E253: 레슬리 맥데빗(Leslie McDevitt) - "라떼 한 잔 하세요..."

and in kind of training or behavior have probably at least heard of control unleashed but just in case they haven't or they've heard of it but they're not really familiar with it can you just share a bit about the approach like what it is sure um in in geek speak the approach is counter conditioning with an operant base meaning if your dog has you know yucky feelings about whatever then my my goal is to help them change their feelings about that thing um using operant conditioning that gives the dog control over what's happening so the concept of like start button behavior and like making things voluntary um is very i'm very big on that so that the dog can control their counter conditioning procedure so whether that means they have a behavior that says okay take me closer to that thing take me farther away from that thing yes i want to do this right now no i don't um so those are the goals of it mostly and then there's a lot of you know supplementary things like relaxation on a mat and just other things that help you you know regulate yourself if you're feeling worried about something they're kind of structured as a bunch of games right like you kind of approach them that way yeah who is the program really kind of targeted i know you kind of breezed over it initially when you're talking about yourself um but you know who really will benefit kind of from working through these games what's kind of the range of dog we're talking about here right um so when i when i started writing for queen run i was i was very sports minded in terms of who i was talking to but the general behavior community you know started using all the stuff right away and um at this point i'm i'm focused on anybody that wants like more support for their dog whether the dog is needing help calming down because they get so high or needing confidence because they you know are shy like across this across the spectrum you know there's stuff in there you know like i'm a certified behavior consultant it's no matter what you're doing with your dog it's it's all behavior whatever you're doing with your dog i'm gonna have to look at like that environment like i've worked with working dogs um and training for canine patrol sar you know detection agility dogs you know pet dogs so whatever in whatever triggers are in that dog's environment that they have to function in that's where the uh the differences will come in because it's going to be customized for every for every dog but um but but but any dog that lives in or works in any environment can use these games

um they're easily customizable so you can figure out how to make it work for you so i wanted to have you talk a little bit more specifically about kind of look at that so i know that those familiar with your program will probably know it right l-i-t they've probably seen the abbreviation all over they probably kind of know what it is but for those who haven't or who maybe aren't as familiar with the program you took us through both what it is and kind of what it looks like in practice and it's done well yeah it's definitely connected to this whole latte thing that i'm that i've been working on so look at that um when i first learned about like behavior mod type stuff and you know it was a baby a baby professional trainer we were teaching a lot of don't look at something make eye contact instead it was positive they were getting clicked and treated for looking at us um but at some point i wanted to take the dogs looking at something and take it from like a conflict where the person is like no don't look at that look at me instead um and turn it and turn it into sort of a behavior change so that seeing the other thing becomes the cue to turn and look at you um and you don't have to ask the dog not to look so if the dog does want to look there's no conflict there anymore and it's also connected to turning back so you know i just kind of named named the behavior of you know seeing something versus telling them not to do that thing i just like you know named it you know when you name something and reward reward that something then you're reframing that experience of what it means in the first place to see it right so rather than being like you know no leave it watch me or whatever it's like hey yeah where is that dog oh good you found it and it just it changes the conference conversation i mean it was one of many games i wrote about in my first book but yeah i just like interested and exploded because it people um in the beginning were like what no that's the opposite of what we've been doing and then they're like oh my god because you know it it works really well and um it's been it's been like a godsend really and it's been fun you know it's like it calms you down to be able to be like yeah i i see that thing good job you know like i like to say now like be a reporter not a reactor like the dogs like they don't have to react to the environment they can like tattle on on the environment to you um oh and i remember the other thing i wanted to say because it's called look at that that was a long time ago and i might if i was writing it now like making it up now i probably

