E102: 해나 브래니건(Hannah Branigan) - "멋진 복종 훈련(Awesome Obedience)"

So I was having to make a lot of it up and there's a lot of trial and error involved. Mostly error. And those, you know, those, those, I mean, I feel bad for all of my dogs, but the early, you know, the, my older dogs more, more so because they, they got to suffer through that figuring out of a lot of these things. And then of course my, my students that I was working with at the time and then since then have become, have also been guinea pigs as we kind of figure out, well, why did this one thing that I do worked and how can I teach that to other people? So what the, the audience I have in mind, the, the person that I have in mind, again, is like I was talking about, has, has already has a background in positive reinforcement, has a background in clicker training. They've read, they've read the classics. They've read, don't shoot the dog. And, and they've got pretty good, pretty good clicker skills on board. They know how to deliver reinforcement. They understand the value of, of building behavior and, but they don't, but they don't necessarily have familiarity for obedience and they're, they're looking to break into obedience. I often have a lot of trainers will come up to me at a conference like clicker expo and they will, and they'll come up and they'll usually introduce themselves and say something like, Oh, there wasn't anything else we were interested in seeing in this time slot. So we decided to come to your presentation, even though we don't do obedience. But after hearing you talk about it, it sounds kind of interesting. And I think I might want to get started. And they'll, they'll often say something like, Oh, you know, we don't, I don't train obedience, but I train service dogs. I don't train obedience, but I do agility and I don't train obedience, but I'm, I'm, you know, I do this, some other thing. But now that I, now that I see how much fun it could possibly be, I'm, I'm curious to try it. And then they would ask if I could recommend a book. And I of course couldn't, but, um, or I mean, that's not true. There were books that I could recommend, but, um, I didn't have my own book to recommend. And, uh, and there, and there wasn't one place that they could go to get just like, what, like literally if you've never competed in obedience, what do you need to know? Like, what skills do you need to train? What behaviors do you want to train? Do you need to train to put together the exercises? As somebody who's relatively new to the sport myself, like there's a lot to learn. There is. Out there. Yeah. Yeah. So the title is obviously kind of a big hint, right?

But can you share a little more on what the book is about? Is it a how to guide? Is it a training methodology? How do you describe it? It's a, it's a handbook. It's, I wrote it with the idea of let's take the exercises, let's break them down into the skills that are needed and look at, um, how, how to teach those skills. So it, it, I think it has most in common really with a cookbook. I'm not real into recipes as far as training goes, because of course, all dogs are different. All teams are different. And I'm much more interested in the principles and the concepts behind it. And I do believe if you really understand the principles of, of good training, you can, you can use those to teach us about anything that you want. But if it's an exercise that you've never trained before, it's really helpful to have a starting point, um, to have, to have a recipe to work from, and then, and then you can modify it from there to make it yours. Right. Um, so, so I think that's, that's the closest analogy. It's got a lot of, a lot of breakdown, a lot of, these are the, these are the important skills for drop on recall. Your dog needs to know this, this, and this, and here's how we're going to teach it. And trying to go through as systematically as possible from, from the ground up, you know, from basic foundation movement skills to putting them together to form clean position changes and adding distance and, um, putting together healing and learning some basic handling and knowing what to expect in the ring. Uh, that was also something that I really was missing when I was first learning, first starting to compete was I walked into a dog show and I didn't know, I didn't know where anything was. Um, I didn't know, I didn't know what to expect and nobody, long, long-term competitors don't remember what that's like. Um, so just having, having some idea of this is how the flow of the exercise is going to go. And these are the things, um, that you can expect. And here's again, some of the things you can train for, um, and just lay them out as step-by-step as possible. In the description on the Karen Pryor store website, clickertraining.com for those who want to go buy it. Uh, it mentions that the book covers where to put your efforts, which is followed by in parentheses, hints, not fronts and finishes. So if trainers interested in obedience, shouldn't focus on fronts or finishes, what should they be focusing on? Yeah, I know this is a little bit of a weird kind of hill to die on that I've chosen, but, um, but I feel really, it's something I actually feel really strongly about.

