E58: 로라 워드비(Laura Waudby) - "링 안에서 행복한 개 만들기"

hard to teach a dog to love training, are often a bit surprised when they go into the ring for the first time and find they have a totally different dog than they're used to. So to start out, just why is trialing so different from training? Pretty much everything about a trial is different than training. One of the biggest things is the atmosphere is just really charged. There's nervous handlers, excited handlers, both at the same time. It's kind of clear that there's something specific about the ring area by the way that people are all crowding around it. Everybody's watching in. And then in obedience and rally, there's somebody there shouting orders at their mom or dad. So they can kind of say they're not really in charge. There's also the formality piece, really even in sports like agility, when you're not really limited to how you praise and interact with your dog, there's still the stress excitement of the trial kind of clams people up and you just act really different than you would in a trial. So it doesn't take long for dogs to discover that the ring is very different. There's no food. There's no toys. And the absence of the reward can kind of create a lot of stress too. So most people, I think, just kind of plan to work on it by taking their dog to lots of fun matches, kind of training there until they think their dog is ready for competition. And while for some dogs, in some instances, maybe that's enough, I think often it's really not. So what are some of the pieces that are maybe missing from that plan? I tend to find people use their run-throughs as kind of getting that, quote, trial experience. They show up and their plan is to go through all the exercises or a full sequence of agility obstacles exactly like it was a trial, without rewards and extra praise and without really any supports of their dog who is probably struggling. And that kind of that whole idea of doing all the exercises formally is really flawed to begin with. And it's sometimes okay to test to see where you are and how the exercises hold up under pressure. But I think I should be pretty limited when you go to fun matches. Because I don't think trial issues are due to the exercises themselves. It's kind of more everything else we've talked about with the formality and the pressure and the lack of rewards. So when I go to a fun match, I want to take advantage of that environment and work on showing my dog what the procedures are. Things like this is how we'll wait outside the ring. This is how someone will approach you and they'll take your leash. This is how we will go to the start line together.

Or this is how we will move in between exercises. But practicing those little tiny things in a trial, I guess that's really where most of the stress issues tend to occur. And my main goal is just having a lot of fun, playing with the dog, helping them out, showing them there's nothing scary about being in the ring. Having them feel good with all the pressure surrounding it. So that's kind of how I approach fun matches and run-throughs. Those are some of the pieces, right, in the ring confidence class. So do you mind just talking about how you work on that in that class? Yeah. The ring confidence class kind of has those two main goals of what we kind of just talked about. The first goal is that ring equals fun. It should be a very happy and safe space for the dog. And that's pretty much through classical conditioning. Just entering the ring and having a party over and over and over again. It can take quite a while for dogs who have already been trialing because you really have to work on going to new places. It doesn't have to be a trial environment. But just going to a park or a shopping area and just practicing entering a new spot and having fun. Forgetting about really training the exercises themselves and just playing with your dog. Because if they're comfortable enough to play with you and focus on you, then they can work. And then the second part of ring confidence is really working on that focus and teaching the dog what to expect at a trial and what to do with all those little pieces. So turning those previous distractions and previous stressors into actual cues to focus on their partner. So it's mainly about providing that structure to the dog and to the human about what to do, such as, you know, how will they warm up the dog? How will they handle those delays in the ring? How will they handle talking to the judge, etc.? So can you share a little bit more about what some of those kind of aspects are that you look at that come with a trial environment and some of the ways maybe that you train for those? When you're starting with a new dog, some of it is kind of trial and error and guessing how the dog responds to you. Because you kind of have to look at what does the dog need when arriving at a trial? Should you crate them inside? Should you crate them in your car? How much time do they need to walk around the grounds? How much time works best before going back to the crate and giving them a little bit of a rest? How they need to warm up? So a lot of it is kind of trial and error. Hopefully you can get that from going different places with your dogs.

