E167: 로레타 뮬러(Loretta Mueller) - "점프 기초"

and nose work. Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to kind of start out today by talking about your upcoming Jump Foundations class on the calendar for June. So of all the skills kind of needed for agility, I mean, a lot of them are pretty unnatural behaviors for dogs, right? They're not necessarily things they do naturally. But I think jumping, most people look at it and go, yeah, most dogs kind of get that. They'll do it coming out of the womb. But is that really true? You know, jumping, in my opinion, is absolutely the most important piece of agility. And unfortunately, I think the most neglected. A jump is the most used obstacle in agility course design. And there are so very many different angles of approach. If they're going straight or turning, there are so many variables. And dogs can be very natural jumpers, which I guess when I think of a natural jumper, I categorize the dog as they just get it. Or maybe they figure it out quickly. I've had a couple of those. I've been very lucky to have a couple of those. And I've also been very lucky to have them in the beginning of my agility career so that they just figured it out. However, many dogs do really struggle. Some have a tough time knowing how to change their striding or how to transfer weight from their front end to their back end. And you'll probably hear me say that a few times during this podcast. Front end would mean their shoulder area, front legs versus their back end, meaning their hindquarters. Many dogs have a tough time just focusing on their job of jumping with handler movement involved. I always say agility is not send and stand. It's send and go. And so that can really affect some things. Some dogs are very talented jumpers, but lack the commitment needed. And so when they're trying to think about everything, when all we really want them to think about is jumping, that can really cause some issues. There are so many things to think about in regards to jumping. If you look at it from the dog's perspective, we are asking them to go really, really fast and to make these split second decisions, sometimes with or without the right information. Is their form right? Is their weight on the front or their back? Depending on the situation, have they added or subtracted a stride? And if you think about it, it's actually really amazing that they keep as many bars up as they do. And so it's just really important to understand that a jump program should be a very high priority for all agility dogs and all dogs that do sports that require jumping. Mm-hmm. What kind of...

I know you got into this a little bit in there, but what are some of the more common problems when it comes to jumping? What do you see? You know, I see dogs that obviously all bulldoze through jumps and dogs that overthink. There's just such a big gradient as far as what dogs are going to do. I see dogs that can't collect or, in my opinion, rather, don't know how to. Dogs that are not getting the information early enough. So a great example is my class I just finished up. It was a class on drills for better timing. And as the weeks went by, the dogs were jumping better and going faster. And I think information is definitely a key there as far as, you know, making sure the dog has all the information. That's a big one. Owners. This is another big one. Owners that did not take their dog's build or stride or size into account and demand too tight of a turn. If the dog physically can't do the turn, for example, then you're really setting them up for failure and frustration. Dogs that ignore jumps, you know, stress or environmental stuff, not enough value in jumping. So if you look at our training, we build tons of value for contacts and weaves. But what about jumping? We have a tendency to take that for granted. The dogs that are going to drop a bar and they treat it as the most horrible event that has ever happened in their lives. I see that often. Or do you have the exact polar opposite, which is dogs that don't care about a dropped bar. They like to play pick up sticks and they have no issue with it whatsoever. But normally, it usually comes down to the skills. Do they have them? That is the first thing you want to look at. Are they capable of performing the skills, aka physically? Do they have the strength? In order to be a good jumper, you really do have to have wonderful back-end strength and core strength. Core is huge in jumping. But also, not just physically, but mentally. Are they in the right level of drive? And if not, that can affect jumping. If they're too high, they may not even notice a jump. If they're too low, they may not even have the ability to do it, just mentally. Are they chasing you? In that case, they may not even see the jump bars. They're busy focusing on your motion and not their job. I think it's important to remember that these guys feed off motion and they are predators by nature. And so, in order to have them jump, they actually have to look away from your motion. And so, I'm not sure if you've ever seen a dog that's chasing a rabbit, but they don't randomly just turn away and look back at you while they're chasing it.

