E278: 줄리 다니엘스(Julie Daniels): 컨트롤 언리시드에 대해 더 알아보기

Um, I had, was working with a person who's, um, just made me think that we should bring Leslie McDivitt on board with this. Even though I didn't know her personally at that time, um, I just thought she could be of help regarding, uh, things like, um, behavior issues and meds issues that I wasn't really, um, I didn't feel that I was on the right track with this dog without some guidance from a person, um, who worked with that kind of thing all that time, all the time. And, uh, so I made the connection first by sending a student to her who was delighted and was, uh, sent on also to, uh, Dr. Karen overall. And then after that, it wasn't too long after that, that I actually wrote to Leslie to say, you know, I'm really excited with this new voluntary sharing thing that you're doing because I do some very similar and very compatible things in my empowerment classes and with, especially my cookie jar games program. And I just am excited to, um, see what you're up to these days because I'm so on that page. And so we just started chatting and talking and then she, uh, recruited me for her group. And I decided, I made the decision like immediately, like, uh, I'm going to just work through this entire new certification program. Uh, I need to start at the beginning and do all the things along with everybody else, because even though I have background and I know the backgrounds compatible and I'm excited with how our work fits together, I still haven't really embraced her stuff from the beginning all the way through, right? Which is what the certification program is. It's a lot of work and it's great fun, but I learned a ton and it was, uh, incredibly useful for me with my dogs and my clients' dogs in every way. I just can't say enough good about it. It is a lot of work and I will say my favorite thing about it is that it fit perfectly with me, uh, teaching classes along the same, um, in that same timeframe and getting feedback on not only what I was doing with my own dogs and other dogs, but what I was teaching my students to do. And it's a fabulous, the CCUI program, I would say, I, I have no right to speak for Leslie, but, uh, it's a teacher's program. It is great. You got to have the chops to get through it. You know what I mean? You can't just, you can get through it working with other people's dogs on your own and not teaching classes possibly. Although I would recommend that teaching others is the best way to really cement, um, you know, a fluency with the, the different patterns and how to use them. However, um, it just was wonderful for me as a teacher to have Leslie's guidance as I was

earning my certification. And I hope they never changed that about the program. It's, it's going to become more popular and it's moving to the clean run online learning classroom. And I just, um, feel strongly that, uh, they'll maintain, and I hope they maintain that hands on component that you can't really be certified without having the chops. I just think that's so important. Having grown up with dogs, right? It's been dogs that mean my whole life. Book learning is not going to cut it for me all by itself. Uh, you got to put it into practice and that's what the program is all about. So I, I love it. I just love it. Awesome. Can you, um, maybe just share a little more about kind of what that process looked like? And, uh, obviously like it was super important to you to get certified. So, um, can you just talk a little bit about what you learned, how it worked? So you mean the CCUI program itself? Yeah. Uh, yeah, we, we learn and teach, uh, presumably first to our own dogs and then to other dogs, all the patterns beginning with, um, take a breath and just being honest. Uh, take a breath is something that I had completely neglected, even though I had known about it and read about it. There's plenty of stuff out there on it and on the science behind it as well. But I had not taught my dogs that pattern, that skill, if you will, as a cued operant response until I started certification program. So, I mean, it's just one of those things where if you begin at the beginning, you'll never regret that. And so often I'm always telling people when you start at, uh, you know, when you're trying to get to step 10, you'll get there faster and better by starting at step one than you will by starting at step five. We all want to like get a head start and leap in halfway. Cause we quote unquote know it already. Right. And, uh, and then of course you will hit snags doing that every single time, no matter what kind of program or sport you're undertaking. So it's always better to start at step one. So that's what I would recommend is start with, take a breath and start with down and chill on a mat. That's another thing that I had to teach my own dogs because I've always used my mat work protocol, which I again, got very excited when I saw Leslie. She's the only other person I've ever seen advise a step one of mat work that is between the dog and the mat and not about working for a person directly. Right. So, um, in my step one of my mat work protocol for what I call eager patience work, which is dog sport work, how to wait politely and yet be ready to take your turn quite different from see you mat work.

