E192: 헬렌 로울러(Helene Lawler) - 루피 리스닝(Loopy Listening)

And then I've been doing a lot of work on the other end of the leash. That's maybe my biggest focus is working on me, my mindset and my my understanding of training, which has been really fun. And then my my physical like mechanics and all of that as well. So the whole package that this end of the leash is getting a lot of focus right now as well. Awesome. Which kind of fits really nicely with what we're talking about today. Right. So exactly. That's it's what what's what this workshop has absolutely come out of this work for sure. Yeah. So obviously loopy training is kind of a buzzword right now. Everybody's hurt, hurt it. Maybe they don't necessarily know what it is, but they you know, they probably heard it at this point. It's kind of a hot topic. I know it's something you're playing around with and exploring in quite some depth. So do you want to just kind of share what it is, why it caught your interest? Sure. So the the concept I first came across through listening to Alexandra Kerlin's podcast, Equiosity, and Hannah Brannigan also talks about it on her podcast. So those episodes got me really curious about it. The term loopy training was was coined by Alexandra and comes out of her work. And so I started to study that because I think she just does such fantastically interesting work with horses. And then, of course, Hannah also was applying it to the work that she's doing. And and, you know, I was watching her results and going, wow, I want that, too. So I started to really study it. And so what is loopy training? Loopy training is reframing how we think about training from a linear process into a circular process. So typically, you know, many of us who have done any kind of work on learning behavior, we think about the whole, you know, the ABCs of training. So antecedent behavior consequence or cue behavior reinforcement or, you know, sit dog sits click. And then we give them a cookie. So we think of that in this linear process. But loop what loopy training does is it points out the fact that the training process is actually circular because by the time. So let's say we'll stick with this example. Sit. So the dog, we say you give the cue to sit dog then does the behavior and sits. And then we click and then we feed. And then after the dog's finished swallowing the cookie, the dog is going to do another behavior. Right. The dog doesn't like turn into a stone. There's there's there's another behavior. So we're back at.

So so then so the dog, when the dog is has finished swallowing the cookie, the dog is going to be cued to do something else, depending on what the situation is at the end of the swallow, basically. So so when we when we think about it, so if we don't control that process, if we haven't planned ahead to decide, hey, when my dog is finished swallowing the cookie, I want the next step to be X. Then the dog will just respond to something in its environment and make the next step Y or X. But but then we're gambling. Right. So if we don't. So so loopy training is about thinking about our training in a loop so that we don't just feed the cookie and be done with it. We go, OK, well, what do we want? What do we want our next step to be? So, for example, if you want to be before working on a sit, we feed the cookie. Then we can't if we actually want to do another sit. If the dog is sitting, we can't ask them to sit because they're already sitting. So what we need them to do is to get out of the set so they can sit again. So if we want to have a loop, what we would do is we would have we would have our standing dog at the start and we ask for the sit. That's the cue. The dog sits. We'll click to let the dog know that that's what what earns reinforcement. And then we will hold the cookie in such a way that the dog has to stand back up to eat the cookie. And that completes the loop. So the dog ends where they started and then you have a loop around the sit behavior that doesn't include any other behaviors. So that is a way of thinking about about how we can train that will be that will really help advance your training skills a lot when you start to when you start to really dig into this. It makes our training so much more efficient and clear to our dogs. And so we can we can move things along much more quickly when we when we start thinking in a circular, in a loopy way instead of in a linear way with our training. So it seems like it really kind of ties into like the idea of smart reinforcement. Right. So like thinking about like where you're delivering your cookie and how you're delivering your cookie and things like that. Are they really different things? Are they just versions of the same or a similar idea? Like how do you kind of where do you draw the line between those two things? Great question. OK, so what loopy training is loopy training is just good training. It's very simple. It's actually like we all already train in loops. We're just not aware of it. And so once we start to learn to see our behavior happening in loops,

