E154: 스테이시 바넷(Stacy Barnett) - 반려견 훈련사의 진화

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And once that got started, I just couldn't stop. And then I ended up, honestly, I don't really do other sports anymore. It just became such a big part of my life, and I just love that joy that I just, I can't, like, I can't do anything else. I just love it so much, because I just saw such a transformation. And, you know, now that I've gotten all my other dogs into it, and now I'm getting, you know, I'm working with dogs primarily, maybe Brava and Powder. I mean, Brava also, she does dog diving and stuff like that for fun. But, you know, we're, the nose work is now, you know, everything for me. And it's pretty incredible. It's incredible for, you know, I enjoy it, the dogs enjoy it. And I just, I love the teamwork that has developed. And it's just amazing. It's just amazing. Yeah, that's how I got interested. It just kind of got started, and it took off. And now it's like a, like a steam engine. You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Those who have taken classes with you are probably kind of familiar with your pyramid concept, but kind of those who aren't, can you share what it is? And then maybe talk us through a little bit what led you to come up with it? Sure, sure. And, you know, I came up with a lot because of my own journey with my own dogs. And I mentioned briefly, you know, that Joey, I mean, motivation has never been his strong suit, why confidence has never been his strong suit, you know, and when I started really kind of thinking about how all this stuff layers together, I came up with a pyramid, and I call it my four cornerstones of trial preparation. I don't know, I came up with that name at some point, and it just kind of stuck. It's not really descriptive. I wish I could change the name, but I can't now. But it's, I know exactly. Once you create something, you name it, like, that's it. A pyramid has four levels. And the idea is kind of that you start at the bottom, or the most important thing is at the bottom, and the least important thing is at the top, and it just kind of builds on each other. So the first level is confidence. And then the second level is motivation. And what I try to do is I try to emphasize to people that skills doesn't come into play until the third level, and the stamina is at the very top. Because I think so often, people get so focused on the skills that they forgot, they forget that you have to have a dog there and ready to work and happy to work and wanting to work before you can even start with the skills. And I've noticed that if you really focus on the confidence and

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motivation piece of it, the skills are easy, honestly, for the dogs to figure out. And we'll talk about more about the skills part of it, because I've really kind of enhanced that, that aspect more recently. But the emotional side of it is such a critical part of a successful dog. And if you can get a dog that is confident in their environment and confident in themselves, that's huge, confident in themselves, and even bigger is confident in the handler. If you can get a dog that's really confident, and then you build that motivation and that desire with a really, really great experiences and everything and that and, you know, wanting wanting to work for odor and wanting to search and enjoying it and getting a lot of, you know, they get a lot of reinforcing, reinforcement just even from the activity. If you have those two pieces, you can layer in the skills. So that's kind of what that pyramid is about. And it's a focus on the emotional side of, of training a dog, which, which I think, you know, it has been, or it's easy, especially coming into a brand new sport, it's easy to forget about that part of it. And just focus on trying to find a hide, you know. So for those, for those who haven't actually seen the graphic, Stacey has literally, it's kind of a triangle, it's pyramid, sort of like the food pyramid, right, where you have the foundations of the thing, the concept. And it's, it's a pyramid for, kind of split into four stacked pieces, confidence, motivation, skills, stamina, right? That's right. Like, trying to help people picture it in their own heads as we, now that we're kind of talking about it. Yeah, yeah. I want something like really kind of simple to, to remember and to think about. You mentioned my, my degrees in chemical engineering, but my, my background is, I spent a lot of time in corporate and I did a lot of, a lot of management consulting in corporate. So as you can imagine, slides and graphics, I think I kind of did that for a living. So I was kind of thinking of like a graphic image, like what, what would make sense? I just, you know, and the pyramid was just perfect. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it is, it is, you know, your, your, your, your history comes back to, to haunt you, right? Hopefully it's helping that haunting in this case. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Well, I think, I think it depends on your, on your frame of mind at the, at the moment, but yeah, no, no, it's a help. Definitely. Definitely to help. Yeah. Yeah. So you, so you're kind of saying how that kind of ties into the emotional piece of things. And I know

