E80: 사라 스트레밍 & 레슬리 에이드(Sarah Stremming & Dr. Leslie Eide) - "어질리티 강아지 키우기"

Leslie, would you mind just kind of sharing a little on how you wound up with him and why him, even though that meant bringing him over from Japan, right? Yeah. So it just kind of happened. I didn't go out looking for a Border Collie and saying, Japan is the place to get him. I actually met Miki, who is sort of his breeder, but not really. A couple years ago at Sinosports, which is the USDA Agility National Competition or International Competition, but it's always held in the U.S. And one of her dogs had something happen to him, and I worked on him at the event, and he did really well. And we became Facebook friends and stayed in contact. And then last year, she won Grand Prix with her dog, Solidea. And Solidea, the weird part about it actually belongs to someone else. She just competes with her. And so she announced that Solidea was having a litter. And I had been looking for, I don't know, probably had my feelers out for about a year looking for a Border Collie puppy. And I really liked Solidea. So, you know, I just through Facebook was like, hey, I'm sort of interested. And she was really excited about it. So when the puppies were born, I many times thought it was too much trying to get a puppy from Japan and everything you have to go through and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I kept saying, no, no, no, no. And then finally, it was kind of like she just said, so I'm getting the puppy to L.A. Make sure you're there to go pick him up. And I was like, okay. So that's, yeah, kind of how it ended up getting a puppy from Japan. You know, all comes back to the world of sports medicine. And that's how you find puppies. So it just, you know, kind of a little bit of fate in a way of it was just meant to be despite all the odds. You know, sometimes when it's meant to happen, it's just meant to happen. And it doesn't matter how many times you say, well, no, it's really pretty complicated. You end up with the puppy. Yeah. I know Sarah's talked a bit about him on her podcast. And you both kind of blogged about him a little bit. And my understanding is that you guys are doing things a little, for lack of a better word, differently than other agility handlers or even dog trainers might with a new puppy. Can you guys just share a little bit about your approach kind of thus far with him? What are you working on? What have you worked on? I'm going to say, like, for me, it's not much different than I would say I've raised my other puppies. I'm maybe what you would think of as, like, a lazy trainer. And it's, I don't know. It's, I'm more about building relationship than necessarily having a list of things I have to

accomplish. You know, he's this old. He must be able to do these 10 things. I just kind of let everything happen in, in maybe a more organic manner of like, he shows me he can do it. And then I say, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to reinforce that. An example is I had him at the agility trial this weekend. He hopped on the table, the measuring table. And we've never worked on stay a day in his life. And literally, because he was willing to stand on the table, I took the opportunity to say, hey, I can reinforce this. And, you know, basically kind of got some really good training in when it was just, again, more organic of kind of him telling me he knew he was ready for it rather than saying, you know, he has to know how to stay by a certain age. Or he has to be able to know how to wrap a wing jump by a certain age. That kind of thing. For me, more what I do with Watson is teaching him how to be a dog in this house and how to, you know, go out on off-leash walks, as everybody knows I'm pretty into. And providing him with, you know, just lots of environmental enrichment and just making, I just want to make sure that he maintains this just delightfully optimistic personality that he has. I know you had Julie Daniels, I think, just last week, and she talked about optimism. I loved it. I like that word for describing what he is because he's not, you know, it's not like he doesn't have any fears because they all do. That's not real. That's not realistic. It's more just that when he encounters something novel, his first guess is that it's going to be good for him. And I just want that to stay there because if that stays there, then agility training is piece of cake, right? Like if you're not trying to overcome fear of other dogs or fear of strangers or fear of loud noises or weird substrates or anything like that, agility training is not that hard. Especially for, you know, pretty seasoned competitor like Leslie. I think both of us feel pretty confident in training agility skills and also handling and not that we can't improve and that we're always trying to improve. But for me, I just want him to maintain that, that really optimistic outlook on when something new is happening. He's game to try it. I guess I would add, you know, kind of goes along with what Sarah was saying is that I also want him to learn what it's like to be a dog in my life. So like she said, being able to live in a household with lots of dogs, but it's also about getting used to our schedule. You know, I'm a busy person and usually work 12 hour days.