And it was something that, again, I, it was a, uh, I think it's a misconception that a lot of people have that I definitely had when I got started with obedience has their reputation of being a sport that is based on precision. And, and, and so a lot of folks will hear that and they're just, their brains turn off. Oh, it's a precision. Precision is boring. Therefore I'm not interested in it. And it, it, one, it does the sport a disservice. There's so much more to obedience than the fronts and finishes, which is what people think of when they think precision. They think, oh, my dog has to have a perfectly straight front. And there are, and I have had people tell me that they're never going to compete with their dog because he'll never have a perfectly straight front or he doesn't have perfectly straight fronts. And I'm thinking, good Lord, perfectly straight fronts. When you have 60 arch points, then you care about perfectly straight fronts, right? That, then that's all you care about. But, but through novice, um, through open utility, through the titles, through your UDX, you can have a medium, um, to mediocre front and do quite well. You can win a lot of classes, uh, particularly, particularly in novice, which is where people who are, who are new to obedience are starting. There is exactly, exactly one front in the whole novice, in your whole novice performance. It is worth three points. And if your dog gets within arm's reach of you and sits, you're going to get most of those points. So you may as well put your time somewhere else, like teaching, um, really motivated, focused healing, right? Uh, where you're going to spend the rest of that time in, in the novice ring will be on, will be on, on healing. So it's, it's just a rabbit hole. It's really easy to get bogged down picking on fronts and finishes, which don't make, they don't make or break any exercise. Um, and a precision error on front or precision error on finish will never stop you from achieving a title. Um, it, you know, certainly it is scored. Yes. But again, until you're looking at placements and you're looking at competitive awards, it's, it's just such a low priority. And for folks who are breaking into the sport, I want them to focus on the, the, the principle, the principle features of all the exercises, right? That's, that's what you need to do to qualify, to get the title. You have to accomplish the main point of all the exercises. The dog has to go out and pick up the dumbbell and bring it back to you. So it's just a functional retrieve. And even if he doesn't sit at all, he just stands there and holds the dumbbell, but you

can get it. You're still accomplishing the retrieve. You're still going to qualify. When you get real stuck on, on perfecting the fronts very quickly, it becomes this really conflicted space where the dog does a perfectly good retrieve. And especially if you're working with a non-traditional breed where you, you worked pretty hard to get the retrieve in the first place. And then they come in, they've got the dumbbell, but they sit crooked. It's easy to think, Oh, well that whole thing's a bust because he's sacroged. And so you, you pick on the dog and you don't reinforce and you create frustration, um, and you decrease motivation by, by picking on this small precision aspect that is, is worth half a point. And it, and by finishing a perfectly good retrieve with this opportunity for failure instead of an opportunity for success, the dog's interest in retrieving tends to decrease. And so we, we suck the life out of the funner parts of, of the whole sport, um, through this obsession with something that doesn't, just doesn't matter, um, early on and just, and still shouldn't be the highest priority. It sounds like a classic case of kind of majoring in the minors. Yes, exactly right. You know, you kind of get into the importance of mechanics and look at things like motivation and arousal levels. So if someone wanted to improve their training, where would you recommend they put the most emphasis kind of on the improving mechanics piece or on the building up the dog's positive feelings about work and obedience in general? That's, it's so interesting that you asked that, Melissa. So I actually believe that the best way to build up your dog's positive feelings about training with you is to have really clean mechanics. If you, if you are consistent and clear with the way you move your body, that affects how you communicate with your dog. And we like being around people who are good at communicating. So if you're clear with your reinforcement, you're clear with what you're, with what you're reinforcing, you're setting your dog up for success. You're giving clear cues. All of those things directly affect how your dog feels about working with you and directly affects how they feel about the behaviors and the exercises that you're training. That's kind of interesting because I was kind of expecting it to be one of those questions that you put between a rock and a hard place. Instead, it really sounds like they, um, are much more connected. They are completely connected. Absolutely connected. I mean, when I, when I'm, when I'm working with a team, uh, whether it's in an online class

