E134: 수잔 클로시어(Suzanne Clothier) - "관계 중심 훈련"

I really like to teach stupid tricks to my dogs. You know, put your chin on the ground or, I don't know, each dog has their own idea of what constitutes a fun or stupid trick. Mostly, yeah, it's a nice place to be a dog. There's not a lot of pressure on you. And magically, when I take them out in public, people always say they're very well-behaved, which makes my husband and I laugh really hard because it's not like we put tons of time into them. But they have nice foundations. They were brought up by me, obviously. And yeah, they're taught basic good manners. So it's quite deceptive. They look like they know a lot more than they actually do, which makes me look good. But it's really because they're exceptionally nice dogs. Hey, a little bit of foundation sometimes goes an awful long way. Oh, yes. I rest on that every day. Yep. So how did you originally get into dogs? I got into dogs by getting into the neighbor's yard and stealing them. That's literally the truth. My mother claimed that the only reason I learned to speak was so that I could ask for a pony. And I did so repeatedly until I got one at 24. But yes, no joke. Any animal within my reach was Sarah Games. So my mother learned when the neighbors knocked on the door and said, do you have our dog? The answer was not no. The answer was let me go check my daughter. And she would often find me in the closet or someplace with the dog. And she remembers me, I don't know, maybe four or five years old, trying to train like four or five dogs at once. All to do a sit stay. And she said she felt really bad because obviously I wasn't going to be super successful. Most of the dogs wanted to go home, not hang out with me. But yes, I was just grimly determined to achieve that. So I don't know what kind of five-year-old, like, set yourself that task of not one dog on a sit stay, but five. So she just left me to it since the dog seemed agreeable. And the first time I got paid to do something with the dog, I was eight. And I was going to go play with that dog anyway. And they said, we'll give you a quarter if you'll take him for a walk and brush him. I was like, what? Like, not that the money impressed me, but the concept was hysterical. That's something I was going to, like, sneak out of my bedroom to do anyhow, no matter what, that I could get paid for that. So that stuck in my head. Wait a second. So, yeah, most of my life, either stealing people's dogs or figuring out where the local horses were or, yeah, if there was an animal, that's where I would be. Live nativity scenes, they always knew where I would be.

I was trying to get there with the donkey and the sheep. Absolutely. So, yeah, I think I was just born to this. And this is quite literally, other than one two-day stint as a temporary secretary, which was really not good. Other than that and animal artwork, this is all I've ever done my whole life is animals. That's awesome. So as somebody who's kind of been in the industry for a long time, have you always been a positive trainer? If not, can you talk a little bit kind of about what got you started down that piece of your journey? Oh, I don't think anyone who's my age started as a positive trainer. I think. I think. I just turned 61. So I will say that coming up, the only stuff that was available pretty much was Keeler. And that was any class you went to with a dog. You know, it was choke chains and corrections. That was just commonplace. It was taken for granted. So what I found was two things that I think are worth thinking about. One is because I came from a background that had a lot of physical abuse and violence, it was familiar. Like I was, I was uncomfortably and acutely aware of just how fast a fist could pop out and, you know, give you a nice big fat lip for sassing off. Not that, you know, I stopped sassing off because I was one of those kids that if I had the dog probably would have been euthanized because I just wouldn't stop poking the bear. So that was a common part of life and it was all around me. It wasn't like, you know, I was some anomaly in the neighborhood, you know, had the only stepdad who smacked her around. Not, not true. I mean, that was quite common back then. And even within the church teachings, you know, spoil the rod, spare the kid or spare the rod, spoil the kid, however that justification goes. So I had that like societally all around me. So that did not seem odd. And yet there was another part of me that was really deeply in tune with animals always and forever. Again, my mother remembers maybe I was four and it was in the winter after breakfast. We lived down in Virginia, so it was cold, but it wasn't super, super cold, but cold enough to turn a four-year-old's, you know, lips blue. And I had a pena in each hand and was simply sitting on the back stoop, motionless, waiting for the squirrel to take the food out of my hand. And again, she thought, should I interrupt the kid? She's going to, you know, get pneumonia. But then she thought, what kind of child sits motionless for that long just so that she can have an interaction with an animal? And that's, so that was the driving force, right?

That made me think there's, there's another way of being with animals. There's a way of being with animals that I am drawn to and instinctively do. And then there's what I'm taught is this is how you train. And then, of course, I spent most of my youth from 12 on involved in the horse world. And if you want to see where there's anything but positive, put some poorly trained large prey animals who, you know, run screaming chicken littles, not a story. And some inexperienced kids who are in charge of them. And, wow. Yeah. The punishment is every which way from Sunday because there's a great deal of fear and pain involved. So the weird part is I became a professional because I was so damn good at delivering corrections quickly and effectively and in a timely manner that the animals, for the most part, still liked me and were happy to work with me. They understood the message of the correction. And, yeah, isn't that, isn't that the irony that people are like, wow, you know, you're really good at that? Like, huh. So when you think backwards, it's, it's just beyond ironic to me that one of the reasons I, I was really, like, I can't say pushed. I was already going that way. That is really encouraged by many and impressed many about my professional capacity or potential was because I was really good at delivering corrections. I was also really good at getting animals to trust me and work with me and, you know, break things down for them. But, yeah. No. Not always a positive trainer. And the bigger that gap got between that quiet place where I would lay on the ground and put bird seed in my hand, hoping the birds would eat out of my hands, which they will if you do it long enough. Walking around with, with animals that other people really struggled with and I, I just understood them. The bigger that got between that and the, quote, professional training stuff I was supposed to know and apply. Yeah. Yeah. That, that started me pushing towards why, why is there this big difference? I don't like this. I like the way I am when I'm with my animals. I don't necessarily like the way I am when I'm training my animals. So I just started looking for ways to bridge that really big gap. So you sort of kind of played around with things until you started to find, find methods that felt better to you or was it more than that? Yeah. I wanted to, I wanted to get rid of, I wanted to get rid of the resistance, right? So resistance is communication. So I really love when I look at a horse or a dog or any other animal and they look back at me and there's an agreement between us.