wouldn't have called it that because people got very fixated on the dog has to look at something or see something like if you saw me work in person you'd see how like flexible and in the moment i am and how it depends on the dog right um but if you just see it in words on a page it might be like might seem like i want the dog to be looking at something i don't care it's like with a dog the dog wants to look at it then i want to name that and you know make it a rewardable behavior but after a while because it's like you keep you keep asking the question where something is the dog loses interest in it and is just like communicating with you so they might just flick an ear without turning their head and really looking at it or they might just stare at you instead of moving at all and like all of it's rewardable like anything that's not reactive is rewardable so you don't have to it's not like a traditional training where there's one you know the cue means whatever the dog wants to do in that moment it's all rewardable you know it's not like you say sit the dog sits it's really specific and gets a treat for that it's not specific like that and i don't care if they're looking at anything um so that's that's something that i like people to understand you know a bunch of people here locally deb norman and julie denkins you came down here and you did you've done a couple seminars down here and i've had a chance to see you do some of this in person so i think it was really interesting to kind of watch that and kind of see what you were really looking for and it's almost more of a yeah i know that thing's there okay let's get on with our game right like that's almost more of the am i phrasing that kind of okay so knowing that uh how is latte different so maybe what does it stand for okay i kind of skipped that part i i wanted to i wanted to like make a new game that gave dogs more time to sort of like decompress in between wraps and it's called latte because my uh my instructors group because i i have a group where i certify people to teach cu classes so they name i think i think that was one of them came up with it but it stands for look at that comma then enrichment so we call it latte um but basically you know when you're playing look at that it puts the dog into like a really like focused like ready to work state because right because the opposite happens like they're not looking at that they're watching you i was thinking like so if i'm taking my dogs for a walk because we go hiking a lot you know and we do

like yeah i see that i see that dog too and then we keep walking it's like that was one rep and it's over because the environment changed right um so look at that is like fine for that but i was looking at things like if your dog's in a park and you just want the dog to be able to sniff but like things are happening in the park and they can't do that you know rather than being like oh yeah you know where's that thing i see it and then you have to you know keep keep working at that level and the dog doesn't stop to just sniff and pee on things because they're working with you like in that mode um i thought what if i can take that initial piece of look at that which is the environment cues the dog to turn back to you rather than react you know and then from there the dog then sniffs the grass and does whatever um and doesn't have to stay focused so i played with like changing the feeding strategy and just kind of changing things up a bit and that's where latte evolved from so rather than giving the dog um one treat i started putting you know when we we held a um a conference a control and leash conference of virtual one and look a mat sponsored us that they sent all of us like 50 look a mats like it was like all of us had just boxes and boxes of look a mats and i mean like i always liked them but they became like a lifestyle because i just had so many um and so you know i just kind of made a sort of course of look a mats i did it in a circle because you know i've always been very um influenced by t-touch training tellington t-touch training and they always had sort of structured movement things like slow guided movement and a circle or figure eight and that's always made a big impression so you know i put a bunch of like look at mats it snuffle mats kongs any kind of like enrichment toy put it in a circle it takes a lot longer for the dog to you know have to interact with the environment and get the treat rather than i gave you a treat from my hand and now you're offering the look at that chain again you know and if they weren't able to take the time to lick and chew and forage and the stuff that i want to encourage then i'd be like okay well this is not the time and place for a latte right like maybe you need to increase distance or maybe that's it's not appropriate in that in that moment but as long as they are like hey i saw that thing and you're like great you know now find a bunch of shredded cheese in this you know snuffle mat and they're like okay and then they spend a few minutes doing

that um and then the way it's a sort of a game is that when they're done they kind of look up at you like and and then you take them to the next one so that's how you're kind of moving around in a circle and um once i started doing that just to see what would happen i really liked it and a major difference between it and just look at that is that within the look at that game there's no interaction between the dog and the thing um but you can take latte if you wanted to use it for like socializing puppies or something like that and you can start integrating the thing into into the latte game um so you know i went with one of my uh certified instructors to a shelter that she does a lot of work at and um they had a bunch of cardboard boxes you know the dog food and stuff would come in so we were just like hiding treats in the boxes and making like a whole sort of field of boxes and they were learning how to kind of interact with new volunteers that way without pulling them and jumping on them and meeting people um so there's like lots of different ways you can you can use that structure um and i also like i like offering people structures that you don't need tons of skill or background knowledge to be able to use like shelter volunteers you know um just here you know you can put the food in different boxes and when the dog looks at you because he's finished you take him to the next one you know and what happens is it starts developing like a working relationship but interaction um because the dog figures out that if he looks at the person if he makes contact with the person they'll take him to the next thing and so for dogs that were these big dogs like big hunting like hound mix type dogs that were what what that shelter gets primarily um and uh you know they were like jumping in knocking people over and pulling people when it was like you know once they figured out they're like you know very nicely walking with the person they have an expectation they've looked at the person they're going to walk nicely to the next thing you know and then you can make more and more space in between those little enrichment stations so the dog is walking nicely for longer periods of time so like it turns out there's all kinds of applications that you could use it for you know and also uh we're doing a lot with horses we've well we're doing a lot of like horse pattern games pattern games being a big part of uh control unleashed right so this is just another one it's very nice for horses because it's putting a bunch of