or a seminar in person or whatever, and if they're coming in with the dog has, uh, maybe sad feelings or there's some disconnection, there's, there's sniffing, um, they're leaving to scratch. One of the first things that I look at is, is how clean are those mechanics? Are you delivering the toy when, assuming you're training with the toy, when and where it's supposed to be? And is it really clear to the dog when he's getting reinforced, when reinforcement is available and when it's not, and when it's his turn to, to offer behavior in order to get access to that reinforcement? Are the cues really clear? That's really most of it. I mean, again, that's, that's 80, that's, that's where that 80% of the focus is. And when we have the human doing his or her job and being very clear, the dog's behavior always follows. Cause we are the ones who are, you know, who are in charge of the training sessions. We're modifying the dog's behavior. And in order to get one, you have to have the other. There's another, uh, kind of phrase in this description that I wanted to pull out and talk about. It says that, um, the book covers how to train the critical unscored transition portion of your performance. Since it's unscored, why is that portion critical? Well, so the, you know, the whole performance that your dog is, um, that way you and your dog are doing together in the ring from the time you walk in the ring, or really from the time you leave the crate to the time you exit to get the reinforcement, this is all one big, long behavior chain. And what maintains the chain is, is the whole, it's all of those behaviors. So it's not just what happens from when the judge says forward to when he says exercise finished. It's also what happens between exercise finished and are you ready? Um, that, that part doesn't show up on the score sheet unless something really terrible goes, goes wrong. But, uh, but it, it, your, your ability to maintain your connection with the dog and those are trained and conditioned behaviors and cues. Um, is maintains that, maintains the, the continuity of the chain. It also determines how you set up for that next exercise. So, um, for example, we'll take novice cause again, it's really, it's a really common one and novice, the order is always the same. So in AKC novice, the exercise that follows the Stanford exam is always the heel free. When the heel free is a little bit scary for a lot of new teams, um, because the leash is now off the dog. It's also, you've been in the ring for a while. It's probably about two minutes, but it feels like a year and a half. And it's the second healing pattern.

So your dog's already done one healing pattern on leash, which may or may not have felt good. And then you did the figure eight and then you did the stand for exam. The stand for exam is a stand stay and it can be a little bit pressure, a little bit distracting. There's nothing exciting about a stand stay. And then you have to leave that to go into this high energy healing, um, portion again. So you go from higher, hopefully high energy healing to a stay to high energy healing. And that kind of dip and then backup of arousal is a challenging transition for most dogs. And there are things you can specifically train leaving that stand for exam exercise and setting up for the heel free and conditioning energy into that so that you show up at the starting point for the, that second healing pattern with enough dog to finish that second healing pattern and finish it the way that you want. Then that's something you can train for. Does that mean that that transition is going to look very similar every single time you do it in the ring? So every time you go from, um, you know, that stand for exam to that, uh, free heel pattern, or is it kind of something that it's just like kind of a repertoire of things that you can pick from based on what your dog needs in that moment? For the most part, I really recommend training it in a pretty routine ritualized manner. Um, there's going to be some flexibility, but one of the interesting things about obedience is it is, it is relative, it is a very structured sport and there, the stand for exam, there's only so many spots in the ring that you're going to end up doing that. You're maybe facing this way or that way, but it's, it's again, a pretty limited range. You're set up for the heel free. Again, it's going to be, you know, maybe one of three locations, um, fairly close to that. You'll occasionally have an outlier where they'll have you on the other side of the ring, but that's so rare that it's, it's really not worth, it's almost not worth talking about until it happens, you know? Um, so you can, with, with the same set of Lego blocks, um, cause you know, I love that analogy. You can, you can put together, you know, three or four slight variations, slight versions of, of how that transition is gonna look, but it's still going to look pretty darn similar every time. They're just, there's just not that, that many different variables there, um, to account for. So the, the more practiced you are, the more powerfully conditioned you have that sequence, you and the dog can both do it automatically.