And then we both try to figure out what the heck we're doing. And it, you know, we could spend the whole hour just discussing all the amazing moments I've had with animals where, yeah, the value of that kind of relationship just was so powerful and so memorable. But there was not a whole lot to see. So what I kept looking for was where's the resistance? Where am I getting kickback from the animal? Where does that light in their eyes go out? Or hopefully I could catch it before it went out and it was just dimmed or they moved away from me. I remember at one point when I was working my shepherd in open. And so I'm working with a retriever over the high jump and, you know, I'm a moron. I'm 23. I think I know what I'm doing. I'm a complete idiot. I'm quite sure that I'm, you know, an absolute smashingly great trainer. And so I throw the dumbbell and he goes over the jump. And then just by way the jump was positioned, I couldn't see him for a bit because that was the old 36-inch jump for a shepherd, right? And he disappeared. And I'm just like, what the hell? And I go and he's laying on the porch and I can still see his face. He's just laying there looking at me like, nope. I'm like, you get back here. We are still working. He's like, yep, nope. And he just, he's like, I'm not doing it. Like, you've lost your mind. I don't know what the hell you're talking about. This is boring. I don't like being drilled. And no. And I remember being really, really angry with him. And then I was really angry with myself. I'm like, so this dog who adores me and who I adore beyond all words. Yeah. I just sent him into a complete retreat away from me. And for probably 15 minutes, he's like, nah. First, you'd have to catch me. I'll be over here still with you. But I actually don't want to talk to you. And it reminded me of moments in human relationships where you think, I really muck that up. And that is not what I intended to have happen. And I've got someone I really care about quite upset with me. So, yeah. Where's the resistance? And in my classes, where's the resistance? Because, you know, everybody's in top beginner classes. You're aiming at your AKC novice title. It's like, I don't know why. Because most of the world really doesn't need their dog holding a stand stay. They don't at all for any reason. No one's going to leave their dog and go out of sight. And, you know, it's just so stupid. Most people didn't care if they healed. They just wanted their arms not to be dislocated out of their sockets. So I kept thinking, like, you know, typical young trainer. I blame my clients.

Like, if you just worked on this, this wouldn't be a problem. And I thought, what? If everybody's having a problem, either I just have the world's stupidest set of students, which I was pretty sure was not true, I had really nice students. Or I'm setting these people and their dogs up to fail, so I just started taking things out of my curriculum, like the Stanford exam. Like, there's no need in God's greeners for a dog to learn that, unless you're going to compete. And you sure don't need to learn it in your first class. It's just stupid. It's like, can you stand quietly with some support on request and with some help? And the dog said yes. I'm like, good. That's all he actually ever needs to do, unless you're going to compete. So I just started to become aware of, yeah, where's the sticking points and why is it sticking? And then just questioning, why does it even have to be there? And that extended to agility. It's like, you know, dogs do jump over things, and they jump around things, and they can duck under stuff. The one thing I've never seen any animal in the wild do, ever, is weave poles. I just, I haven't. I've never seen an animal, like, out in the woods say, I know what I'll do. I'll go from tree to tree to tree and bend myself in very sharp and uncomfortable ways. Yes. And I started to think, like, why is it even in the curriculum? Like, why? Yeah, it could be an advanced skill if you like fancy tricks, but it's not natural. And so dogs found it difficult, especially dogs that didn't get concepts very well or physically challenged, so I just kept peeling it down further and further. I had the blessing of working with a truly superb dressage trainer who, unfortunately, died very young, and he was all about finding the points of agreement. He was about really listening to the horse, and he was also just an exceptionally good instructor. So he flew in the face of what most of my other riding instructors had taught me, and the results were just delightful. I mean, he got me where I wanted to go, so it was very sad when he died. It gave you a chance to kind of think about how you could apply that concept in other ways, huh? That's always true. I mean, there's nothing I do with horses that I don't think about with dogs or vice versa or any other animal. There's always parallels, especially with social animals, right? I know when we got our cockatoo, my husband is actually really brilliant about moving cattle. He did not grow up with cattle. We got our first cows 20 years ago, and he knew nothing about cows or any large animals, for that matter.

