147: 낙하 바에 대한 수산 개럿의 조언

Now I know what to do anytime my dog knocks a bar. And so because taken out of context, you know, I think you could really hurt the relationship you have with your dog and put the dog under some, you know, undue stress. So the protocol itself takes into the assumption that there has been a jump education put in place. So I have a jump program that really is originally based from Susan Salo's work, and it's all about educating the dog. But even before that, you've got to look at the body awareness work, the strength and flexibility. And, you know, there's lots of great programs. There's so many more people focusing on body work now. You know, you could spend, well, we work our dogs on it probably three or four times a week. They get just strength and conditioning work on fitness, let alone the stuff they get every day where we're, you know, obviously we walk and swim them. But there's so many elements that contribute to a dog being able to jump. And then the other element is the handling system that you use. And how easy is it for the dog to anticipate what's happening next? Because a lot of bars will come down because the dog's surprised by what you ask them to do. And if the dog knows that before they take off for the jump, it's a lot easier for the dog to keep that up. So that's all my qualifiers before we go into the protocol. Right. It's just, it's really important that we give the dogs as the biggest opportunity we can to, for them to have maximum success. So the first thing I do, a bar falls, and I'll give you another qualifier. It depends on the age and the stage of training my dog is at. So with my youngest dog, Momentum, I have never done this protocol. She's 20 months old. She's still in a learning phase. She's still in a, you know, growing phase. And this is not something that I've ever done. However, with my young dogs, I do everything I can to prevent them from rehearsing, knocking a bar. And we can talk more about that later. So the protocol, a bar falls. And the first thing I do is I stop my action immediately. I just, I don't say another word and it's a verbal-based program that I use. And so my dogs hear nothing and then I stop my movement. So that's the first indicator that something's gone wrong. And that's the first punisher. Because if a dog loves agility, you stopping action is a punisher. Now that stopping of the action doesn't have to be or shouldn't be accompanied by no, wrong, or anything. Because the punishment is the act of the dog being stopped, right? The dog, you know, you're not moving forward so the fun is stopping. And what we're working on is response cost.

And that is, if you just quickly put the bar up and went along, then that really is a little hiccup in the dog, but they don't really care. You know what? Oh, is this the way we're doing agility now? You just put the bar back up and we go along our happy little way. The response cost is you stop and you kind of black out a little bit. Like, what was I doing? Oh, yeah, you knocked a bar. Yeah, I guess I better walk over there and pick that up. So it's a long stroll to get that bar. And you've got to be aware of what is the dog doing during that time. And also, you might choose to use a non-reward marker, but it needs to be applied pretty quick. And so, you know, I don't think it makes that much difference if you do or you don't. So I'll walk over. And this is something Swagger's kind of put into this. If the dog is circling, like a lot of border collies, they get anxious because the action stops. So they'll start, you know, hurting you. And if that happens, I don't move forward to pick up the bar. I stop my motion. You know what? This is not going to be turning into a game. I'm not turning the act of the bar falling into a reinforcement for you. So you're not allowed to. And so what Swagger's done is he meets me at the bar and he now picks up the bar and gives it to me. Now, that is something he's developed all on his own. And it still doesn't slow down the process. It doesn't speed up the process for me. I'm still really slow about it. And the goal here is to draw attention to the dog constantly. The importance of the bars. Like, I don't want you knocking bars. It's really important that you keep bars up. And, you know, we build behaviors through reinforcement. So the whole idea of the knock bar protocol is to set up an opportunity to bring awareness to the importance of bars staying up. And I know Swagger understands that. You know, we don't really know what our dogs understand. But I'm pretty confident he understands that where Feature does not. Feature really didn't knock bars in her life. And I never had to do this with her. And now as a nine-and-a-half-year-old dog, she knocks a bar and she, there is no, there is no awareness. It doesn't, she doesn't recognize that anything's different in agility. So it's actually really nice to have a dog who has this problem young because you can establish this really early on. Okay, the next thing I do is I slowly pick the bar up. And, again, this is all part of the process for the dog. Observe the dog. What are they doing during this? You know, some dogs start barking at you.