You're tapping into all of the, um, the conditioned emotional responses that you want associated with, with those behaviors in that picture, the more effective it's going to be. So what does training for those transitions look like? I mean, what are we really talking about here? It looks just like training for the exercises. It just happens to be an exercise that isn't written in the rule book. Um, you think about what's the starting point? What's the ending point? What are the, what do I want to happen there? And there you can, and there's certainly some flexibility, right? So I, I have with one of my dogs, I, most of his transitions were really bouncy. Um, he was unlikely to bark. He was on less likely to, you know, bite my clothes. Um, he was more likely to go flat in the ring. So moving him from one point in space to another usually had a lot of high moving hand touches. So he would bounce, bounce, bounce, call the heel, set up, ready to go. Um, my two, two, and the next child, and then, and now my, my younger dog, um, both actually really just, we do a hand touch, we do a quick pet and then call it a heel and move to the next starting point. Um, and that's what I've trained them for. And, and both of those work really well. Um, but it's, it's, it's, it's the breaking it down, um, and training each piece, pairing them like a little behavior chain, putting them together, generalizing as appropriate, adding some distractions, uh, but, but you're practicing and reinforcing those, those sections, just like you would any other exercise. You know, I certainly hope that everybody kind of goes out and we've gotten their interest in the book, but, uh, there was something else I want to talk about. So originally we were going to talk about this kind of before registration for February closed and that didn't happen, but, um, I still like to talk a little bit about the new series of classes you've put together on healing at FDSA. I believe it's three parts. Can you share a little about the approach you take, um, with that class? Yeah. So, uh, again, my approach to, to training all the things I love when we can take this really complex, fascinating, um, sometimes almost mythologized, uh, exercise or behavior like healing. Like there's, people go on and on about healing and I, and I totally get it because I love watching beautiful healing. I love when I find it with my dogs and, and, and I know when I was getting started in training, I didn't really understand what healing meant. It's like pornography. You can recognize it when you see it, you know, but I couldn't necessarily break it down

and articulate why this team looked better or looked like a stronger, more beautiful healing team. And this one didn't. And I didn't really understand how the point values broke out or how I could take my dog and teach, you know, what, what were the skills that my dog were, was missing to bring him closer to the ideal performance once I identified it. So, so with this series of classes, that's pretty much exactly what we're doing. So we're taking, um, the big picture healing with the animation and the focus and the energy and the precision and the, um, responsiveness and that, that beautiful, um, like almost magical sensation that you get when you're really in sync with your partner and you're, you're healing and it feels like it's one organism, um, moving together. So we're taking that big organic picture and we're, and we're deconstructing it. We're pulling out, okay, what, what's actually happening here that we're perceiving as beautiful healing? What is the dog doing? What is the handler doing? What of those things are skills that we can teach? Cause it turns out most, if not all of those components are skills that can be taught and there's going to be, you know, come more easily to some individuals than others, but there's still quite a lot that we can do for any team to, um, to fill in the gaps and improve their skillset to bring, again, bring them closer to that ideal. And we can do a lot of that out of context. So we're not drilling the same healing. You're not doing the, the old school forced march around and around and around. No, we can, we can pull out a lot of those little behaviors and really teach them as tricks, you know, teach the dog to back up and teach them to move side to side and teach them to line up correctly. Um, teach them to find heel position from anywhere, all of those little components. We can teach them separately, teach them out of context, which also makes it easier to teach like in your living room, uh, or on your front porch if you don't have a training facility, which I don't. And then when you have a little components, all those little Lego blocks are, are fluent. We can, we can put them together and we can combine them. And then we can use those tools to fine tune the position to build that, build back up to that beautiful, organic, big picture of what your, your preference, what, what beautiful healing looks like for you. So you're, you're talking about things like, you know, head up is one piece and like, but in is another piece, right? Like just kind of operate. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We can, uh, we can isolate the, the rotational element.