stuff around for them to like snuffle and graze and and all that so my horse has like a a horse kong basically they have to like they have to like roll it with their nose to make the treats fall out of the hole you know and uh it's awesome i love the horse kong so yeah that's awesome i love that um that you can use it with other species and stuff and i do want to talk about that a little bit more i'm going to jump around my questions a little bit if that's okay horses aren't the only species you've applied some of this to right a bunch of people are doing with cats um i've got i've got several um certified instructors that are at shelters doing it a lot with shelter cats different pattern games and and i've had a few that have that have come from a zoo background that have worked like with exotic animals doing some of it um there was a sea lion that you're talking about look at that i know that at the bronx zoo there was a sea lion that they taught look at that too that's awesome and i'm like they were gonna let me come in and like see this but then the it was like mating season or something and then it was a whole dramatic thing and i never did end up getting to go but i would sure like to see that yeah yeah that sounds awesome they should at least send you some videos so you can yeah sneak in some of your talks i do have some videos of not look at that but of other pattern games i have a video with a dingo a video with a clouded leopard and a video with a bear that's quite the assortment i love it it just makes me happy i love it so much it's like the little kid in me that didn't know like that thought the only animal related job one could have as an adult was a vet but was not good at math or science and knew like that that wasn't going to happen i wish i could have told her like dude there's all kinds of crazy stuff that you could do because i just didn't know yeah so when you came up with latte was it like intentional did you like sit down and go okay i want to build on look at that or was it more um organic or kind of how did that develop um that's a really good question and usually my stuff is organic and it happens because i have a specific case i'm thinking about and i just do something and then i'm like oh i'm going to name this you know um but with latte it was actually like intentional and i sat down because i wanted to i wanted to work on something that was that let the dog have have time in a certain environment to chill out but still give them structure you know so there's always like

not a conflict but a balance between like structure how much structure how much information to give the dog versus just let them do their thing and be a dog um and the dogs that i work with tend to have like a lot of anxiety that's driving their reactivity and stuff like that so my work isn't about like controlling their behavior but it is about like giving them a certain amount of structure and feedback so that they can like feel comfortable because things are like predictable and they feel more in control um but i wanted to look at can can i use some of that structure um for a dog that needs it but but still be able to encourage that more just freedom in a field or whatever like you wouldn't use latte necessarily you know like if you were in a class and you needed just to have sort of a working relationship within class you would do other cu stuff so i but i didn't have one for um you're not in class you're not really working your dog needs some level of structure but you also want them to do their thing a little bit you know so yeah so i like sat down and thought about what that could look like and because the dogs that already know cu stuff um look at that it's just it's just what they do if they see something that they think is strange they just turn and report it to you um so it just kind of was like that's easy to start with as a base but now but now why you know so then i wanted to kind of use my million look-a-mats and just figure out something that got them like off the attention part for a while which is different from my usual stuff usually i you know want the attention so it's fun do um just because you mentioned something in there and i want to i want to kind of clarify do do they need to know look at that before they do latte or like how does that piece so they they totally don't um you could use it like that like if they're all like if they're offering look at that they're looking towards something back at you and then you sprinkle food on the look them at or whatever right um but you could also use it like the shelter dogs that i mentioned earlier didn't have any kind of background or training and i actually call it decaf just to be silly when you're doing it like that because you're taking the lat out of latte you know yeah you can just you can just use it to establish some kind of interaction and you know that so they don't actually have to be doing that behavior at all i like how convenient that phrase is you've come up with multiple little plays on the words it's not the time for a latte let's do decaf like i like all of that