And while he may get to come with me to work, he also has to realize there's going to be some really boring time at work where he just has to sit and chill. And that happens at home too. And so that's really important to me that he doesn't necessarily get upset or, you know, get stir crazy or, um, all upset when he doesn't have something to constantly do. You know, Border Collies are definitely busy, smart dogs. And, um, so learning what our life is like and not necessarily being, um, doing things out of the ordinary while he's a puppy. And then suddenly when he's grown up being like, okay, now you're an adult and you have to just live with how our life is. Um, but rather teaching him how to handle it when he's young. And I think that, you know, cause you said, how are you guys doing stuff differently? I think that is like the primary component because most sport people that I know, especially in the agility world, really, really want their puppy to just have tons and tons of drive to work with the handler. And I'm not saying that's bad. We want that too. But, um, they tend to go about it in a way that seems just really imbalanced to me. And the dog pretty much experiences isolation slash boringness or super exciting training time. And that's just, that's not how we live. I mean, I guess if your dogs all live in kennels and they come out to train multiple times a day, then you could pull that off. But we both want our dogs to be free for 90% of their time. I mean, we just don't want them to be crated, kenneled or what, you know, et cetera, for large portions of their life. So they have to learn how to just hang out early on. I don't remember if it was the blog or the podcast, but I feel like I remember something one of you at one point put out about planning to hold off on teaching certain skills until he's a bit older. But I was hoping you guys could talk a little bit about that too. What skills are you guys holding off on maybe and sharing a little bit of the reasoning? I know we've talked about a little bit already. Yeah, I think it's mostly the blog was relating to like agility skills and that a lot of, a lot of times we start teaching like the foundation movements, you know, right away with a puppy. Wrapping a wing. Oh yeah. Like that. Yeah. Like wrapping a wing, like, you know, groundwork. You're not necessarily like putting them on equipment or doing anything like that, but you're everything that you are teaching them in some way relates to eventually an agility skill, including like, you know, convincing them to tug with you.

You know, that's kind of a big thing of like, they have to tug and, um, and then, you know, goes from there. Those things I think will come. I'm not going to push for them too soon. And that's kind of like, kind of going back to the story of, you know, working on a stay on the table just this past weekend. You know, if he shows me he's ready for something, then I'll take advantage for it, of it. But I'm not going to necessarily push him, um, ahead of his comfort level. I'd rather him be comfortable with everything, be happy with playing with me and know that good things come from me and that we're going to do fun things rather than necessarily taking it straight to an agility focus. I'd assume the two of you have had a pretty big influence on each other and kind of your approach to dogs and all that good stuff over the years. From the outside, at least, it kind of seems like you're essentially taking, uh, all Sarah's developed with like our whole picture approach and applying it to Watson. Sarah, is that accurate? And for those maybe not as familiar with your approach, can you give us kind of the down and dirty version of, of what I'm talking about? Yeah, I would say that that's accurate. So the four steps to behavior wellness is what we're talking about. And that would be communication, nutrition, exercise, and enrichment. The communication front, that's just training. That's just having a positive reinforcement based training relationship with the dog where you give the dog a lot of good, positive feedback all the time. And then nutrition kind of self-explanatory and Leslie's a vet. And so I pretty much, uh, defer to her in that regard with him. And then, um, exercise. I like free exercise. He certainly goes on leash walks, but the leash walks are more about learning how to walk on a leash than exercise. As well as, you know, again, I defer to Leslie in the exercise department because her field is sports medicine. Um, definitely don't want to be overdoing it with a puppy at all. And so, you know, and he would like to be completely wild and run and run and run all day long. So we have to talk about that. Um, but the enrichment piece is really big for me. We do lots of things for him to shred. I, you should basically see our house. There's like cardboard shreds everywhere. Um, so just giving him things to shred, feeding him his meals out of a slow bowl. Um, he's got, we have all kinds of like little kibble dispensing toys around lots of chew bones, things like that. So just making sure that his brain is exercised, his body is exercised. Um, he is not confused.