However, our step ones are the same. The first thing I want is attraction for the mat. Love the mat is what I call my step one. And I think that description fits Leslie's step one of mat work too. She puts cookies, not, not given to the dog directly from the handler. It's not about the handler. The cookies come from the mat in her step one. It's the only other pro protocol I've seen that does it that way. And again, I just like, I just had to send her it out. Like you are so freaking awesome. You know, thinking first of the relationship between the dog and the mat. If what you're going to want is long duration mat work, it can't just be about, oh, I'm, I have to stay here. You know, it's gotta be, begin with a love for the mat, a good relationship between the dog and the mat. So, I mean, I just can't say enough about the program or about begin at the beginning. So hard. It is. So for those who are totally uninitiated and they're listening to all this and going, wait, what? Do you want to start, do you want to kind of explain for us what it is that Control Unleashed actually is? Like what is it? Oh, so now we're going to talk about what we're talking about. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's see. I'll just put it into my own words. Leslie talks about it being the program, being a way to have a conversation, the way away for the dog to report about the environment to the handler instead of reacting to the environment directly. Right. So Leslie's always referred to this as conversational training, which is a term I love. And she talks about it as a way to turn stress into confidence, a way to turn distraction into focus using obviously 100% positive methods, let's just say. But that's easy to do with the pattern structure that she's developed for her game. So she saw the benefits of using predictable patterns of cookie delivery, you might say, and combining that with what we now call a start button, thanks to Eva and Emily. But long before we had that terminology, we were inviting the dogs to look at us in order to say, let's do it again, or in order to say, let's do the next thing. So now we know that as a start button behavior, that's simply one start button, but it's probably the most common one that we use in control and leash patterns is looking up at the handler's face. And we don't talk about it so much as direct eye contact. They have to do this and they have to do that, but they've got to look up at your face. They've got to check in with you and orient to your face in order to ask for the next step of the thing. And that very quickly turns into how to ask to increase the challenge, right?

So can you do a little more? Can you like move a little closer? Is it all right for the thing to come a little closer, right? It goes both ways. Either the dog approaching a thing or a thing approaching the dog. We give the dog the agency to say when that may happen and in fact, whether it may happen. So it's a series of patterns. Control and leash consists of many different predictable and comfortable patterns that the dog engages in as a calming mechanism so that they can filter the stimuli in the surrounding environment and converse about that stimuli with their handlers. Does that help? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. In other words, any dog with big feelings, just to refer to the conference that's coming up this Saturday, I'm so happy to be part of that conference. And it's a perfect application for dogs with big feelings, right? Control and leash just works perfectly. So speaking of that, since you started to go there, it's my next question anyway. Not all dogs that'll benefit from this stuff necessarily look the same, right? So who should consider learning more about the program? Yeah, that's for sure. Dogs that can benefit from control unleashed include what I call dogs that are loud on the outside. You know, the big blow up and reactivity type dogs or dogs just the same sort of internal mounting pressure. But dogs are loud on the inside. But they might even look quiet and still on the outside. Sometimes frozen. That's easy to see. But sometimes not. Just the mounting. I talk about, you know, the blood pounding in your ears, that kind of sensation where internally pressure is rising and the dog is feeling more and more uncomfortable and you don't even see it on the outside. So that kind of dog, I think, is helped even more by control unleashed because the internal state, beginning with take a breath and beginning with simple, stationary, predictable patterns, such as up and down would be my first choice, literally encourage the dog to relax that limbic part of the brain and start operating from the prefrontal cortex. So you can imagine that's extremely beneficial for a dog who's loud on the outside, but it is every bit as beneficial for a dog who's loud on the inside and quiet on the outside. Is that useful? So every dog with big feelings, I don't have any question about it. Every dog with big feelings can benefit and should be, you know, the beneficiary of a few control unleashed patterns at least. Well, I mean, I think maybe even, you know, those dogs who are loud on the inside, we have a harder time telling when something's going on, right? So it gives them that communication tool. Yep. So true. Yes.

