E78: 줄리 플래너리(Julie Flanery) - "아름다운 힐워크 구축하기"

So I wanted to have you on tonight to talk about something that I think is probably pretty important to a good percentage of our listeners. I want to talk about healing. So non-freestylers may not realize it, but he works a pretty big part of freestyle, right? Can you just talk a little bit about kind of the role it plays in the sport? Yeah. To anybody that has done obedience, there is nothing more beautiful than a joyful healing dog. We all have that picture in our head and what it looks like, and it can take your breath away. The only thing I think might be more beautiful is watching a freestyle routine with a joyful healing dog. And maybe I'm biased there, but I think that adds a whole nother level of animation to heel work. Heel work is really what holds a freestyle routine together. We often talk about it's the glue that holds it together, but I think it's really so much more than that. In terms of holding the routine together, it's very easy to get lost in a routine. We have three minutes of 50 to 80 cued behaviors, and we don't always remember our full routine. I mean, no matter how much you memorize your routine and no matter how much you work your routine, it doesn't always go as planned. I have never met a freestyler that said, oh yeah, we went out there and it was perfect. So you have to kind of be a little prepared for that. And having a dog that understands heel work has a strong desire to be in heel, one that defaults to a standing heel position, then your dog is always in a right place where you can make things right again. It also means your dog can maintain a sense of purpose. If he's not quite sure where he should be or what he should be doing, either maybe there's a wrong cue or I screwed up something in my choreography, he can maintain that level of confidence and joy by defaulting to a heel position. And it gives me the confidence then to kind of pull us out of whatever scrape we've gotten into. In freestyle, we train our behaviors, especially behaviors that we use as transitions from a position to a position. So whatever behavior I'm going to include in my freestyle routines, I train it where my dog starts in a heel work position. And in order for that behavior to be completed, she has to come back to a heel work position. And if she doesn't understand those positions, then I'm going to lose the accuracy and precision of the behaviors. Those positions give me a stronger execution of all of my freestyle behaviors. So without that understanding, many of my freestyle behaviors are going to degrade.

And if the dog isn't set up correctly, then not only is that behavior not going to be accurate, but my next behavior isn't going to start in the correct place and it's going to lose its accuracy and precision. So that having a dog that understands their heel work positions is incredibly important in freestyle because without it, everything else is going to kind of fall apart. And that's why we say it's kind of the glue that holds the routines together. I think that many, many see freestyle is kind of a loosey goosey sport. You know, you go out and you move and you dance with your dog and you have them do some tricks. But if you look at some of the world's best freestylers, those handlers understand and utilize heel work to give their routines that polish, that unity that really make their routines stand out. And so I think as we are moving forward in the sport, more freestylers are trying to make heel work a much more important piece of their training program than maybe it was in the past. You kind of mentioned in there that you're looking for kind of a joyful demeanor in healing. Can you talk a little more about that? Kind of describe what you're looking for when you're training your dog to heal. What does that final picture really look like? Yeah. Well, as you said, first and foremost, I need my dog to learn to love healing. And that's for the reasons mentioned above. But also, I want her both to look and I want her to feel happy when she's healing. If healing allows her to be in a happy emotional state, then she's more likely to be able to ignore the environment. She's better able to take and respond to cues. She understands and loves that job of healing. If she or I get lost in a routine, her default will be to stay and heal. And if she can do that, I can get us through those rough patches. In terms of physical appearance, I like my dog's head up. I like her looking at my face. And that's both because I think it looks pretty, but that's kind of my security blanket. I think if she's looking at me, she must be paying attention, right? So that's part of my picture. I want her looking up at my face. It's part of my training. I like that the front end to be lifted. So that the weight is off of the shoulders and you can get more lift to the chest and in the front feet. I like a dog that has a little bit of a prance to it. So I try to work that into my criteria. What people may not know is that in freestyle, the dog and handler team choose their own heel work position.