But he developed a really nice sense of how to move stock with just the smallest amount of pressure, just a slight lean towards them, and he could recognize before they moved a foot that they were feeling pressure. But when we got the cockatoo, he just, like, blew right past everything the poor bird was saying and sent him, you know, shooting to the back of his cage, going, lordy, lordy, we're all going to die. Yeah. And he's like, I just don't understand why this bird doesn't like me. I was like, so if he was a cow, and he did what he just did, what we just said, he's like, oh, too much pressure. I'm like, great. Treat him like a little two-legged, white-feathered cow. And that's all he needed. And then he's like, oh, you mean so, like, when he leans? I'm like, yeah. So, like, when he leans away from you, he's saying, I'm already feeling the pressure. So, that's been, yeah, one of my great pleasures is helping people draw from stuff they already know with their own lives and their own relationships with humans and their own experiences as humans. They know most of what they need to know. You know, technical tricks aside, most of what they need to know about accomplishing healthy relationships, they have a lot of the answers themselves. They just don't know that they do. You just kind of have to think about it the right way. Mm-hmm. Yep. So, you mentioned, you know, when you got started, there wasn't really a thing for positive training, right? It didn't really exist. So, you kind of got to see it as it developed and as it evolved. You know, I'd love to hear your perspective on what some of the biggest changes have been kind of as it's evolved and, you know, maybe how your own training has evolved or changed over the years, too. So, it was very interesting watching, and I can almost look at my bookshelves and you can see the progression of where we started. You know, it was Winn Strickland and Conrad Most and Keillor and probably people listening to this webcast or podcast. They may not even know who those people are. It's always educational. I'll go back and read old stuff. But that was pretty much compulsion-based. There was still a lot of sense in it, though. Like, you know, most talks very clearly about the dog needs to understand. And the same is true for Keillor. Keillor was not a, you know, choke them into it until they comply. That was not his gig. Use corrections to make things clear. And whether we like it or not, negative reinforcement is a very powerful quadrant. Whether we choose to use it or not is another story.

But it's very successful in the hands of people that are good at what they do. And it's out there in ways we don't even think about. So it was really interesting watching. And I think one of the big, you know, like Campbell, when Bill Campbell's book came out, that had a different flavor. So that was interesting to see. And I still don't agree with a lot of what he said. You know, the big jolly routine. If someone ever came up to me when I was really upset and said, like, it's okay. Don't worry, Suzanne. It's all fun. And I've got cookies and I brought two cake, which is your favorite. I'd be like, you know what? That still doesn't change the fact that I'm standing on the edge of the cliff. And that really freaking scares me to take the coffee and the cheesecake and the cookies and step back. Yeah. So there's some good stuff in there. And then Karen Pryor came along. And that was also very interesting. I thought even from the get-go that it had some limits. But I also knew that in my experience, people really, really desperately, they want recipes. Because real life and real training is chock full of paradoxes. It is chock full of it doesn't actually go like that. And there's many, many complexities and nuances that trainers would often prefer to forget. It's why recipes are very popular. You do this and you do this and you do this. But what I found was when people did that, they sometimes forgot the animal. So it's a useful tool. I think the emphasis on behaviorism has had some benefit in that people are a little bit more aware of learning theory. And how operant conditioning works and classical conditioning. But we seem to forget that that's not the end-all, be-all of life. It's simply a model for understanding behavior. And I don't find it particularly fulfilling. It's a tool. It's all it is to me. It is not a lifestyle or philosophy. So one of the things that I saw as a kickback was what's called a model shift. So, you know, it's the typical, I'm going to take on this new shower. So I'm throwing out baby and bathwater. It's not uncommon. You know, so it's kind of like remodeling the bathroom of your brain, I guess. Yep, out with the baby, out with the bathwater. So people threw away a lot of stuff that still has great value. And they took it to an extreme. And it's become a very divisive world in dog training. And people often ask where I stand. It's like, hmm, my own two feet. Yeah, I don't think a dog will melt if you say no to him. No more than I think the person at the drive-thru of McDonald's is going to, you know, storm out and quit or pass away if I say no. No fries, thank you.

It's just information. And so I'm not like this part where people have gotten so dogmatic, pun intended, that somehow, again, they're forgetting the dog or they're forgetting the relationship. So you can't really build a relationship with clicker training. And clicker training is simply a tool. So what happens in the training process can build a relationship, but not necessarily. I know tons of dogs that know tons of stuff. And the relationship with their people is still pretty badly skewed and uncomfortable for both parties. So that's the kind of dogs that get brought to me a lot. They have immense skills under their belt. But both handler and dog are looking at each other kind of annoyed, kind of irritated, kind of frustrated, and kind of disconnected because stuff is not what relationships are made of. So I would like to see the world calm down a little bit. And I think I would like to see behaviorism not be as fervently espoused as it is in human psychology. It is not as popular as it is in the world of dog training. We're about 15, 20 years behind human psychology. I would suggest people go back to thinking about individual temperament. And if they want to read about this, then go way back to, like, Thomas and Chess or Jerome Kagan, who did really great work in temperament and children. They got run over by the behaviorists who, you know, their underpinning is, give me a kid of any age, tell me what you want him to be, and I'll train him to be it. There's an arrogance in behaviorism that really makes my blood run cold. It's like that's, all of us would say, like, oh, so you're going to turn me into an accountant? It's like, yeah, I've got a clicker and lots of money, so I shall make you an accountant, not a dog trainer. All of us would be like, excuse me, that's not who I am. But, yeah. So sometimes revisiting the underpinnings of a philosophy are a good way to suss out what biases or unspoken assumptions are at work. And I'm not a fan of recipes. I'm a fan of really understanding the individual dog and then that individual relationship. It seems almost like we started on one end of a pendulum and swung really, really far to the other end and we still haven't quite settled, you know? Yeah. And I think I talked to someone who was in public health. You know, that was their career. And when I said, I don't know how long ago, I've been doing limited vaccines since when vets warned me that all my dogs would die. And, you know, I've been doing acupuncture since 82 when it was just quackery. And now it's, of course, a board certification.