The conversational element is incredibly helpful if you have a dog who's loud on the inside. Yeah, that's really true. Julie, can you share just a little more about what you're going to cover in your conference, excuse me, presentation? Oh, you want me to give that away? Okay. Maybe just a snippet, a little bit. Give us a peek. It's like everybody else. I only have an hour. So boy, that is tough. And some things that I really wanted to include and I, you know, felt strongly about, well, this has to go in, ended up on the cutting room floor, right? That just happens to all of us. And we have, we just, the subject is so big and you want to help everybody, right? So instead of doing a deep dive into one particular type of problem. So this is what I tried to do. I tried to show a few of the main patterns and how to maybe take that, how to personalize them. The patterns are very flexible. When you teach the base pattern, it's, you know, fairly specific. In order to be simple and predictable, it's fairly specific. Food delivery is a big part of it. The start button is a big part of it. That kind of thing is important. And then as the dog and the handler both become very familiar and comfortable with that pattern. And in other words, we've taught it in a state of calm. Then we can start using the calmness evoked by that familiar pattern to help maintain calm feelings as we gradually increase the level of distraction, right? Working all the way up to things that are, you know, triggering for that dog. So I think it's important to remember that, and I make mention of this many times in my presentation, that the antecedents count so much in CU. Not that they don't count elsewhere, but boy, it's so easy to neglect the environmental conditions. And in control and leash patterns, you must not do that. You must always be working within a framework of what's going on in the environment around you when you want to employ this pattern or that pattern. So I don't need to say it, and yet I have to say it 10 times a day to everybody that I work with. You can't be teaching the patterns when you need them. You can't be teaching the patterns in an environment that is challenging. The patterns have to already be well-learned, familiar, and comfortable to both you and the dog. And then what you're doing is gradually increasing the distraction level, you might say, beginning with an attractive stimulus rather than a scary or triggering stimulus. You don't want to be teaching the patterns in that because you'll definitely attach the feelings of arousal or upset or worry

or all those negative emotions that dogs have, just as people have, will become attached to a pattern that is learned in that state. That would be true of anyone. It doesn't matter the species. You want to teach the patterns. The whole value of the pattern is to be able to bring the calm out and about, right? And therefore, the patterns have to be taught in a state of calm. And the more you can pay attention to the environment and set up the environment to facilitate calm, happy, confident feelings around the pattern, that's what's going to be the benefit as you begin to take the patterns out and about. Oh, that's... Yeah, yeah. That answers your question. So I'll be talking about different ways to combine the patterns. I'll be talking about things you may not, you know, things that I have found useful as I tried to do. For example, I actually have one example where my dog and I are heading to the agility ring. And so talk about your big feelings. Like there is no more triggering, happy triggering stimulus to her than agility equipment and the agility ring. And I actually was able to set up a little camera when I was ready to go into the ring for the second or third time. This was at a seminar and my dog, I mean, you can imagine the bullet. She may be little, but boy, that's a powerhouse dog. And when she wants to get to the agility ring, like she can drag a person like me pretty well, make a convincing show of big feelings. So using a pattern like one, two, three to get from here to there without triggering is very tricky because she's already in the environments that's overstimulating, right? So my, the first slide about that, I think I showed an intermediate step of teaching the pattern that I was going to want to use in public of adding the two to the three and then adding the one to the two to the three so that you build a dog who is prepared to, let's say, walk and chew gum at the same time. They've got to be able to eat and walk at the same time. And you've got to be able to feed and walk. It's usually a handler problem more than a dog problem. The handler has trouble feeding and walking at the same time. So with one, two, three, you want to get from here to there without causing a reaction. And needless to say, that was very challenging in that environment. So I was able to show in my little video my dog's first impression of hearing one, two, three as she was about to, you know, drag me to the ring and how she didn't buy in at first, which I knew she wouldn't, right? So I had an idea that I had been experimenting with.