So, we're really going against instinct when we ask them to just focus on that jump. Is the dog overwhelmed? Environmental? Or possibly, you know, people can ask too much too soon from the dogs. Too much height. Too much speed. Into transitions, like extension into collection. All of these can contribute to the dog not showing good jumping. And then, of course, you've got the additional variables of surfaces and weather. If you're trialing outdoors or if you have a slick surface, you know, the dog has to adjust as well. So, there's just so much that really goes into it. And there's so many things that the dogs can do that can show you that there's a problem with whatever's happening with jumping. Mm-hmm. So, interesting. I never even thought about the surface problem. I imagine that's especially hard to train for and plan for and deal with. Yeah, it really is. You know, depending on what part of the country you're in, some of the trials can be more outdoors or indoors. But surfaces can really vary. And if your dog has not had experience with a particular surface, they can slip, they can fall. So, some dogs will adjust naturally and they will, you know, add a couple strides in here or there to keep themselves safe. But then you have some dogs that are just going to run as fast as they possibly can and they end up slipping, face planting. And, you know, that's something that we can work on with them. But it definitely can affect jumping because if you think about the dog reaching a specific takeoff point on the jump and as they go to lift to jump, the surface comes out from underneath of them and they slip. That's not necessarily the dog's fault. It's just more an additional variable we have to look at. So, for those who are kind of like me, who maybe have been on the fringe of agility conversations and, you know, talk to people like you, but haven't really actually trained the stuff or worked super deep in the stuff, you know, we definitely hear the words collection and extension kind of thrown around and kind of know that they're important, right? But I definitely could not explain them or define them. So, can you just give us a little bit of a working definition for each and then kind of talk about why they're important? For sure. I would start with extension. I would say the reason why I'm starting with extension is because that's kind of the dog's emo. They run straight and they like to open up and really run. And so, I would define that as speed using all the stride you have. As far as physical things you should see in your dog, the dog's head should be flatter.

Their ears are normally forward or pinned. Again, this is all can be breed dependent or dog dependent. Their back is going to be flatter. Their front and rear legs can be tucked or extended. Normally, they're extended when they are jumping. I call it flat. But this also can be dependent on the way the dog is built. The dog should be more on the front end of their body. So, people, I hear people say all the time that, oh, my dog's on their front end. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. That's great for straight lines. This type of jumping, again, it's used for straight lines. And my dog should not be adding in extra strides or slowing down. So, I like to think of it as it's like you're driving your car down the interstate. And you're going forward. You're going in a relatively straight line. You're not going to slow down in the middle of an interstate or you shouldn't. And so, that's that extension line. That's very different from collection, which, in general, I'm going to say is used for turning. In collection, the back will be more rounded because the dog has to create a smaller jump line. The front legs will probably be tucked. Back legs also. More so than extended. But, again, it can depend on the dog's build. The weight will be transferred to the rear end of the dog. So, they actually have to rock back onto their butts, for lack of a better term. And you will see a defined change of speed and or an added stride. This is more what you would do if you were driving needing to turn at like an intersection. You would not approach an intersection going 70 miles an hour. Hopefully, you would slow down and use some light braking. And then, eventually, as you go into the turn, you would speed out of the turn. But you're not going to speed into a turn. So, it's kind of city driving versus country driving. And, you know, depending on if you look at an agility course, you can really see those moments where you will need the extension and you will need the collection. So, a dog that runs just on their back end all the time is not what we want. We want a dog that can transfer from city to country driving back and forth consistently and on demand given whatever is presented in front of them. Hopefully, that makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, folks tend to get analysis paralysis when talking about some of this stuff, right? Like, so they either don't realize it's important at all and kind of just jump ahead and kind of the dog will figure it out, right? Or they overthink it, sort of like the dogs, the bulldozers and the thinkers.

And so, if they are overthinking, if they're kind of falling into the analysis paralysis, they get stuck with, okay, how do I choose a method? Or how do I decide an approach? So, if somebody just kind of wants to start their dog off right, quote unquote, where do you start? What are the kind of those early steps? First of all, you need to make sure your dog has the physical strength to jump. Is your dog fit? Overweight dogs really struggle with jumping. Dogs with weak rear ends, with weak cores, so your stomach muscles struggle with collection. So, number one, making sure your dog is fit is very, very important. Obviously, with little puppies, you know, they're still learning stuff. So, you're not doing any kind of jumping. But that's going to be something to take into account when you start. So, if your dog's not fit, try to work on getting on a fitness plan of some kind. As far as, you know, methods and what to do and what's the best thing to do, this is based off my experiences. So, I try to be as consistent with whatever method I use. You know, I think a plan really helps with your goals of having a good jumping dog. If you're just kind of haphazardly putting things together, I think you're going to end up with some holes that you don't necessarily want. And you may not find out until you get to a trial, which is not a good place to find out a hole. But as far as starting off right, to me and my past experiences, honestly, it starts with teaching commitment to jumps. And teaching the dog to deal with handler motion. That's the biggest area of needing improvement I see in those that I work with. So, they've got all these great skills on their dogs with jumping. But as soon as we add a handler motion, it all goes out the window and the dog loses their technique. So, if the dog can be taught to commit, then that makes the jump training much easier because the dog is focused on their job and not on the handler's motion away from them or ahead of them or behind them. And I think that's the biggest piece that people in general leave out. And it's a really, really important one that will bite you further down the road from a young dog to a very experienced dog. Kind of taking that from jumping to handling, you know, you've also got your handling class in the calendar. You're basically handling class on the calendar for June. So, if I remember right, you don't really use any one handling method. So, can you talk about that a bit? You know why that is? Yeah, sure. So, I don't subscribe to just one method. No. Do I have a very consistent set of cues for my dogs? Do I have my own method?