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we've talked a little bit about that before on the podcast, like just how important having that emotional component in place and having the dog in the right frame of mind and all those pieces, kind of how that ties in. You know, more recently, it kind of seems like you've been focused on the cognitive aspects of how dogs problem solve. So for those who maybe don't know what I'm talking about, maybe you could talk through that a little bit and then kind of what led to that shift. Sure. Sure. You know, the, the cognitive side, because the thing is, is that dogs are not just emotional animals, right? They're, they're also cognitive animals, meaning that, that is the, the, the, the way of their, their thinking and learning and understanding, you know, and how they, how, how, how they learn, how they, you know, the, the memory and it, it, there's so they're, they're complex animals, right? You know, I think sometimes even when we start training in nose work, it can be a very, um, we, we kind of picture it in terms of the dog not being a cognitive animal. And I'm going to kind of explain that because you're probably thinking, what? No, I know dogs can find, um, what I mean by that is a lot of times we think about nose work in terms of the hide and the dogs just finding a hide. So we kind of almost have in our heads, uh, a picture of like, um, do you, do you remember Pepe Le Pew? Yeah, yeah. Pepe Le Pew, right. And he was in love with this cat that had the paint down, down her back. And, and I, I actually found a graphic of this where he's got this perfume and, and he's trying to entice her, right? So he's got this perfume and the perfume goes out to the cat, right? Or the, the, the little fake skunk and kind of draws her in following this perfume. Cause you know, Pepe Le Pew, he's, he's in love with the cat. It might be a completely generational issue, uh, with, with some people listening, but that's kind of the picture is that we kind of picture a, a dog, you know, finding this scent cone and then kind of following the scent cone back to the hide. Cause that's really, I mean, yeah, they kind of do that, but that's very simplistic because what that means, I mean, basically you could replicate that with a machine easily, right? Yeah. Put a little gas chromatograph on wheels and just kind of wheel it around. And, and if you've read it, you know, quickly enough, you could probably find the hide, but dogs aren't machines on, you know, on legs, you know, they're, they're, you know, they're really

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not right. So there, there's a whole lot of thinking that has, that happens here in that, you know, they're evaluating their environment. They're reacting to their environment. They're remembering their past experiences. They're using their past experiences to build upon their, their current skill capability. They're thinking about, you know, they're, they're, they've got contextual understanding, right? They can also, they know what a vehicle looks like. And even if you only did searches on passenger vehicles, they're going to, or, or on cars, they're going to see a truck and they're going to realize it's a vehicle. They're going to see a semi, they're going to realize it's a vehicle. They have a contextual understanding. They also have an understanding of their environment. So for instance, if they're catching odor and they have to go around an object, they're going to figure out how to do that, even if it takes them out of odor. So it's all this type of understanding that, that I think we don't always give the dog a whole lot of credit for. And then when you really think about what odor is, is that, you know, the molecules, I mean, they're bouncing around like crazy. It's not, it's not like a laser pointer, right? The dogs really have to kind of assess and understand it, um, in order to find the hide. So the cognitive side of that is really it's. So if you layer on, like, if we go back to our pyramid and we talk about the confidence and motivation, once you get into the skills, you start really tapping into, if you understand, if you really understand the dog and you understand how they're thinking, how they're solving the problem, you can set up situations that helps the dog to learn to be more effective and efficient and the skills, right? So that's kind of that aspect of the skills that, that, that I, um, does that make sense? Yeah. I want to, I want to talk a little more about that though. So really it's, I guess kind of what you're trying to say with the cognitive piece is that it's not just all instinct, right? Like it's not all just something that kind of comes built in. The dog has to kind of process and think is that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause, cause it is, it is a learned skill. Um, I mean, yeah, granted puppies come out of the womb. They know, they know how to search for, you know, their, um, you know, search for their food, right. You know, all dogs have, have an, an, a natural aptitude for hunting. Um, what we do through training is that we make them more efficient and