She's also familiar with Denise Fenzie's circle method of loose leash walking. And so I was able to incorporate that first. As soon as I could see that I might have said two or I might have said three. I certainly didn't start with one, but whatever. I announced game on for one, two, three. And my dog said, I don't freaking think so. So I just started the circle, you know, the loose leash walking circle. Again, the handler's walking a concentric circle inside the dog's bigger outer circle just to allow them to move, to play a stationary game. People whose dogs are crazy about any sport. It doesn't have to be agility. Oh, my God. I've seen the fly ball dogs. I've seen the dock diving dogs. I mean, come on. You guys are just as crazy as we are. But so how can you incorporate a calming pattern like control and leash in a context where the dog is already feeling the feelings and needs to move, flat out needs to move. A stationary game is not going to cut it in that context. So I'm recommending to combine Denise Fenzie's loose leash walking circle method with the one, two, three. And I actually was able to capture on my little video the transition between not caring about the one, two, three part and then gradually actually caring. And I was actually able to show it in that video, even moving away from the ring as well as toward the ring. And so we ended up being able to go to the ring calmly with one, two, three. And let's just say anybody with dogs with big feelings about any sport knows that what I'm about to say is true. If you can arrive at your destination, such as the ring or the pool or the wherever, in a state of relative calm, that bodes better for your performance in the ring. Like, you know, that's true. Right. Right. The dog's thinking. Their brain is engaged. Yes. Yes. It's exactly that. The prefrontal cortex is engaged. Whereas they don't need no stink in prefrontal cortex for those limbic reactions of dragging you and screaming, you know. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, that's one of the things that I was able to include in my presentation, just hopefully to be useful and real world like to the people who are bound to say, well, those patterns are all well and good, but they're not going to do me any good in the context of agility. Oh, I hear that for sure. And, you know, I could have let my dog drag me to the ring. As I mentioned in my presentation, it wouldn't be the first time. So, I mean, it's not the end of the world if that has to happen. But guess what? It really doesn't have to happen. If you do the homework, if you think about how you can help your dog in the moment and

you have, you know, the time and you have the inclination and your own brain is in a good place, we need the patterns as much as they do. You really can make a huge difference in the mental state of any dog with big feelings. And I hope to show that through quite a few different and varied examples in my presentation, beginning with mat work itself, because I was the queen of eager patience, mat work. And I still use that and need that for all my dog sports work. But now I also have dogs who are expert in Leslie's control and leash mat work, which is basically down and chill. And so I show the same dog, the same crazy little bullet, first using the active stationing that I'm talking about. And I mean, this is a seven yards a second agility dog. And reporting to a station by choice, spitting out the toy by choice, announcing that she's ready for another rep, please. Or can we do that backside thing again? That's just way better using the stationing, the active stationing, way better than you or me having to end the fun, get the freaking toy back, right? Set up in a place. And now all of a sudden, you're the bad guy just when you need to be the good guy. So the stationing, the active stationing that I use is incredibly helpful for that. And it's pattern work, but it's like super active. But it has the dog self-regulating. Part of my title is it's not just CU patterns for, you know, for active dogs. It's also to help the dog think clearly and self-regulate. And that's the piece of the puzzle that we need for the dog sports people. Being able to go limbic with the toy, tear around the ring, and then announce when they're ready for another piece of the puzzle. This is in a learning environment, right? We're not talking about trialing here. We're talking about you want to teach something new. You absolutely need a dog who's working from their prefrontal cortex if you're going to teach new information, new skills, things like that. That's not the time for a limbic superpower. It's not going to come out well because they don't know what they're doing yet. So when you're in a teaching environment, if you're having a training session, you want something like active stationing because the dog can tell you and bring themselves back down, the arousal back down to a readiness level of, you know, ready to learn, ready to work as opposed to, yay, I got the toy. So literally you'll see Kool-Aid jump on the station and spit out the toy. And you can just see that face get focused and calm as she's like, I'm ready. You know, do the thing. Let's do that thing again.

