E123: 니콜 위부시(Nicole Wiebusch) - "바닥의 네 발에서 랠리 링까지"

So I kind of mentioned in your intro a little bit how long you've been in dog training. But what really kind of got you started? How did you originally get into it? Well, when I was a kid, I constantly begged my parents for a dog, like so many do. And they finally relented, probably because they got sick of hearing me beg. And so when I was 13, I got a German Shepherd named Max. And I went to some obedience classes, just basic pet manners classes with him, and then got involved in 4-H. So that's really what started me on more the competition side of things, you know, training for obedience. Once we started doing some 4-H training, then I moved on to some AKC stuff, and we ended up getting our CD. I think I was about 14 years old. So that was my first venture into the ring. You know, then I kind of, I was an older teenager, and I didn't do as much with him. But then as soon as I could, I started looking for a golden retriever, and I knew I wanted to do performance events with him. And so that ended up being Tucker. He was my first golden. I got him when I was 19. And he, I knew I'd do obedience with him, and then I ended up doing some agility with him, too. And he was just a great dog, a perfect introduction dog into those things. But obedience wasn't his most favorite thing in the world to do. He would much rather just lay on the couch and cuddle and follow me around. And so at that point, I realized, hey, I really like this stuff. And I started searching for a dog that was a little bit more bred for performance. And so that started my search, which led to Toby, who is that once-in-a-lifetime dog I mentioned in the beginning. And I think you mentioned that he's kind of part of what got you started down that R-plus path, right? So can you tell us a little bit about that? You know, what happened or why was he kind of the impetus for that? Yeah, definitely. So Tucker, like I mentioned, obedience wasn't his favorite thing. And back then, you know, this was in the early 2000s. I didn't have a whole lot of exposure to positive training. I did tend to, you know, I used a lot of treats and I didn't use harsh corrections by any means. But I certainly did at that point. I used some corrections. And Tucker ended up, you know, really dealing with ring stress. And we got through novice and open pretty easily. But when we got to utility, particularly the signal exercise, he really struggled. And he would just freeze up because he was afraid of making a mistake. And so I started to realize that, you know, that it was ring stress and that I needed to help him through that.

And so it was around that time that I started to shift into more reward-based training. And I'm fortunate enough that I live just a few hours from Nancy Little, who also teaches for FDSA. And she was using some positive methods. And so I went to her with Tucker and I started implementing that. And it really, really helped him. Unfortunately, he had to be retired early because he had some health issues. But at that point, I was getting Toby and working with Toby. And so from the get-go, I was able to use those methods with Toby. And that's kind of how I got started on the positive reinforcement journey. That's pretty cool because I knew that you had known and trained with Nancy. But I hadn't realized how kind of pivotal of a role she'd played. Oh, big time. I mean, I owe a lot to Nancy. And I continue to train with her on a regular basis. She's my in-person trainer. And so, yeah, it was really, really great to be able to hook up with her. So how would you describe, for lack of a better phrase, your training philosophy, you know, kind of these days? Well, I definitely would describe it as reward-based. I think that breaking things down is really important. I like to set the dogs up for success right away. I'm really excited about how positive reinforcement training has changed since I started learning about it. It's just come so far. And we've realized that it's not only about click-treat. It's about, you know, conditioning positive emotions. We're learning that dogs' emotions are so important. And so I spend a lot of time with my competition dogs teaching them that the ring is a fun place to be. I spend quite a bit of time on ring prep. And so I definitely, like, you know, like I said, I like to break things down. When you break down behaviors, you can train each piece to criteria. And then when you put it together, you know, you can get precise behaviors but still have that, you know, really confident, fun attitude. So I focus a lot on how my dogs feel about training and how my dogs feel about working with me. And I think that's really helped us. I was kind of hoping we could get into your upcoming Pet Professionals Program classes a little bit and talk about, you know, for FDSA, the rally classes that you're teaching and that you have coming up. But I want to start with the PPP stuff. So your first workshop is four on the floor, Strategies for Reducing Jumping. And your description mentions that you'll get into why dogs do it and what to do about it. So, you know, why do dogs jump? Why is it such a hard thing for people to teach? I think the majority of dogs jump up for attention.