it's ridiculous um but i like naming things so that's just how it is you mentioned that it can be kind of customized for a lot of different uses and i know you shared kind of the shelter dog example um your talk description you also kind of mentioned that it can be used for like remedial socialization do you want to just share a little bit more about some of the ways it can be customized um so if you had a dog that needed to learn to work with others whether medical setting dog sitter whether they're a shelter dog uh that needs to work with different volunteers um whether like sometimes this comes up when i work with agility people that the dog is worried about going with the teacher to demo something um you know you can i have a sort of like a shadowing uh you know procedure for that you could use for decaf all right so that you're walking and someone else is kind of shadowing you but you're still doing the feeding and the interacting and then you know you could start like so you do sort of a full loop right so it's your choice like how big you want this loop to be say there's like 10 stations you know um and then you know the second time you do the loop the the other person does the feeding the dog can look at you or the other person whichever and then go to the next one and then you know the third time you might sort of step back sometimes i have people it depends on the dog you know people the handler could either leave they could go sit on the sidelines they could go i had one the other day sit in the middle so the dog is like they can see them but they're still like engaged in doing the loop and so they learn to be handled by a new person um you know or you can also make that person more and more interactive i've had people i've had helpers become stations so like my friend's puppy that was like jumping all over my kids i will i use this to get them like real like calm and chillax about having the kids moving around and i kind of made the kids i put them on chairs kind of like in between the enrichment stations so that like sniffing the kid and then look up and go to the next thing and get your get your cheese or whatever um and then had the kids move around with with that puppy and then by the end the kids were walking the puppy and feeding the puppy and petting the puppy and the puppy is just like looking up and going the next thing it it doesn't have to take long it depends of course on on the dog and if they're worried or or you know why we're doing it but it's a easy and fun way where you don't need to have a lot of skill the dog doesn't really have to know

anything um it's giving it it's giving a predictable structure which is what i like to do you know being a person with a lot of anxiety i like things to be predictable and feel in control of them so that's what i do for dogs but um but yeah it's um it's um you can just figure out you know what what's what's your goal it could be like your dog can't settle down once guests are in the house so you've like put enrichment stations all over the living room you know what i mean like yeah um that makes me think something else though because it someone listening to this now is like what if you don't have those because you're outside or whatever so you know if you don't have that and you still want to do this if you're on grass you just sprinkle a bunch of things in the in the grass and just kind of like try to walk in a circle or in some predictable pattern so it doesn't feel random to you and after a while it won't feel random to the dog you know yeah make use of what you have in other words yeah that makes sense are there times where you wouldn't recommend somebody use this or it's just not appropriate or you'd recommend something else or maybe it's not the right type of dog for this type of thing um i don't know if there's ever a situation where it's not the right type of dog but there's definitely times that i would choose something else you know i mean first of all if you want working attention i wouldn't choose one that was meant to get the dog to stop paying attention to you for periods of time um if you're just trying to pass something quickly this wouldn't be it then i would use look at that and maybe my one two three pattern game is another really popular one and that's about like moving a dog you know from a point to a point and just get past a thing um so you know i would do something like that versus you know a latte type thing so it depends on depends on what you want but it's it's fun to have as an option yeah yeah and it certainly has like key elements that i'd imagine would be really helpful especially for dogs that are stressing or feeling anxious about stuff whatever the stuff may be yeah you know or like dogs that are just like they're not sure about a new person or even if they're not sure about seeing another dog um but you want to set up a situation where you want to practice having that dog there you know as long as they can eat and you know find their treats explore their environment look at you keep going um you know so that's another type of thing that you use it for you can set up situations

