E436: 페트라 포드(Petra Ford) - 오픈 오비디언스 살펴보기

a good three to four years to get my dogs healing the way i want so what am i going to do in the meantime well i'm going to teach all the open and all the utility exercises right i'm going to teach the foundation pieces and then just keep building on it and building on it plus it's fun like the dogs like it it gives them some variety you're not just healing all the time right you're doing a bunch of other skills and dogs they like to learn and they like to be challenged and i think it makes it more fun for the handlers too i think when they're new it's all just a little bit overwhelming like there's so much to learn um as a handler but if you think of um like the open utility exercises as as not if you don't think about the whole class and a whole exercise if you just think about teaching little pieces then i think it's not as intimidating so speaking of that um i think you definitely know all of the exercises and i looked them up before writing these questions so i know what the exercises are for those who are new to obedience or maybe listening to this and haven't played in obedience before can you just talk us through what the actual uh behaviors or the skills for the open ring actually are sure so compare to the novice because you're mentioning novice too right so for um open you have to do an off-leash healing pattern and figure eight so that's kind of similar to novice then you have to do a retrieve on the flat which basically means just throw the dumbbell straight ahead of you um dog runs out retrieves it front finish um a retrieve over the high jump so you throw the dumbbell over the jump the dog runs out over the jump picks up the dumbbell comes back over the jump front finish um drop on recall so it kind of builds on the novice recall the novice recall you leave the dog you call the dog the dog the dog fronts drop on recall at some point while the dog is running towards you the judge gives a signal and at that point you either give a signal or you verbally tell your dog to down your dog drops quickly to the ground and then when the judge gives another signal you call the dog to front and then finish so that's a drop on recall and um then we have probably one of the hardest competition obedience exercises which is command discrimination which on the surface doesn't sound that hard people are like well i can get my dog to move between a sit down and a stand but what makes this exercise so hard is you are almost always lined up with a dog with a ring gate behind the dog so there's pressure behind um sometimes you're lined up kind of in a corner so there's

pressure on both sides and then the judge stands off to the side that's pressure on a third side and the dogs know they are not getting out of that position for quite some time which makes it really hard for dogs but in any event um you will know the combination ahead of time if you go and open a the combination is always the same the judge says stand your dog you stand your dog the judge says leave you walk 15 feet to a marker turn the judge gives you signal you can um it's always uh stand then it's a down so you can give a verbal and a hand signal to down your dog then the judge says leave you go another 15 feet and then you give a signal to sit your dog if you are in open b then there are a bunch of potential combinations and you don't know which combination it's going to be until the till you get to the trial that day so it could be down sit stand down stand sit stand sit down or stand down sit so you have to teach your dogs all those orders um so that exercise is pretty challenging um that's why that's when i for sure start very young and then the last thing is did i get everything yeah the last thing is stand stay get your leash so in novice you do a sit stay get your leash but i think it's about like give or take 30 feet from the ring entrance for open it's only about it's not even 15 feet a lot of times it's like 10 maybe even less feet away but you stand your dog and then you leave your dog you leave the ring get your leash step into the ring wait for the judge to tell you to return return to your dog yeah so that's open awesome so those are the skills right you talked a little bit about how they do from the novice stuff um what challengers complexities beyond just the skills that you need to teach do teams really need to prepare for for open that maybe differ from earlier levels yeah so the biggest you know the majority of people that go to a competition their dogs in their you know wherever they train at home in the training building they go to every week the majority of the dogs can do the basic exercise like so in a pristine um sterile for lack of a better word environment they can do the individual exercises where it gets complicated is dealing with distractions right so there's a lot going on in the environment and it's different every time it's not always the same right so every competition i go to every time and i've been doing this a ridiculously long time unique things still happen unexpected things something i would have never thought of in a million years right um so the dogs have to