Even just going to a park and seeing does your dog, you know, connect with really calm petting? Do they need more energizing tricks and movement to feel comfortable? Kind of figuring out how far away from the ring should you need to be? All those little things are just kind of trial and error as you go, but you can work on training different parts of it. And then looking at all the stuff once you're actually inside the ring, such as, you know, the people pressure, practicing the leash runner approaching your dog, practicing how you're going to keep that connection. And again, either building energy with a dog who stresses down or with a dog who gets really overexcited, figuring out how you're going to keep that dog from just boiling over as you move to your new setup spots or move between exercises. I know the class kind of covers a couple different sports. Are there differences there in what needs to be taught for the different sports? Well, the basic concepts are pretty much the same, whether it's obedience, rally, agility, even we've had some freestyle students in the class. The main difference is that obedience, you have a lot more stuff to train because you have a lot more pressure in the ring. You have to train for, you know, the judge approaching you, all the people approaching you at different times. And then, of course, the breaks in between the exercises. And in agility, you have a lot more freedom of how you actually interact with the dog and the ring while you work your way to the start line, how you handle delays. Encouraging a lot more active connection, such as jumping up and even barking is perfectly fine in agility. So you just have a lot more stuff you can do. And in obedience, you just have a lot more things to train for. Fair enough. So you mentioned handler nerves a little bit earlier, just the fact that there are excited people and there are nervous people and, you know, kind of all range on that spectrum. How significant of a role is that when it comes to a competition environment? And do you address handler nerves at all in class or maybe just have recommendations from your own experience? Handler nerves are a huge part of trial issues. Dogs definitely sense our stress. And this can, you know, can shut them down or amp them up depending upon the dog. Unfortunately, handler nerves are not my specialty at all. I still get very nervous for obedience trials. I'm just so focused on how I'm going to handle my dog for every part that I don't think other people can tell. We do do a little bit of training in the ring confidence class to get the dog used to that

picture of a stress handler. We can work on things like holding our breath to mimic our really tense bodies. Healing to a metronome to mimic that extra concentration we have when listening to somebody else. But in terms of actually teaching the human part how to deal with their own stress and relax, I kind of leave that up to Andrea. Andrea has all the wonderful mental management classes. So she is much better at dealing with that than I am. Denise kind of taught the class. Now you teach the class. As a competitor, are there any skills from this class that have really been game changers for you and your dogs? I know that part of it is that you implemented the class, right? So maybe you could talk about that a little bit. This class, I'd kind of already been doing quite a while with my own dog, Vito, because he's been a huge experiment for me in trying to get him happy in the ring. One of the things that Denise introduced me for this class was the idea of that squish, was having not just a safe place for the dog to be while waiting outside of the ring, but also that idea of teaching that release to be really, well, for Vito, who stresses down, for that release to be really energetic, drivey, focusing on me. I think that on switch has helped him quite a bit going into obedience. For agility, probably the biggest success for him in agility in implementing this class was actually teaching him to bark at me when entering the ring. It took him a long time to get him to bark at me on the start line, and people don't believe me when I say that anymore because he's a toller and he loves toller screaming, and he will scream a lot now on the start line. But what that really did was it helped our connection. He used to stare at the ring crew, the leash runners, the judge, really worry about them. And now that we're entering the ring and he's barking at me, he's focusing a lot more on me and yelling at me instead of looking around to find where all the scary people are. So that was kind of our game changer for agility. But sadly, obedience does not allow the barking. So working on that squish and that release coming out of it and all that personal play and jumping at me has been a work in progress to work on that motivation. So for those who don't know what squish is, do you mind just briefly describing kind of what that looks like? Yeah. So a squish is a waiting position for the dog when you are outside of the ring. It could be when you're right up to the ring gate if you have to wait close to the ring, or it could be further away from the ring.