And if they bark, if my dog barks at me while I'm doing this, I just drop the bar again. Oops, your voice startled me. Let's start this again. I don't want to, because what your dog is doing is being built into this process. So your dog, if your dog's nipping at your heels or barking at you or bouncing off you, that's being built into this is what happens. And, again, some of that could become a reinforcement for the dog rather than, and I hate to say, keep saying the word punishment, but on a really mild scale, this is a punishment. Right. And so now that's all the punishment. Now we have to remind the dog of the importance of keeping a bar up. So the first thing we do is we go back to the approach that the dog just took when he knocked the bar, and we just repeat that jump. And then I praise the dog. Absolutely, it's important you don't reward the dog with food or toys here. You just praise them. You can pat them. That's good. That's what I want. And he says, yeah, we can do this again. And then you go back to obstacles. So the dog has a little bit more speed coming in. And that, you know, they have to control their body. And this is where sometimes it goes bad. And we do it again. And when the dog keeps the bar up that time, and you have to keep handler consistency, let's call it. So your body has to be consistent to what your body was doing when the bar fell. Your voice cues have to be consistent to what you were doing when that bar fell. And if the dog, when we give them a little more speed and momentum coming in there, if that bar stays up, then it's party central. Like, people think I'm whacked when I celebrate a bar staying up after, because of how much. I celebrate it as if I just won a world championship. And it's that big celebration that the dogs are like, yeah, like for some reason, this woman really likes this, me just taking a bar. And them understanding this doesn't happen overnight. You know, it's a process that as they, you know, I can't put a timeline on it. It might take a year, might take longer for them to understand this. So then after I've done my massive celebration, I go back to the beginning of the sequence or like wherever that, you know, if I was running a course, I'd go back there. And I do the same thing because I want to make sure that that understanding is clear. And I have no problem if, you know, I may finish the sequence if it's, you know, a one-off or I may stop and do another big celebration and start the whole process again. So that's the protocol. But I just want to remind people that is a slice of a very big pie of jump education.

And when people come to me and they say, you know, my dog, my dog is a wonderful agility dog. We have no problems except, you know, he knocks bar. So can you, can you tell me what I can do about that? And I'll say, well, when does he knock bars? How many strides into the bar? Is he on a turn? Have you asked for collection before? And people need to record keep. If you have a dog with a bar problem, let's say, you should be record keeping every training session and every competition. And really analyzing when do bars fall? I can tell you when, with swagger, when a bar is a tougher bar for him. And there's, you know, they're dogs. And so occasionally they'll knock a bar when it isn't a tougher bar. But that should be a rarity. You should be able to know, okay, this is when, for example, backside serps for swagger have always been a challenge. So I've worked a ton on creating explosion from a sitting position or from a pretty position or, you know, whatever it is that you're asking the dog to do at speed. What can we do to help bring awareness to the body and help strengthen the part of the body that's required? You know, with some of the course designs, we're asking a lot of physical challenge of the dog. And sometimes that's the reason why the bars are coming down. And let's work on that. But I find too often people aren't, they don't know when bars come down. Oh, it's all the time. And if you look, there will be times where you can predict, yeah, this is going to be a tough bar for my dog. And let's fix that. Let's not have any more tough bars. I think that's a really great and important point. I noticed that when I was training Gitchy and trying to get her ready for world team tryouts and all these different events, that it was the back size that she was struggling with and also some slicing on throttles. You know, you throttle her and then they slice. Sometimes they're going to brush the uprights. And you notice that she's missing more in those spots than in other spots. And I think you're right. People don't really know. They just kind of lump it all together. You know, I want to know if it's the double, the triple. Does it happen after contacts? Does it happen when they come out blind from chutes and tunnels and things like that? So I think that's a really great point. I've got a question for you, though. Something you hear a lot. What about people who have been given the advice that they are talking too much while their dog is over the bar? Either they're screaming out commands, yelling the dog's name, and they've been told that if they run silent,

that the dog is going to be less likely to drop a bar. I think this is pretty common. You hear this a lot. Yeah, especially with our system. You run a very verbal system. Very verbal. What do you think about this? So there's a couple things that I tell people. First of all, don't blame a methodology just because of somebody's poor application of it. That's a great line that I learned from Bob Bailey. And so I agree 100% when you are talking to the dog and it surprises them. But if your cues are something that the dog is 100% used to, then I 100% disagree with that. But you've got to look back at what does the dog understand. So in our system, we do a lot of what we call cue checking, where we're constantly reminding the dogs of what our cues mean. Something that you can't do if you don't have a verbal-based system, right? That, you know, it becomes more difficult. That's for sure. So I could stand in front of, you know, a couple of jumps and ask for my dog to take the backside away from me, take the backside towards me, jump long, jump with a, you know, a gradual turn to the right, gradual turn to the left, a tight wrap. You know, so I can get all of those things in so I can test what part of, if there's a part of that my dog doesn't understand. And so that's the benefit of Swagger gets excited when I use the cues. So if you hear him in the background, he's now got a ball and we're talking agility. We should be doing agility. Right, right, right. So that's, that's a, if you, especially if you look at a novice handler and a, and sadly, you know, when I used to ride, we were always told the worst combination is a, as a green handler, green horse. You always want experienced horse for a green rider, but we can't do that in dog agility. So all of us are starting out with a green dog and a green handler. And so unfortunately those things happen. The handler says things over the bar and the bar falls and, and, and that spot on. That can be the cause. But when the dog understand and is used to responding to the cues, that should not be an issue. There are two things that I really love about the protocol and, and that really, I think it's really sometimes a personality thing with handlers. I love that it's systematic. So that speaks to me as like a person. I like order. And I understand the caveats that you put in place and, and the kind of understanding that there is some punishment there for the dog. But I think that the alternative that you usually see is a very erratic application of punishment for bars.