deal with those kind of things um environmental distractions there's a lot of judge pressure they have to deal with and you know as the exercises get more complex and the dogs have to do more complex chains on their own they just um there's just more for them mentally to hold together right like they just um there's oh it's if you think about it it's an animal nothing they're doing is natural not a single thing like yeah maybe they run and get a ball that you throw in the yard but for sure they don't have to do a clean pickup they don't have to hold it perfectly they don't have to do a perfect front release the object do a finish like none of it's natural so it's really all a bunch of tricks chained together in a ridiculously long chain and that's a lot for the dog to remember right and hold together so um it's really important to make the exercises really strong um to make sure the dog can do them around a wide variety and variety is a key word of distractions and um with a lot of judge pictures right like judges in a whole bunch of different places because they're never in the same spot all the time so for those teams that maybe have done a lot of that type of work they've learned to the pieces right they've gone through and learned the behaviors what makes the difference between a team that's kind of good at open and a team that's like really great like you watch them and go wow a lot of time and work fair enough yeah i think it's no i think it's um it's kind of along the line it's for one experience is helpful right because if you take me for example i have seen so many different possible challenges that can occur in the ring that i have a wealth of information to pull from if you've never been in the open ring and you walk in and suddenly um the high jump is set up in a way you like on the diagonal and you've never seen that before and you didn't even know that was a possibility you're gonna be like oh god i never trained for that well of course not you didn't know right um and there can be a wide variety of ways the ring is set up and um or maybe all of a sudden you're the judge is standing near the dumbbell and you're like wait i thought the judge was gonna stand next to me and the dog i didn't know they could be out there so experience is definitely helpful just in terms of you know what all the what a lot of the possibilities are and so you can prepare your dog for them right um and it's also i think that people that are newer feel like okay i've taught my dog the exercise my dog knows it therefore my dog should be able to perform it in the ring and more

experienced people understand that that's not enough right that um you need to prepare your dog like i mentioned to deal with distractions to deal with judge pressure to deal with um and to really strength challenge the exercises and strengthen them so that the dog is super confident performing them so that the dog knows the exercise inside out backwards forwards when you're working on your training plans for all of that so when you're thinking about kind of what you need to work on um how do you decide like either in the moment or kind of you know thinking about your training for the week like what part of an exercise you're gonna work on proofing or like work on challenging next do you look at like you know the dog's cue response the handler movement the environment something else like how do you how do you make those training choices so i'm doing some things a little differently now we're doing this with one of my training partners because she has a young dog and um so what happens is so there's three of us that train and the three of us have like very advanced dogs right so we're we're always setting up challenges because um well because it's important to strengthen the dog's understanding of and commitment to the behaviors and because our dogs are at that point in their training but i said let's just let the puppy see these things right that are different um so for example we might have like a kid's toy that looks like a little crabby thing and it makes noise and it moves all around right so her dog is not fully trained obviously it's a puppy it's young but she's just gonna train whatever she would normally train maybe it's just like a recall or just some or she's gonna do some simple behaviors and the crabby thing's just gonna be moving around and that for the dog it's seeing like one or two weird things unusual things it's just gonna be part of what the dog's gonna see right um so every time we train and we do something a little different like i think we put um like a blanket over the bra jump just to make it look different and her dog is in the process of learning the bra jump and we just continue training the bra jump as if nothing was different it just had a blanket over it so it just looks different right um so it we're not making it so hard that the dogs has to make this conscious effort to ignore it or to make a choice like you know don't get that thing get this thing instead it's just kind of there in the background um so that's what we're doing with the young dog right and that's what i'll be doing when i get a puppy next year but as far as an actual

