E363: 헬렌 로러(Hélène Lawler) - 신뢰할 수 있는 원거리 다운

Like, you know, when you're doing obedience, for instance, or rally, they need to, they need to be able to drop into a down, um, and at a distance. Um, and, uh, you know, agility, you may need to, well, I don't know how, you know, not all runs have tables anymore, but pause tables, but even if like your dog's going off course, you need to stop them. You're, you're losing your, your focus. You need to like, hold on. I need to, I need a quick break. So you're like down, lie down, stop your dog, reorient, keep going. Um, and then, you know, lots of other ways it applies, um, in everyday life, a distant down, and we'll talk, we can talk about the difference between like just down and a distance down, but a distance down can save your dog's life. And long before I did dog sports, I taught my dogs to drop at any distance. Um, and on more than one occasion that saved their life. Like I would be playing, you know, back in the day when, what I would do with my dogs is I would go to a field and I would, with a chucket, which is not something I do anymore. Um, so that's a whole other conversation, but I, I don't, I don't go to the, to a field and just play, play kind of fetch with a chucket, but I used to, and I would, I would like throw the ball and every now and then the ball would like bounce the wrong way and like roll into the road. Um, being able to tell your dog who's like, you know, 50 yards away, lie down and have them drop as their ball runs into the road, life-saving, right. Or chase a squirrel and they go flying after a squirrel and, and, and they stop. So it's a, it's a fantastic skill to have on your dog for any reason, sport or everyday life. If you want to have your dog off leash, um, it, I would say would be a, an essential, um, skill to develop and really master and solidify in your dog for all purposes. So often I think people teach it just as a position change. That means, you know, right here in front of me. Um, so if what we actually want is a change of position in place, so at a distance, right. Where is it that people kind of go wrong when they're teaching it, that the dog thinks they need to maybe come first or what have you. Um, and then how do we, how do we communicate that? Right. That we, let's just stay over there. Right. Yeah. And that's, that's like the number one problem that I see and it manifests a couple of different ways. So the number one problem that I see with people who teach a down versus a distance down is that the way I understand it is dogs think in pictures. Like we think in words, right?

So you think, oh, down means, um, you know, bend your legs and drop in, you know, like your dog, the dog lies down. Right. The dog doesn't, I mean, not that I've ever been inside the head of a dog, but based on their behavior and my observations, the dog doesn't think of the down as that, um, as the same way we do. Right. What the dog thinks of a down is the body, the, the movement, the behavior, the body position in a bigger picture context. So for instance, um, and this is the opposite of what most people have. I bought a fully trained sheepdog who was winning sheepdog trials and we're talking field trials. So their dogs working hundreds of yards away from their handler and taking beautiful downs around sheep, high arousal, all that kind of stuff. That same dog did not understand when I said lie down in my kitchen. She was just like, huh? I do not know. She, she immediately, you know what she did? If I would say lie down, she would start looking for sheep. That's so funny. So away from the context of sheep, she did not understand what the term meant. She was, if she, if there had been sheep in my, in my house, she would have dropped like a rock, but she didn't understand. She's like, I do, this makes no sense to me. Right. So they really understand the context. Now, most people have the opposite problem where they're out and about and their dog is running around doing something or, and they say lie down. And the dog has understood the concept of lie down as being in front of the handler about arm, like half an arm's way, the distance away. Cause that's where we, how far we reach to feed the treat facing the handler. Right. So if we think about when you teach your dog to lie down, you have, they're probably standing in front of you, looking up at you, making eye contact and close enough to you that you can hand them a treat. And then you say, lie down and you hand them a treat. So the dog develops the, the picture, I call it a cue picture. The cue picture is that, is that concept of lie down means I bend my front and back legs, um, and drop my belly to the ground while facing my human. Um, and about like a foot and a half away from their feet. And so what happens is then the dog is off doing something and you say, lie down and the dog either doesn't know what you mean and ignores you completely or stops what it's doing, runs over and, and plops on its belly at a, you know, a foot and a half in front of you, um, facing you. And so, which can be a problem if you are, for instance, you know, doing a position change