So I'm often ahead of the curve, which isn't always funny because, yeah, there's a lot of people who just think you're nuts until it's proven. And then it's like, well, I've been doing that for two decades, but all right, catch up. So I'm willing to do that always. But one of the things she said was I said, how long until it becomes standard practice that we're not over-vaccinating? And I can't even say how long I've been saying spay and neuter is a bad idea. Sterilization is what we're after. And so she said it takes a full generation, takes at least 20 years to make a model shift until it becomes accepted. And it's like, well, yes, that's the way it always has been. But she said just understand that. That's what it takes for the average model shift. It takes about 20 years. So I think the dog world is getting there. I think the Internet does not help us. I think there's so much divisive oxytocin-fueled us versus them because oxytocin certainly is the feel-good little bonding chemical. But it also promotes the you're-not-one-of-us behaviors as well, which is the dark side of oxytocin. We feel good when we exclude other people. So that can be really scary. And some people are absolute zealots. You know, I have an article on prong collars on my website. I couldn't remember the last time I put a prong collar on a dog, but it's a piece of equipment. If you're going to use it, please, God, know how to use it properly. And there's people like, oh, I saw that, and I never read another thing of hers again. I'm like, all right, well. Open minds are, you know, they're like open parachutes. That's when they work best. Mm-hmm. Yep. So you mentioned relationship in there, and I know that that's kind of a big emphasis in all of the things you write and all the things you do. You know, you went so far as to trademark the phrase relationship-centered training, RCT. Can you just talk a little bit about what you mean by relationship, what RCT is all about, and just dive into that a little deeper? Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. So, as I said before, like, there was the relationships I had with my animals in our daily, you know, interactions. And then there was training, and the training part wasn't so much fun. I could get the job done, but it wasn't like hanging out or going for a walk with my animals. So the more I thought about it, the more I realized I was surrounding myself with social animals, and social animals are social animals because they have relationships, right? That's one of the defining features of a social animal. They live within the context of social relationships.

And then I thought, you know, do you use this method? Do you use that? You know what? People would say they use my method, which I found really funny because I don't have one. I have some techniques I've developed. But what I had was I ultimately decided that my guiding principles would be how does this affect the relationship? Because if that's not healthy and strong, then I knew from my own experience and from working with tons of clients that if their relationship is not solid, it's going to affect all performance. You know, and I thought people like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but I just need to get these points. Yeah, yeah, I just need to finish this title. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, it didn't work for me. So when I shifted the other way and said, look, let's get the relationship healthy, let's get you two comfortable with each other and understanding each other and communicating well. At which point I kind of cut the throat of my private lesson business because people would only come once or twice. And then they're like, oh, well, now that we fix that, I'm like, right, now you have an attentive, happy, thoughtful dog. Well, who the heck can't train him, you know? It's like, and so I would hear people say like, oh, I've got them, you know, they've been here for six months. I'm like, because why? The relationship was the foundation and that's what I went looking for was where are the holes in this foundation. Then on top of it, there's still behavior problems or handling issues or, you know, specific goals you want to reach. You have to teach skills to do that. But when I made relationship the center of everything I did and whether it was a technique, you know, someone's philosophical bent, different tools, different methods, all of it had to first go through the filter of how will this affect the relationship. So, for example, when the head halters first came out, like, okay, interesting tool. Certainly, as a horse person, very familiar with putting things on a critter's head. But what I saw, not what I saw with horses. Yeah, no, I saw dogs desperately trying to claw the damn thing off their heads. I saw dogs who just shut down and gave up. I saw dogs who fought really, really hard. And then I, you know, people were like, well, you just get them used to it. And I watched some people, extremely well-known trainers, you know, just delivering these nice, sharp corrections, or they didn't call it that, to force the dog to stop fighting the halter. And I said, well, that's crazy. Why would I put something on any animal that put them into a mode of resistance from the get-go?

You know, it would be like taking me someplace fun, but insisting I wear pantyhose and high heels while doing it, and then have my hair, like, puffed up. Like, I'm not going. I'm from the get-go. I'm going to be fighting that and trying to get rid of the shoes and the heels and just comb my hair. So, yeah, that became a very useful way for me to sort things out. And so then I began developing techniques and methods and approaches that were like, if this is present, how do I solve this? If this relationship is out of balance, then what do I do to help rebalance that? That being my goal, that the foundation has to be a mutually respectful, mutually enjoyable, realistic relationship, not based on I need this dog to do X, Y, or Z, and I don't care if he's scared stupid. I need him to go finish this championship, or I need him to get this title, right? I want him to not be afraid. Like, well, I'd like to not be afraid of heights, too, but I haven't worked that one out yet. Fair enough. So which came first, RCT or your book, Bones Would Rain from the Sky? RCT came first. I used to call it relationship-based training, and then to my great annoyance, like trainers all over the country are like, yeah, that's exactly what I do. So I just started seeing it everywhere. I'm like, okay, I'm going to try to actually hold on to some name of mine, things. And then RCT, I switched it to relationship-centered training. But yeah, Bones didn't come out until 2002. But yeah, RCT stuff's been around in different formats in a longer way. Can you share a little about the book? What led you to write it? What can readers kind of expect to learn? I don't know. It's not a technical book. It's not a how-to. Like, you know, put your left hand here and put the dog there, and then click your heels three times, and you both fly back to Kansas, deliver treats. There you go. The Wizard of Oz Approach to Dog Training, which would be fun to write. But very easy to write a how-to. Much harder to write a book that is largely philosophical and highly personal. So there was a lot of pressure in my head to get this down, because I could feel the tide was turning. So mind you, it was 98. That was a long time ago now. So I could feel the tide turning, but I could also feel there were big chunks of things that people weren't getting right by my lights. You know, I mean, the Monks of New Skeet was still, you know, one of the best dog training books ever. And I thought, I don't know how that can be. When one question they ask is, how hard should you hit the dog? If he doesn't yelp, you haven't hit him hard enough.