And I think that's probably in a lot of ways worse for dogs when they don't know what to expect. They don't know if this is a time when falling bars is okay, or if this is a time where falling bars isn't okay. And that confusion, it can be much more punishing than the small amount of, of essentially like timeout that you're building in with the protocol. I agree. For sure. So I love that systematic aspect. I love that you mentioned response costs because I actually remember being at one of your seminars a very, very long time ago. I can't even remember how long ago it was, maybe a decade talking about, is it advances in dog training? Yeah. One of those seminars where you talked about response costs. And again, that was one of those nuggets that stuck with me for, you know, to this day, it's a, it's a concept that I think about and, and fall back on when I'm looking at why dogs are doing the things they're doing or how I can help them understand. So I love that you bring that into that. But the other thing that I really love about your protocol is the recognition that every bar is different and the speed that they're coming, that they're coming with the angle that they're coming from the distance from the previous obstacles. That's different for every bar they encounter. And your protocol recognizes that for whatever reason, and we don't know necessarily why the bar that fell was more difficult for the dog and rewarding that bar when they get it right. Rather than the other thing that you're going to see people do is maybe they do stop when a bar falls down, but when they go and they do the sequence again, they're going to try to do the whole sequence. They're, they're almost certainly previous to you coming out with this protocol, almost certainly not going to stop when the dog is successful. Right. They're going to continue on. I love that aspect. Or another thing that they'll do, um, a common, like a misapplication of this protocol is they'll, when they go through it to set the dog up for reward, they won't handle. Right. They'll just like come to a stop so they can reward the dog. You need to keep powering through as if you're handling and throw that reward back so that the dog sees the same picture that they saw the first time. Absolutely. I think that's probably the most striking part, uh, to me and something that I strive for in every practice, because when you, um, stop, you remove the obstacle before even the line of obstacles before that, uh, drop bar.

You, you often change the angle of approach. You're bleeding off a lot of speed from the dog. Of course, you're going to keep the bar up. Even if you stop right there and you reward them. Exactly. Yeah. You're going to lose a lot of that there. All right. Now I'm thinking about other things. Beginners are commonly told a couple of things jumped in. Yep. And, um, there was a trend. I don't know if it's still popular today. It's not something that we do, but I know that there are people who will yell at a bar when it drops. They get very animated about a bar or they will pick up the bar and strike the ground with it. And also that, you know, they say they're kind of not directing this at the dog, but that they're just upset with the bar. So what do you think about that? And why do people do that? I think that's hysterical. Yeah. Um, you know, people are weird sometimes. And in the name of, um, maybe this helped to, to get my dog to keep bars up, but that's intimidation, isn't it? We're trying to, I've actually heard the, the word, you need the dog to show remorse. And, um, when people have described their protocol, so, so to speak. But here's what happens. We're drawing attention to punishment. And dogs will figure out the bar coming down is a bad thing. But the fallout of that punishment is if, let's say you give a cue late and the dog is about to go around a jump, but you're going to save that refusal and they come in at a really bad slice. Dogs who have an association of, if that bar falls down, bad things are going to happen are not going to make the effort to take the bar. They are going to go around the jump. Whereas dogs with, with, within our protocol, I have seen Swagger twist his body and bring his paws up over his, his head when he's jumping in an effort to keep the bar up on course. And I watched that and I go, I like, I just love that you've learned that for me. So, you know, you'll often see dogs who have been raised in a more intimidation based drop bar protocol. You will see these dogs go around jumps or as soon as a bar falls down, they kind of shut down and get worried. So there's, there's, there's fallout with punishment. And with this, that's why the focus is on reinforcement. So you're creating a more forgiving dog, a dog that can recover from some of you, because we're not going to handle perfect all the time. So a dog that can recover from our mistakes as well.

Exactly. And people will say, well, my dog is, is so hard headed or he doesn't recognize, and this isn't going to work for him. You know, our dogs are who we created them to be. And you can take the softest of border collies and create them to be a really tough dog that takes any kind of physical punishment you want to throw at them. And, you know, it's just who we create them to be. So if you've got to embrace the, all that's good with that dog, you've got a really fast dog who, who, you know, blithers through bars and the bars come, you know, I, think of buzz and the lack of education that I had to help him. And it would be easy to say, Oh, he's just a knucklehead. He doesn't care about the bars falling. And this would never work for him. You know what? I don't think this protocol would have worked for buzz because there were so many other missing elements from his education, the flexibility, the body awareness, the strength, the conditioning, the, the, the jump grids, the, you know, there were so many missing pieces. If I just done this protocol, hell no, it wouldn't have worked. What about the people who do have those very high drive, very fast dogs that you're talking about. And something I hear often from them is my dog doesn't care, you know, whether or not the bars come down. And if I don't do things like yell at them or give them a timeout or tell them no really loudly, like they're not going to care. Yeah. You know, there is no magic pill to help dogs who, a lot of dogs, dogs will either stress up or they'll stress down. So the dogs that you're talking about are ones that stress up and they're just going to knock more bars. And, you know, you just have to get escalate your punishment. And a different approach would be to, you know, do the things that I've suggested. But the thing is, like you two are, you're more of the unique side of agility because you're agility handlers who love the training of it. And people have to learn to love the training. I love the training. And, and that's why I tell people our, our program handling 360 isn't for everybody. If you just want to run your dog, our program's not for you because ours is a dog training based handling program. And we have students who love the training. And so if you have a dog that is knocking bars and just doesn't care and you don't love the training, that's a really bad combination.