we can then intentionally set it up in a loop in a in a circular fashion this way. And using the smart smart reinforcement or location specific markers or location specific reinforcers. And, you know, there's there's more and more terms coming up for what we're doing with this. But basically having your reinforcement in a position that will then ensure the you know, that the dog is set up to do the behavior we want next is part of the loopy training process. So it's absolutely one in the same thing. So, OK, so we've talked through kind of what it is and we've talked through about kind of the idea of smart reinforcement. What do you really see as kind of the benefits here? What you know, why do we want a clean loop when we're training our dog? OK, so a clean loop gives us information that we need to progress our training. So the rules of loopy training are that we want to have. So the so, OK, when you have we have your little loop, we'll go back to our sit loop that I talked about. When you have a dog who starts in a stand, sit, click, feed so that they end up back in a stand. And then you have that nice little clean loop, then then the dog will understand the word sit means put his butt on the ground and back. And then you can pull it out of a sit. Now, if we don't have a clean loop, let's say we have some other behaviors in. So you say sit and the dog lies down and then pops into a sit and then maybe barks at you. So then and I'm sure I'm sure we can all relate to that. Then then what ends up happening is that you finally get your set. So your dog, if you say sit, the dog like, you know, lies down, barks, pops into a sit and then you click. And then you feed either in a sit or in a stand. What you've got now is a loop, a behavior loop that has a sit and a down and a bark. And when you click, you actually have reinforced all of these. And then what ends up happening is you end up reinforcing that behavior chain. And you know what? Maybe you don't care because you just want your dog to eventually end up in a sit. And then that's totally fine. But let's say you're doing competition obedience. You so don't want that. Right. So you or even if you're just doing you're doing tricks or you're doing other things, you want that nice, clean, that specific behavior. So when we start when we aim for the clean loop, we will start to see how those other behaviors get built into the cue that we're giving and how that can mess up with what we're trying to achieve.

So getting to a clean loop, one of the really important things about doing that is that then we will prune out all those extraneous behaviors. And then we don't end up with with what we commonly call junk behavior in our in our behaviors. So that's one big reason for it, that if we if we want to have effective training, we need to think about it in these simple, clean loops as we build it and have a little building block. So if you think about it as like each loop is a is a block that we then build on to grow our behaviors as opposed to having like this kind of big, like lumpy mess that we then have to try and build on. So I think that you've kind of iterated on the the idea here, right, the original idea. And you've kind of started to talk about this new concept. I think you're calling it loopy listening. So do you want to kind of talk about what that is and how that's different than the concept of loopy training itself? Sure, absolutely. So loopy listening is it's a term that I pretty sure I coined it. Maybe my brain picked it up somewhere, but that but I think I think my my brain created it. And but what I'm using it, what I basically use it to mean is we use loopy training that the strategy of loopy training to learn to hone our eye to be able to listen to what our dogs are saying. That's why I call it loopy listening, because our dogs speak through behavior. And so we have to watch it. But what we have to do is then interpret what we see as as communication for our dogs. So that's why I use list loopy listening as opposed to loopy watching. So I can watch my dog perform a behavior and then see what other behaviors are involved in that loop. What is the dog adding to the loop and how do I interpret that? That is what loopy listening is all about. So I have a definition here that I that I use to describe to define it. So loopy loopy listening, I define as the applications of the application of the principles of loopy training, which is what we just talked about. So we learn to hear our dogs whisper before they have to shout. Whispering are the little subtle behaviors that they do. That show us where our training is starting to break down, where they have some confusion, where they're feeling a little bit of frustration or boredom. And this is really, really critical to our training process, because what ends up happening if we don't respond to the whisper, if you think about it, somebody is whispering something, they whisper it a few times and you can't hear them. What do they do? They get louder. They get louder. They get louder. And they get louder and they get louder.