And I thought, is anyone else, like, noticing that? I just feel the need to say something. So I did. And I sent out a letter to many of my supporters and students, and I said, there's something in my head that needs to come out. And if you could just donate $25 or $50, what I needed to buy was a computer that could actually handle the size manuscript. I had a PC junior at that point. But that led one of my very dear students to tell her husband, oh, Bob, no, Suzanne Clovier has a brain tumor. Yeah, it's like, no, no, I don't have a brain tumor. I just have a book I need to write and it has to come out. I like that she immediately assumed. I was asking for a little bit of change so I could have my brain tumor removed. So I knew I was bucking uphill because it was not a how-to. It was sold very quickly. That wasn't the issue, but they did not know what to do with it because there was no category for that kind of stuff back then. And then we had the good misfortune of I'm now on editor number four or five, the one who actually championed the book. And if you haven't published a book, you need an author to, I mean, an editor who fights for your book, fights for the marketing, gets it out there. And none of that happened with both. My first editor, I think she quit and went to Toronto to get married or something. It went on from there. So that it's still in print almost 20 years later makes me very happy. It surprises me. And it frequently makes top ten. So what people can expect if they're expecting a, here's the problem you have and this is what you should do, the answer is, nope, don't pick up the book. If you are afraid of thinking of animals as sentient beings with emotions and that we have a great responsibility to treat them accordingly and to really respect that this is a very serious and very intimate relationship, if any of that bothers you, don't pick up my book. If you just want science to say, this is what science says, then you should not pick up my book because science has only got a really small piece of the puzzle, to say the least. I'm much more in line with the old ethologists, with Tinbergen and Lorenz and those guys who had no problem believing that animals had emotions and freely spoke of them. Right back to Darwin, actually. Not that he was an ethologist, but you know what I mean. So what people tell me that their response to bones is, is that it changes everything. Once they open their brain to the possibility of what I'm trying to say, which is that relationships are quite profound and we have huge responsibility in what happens,

then, yeah, it can change everything in a very good way. And surprisingly, it's required reading by some marriage therapist, some family therapist. There's a, like, a colonel in the military. It's required reading for his officers. Like, I'm always constantly surprised that people are like, oh, yes, we have that. At one veterinary oncology practice, I ended up there with a couple of my dogs, and they were like, it's such an honor to have you here because we do a reading from bones every Tuesday at the staff meeting. I was like, huh, well, that's kind of odd, but okay. I felt like it was like some little church service or something. I thought, well, pass the collection plate and see if you can knock down some of my oncology bills. That would be great. Yeah. So I just, I never know. I mean, my husband was bringing a dog back from Canada, and they were taking everybody out of their car at customs. Everybody get out. They were just dismantling cars. They get there. He shows them the papers. He has our girl, Piper, just brought her back from being bred in Michigan. And he says, my wife's name is on the papers, but, you know, here's other evidence that this is my wife and this isn't. And literally the agent said, oh, this is Suzanne Clothier's dog? Well, then you'd better get her home and send him through. And it's like, huh, okay. It was just funny. It is. So if people are interested in a meatier read, I wrote it because I thought if I read one more book that had, like, top ten points, take-home messages, little, tiny, carefully spelled out, pre-digested, cosmopolitan-type approach. It's like, that's great when you're learning, but there comes a point where you've got all those on your shelf and you want something meatier, you want something to argue with or think about or crack you open, then Bones might be the right book for you. Awesome. I want to kind of shift topics for a moment here and go from talking about training and relationship to some of the other work that you've done around, do you pronounce it carrot when you pronounce it out loud? C-A-R-A-T? Yeah, yep, carrot. Okay. So the Clothe Your Animal Response Assessment Tool. Can you start that just by explaining a little about what it is and where it came from, kind of why you developed it? So carrot is a temperament assessment tool, and I've spent most of my professional career assessing puppies. My first professional job, actually, was working for Guiding Eyes for the Blind back in 77 and working at the breeding farm and puppy testing and blah, blah, blah. So safe to say, over the years I've tested a lot of animals,

but what I didn't like was I didn't like the way people were thinking about temperament. So I just kept diving deeper and deeper into, like, what are the different aspects of temperament? It's me. So, you know, if I have anything I'm accused of, as Dunbar said, you can make things so complicated, you know, people pass out. And I'm like, you can make things so simple, Ian, that people get no nutrition. So between us, we've got the whole gamut covered. So it comes from, I'm on generation number 10 of raising shepherds. That's a lot of puppies over the years. I'm thinking in much more, I guess, detail, because I like detail. I think detail is, you know, they say God's in the detail, dog's in the detail. I just get better results when I think about animals and their temperament in a very detailed way. So mostly I just kept it to myself, and it was just how I thought about animals when I watched them. And that assessment was different from other trainers. Therefore, I got different results because I just saw different things. That's all there was to it. And then I went to talk to a guide school about doing cooperative breeding. We had done some 15 years before, and I wanted to see who their current stud dogs were and if they'd be willing to do a cooperative breeding with me. And for whatever reason, they turned it into, ah, I like a celebrity visit. So they asked if I would sit in and help score a puppy test. So the form they had was kind of wonky, and the test they had was poorly run. But I said sure. And so I kept asking them, do you want me to write the first thing that the dog does, the last thing, the thing that happens the most? Do you want me to put them in the order? Do you want me to cross out stuff that the puppy didn't even do? And by the third time I'm asking questions like that, they're kind of desperately wishing they hadn't asked me. And then I just thought, well, you know, I'm looking at your form here, and where are you scoring patience? Because it would strike me, patience is kind of a really important quality in a guide dog, but I don't see that you're scoring it, even though the puppy's shown us four times how patient he is. They're like, what are you talking about? So I told them, and they backed up the video, and yep, sure enough, there's the puppy. And that's when the breeding director said, well, what else would you be looking for? I'm like, oh, blah, blah, blah, blah. Just stupid. I opened my mouth, and she's like, can you write that down? I'm like, yeah. It's going to take a lot of paper, but... And, yeah, that's how Cowart was born, because once people saw what I put on paper,