at a distance and you say, lie down and the dog trots over and lies down and you're, or, or drop on recall, for instance, in, um, obedience. Or again, like I said, if you're, um, if you're doing an agility run and you lose where you're going or your dog's going off course and you need to stop them and you say, lie down and the dog recalls to you, um, that could, that can be more damaging to your run and your score than if you just stop them and reorient them. So we want to learn how to generalize the concept. So with what, in, in all of these cases, the dog has not generalized the concept of the down to be, to mean like belly on ground, belly on ground, belly on ground, belly on ground, whether I'm looking at my human, whether I'm looking away from my human, whether I'm like two feet from my human, whether I'm a hundred feet from my human. Um, it doesn't matter when I hear the word down, I just drop, um, and, and stay, stay where I am, stay in the orientation I am and I drop. Um, so that's, that's a, a much more complicated concept to get across to the dogs. It's not that they're not capable of it. They're fully capable of it. Dogs lie down at a distance, looking away from their handlers, like all the time. Um, it's getting the cue to mean that, um, uh, as opposed to this more specific down of like the cue picture being right next to me, staring at me, facing me. Yeah. Um, so as you mentioned, you know, I know you use it a lot for herding, right? And for working with sheep, I'd imagine that kind of adds a whole nother level of arousal into the picture. Like it's one thing to teach it, like, you know, in your living room or even at a distance, but then you're adding this thing that the dogs would really like to interact with. Um, so how do you, how do you build this skill to that level where the dog can do it even at kind of that level of arousal or that level of excitement? Um, slowly, carefully, thoughtfully, and progressively. Fair. Um, now I'm going to be full, full disclosure, full transparency. Um, when I'm teaching a down on sheep, I will, with a border collie, they often come with this built in. So I don't necessarily have to always follow this plan, the plan that I do for a lot of these dogs will, um, naturally be able to do this. First of all, their focus is going to be on the sheep. So it quick, it immediately takes the focus off me, the handler. Um, and, and they want to be near the sheep. So it allows them to go, uh, work at a distance. And then a lot of them, like I have a puppy right now. He's, he's just, I don't know, he's about 14

weeks old. Um, he just like drops into a down, like he sees something he plop plunks, like any, any, any kind of like movement just immediate. So, so sometimes we get lucky and we have a dog that has the tendency already built in. Um, and when you do something like herding, they have a, they have a natural focus. Um, so I can work with that. And in that, with that, I will use, uh, and with, and I also build up to this no matter what I'm doing, but I use pre-Mac. So pre-Mac being, um, I reinforce the dog's behavior with another behavior. So the pre, the basics, uh, the basics of pre-Mac is that, you know, if you eat your broccoli, you get your chocolate cake, right? So you do it, you do the behavior, the low probability behavior that I'm asking you to do. And in exchange, you get to do the high probability behavior that you already want to do. So on sheep, if my dog lies down, which is the low probability behavior, um, then I will let them, um, work the sheep, which is the high probability behavior. So then you can get up and keep working the sheep. And that teaches them very, very quickly to drop and respond and go. Um, we can take this away from sheep. So I learned how to do a lot of this. I mean, as I said, before I got into herding, I already had my own methods, um, they were not as a hundred percent positive reinforcement based as I now do. Right. Yeah. So I had to kind of like rethink some of the old strategies that I was doing. We won't go into those. I mean, they weren't, they weren't like super bad or anything, but they're just not, they don't really fit with my philosophy today. Um, and cause I found better ways. So now I teach the better way. Um, so learning how to do it with the sheep as the reinforcement. So you have a reinforcement that is, um, at a distance from me. So I kind of, I'm like, okay, how can I reverse engineer this to make it effective for, um, you know, away from sheep doing other things for people who aren't going to use it for herding for, for people who don't have sheep to train on, um, for dogs that don't have that natural tendency, which is most right. So, um, how do we do that? So we then, so I think about, um, kind of reverse engineering what I would do. And so we start off by, um, you know, teaching basic down cause we want to get the mechanics in. So it becomes a comfortable concept. They understand the, the, the basic down in the cue picture. That's easiest to train, which is facing us folding down close enough that we can feed them a treat. And then little step by