So if the dog is a little wide, but consistently a little wide, always that distance from the handler, then no points are taken off. So small dogs oftentimes are a little more comfortable not being right under the handler's feet. So that's an example where a handler might decide to allow their dog to have a little more distance from them. And as long as that distance is consistent, then it doesn't hurt the score or any. I like my dog to forge a little to show off that little prance that she has. So as long as she is consistent in her position, that she's always just forging that little bit. Maybe my leg is closer to her shoulder or rib. And as long as she maintains that position in relation to me, then that's not going to hurt our score or any. And it actually showcases the part of her heel work, which I really love, which is that little foot action that she sometimes has. So in freestyle, there's some leeway. There's some ability to kind of customize your heel work position as long as it's consistent. So you could choose or use AKC's definition or whatever organization you show obedience under. Or you could vary from that a little bit to either help your dog be more comfortable in healing or to showcase something that your dog really does well. I mean, obviously, healing is a super complex thing to train. I mean, even just from that description, you kind of talked about all these different pieces of that criteria, right? Different trainers kind of start with different bits and different approaches. I'd love to kind of hear how you approach it. How do you get started? So like all training, we have to look at both the physical criteria and the emotional component. Heel work is physically demanding. So I want to make sure that my dog is getting a really high enough rate of reward and value of reinforcement for all of that hard work. And I want to maintain that high rate of reward for a really long time, probably much longer with much greater frequency than I do for other behaviors. Hand touches are a huge part of my heel work. They help me both create position and lift and fun. And I can do all sorts of games with my hand touches. And yes, there is a right way and a wrong way to teach a hand touch. And people learn that in the class that I'm doing in October. Also, both standing platforms and pivot platforms are really important in my program. It's where I start to add the cue. It's where I know with certainty that I can get my dog to perform that precision criteria that I really want.

And the dog learns to use his rear end in a way through the pivot platforms that helps him maintain position. So those are really big tools that I use. Shaping is part of my heel work training. I think a dog that understands how to offer correct positioning can fix an issue without waiting for the handler to do it for them. And I think in heel work, that's huge. It also helps to build a desire to get to heel and stay in heel. And that shaping includes both finding the position while I'm stationary and also while I'm moving. So, for example, I really like Don Yak's choose to heel protocol. And that's all about shaping how to find a moving heel position. Two, with shaping, I don't necessarily want to use the cue I started to add on the platforms. So I want my dog to understand that she doesn't have to wait for a cue to give me either some or all of that criteria. So shaping gives the dog control of that reinforcement in a lot of different ways. And if she can offer that criteria, that heel work criteria that I've been working on at any time, or those things that earn rewards, then that puts me ahead of the game because I don't have to work as hard at getting that criteria all the time. And then, of course, there's fun and games. So we don't want to forget that. Those things are where we don't really worry about precision or accuracy at all. And the rewards come for moving with me or moving to my side with lots of enthusiasm. And it's that attitude that I want to really create and reinforce through games. So I teach technical aspects. And then I also teach the fun and games aspects all in the same timeline. So I don't do one first and then the other. They're both being played and trained all in the same time frame. So once the dog has some experience in each of those, I can start to combine those components. But really, I found that it's the dog that starts to combine them, that you'll be playing a game. And that promotes those certain attributes like lift and enthusiasm. And all of a sudden, you'll kind of move into a perfect heel position. And those are the times you want to be really ready and willing to click. Just those one or two steps in the middle of a game that she's suddenly offering. And that's what's really cool. When the dog says through their offering of the things you've been reinforcing, that doing this precision work is really part of the game. So that's what I think is really, really fun to see. And of course, I use the games to kind of sneak in the different components. So a game of chase could turn into clicking collection as soon as I start to slow down.