Absolutely. But my dogs have taught me through the years that they don't always fit into boxes. And my students have also taught me through the years that they don't always fit into boxes. And so, that's my job as a teacher, as a trainer, to help them get as much information to their dogs. Or if you're a dog, getting as much information as possible. I think that one can take different areas and ideas from other methods and apply them. I find that to be the art of handling. And I like to be creative. And rules to me are, I don't know, a little bit more like guidelines. I feel a little boxed in otherwise. And I also work with people from very different physical abilities. Some of my handlers are very limited physically. So, we do mostly verbals. Some of my handlers are very gifted physically. And we can do a lot more motion-based cues. So, I educate myself. And ultimately, I go with what works for the dogs first and foremost. And then secondly, what works for the handlers. And I think that the dogs and handlers that I work with, they've been quite consistent with helping me see and understand. That if I just limit myself to one specific thing, I'm limiting the ability to get creative when things don't go quite the way they should according to whatever method. Hopefully, that makes sense. Yeah. So, when they don't fit perfectly into the box that the method was designed for, in other words. Yeah, exactly. Yep. So, kind of keeping that in mind, you know, how do you approach a basic handling class? What do you cover? I cover commitment. Like I had stated earlier about the jumping. It's huge. Sends are very, very important. And yes, I can adapt to whatever method the person is using. So, if you use the Derrick method, if you're more Mecklenburg, if you have no idea what those two words are and you're just trying to figure it out, I can work with you. I know and have studied the major handling methods and so I can adapt pretty much anything. We also work on training the dogs to deal with motion and some jumping because jumping is very important. But even if you have a young dog, you don't have to jump them in this course. They can be bars on the ground or no bars. And then, biggest thing is I really work hard on the person to get them not to babysit jumps and to move off a cue or a send while staying connected to their dogs. And we're training the human as well so that they are not doing some of the most obvious mistakes that many agility handlers do, which is staying there on the jumps and babysitting and not moving off.

So, it's very, very important that you do move on to the next obstacle because motion to the jump is a cue. But motion away from the jump is also a cue. So, all of that gives the dog the information on where they're going next. And most people have a tendency to wait until the dog is taken off before they move on. So, I'm working on training you as the handler how to do this and get it stuck in your head and make it muscle memory. So, on your syllabus, you know, kind of from week one, you have a lecture on using both the use of handling but also the theory for handling cues. So, kind of first, kind of what's the theory here? What are we talking about by theory? So, when I'm thinking in terms of handling, I really, really look at the dogs. I want to know what the dogs instinctively read. I want to know what would be a trained behavior versus instinct. And that's going to be really important. The theory is basically dogs read motion, period. And we have to understand how dogs respond to our emotion in order to understand how to effectively communicate with them. So, either you're cueing, extension, or collection. That's really what it comes down to. I know we can complicate it. But we just go over how to do that. So, sometimes our bodies are telling the dog to do one thing, but we want something else. And so, those questions that we provide with our dog can set us up for some bad communication. It can be really tough when you're working with a different species. I mean, let's face it, we can't always communicate well with other people. So, we start with theory, just so everybody is on the same page with what communication works. And again, it's based on the dog. So, we go through how your motion affects them. We go through verbals, how those affect them, late verbals, late motion cues, pressure, aka your body pressure, training pressure. All of that kind of stuff goes into play when we're talking about theory. Mm-hmm. So, when you take that theory and then you're applying it to real life, can you just talk a little bit more about, you know, kind of where that line is? Sure. Yeah. So, as far as at home, like just in general around the house or any other random communications with your dog, you learn how your body pressure or body language can cause issues with communication. So, a really good example of this would be bending over a small dog makes them want to back away from you or kind of slink down. And that's because of all that pressure applied to them. As we study and learn more about dogs, it becomes very obvious that sometimes human behavior doesn't always mesh with dogs.