So lining up, um, lining up with straight, precise heel position. Sounds like that could be one unit in and of itself, but, Oh, we can go so much deeper. We can, we can pull out the different planes there. So can you line up front to back? Can you find the focal point? Um, can you control your body and space on a sort of rotational, um, situation? So like that counterclockwise pivot comes in here, but we also need balance because maintaining that focal point, maintaining that precise position is not a done thing. It's not something you do once. It's a dynamic, it's a dynamic behavior, just like standing on one leg. Um, so they have to be able to confidently, uh, and fluently be able to control their body to maintain that balance while you're moving, while they're staying focused on you and giving your cues. Um, we can pull out head position. We can pull out gate. How much, how much prance do you like? Do you prefer your dog to be a little more neutral? Do you really, do you really like that kind of more IPO European flashy trot? Um, I, I personally like a little more animation. So I tend to train a little bit more for that. Do you like your dog to have a more vertical head position? Do you like it to be a little more flatter? Do you like your dog to heal a little bit ahead of you? Do you like him to, um, be really tight on your leg? So there's, there's a lot of places where we can pull out these little elements, um, and train them. And, and again, really there's, there's a lot of room for creative expression, which I find very exciting. So this next question honestly is partially satisfied my own curiosity, but I know you teach an independent pivot as part of teaching healing. I guess I kind of want to just ask why, what are the benefits to an independent pivot versus just teaching it with the handler next to the dog? So really there's, there's a lot of ways to teach this. So, so that, so when we're talking about a pivot, um, the, the pivot behavior that, that I'm talking about, the dog, um, is basically doing a turn on the forehand. So the front feet stay planted and the rear end can move in a circle. And, um, I think it's really important that we work both clockwise and counterclockwise. The way that I like to teach this is using a platform. So we put, uh, train the dog to put his front feet up on an elevated surface. So it could be an upside down bucket or food bowl or a step stool or a cinder block. It doesn't really matter. Um, but that, that, uh, elevating the front feet does two things for us. One, it isolates them. So the front feet stay in one place.

We just, we, we restrict their movement so we can worry about the whole rest of the dog. Um, and also since this little bit high, it induces some weight shift, which again, it helps us isolate the movement that we're looking for. And it starts to give carry over to the same kind of weight shift and actions that we're going to want in, we put it together in healing. Why do I, why do I value the dog being able to do this independently? So by independent, I mean that the, the human, the trainer stands still. Um, and other than setting up the stage, setting up the picture that effectively cues the dog for what the behavior is, which is pivoting. Um, doesn't do anything to, to induce or to, to cause the dog to move. So the dog can look at the picture. Okay. I'm supposed to pivot, put his front feet up there and, and do a full circle. And most importantly, go past the, past the trainer's leg is what I'm really looking for that the moment where he turns, um, to face the other direction, goes right past the, the trainer's leg and then comes back the other way. Um, that section of the arc, um, from say like, um, four o'clock to, uh, to eight o'clock. Um, if you're looking at the face of the clock. So that's the part that's the most important to me. Um, I really liked the dog to be able to, to perform that action without the handler's body cueing it because I find that it gives us, it makes it easier to have clean cues later on, um, down the road. So I can train this behavior with me moving. Um, and, and when I first started playing around with, with teaching pivot platforms, that's exactly what I did. I, I would move with the dog. I would size step with the dog. I had a couple of variations of that, but what would happen then was my movement became the cue for the dog to move. So the dog would put his feet up on the platform and he would stand and look at me and I would stand and look at him and then I would move and then he would move and then I'd move and then he would move. And that's fine. Um, as long as that's what I wanted, but to finish the behavior for the purposes of the exercise for how it's going to be performed in the ring, I'm going to be standing still and I'm allowed to give either a hand signal or a verbal cue. I'm not allowed to use my shoulder to circle the dog back. I'm not allowed to use my hand to, to prompt the dog around. And what I discovered was it was a lot harder to fade handler movement as a prompt than it, than it is to fade the inanimate object as a prop, just strictly from like a student and trainer perspective. A dog doesn't really care.

Like we, there are tons of people who can do those things really, really well. The sticking point I kept running into is, is we would get dogs that would get to within about 30 degrees of field position and then stop. And then whoever was training down, certainly not me would move a shoulder or pull a hand down or use a target or otherwise do something to try and get that last 30 degrees. And so the behavior that we ended up training was come almost to heel position and stop. And your handler will shuffle her feet or tap her hip. And then you go the rest of the way in. And if that, if that behavior pattern, that little behavior sequence has been reinforced for months or years, it's, it's a lot harder to change it. And more importantly, if that behavior sequence has been practiced by the human, by the handler for months or years, it's really hard to get that clean, especially for, for so many of us who train almost entirely by ourselves. Um, because that those unconscious muscle movements get, take a, take a life of their own. And, and they're really, they're hard, they're hard to eliminate. So I, I prefer to just not introduce them in the first place. I can get the behavior that I need shaped without adding my movement to it. And now I have a dog that can, um, can happily find heel all the way into heel position. Not, not just to almost heel while I'm standing still, which is exactly the picture that we're going to be working with in the ring where I can say heel. And I want my dog to be able to line fully up, um, and in one movement, line up, um, under heel position and, and be straight. That was a really well thought out answer. I will give you that. Well, thank you. When you're talking about kind of the people in the class or that should take the class, what are we looking at? You know, in terms of skill level, in terms of organization, what, you know, who is it for? So it's, it's not a particularly hard class from a skill standpoint. These are the exercises that I do with my puppy, um, or any of my puppies. Um, this is how I bring up my young dogs to give them, um, healing behaviors. The first class, um, which is the one that's going on right now is, uh, really is very foundational. So it would be completely appropriate for, um, a young dog or baby puppy that has, uh, foundation with shaping and targeting. There are, there are a few kind of basic prerequisites like nose targeting, a chin rest, um, some familiarity with platform, but I'm pretty flexible. There's a, there's a lot of ways we can, we can solve, um, or create setups that help the dog be successful there.