they're like, but that's a completely different way of looking at dogs and temperament. I'm like, well, yeah. So I'm not sure if it's the noose around my neck professionally or it's a legacy. It could be both. It could be both. It's easy to grasp the basics. We look at, like, 19 different traits. So we look at the dog, the core traits in a dog, and this, again, comes from a lifetime of raising dogs and watching what I see in little puppies become what I see in adult dogs and a lifetime of selecting dogs for people who do turn out the way I say they will as a rule. Yeah, so we look at arousal and resilience, and all of these, I think, are ones that have a pretty strong, genetic and early developmental qualities to them. Like, you're not going to change these through training. We look at physical energy, like, how does the dog move? You know, some dogs move pretty lethargically, and some dogs, if you're just going to go three feet, you know, why walk when you can gallop? I don't see that that changes until old age. Their brain's still trying to gallop, but their body says, we're going to have to walk this one. We look at sensory input. How does the dog handle visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and olfactory input? And then on top of that, you know, he can have deficits, right? So a dog with deficits visually might have some impairments or even be blind, but you can also have a dog who's so sensitive to visual input that it causes him to be dysfunctional and interferes with normal function. It's more common, for example, for auditory to be that, that it can really distress a dog deeply. Then we look at persistence. Like, once that sense is engaged, what does it take to interrupt the dog? And for some dogs, you know, just the handler coughing and the dog is off task. And for other dogs, once they're engaged in something, wow, getting them off it can be really hard. Nothing is good or bad. It's just a matter of whether it's adaptable behavior or it's more specialized behavior. Do we have to adapt to the dog's needs and preferences? Right? So, you know, is this a specialized kind of niche animal that will do fine on a desert island with a little old lady who never gets any visitors? Sure. Or is this a dog that we could put in almost any setting and he'll do fine? Or do we need a really specialized dog? So a lot of the listeners here that are engaged with Sensi Sport Dog Academy, what they're often looking for is they want the temperament that will allow this dog to be successful competitively at a pretty high level. Well, that's a very different set of qualities and temperament traits than a dog who's going to be a really good

first-time family dog, you know. So identifying those traits is one of the things that Carrot does well. So we come up with a very nicely nuanced profile for each dog, which, yeah, we won't discuss why. It hasn't been published or why there's not scientific papers, but we're working on it again. Yeah. I remain, first and foremost, the practical dog trainer, not an academic by any means. But those who have learned it, yeah, it actually changes everything because it's very easy to see Miss Fluffy. One of the reasons he's struggling on that recall is because he's really olfactorily aware and he's olfactorily persistent. So he might shine in nose work, right? But in the obedience ring, different training is required to say to him, this is not the time and place to use your nose, right? So I might have to use a whole lot more reinforcement. I might have to really keep that behavior topped up and really tightly maintained. Whereas another dog who says, don't really care what the smell is, love being with you and perfectly willing to do whatever you want. So sometimes people think they're great trainers when in fact they just have a dog as well suited to the task. Always be careful that you take credit, which really belongs, hanging off the dog's collar. Right. That leads really naturally into kind of what I was going to ask you next, which was how, you know, better understanding the dog we're working with can really help us when we're working with and training that dog. So it sounds like it's really, you know, there's a component that a lot of people seem to overlook about kind of looking at the dog and who they are and adapting to their natural strengths. Is that kind of what you were getting at? Yeah. So we have a couple options. One is if we have a specific goal in mind, one of the things that, you know, I do carrot and I have tests that I've developed to be scored with carrot, but I also have the relationship assessment tool, which really looks at the dynamics of the dog handler interaction. That's a really fast tool. It's done within five minutes, but it gives you a really strong idea of what the issue is. For example, someone shows up and they have a, you know, the presentation is that the dog is pulling and he's disconnected. But when I watch them, I actually realized that the handler is the one who keeps the death grip, that the dog actually was sitting quietly next to his owner. And even then, there was still tension on the leash, right? So then I know I got to work on the handler, not the dog. So I'm really always interested in identifying what's going on and understanding who that dog is, first and foremost.