But I think people don't love the training because they've lost the confidence in it. And once you, you, you peel back the curtain and you get down to, to grassroots and you start building a strong foundation of understanding, you're going to find that the dog's always going to be high. I mean, Swagger is a very high drive dog, but he's very thoughtful in drive when that's different than Buzzy where Buzzy, he would just get more and more frantic because of the lack of education. And, and that's the difference. You know, our dogs are great educators and we just got to look at what lessons they're trying to share with us. Right. So I'm going to bring you back to the thing that we jotted down earlier, which was talking about preventing mistakes in the first place with your young dog. So doing everything you can to not have to use this protocol, especially with a young, inexperienced dog. And that goes back to the question about the dog who just doesn't care. A lot of dogs just don't care because they've been raised to an environment where they're allowed to knock bars and you just keep moving on. Right. So as they're, they're growing up, they knock bars and you just keep handling and figure, oh, they'll figure it out. And, you know, dogs are brilliant. And they, for the most part, they do work it out. But here's, here's what I do. So I really don't start doing jump work other than my grids. I don't start that very young, very young. So I don't have my, my year old dog doing sequencing and handling. They're doing jump grids and they're doing one jump exercises, but it starts with the jump bumps. And I think it was Susan Salo that made those so, so very popular that it's impossible to knock that. And when I introduce a bar, it's introduced on a set point, you know, we call it the Salo spider. And it's introduced in a way that I hedge my bets. So the jump bump is there. So the dog has to take off early so that they can't knock that bar. I mean, it's, I can't think of, I've ever had a dog knock a bar in that set point exercise that way. And then when I start to do, I do Cavaletti work where the poles are kind of hooked in the cones. So if a dog knocks that bar, it moves the cone and it's uncomfortable and they don't like it. So they avoid it. So all the way along the way, now they're learning either to never do it or that there's a little response cost when you do it. Like it's, you know, the little Cavaletti moves and it gets in your way and you trip and you stumble. So they learn to keep their feet up in the Cavalettis.

And then I go to my jump grid and I actually lock the bar. So, you know, I'm not going to, again, you can't take this out of context and just throw a dog into the deep end and lock a bar. And how I do that is I'll take a PVC pipe and I'll slide it over the jump cups. So I have a couple of old metal jumps, you know, with those old metal jump cups. Right. And that's what I use it for is when I'm educating young dogs. And I can tell you, I've never used it for momentum because the first time she ever knocked a bar in a jump grid, she stopped and stared at the jump and kind of backed away from the bar. So she has her own awareness of, I don't like that to happen. And so there's a lot of this that I've said, and she's not a soft dog. She just does not like bars to fall down. And so, you know, I, I, I didn't need to do this with her because, you know, until she was, until recently when I started sequencing with her, she never knocked a bar. Like I've never raised a dog who never knocked a bar and she didn't. So now, of course, I'm doing more sequencing and she is getting really fast. And, you know, we do have the odd bar and pretty soon I will introduce this protocol to her in a more subtle way. But the big thing is, as they're growing up, don't allow the rehearsal of the bars to fall and let the dog think, this is part of agility. Bars fall. Yeah, this is what we do. And then when you start trialing and it costs you money, then get mad and say, oh, I got to start punishing this. If they're raised with the intention of bars never fall in agility, that's an important part. Then you're just hedging your bets that it's going to be easier to, to have a dog who rarely knocks bars. They're all going to do it occasionally. They're bars and they're dogs and they go fast, but you just don't want it to be the norm. Yeah, I think there's some interesting similarities there between behaviors like start line stays and maybe contact work. You know, the novice handler kind of gets those behaviors. They're not extremely well taught or well rehearsed. And then they want to get through these sequences, whether they're in class or with their friends. And they want to really, you know, be able to say, we got through it. So if they, if the dog is going to break the start line, leave a little early, come off the contact a little quickly, not quite meet criteria, you know, but at least they were able to get the sequence.