Or a game of catch me if you can, where I might use a bit of opposition reflex will turn into the dog really putting some lift and energy into that first step off and heel. So the dog is viewing these components as part of that fun game again. And all of the components, whether they're the game pieces or whether they're the precision and accuracy pieces, they're all getting heavily reinforced and rewarded. So I can get both that physical criteria, the technical criteria, and a dog that thinks that this is just all one big game. So that's kind of how I look at it. And because both of those pieces are super important, I don't think I would want one without the other. I mean, certainly you don't want this enthusiastic, bouncy, out-of-control dog without that precision and accuracy. And that precision and accuracy really just isn't the picture that I have in my mind of beautiful heel work without all of that enthusiasm and joy. So I want to make sure that in my program I'm bringing them both together, but training them kind of separately. That's interesting. It's kind of a different approach. Yeah. I think a lot of people want both those things, and maybe they're just putting it together in a slightly different way. But I really like it when the dog says, oh, oh, this gets rewarded too. And, oh, I really like doing this just as much as I like the game aspect of it. Because it's, you know, even though they're rewarded separately, the dog learns to bring those two things together. You know, they say everything bleeds in training. One piece of criteria sometimes will bleed into another piece of criteria. One action will bleed into another. One behavior will bleed into another. Those things that are reinforced will bleed into each other. And this is an area where you want that. Some areas you don't want that. This is an area where you really do want that. We talked a little bit in there about obedience versus freestyle. And I'm curious, how does the heel work you want in freestyle compare to what somebody might want for the obedience ring? What are some of the similarities or differences? In both sports, obviously, we want that lift, that animation and that focus, the precision. In freestyle, the dog heels on both the right and the left side. So there's some additional training time that needs to be put into that. And even if you don't do freestyle, it's a good idea to train heel work on both sides to help build symmetry in muscle development. And I think more and more handlers are starting to do that.

In freestyle, we teach heel work as a specific place in relation to the handler while standing. So there are no default sits in freestyle. In obedience, there seems to be a lot of emphasis on the sit in heel. And when you think about it, though, when heeling, I would guess that maybe 90% of the time the dog is actually on all fours standing. So I think it's important in training to separate out the sit in heel from the stand in heel from the moving heel. They're all very different components with very different criteria. And it's easy to start to lump them together in our training. And I think that's oftentimes to the detriment of some of our heel work, the overall wholeness of our heel work. If we spend too much time on that sit in heel, sit in heel, getting into sit in heel, we may not be spending an appropriate amount of time on teaching the dog where he should be when he's standing in relation to our body and when he's moving in relation to our body. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. I think that that's kind of an interesting point because you're right. I see a lot of people practice, especially that setup, right? The setup is huge. In freestyle, the other thing is that we heel in a variety of directions, not just forward. So we'll go sideways or laterally. We will be backing in heel or backing in right heel. In obedience, the dog generally is always propelling themselves forward, whereas in freestyle, the dog learns that the handler may move in any direction and that their job is to stay in position no matter what that direction is. And while, you know, we do see more and more obedience handlers seeing the value of that teaching multidirectional heel work, it's not required in the obedience ring the same way it is in freestyle. So it's something that freestylers spend a lot of time on, whereas I think obedience trainers don't spend quite the amount of time on it that we have to in freestyle. So I think that gives the dog a much better understanding of where that position is. I train it. I think most freestylers, well, maybe not all, but I know I train heel work as a stationary position in relation to the handler. It's not a moving skill for me to start, for my dog to start. The staying with me is a byproduct of the movement. So if my dog understands that she should be at my left side or at my right side with her shoulder at my pant seam, then if I take a step backwards and she finds enough value in being there, she's going to work to get there and stay there. If I step sideways, she's going to work to get there and stay there.

If I step forward, if I pivot, wherever my leg goes, she's going to work hard to stay there. But I think some handlers skip the step of building value in the position in relation to the handler and spend more time on teaching the setup, the sit, or teaching forward movement. And I think they would have those things if the reinforcement, the time, the energy was spent in teaching the dog to find value in just staying in the position stationary before we start adding a lot of movement. And then teaching the dog to move in more than one direction. Because I think that generalizes what we're trying to teach them, that this is the place we want you to be. This is Disneyland. This is the sweet spot. This is everything good happens here. And you only have to do one thing. You don't have to think about moving forward. You don't have to think about moving sideways. You don't have to think about a pivot. All you have to think about is being right here at my side. I use only a single cue for all of my heel work, whether I'm going backwards or whether I'm going forwards or whether I'm doing a lateral side pass or pivoting. It's all the same cue because it's all the same behavior to the dog. And I think that might be a little bit different than what many obedience handlers train. I think a lot of time is spent on forward moving heel work and on the setup. So I think that's something people will see a little bit differently in freestyle training. I could certainly see how teaching the dog the concept of heel work from that perspective of sticking with the handler rather than necessarily about a specific direction or what have you. I could see how that would be really valuable regardless of the sport. To me, I think it simplifies the skill for the dog. It totally simplifies the skill. And in freestyle, again, we have a lot of cues in freestyle. I'm, we're constantly saying, oh my God, I'm running out of cues. To be able to have all of those behaviors, backing in heel, pivots in heel, side passes in heel, forward heel, in heel, forward 360s, to have all of those behaviors be a single cue. I think that really clarifies it for the dog. And it makes it so much easier on both the dog and the handler. The dog doesn't have to learn all of these different cues. And what are the behaviors that they attach to those? They need to learn one cue and one skill. So I think it, I think it really simplifies it and clarifies it for the dog.

