and i'm like it's good you're okay right so like when i did rally the other day my dogs have

been doing obedience for many years the day before we were in that building we did utility the next day i go in the ring and we're doing rally i start doing the course and each both of my dogs same thing at some point they're looking at me like what is happening like what are we even doing right and in that moment i'm able to look at my dog and and i said i'm like it's okay you're fine good boy good girl come on let's go if i'm not really paying attention i'm leaving them hanging right and they're coming along like oh god oh god i'm unsure i don't know right and i'm looking at them i'm like come on it's all right let's go you're good right and you can see that when i do that they're like okay all right i got i i'll do what you say even though this is really weird um so that's the part where i'm saying like it's a conversation and so it's my job to support them and it's the same in the ring with obedience even if i can't say anything to them many many times my dogs are like oh and i'm looking at them and in my head i say to them it's it's good you're fine yep you're right you've got this come on keep going and they absolutely can read that and they're like okay and then they're fine so we're talking about this at least in part because you're offering a six-week class specifically on engagement in um august enhanced engagement building competition skills can you talk a little more about the class kind of what you'll cover what you want maybe who might want to sign up yeah so um basically i you know theoretically you should have some basic engagement training on your dog and now we're going to take it to the next level um we're going to build it with we're going to look at it within the exercises longer chains with definitely with distractions you're definitely going to be getting out of the house and out and about having said that every class i ever teach has people with a wide range of abilities so i know i'm going to have probably one or two people that don't have a lot of engagement on their dog yet and it's fine i'm i'm totally fine with you know giving people whatever they need um but basically we definitely want to look we're going to look at you know taking engagement to the next level for sure getting you out of the house because that's so so important um it takes a long time for the dogs to generalize engagement and if you're just training at home or in your training building and then you ask them to trial they're never going to be able to do it it's just too hard and it ends up being really fun like people will a lot of times

be hesitant at the beginning they'll be nervous they'll be unsure they'll be uncomfortable but very quickly within a week or two they love it you know um it's super fun and the dogs like it um they like variety right it's interesting um we'll do a lot of games um we'll be looking at you know the things i talked about a little bit earlier like maintaining engagement i'm sorry um using reinforcers that you can use in the ring right so that you're reinforcing your dog for staying engaged and you're helping keep your dog engaged um maintaining engagement at a distance right when you leave your dog because that's super challenging i mean it's one thing to have your dog when they're right next to you or right in front of you but when you leave them that's really challenging as well so um we're also going to be looking at that i to me this is one of my favorite classes engagement because really the majority of people know how to train the behaviors right so whether it's obedience or rally the dogs know how to do the behaviors the signs the exercises um it's engagement that's what the majority of the teams are missing and really even for me like with my dogs like if my dog is engaged the quality of their work is good my dog is not engaged doesn't matter how well or highly trained the dog is they're not fully focused their work is not going to be that good any uh kind of final thoughts or anything else you kind of want people to know if they're listening and considering signing up um so i think that all dogs can have really good engagement um it's it's we have to understand that it is hard for the dog and why it's hard but i think if we understand that it makes more sense and then the fact that we need to mindfully teach it and give the dog information and explain to the dog you know how to do it and build it up over time like it makes sense and we're not just kind of fumbling around go and feeling bad because we're not interesting enough right or our relationship our quote-unquote relationship is not strong enough um or our dog just doesn't like us enough um or sometimes people will say oh their dog is environmental nah i look at the dog now that's just a normal dog saying i like the environment right because they do i mean if i sit on my patio at my house my dogs aren't sitting there staring at me they're looking around um they're listening they're smelling they're looking at things because they're just being dogs so um we can all have really good engagement and when you do to me that is magical right like that is to

me the most beautiful the most enjoyable thing is like when i'm working my dog and my dog's like giving me all they have and they're you know consciously tuning out the environment like that that to me is the is my holy grail it's my goal when training is can i have that for my entire run in the ring because if i have that then that really is like a dance you know like it's just the two of us together um no one else exists and it it's it really is it's beautiful i love it it's my favorite thing oh i love that and i think that's a great note for us to kind of wrap up on so thank you so much for coming on the podcast thanks for having me as always always a pleasure definitely a pleasure on my part too and thanks to all of our listeners and our viewers for tuning in we'll be back next week this time with julie simons to talk about handling your nose work dog if you haven't already subscribe to the podcast you can do that in itunes the podcast app of your choice or over on youtube so you never miss an episode today's show is brought to you by the fenzy dog sports academy special thanks to nise fenzy for supporting this podcast music provided royalty free by bensound.com the track featured here is called buddy audio editing and video editing provided by chris lang thanks again for tuning in and happy training you