E258: 사라 브루스키(Sara Brueske) - "음식으로 장난감 놀이 가르치기"

are familiar with protection sports. I do Monty Ring, so I don't work in defense drive at all. So if I think about those sports as I have to use a toy in the sport itself, it's really important for those sports to be using a toy reinforcer to help the dog be successful. Like I can't train duck diving solely for food. I can train a lot of foundation stuff, but I have to bring that toy play in eventually. As far as the other sports, so if we talk about obedience or agility or scent work, what toy play does is it helps bring extra enthusiasm. It helps increase arousal level and it helps increase speed in the behaviors I want. And so if I want super fast agility, I'm going to try to use toy play to help bring out the prey drive in my dog, that chase drive, and help use that to increase the speed in my behaviors. Same thing with scent work. If I want to increase the speed and the resiliency of my dog's hunt drive, then I want to use toys to help reinforce that. It's just going to kind of put that extra edge out there. My dog's going to be a little bit more excited and that's going to transfer into more speed for the behaviors. And the same thing with obedience, right? So if I want to increase the speed in like my retrieve and the excitement in my retrieve, as well as my position changes or healing or increased enthusiasm and any of that stuff, I can introduce toys to help with that. Now where food comes in, teaching the behavior initially, I need to use food to do that for the most part. A lot of dogs, including my own, struggle thinking a little bit when there's a toy around. And so we can work with that as much as possible. But it's just like trying to go to a fair and trying to teach your kid math at a fair, right? They're going to be super excited and jazz. They're not going to want to sit there and think about numbers and concentrating on learning that thing. And so it's just easier to teach a lot of the behaviors with food and then transfer it to toys after that. Are there downsides to using toys as reinforcers? Yeah. Like I just mentioned, it increases arousal level and it makes it really difficult to teach new behaviors. And then I can talk about a little bit with the sports that, you know, involve the toys in the sport itself. So even like dock diving, you know, when my dog creature is never going to be a great dock diver, like he's just not. And the reason for that is because toys make his arousal go up so high that he's not really aware of what his body is doing. And so because he's not aware of what his body is doing, his jumping form tends to go out

the window and we get some pretty crazy gymnastics in the air and off the dock. And so for his own safety, I've never worked dock diving with him to try to increase distance and he just won't be competitive in any way. And, you know, I can sit there and work with it as much as possible. And I have, but at some point it's just, he's not going to be safe doing it. And so that is a concern when we use toys is that we tend to bring up arousal a little bit too much where the dog isn't able to think maybe they're going to be a little bit unsafe or the precision in their behaviors is going to kind of go by the wayside. So that is the disadvantage of using toys. Okay. You kind of talked a little bit in there about, you know, some of the pros and some of the cons. But what skills are we really talking about that they need before we can even use toy play in training? Can you kind of break down what's required in order for that to really be a successful reinforcer for training? Yeah. So toy play is great, except for when it's not cooperative. So cooperative toy play is a really good tool to have for your training, right? So if I'm playing, if I throw a toy reinforcer in agility, I want my dog to bring back that toy so I don't spend, you know, five, 10 minutes waiting for them to stop running around with that toy in their mouth and bring it to me eventually. Zip tie. I'm just saying zip tie. To be fair, zip tie does have a loop on cue. I do send him out with his toy because it is one of those things that he just does anyway. So anyway, you want them to bring back the toy because you don't want to be the one standing there holding up agility class while your dog runs around with that toy. If you play tug and you let your dog win, you want them to bring it back to you and to continue that game. You don't want to be sitting there playing tug with your dog and then always trying to win the game to prevent them from stealing your toy away. And so cooperative play is like the most important part of this. I have to have some sort of game that I can play reliably in all sorts of different locations and that my dog enjoys and I enjoy playing it because otherwise those emotions are going to go into the game and then into the behavior and into the thing I'm training itself. And so the two games I really like to use, I've got a few, right? So tugging, obviously, I want to be able to tug with my dog because I want to be able to reinforce on my body to help pull focus to me. I also want my dog to be able to chase a throne toy and then bring it back to me. So fetch.