Now, if I understand correctly, you know, one additional piece there that, that maybe you didn't get into so much is just the value that you place on kind of teaching the dog to really listen to a verbal and freestyle. And not be cuing so much of your body language. Can you talk a little bit about that? Kind of why it's important and how you work on it? Yeah. You know, no matter what, our dogs are always going to cue off of our bodies to some extent. And even if you have strong verbal cues, they do look to our bodies for information. So in freestyle, we want our verbal cues to override the value of what's happening with our bodies. And so that takes a very strong reinforcement history for verbal cues. And it takes a very specific process or protocol to teach those verbal cues. So, so I may want to use my body, my arms, my legs, how I tilt my head to interpret the music, to basically dance to the music or convey a story through a skit. I want my dog to be able to ignore what I'm doing with my body and favor what I'm cueing verbally. I want my dog to, I want it to appear as if my dog is performing of her own accord. I don't want the audience to see my cues as that, you know, that can really disrupt kind of the magic that we're trying to present. We're trying to show that the dog is not just a willing participant, but is actually initiating parts of this dance. And that's really the magic of freestyle is when those cues are hidden, when you can't tell that the dog is being cued and it appears as if he's initiating these behaviors. That to me is, is really the magic of freestyle. That's what I want to portray out there. So, so in getting that, if I, if I really want that, if I need my dog to really respond to my verbal cues, I need him to, I need to count on his response to those verbal cues. I need to follow a very specific protocol that's going to help her truly learn the meaning of those, those cues. I think that for the most part, handlers make the assumption that if they're saying it, the dog is learning it. Or if they make their hand cue smaller and smaller, the dog will take the information from what we're saying, rather than, you know, that little bit of a hand cue that's left. And I, that's just often not true. Uh, and we know that by the number of times we say things and our dog just looks at us like what? And it's not until we provide some measure of body cueing that they say, oh, oh, it was this, this is what you wanted. So, so they, they'll certainly pick up meanings of certain words that way and phrases over time.

You know, you want to go for a walk, you ready to get your ball and, and even obedience cues. Yes, they will understand those to a certain degree, but I don't have the time or luxury to assume that they will learn it either on their own or using a less efficient method. I mean, I, like I said, I really need to count on that, that response in the ring. Otherwise my performance is, is just not going to appear polished. Uh, if my dog misses a cue in a freestyle routine, the music keeps playing. I can't give the hand cue then and hope she does it right because I've already lost the opportunity to showcase that behavior. I've already lost the opportunity to have it match the phrasing in the music. So having strong verbal cues is imperative to the freestyler if they want to put out a really polished routine. And again, we want those cues to be hidden. We don't want it to look like I'm, I'm showing my dog that he needs to spin. I want my dog to spin at a point in the music because the music moved him to spin or, or it looks like the music moved him to spin. Not that I'm actually cuing him to spin. So I, I, and in that same vein, I need to proof my cues against my own body movement because I might be doing something totally different. Um, you know, I might be moving my arm in an opposite direction of the way I want him to spin. So, uh, I've got to proof those cues against not only the distractions like we normally proof in training, but I'm going to have to give my verbal cue and make my body do something weird and reinforce my dog for choosing what I said over what I did. So that's a little bit of added training in terms of, of cueing for freestylers. Um, and then as well, I, I, freestylers teach choreographed body movements as new cues. So if I know I'm going to use my body in a certain way, I'm going to spin a certain direction. I'm going to put my leg up this way or whatever. I can actually teach my dog that that movement, even though it's not a lure like or a leading action, that movement, um, means to do something. It is a cue to do something, but it's not being used as a leading cue. Like if I were putting my hand out in a circle to get my dog to spin, but that's a whole nother podcast. That's, that's freestyle, not heel work. So, right, right. I know you have a class coming up on this stuff in October. Can you just share a little bit on kind of what you're planning to cover there? Uh, what level of classes is a foundation is intermediate problem solving, and maybe a little bit about what skills someone should have. If they're interested in taking it. Yeah.