You know, the dog that gets really, you know, I get this so much as a case history, the dog gets into the agility ring and gets really pissed off because he's not getting good, timely information. And so his arousal cranks up because sometimes that's how people think they're supposed to train is just by stepping on the gas pedal until the dog is, like, spinning out of control. And then they wonder why he does spin out of control. And then, yeah, leaps up and bites them. It's like, well, if I have a dog who has a really strong gas pedal, so to speak, so his arousal, it's easy to get him intensely aroused to the point where he loses fine motor control. So that might show up in obedience where he's got a death grip on the dumbbell or he can't let go of it. Arousal actually blocks whether or not the dog can even release the dumbbell, which is interesting. Fine motor control starts to go. Balance starts to go. So they're hitting jumps. They think they're being precise. They're not. They're getting pissed off. They're biting their hammer. I need to know why. And then I've got to find a way to keep this dog in better balance. So if I want a dog that's going to be competitive, for example, then I have to recognize it's not just the willingness to work, but he also has to be solid around sound. He also has to be socially confident because competitive arenas are chock full of people, unfortunately. No one gets airlifted into their competitive ring and then airlifted out again like James Bond or something. Right. Probably if we could arrange that, people would pay for that. Can I just jet pack in, do my performance, and leave immediately and the dog can go to a quiet soundproof room? So, yeah, one of the things I'm really interested in is how quickly and how well can we understand the individual dog and what his needs are? Because for me, it's not enough to be a positive trainer, which sometimes just equals I've got a pocket full of chicken. I want to be a humane trainer so that I'm never asking the dog more than he is actually physically, mentally, and emotionally capable of doing. It's not about pushing your best friend so he can help you get those championship points. It's about the dog's quality of life. It's about the joy. It's about the light in his eyes. And the better I can understand the dog, the better I can make choices for him as a humane trainer. I like that. I kind of like that distinction. It makes it, it takes a very complex thing, right, and kind of breaks it down in a way that simplifies it a little bit. It's a little easier to wrap your brain around. So at this point, we've kind of had you do

a couple of different webinars for FDSA. And I know that one of them, Thresholds, Transitions, and Tincture of Time, Finding Any Dog's Sweet Spot for Learning, is going to be available again as part of our upcoming webinar week anniversary sale, which opens for registration this Sunday. Can you just share a little bit about what you covered in that webinar and what folks can expect to learn if they pick up the recording? So that particular webinar is really about how handlers can avoid playing captain of the Titanic. If you remember the story of the Titanic, the information was sent out that there were icebergs in the area, and the captain of the Titanic chose to ignore that warning. There was another ship that was also fairly close. They heeded the warning and swung way south and survived the night and went on to be an old ship somewhere, I guess. So we do this with dogs where the dog actually tells us that there is a threshold that's been exceeded. And this could be as simple as you're walking along and the dog's in cadence, right? And he's like, if it was a piece of music, it's nice and easy and smooth and rhythmic and do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. As soon as that cadence shifts, I've already, I know I've hit a threshold. There's something that just shifted that dog out of it's good to it's not good. And so it can be as subtle as a shift in cadence, at which point you need to be unnoticed because the dog's saying there may be icebergs here. But we don't. We speed up. We tell them, let's go. Come on, come on, come on. I've got cookies. We pull out their toy. We try to get them to tug. We have all these ways that we ignore the fact that the dog told us something just changed for me and that was not okay. I either need time to think about it. I need to actually look at it. I need to move away from it. And so this is, this is where I think it seems so simple. And yet, this is where we often blow dog training. So I get tons of case histories every year where people, without realizing it, are describing where they have blown right past a dog's clearly stated threshold and blown right through transitions without giving the dog time. And that's why I say tincture of time. When in doubt, one of the things I've learned from the best horse vets and dog vets I know and the best horse trainers I've worked with is the quality of time and the mercy of time. And we're just always in this rush. I don't know why. I remember one group telling me if we let this dog off leash, it was in a safely fenced scenario, but he had many options. Like he could go up this stair to this big set of runs up at the top of the hill. And they said, you know what, if you let him off leash,

he'll leave, he'll be up there forever. I said, awesome. Does anybody have a stopwatch? Because let's just go ahead and do that. Let's time it so when I burn in hell forever, I'll know what I'm looking forward to. So, yeah, it didn't take long. It didn't take long before he came back and it was just a matter of minutes. And yet, in their heads, yeah, it became forever. So sometimes time, you know, if I called you and said, hey, Melissa, I've got this question about the podcast and I'm not sure about this and that, and you're like, can I call you back? It's like, no, you may not. We need it right now. Right now, how dare you not answer me? Or I'll pay you 500 bucks if you give it to me now. You're like, I can't. Yeah, so that whole little webinar is actually a very, very intense quote, condensation of a seminar I'll be teaching in Maryland, which is, yeah, thresholds, transitions, and things for the time. So how do we, how do we recognize what our dogs are telling us about how they make the transitions and what the thresholds are? Yeah, I'm, the thing that stands out to me and that I remember most is the, the video you included of the dog that just, it knew the behaviors. It just could not do the work in that situation. Its arousal level was too high to give the precision that the owner was looking for and kind of seeing how, seeing you talk through that a little bit and what was going on and what we, what we were seeing. Yeah, so that, I think you're talking about the Frisbee dog, the disc dog. I was actually thinking, I do remember that video too, I was thinking about the one, I think it was heel work, you healed up to a fence post or something and then asked the dog for a sit and heel, or the handler rather, healed up to like a fence or a railing or something, was asking for like a sit and heel or a pivot or something, something with fairly precise behavior. Oh yeah, yeah, the little Mally. Yeah. the Malinois, you know, competitive obedience dog with a lot of stuff under his belt and a nice worker. It was not a lack of willingness, but the arousal was so high that the dog really was struggling to process and was kind of pulling any behavior out of his armpit that he thought might work and he was, he was compliant. I think if we could interview him, he would have said, yes, I'm where I'm supposed to be, but of course, obedience is about precision, right? And so, one of the things that happens in humans as well is when the arousal goes up, then the ability to know, to accurately orient yourself in space diminishes like, like a rock falling out of the sky the higher your arousal goes. And the same was true for that dog, but one of the things that the handler had been told was like, you know, you have to get after him,