I think it's a natural behavior for them. If you watch dogs playing with each other, they're often jumping on each other and jumping towards each other. And so I think, you know, it's just one of those things that's very natural to them, but it just doesn't work in our world. We don't typically like it, you know, unless they're like two pounds and, you know. But with the bigger dogs in particular, that's not a behavior that we really enjoy. I also think that dogs like to get closer to our faces. And so I think, you know, that's a way for them to do it. When they jump up, they're closer to us. The other thing I see with jumping up is with anxious dogs. And that type of jumping up almost has a frantic feel to it. Those are kind of the main reasons I see for jumping up. And I do think that people inadvertently reinforce it. You know, most people, their natural reaction, especially in the pet world, is to push the dog down or to knee them, you know, knee them in the chest. And these are the things that people have been taught. And dogs find that reinforcing. I tell my clients, if you watch dogs interact with each other, they are pretty rough with each other, you know, for the most part. And so us pushing them down, they're like, oh, cool. You want to play? Okay, let's do that again. Many people and clients tend to reinforce it accidentally. I found that, you know, dogs like attention. And, of course, they want positive attention. But they would rather have negative attention than no attention at all. And so because of that reason, people accidentally reinforce it. And then the behavior gets worse. This is one of those topics where, you know, some instructors may kind of already feel like they have a solution. That's the solution that they teach. And I was hoping we could get just a little bit into the approach or approaches you'll cover and how, you know, having some additional approaches might help the toolbox even of an experienced trainer. Sure. So I think it's important to come at these types of problems with several solutions. I find that dogs, you know, tend to learn better when we can approach it from many different angles. And so we'll be talking about a variety of approaches in the workshop. One thing that I focus really heavily on is an alternative behavior. I think it's really important that, you know, we just don't tell our dogs, no, you can't jump. But we tell them, instead of jumping, I would like you to do this. And that can be anything that's incompatible with jumping. A lot of times we'll start with sit and we'll just really heavily reinforce the sit. But it can be down.

It can be go to your mat. You know, whatever. Whatever works for the owner and the dog. So while we're working on that alternative behavior and teaching the dog that it's super reinforceable when they do that, I am instructing the owners to completely ignore the dog if he or she jumps. So I'm telling them, turn around, back away, you know, fold your arms if you need to. But I want you to ignore the dog. There's no yelling at the dog. There's no pushing the dog off, anything like that. Because some dogs do find that reinforcing. And then we play several other games. I teach the dog to sit in order for someone to approach. So basically, if they want to bring someone in closer, I have them sit. So as soon as they sit, I will start to approach them. If they get up, I'll just back away. And they learn really, really quickly without the owner having to do anything except hold the leash, that if they want me to come in, then they need to sit. And then once I do get up to them, I'll sometimes toss a cookie behind them or have the owner reinforce. We kind of just mix it up. I also find that rewarding the dog before they jump is really important. You know, trying to build up the success instead of waiting for them to jump and then dealing with the jumping. And so when I walk up to a dog that I know is really excited and a jumper, I will often just put food on the floor. You know, I'll make sure I'm rewarding them before they even have the opportunity to jump up. I play a game where they sit and they wait for the treat to come down. And so I just have them sit and I start to lower the treat. And if they come off the ground with their front legs, I put the treat back up. When I start this game, I tend to do it pretty rapidly because I want to get in some success right away. But then, you know, at some point I'm making it more difficult. And I'm, you know, when the dog gets really good, I'm almost teasing him a little bit with the treat. And then I really reinforce him for staying in the sit. And then the last thing that I can think of right now is I try to teach the owners how to lower the arousal level with food. I explain how eating and chewing and such can calm a dog down. And so we talk about things like scatter and, you know, just different ways they can use scatter where they place several treats on the floor and the dog can kind of forage for the treats. I tweak things depending on the team. But I do find that, you know, having several approaches is a good idea for something like this. I mentioned the intro that you've been teaching since 2005. So that's 14 years now. Yeah. Yeah.

So probably safe to say that you've been at this for a while. And I know one of the themes of PPP is that concept of, you know, offering multiple solutions for common problems like jumping. And just to kind of get at this point from a slightly different angle, you know, has there ever been a time in your career when you've been just like really glad that you had multiple solutions to a common problem like this? Can you maybe share a story in that vein? Sure. Yeah. So I think with any pet, well, I mean, really any behavior, it's helpful to have multiple approaches because what works for one dog may not work for another. You know, what one owner might be good at, maybe another owner can't grasp. And so I find that when I'm dealing with my pet dog clients, thinking on the fly is really important. And being able to notice really quickly what's not working and to switch tactics is a helpful skill to have as a pet dog trainer. I also, like I mentioned before, I like to approach the problem from different angles. You know, when I'm working with dogs on jumping up, I'm doing all these things simultaneously that I spoke about. I'm not teaching them one thing and then teaching them another thing. If we only use one solution with something like jumping up, let's say we've decided to reward an alternative behavior like sit, we're not really dealing with how to teach the dog to control their arousal level. We're not really giving the owners creative ideas on how to handle specific situations when the dog is more likely to jump up. You know, like maybe when they come home from work or when someone comes over. And so I think that using a multi-prong approach to a lot of these problems is much more likely to be successful. And even if the owners don't typically or don't necessarily use everything you gave them, they will find some things that really work for them and they'll see what works for both them and their dog. I love that you mentioned not only is it about, you know, what works for one dog might not work for another, but the bit in there about, you know, one owner might not be able to kind of grasp something or accomplish something in quite the same way as another owner. I think that's so important, especially for pet dog classes or pet dog clients. Right, right. You know, you definitely, you can't stay within your little box when you're working with a lot of clients. You know, you have to be able to think outside the box a little bit and to recognize, you know, what's working for this team and what isn't. Yeah.