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effective. Now, if you think about, you know, an animal in the wild, well, they kind of have that training all the time, right. Cause they have to go out and they have to hunt for their food. So they're getting that kind of on, on the job training. Um, you know, our dogs, you know, we, I mean, honestly, their food, we give it to them in a bowl, right? So they, they do have to kind of develop this and you're going to find that over time. Um, you know, your dogs become more effective and efficient. Um, the other thing is that we also have a lot of, um, we have criteria on our hides, um, in terms of, you know, how close they have to get to source depending upon the hide. We also have criteria, um, in terms of, you know, time, you know, we're granted, you know, if you take a dog that's driven enough and you give them a very difficult hide and you don't put a time limit on it, even if the dog's very green, but if they have enough drive and enough, enough desire, they'll find it, but they'll take a long time. And when we're talking about competitive nose work, you know, it, it, this is a time sport. So we need to be able to have that efficiency. The other thing is that also when the dog works those patterns and we can start to evaluate and see what the dog is doing, it educates the handler. And then the handler can understand exactly what is the dog going through? Um, what is the dog thinking about? How's the dog approaching this problem? Because we're also cognitive creatures, right? So we can evaluate that, understand the dog's patterns, and it helps us to be a better handler and it helps us to be able to evaluate our dogs and be able to support our dogs in a better way. So you, you kind of touched on a lot of pieces there. So let's, let's pull some of that apart. Um, you know, I know you, you know, I happen to be, to sit through some of the webinars, um, since I run them, I know you talked about, you talked about cognitive approach in the webinars. You're talking about kind of how you can figure out things strategically, I guess, kind of about what you want the dog to remember when they're searching and intentionally kind of build that memory and build, um, that context. So can you, can you talk a little bit about that? You know, I've been trying to understand memory and how memory works and everything. Memory comes in, there's a huge aspect of that because I kind of think of it in terms of there, there's, um, there's four different types of processing that I've noticed, um, that when, when a dog actually goes, uh, goes through their searching, it's kind of like how a dog searches.

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They, um, they use their memory a lot and we'll talk about that in a minute, but they're also leveraging their memory in the three other aspects. The other aspect there's, um, there's also, uh, sensory processing, right? So, so when a dog searches and this is, this is where the cognitive aspect comes in, they're not just following their nose, which is the reason why I kind of mentioned the whole Pepe Le Pew thing. Um, they're, they're using their nose and their eyes together because they, they're thinking, they're seeing their environment, they're reacting to that environment and they're drawing, they're making deductions based upon what they see. So in order to become more efficient, they're, they're using the, their, their nose and their eyes together. Um, and if your dog is out actually hunting for a squirrel or a rabbit, they're also using their ears. They're using all their senses. They're not just using their nose. So they're using, you know, to find the hide, the birch and his or clove, right? They're using, um, kind of their nose and eyes together. So there's a whole sensory processing. And at the same time, they're noticing what you're doing as a handler. So all this information is coming together. So they have to be able to process all the sensory aspects. Um, and then, and it, you also get into the aspect of, um, there's also contextual understanding. So once the dog sees something, this is why it ties into the sensory. Once they see something, they're also saying, Oh, this is a container. This is what a container looks like, or this is what, you know, a vehicle looks like. I know based on my experience as a dog, right? I know coming in and I see containers. Well, you know what? The hides are likely to be in the containers, right? So there's that, that whole aspect where they can increase their likelihood of finding a hide based on their previous experience, which is a reason why it ties back to memory. Then you have the spatial processing and that that's that last piece. And the spatial processing has to do with evaluating the objects and the environment around them so that they can navigate their, um, navigate the space in order to get to the hide. So this could mean, you know, if odor is blowing through a set of bleachers, for instance, how can they like going from front to back, how do they navigate that to get to the hide? Or if you have an object in the way, can they even move, uh, in an area of what, which actually make them take them out of like a lower concentration of odor