And so often we don't hear the whispers. We're not aware of them. We don't know what they mean. We don't understand them. And then our dogs have to up the volume and then they end up shouting at us. And then we're in trouble. So by the time our dog is shouting, we have a problem as opposed to just a training tweak. Yeah. So when you say shouting, you don't literally mean that they're barking at you, right? Like, I mean, it could be that. But there are other things that represent shouting too, right? Absolutely. So they absolutely could be shouting. That's definitely, oh, that's right. They could be barking. They could be. So, okay, I'll give you the difference. So whispers could mean the way our dogs whisper to us is they'll do a lip lip. They might blink. They might give us a little bit of whale eye when they turn their eye to the side and we see the whites. They might be a little slow in their responses. They might start sniffing the ground a little bit. They might suddenly be itchy or discover a crumb on the ground that is super fascinating. They have to investigate in the middle of performing a behavior. These are all whispers as opposed to shouts, which would be barking and biting and spinning, zoomies, quitting, running away, other types of reactive behaviors. The really big feeling behaviors that so many people struggle with in their training or competing. And you have these, you know, they're like, oh, there's a dog with really big feelings and they express them in these very dynamic ways. So that's what I mean by shouting. So you already talked a little bit. My next question was going to be, why is the concept so important in training? So I know you already talked about that a little bit. Is there anything you kind of want to expand on there? Absolutely. There's a lot. So go for it. So, yeah, so the concept of watching for the whispers, the reason it's so important. Okay, I talked about, you know, getting clean behaviors, but that's like really the fringe benefit. The really important part of this work is that arousal comes from having to raise their voice. And what I see so often in sport dog training is arousal problems. That's like my number one thing that people come to me for, really, for work with their dogs is arousal problems. Either dogs that stress high, and we have all the, like, you know, the worked up dogs, or the stress low or sensitive dogs, and the dogs that just don't want to engage in the training. And now some dogs are inherently, you know, very, very naturally high arousal already. And some dogs are very naturally sensitive.

And there can be pathological reasons for that and genetic reasons for that and medical reasons for that. But a big portion of that also comes from the training process. And the dogs will start whispering and saying, I'm confused. I don't really know what you mean here. Can you give me a little more information? Oh, this is uncomfortable. Ouch, that hurts. And they'll give us these little tiny whispers. And we don't listen. And we don't hear them. We don't see them. We don't know what to look for. We don't know what they mean. And so we keep going. And then the dog starts to raise its voice in behavior sense. And that emotional state and that arousal state gets built into our training as well as the extraneous behaviors. So, for example, that dog who, you know, drops into a down and barks at us before popping into a sit, the barking might be annoying and the down is messy. But the bigger issue here is that the dog has an emotional, a conditioned emotional response of, you know, probably frustration built into the cue sit and an arousal reaction to go into high arousal when you say sit. And that's deeply problematic. I'll give you an example of when I was training a sheep dog that was there having a really hard time with the dog biting and gripping the sheep. And I took the dog in to do a little work with myself. And I had a small area and I had everything very controlled. And the dog was working beautifully. And I said nothing. I was being very, very quiet. And I was just sort of watching and observing the dog. And then things were going well. And I said, away to me, which is the cue for the dog to go right to the right around the around the, it was ducks. And as soon as I said the cue, the dog dove in and tried to bite the ducks. We had her, we had a muzzle. So it didn't. And that was like, wow, the cue itself. The dog was working perfectly. No problem. The context wasn't setting the dog off the being with the livestock, the handler, all of that wasn't set it off. But the cue, when I said, away to me, the dog shot into high arousal and exploded forward and tried to grip. So that behavior that was so well rehearsed was built into the cue. And so then we had to, you know, work at coming up with new cues and retraining and so on and so forth. So I just thought that was such a, that's such a very, very clear example to me. That was one of my first big aha moments of how, how the arousal habit was built into the cue itself. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. I think, and that's obviously like a big dynamic behavior. So it's really obvious to see that that's tied to arousal and really clear. Right.

I think a lot of times people miss it because like you said, the, the, the down bark thing, right. Is obviously less obvious to most trainers than diving in after the dog. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I, I have, um, uh, a dog that one of the dogs that I'm working with. Um, and I, and I share a lot of this work in the, in the workshop because I think it's so important with my livestock guardian dog because she bites and slams and paws. And like, she manhandles me like crazy. Like when I, when I am, when I create any frustration in our training, I like pay for it and skin. Um, and, and I'll say, this is why it's, um, the work, the work came out of the horse world. Um, and I, and, and I expect as also in, um, people who work with like, uh, wild animals and so on, because the consequences are quite serious. Most of the time, you know, like if your agility dog gets the zoomies or barks at you, you know, it's frustrating and it's annoying, but it's very different from when you have a thousand pound animal that, you know, throws you off its back. So in the horse world, they're very cognizant of these things. Um, and for us, we don't, we don't have that level of, you know, positive punishment to the handler when we, when we, when we, we don't pay attention to these things. Right. And, and so we can get away with it a lot and, um, and a lot. And so, uh, we can get away with it until we can't, and we don't, you know, as I said, Juno's like, you know, I'm covered in bruises and, and, uh, you know, scratches and stuff from working with her. Um, but, uh, the, most of the, most of us, uh, what we end up with is a, is just a dog. We can't, we can't do, reach our goals with, um, we either can't, you know, they can't go into, you know, a competition environment. They quit or they get, they get zoomies or they leave us or, or whatever. Um, and so for us, though, that's the, the fallout, um, at the extreme end and, and the damage to our relationship and the damage to our emotional state around, um, training and, and the same for our dogs, their, their emotional, um, responses to training. So when I've, when I've done the loopy, the loopy listening work with, with teams and with my own dogs, um, we've just been able to reverse so much of that. Sometimes it just goes away almost immediately. It's amazing. Mm-hmm. Uh, so you talked a little bit about kind of what a whisper is and what a shout is. Um, are there other things that you're kind of listening for when you're working with this? Like, I mean, what do you, what is it that we're kind of trying to tune our eye or ear to like notice?