challenge within the exercise where we're like okay here's the exercise and i'm going to create a challenge so for example i'm going to throw the dumbbell and when you get out there to your dumbbell there's going to be a toy out there right or a contain a closed because i have labs um securely closed container of food that you cannot possibly open and now my dog has to go out there and make a decision right get the dumbbell or go for the food dish and or get the dumbbell or go for the toy and that's it's a challenge right so of course the dog is inexperienced or it's a lab it's going to go for the food dish and then we're like ah silly dog the dumbbell get the dumbbell and then after a couple reps the dog's like i know what to do i get the dumbbell and i'm going to ignore that food or i'm going to ignore that toy and when they do we're like yes that was brilliant and everybody like freaks out and we have a big party now the dog um is making choices and it's becoming confident right and we create all different challenges where the dog is like where we make it a little harder than what the dog will see and the dog starts to go i can do this so like zayna loves when we make it hard right because i think she thinks when it's normal it's stupid she's like i know what i'm doing this is too easy she loves it she gets so happy and she's so proud of herself and she's like you silly humans you can't fool me you can come up with whatever you want i know my job so as a result she's very confident with her exercises right she's confident with her job she understands what she's supposed to do so when i'm in the ring and something happens if anything it makes her better so if i'm healing and a judge is practically on top of us like scoring like so you know i'm i love when they do that it's i'm gonna get her best healing because she's got she looks at me and she's like this person is not gonna mess me up right and that's what i want i don't want her going oh god this person's on top of me this is so awkward and uncomfortable which it is um why are they there right she's like yeah yeah yeah and so that's what i want to work towards with my dogs that if something drops behind them or something unusual happens instead of them going oh god oh god they're like yeah mm-hmm yep got it doesn't matter what happens i know what my job is i can do this right and i find that the more challenges we put in front of them and the more successful they are with the challenges um the more confident the dog gets overall right and the more um and the more solid their

understanding is of the exercise right because a ring is not always a pristine environment it's not always perfect um things are going to happen and i want my dog to be able to solve the problem i don't want my dog to go like oh god a problem oh god and panic and fall apart i want my dog to be like yep i i can do this thinking that through right when you're breaking out pieces from the bigger chain or you're working on like little bits and pieces you know if you're isolating maybe parts of the retrieve or a finish or a healing transition um how do you avoid you know over doing that aspect so over segmenting things and not maybe letting the dog see the big chain enough how do you like find a balance between breaking things down and working on like little bits or specific challenges versus like okay this is really what it's going to look like in the ring so when i add challenges like true challenges right i can only add that to something that's fluent so if a piece of the behavior is fluent i can add a challenge to that piece right and i will because i don't want to wait until the whole exercise or the whole class is fully trained to add a challenge but as the dog progresses in their training and they are a chain is now fluent then i can add a challenge or multiple challenges to the whole chain right because they know the chain the behaviors have to be fluent because otherwise when you add a challenge the dog's not going to be able to come up with the answer and then all they're going to do is fail and then all you're doing is adding stress and um you know worry and you're actually ruining their confidence it's you're making them insecure right and that's not what i want so as my dog gets more advanced i can do a whole chain so um if there's an so with my dogs now let's say they're considered fully trained right they know all the exercises really well if there's a piece that i see that's weak or that's gotten weak i could choose to isolate that piece and just strengthen that but if my p my if my chains are all fairly solid on a given day i could certainly add challenges throughout the entire chain and just keep going right i could tell my dog good that's it and then move on to the next thing or i could add a challenge but have my dog complete the entire chain and then reward the dog um so i tend to just i tend with everything i tend to mix it up right there always has to be balance like you have to work on pieces but you also have to work on the chain and then sometimes and then i don't always add challenges

because then what happens is if we're adding challenges all the time and the dogs are getting like oh challenges challenges then all of a sudden you show them like a kind of clean ring with just the judge and now it looks completely different so sometimes we do you know ring picture that's somewhat more clean and just work that so it's a constant balance right um and it's it's just mixing everything up and it's i reassess my plan we so i basically assess what i'm going to work on based on for example if i go to a competition what are the pieces that i thought were weak or that i would like to be better so i'll focus on those and what why were those pieces weak what aspect is it that the dog's understanding isn't strong enough was it pressure was it distraction what was it and then i'll work on that um and then the rest of it is just maintaining this balance of some sessions have to be motivational some have to be challenging some have to have distractions some have to be you know shorter pieces some have to be longer pieces it's just constantly balancing it out it's it's a juggling act for sure yeah lots of different angles to look at things with consider and piece together yeah yeah so we're talking about all of this because you've got your open obedience conquering complexity and challenges class on the schedule for the december term which when this podcast comes out registration will be open for the class um do you want to talk a little more about the class itself kind of what you cover who might want to sign up yeah sure so um we used to call it proofing what what this class is about right and the old way of proofing was you set up a challenge so you make the exercise hard and then the dog makes a mistake and then you tell the dog they're wrong so that kind of sounds not so fun right um so that's not what we do and um i was doing a panel discussion with denise i want to say it was that not this camp the prior camp and she's like yeah i i don't even call it that anymore because no matter how much we say that we do it in a positive way the word still holds this negative connotation because of its history um and so she said i'm just i just call it like adding i think she said complexity or challenges one of those things right and so that's why i kind of was like all right i'm not going to name this a proofing class right because that's not what i'm doing we're mindfully adding um very mindfully and thoughtfully adding challenges that the dog can win win so the dog is right most of the time and if the dog is struggling a little bit we can help them