little step, I start to change that picture. So I want to change the picture a little bit at a time. And, but the behavior stays the same as we go. And so the dog soon starts to understand, Oh, down is down, is down, is down, is down. And then that it involves, um, you know, I use a platform to give them a location, which allows, makes it clear that here's a boundary that you can stay. And then I can move away. I use reinforcement in different places to get them to focus on different things, um, to, uh, sorry, focus in different directions. Um, and so on. So I have like a, a like very systematic way that I train the dog to, um, uncouple the, the idea of dropping to their belly from the picture of being right next to me, staring at me. And then that helps generalize that behavior in, in a whole bunch of different contexts. So I have a, a, you know, very systematic way to break that down. Um, and then we just work our dogs through it. Um, and we, and we, we change, you know, we change up the cue picture, um, also systematically. So I want to make it as, I like to make it as simple and, or sorry, as, as, yeah, as simple as possible for the dog, um, and for the handler to just take these little steps, little steps, little steps, little steps. And then all of a a sudden, boom, you've got a dog that understands the concept. Um, and then they can, they can down at a distance looking away from you if, if you need that. I know kind of using it for herding, you need, you know, the down solid, both from kind of stillness or maybe from motion and then potentially on both like a visual and a verbal, right? Can you, can you just talk a little bit about maybe adding those layers to all the stuff we've just been talking about? Sure. Yeah, absolutely. So dogs also, uh, so just to address your last point first, dogs, um, actually will respond to our, our body cues much more easily and naturally than to our verbals. So I actually start with the physical cue and that gets built in to how I teach the down in the first place, because I use the, the movement of the, of the, um, reinforcement that I'm giving to help get the down. And then that movement of me, like delivering the treat becomes the hand signal. Uh, and I can fade the treat out of my hand and still make that hand signal and the dog will drop. And then I reinforce with my other hand, for instance, or elsewhere. And then, um, that, so then I get the, um, I get the dog and they, they understand that quite easily. Most dogs will figure that piece out

quite easily. And then once we get that piece in place, then we can back chain a verbal. Um, and so back chaining the verbal just means I will say the downs, my cue, right? So let's say down pause and then do my hand signal. And they, and then what's very quickly, and you, you will start to see, well, depending on the dog and how quickly they learn and what their learning history is and everything. Right. So some dogs pick this up really fast. Some dogs take more practice. It takes whatever time it takes. Um, but we will see the dog start to under start to anticipate when they hear the verbal. And this is true for any time we want to put a verbal on something that we have a physical cue for when they understand the verbal, um, you will see the dog start to down before you do the hand signal. So the really important piece is to do, have that pause between the verbal and the, and the hand signal. You pause briefly, like for one second. And, and if you start to see the dog actually start going down, then you don't need to do the hand signaling more. And you've faded the hand signal. Um, I like to have the hand signal. I mean, it's, it's possible to not have it, but for, for a high arousal situation, I really liked the hand signal because the hand signal, um, again, it's easier for dogs to read body language than to, um, respond to verbals. And if you have a dog who's in a high state of arousal, they may not be able to really respond to your verbals, but they will be much, they'll be more easily able to respond to a hand signal. So because so much of what I do involves working with dogs that will be in high states of arousal and sometimes be an over arousal, which are not the same thing. Um, I really like to have that physical cue so that I can be like, Hey, right. Like throw my arm in the air or whatever your chosen, your signal is, depending on what you're doing, which one's going to make the most sense. Now, of course that only works when the dog is looking at you. Um, and isn't going to help when your dog's not looking at you, but, um, but it's a tool that I, you know, I start with, especially in hurting, the dog's going to be looking at me. I'm not going to be stopping them. Um, initially, uh, when they're not looking at me, cause that's going to, it's going to be way over their heads. Right. So I'm going to be, I'm going to always be in their visual field at first and then use the, so the hand, the, the physical cue is very important for that. Um, and then we get the verbal cue really solid. And then when the verbal cue is really solid,

cause we've done all the, all the different iterations to uncouple the, the verbal from the, um, from the physical, then they're ready to start doing a down without looking at us. And then we, we start to build that next. The other part of your question, I don't know if I answered the whole thing. The other part of it was about, um, kind of adding the piece where they can do it both from stillness, right? So just a position change and from motion. So if you need them to kind of down out of motion. Right. And that's really important as well. Really important concept because a lot of people don't understand there's a difference between, um, I call it static impulse control and dynamic impulse control. And most of the, what we teach in dog sports and that I'm seeing is, um, we teach dogs to have impulse control when they're already stationary. Right. Um, and so they can do that. Um, but what we also need them to do is to be able to have impulse control while they're in motion. And so having that like dynamic, so I call it dynamic because they are in movement and I want you to go from movement to stillness, um, or dynamic impulse control. I've got a whole workshop on that too. Um, but, uh, so we won't go to, you know, that's not the focus of, of like teaching the down part, but it's an important concept to kind of understand that like asking your dog to down when they're stopped is different from asking your dog to down when they're in movement. And again, the dog's understanding of the cue is so contextual and that they may not understand that that whole thing we've just practiced when I was standing still also applies when I'm like trotting or, or galloping. And so we have to also build that piece in, um, because again, the, the, the context is different. The dog is doing something really different when it, with its body, um, its energy levels are different. And so the cue might not land and mean the same thing for them when they're in that movement. So we need to also generalize the understanding of belly on ground, even if you're running, even if you're walking, um, as well as just when you're standing. So that, that's another important piece. So there are a lot of little pieces to this puzzle to, to build this out. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like we have, you know, lots and lots of different pieces and a pretty complex goal when we really, you know, stop and break it down and kind of think about it. Um, so I think it's really easy when that's the case, right? You end up just kind of constantly making