you got to give him a correction, you got to do this, you got to try to rev him up, you got to, I was like, could you just be quiet? But, how about, how about we imagine he's in flames and throwing more barbecue, you know, lighter fluid on the flames doesn't actually help. How about we let the flames die down until he's just nice and toasty warm and he can think again, at which point he could. And it really wasn't very long, it's not like we spent 22 minutes cooling our heels, we're talking seconds, you know, less than a minute, minute and a half, which seems so, like, well, of course, anyone would give the dog a minute and the answer is no, they don't. No, they don't. So, yeah, just stepping it back to these foundational aspects, I think, we sometimes get so carried away and I mean, it's one of the things that the Sensi Sports Dog Academy does so brilliantly, right, you have got just a wealth of information, of techniques and, you know, here's ways to help this happen, here's a way to dial this up and here's how to tweak this and make this great and fun for your dog. But sometimes we just forget the actual basic bare bones of what's going on in the relationship, who is that individual dog and how will this affect him and then, yeah, I don't see too many books that even talk about, time, we talk casually about, you know, be patient. It's like, yeah, in my experience that is something trainers really struggle with and it's not actually taught as a, this is what can happen when you're truly deeply patient and why, why you need to be. So that's probably a good synopsis of some of what's covered in that webinar. Awesome. So to kind of round things out here, I have three questions I usually ask at the end of every interview when I have somebody new on. So I kind of want to just run through those. The first one is what is the dog-related accomplishment that you're proudest of? I'm going to tell you there's two things. One is bones because that was really a huge chunk of my soul at a time when no other trainers were burying their soul. So a strangely risky little proposition. but that it has continued to touch lives really really pleases me because, you know, I almost was incoherent after working on that as my husband. But then I think the other thing which will always just remain quietly out of sight is the work I've done for guide dog schools. So over 10,000 plus puppies have been raised in programs that were altered to incorporate my Enriched Puppy Protocol and the difference the difference that that has made for those dogs and then for the lives of all the people who are involved with those dogs. I think it's one of the most gratifying ever to know that the people in the kennel saw the difference with the puppies.

The people who raised the puppies saw the difference. The trainers saw the difference when they came back in for training. but then most deeply gratifying of all the end user the visually challenged person they saw the difference. Some of them even called them the clothier model. So it's a quiet little revolution that I set in motion starting back in 2007. So that's yeah that's probably the thing I'm most proud of is the thousands and thousands and thousands of puppies who left their organizational kennels with a really strong light in their eyes and an interest in connecting and a trust in humans and skills to go out and just be what they needed to be. That's a big deal. Yeah. It's a very big deal. My second hard question here what's the best piece of training advice that you've ever heard? That one's easy. That came from Linda Collington Jones at the end of a 10 day training it was the first companion animal training that the T-Touch organization did. So we spent 10 days outside of Santa Fe with oh my god I think there was 21 wolf hybrids who've hardly ever been touched and some fearful greyhounds and it was a really interesting 10 days let's just say that. And at the end of it I approached you know because all my other work with her had been with horses and so I approached her at the end and asked you know she'd been watching me work and I so wanted to be anywhere near as competent as she is with horses. It's never going to happen I'd have to come back and live several more lifetimes but you know it's a goal right? And so I just asked her like do you have any advice for me? I could still fear you know she's standing there with a paper plate eating some potato salad with a little plastic fork and she stabs a piece of potato and she looks at me and she kind of just points the potato chunk at me and she's like yeah learn to train without ego. I was like huh it was just one of those I don't know if you've ever taken an arrow to the heart emotionally speaking but that was a really big arrow and it hit me dead center and I've left it there and anytime I ever started to get cocky or think I was really good at it I either I would reach over and snap that arrow so it would go back to resonating in my chest and remind me or God bless them multiple dogs and horses and other critters have said hey did you forget about that part learn to train without ego that's probably the best advice I ever got because it's one of the things that gets in our way of learning right if we have our ego involved and we care about the outcome in a way that we stop being open to who the animal is and what they have to say we will have made a very big mistake and so anyone that's attended my seminars and watched me put on demos that it's like that was not at all what I thought would happen knows that

I'm pretty good at doing that it's like huh alright then and that's what that animal actually did so we're all good but yeah one of my all time favorites learn to train without ego I like that final question who is somebody else in the dog world that you look up to hmm that's a hard question I think Paul McGreedy at University of Sydney in Australia is someone I respect immensely I wish he he's so busy I mean if you google his name he's like the co-author in about 5,000 billion papers he's just such a smart and practical guy he's a veterinarian his first love is horses his second love is dogs he's just practical realistic and just so freaking brilliant yeah I think if I had someone that I could just go spend a couple of days following around it would probably be McGreedy and then I'm also a huge fan of Adam McClosey I think he and his group over there are asking some really interesting questions about dogs and cognition so again if I could follow him around for a few days I would do that too awesome well thank you so much for coming on the podcast Suzanne this has been fascinating and interesting and fantastic well I really appreciate it I'm always flattered when someone is wildly successful and deservedly so as Denise finds my work of value and I really appreciate the opportunity to share my little thoughts thank you and thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in we'll be back next week 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 cop