They got their cue and they don't realize that there's going to be potential long-term consequences there that they're going to have to work through and actually create more problems later. So I see a parallel there that's interesting. Exactly. Exactly. But I like to set them up so they don't knock them rather than you don't want to start adding punishment to a young dog because then they're just going to, every time a bar falls in a trial, they're just going to stop. Right. And you don't want to build that in as their education. Let's face it, when our puppies are 14, 15, 18 months old, they're not nearly as strong as they're going to be at two and a half years old. And that's why I'm just never in a hurry to do things with them that is going to introduce them to knocking bars while they're working. One, we kind of touched on it briefly earlier, but one very, very common bar that, you know, a dog that may not knock any other bars would knock is the backside and especially like a backside wrap. And a lot of times they're not even hitting the bar. They're hitting the upright. So for those specific, I mean, it's a very physically demanding kind of jump. What extra advice do you have about that kind of bar where that's the only kind of bar that a dog knocks? Yeah, that is, you nailed it. That is a physically demanding bar. And so I'm hoping we get to a place where it's outlawed in North America for judges to make a backside on a wingless jump. I would like to get to a place in North America where you don't ever have wingless jumps, but that's another story. So, because that is unfair. If you look at, you know, a dog takes off, even when we're asking for collection, a dog takes off probably 18, 24 inches from a jump, that would be the closest they would take off from. On a backside, they're taking off only the width of a wing. So if a wing is non-wing, they have to wrap and take off within inches under the bar. And when we're talking about 20, 22, 24-inch jumping dogs, then you've got to get them to go vertical. You know, there is no more basquille over a jump. It's basically a vertical jump. We've got to teach them the Fallsbury flop, I think, because it's so tough. It's just acceleration straight up is what you need to do to be successful. So, again, it goes back to those physical skills that we have to make sure that we built in first. And then one of the things that we do in Handling 360 that I don't think anybody else does is we teach dogs. You know, you've seen all programs have multi-wraps around wings, correct? Everybody's doing that now.

But we teach that when we're teaching that, we don't use wings. We may start off using traffic cones. But then we go to something we call a PNU. And a PNU is basically take a marker for a long jump and put a pool noodle around it. And it's, you know, strategically and scientifically called the pool noodle upright. So we add arousal to this. And any time that falls over, it's the knock bar protocol. And it's no big deal because they're just circling it upright. So you're not going to get a dog worried about this. But we're teaching the dog never touch an upright. Give a little space. Give some space. Don't try to wrap too tight because if you do, that's going to fall over. And with dogs like Swagger, I went so far as to take one of the legs off. So it's a three-legged, not very stable upright. And if your tail brushes it, it's falling over. And if it falls over, I'm going to stop running away. So we send them for a multi-wrap and then we're taking off running. Well, they have to keep multi-wrapping and they want to dig in and just plow that over. And so, yeah, not touching the wings, not touching the uprights. That's just as an important lesson as not touching the bars. Either way, it's an elimination, right? Exactly. Exactly. That's very interesting. And I don't think that I've heard of people specifically doing that. Some of our ninja stuff that we keep hidden in our program. And that kind of brings us full circle back to the record keeping because it lets you know, do I have a general bar knocking problem? Am I only knocking bars on slices? Am I only knocking bars on wraps? So that you can kind of pick the right tool for getting through that. And that all comes back to how good are your records? And I know you just did a great Bad Dog podcast on record keeping. Wasn't that a recent thing? Yeah, that was the last podcast. And you know what? That was a brilliant idea. And I took action immediately. I set up my little Facebook groups. So I'm all about record keeping and I love it. And if there's an innovative way to make it easier, let's jump on that. So, you know, when you're specifically focused in on creating a brilliant jumping dog, you've got to consider everything that things that you wouldn't even think of. Like what was, you know, there's the obvious, you know, what was I doing? What were my emotions? But what was the judge doing? I think you probably saw that video where the judge ran early and Swagger went with the judge on. I did see that. That was so interesting. So, you know, those are the obscure things, but you're not going to know that unless you video.

And I think since Encore, I have a video of or I have videoed every single run any one of my dogs has ever done in competition. So she's going to be 14 soon. So at least for the last 12 years, and I did it sporadically before her, but every single run any dog has ever been in, unless my camera broke or the battery ran out, I've videoed the runs. And so I can go back and look at, okay, we had a bar. What was the surface? What was the dog's approach? What type of jump, you know, was it? How far away from the jump was I? Was the dog turning left or was the dog turning right? And I know with Encore being, she has a dysplastic hip. She definitely had more bars down when I asked her to turn and push off of that hip. So those are things, okay, well, how can I handle it different or create more strength? So knowledge is power. And once you have this knowledge, you can then say, all right, I'm going to do more backside wraps and less backside SERPs in a really important run until I get to a place where I'm 100% confidence with my dog. And meanwhile, at home, I'm going to just, you know, work on my dog's strength and work on them understanding don't knock, don't, don't touch the uprights and work on my dog's flexibility. And when we're doing a backside, we're actually asking a dog to weave two uprights, right? They have to flex through their back. And you've got to look at that. Is your dog flexing through their back or are they just jumping and landing and then having to accelerate from there? So, you know, record keeping is the way that you're going to get these answers rather than just, you know, getting upset and frustrated. There's something that you said in there that I think is such a, just a golden nugget all by itself. And it's something that we've said on multiple podcasts. So it's like preaching to the choir, but I want to point it out. And that's where you said that you will take a look at what works best for your dog, even if maybe it's not the fastest. Take that knowledge and know that tactically you may lean on that for a big competition. That's important, but that you also go back and train the alternative. And I just wanted to highlight that point because it's so important that you, that you don't go to either extreme. I think the two alternatives that you'll see are people that don't really take into account what their dog is best at in a competition. So that's like one extreme. But the other extreme is people that will do the safe thing and never progress their, their training or their handling, you know, back home on the training field.