out but it's not about making the dog wrong it's about making the dog helping the dog learn that they can do it they can push through these challenges and they can win the game and building their confidence so if you have if your dog is not fully trained and open but you have pieces of open that are fluent confident then for sure you can take the class because it's we're going to be working on pieces a lot if your dog has longer chains or if your dog knows open or if your dog is in open but you would like it to be stronger or you would like your dog to be more confident then for sure um this class is going to be good for that we are also going to be working on things like transitions and ring entrances because those are really important as well um and most importantly this class is fun like whenever i have people and i've in the past where i like start to say well let's add this they're like oh god oh no oh no i no that's gonna be too hard for my dog right then i get them to start doing it and then they become like addicted to it because it's super fun it's fun for us and it's fun for the dogs like and then they get really creative and come and i'm like ah that's a really good idea i'm gonna try that right so yeah like students have come up with great ideas and um they get more confident as handlers and trainers and the dogs get more confident and like i said it's super fun i love proofing it's literally one of my favorite things because i like watching my dog evolve and i love watching my dogs just get really confident and you know kind of like i described zaina and zesty's getting there now too where they're like yeah yeah yeah i watch this i can do this and then they're like really proud of themselves so yeah it's it's fun it'll be it's a super fun proofing it or challenges are super fun um so yeah i'm excited looking forward to it for those that register should they already have all of the exercises for open like what prereq level i guess do they need to be at just pieces like if for example if they don't have a full retrieve on the flat but the dog can maybe um like get the dumbbell and then they just throw a cookie between their legs because it doesn't have a front and finish right um it they don't have to have finished open exercises like i said if they have pieces of open like let's say the dog's jumping over the broad jump but they haven't added like the front and the finish or they send the dog over it but they're not in formal heel position yet as long as the pieces that you're working on are strong

fluent right if a piece is fluent then um or let's say a dog can do command discrimination just not full distance that's okay as long as you have pieces that are fluent you can start proofing and the sooner you do it the better it is right because all it's because i almost feel like what happens is people train the exercises in a sterile environment and then that becomes part of the picture right that becomes part of the cue system and the context and they do that until the dog is fully trained for the ring then you go and you add challenges and yeah it's going to look drastically different to the dog but if you start introducing these things again in a very thoughtful systematic way earlier then i think it's much easier for the dogs um you know down the road and as they progress any uh final thoughts or key points you may want to leave folks with as we wrap up i mentioned the main thing is that you know we're going to make that this doing uh adding challenges strengthens the dog's understanding of the exercise and it builds their confidence and confident and it strengthens their ability to solve problems and when they're in the ring no matter how well you train your dog the ring is hard your dog's going to be under pressure your dog's going to be challenged your dog's going to have periods when it struggles a little bit and they're going to need the skill set of being able to be confident solve the problem push through to the end um and that's what this course is going to give the dogs awesome all right well thank you so much for coming on the podcast petra thank you for having me as always my pleasure also as always and thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in we'll be back next week this time with ashley escobar to talk about how to use fitness conditioning to improve your dog's impulse control body awareness and precision if you haven't already subscribe to the podcast in itunes or the podcast app of your choice then our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available today's show is brought to you by the fenzy dog sports academy special thanks to denise fenzy 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