And then I use the same dog because that's the way it's the most useful. I didn't use a different dog to show the other kind of control and leash mat work. I use that same little bullet in a, you know, different context where it's CU mat work that I want. So my point is, and I try to make this point early on in the presentation and use it throughout, your dog can learn to self-regulate. And mat work, I would suggest, is probably where to start. Yeah, it's not obvious that that would work. I don't want to do this kind of mat work because I do that kind of mat work. Well, I started out with the crazy dog mat work and it was incredibly helpful to me and I don't need to get rid of it. But I was able to add by starting from the beginning, in case I haven't mentioned that before, from step one of control and leash mat work, I was able to build that obviously in a separate kind of environment in a whole different kind of context. And I would say that this same little bullet who does the crazy stationing, who has crazy stationing skills, also has crazy down and chill mat work skills. And I proved that in the presentation. That's awesome. I'm looking forward to seeing that, Julie. So in addition to the presentation, you do have classes that you're offering through FDSA on this stuff. So I think you've got your second one. Is the second one coming up in August? Oh boy. Yeah. Can you share a little bit about kind of what the different classes are and kind of a little about them? Yeah, sure. This fits perfectly with what we were just talking about. The basic class that I'm teaching for the second time right now, it's just about to wrap up as we speak, is the basic patterns. And I really try to keep them basic. It's very tempting to go on and show, oh, here's what you can do with this. And here's what you can do with that. And there is a little bit in this class because students do want the sexy stuff. Um, but again, I just harp on the fact that you need to be thinking foundation patterns first before the sexy stuff. Because usually sexy stuff means adding challenges, right? It's not just variations on the theme. It's people want to take it out and about, which is understandable. But if you don't have a real fluency with the foundation patterns, and by this, I mean the handler as well as the dog. Um, you have to have to have these patterns at a level of comfort that is fluent before adding the challenges. So this first class that I've now taught twice is geared toward the foundations and not geared toward the sexy stuff.

And so I think I can fairly say that, um, CU part two, which comes up in August, as you said, is sexy. But, uh, therefore you're going to want the foundation patterns in place and fluent, hopefully, um, before you pick up this class. So I don't, we haven't talked yet about whether the, um, uh, CU part one will be available as a prerequisite, um, during registration. I would hope so. I actually, thank you for reminding me. I need to approach Terry about that. Yeah, I need to be a boss about that. Because you, you aren't really going to want to dive into part two without any background in part one. It just wouldn't be how I, how I think about it, how I want it to work. Obviously we'll review, but like I will, I've written the syllabus about five different times and shifted things around and changed the wording. And, um, I still don't have it finalized yet. And knowing me, I won't finalize it until, you know, Terry says, Hey, I so need that. And then I'll be like, okay, just put it out the way it is and it'll be fine. But, um, I'm, uh, the way I've worded it for, um, the, the beginning of the class is that we'll start by reviewing and progressing the arrival skillset, for example. And anyone who has taken my foundation class knows, or the webinar I did on it will be familiar with what the arrival skillset is designed to do for us and, um, how we're, you know, planning to use it going forward. And, and so that's kind of the idea of part two is that yes, there will be some review, but I'm not going to reteach those things. We'll be sort of, um, um, going over them and then dive into how to progress them. Um, so that the, the goal of see you part two is to get out into the world. I mean, I think that's what it's called control unleashed in the big wide world. So that's my goal for the class is to get dogs out and about. And by the end, my hope is that anyone who's following along with the class, um, will have a plan, right? Or at least it doesn't mean that you'll have it all taught, but it does mean that you'll know what kinds of things work for you and how to, um, take advantage of the flexibility of the patterns and, and, um, you know, use them in your own way to your own dog's advantage. So the conversation will start to develop more intensely between the dog and the handler. Some of the videos I have for this class, I'm just so proud of like individual dogs saying specifically in a, in a straight line of targets. Okay. I like this target. This is as close as I want to go to the thing. And, um, I'm going to offer you the start button as I turn around and face the other