And so, things that we do to other people don't make sense to the dogs. And if we take some of the behaviors we use with dogs and we apply them to other humans, it seems crazy. So, running up to a random stranger excited and throwing yourself into their arms makes no sense to another human. But sometimes we'll do that with another dog. And so, you know, it's just real life situations we learn about how that works. As far as agility, which is real life too, if you're aware of what you're handling or your body language does and your motion, you get a very predictable response to a handling cue. And having a dog that you can trust on the agility field is priceless and makes agility so much fun. If you compare that to running a dog that you have no idea what they could do, maybe they might do this, maybe they may not. That gives me anxiety personally. And it makes agility way less fun. I like a predictable response. And so, the more you can become consistent with your body language and understanding the theory behind how you affect your dog on the course, the more consistent and predictable everything will be. So, are there any like super common problems that handlers make, you know, especially when training their first agility dog, kind of where they go wrong? Oh, that's a really good question. That's a tough one to answer. It really is. Because there's, you know, there's just, for all of you who are sitting out there going, oh my gosh, all the things I did with my first dog. There are so many things. But I would say overall, not rewarding enough. And trying to process and think while handling. Handling should be an autopilot activity. So, your muscle memory is going to come into play. So, trying to train yourself and train your dog and learn the moves and memorize a course is just a lot and can really stress you and the dog out. And that's why I guess I love my method of working on the stuff we work on in ag, the basis handling class. Because we work on each thing one at a time on one jump. So, there are a lot less things to think about for both the dog and the handler. We're working on changing human behavior to make it more applicable to the dog. And we're working on the dog doing the correct behavior. And we're able to put it together in a very simple format. So, you don't have to think so hard and worry about processing everything at lightning speed. So, if folks are kind of evaluating the schedule for this term, I'm sure there are a couple common questions that you get all the time. They're bound to come up for classes like this, right?

So, like how much equipment and, you know, what kind of space are we talking about that they need for these? Yeah, I get that question a ton. So, for the jumping class, you really need at least a line of four jumps. More if you can, but four is going to be a good starting point. So, a longer skinny area if you have one. For the extension work, I would say the jumps are going to be 18 to 20 feet apart. So, we can get away with a 60 by 80 space. We can modify it if need to, add a jump, subtract a jump for extension. Collection work can be in a much smaller space. So, we're looking for longer, skinnier spaces for the jumping classes. It does require more space just because of the fact that we need to get speed for some of the exercises. For my handling class, most of the work is done on one jump. And then towards the ending weeks, we do use two and three jumps. So, about a 30 by 30 would work just fine for that class. A lot of people have done it in a very small area for the first several weeks when we're working on one jump. And then either went to a park or rented a space for the last couple weeks when we work on multiple obstacles. And then is there, you know, a particular experience level that a team should have or things that they should kind of know going into either of these? I would say no. The dogs don't have to have experience. I've found that a stay is very nice. If you have one, it just helps with both the handling class and the jumping class. However, if you have someone that can hold your dog or if you have something like a pet tutor or a manners minder, treat and train, you can send the dog to. We can make that work. And so, I've had quite a few students that don't have a stay, but a stay definitely helps. I've had dogs that have never done agility before in the classes. I've had dogs that are seasoned competitors. And it works out great for either level. And then is there anything else that they should really consider when they're deciding whether or not to sign up? Is there, you know, anything else that you'd want to mention? Yeah. So, I guess for jumping and for the handling classes, you know, what are your goals with agility? That can really help you customize your training and get the most out of class. Even if you're not a gold, you know, silver, bronze, take video even if you're not going to, you know, post it. I think that's really important. Make sure you have lots of rewards. Also, make sure you don't get your dog fat during the classes because we use a lot of rewards. So, you might have to think in terms of thinking ahead on that.

And then, especially for these classes where a lot of people are doing it in the backyard, do you have a plan B if the weather's icky? Just to help you stay on track. So, if it's raining or we even had snow in May, welcome to Minnesota. You know, you can still stay on track. So, if you have ring rentals or stuff like that, just to kind of be proactive so you know what you're dealing with and you're not surprised by something. So, last question here. What's something that you learned or you've been reminded of recently when it comes to dog training? That if your dog doesn't have the right mindset for your training session, just stop. Get the dog in the game. And if you can't, go for a walk and try again another day. They say never end on a bad note, right? We hear that all the time. I don't think that's true. I think sometimes you just have to stop. Even on a bad note, stopping and going for a hike is not a bad ending to a training session. You're not going to do anything horrible. But you have to understand that you really can't train a dog that isn't able to absorb the information at that time. So, it's not worth the frustration to try. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Loretta. This has been interesting and I certainly learned some stuff about jumping today. So, thank you. Thank you. I had a wonderful time, as usual. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week with Megan Foster to talk about mindset training for competition. Don't miss it. If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice. They have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzie Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzie for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by bensound.com. The track featured here is called Buddy. Audio editing provided by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in. And happy training. Thanks. Thank you.