Well, we're really trying to, um, train, basically train your eyes. So there's so many things that our dogs do because they speak to each other through body language. That's so subtle that we as humans miss like 90% of it. And we need to learn to train our eyes. So I can, I can tell you that, you know, like six months ago, I didn't see what I see today. You know, six months ago, I saw more than what I saw a year ago and two years ago and so on. Um, and so what, what loopy listening does, which is why I'm so excited about it is it's a fairly systematic process. I mean, it's an art and a science, but it gives us a very, um, sort of step-by-step process for training your eye to watch for those things, to learn how to spot it. It requires, uh, practice. It requires a lot of thinking and, um, and, and paying close attention. So I, I always, um, recommend that people just do it for like little, don't try and apply it to all your training all at once, be it loopy training or loopy listening, just pick one thing and work on it for like two minutes and, and let that soak into your brain for a little while. And over time, your brain is going to, um, develop that skill, develop that muscle, and you'll be able to see more and more and more over time. And it gets really exciting when you start to be able to see an ear twitch and know what it means. You know, when you, when you catch that, that little tongue lip, like, um, that, that, you know, you never used to notice. And now you see all over the place. And so it starts to really improve your relationship with your dog and, um, and your communication skills. So it's, it's very exciting because it's really all the training is, is communication. It's a, it's a conversation between us and our dogs. They already know how to sit and down and do all the things. All, all we're trying to do is, is attach our, give the, give our words meaning. So they know that when this weird sound comes out of our mouth, we want them to do the thing they already know how to do in response. So we're having a conversation and they, they're talking to us just as much as we're talking to them. And, but they talk to us through their bodies and through behavior. And this just helps us understand their language so much better. So it's really, I think it's really exciting. How much does it kind of differ from dog to dog? I mean, is it really, you know, just kind of a set of cute set of things that you learn to listen and watch for it, or is it really, you know, kind of more about, um, learning the signs that your specific dog actually gives out? I'd say a little bit of both.

Um, so there's sort of a, you know, kind of, I, I read that my shopping list of, of behaviors that we watch for and, and it, you know, different, it tends to come in packages with different dogs. So dogs who tend to stress low will do certain things. Dogs who tend to stress high will do other sets of things, but you'll see it in both types of dogs. So a dog who, you know, like, do you know, my livestock guardian dog who, you know, scratches and jumps and nose muzzle punches me and, and bites and body slams me will also, um, give me, you know, a look away and give me whale eye and lip, lip licks. And, and so all of the things. And so, uh, I think, you know, there's, there's, there's a set repertoire that, that they'll, they all have access to. And then certain dogs will default to some more than others. So you like my, my Desiree, for example, she's so subtle. Um, and one of the things she does a lot of is the lip licking and it's so fast because she's just a little speedy little thing. But now, now that I learned to see it, which I had to learn through watching video because I couldn't see it real time. Uh, now I see it all over the place. And so I know to watch for her. So when I'm working specifically with her, I watch for lip licks. Um, whereas another dog I might watch for, um, you know, maybe like with Juno, I'm watching for muscle bunching in her hand quarters, which are going to tell me that she's going to launch at me. Right. So, so we, we have this repertoire that we can, um, we can learn. And then we want to see how that, like the vernacular of each individual dog, how, how each individual dog is going to express their, their, they're going to have a set of defaults that they tend to do more often than others. And then we can know to look, to learn, to look for that in that particular dog, um, which really helps us because we have, you know, so much to watch for already. So it's like, okay, with Des, if I just keep an eye on, on her lips, then I know that's, that's an easy thing for me to watch for. Yeah. Uh, so what do you do? Like you talked about like what you're watching for and what you're listening for. Um, what do you do when you see that stuff? Right. So if a dog starts to exhibit signs that they're getting frustrated or that their arousal level is going up during training, um, how do you handle it? Great question. Um, okay. So how do I handle it? It depends is, is the answer that, that wonderful answer we use so often in dog training that's that nobody wants to hear. Uh, okay. So what do I do when I, if, if I have in a, in a perfect world, which I, I never, I don't live in.