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to get around to things? Um, all of these things come together. And a lot of that has to do with memory because it's the memory of their previous experiences. It's, it's also, um, you know, they're, uh, they're, they're, the emotional tie to odor. Um, you know, all of this, the, the, the, you know, how they actually source that, you know, all, all that kind of comes, comes into play. Um, so that's kind of, that's kind of the crux of it. And that's the reason why it kind of ties back into memory because they have to be able to evaluate what they've done in the past and then build on that in the future. So is it, is it really different than reinforcement history? Um, to some extent, I think because it's more experience based, like reinforcement history is kind of the, the end, right? So I consider more of the reinforcement is, is thinking more about emotions. Okay. When, when the dog gets to the hide, they get reinforced in, and you have the emotions there and they realize this was really, really fun. What the memory does is that it also envelops everything that they did to get to that point. Right? So they might be thinking, okay, if I can't get to the hide because, you know, I can't go underneath the vehicle, I need to know how to go around it. It's that aspect of understanding how to go around it. So then they can apply that. It's more of an abstract concept, right? And it's, and it's being able to, um, to apply abstract concepts in the future where if it's more like, okay, if I'm teaching a sit, it's a behavior and that's more of a, um, that is also, there's, there's also a memory component, but that's more of like a motor behavior, right? Like motor memory, um, versus the, how do I problem solve to get to that point? Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. So I guess kind of to take this to the next natural step, right? So if all these components have to come together for a really good search or an efficient searching dog, um, you know, then the obvious question is, okay, so how do we strategically use them in training to be, you know, setting up puzzles that our dog, that teaches our dog the skills we want them to learn? Right. Um, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and to me, it's more of an appreciation of the fact that the dogs go through this because if the dog, if you have an appreciation of that, then you can start to see, um, cause every dog is different and, and this is, um, that that's part of it, right? I mean, this isn't something that you can necessarily train as a recipe. Um, and this is also completely separate from how you imprint over and how you get the dog to search for,

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for a, um, for, for a basic hide, you know, and, and all of that, you know, there, there's, and, you know, there's many roads to roam. A lot of people do that a lot of, you know, very differently. Um, this is kind of more the, now that the dog has the basic skill of finding a hide and they understand that that results in a reward. Now this is building the dog's, um, depth and breadth of their capability. Right. So that's where we can use this information to kind of understand what is it about our dog's natural search style that says that there may be, you know, stronger in one aspect or another. And then how can I use that information to emphasize certain aspects of their education? Yeah. So if we wanted to, to take a dog, right. Dog that they've trained on basic odor, they, they understand like the basic kind of the foundation skills. Um, and we want to kind of figure out what they're strong in and what they're not strong in. So we can maybe build those weaknesses that that's kind of what we're talking about here, right? It's like, how do we evaluate? Um, yeah, yeah. And so I'll give you an example. Um, and, and I, it's actually kind of sketched this out earlier, um, because right now this is probably seeming very esoteric, uh, you know, cause, cause it is kind of, it's very deep thought. It's like, so, so an example could be, and I just sketch this out, um, the emphasis that a dog may naturally have on their nose versus their eyes. And you see a lot of variation with that. So if you have a dog that's very, very visual, what you're going to find is that dog's going to be very object oriented. And what that means is if you have discrete objects out in your search area, they're going to go to each of the objects and they're going to check the object and move on. And they check the next object and move on, right? Because they have an assumption that the hide has to be on an object. So these are dogs that tend to be very visual. They tend to be very object oriented. Now, if you take these dogs and you put them into certain types of search areas, they're going to do very well because they're going to be able to search those objects very quickly. And they'll be able to, they'll be able to use that, that visual part of it, be able to find those basic hides. Now, the problem that they're going to run into when they get to more complicated hides is that is the problem solving that comes from a hide, not being on a basic object, but perhaps in the search environment. And they're going to start to