He's communicated with appropriately, um, and that he is fed well. And that's what we're trying to do. Leslie, I'd guess, you know, Sarah mentioned a couple of times there, your background, but I'd guess your background has had a pretty big influence on just kind of your general approach, right? So how has your experience as a vet and a canine rehab specialist kind of influenced your views on this stuff and led you to kind of take this approach? It's maybe changed it a little bit, but not much. You know, I've always kind of been a little bit more laid back with, with my approach with puppies. Um, I've always kind of had this belief that puppies should get to be puppies. You know, um, and experience their puppy hood and, and not necessarily just be thrown into intensive sport training right from, from day one. And maybe that's a little bit of a, a backlash from my own experience of, you know, being thrown into competitive swimming as a five-year-old and doing that for most of my young life. And, and everything was about training and, and, you know, being really serious. I also would say from, from the vet side of things, you know, I, I think there's a lot of injuries that can happen, um, when they're young and by pushing things and doing stuff repetitively that, you know, causes problems at a young age, or maybe they're not, not as, um, visible at a young age, but then they show up a little, a little later in life and can definitely cut their career short. I want to be successful, but I also want to do it for, for a long time and not just a year or two. Um, and then have to give it up because they're hurt for some reason. We've talked quite a bit, I guess, about what you're not doing. So I'd love to hear, I know you guys mentioned doing a little bit of leash walking. I'd imagine you're doing some other training with them, right? So, so what are you guys kind of focusing on as far as training goes with Watson right now? Well, Sarah's trying to teach me how to teach him marker cues. Okay. We'll see how that goes. Um, but so, so we definitely have, have that going on. He gets the basics of, you know, sit and down. And again, most of it is more mostly capturing offered behavior, you know, rather than setting out as a training session of like, okay, we're going to learn this behavior. We do, you know, fitness exercises. So I have my, um, building blocks that I use to make all my canine fitness exercises. So, you know, starting to work on ones that are appropriate for him, like learning targeting, front paw targeting, rear paw targeting, being comfortable getting in an, um, an object or

on an object like a box or a disc or something like that. And then a lot of new experiences still, um, you know, most recently, uh, over the past couple of weeks, I'd say I work to, um, introduce them to the underwater treadmill. Um, so he can start getting some exercise in that since that's a really easy way for me to exercise them at work. That's so cool. Yeah. Um, going places. We went to the beach for the first time. He goes to shops and meets people. He goes to agility trials and hangs out. Um, like I said, no agility trial learned how to do a stand stay on the measuring table. So I'm the kind of anti planner. Um, I don't really like set out with like, we're going to learn this necessarily. It's kind of more, um, uh, you know, see, see what happens and, um, go from there. And for me, I, the things that I need to teach him are things that make him easier for me to manage in the house of six dogs. So we've recently started working hard on all of the dogs are trained to release out the door by name. And so I want Watson also to know that with everybody else. So we've been working on some very early iterations of that and, you know, things like the best stuff for puppies is not on the counter or the kitchen table. The best stuff for puppies is on the ground and, you know, body handling. So handling your feet and looking in your mouth and, um, accepting passive restraint as is so important for all of them to learn and things like that are more my focus with him. I would say, you know, something that's really big is, is play time too. I mean, that's not necessarily something that like a skill we're teaching, but just making sure that play time happens every day in some form. Are there skills that you think kind of get overlooked that maybe you're making sure to cover right from the start? I mean, you mentioned handling, you mentioned play skills. Is there kind of anything else on that list for you guys? I do think body handling gets overlooked, but for me, especially within the sport of dog agility, I think a lot of people start out with puppies ringside watching agility, trying to quote unquote, teach them to be cool, waiting their turn. And then what happens is at a certain age, the puppy notices what's going on in the ring and they start to wiggle and scream and not contain themselves. And then, you know, depending on the trainer, the puppy might get a correction or the puppy might be removed from the arena, or they might just try to distract the puppy with food. Or I saw a competitor once just basically just hit the side of her puppy with a tug toy until