Um, but let's say, let's say we can visit the perfect world. You go into a training session and you know exactly what you're planning to train. You have your step-by-step criteria already planned and, um, you have all your, your steps split and you have like, okay. Um, backup splits that you can default to. So you can make a behavior, your next criteria a little bit smaller. So when you see the dog exhibit these behaviors, you know, let's say you see that tongue lip or you get a muzzle punch depending on the dog. Um, you can be like, okay, I have, uh, let's see what, what, what's going on here. Have I, maybe I've raised criteria too quickly. I need to step back and I already have in my brain what that next step is. And I just quickly go to that. And then, and then my dog is like, oh, few. Okay. Now I understand. And I, uh, um, I move on in smaller steps, for example, or maybe I say, um, oh, I've, I've waited too long. I've dropped my rate of reinforcement. I need to increase my rate of reinforcement. So I'll start clicking faster and getting food into my dog more quickly. Um, or maybe I'll be like, oh, my dog is totally confused. Maybe I need to lure her. So there are certain things, things that I've trained a lot, especially, and dogs that I've worked with a lot. I will already kind of know how to solve some of these problems. Um, but, but more often what I'll do is now, if I just see one little bit of frustration and then the dog comes right back to work, I don't, I I'm, I'll make a mental note of it. If I, if I'm, you know, if I'm on my game, um, and be like, oh yeah, okay. I did that. And then make a note of it, but, um, carry on with my training. But if I start to see breakdowns in the training where the dog is doing this repeatedly, you know, two or three times in a row, and I don't immediately know how to like instantly know on the fly, how to fix it, which is a lot of the time. Um, I will just like drop a scatter and stop. And I'll like, just throw a bunch of cookies on the ground so that my dog doesn't feel like they're being punished, but ending, ending the training. And then I'll stop for a second and I'll think. And, um, in a perfect world, I have this on video and I can go back and watch it. Um, and, uh, and, and, and if I don't, then I might, if I don't know how, how, if I don't know how to solve it, I might set it up to do it again and video. So then I can go watch it and then I'll come up with a training plan and figure out what's going on. So again, it really depends. Um, sometimes I know how to fix it on the fly.

Sometimes I don't, but it usually involves, um, reducing your criteria. So there's, there's a few things that we, we, we always, uh, you know, that we start with. So split your criteria. We probably, you've probably lumped, you've probably increased what you're asked of the dog too much and they're confused. So you want to decrease it to the point where they can be successful. You probably, you know, that you may have dropped, uh, your rate of reinforcement too low. And so the dog is going into an extinction burst, uh, which is what happens with Juno every time she muzzle punches me. Um, so frustration, barking, things like that can all be extinction burst. So it just means that you're, you've, you've, you know, dropped your rate of reinforcement too much. Um, what else, uh, we can, um, you might need to add in some more information through like a lure or a prop. And then the other thing that we also need to pay attention to is the overall energy of the dog when we're training. So for example, is the dog, uh, in a good mental state to be training right now? And those, they might be, the dog might be stressed out about something and maybe you had a thunderstorm, you know, a couple of hours earlier and your dog is just not in a good mental state. Maybe, um, maybe it's, you have a, an older dog and it's first thing in the morning and they're kind of arthritic and they don't feel like doing stuff. Maybe you have a young puppy who is full of beans and needs to go for a run. So you want to evaluate, so, so there's a lot of triage to be done. Um, so this is, this is not like a, you know, um, if a, then be very simple, straightforward, it's not linear. Um, but, but there are lots of things we can work with and the more we work with it, the better we get at figuring out how to solve the problem. So there's that whole, there's sort of the science side of things in terms of there's this kind of a set number of things we can try and then the art of it is putting it into practice and seeing what works. And that'll be a little bit different for each dog. Right. That makes sense. I know you were, um, kind of talking about this a little bit on the FDSA alumni group, um, over on Facebook. Um, and a number of folks were talking about how it factored into playing with their dogs specifically. Um, and that seemed like that was a topic that folks got a little excited about. So do you want to just talk about that a bit? Like how, how it all factors into play? Absolutely. Yes. That was something that, uh, came up in our, in my sensitive dogs class, um, because several