But it's a place for the dog to relax, they don't have to focus on you, actually don't want them focusing on you. I want my dog to kind of look around, to see the world, to look into the ring, see where the judges are, the stewards are, and just kind of relax. And then we teach a release cue, which is kind of pressure-based. I have a physical hand touch I do with my dogs on their chest. And when I release it, the dog should focus on me with whatever drive and kind of energy level you need that dog to do. So with my dogs who stresses down, I really work when I release Vito from standing, he stands between my legs for his squish. When I release him, he should turn to me really quickly with a lot of energy. And with Zumi, who stresses up a little bit, I work on a little bit of energy coming out, but a calm, a thinking type of energy and not just exploding randomly into the world. All my dogs wait between my legs for their squish position, but you could have them, whatever works for you. You could hold them in your arms, you could have them leaning against you, just a place to feel safe. So for people who are considering taking the class, can you just talk a little bit about who's a good fit and how someone can decide if it's an appropriate class for them? Well, the Ring Confidence class is probably my favorite class of all time. I love teaching it, and I really think it's for anybody who wants to trial or is trialing. The main audience are for dogs, though, who do perfectly fine at trials. They're fine hanging out in the crate area or walking around, but then they walk into the ring entrance. They walk into that ring and just bam, they're a completely different dog. They either stress down and start sniffing everywhere or just disconnect, or they stress up and have some of those over-arousal issues, and they just really struggle to either focus or have that thinking connection with their person. My ideal audience would be dogs who have not started trialing yet. It's kind of a novel idea to actually prepare your dog what to expect in a trial. Right. But really getting them comfortable with the procedures before actually entering their first trial. Now, in addition to the Ring Confidence class in April, you're also teaching a Team 3 class. And I know I've talked about Team for those who are listening a couple of times now, a few different episodes. But in case there's anyone out there listening for the first time, do you mind just briefly sharing what Team stands for and kind of what the concept is there?

So, Team stands for Training Excellent Assessment Modules, and it's an online video-based titling program. The first three levels were designed to set a very solid foundation for any dog sports. The emphasis is really on excellent training, breaking down exercises into their smallest pieces, and then seeing, can the dog do just this little bit, but do it very, very well. So, it's kind of more of that training title than, can the dog just do it? Because we want to see that we're gradually adding the ideas of precision, reducing reinforcement, adding distractions, and then doing it in different environments. If somebody wants to compete in obedience or rally specifically, how can Team kind of help them get there? I think of Team as providing a blueprint of how to break down all those advanced exercises into manageable pieces. So, instead of spending all your time working just on healing and recalls, which pretty much makes up most novice obedience organizations, instead we actually introduce all the foundations for pretty much every single advanced exercise right from the start. So, in Level 1, we not only have pivoting, which is a foundation for really great heal work, but we also have backing up and sent articles, going out around a cone, teaching a vertical target for a go out, all these little things. And it kind of just builds from there until you, as a level starts to progress, we start to form little chains of those behaviors. So, they actually start to look more like the advanced exercises and not just those little pieces. Now, I've heard a few times kind of in the Facebook group and just, you know, talking to folks that Team 3 is kind of where things get fun. So, I wanted to ask how Team 3 is different from those first two levels. And if you could talk us through a few examples of how it builds kind of on those behaviors from Team 1 and 2. Oh, I agree. I do think of Level 3 as where it does start to get extra fun. I think it's mainly because it starts to feel real. You're putting more behaviors together so that it actually looks like real obedience training to people who don't necessarily train this way. For example, you know, on Level 1 and Level 2, you're doing all this pivot work, you know, with a prop and without a prop. And finally, in Level 3, we actually allow you to heal forward. And that starts to look like really pretty healing. And we even test that by doing sidestepping and heal. Can the dog move laterally with their person by keeping their rear end nice and tight? And it looks really cool.