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stumble. For instance, if you have a hide near an object, you may end up getting false alerts on that object. So there's a lot of, a lot of challenges that have to do with that. So that could be a more visually oriented dog. And if we look at the other end of the spectrum, you might have a dog that's extremely olfactory oriented, which you might think is actually very good for nose work. But it can also be a challenge. So dogs that are very, very nose oriented versus eye oriented, they may get into kind of a analysis paralysis type of thing, right? Right. So, so where they're working the odor and they're working the, the, the airflow and the, and the, the airflow and the air currents so heavily that they don't even think about what they're seeing. And if they don't think about what they're seeing, they're not able to make the deductions of between their eyes and their nose. So it may take them a lot longer to get to source. So then you have a very inefficient searcher, right? But then you have, and so what they, they kind of, they ignore objects. They kind of just kind of go through the search area to find the hide. Then you have a dog that's kind of what I consider to be in balance. And these are the dogs that are in balance between their eyes and their nose. So with these dogs, what they're going to do is they're going to skim along the objects, checking the objects, but then they're going to work the air currents between the objects. So you get a dog that's able to deduce between the objects and the odor to be able to find the hide more effectively and more efficiently. So when you're assessing your dog, you're able, you're able to assess your dog if they're more object oriented or more olfactory oriented, and then set up your searches so that you can make the dog more efficient over time. By, for instance, if you have a dog that's very object oriented, you may want to start some searches where you have very few objects and the odor is more in the environment. So the dog starts to break out of that paradigm of a hide always has to be on an object. And you start to emphasize the nose over the eyes. Um, I call it a toggle when, when the dog kind of goes back and forth between the eyes and the nose. Or if you have a dog that's very olfactory oriented, maybe you want to start putting some more simple hides on objects to try to get them to drive the source more quickly. Um, so you can kind of change how you set your hides based upon how your dog searches. And that's one example. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think that's helpful to kind of put an example on it.

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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause otherwise it gets very esoteric and you're like, whoa, you know. So I, I, I want to kind of go back a little bit though, because we were talking about originally kind of this emotional aspect and then we kind of got into the cognitive stuff. Um, can you just talk a little more about how those two things kind of work together and how important it is to kind of have, to think about both ends of that. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Cause if you have a dog that's not emotionally committed to, uh, to nose work and you work on all these skills, you could get a dog that says, well, this is really too hard. Um, and, and then you might end up with a slower dog. You might end up with a dog that's just like, well, you know, this isn't worth it. Um, the emotional aspect is super important. And actually I just put out a blog, um, on my own website yesterday. I don't know. I'm ready. My day, my days are running together about training happy. And I, you know, I'm kind of, I was looking at a lot of the different studies that have happened and, you know, they did a study with, um, some MRI imaging and everything where they were actually able to prove that, um, dogs were, um, more interested in praise from their owners than actually from food. Um, and, and, and it goes to, uh, and a lot of this is, you know, with, with like the, a lot of the FNZ FDSA type of, um, you know, we're, we're very much a relationship based, um, you know, uh, school, right. With, with the dog, building that relationship and building and having that emotions that it's not just a, you know, we're not just handing out cookies. And this is, I think, I think it's, you know, it's really regardless of, um, whatever sport you're doing is the same type of thing with nose work. And, and when the dog finds a hide, you know, it's gotta be kind of a, kind of a reward event. And, and I try to make it an event when my dog finds a hide so that my dog sustain that amount of motion, um, because they, they want that praise in addition to the cookie. Yeah. You know, I have Labradors. Yeah. They'll, they'll do anything for, for food. They really will, especially Brava. She's, she's, she's, um, I've never seen food drive like this before. It's a little terrifying actually. And, and, you know, Labradors kind of make up what food is, uh, you know, to, to the, to the disdain of their owner sometimes. Um, you know, yeah, we won't, won't go there. Um, but you know, they really do. So I'm training Labradors and, you know, but I have to tell you after Brava, you know, we're done, you know, I give her a cookie. She's