this picture ever harder from your dog's perspective. Can you talk a little bit about how to avoid that? Right. And that's, that's also super important. Thank you for asking that question because we can get greedy and constantly up the, how difficult this is. Oh, look, my dog could do it here. Can I do it there? Can I do it here? Right. And you make it harder and harder and harder. Um, we don't want to do that. And this is sort of just general good training practices. Um, we like, I, I recommend ping ponging the difficulty. And so you might do a couple of difficult reps and then you get, or, or even just one, and then you do like immediately follow it with some easier ones. Um, you do some, or you can do, um, you know, a couple of easy ones, a medium difficulty, uh, another easy, a really hard one, a couple of easy ones. Right. And so we want to change it up all the time and that helps with generalizing. And it also helps with confidence building. Cause if you're, and, and also it helps with like, if the, if, if you're think about, if you're like doing math equations, um, and you, you like solve one, you're like, yes. And then you're like, okay, here's a harder one. And you solve that one. And you're like, yes. And they're like, okay, here's a harder one. You're finally gonna be like, okay, enough already. Right. So, you know, eventually you're, you're, you're going to be sick and tired of doing the math equations. Cause they're like, you know, that when you're successfully complete one, you're just going to get something harder. And even if you love a challenge and you love math, eventually you're going to be like, I just need to go take a break. So we want to be very mindful of how much challenge we offer at any one time. Doesn't mean we don't progress it over, um, a series of training sessions. So we might want to look at growing the difficulty over a series of training sessions, but within the session itself, we don't want to make it progressively harder. We want to make sure that we have lots of successes and then ping pong in like pepper in the hard stuff. Um, uh, so like season the hard stuff instead of like make it. If you think about it. How many analogies can we do? Ping pong, season it. I know, exactly. I want this to, I want this to land. Let's give lots of different ways to make sure everybody, you know, they're every, all the learning styles are covered. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Um, so obviously part of the reason that we're talking about this is because you've got your workshop on distance downs on the calendar, uh, scheduled to start.

I think it'll be this Sunday, the Sunday this comes out, um, Sunday, the 23rd. Do you want to just share a little more on the workshop itself? Kind of what you'll cover, who might want to join you, some of that. Okay. Yeah. So this workshop, um, has, uh, all of the pieces that we've talked and talked about, um, broken down into a step-by-step process. And again, I try to make this as systematic as possible so that, um, it's very simple and straightforward for the handler and for the dog. Um, and as we all know, simple doesn't mean easy it, but I would try to have lots of clarity, lots of simplicity and, and, and break it all down into pieces. And so, um, as we were just talking about before hopping on here, I have, I did, I actually started this by creating a mind map where I like dumped all of the, all of the different parts that we've just talked about onto like a sheet of paper. And I drew all the lines between like this, this, and the other, and you know, how does it all fit? And then I took that into, um, uh, I broke that down into like systematic categories. So there's like three major stages. And then under each one, um, there are the different steps. And then when you complete stage one, you move to stage two, and then you move to stage three. So I have that all mapped out. Um, visually I made cute little drawings. Um, and then step-by-step with the trainings as well, like the, the exercises. And I walk, walk you through the exercises very systematically. So who would this be for? This would be for anybody who wants to be able to down their dog at a distance and you can start at any level. So this takes you from like, right from like from zero to down at a distance, right? That would have been a good, that would have been a good workshop title. Um, but you can come in at, so like if you, if you haven't started teaching your dog a down, or you want to retrain your dog, um, to do a down at a distance, um, you start from like right from scratch and, and go all the way through the thing. You may have a dog that's already downing really well, like close to you and in certain circumstances, but it falls apart, um, at a distance, um, or falls apart when they're not looking at you, um, or falls apart when they're in movement. Uh, so these are the, there are entry points. So you'll be able to go through the workshop and be like, okay, I've got these pieces in place. I can see that here where my holes are. I'm going to hop in here. So you might hop in like the middle of the workshop and work through that, those, those steps. So I, I believe it's set up.