direction away from the scary thing. I mean, that's a conversation, right? That's a dog who's fluent in the patterns and the power, the personal power that the dog has within the framework of that familiar pattern. So that's my goal for every student who takes CU part two is that you and your dog work the patterns to fluency so that the two-way feedback system, you know, keeps you on the same page as you add challenges. I hope that's helpful as a description. Yeah, absolutely. Um, and in the class description, you kind of called out a few specific games. So, um, I know you mentioned requested approach training and voluntary sharing and latte and decaf. Um, you don't have to go through all of them by any means, but can you maybe pick one or two and share a little about what those kind of look like and how you use them? Yeah. Yeah. I am, um, going to do a lot with those four. So you mentioned voluntary sharing and that was, uh, the thing that first excited me to, um, write to Leslie directly and say, I just love this. Like it fits so perfectly with what I'm doing with cookie jar games. And, you know, I just am thrilled to be able to read your stuff and practice your work. So, um, voluntary sharing allows the dog, the, let's call it the target dog, the one you're working with to actually request that you give a cookie to someone else. And then that cookie to someone else predicts a cookie for that target dog. So would you kindly as Leslie, I think used, um, two of her dogs to begin with and, um, please feed that dog and then feed me. That's what you're saying. And so we use, uh, we also incorporate a start button into that. And most of us tend to use chin rest as that start button. As I said before, there are other start buttons you could use, but, uh, chin rest is a good one for voluntary sharing. And when the dog, um, puts their chin in my example video, I have my dog put her chin on my left thigh. So that means antecedents, right? I have to set up the environment so that she's on that side of me. Cause although she might well be fine with putting her chin on the other side of me, I taught the pattern with my left leg. So I'm just going to stay with the left leg thing for now. And then we'll talk about how we can progress that and make it more fluent if we want. But we don't assume fluency before we've actually trained a hundred different variables, right? Like we, we have a lot of variables to vary in the environment before we start making things more difficult. Does that help? So that's part of my job with CU part two is let, before we start talking about, uh,

people think of adding difficulty, like in a straight line, I'm going to go this far and then go this far. And then we're going to go closer and closer and closer. Oh, such a mistake. A in the first place, ping pong difficulty, go back and forth between harder reps and easier reps. That's just a basic training, good training, but it's also going to be important that the dog gets to say when, and we don't usually do that in our training. We're used to the handler saying, okay, I'm going to go a little closer. It's not how we do control unleashed. The dog says, let's go a little closer. Shall we? May we go a little closer? So that's not just going to the next target or the dog's not just putting their, keeping their chin on your leg the whole time to say, yep, you can keep doing the thing. You can keep doing the thing. There are some games where we do that. In other words, if the dog lifts their chin up from chin rest position, that's a stop button. That would be similar to what we learned from Shirag Patel in the bucket game. Like that is a fantastic use of a stop button or a pause button. And we'll go into that also in CU part two. We've actually, because my students are just dynamite, we've gotten into that in part one as well. The difference between, you know, a pause button and a stop button as well as a start button. So the two-way feedback system is always open. But in voluntary sharing, each rep is an individual. So the dog puts her chin on my leg. That tells me to feed S-P-O-R-T, who's lying at my feet. So I don't want to say his name. So I feed him and then feed her. And the act of feeding your target dog takes their head away from the chin rest position, right? So you're using food delivery in a specific way to put the head in a certain place so that the dog now has a separate individual choice to come back, place the chin on your leg again when ready for you to feed the other dog. Does that all sound good? And I also take that further too. That little dog of mine who does the stationary chin rest behavior for me to feed another dog is also capable of running from where we are working. Let's say I'm working with her. I have a video where another family member, little staffy mix, comes running in, butts into her perch work training session and wants to play too. So my dog knows perfectly well that I'm not going to feed him, right? He wasn't invited. She's the one getting paid. She can just keep doing what she's doing. And I'm good for it. I'll like gently move him out of the way so that she can continue doing what she's doing. And I'm not going to give him her cookies. That's not going to happen.