And I also want my dog to be able to pick up a toy off the ground and then bring it to me to play a game. So whether tug or I throw it for them. And so the two most important ones are fetch and tug. And once I have those and my dog enjoys them and I can bring them to different places, then I'm generally pretty good to add that to my training. So how do you actually approach teaching those skills? It depends on which one I'm talking about. So and it depends on the dog itself. So there's a whole bunch of different ways that I can teach my dog to play fetch. One of them is for food. And that's actually my favorite way to teach it is teaching through food as the reinforcer for bringing an object back to me. And I start that with a neutral object. And that's really what my upcoming workshop is all about is teaching toy play for food. And the reason why I really like teaching that, regardless if my dog has crazy toy drive or no toy drive out of the womb, natural toy drive, it gives me a really, really solid criteria, clear criteria for my dog to follow. I can teach them to deliver that toy to my hand. And then I can use that to help build up a game of tug as well as a game of fetch. I also really like that I have an additional reinforcer. So when I start introducing that toy play to new locations and distractions, and my dog gets a little bit like not committed to the toy, as some dogs will, I can use food to help reinforce them staying on their toy, which is a huge help for a lot of dogs. I also like that by teaching toy play for food, I'm actually teaching my dog to go back and forth between the reinforcers, which is really, really important, especially if we start talking about arousal mobility and helping our dogs go from crazy to calm. Having that ability to go back and forth between the reinforcers is huge. So that's one of my favorite ways to teach those games is using food as a reinforcer. The other ways are typically we have our toy switch game. So I'm playing tug, they win the tug and they come back to bite a second identical tug. And we continue the game that way. So it's a really good way to help reduce possession. So helping the dogs that tend to grab a tug toy and then go off into the corner and they're precious and you're never going to get it again, right? I've never seen that, Sarah. No, not at all common, especially in like Cocker Spaniels or Melon Laws at all. So that's a nice way to do that. It's like you always come back and continue the game. And then there's like the two ball method. So same thing.

I throw a ball, they chase the ball, I mark and reward them for looking at me and throw another ball the other direction. So those are more the traditional ways of teaching it. But then, you know, that that toy play for food is really kind of my favorite way. Your webinar coming up, you mentioned the workshop. Let's talk about the webinar first. So the webinar coming up is on teaching the out. What approaches do you kind of include in the webinar? Can you share a little additional information on kind of what you cover? Yeah. So kind of the methods I already talked about, we use those games, the same games that we use to teach the cooperative play. We can actually use them to teach the out then because we are already teaching them that we're the fun part of the game. So come back to me and the game will continue. And so that's a huge part of teaching the out is building that trust that it's about interacting with the handler versus the toy itself. And so we can use that switch game and then adding in our verbal cue as our dog gets comfortable with it. Same with the two ball game. And then, you know, adapting it that way. So we're going to drop off at a distance versus just in our hands, which is huge for games like disc. And then using food again is another huge, huge way to help out. And so I have kind of a treat task game that I like to play with dogs. I'm teaching it out. And we'll be talking about that for sure in the webinar too. Excellent. And then you mentioned the workshop. So do you want to just talk a little bit more about kind of the advantages to teaching toy play with food since that's kind of what you're focusing on for the workshop? Yeah, absolutely. So like I already said, introducing it to distractions is a huge one. One of the biggest things that people talk to me about with toy play is that they have great toy play at home. They built up a really nice solid game at home. But the second they take it outside, even in their backyard, it tends to go away because the distractions are just too overpowering. And so one of my favorite things to think about with toy play, and it took me a while to get here, is that toy play is just simply another behavior. And so if we approach it that way, it's a lot easier to maintain and build in the long run. So with a behavior, let's talk like a sit stay or a down stay, right? So I teach a sit stay in my house. I add duration to that sit stay. I add difficulty in my house, you know, maybe some dogs walking, other dogs training. You know, I might go knock on the door, you know, that type of thing.