My intention was to set it up so that it can help, um, people achieve that long, like that big picture goal of the distance down of the dog, you know, dropping in motion, staring away from like looking at focused at something they are excited about. Right. So if you picture that dog who is like running out to that sheep dog, who's deeply genetically programmed to want to go after those sheep and is in motion at a hundred, 150 yards after the sheep, not looking at the handler and you blow a whistle and the dog drops. Okay. That's our big picture goal. This workshop takes you from like zero to that through all the steps. Um, now I'm not going to say you can do that in the one week of the workshop. Okay. Disclaimer. Yeah. Yeah. Disclaimer. Very, very important that, you know, like depending on if you're like starting from scratch, you're probably not going to get to that in one week. Um, and, uh, like, yeah, it's, if you do let us know, maybe you'll win a prize. Yes. Right. Exactly. However, you'll have the four, you'll have the blueprint. So you hop, you start wherever you are and you know, you might be like, I've got like, I would recommend that anybody taking this workshop, at least review the whole thing and like, kind of go through like, check, check, check. I've got those pieces in place before. Even if you're like, yeah, I can, I think I can jump in the middle. Just double check, test, test the waters, make sure you do have those pieces in place and then move forward. And, um, but then you will have the blueprint to keep progressing. If you don't get that, you know, big picture and not, I mean, let's, let's be honest here. Not that many people need that big picture that I just described, right? Final big picture. Yeah. Final big picture. But you can get, um, I've seen some, when I've run this workshop before, really impressive, um, progress depending on where, you know, wherever people start to where they go. If you do the work every day, um, it, it, because it's systematic and, uh, and progressive and works in these little, little bites and pieces, um, and it's fun, the dogs can learn pretty quickly. So it's a, it's a highly reinforcing workshop as well for the handler, as well as for the dog, because you see the progress happening and it's a lot of fun. So you can make really significant measurable progress in the one week. And then you have the blueprint to go as far as you, as you want and need to go. Awesome. Um, all right. Any final thoughts or maybe key points you just kind of want to leave

listeners with? Um, yeah, just basically, again, I think this is a, uh, like a life skill as well as a sport skill for, uh, anybody with a dog. I think it's so, it's so important to have, be able to have that, uh, ability to stop your dog at a distance. And, um, it's, it's a, it's a life-saving skill, but it's also a skill that gives people that, that allows for more freedom. And, uh, you know, like if you're struggling with being able to let your dog off leash, for instance, um, which is something that, you know, a lot of dogs benefit from. And if we can, if it's not safe, we can't, we can't do that. Right. So this can help build that piece in to allow them to have more freedom, um, get out and do more things. It's more fun for us. If we can go, you know, I love to go for hikes. If I can let my dog off a leash and go hiking with them and know that I can stop them. Um, you know, if, if, if I need to, uh, you know, a deer runs by or we run into somebody else with a dog or whatever, that can be, that can still be very challenging for, you know, some dogs. However, the, the more we train this, the more we train this, like if I can teach my sheep dog to drop at 150 yards, um, around working while working sheep, um, that, that skill absolutely translates to going for hikes in the woods and a deer runs by going for, you know, walking through a park, playing, playing fetch in a park. Um, and you know, there's like a squirrel runs out into a road, you know, things like that. So it just gives, it gives, there's so many ways that it is useful. It's not just for, not just for herding. It's not just for sports. It really does help our dogs and us have a better quality of life to train the skills. So, um, I hope people will, um, take this into consideration and join me if this is a skill that you need. Um, I, I love teaching this. It's a lot of fun. It's a fun workshop. And, um, uh, yeah, I think, I think, uh, I think that's what I wanted to wrap up on. Awesome. I like those final points. They're kind of a good place to end things. Um, thank you for coming on the podcast, Ellen. This has been great. Thank you for having me. It's always great to be here. Absolutely. And thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week with Sharon Carroll to talk about when your dog ignores your cues. So the opposite of what we talked about today, um, and what engagement looks like for kind of those differently motivated dogs. Um, so if you haven't already subscribed to the podcast and iTunes or the podcast app of your choice,

to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. Today's show is brought to you by the Fendi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fendi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty free by bensound.com. The track featured here is called Buddy. Audio editing provided by Chris Flying. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training.