But the dog already has the foundations for it from all that pivot training they did in the earlier levels. So, it's actually not that hard when you start to combine it together. With the more combined behaviors that change, it also means that there's a lot more movement involved. And dogs just love that movement. I mean, there's still the technical pieces, but the extra movement they do, the running they get to now, starts to be more naturally rewarding for the dog. And that makes it easier to start kind of reducing the reinforcers. So, actually, at Level 3, you finally only get four cookies for the entire test. And so, it's kind of like a reward every other exercise. It's really good trial preparation to gradually reduce those rewards. And the dog's having a lot of fun by doing all those movement-based exercises. In Team 3 submissions, are there any places where it's kind of common to see Not Yet, either because they're particularly tricky to train, or just because it's easy to maybe misunderstand the rules or, you know, kind of miss something when you're reading through? Can you talk us through what happens there? Overall, I think the students are doing a really great job with their Level 3 runs. They already have several successful Level 1 and 2 runs under their belts. They're doing a much better job with remembering what the pieces are, how to handle their dog between exercises, kind of remembering where the exercises start. So, I think there's actually a lot higher success rate at Level 3 than there are at their earlier levels. But there are two main places I see errors. The first is the healing, just like Level 1 and Level 2. Level 3 at this point, we require two steps of forward healing, a 180 pivot left, a 180 pivot right, and then the two feet of sidestepping right. The handlers can get a little bit overexcited and forget that the pivots that they've worked really hard on at the earlier level still have to be a true pivot in place at Level 3. So, we like doing really big, wide U-turns sometimes in healing, but the dog doesn't have to move their rear end nearly as much in a U-turn, and they don't learn to stay parallel to us during the entire turn. The handler just needs to calm down a little bit and remember to do that really precise pivot to the left and to the right when they're doing the healing work. Same thing with the sidesteps. Handlers tend to rush that. They just get excited. They're a little stressed. I recommend doing several small shuffle sideways instead of trying to do two gigantic steps and leaving the dog in the dust.

We want the dog to be parallel with you the entire time, so moving those smaller steps for the two feet tend to help with that. And then the second exercise that I see, again, more handler errors than anything else, is the directed cone send. And this exercise is basically a baby version of the utility go-out and directed jumping exercise you see in trials. We just use cone to set up jumps and have a shorter distance. And the challenge here is that we also introduce the concept of cueing the dog to return directly to heel versus cueing the dog to come to front. And then they have to find that front from an angle as the handler is not allowed to move their feet. And what I find people are doing when they're practicing this is that they're waiting to cue the dog to find front or find heel until the dog is all the way to them so they can use their hand signal as a guide. However, for the actual test, the cue to find heel or find front needs to be given when the dog is still at a distance, kind of just after they've rounded that correct cone. So this is really more of a handler error than a training challenge. But if you look where you want the dog to go and give them the information they need soon enough, the dogs can really do a great job of learning the difference when you're cueing them to find heel versus finding front. That's kind of an interesting thing to kind of include, right? Because at least I think most of the time in the obedience ring, they're coming to front. So it really forces some cue discrimination there. It's definitely not a skill that we need here in America. The dogs don't always have to find front except for the utility moving stand exercise. But this is really the first time they're doing it from such a big distance and with a lot of speed. So this actually came up on the Facebook page, which is why I wanted to make sure I include it. Do students need to have their Team 2 title to take the Team 3 class? And if not, how can they decide whether they're ready for it? Nope, they definitely don't need the Team 2 title. We actually encourage students to be looking ahead to the next level or even further than that and start training for it even if they haven't done the lower level test. Dogs always have some behaviors they're really strong with. The handler needs to be raising the difficulty with challenging their dog and not just keep doing the same thing over and over and over again. With the behaviors that are still in progress, it's okay to still work at your lower level even though you're also working on Team 3 or even Team 4 stuff with the behaviors that dogs are