And where's this person struggling or where are they really being successful? Right, right. So to transition a bit to what you're teaching at FDSA, I feel like I should say FDSA proper, I don't know, the dog sports component of the FNZ Academy, I want to talk about rally for a few minutes. Just to kind of start us out, why rally? If folks have, you know, until now mainly been working towards obedience titles or maybe in other sports, are there advantages to also competing in rally? Anything they need to keep in mind if they're doing that kind of multi-sport thing? You know, I come from a traditional obedience background. And so, and I was doing this before rally was a thing, at least with AKC. And I remember hearing about it and thinking, oh, you know, that sounds really easy. That's basically what we call doodling. You know, we used to do, you know, little front games and finish games and all that stuff. And so in the beginning, you know, when I first started competing in rally, I didn't really train for rally specifically because I had the obedience pieces down. But what I realized is rally is how you can break down those obedience exercises. And it's a way to get in the ring and to be in that ring situation and to practice the behaviors and have a positive experience without having to put together super long chains like you do in obedience. I think rally is the perfect introduction to obedience. It tends to be way more laid back than obedience because there's less emphasis on precision. Now, that doesn't mean you can't be a precise team. I definitely consider myself, you know, a team that likes emphasis on precision. But you can do rally very, very successfully without super straight fronts or super straight finishes. I think the qualifying rate is typically pretty high in rally. So there's a lot less pressure for the handler to be perfect. You know, whereas in obedience, it's like, oh, your dog didn't come on the first command. Well, you just enqueued. Whereas with rally, you can talk to them. You can give them multiple commands. You can interact with and talk to your dog throughout the run, which I think is really important, both for dogs and handlers, to go from training to where most of us are interacting with and talking with our dogs into a sterile, obedient situation is a really big leap. And so rally is a way that you can, you know, break that piece of it down. You know, I talked earlier about how I love breaking down behaviors. And I think rally is a great way to do that because you pull out all the little pieces with your different signs.

And you're also breaking down the fact, you know, you can talk to your dog a little bit. And as you become more experienced, you can control how much you talk to your dog. There's a judge in rally, but they're not following you around like they do in obedience. And I think that's another thing you can break down. You know, a lot of dogs get a little nervous about the judge following them around. They're like, hey, what is that? This is a little weird. So if they're pressure sensitive, that can be tough. Whereas with rally, you walk in to the ring, the judge says, you know, hi, how are you? Are you ready? You say yes, they're ready. And the judge says forward. And so at the beginning of your run, they're right there. But then you leave the judge. And I think that can be just a way for a dog to, you know, kind of get used to that presence of someone being there without that person being overwhelming. I feel like if you do a good job teaching the rally behaviors, it's really easy to transition into obedience. And I think it's a little bit easier to teach your dog good emotions about the ring. When we go into the obedience ring, many handlers are nervous. Their dogs are like, who is this crazy person? I don't know where my mom or dad went. The dog then feels a little bit unsure. The mom isn't acting or the dad isn't acting normally. The judge is following him around. So that can be kind of scary for dogs. And because of that, some of that ring stress comes in. Whereas with rally, your dog probably already has some good emotions about being in the ring. You know, once you get in and you can praise them and you can have fun, they're going to feel much better about going in the ring with you. And then going from rally to beginner novice in AKC isn't a huge leap at all. Because there are signs for the healing pattern. So they're used to that picture. And then with beginner novice, during certain exercises, you can talk to your dog once. And so it's not like you go from, you know, not being able to or being able to talk as much as you want to not being able to talk at all. And so I think that also makes the transition to novice much easier because you're like stepping forward. You know, you can talk all you want. And then you can only talk a couple times. And now you can't talk. But at that point, by the time you get to novice, the dog's like, okay, yeah, rings are fun. This is cool. I'm good with all this. And I think that can really help people make that leap into obedience if that is what they want to do.