She can trust that. And I recommend that, you know, be fair to the working dog. Don't let other dogs bump in. Oh, he wants one too. Well, yeah, duh. But that doesn't mean he gets to, you know, take a session. However, this happened and I happened to be videotaping. So I got it on video. My little dog decided, wait, he can have my turn. I'll run over here to this station, you know, and I bet that'll pay off for me. And obviously I made it pay off for her. So that's a different active example of voluntary sharing, taking that concept, the dog taking that concept and using it in an empowering way. I can, you know, be nice to that dog and give him my turn. And I bet that this will pay off for me. And so it's your job to make sure it darn well does pay off for them. If you want your dog to be polite, you know, and not triggered by the approach of another dog. So you can turn resource guard. Obviously, that's this is not a beginning step. But the fact that my normally resource guard type dog who has worked all the way to calm because she trusts me not to give away her cookies when she's working. So she's not resource guard in that context. But this was a quantum leap above that thinking. This is empowered thinking using the control unleashed mindset of voluntary sharing. I hope that's enough to entice people to take this class because it's really going to be fun. Yeah. Yeah, I know. It sounds awesome. You kind of alluded to this earlier, but I'd love if you could talk about a little more kind of how some of the components in Control Unleashed complement the classes you previously, you know, taught at FDSA that people came to kind of know you for, right? Like your empowerment class and your cookie jar games and all your other popular classes. How do they kind of fit together? Yeah, they so fit together so well. The whole idea of, well, first, let's just stick with the example I just used because I would happily go off on 10 more tangents. But let's stay with that one. That example of the concept, voluntary sharing as a concept instead of a ritual, you know, she had never been taught that as a pattern. She employed the concepts of that pattern that she did know and used it in a new way. And that's the idea of cookie jar games is delayed gratification, delay of reinforcement as a dog's choice phenomenon and a very good deal for the dog. So it's cookie jar games is all about creating not only a fluency with delay of reinforcement, but a desire delay of reinforcement as a better deal.

That's what excited me so much about the whole voluntary sharing thing is it's the dog's choice element and the fact that it's actually a better deal for you if reinforcement does not come immediately. And you have the power that's it's so personally empowering, which leads me to tie it in with empowerment. Boy, the CU pattern, I'm always saying, yes, they're calming. The CU patterns are calming, but they are also empowering because of that start button element, the dog's choice element being built into the patterns by design, by Leslie's design from the beginning. There just couldn't be a more empowering way to use patterns other than employing a start button like Leslie's always done from the beginning. So anyway, love her, love her stuff. She really turned how to handle crazy dogs, you know, and you define crazy any way you want, how to handle that combining structure with choice. Just brilliant. Wonderful. Just wonderful. It's a whole better way. I don't know if people know this, but originally when Leslie first started developing these games, these patterns, the purpose was to use it with sport dogs who were just that little bit. Oh, let me just phrase this in a nice way. They were a little bit disruptive in there. And it was Leslie's job to take them out of that environment and help them get ready to come back into the class without that disruptive element. So nowadays, we just expand that. We know its value now for dogs who are simply reactive to the environment or to other dogs or to any trigger or stimulus. These games are a wonderful way to help calm the nervous system, keep the dog in the thinking brain. Yeah. All right, Julie. So we covered a whole lot of ground. And I've got one last question here for you. If we were to take all the stuff we've been talking about and kind of drill it down into either a key piece of information you really want people to understand or like one kind of summarizing final point, what would that be? One thing. Okay. No, I can do it. I would say control unleashed patterns are calming and empowering. So teaching the patterns in a calm state helps you transfer into the real world without losing the element of dog's choice that is so important to an empowerment mindset. All right. That's the best I can do. Okay. I think that's a pretty good summary. So thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Julie. This has been fantastic. It was my pleasure. Thanks, Melissa. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week. Don't miss it.

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 Body. Audio editing provided by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training.