the puppy decided to turn around and latch on the tug toy instead of squeal at the dogs in the ring. And for me, you know, it's kind of, it's again, it's kind of an answer, an answer of what are we omitting, but it's about teaching him the skill of waiting his turn before we ever ask him to wait his turn. So the early, early iterations for that, for me, look like feeding all of the dogs a little bite of something and I say their name and I feed them. And then I say their name and I feed them. And Watson is trying to eat everything that I'm feeding, but he doesn't get anything until I say his name and feed him. And so he's bouncing around and being ridiculous and all the other dogs are sitting and waiting. And eventually they go, oh, this isn't that hard. When she says my name, I get to eat. And just like what Leslie was talking about, they show you that capability when they have it. It's kind of like, you know, a three-year-old child only has so much self-control. And I really feel that way about puppies too. They only have so much ability to, you know, quote unquote, wait their turn. So teaching him the skill of waiting his turn way before we ever ask him to wait his turn is a big one for me that I think people maybe don't overlook, but go about it in a way that I wouldn't. For me, it's relationship. He can train and, you know, he knew how to do that from pretty much the moment I got him, but he didn't necessarily know that I was a special person to him. So to me, it's about building a relationship before necessarily asking him for like a list of skills that he needs to be able to do. And, you know, definitely training can help build that relationship. But I think it's also just one-on-one time, especially when there's a large number of dogs in the household and it's about snuggles and play and that kind of thing. So obviously we all try, right, when we get a new puppy to do everything right. And there's definitely nothing more stressful than that feeling. But inevitably something goes wrong. We're out and about and another dog barks and lunges at the puppy or kids come flying at the puppy's face screaming and they scare the bejesus out of him. Have either of you had to deal with any of those types of moments yet? And if so, how'd you handle it? Is there prep work you've done or things you do in the moment or even afterwards, stuff you do for damage control that you can kind of talk about a little bit? I, we honestly haven't had anything big that I have experienced, but there have been things that he saw and went, huh, I'm not sure about that.

Like we were, um, we had him in this little beach town after running on the beach and there was a lot of construction going on. And so there was like a jackhammer, you know, going into concrete and he wasn't sure if that was what should be happening. And I can't blame him really. Um, what was important for me and what I usually tell people to do is just as long as the puppy is still observing the thing, allow them to continue to observe the thing. So he looked at it until he was done looking at it. And then he turned away from it. And then we all retreated away from it together. And I think what people try to do instead is they try to distract the puppy away from it with food, or they try to make it a positive event with food, or they try to drag the puppy towards it, maybe, or lure the puppy towards it. And it's best to just let them experience their environment from a distance that they feel comfortable with. He really hasn't had any huge startles, um, about anything. He's, I tend not to let him see a lot of people unless I know them because he is going to jump on them and I don't want them to be a jerk about that. So he did meet one strange dog that I hadn't planned on him meeting once on a walk, but, um, and that dog, and I actually posted a video of this on the cognitive canine Facebook page, that dog was inviting play kind of before Watson was ready. And he kind of scared Watson a little bit, but not terrible. And what was amazing was that Felix just kind of walked up and intervened. And then the dog played with Felix and then Watson was able to, he still kind of stayed there. And he was like, okay, I can tag along if there's three of us, but I don't want to be the center of attention. And if he had run away, like, you know, let's say that dog had really scared him and he had tucked his tail and run towards me or something. Um, the puppy is coming to me looking for shelter from whatever it is. I always give it to them. So I would have absolutely picked him up and allowed him to just look at the dog from a distance. But I tend not to try to involve food in those moments unless the dog is then trying to, you know, approach, like, let's say, you know, it was like when Felix was a puppy, he saw a fire hydrant seemingly for the first time and decided it was a monster. And I let him look at it as long as he wanted to the first day he saw it. And then we walked away. And then the next day he looked at it and then he wanted to sniff it and approach it. Um, and I just fed him for that. And then the third day he was like, oh, here's the thing. Feed me. And I was like, okay, good, done.