where they can see something at a certain distance and continue with their latte stuff like someone sent me a video recently and it was um her dog that always barks at her ponies and they were doing a latte like around the where the ponies were it was cute i like that and i like the idea of um you know ponies should be behind a fence or whatever so it's a controlled distance to a certain extent and you've got you know it's a nice structured option right yeah and like if the dogs know like if you start putting stuff down that like oh we're gonna do latte and then you add a thing at a distance and they're like oh that thing but we're still doing latte so you can kind of get it going you know so i've been doing some of that with a friend's a friend got a sort of a pandemic um border collie and he he's like really an amazing an amazing working dog but if a dog doesn't look or move like a border he suspects it um and so we've been doing a lot of that type of thing with with him and we've gotten him to um like actually take like some walks with a few non border collies at this point without screaming at them that's awesome yeah yeah i mean the nice thing about all of the the pattern games and kind of the stuff that you've come up with right is is that you can teach the dog the game and then introduce other things to it and i think that's part of the magic exactly that's and when i say structure that's what i mean like there's a certain sort of series of events that happen that you can predict and then you can start kind of adding little layers of other things into it so the dog feels secure you know and then you add something and if if the dog doesn't like what you've added then you just take it away and go back to the secure part you know so that also gives you like people that are worried when they do counter conditioning like well what'll happen if you know he gets upset or he barks or it's like well this is what happens that thing will stop and go back to what you know keep building on your successes and then keep figuring out how to break the layers into the teeniest tiniest you know increments yeah increments i think you've kind of covered a lot of ground but i want to kind of round things out with one last question which is if you were to kind of drill all of this down either into one key takeaway or one kind of piece that you really want people to understand after listening to this um what would that be it's interesting because i'm thinking about how that might have how that may have changed over the years just in my own

head um like go ahead and share like the first thing that i would that would come out of my mouth would be something about like listening to your dog you know um but also i really want to impress upon people this concept with these um cu games about making making a structure that's that's or a set of predictable rules um that's portable so it helps a dog that's anxious generalize you know you haven't seen this happen before you haven't been here before but you know we have our our things that we do you know so that they have support so um it's about so i would i would want to say something about um that you can see dog training rather than like telling them what to do as um as a way of of offering supports you know and if they don't need them you don't have to offer them you know and it's flexible um or you know one of my kids goes to like a special ed school for kids with learning differences and just that concept of accommodations you know that we we don't have to think of training as control we can think of it as accommodations you know yeah and then you look at behavior not as like oh i don't like that my dog did this but my dog is communicating they needed more accommodations in that situation so like new ones you know yeah let's figure out how we can give them what they need so they can do what we need yeah right i like that i like that kind of phrasing um and reframing right because i think a lot of people look at it the other way right exactly which is i mean look we came from i think dog training came from like you know hunting and military you know right and we're just we're just we're always moving and evolving and i think that this is definitely like the path forward just the idea of giving them more agency and and all that but but yeah for me especially because my kid is in that school just not thinking about accommodations you know it's like when he was he has dysgraphia which is like dyslexia but in your hands like he can't his brain can't tell his hands to write very well so you know he writes like a toddler you know and he was doing well in his like a conventional school except that like they got to a point where the kids needed to write an assignment or something i mean he can't do that the way that other kids just sit down and write something you know they didn't have the environment to give him what he needed so it's not like and they kind of framed it as sort of you know we can't we can't do this um but you know decades ago it would have been like your kid is misbehaving you know and i think we're still there

with the dogs like you're like you blame it on the learner but then changing schools to a school that's like we deal with this stuff all the time we're going to teach you to type we're going to do this we're going to do that we're going to have an occupational therapist sit with you in the classes where you have to write look you know and just and you know turn your writing classes into occupational therapy and then you know it's like it makes this huge difference and he's not different his behavior isn't different but you know his needs are being met in like different and creative ways and um you know he does great in school so and feels good about himself so anyway it's awesome training is more i was already on that path with the dogs but then just just being around this whole situation and seeing how the how different schools you know have different capabilities and it's like crazy so it just has made it even like more obvious to me there's so many parallels i think um as somebody who doesn't have kids between child raising and dog training yeah um yeah awesome well thank you so much for coming on the podcast leslie this is fantastic i think there's tons of great information in there so thank you i haven't talked to you in a while so that was cool i know it's been a while i'm glad to catch up and thank you to everybody uh listening for tuning in we'll be back next week with jennifer rogers who's the founding director of pals to talk about her lemonade conference talk which will be on assistance animals um at this year's lemonade conference if you haven't already subscribe to the podcast in itunes or the podcast app of your choice then our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available today's show is brought to you by the fenzy dog sports academy special thanks to denise fenzy for supporting this podcast music provided royalty free by bensounds.com the track featured here is called buddy audio editing provided by chris lang thanks again for tuning in and happy training you