I like that you kind of broke down the difference between not only is it good practice for the dog, but good practice for the person if they are the type who is going to get nervous during a competition performance. Like when who doesn't get nervous, right? Absolutely. So what about the other side of the coin? If folks have maybe tried traditional obedience and they've kind of been turned off by it or, you know, they decided that that's definitely not for them. Can you get a little more into how rally is different? They might decide that they want to give it a try even if obedience wasn't for them. I think the atmosphere at a rally trial is much more laid back than an obedience trial. You know, you walk into a room where they're doing obedience and everything's super quiet. And there's not, you know, everyone's kind of being careful about how they move and trying not to distract the dogs. And with rally, it's a lot different because the people in the ring are talking to their dogs and they're cheering on their dogs. So it's not nearly as silent and sterile as an obedience atmosphere. And that is, you know, that alone makes it a lot easier for people. As I mentioned earlier, it's easier to qualify in rally. Typically, even if your dog can't do a specific sign, as long as you attempt the sign, you only lose points. You don't lose the cue. And so as long as you are prepared for the signs and you've done a good job with training your dog and you pay attention to the course and you don't skip the signs, then it's pretty likely that you'll qualify. The average qualifying rates are much higher for rally than they are for obedience. And so that just, again, takes some of that pressure off the handlers. Another thing that's nice about rally is you get to walk through the course before you take your dog in the ring and you can ask the judge questions. And so I think that really helps the handlers. They can get in the ring. They can calm their nerves a bit. They're in that, you know, scary place. And they also have the opportunity to talk to the judge. And their dog is put away in the crate or, you know, someone's holding him or whatever. And so that gives the handlers just a moment to acclimate and to get some of those nerves out. I like to start my dogs in rally because I like to see how they're going to react to being in the ring at a place where I can help them out if I need to. If I see that my dog is struggling a little bit, I can praise them. You know, I typically am not a chatterbox with my dogs in the rally ring because my eventual goal is obedience.

But you can be as chatty or non-chatty as you want. And if you need to give your dog a bit of extra help, you can do that. You know, if people enjoy training the behaviors, if they like, you know, training the fronts and the finishes and the healing and all that, but they haven't had the best experiences at obedience trials or they're just not sure they want to do obedience at all. I think rally is really that great stepping stone or even just that great place to be. There's plenty of teams out there that just do rally. You can go really far in rally now. They've got rally nationals. There's really all kinds of things you can do and stay in the sport without ever going into obedience. That's awesome. So I know you just finished up your first rally class at FDSA and you've already got another one on the schedule for August. I'd love to have you share just a little bit about what the upcoming class covers. Can people take it even if they didn't take the class this past session? Yeah, absolutely they can. When I was working on this series, I wanted to make sure that people could jump in, you know, wherever they needed to. The first rally class that we just finished up focused on teaching the skills. There's a lot of skills you need to compete in rally. You know, short healing segments, fronts, finishes, positions, that kind of stuff. And this class is focusing on the signs. And so what I'm going to do is cover all the novice or level one signs from what I found to be the four most popular organizations. So that's AKC, WCRL, UKC, and ASCA. And so for every sign, there's a lecture and then there's pictures of the sign and a description of how to complete the sign. And then at least one video example and in some cases, several video examples of how that sign should look. We're also going to include helpful tips for each sign. I'm going to discuss how to move into and out of the sign because that's important. And in addition, we'll discuss how to teach the dog to ignore the signs on the ground because it's a distraction and the cones and all that stuff. And then how to stay connected to your dog as you navigate the course. It's definitely a skill to be able to be there for your dog and be connected and pay attention to what's going on with the signs. So anyone can take this course, but it will be assumed that, you know, the dogs have skills needed to complete the novice level signs. They don't need to be perfected, but the dog should at least know the basics. You know, if your dog doesn't know how to front or finish, then, you know, this probably isn't the right class for you.