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really excited. If I look down at her and I kind of clap my hands very lightly and I tell her, you're so amazing. Her face lights up because yeah, she's really into the food that I'm giving her, which, you know, she could care less when I give her, but she's really into that. And in the moment, she really wants, wants the food rewards, but it's the, it's the experience with her going back to the, the, the crate or back to the car or wherever. Um, that is really, really rewarding. She just loves it when I just do that light little clap and I just tell her how amazing she is. Um, you know, it's that, that emotion then reinforces the entire event that we just had and that reinforces her desire to learn. So that also gives her more, um, more focus and more attention, right? That's also part of, um, of the studies that they've done is that emotion actually helps to, um, increase attention and focus and, you know, positive emotions. They've, they've done a lot of studies with humans and everything. And, um, having that positive emotion reinforces that attention, which means that she's going to learn better, which means she's going to remember better. And which means all of this cognitive aspect becomes strengthened. So you start to bring the two together and I mean, we don't want to be, um, uh, you know, kind of the, these sterile, this isn't, this isn't sterile learning, right? It's all about emotion and reinforcing the desire to want to solve these problems. And that's really why it's so important. And then going back to the pyramid, that's why that confidence and motivation is there. Because if you have that, the world is your oyster, you know, that is just kind of setting up those puzzles to really help the dog. Um, and especially if you have a dog that's low on motivation, you really have to bring that emotion in. I mean, you know, Joey, for instance, is not food motivated whatsoever. Um, for him, yeah, he takes the food when it, when he gets to a hide, but that food is almost to some extent, a marker, right? It just tells him, yeah, you were correct. But when I trial, he's not searching for the, he doesn't search because he wants the cookies. He could care. He honestly could care less about the cookies. I mean, he gets it and he'll eat it, but he usually looks at me and he goes, you know, is it poison before I give it to him? He does. I swear. I swear. He looks at me and says, is it poison? No, honey, it's not poison. You can eat it. Oh, okay, mom. And, and, and then he, he takes the food and these are the high value rewards for him.

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Keep in mind, which is kind of scary. And, uh, so he takes the food and he eats it, but then on the way back to the car, I play with him and it's that personal play, like a lot of stuff that Denise does, um, or that she's, you know, she's taught a lot about over, over time. And now, you know, a lot of our, our instructors teach as well, you know, Amy Cook and shade and all, everybody teaches play because it's so fundamental and it's so important. So on the way back from the search back to, um, back to the car, I'm playing with him. I'm down on his, and he is, he is so stinking happy that it then makes that next search more powerful, right? The next search he goes out because he wants to have that whole reward event at the end of it. And that's kind of how, so it reinforces the learning and it reinforces, um, the whole experience. So that's kind of where, where that emotion and that cognition kind of comes together. And that's really where the power is, right? Um, finding a hide is the easiest part of nose work. That's the easiest part. Finding a hide effectively has to do with motivation and that has to do with emotion. No. And, and then of course, the skill, which is the cognitive piece, right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Um, and that, yeah, all that comes together. And, and when you start to put that together, you can, you can also start to build the stamina of that last piece, right? Because when you get up to kind of, especially at the summit level, you're doing a two day trial and we're talking some really, really crazy searches, um, that, you know, they're, they're just amazing. And, and the dogs and the stamina that the dogs have to have, especially for the fact that there's a lot less odor usually. And what I mean is, I mean, by fewer hides by less odor and larger search areas. So the dogs are finding fewer hides in larger search areas. So they have to have that stamina to sustain the desire to search in the presence of no odor. And if you have built up this whole love of the, of, of the, of the activity through all of this training, they can get to that level where now they can go, they can search for a long period of time and not find anything and keep the focus and keep the motivation. That's kind of how all this stuff comes together. You know, I really kind of got into this, especially, um, once Judd got kind of got up to that level and I started thinking, I'm like, okay, you know, and I just, I love, I love observing and just observing how they search. Um, I think it's, it's helped and