of the working students were really struggling with play with their dogs and want to play. And it's not quite loopy training because we're not playing, you know, they weren't playing in loops and we didn't approach it by trying to set up play loops per se. Um, but the, having the eye honed to the whispers through the loopy listening, they started to see when the dog was whispering in play, telling them they, they weren't having a good time. And that was so powerful. It was really exciting actually, because, uh, there were dogs that just would not play with their, with their people. And, uh, we started to look at it and, and, you know, video it and watch and say, you'll see, look, when you, when you take that toy, um, see the whale eye notice, notice the stiffness in the body. Look at the, you know, look how long that the dog is, is not bringing the toy back. Um, and so that opened up the option to question how we play with our dogs. And there is, and this is, this is a whole rabbit hole to get into. So just, I'll just open it and leave it there for people to explore. But we, especially in dog sports have a, this manual of how you're supposed to play with your dog that I don't know who wrote the manual, but we all seem to have the manual in our heads. You know what I'm talking about? How we're supposed to have total control over them, how they're supposed to out the tug beautifully, how they're supposed to, um, uh, you know, like switch between toys and play, you know, everything is a toy play with anything. We hand them. We have all, we have all these rules around play. Uh, and really, um, a game is fun when everybody involved is having fun. And when the dog is not having fun, because our rules are not fun for the dog, then they're going to stop playing. They're going to be like, this, this is not a game. I always tell my dogs because when they ever get sort of, you know, one of them gets a little too much for the others. I always tell them, you know, it's only a game if everybody's having fun. Otherwise it's a dictatorship. So, um, my dogs don't listen to me, but, uh, but my students do. Um, my human students, I mean, but yeah, so, so we need to pay attention to when our dogs are not liking our, the rules that we've set for, for play and learn, learning the, the whispers that we learned to train our eye to through loopy listening will start to show us, Hey, you know what? Like my dog took like the two laps of the field with that Frisbee in her mouth before she came back to me. Maybe there's a little bit too much pressure happening here and she's not finding it super fun.

Whatever I just did before that happened. Um, so Desiree, for example, who I mentioned earlier, um, she, uh, I used to play all sorts of tug with her. She wouldn't let go of the tug. She wouldn't let go of the tug. She just like, wouldn't. And then when she, I finally let, if I let go, she'd run off and go like run on, go lie down under the dog walk or whatever. And I finally realized, um, you know, she, she has various possession of the toy is hugely important for her. And I don't care about the toy. I don't want to tug. So we've completely changed how we play. And now our game is, um, she has the toy and I tried to steal it from her and fail. And she thinks that's the most fun game in the world. And, and I know a lot of people who would be horrified that I let my dog, you know, do that, but it's a game. And I, you know, I want her to have fun and I'm having fun cause she's having fun. And that's, that's the game we play. And, and, and it works for us. And because of that, um, I've got my dog back who wants to play with me all the time now. And, and from there, I've been able to bring in a few of my own rules, um, around the training. And, but you know, like 90% of the time we play her game and 10% of the time we play my game and, and that's slowly shifting. And probably maybe I'll end up being at like 60, 40, but, but you know, I let her, I let her set the rules, but I had to pay attention to the whispers she was doing, which was, you know, slow release of the toy, not bringing it back. And then that, that was getting louder and then running off and lying, lying under, you know, in going into the tunnel where I couldn't reach her was a very big shout. Right. Yeah. So yeah. So once we train our eye to see the whispers and, and, and respect them and respond to them and, and, and believe our dogs when they're whispering, then, then we can apply to, to anything we're doing with them and play is a big one for sure. So the workshop on this stuff is right around the corner, um, Sunday, November 15th, this Sunday. So anything else folks should know? Oh, come take the workshop. I think it's such great, important for people to understand. Um, so if you're, you still have questions after listening to this podcast, come join us and ask them in the workshop and give it a try. Um, but what should people, uh, what should people know about, about this, about the workshop or just about loopy listening in general? So the video, video, video, video, video, video, video, video, video, video, video. Um, because we can't until your eye is trained. And even then we can't see the subtleties in real time.