I might toss some treats, whatever I do to add distractions at home. And then I start to bring it out to new places once I have a solid behavior. So I might start my backyard working that sit stay. I might bring it to my front yard. I might bring it to my training school. I might, you know, bring it to a park, all that sort of thing. And each time I do that, I reduce my criteria and difficulty and help my dog be successful. And I'm using that food as a reinforcer to help build that behavior. So if we talk about toy play in the same way, I build my behavior. So my fetch game or my tug game at home, and I'm using food as a reinforcer there. And I build up the duration, and I build up the difficulty. You really have to pull that tug from my hand. And I start adding behaviors to it. So now they're, you know, working for that toy versus just playing with the toy. And I bring it in my backyard, and I bring it in my front yard. And each time I'm making sure I increase my rate of reinforcement, and then bring it to the park, and so on and so forth. And the reason why this helps, not only is it helpful for our dogs to slowly build a behavior that way, obviously, because that's all training is. But it also helps us take the emotion out of toy play. Because I know from personal experience, when my dog doesn't want to play with me, I am crushed. Like, it is the worst feeling ever when you get that toy out, and you're like so excited and jazzed to play with your dog. And you're running around being crazy, and they're looking at you, and they think you're crazy, and they sniff the grass instead. So if we approach it like a behavior, at least for me, I found that it really helps me put my emotions aside and really approach it from more of that scientific method versus just going, oh, I have to play this certain way, and my dog will enjoy it. Or my dog's not really enjoying it. And, you know, toy play is just never going to be a thing we're going to have. So really, that's what the workshop's going to be all about, is talking about that and how to build those games, and then how to help introduce it to distractions and get a reliable, cooperative toy game. I love that. As somebody who has struggled to teach toy play to her now adult dog, I think that sounds fantastic. So let's say we've gone through that stuff. The dog has solid toy skills. Are there things that need to be, is there a point rather at which the game inherently becomes reinforcing if we've trained it with food? Like, how does that piece of things work? And then are we essentially building value for both food and toys by going back and forth

between food and toys? Yeah. So if we think about agility, right? So we all, if you've done agility, you know that, you know, you can use a reinforcer and agility, and that's going to be a good thing and a good way to build value for the game. But at some point, those obstacles become reinforcing for our dogs just by themselves. And so we can start to fade those reinforcers out and start to chain those obstacles together. And our dog has values for them. For those dogs that are tunnel suckers, you end up using that tunnel as a reinforcer, right? So there's different things that you can do with that. And your dog starts to just love the game by itself. So it's the same thing with the toy play of her food. It might start out that your dog's really doing it for the food. But as that condition on emotional response goes, and you start to, you know, start to decrease the rate of reinforcement, and now you have to win the tug two times, or you have to do three throws before you get reinforced with that food, the dog's going to start to enjoy the game itself. More so depending on the dog or equal to the food. And that's kind of what we're going for. So like I said, even the dogs that I have that have great toy drive out of the womb, I still reinforce with food and teach them toy play for food. And what ends up happening, I found with those dogs too, is it does increase their food drive. So whatever is a weaker reinforcer, I found that kind of using both reinforcement options tends to even them out. And so if you have one dog that's like, no, there's a toy present, I'm not going to go for the food at all. If you go through the steps and really teach it as a behavior that you have to eat the food to get the toy or vice versa, they do start to even out a little bit, which is really nice. Yeah. Once the dog has solid toy skills, so they bring the toy back, or they push back into you with a tug, are there other things that kind of need to be taken into consideration before you can actually use those skills in training? Yeah. So like I've already mentioned, distractions is a huge thing, and then fading that reinforcement. So knowing how many times your dog will engage with that tug before you have to reinforce it, as well as can they maintain the criteria and how difficult can I make it? So if we talk about like a disc dog game, which has a deliver to hand, that deliver to hand criteria is extremely important to disc dog players. Because if the dog drops that disc three feet from you, you're losing fractions of a second

of time, which could potentially cut out a whole throw, which is a bunch of points for you. So basically, we need to make sure that that deliver to hand is top notch. And so for that, when I bring that toy play to new places, I have to know if that deliver to hand, that toy play that bring that disc back to me can withstand the distractions around. And so really just making sure I have that, I have a good understanding of my dog's understanding of the behavior and how far I can push it. So I'm not setting my dog up for failure with it. So to round out our chat, kind of one last question. If we were to drill all the things you've been talking about down into one key piece of information you want people to kind of take away or understand, what would that be? Toy play for food is absolutely amazing. And I know it has a giant taboo around it. But oh my goodness, once you guys do it, you will always do it, regardless of what the dog is in front of you and how much they value toys or not. It makes life so much easier in the long run. Awesome. All right. Well, thank you, Sarah, so much for coming on the podcast. Thank you so much again for having me. Absolutely. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week with Jake Schneider to talk about improving your dog's precision to save your fingers during toy play and building value for you rather than a decoy. If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, the podcast app of your choice. 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 Lang. Thanks again for tuning in. Happy training.