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especially observing a lot of dogs, you know, it's really kind of helped to figure out, okay, there there's kind of buckets in terms of the way dogs search and the way dogs think. Um, but then you can take that and you can apply that to other, you know, uh, there, there, there, there, there's just, there's just a lot of trends, a lot of, it's just fascinating. This is what I love about it. Right. Just a, just a, it's so fascinating. So you've kind of been talking, you know, throughout about how your training and how your teaching has kind of evolved. Um, are there things that maybe you taught initially or that you believed about training that, you know, kind of when you were getting started that you no longer believe or would teach? Is there anything, you know, that you've done a 180 on or completely changed your mind on? There's not a whole lot, honestly. I mean, there's some things that I do differently. Um, I do emphasize different things, um, than I used to. My emphasis is heavily on problem solving. Once the dog gets to the point that they understand how to, how to work to the hide, but problem solving in such a way that it sustains the motivation. Um, cause you have to have a motivated dog before you, before you go anywhere. You know, the only kind of changes I've made are probably very, uh, from kind of the initial side of it is just more of a de-emphasis of containers until, until later. Um, and I, I know we, we, I think, um, both, you know, uh, Julie and Melissa are also kind of doing the same thing where we're, um, we de-emphasize containers a little bit because we want to really emphasize the dog's desire to, to find source. And, and I think you don't get that as much with containers. Um, but that's really kind of probably the only thing that I've really changed is more, um, the way I've changed the way I teach is more additive. I think, you know, it's more additive and it's more personalized. So where I mean, my personalized is very dog specific. Um, and being able to, to try to just take that dog, that specific dog and try to figure out what that specific dog needs and, um, you know, versus, um, versus changing what I do, I guess, I guess if that makes sense. It's a little more complex, but it's got a little more depth to it. Yeah. Yeah. It's more complex. It's got more depth, but, but what I try to do, um, especially with a lot of, um, a lot of my classes, I do a lot of visuals, uh, where I try to take concepts and I try to put it, I'll make like a slide or a visual or something to, to try to understand.

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So, so that people can kind of understand how these concepts come together. Um, cause what I want to do is I want to make thinking trainers, the, the handlers that are working with their dogs, I want them to be thinking antlers. So it's more than following along and giving the dog a cookie when they find a hide. And it's more than even observing it's thinking so that they can understand what their dog is telling them and then, um, help them to be able to understand what kind of, you know, like really how to emphasize what's best in their dogs and, and to really produce, you know, excellent, excellent handlers and trainers, you know. All right. So I've got one last question here and it's the question that, um, that I can ask everyone these days. Uh, what's something that you've learned or you've been reminded of recently, uh, just when it comes to training? What I've been reminded of recently? Um, you know, I, like I really was thinking, oh gosh, there's, there's so much I'm always thinking about something. Um, I, I know, honestly, I think it's the emotional side of it and it's, it's just so, it was just so obvious to me when I was working, um, I was working with, with Brava actually, we were, uh, kind of patterning, you know, getting her to wrap the vehicles a little bit more and it just kind of, you know, some, some stuff that I've been working on recently with her, uh, cause she has a tendency to search a little bit like a pinball. And, uh, and, and that, that whole, her response to me, just kind of leaning over and kind of clapping at her, like a really soft clap and her response to that, it just kind of reinforced that whole emotional side of it and, and how even a dog that is so, so into food and into the reward that the real reward is me. And, um, and, and just, you know, cause I've, I've been kind of, you know, thinking about how that, that piece of it really reinforces the learning. And, um, that's kind of where my head is right now. Mm-hmm. Awesome. Yeah. Such an interesting concept. Well, thank you so much for coming on. Yeah. Oh, thank you. This is fun. This is fun. All right. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week. Don't miss it. 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

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called Buddy. Audio editing provided by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training. See you in the second half of the recording. See you in the second half of the recording. See you in the second half of the recording. See you in the second half of the recording.