Um, we have too much going on in our heads and things happen too quickly. So when you have video of your training and you can watch it, um, I use the coaches eye app, which I love. And I throw my videos into that and you can backwards and forwards and stop and freeze frame with your finger on the screen. It's great. You can draw all over it and everything. $8, I think, or something like that for the app. It's really worth investing in. Um, there may be other apps too, that do something similar, but, um, yeah, video is your friend. And, um, if you, uh, let's see. So video is your friend. And, and the other thing is that this is a, this is a process that evolves over time. So wherever you're at right now is perfect. Don't expect perfection. The, the goal is not perfection. The goal is the process of a learning process and the conversation you're having with your dog. So, you know, we, we tend to always want to be perfect and we tend to, um, be critical of ourselves when we're not. And it's really important to recognize that, you know, we're never going to be able to read our dogs as well as other dogs can read our dogs. So as a human being, give yourself some compassion. If you haven't been reading your dog as well as, uh, you know, maybe you'd like to, and there's a process that you can learn to improve that. And it's just going to be an ongoing thing. Like I said, six months ago, I thought I was doing well. Now I'm like, I see more. I know six months from now, I'm going to see more two years from now. Who knows where I'm going to be? It's just going to be this constant growth. So yeah. So it's, it's a, it's a journey. Okay. So the last question I'm asking all my guests lately, um, what's something that you've learned or something that you've been reminded of recently when it comes to training? Oh, just one thing. So many things. Um, well, uh, I'm going to throw a couple of things out there. So the first one was, as I've already talked about, do you know, my livestock guard, guardian dog who has shown me that I'm not the clean, precise trainer that I thought I was. And I am very grateful for that. And I'm very, um, I'm excited about that. I love being shown how I can improve. So, so I'm really grateful for that. And I think that, um, I think it's just so important to not be critical of ourselves when we discover that there's something we can do better, but embrace it and be excited about it and be curious about it. So as you mentioned before, um, I do mindset coaching and my number one student is me. And so I work on this all the time.

So now I, um, I, I, I think it's, I'm, I'm getting much better at getting excited about what anytime I see where my dogs are teaching me new things. And I think it's super fun. And that's the best part of training is, uh, is learning from them. And that's just something I just keep learning over and over and over and over and over again. And I'm so grateful for them. I think it's funny because I think that, um, most often when I ask this question, the answer is almost always, um, you know, whatever topic is most kind of in your corner, people are always learning new lessons about, right? So it's always like talk to shade and she's like, I had to learn again about like playing with toys and like listening to the dog. And then you talk to like Deb and she'll share something about focus. It's like whatever your area where you're actually, you know, generally seen as an expert, like you're also still constantly learning about that. I kind of love that. Absolutely. It's these like never ending layers that we just keep peeling off and learning new things and peeling off and learning new things. Like I said, at the beginning of our call, um, I'm working on this end of the leash as much as I'm working on the other end of the leash. And, oh my goodness, I'm just like mind blown about things that I'm, I'm covering with the mindset and, and the handler mechanics and don't even get me started about balance. We'll have to have a whole other conversation about balance. That's my new, my new exploration. So, yeah. So the more I learn about, um, my own contribution to the training process, the more excited I get. And my, my, my thing these days really is discovering how much I can improve my training without doing any more training. It's all about working on me and, um, and my, my dogs just keep getting better and better. The more, the more I work on this end of the leash, it's very exciting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Helen. Thank you for having me. It's always so much fun to be here. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week with Laura Wadby to talk about the benefits of training a Zen bowl and how you can use it to reduce reinforcement. If you haven't already subscribed 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. Thank you. Thank you.