Here's one cookie. And now I'm never going to feed you for that again because it's over. But I think people freak out. And if you freak out and they're freaking out, then we're all freaking out. And it's not a good thing. Yeah. I mean, he really hasn't had anything, but I completely agree with Sarah. I mean, it's, and, and I'm pretty good about it. Again, kind of going on along with not necessarily planning everything. I'm pretty chill about everything. So when, you know, he reacts to something, I don't know. I'm not going to feed into it by being like, oh my God. You know, it's, it's about like, cool dude, check it out. You know, I'm not going to force you into anything. We'll just be a stand here. You know, if you're comfortable staying here looking at it, then that's where we'll stay. And I, I usually, you know, food comes into play. It's for when he chooses, when he turns around and looks at me and says, okay, let's go. You know, it's, and so it's more of a reinforcement of just choosing to be back with me and, and go on with me on our, whatever we're doing. I mean, not like a reinforcement for necessarily. Which we would do if the thing was exciting too. Not just if it's scary. Yeah. It's choose me over the stuff in the environment that interests you. Yeah. I'd love to kind of end on a high note, ladies. Can each of you just share one piece of advice for anyone out there with their own puppy hoping to raise a happy, balanced dog? My piece of advice would probably be something like, it's all going to be okay. We all can make mistakes and, and luckily dogs are very forgiving. So don't beat yourself up if, if something bad happens or you make a mistake, though, um, there's lots that you can do to bounce back and still have a perfectly wonderful puppy. Yeah. I think mine is really similar to yours in that I would say, you know, Melissa, you had mentioned we're all paranoid about doing everything right and that's really stressful. And so my piece of advice would be to embrace and accept that you will not do everything right. Embrace and accept that you will screw something up at some point and that you'll survive. And if you're paying attention, you'll learn. And that will in the end be a good thing too. Yeah. I definitely, I mean, seriously look back on every puppy and go, yeah, could have done that better. Could have done that better. All of us do that and that's fine. Embrace it, run with it. For folks out there who are kind of interested in following along as Watson grows up, what's the best way to do that?

And where can people who want to stalk or at least follow each of you, where can they go to stay up to date? So the first question, where can they follow Watson? We are running a subscription to a blog just about Watson. It's called Puppy Elementary. And you can find that by clicking the Puppy Elementary tab on my website, which is thecognitivecanine.com. Again, you can follow me at thecognitivecanine.com. That's where I blog. And I also have a podcast called Cog Dog Radio. And of course, I'm on Facebook with the Cognitive Canine and Cog Dog Radio and just me. So that's where you can find me. You can find Leslie. At work. At work. All day. Every day. We are teaching our course together. Is it next term, October? Yeah. Jumping Gymnastics for FDSA together. So you can find Leslie there too. But your website's thetotalcanine.net. Yes. And yeah, Facebook. I'm on there. My business-y type page is the Total Canine, which has a Facebook page. And then the website's thetotalcanine.net. And it is canine spelled out. And then my real work is Sound Veterinary Rehabilitation Center. And it's on Facebook. And the website is soundvetrehab.com. I think you're right. I think it's Sound Vet Rehab. Yeah. And where are you guys located again, just in case somebody's in your area and wants to come look you up? The Seattle. Never. About 40 miles north of Seattle. But the Sound Veterinary Rehab Center is in Shoreline, Washington, which is just north of Seattle. One last question for each of you. My new last interview question that I've been asking everyone. What's a lesson that you've learned or been reminded of recently when it comes to dog training? Sarah, you want to go first? Yeah. Mine is kind of exceedingly nerdy. When I told Leslie what it was, she was like, oh, God. It's to remember not to stay on lesser approximations for too long. So in real words, plain English, basically that means to progress as fast as possible. So don't wait for perfection before moving on to the next thing that you're going to be reinforcing. You know, I'm always shooting for low error rates, high rates of reinforcement. I like nice, clean training. And because of that, sometimes I can stay on approximations that are not the final behavior for a little bit too long because I get a little bit too perfectionistic on those. And it bites me every time. So I was recently reminded of it in Felix's contact training. And a friend. I've never done that. Yeah, I know. Right. I think it's the sickness, honestly, of people who are really obsessed with training just get way too fixated on the details. But anyway, that's mine.

So I think I'm going to pick one specifically to make fun of Sarah. I expect no less. In that it's something that I never do, but she probably really wishes I would. And that's take data. Leslie never takes data. No. I take data on everything. I always say that if we could put us together, we'd be a great trainer because I'm too detail oriented and nitpicky and she's too free form. Yeah. Which is why together with jumping gymnastics, I think we do a nice job teaching together because we do come from both of those different sides. Thank you so much, ladies, for coming on the podcast. And we managed to find a time when both of you could join me. So that's awesome. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. And we'll be back next week talking about details with Hannah Branigan to talk about prepping for competition and more. If you haven't already, subscribe 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 bensound.com. The track featured here is called Buddy. Audio editing provided by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training. Today's show iso. Today's show iso. Thank you.