Like I said, they don't need to be perfected, but they need to kind of have a baseline. And then for those that took the first class or for those that already have those skills in place, we're going to continue working on strengthening and adding precision to the skills. And so if you just need some help with refining, say your dog knows all the skills, but you're struggling with maybe some of the precision aspects, then I can certainly help you with that. Like I mentioned earlier, I like to train my own dogs to, you know, fairly high precision. And I love doing it. It's a passion of mine to be able to get, you know, precision and good attitude at the same time. And so if there's someone coming in and they're thinking, well, I don't really need the signs. I need some help with precision. Then we can absolutely focus on that. That won't be a problem at all. And the first class also is available as a prerequisite if you want to learn, if people want to learn how to teach the skills. But it's not required. It's definitely not required. But say you missed out on the first class and you realize, oh, I need to learn how to teach these skills. Then that class is out there as a prerequisite. That's awesome to have that option. And so the new class will open for registration on July 22nd. Anything else folks should know about the class if they're, you know, maybe on the fence or trying to decide if it's the right one for them for this session? Sure. You know, I think maybe for those teams that are working through the team program through FENSEE or if they want to kind of work some obedience foundations, I think rally is a really good place to start. Honestly, even if you never want to compete and rally, if you train it, you learn all the stuff you need for obedience, which is great. You get some, you know, really broken down skills and some great, great obedience skills that way. So I think whether or not your goals are obedience or rally, this class is a good one. And if you're working on team, maybe you're working on the upper levels of team and you're like, well, you know, I just need something to do with my dog, then this is a really good one for you. So last three questions here as my dogs make their presence in the background. So these are three questions that I usually ask people the first time they come on the podcast. So what is the dog related accomplishment that you're proudest of? You know, I had to think about that one. And the one I kept coming back to was when I finished my first UD, Utility Dog Title with Toby.

With Tucker, my first golden, I tried for a long time to get that UD and we never got there. He, you know, like I mentioned, he had those ring stress issues. And Toby earned his UD in three weekends. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. He was amazing. And I just, I, I remember vividly standing there, watching him take that final jump on the directed jumping exercise and just being so proud. And not only proud that, hey, look, I finished a UD, but proud that I finished a UD on a dog that was completely trained with positive methods. And not only did we finish the UD, we had very high scores for all three of our legs. And so that realization that I can successfully train a dog using positive reinforcement methods was just this wonderful feeling. And I remember I left the ring and I, I was, I literally had tears in my eyes. I was just so proud and, and, um, you know, so proud of my dog and so proud of our team and the team that we are together. And so I, I think that would probably be the one I'm most proudest of. That's awesome. What is the best piece of training advice that you've ever heard? That was another really hard question because I can think about 10,000 of them. But I think I would probably have to choose, you know, that saying, be a splitter, not a lumper. You know, I tell my clients the key to being a good trainer is to break down the behaviors. And I really believe that if you can break down each piece of the behavior and split it very finely, and you can teach each piece to criteria, then you can end up with a really solid behavior. And if anything ever falls apart later, then you can go back because you've got that foundation. So you pull that tiny piece out, you fix it, you put it back in. Obviously, most people, most pet people in particular, they don't know how to split out behaviors. And so I really, yeah, I really, um, focus on teaching how to do that. And, and it really helps their training a lot. And so I think I would have to pick that as, um, you know, probably my best piece of training advice that I've heard. Last one. So who is somebody else in the dog world that you look up to? I thought, I thought about this one a lot too. And this may sound a little cliche, but you know, I would have to say Denise Fensi. Um, I remember the, the first seminar I attended with Denise and it was back. I don't remember what year it was. Um, must've been maybe around 2012. And at that time, there weren't a lot of people doing positive reinforcement training in my area. You know, I kind of worked with Nancy, but, um, I remember sitting at the seminar with Denise and just

like being amazed that there were these, these, these other people in the world that wanted to train like I did. And, and I remember just thinking, yay, you know, I can do this. I'm not alone. And it was, it was just this great feeling. And what Denise has done, um, you know, with FDSA, it's just incredible. And not only the dog training piece of it, but the people, the, the culture, um, you know, the community, that's the word I'm looking for. I just, I think it's amazing. And it's been such a huge part of my life. I mean, FDSA, I started taking classes in 2013 and it, you know, really helped me to become a better trainer and really change everything for me. I think, yeah, I would have to say Denise. Um, I, I really look up to her and I'm like, yeah, when I grow up, I want to be Denise Fendi. Don't we all? Right, right. So, uh, yeah, that's, that's who I'm going to pick. You know, obviously there's, there's quite a few, but, but she's the one that kept coming to the front of my mind. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Nicole. Oh, thank you, Melissa. It was tons of fun. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in. As a reminder for the next few weeks, we'll be chatting with instructors of FDSA's new sister school, the Pet Professionals Program. Um, our last episode dove into everything puppy. Um, our next one, we'll talk about how to handle tricky training situations and bad dog behaviors. Don't miss it. 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. Musico. Thank you.