We're really isolating specific behaviors. It would be a level of detail that I think would be overwhelming to someone who's very new to dog training or new to positive reinforcement training, um, or clicker training in general. Um, again, not, not that the behaviors are that hard, but I just, we're going pretty far down a lot of rabbit holes here. So, um, so we're, we're going pretty deep. We're getting, we're getting a little nerdy, a little geeky, um, with some of the, some of the details. And, um, for, for someone who really is, you know, they're, they're just getting started learning to teach loose leash walking. It's going to be a lot more than they need. And I think, I think that, um, a new trainer might feel overwhelmed. It may be a little foundational for someone who already has a finished heel position. If you have healing that you are happy with and you like, then this is not a class that you wouldn't necessarily need to take. Um, but I think it is, it is a helpful process to go through if you have say maybe half trained healing, that's not really going the way that you want. Um, and you need to back up and find a new starting point and, and build it up differently. Um, I, we've got quite a few teams that are working through the exercises that I think are in that, that kind of a boat. Maybe they'd been training for rally, but now they want, um, and they were having a really good time. Now they want a little bit more. They want to go a little bit deeper. They want to go a little bit more precise. We've got quite a few teams that are switching sports, um, and are learning or relearning healing for their own benefit from there. So last question here, and this is kind of the last one I've been asking everyone who comes on lately. So what's something you've learned or been reminded of recently, uh, when it comes to dog training? Yeah. So something that's, I've been really just been spent on my mind a lot, I guess lately, I've been really thinking a lot about fluency and what that means, um, particularly for our performance dogs, but also for humans. Um, it's something that's coming up with, with my own child right now, but thinking about when we're acquiring new skills, how important fluency is and, and how fluency has an element of speed all already included. So our definition of fluency is accuracy plus speed. I think it's easy, um, especially in, in, well, I don't know. I seem to do it with any sport that I, that I approach, but I'll, I'll get hung up on if, if the dog has done however many correct, but I won't be paying attention to how fluidly,

how fluently, uh, those correct performances are occurring. So like how, how long is it taking him to get that correct? Um, after the treat, is he ready to come right back and do another repetition or does it take him a little while to find it again? And, and I, I have been guilty of, um, looking at, oh, I just got a perfect tucked sit. Hooray. Let's move on. Let's add, you know, add more distractions to this, add more challenge, but not necessarily noticing that it took two minutes for that one tuck sit to happen. Um, and, and fluency requires speed. So a working definition of fluency that I like to use a lot with my own dogs, with my students is that as soon as the dog has swallowed the treat, he's ready to perform. He's already perform either responding to the cue. If there's a cue involved or he's offering the behavior again without a gap. So really, really low latency and looking for that improvement, looking for that closing of that gap. What we're talking about is a clean loop here from he, when he does the behavior, eat the treat and he's immediately ready to do the behavior again. Um, looking for that as a sign of fluency before, before we add anything, any more challenges, before we progress it to the next step and whatever, whatever behavior it is that we're training. That's really kind of an interesting thing to think about. So thanks for that. That'll have, that'll be my brain worm for today. Good. Well, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast, Hannah. This has been a lot of fun. Thanks for having me. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week with Deb Jones to talk about her new book, um, all about cooperative canine care. 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 benson.com. The track featured here is called Buddy. Audio editing provided by Chris Line. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training.