So I just really love that you kind of wrap that all up in that little sentence there. We used to call it the Canadian way because everybody wanted to get legs and qualifying. I don't think it's that way anymore. I think in Canada we've gotten pretty aggressive with our handling. So it's not fair to say that, but people would always go the longer way in order to be the safer way. And, and it developed in Canada here because our national champions is named based on running six runs clean over a weekend, you know, two gamblers, two jumpers, two standard. And it was that, okay, the slow and steady dogs were winning, but it's a nation. We've gotten a lot more aggressive with our handling styles and, and aggressive and clean. So it's no longer the, the Canadian way to go the long way and keep the bar up or, or, you know, it's, it's, it's the Canadian ways to, to run hard. But that's what exactly what I see is, is people say, oh, my dog will knock a bar there. Like for example, look at a throwback. So whether you do a, a backside surf or backside blind or a throwback, it's the same jump mechanics for the dog. They have to wrap a wing and, or even if I'm running and I don't know if you can visualize this with, with, without the picture, but if I'm running and I have dog on right and I threadle to that jump. If I have, you know, I'll just threadle the dog to the backside. It's exactly the same mechanics. And I know if I do 10 backside blinds, 10 backside surfs and 10 throttles to the backside, I might get one or 2% of those bars falling with swagger. And if I did a throwback, I would get probably 60% of the bars falling with swagger. So I know that's something I continuously work on at home, but I will avoid in an important run doing that. Now I will, if I'm in a run and I've had a bar down and there's an opportunity to put one in, absolutely. I'm going to put one in number one to see if he can do it. And number two, to help build my confidence in the fact that he can do it. But you have to always be playing with that. Don't just say my dog does X, therefore I will always do Y. Let's work to evaluate why your dog does X and help him to, you know, for that to be part of his history and not part of his future. Right. And then, you know, on the practice field, there's no penalty to us for working on this. So, you know, let's go out and fix our problems. Exactly. You got it. Well, it's funny that you talk a little bit about the change in Canada as far as handling style over the years. I think of myself not just as a competitor, but as someone who's kind of a spectator, a real fan of the sport.

And I've been watching Canada very closely for years now. I think it was a couple of years ago that I said, you know, I think they're arriving or they're about to arrive in a big way. And, you know, I should take this opportunity to congratulate you and the rest of the large dog team for Team Canada. You just had the Italy World Championship and you brought home the gold medal for Team Jumping. Thank you. Yeah, that was a huge thrill for us all. And I think we've been very close for a number of years to being able to do that. And it was unfortunate that we just had bad, bad luck that we didn't get the all-around because, you know, every one of the dogs that had a fault on that finals standard run were just weird faults that those dogs would never have. Right. But, yeah, as a nation, I'd like to think I've always been competitive in the sport, but I have been – there's been very few of us myself. And then, you know, maybe in the last 10 or 15 years, Cal McCann has gotten on the scene too. But now it's not just one or two of us. Like, as a nation, you know, we're still – still our numbers are nowhere near what the numbers are in the United States as far as competitors. But the percentage of handlers that are getting to that elite level is much, much bigger than it ever has been. And, you know, I'm super proud of it. And I'd like to give tribute to a friend, the late Adrian Rakers, for starting a competition here many years ago where we were, as a nation, you know, encouraged to go for it on every run with the Canada Cup. And I think that helped set the stage. And then competitive instinct, I think, took over. And we don't have – you know, in the States, you have to get double Qs to get to try out for your nation's team. And, you know, that's not a process that we have. And I think all of those things contribute to a mentality of, you know, we want to go as hard as we can. And we're not going to take unnecessary risk, but we're willing to risk forward and try to get the best run we could ever have. I really like the idea of the cups. And so I know that a couple of people have tinkered with that locally. They've put on events running with the international-style type courses and given people an opportunity to go out and do that. And I think there is tremendous interest in international handling. You see the popularity of handling systems like H360, like One Mind Dogs. These are courses – I'm sorry. These are handling systems that are not really designed for typical American kennel club courses that we see in our local trials.

And so for them to be so popular, I think you do have this striking interest in international-style handling. Yeah. You know, the vast majority of the people on our program – I can't speak for One Mind – but the vast majority of the people on Handling 360 are just running North American courses. But, you know, it's like any skill. If you work to be at a highest level before you enter a novice class, then these novice classes are going to be super easy. And that's what we're finding with our students. You know, by far, when we've polled students, the vast majority of them just want to bring out the best in their dog, and they have no interest in being on a world stage or, you know, a national championship. But yet, their skills are crazy good. And I think it makes agility in North America so much easier when you train to the level where the international courses are something that you do run every once in a while. I think they're a lot of fun. And I just – you know, I can't say that I've run an international class in recent memory that I didn't come off going, you know, it might have got the better of me, but I still – it was a wicked fun course to run. And there were some tremendous courses at this year's world championship. And actually, that kind of made me happy because I remember thinking a couple years ago, courses were maybe getting a little too straightforward in that all the handling options were kind of the same. You'd see competitor after competitor running in almost the same manner. But this year, especially on that last now legendary tough course, the 8% course. No, the 8%. 8%, 8%, yeah. Right. Right. That would be the individual large dog standard course that determines the overall individual winner. You know, that course was really, really tough. And one of the really cool things that you did, and I know that a lot of people did because you saw it pop up on social media, they immediately set that course up. Oh, yeah. Well, there were people who didn't go to the event. They set it up. There were people who were never wanting to be on a world team with their dog. They set it up. And there were people who were at the event, and they went, and they got this rematch. So tell us a little bit about that. I love that you did that. I watched it live. It was a really great and cool thing. And I think Linda did a really great job of moderating. That's awesome. I'll tell you who said so. You know, people were getting psyched out walking that course. And normally, I live in my little bubble at these big events because I know my handling choices are going to be, you know, let's face it.