really good at. And if you're not quite there when you're looking at some of the Team 3 lectures, you just may need to add in some props in or reduce the difficulty in another way. For example, the Level 2 test looks like getting position changes from 6 feet away with a 5-second pause. And that duration and distance just takes time to build. You just can't rush it. So it's okay if you want to work on Level 3, which adds in handler distractions. But now you'll just go back to standing right in front of the dog and not working as much duration. So you're kind of splitting out the distance and the duration from the idea of the dog listening to their cue even if the handler is doing something weird like lying on the floor or turning their back to the dog. Now just kind of help them for the Level 1 and Level 2 test. So I think this question probably applies to both classes. But probably one of the most useful things competitors can do is to really know the rules of whatever venue it is that they're competing in inside and out so that they know what to expect and so they can train things properly. What kind of things should people look for as they read through rules for whatever their sport and venue? And do you have any tips kind of on keeping it all straight? Probably the biggest help is going to a trial in the sport you're pursuing or a particular organization. Or in the case of team is watching all the videos and not just watching videos from the level you're at, but watching videos of the upper level. So you can really kind of see what that final picture is, like where all your training is going. You can get a better idea too for agility, what course styles there tend to be out there. For in-person obedience trials, you can also look for the details of where the judges tend to stand, what do the common layouts of the ring look at, just so you're a lot more comfortable with everything and how things tend to be judged. For in-person trials, for terms of ring confidence, sometimes the biggest factor you should know before going to a trial is knowing specifically how that trial site is laid out. If you have a special needs dog, like many of us do, you may need to plan exactly where your dog is going to wait before entering the ring, how you're going to get to that ring entrance with focus. Some trial locations are just not easy for the dogs to get overalls, reactive, or stress. That's where team is really nice because everything is online. But there's a lot more pressure on you to remember the order and the precision needed for each test.

I recommend that people, besides watching all the videos, to kind of know how things should look, I recommend actually memorizing the exercises at least in a group of three. And if you print out those lists and kind of divide them in three exercises, that'll help a lot with your flow. I see a lot of people in the videos stopping to read what the next exercises is, read the rules, and then their dog is just kind of left hanging out there and not knowing what's going on. So just read those rules, memorize a little bit of an order, and kind of plan your flow will help a lot in getting through that exercise with much less stress for you and your dog. I think people probably underestimate the value of really having watched the videos and attended things in person. I know one of the big conversations constantly on the team Facebook page is being strategic with your locations and where you do your tests. And if you don't think that through, you may use a location that would have been better for a later level, right, early on. And that can cause, you know, make things a little more difficult than yourself. Yeah, as the level goes up, you definitely need more space. So you don't want to use your biggest space for a level one when you really need that for a level three plus video where you need to go off site. So definitely start to plan ahead. Finally, as somebody who has competed a fair amount, would you be willing to share a little bit of information on how you prep for a competition and maybe what your pretrial routine looks like with one of your own dogs? I don't think I really do any specific prep work before a trial outside of all the ring confidence work I've done. I don't really train differently before a trial than I do on non-trial weekends. The only thing I make sure of is I don't put any extra pressure on specific exercises, meaning that, you know, dogs make weird mistakes sometimes. And like, let's pretend my dog suddenly can't remember at all how to do a scent article or how to do their weave pull entry. And it's a few days before a trial. I kind of ignore it. I like I'm not going to do any training to try and fix it because I'm just going to add pressure to it. But I really just ignore it and go to the trial. Don't worry about it. The last thing I just want is my dog getting stressed over the exercise because I'm suddenly freaking out about it. Chances are the behavior is taught fine. It was just a weird thing that day. And if you don't draw attention to it, then it's not going to stick around. And if it does happen to stick around, well, then you could just have to develop a training

plan for it anyway. And you freaking out a few days before a trial is not a good time to come up with a training plan. So I don't really do a whole lot. Fair enough. Well, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast, Laura. This was great. Yeah, it was fun. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week with Eileen Anderson, author of Remember Me, Loving and Caring for a Dog with Canine Cognitive Dysfunction. 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 Fendi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fendi 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. Thanks. Thank you.