I am playing in a young person's sport at that level of agility. Certainly, there's people much older than me having, you know, thriving in the sport of agility. But when we're talking the world championships, you know, being competitive to get on the podium, there's not many that are closer to 60 than they are 50. And that's the position I'm in. So I, but I allowed, you know, people coming off the course and saying to me, oh, good luck with this. This is a runner's course. Or I don't even have a, some of these really fast European runners coming up to me and saying, I don't have a prayer on this course. I don't know what you're going to do. And they were saying it, joking. Nobody was trying to psych me out. It wasn't trash talking. They were, you know, being just fun because everybody was saying. And I walked it and I'm like, I don't really see the issue here. Like it's, it's, it's, there's a challenge at every obstacle, but I don't see what is, what, what should, should cause you to come unraveled. And so I actually was angry because I, I did a backside blind on jump two. And that's what put me off of the rest of it because I hadn't walked that. And I truly believe that I could run that course clean. And so like, I literally got off the plane and I got, I got driven home after traveling for almost, you know, 20 hours. And I walked into the building. I mean, I went to the house, said hi to my dogs, took them for a little walk, and then walked out to the building and set that course up and I was going to run it, but I was talked into like, let's just, you know, get some sleep and run it in the morning. And so, and yeah, what I put on Facebook live, that was, I had not trained on it. I hadn't even walked it before that. And I, and it was, it, and, and, and it ran as beautifully as I thought it could when I walked it the first time. And I told my students, they said, oh, we're never going to run that. And I said, you guys, you're going to run it. You're going to nail it. And they did. And I think if you, if, if you have, if you have the skills, you know, when you get to a big event like that, there's going to be some anxiety. And what, you know, it doesn't matter if it's the world championship, if it's the AKC nationals, or if it's your first weekend trial, and you've never trialed before, there's still going to be some anxiety. And the difference, you know, what bridges the gap in your anxiety. And actually this is coming up in a, one of my online workshops that I'm, that I'm presenting next week is you have the skills that, you know, you and your dog are capable of,

and then you walk the course and you see the skills that you think you're going to need, or that to be successful on this course, you need these skills. And the, how big that gap is is what determines whether you go into that course with anxiety or confidence. So if it's a very small gap, or if there's no gap, there's overlay, you know, the skills required or the skills you've got, then you have confidence. If there's a big gap, the skills required are not the skills you've got, then you've got anxiety. And, you know, and that's why courses like Handling 360 are great because we give people so many skills that closes that gap and they just walk out with confidence. And, you know, it doesn't make any difference where you are. And the first novice person walking out to their first trial, you're feeling the same thing as somebody at the world championships. Either you're going to be prepared because you have a good coach who helped you or you're not. I think a lot of times there is a real confidence problem among competitors. And a lot of times among novice competitors, I think we have a lot of mental restrictions that we put ourselves up, that we put on ourselves about what we're capable of, what our dogs are capable of and what we should be attempting. And I think that even the novice competitor can do very large pieces of these international courses. If they break it down, if they put it together, you know, bit by bit, work on it two or three obstacles at a time. And I think that so many people are limiting themselves just because of their perceptions of where they are and where their dog is. Absolutely. And certainly you've got to know what are your strengths as a handler and, and what are your challenges and what can you do to overcome those challenges? So on that, that last course, yes, it was a runner's course, but what can I do as a handler? And that's where for me, all the verbal cues and the distance work comes in because I, you know, I'm, I might be outrun by somebody who can run faster, but I, I doesn't mean I have to be out handled. I can just, and you've got to know that about yourself. So if you're a brilliant fast runner, I'm still waiting for the person who is a brilliant fast runner, who still puts in all the dog training that we do, because then they would be unbeatable. And one of the things that I have been noticing recently about courses, and I'm, I'm seeing it more and more. And what you said plays into it perfectly, which is courses today at the highest level are requiring a level of training that you cannot just use handler speed to get through. Yeah.

I'm loving that because you've spent so much time working on those handling skills and those independent skills. But we talked to Lee Gibson on a podcast. We talked to Anthony Clark on a podcast and both of them emphasize that in their courses, they're looking for handling skills, but they're also looking for dog training skills. And when you look at their courses and the practice courses that they put out, there are sections in the course that you have to have particular independent skills to get through no matter how fast you are as a handler. And that's pretty much exactly what you, you said people are coming off and saying, even I can't do this course, you know, because I'm super fast European running person. Right. And, but it's going to take those handling skills and those dog training skills and those independent skills. And I think that because the entire agility world has gotten so good at handling, that's, you know, where it's going. It's, it's testing that. I think one of the judges who's judging next year's AWC, she came to judge two weekends ago here in Canada and her courses, I think were even harder than that 8%. So that's what I, maybe next year we'll, we'll be raising to an, to an even higher level than we did this year, which I think is always fun. Because like you said, it's, it's the dog training blended with your, your handling. Right. And that's really where you excel. And I remember watching your course, the team standard course is the course that I remember best from your particular runs. where, when I watched that course, I thought that was just a gorgeous mix of independence, of handling and of you running. And, and you really put those together in a way. I think a lot of people that rely on distance, they don't work to get places themselves as a handler. They rely almost exclusively on distance. And I think you have just such a fantastic blend of I, Susan Garrett, am going to run, but I'm also going to teach my dog to do a lot of things independently so that I can run in a more effective way. And I think that's important. You're always want to keep, you know, you want to come up with a way to overcome your challenges, but keep working on them as well. So, I mean, there are days when I'm out there thinking I've got to be the only, you know, person, 55 year old person doing sprint drills. Like who else at this stage of life is doing sprint drills? And it makes me laugh because I do love doing it. And so it's all part of people have asked me, well, you know, isn't there going to be a point where you're just going to turn it over? I'm never going to turn it over.

I'll be beat at some point where I won't make the Canadian team, but it's never, it's never just going to be a turnover. I'm going to always be working on, on what my struggles are. And the, and the people that are wanting to replace me, they're going to better be working on what their struggles are too. And that's what makes it so much fun for us all. That's right. So in wrap up, I actually wanted to highlight something from our last podcast because I listened to that in preparation to this one. And the last question I asked you was, Susan Garrett, what do you think the next big challenges and agility? And you said jumping. Like I had a crystal ball. That's right. You had a crystal ball. You even said that. You're like, let me look at my crystal ball. And we talked a little bit about how you thought jump training was the next thing. Here we are. We're talking about jump training and how important it is. And now we've talked about how the next big thing is combining independence and handling. So people be warned. We are, we're one for one, right? Between the tank here, right? We're one for one, right? We've, we've laid it out. What the next big challenge is. That's it. No excuses. Everybody has to go and train it. Raise your game, everyone. That's right. Susan, thank you so much for joining us today. And talking about all these different issues that I think, especially the novice handlers are going to really, really enjoy and get a lot out of. But before we let you go, are there any projects that you're working on right now? Yeah, actually we start next week with, we're releasing the first of four videos in a free handling video series that we do. We do this once a year and we opened up a new Facebook group last week called Handling 360 Free Handling Workshop. Free Agility Workshop. Sorry. And so it's called Handling 360 Free Agility Workshop. If you, if you do a search on Facebook for that, it's, it's just a community that's growing. I think we've got about 3000 members in there right now. People who are interested to learn more about what we do is, you know, the dog training of handling. And that's really the focus of this seminar or the seminar, the online seminar we have is really about planning your training at home. Because I think people don't train at home as much as they should, because they've lost their confidence to know they're doing the right thing. And so I'm doing this entire seminar series is focused on how I make my plans, because I, things that I take for granted, I'm realizing people aren't doing. So that's what we've got. And of course, we're going to be opening registrations to Handling 360 after this,

but I just get a kick out of, you know, sometimes we'll have 30,000 people that will join these communities when we put out these, these free workshops. And I have no expectations that 30,000 people are going to join in our classes that, that we actually couldn't, couldn't laugh at. But, but I love to help people who, who, you know, are not in a position to take a class. And so that, that I just get a kick out of that. And that's what we've been doing in that Facebook group. I've got actually got a podcast in there that you kind of touched on and it's called, are you two of 30? So there's a lot of free stuff in there as well. And you know, anybody who's interested, just do a search and join the group. And myself and my team, we're just, we just love helping people. So that's what we're about. And so there are most recent one starts on, what's that date? October, the, I think it's the 22nd or 20 or 20th, somewhere around there. We, we start the series. And we'll put a link to that on the show notes page as well. So it'll be super easy for people to find. Super. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Susan. We, I, I had to hold myself back because I could talk all day about agility to, to, you know, a like-minded ear, but thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. Yes. Thank you. It's been a thrill. And I do love talking the dog training of agility, and it's awesome to find people who love to do that too. And that's it for this week's podcast. We'd like to thank our sponsors back on track and elite science and also NTI global. Visit shop.ntiglobal.com for the widest selection of dog agility tunnels for both competition and backyard training. Known for free shipping, more options, high quality products, and low prices. NTI global has got you covered. They also offer tamer and anchor weight bags, along with full line of accessories and agility storage solutions. Need your agility gear in a hurry. Don't forget to check the in-stock selection. Visit shop.ntiglobal.com and use promo code NTI agility five for 5% off savings today. Happy training. Happy training.