Um, in a sense, it's a foundation class. However, it's going to be most suited to teams where the dog always already has some understanding and has some reinforcement history of being near or in heel position in relation to the handler. They don't have to have strong healing behaviors. They don't have to have perfect heel work by any stretch of the imagination. But if they have started on their heel work skills, and they want to get more out of their training and more out of their dog, they want more joy and lift and yeah, precision. We're going to go over precision and accuracy as well. But, uh, if, if the picture they see in their head of a beautiful healing dog is not what they're getting out of their dog in training, then this would be a great class for them. We are going to go over some precision and accuracy. We are going to, um, go through a lot of different ways there are to build, build joy in our heel work training. And then we're going to be using a lot of reinforcement history and value in each of those pieces to allow the dog to bring that together. We're also going to talk a lot about appropriate expectations in your heel work. You know, there are certain limitations. If you have a certain picture of what you want and your dog structure dictates that that just isn't going to happen, we still want to get the, the prettiest and best performance out of your dog that we can get. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the bulldog is not going to heal the same way that a border collie or a Belgian is going to heal. So, so we do want to take those things into account, but there's still things that we can do to work towards that picture or, or build a more dramatic, uh, style of heel work for your dog. You mean a bulldog can't get quite that same lift? Not quite. Not quite. Aw, poor guys. Yeah. Doesn't mean they can't be beautiful heel work. I just saw the most gorgeous bulldog. Actually, it was a mix. I think there was some French bulldog in it and there was something. And oh my gosh, that dog just had such spark in his heel work. And, and, and it was beautiful. It was just gorgeous. No, it wasn't a turf and no, it wasn't a board. It was just, but for that dog, it was just gorgeous healing. And I enjoyed that as much as I enjoy seeing some of, some of the dogs whose structure is more conducive to the type of healing that we picture in our heads as being beautiful and joyful. One of the things on your syllabus that caught my eye was that you're planning, including some information on reinforcement strategies.

I know that that's kind of a big topic, but what, what are some of the common reinforcement strategies someone might want to use in working on healing? And maybe a little on head decide which of them you want to use when? Something to note about reinforcement strategies that I, I think people aren't fully aware of, or, or don't fully grasp about why we use different reinforcement strategies. Reinforcement strategies are a way to alter future behavior and not the behavior you are currently rewarding. So for example, if I feed with my dog's head slightly away from me, it's not an effort to lure her bum in, but rather to get her to start thinking about where reinforcement happens for the next reps. So if I, so if I reward the dog, let's say just for friends, if I reward the dog for coming into front by tossing between my legs, I've already clicked the behavior. I've already said you are getting a reward for what you just did, but by tossing the treat or the toy between my legs, she's more likely to line up straight and in a way that she can efficiently get to reward faster on the next rep. And that benefits future behavior. So if I want my dog say to take the weight off of her front and drive from her rear for heel work, I'm likely going to have her reach up and forward a little for her reward. Maybe, maybe give a little jump up to get her reward. So she starts thinking about that on the next few steps of heel work and begins to think about rewards coming, rewards coming. Where is it? Oh, it's going to be up high. She starts to lift herself in preparation for that. And that gives me something I can click. That bit of lift she's offering in preparation to take the next reward gives me my criteria shift. Let's me click that behavior. Even though you kind of design the class thinking about freestyle, would the class still be a good fit for somebody whose primary interest is, you know, obedience or rally? And we talked a little bit about this already, but, you know, how the skills that you value in healing and in the class for freestyle really kind of carry over into those sports? Yeah. Yeah. Just given the things we've kind of talked about, I think that all of those things, any obedience handler or rally handler would like to have those things. So, and especially in rally, the backing up. In backing up, we want that skill to be a very thoughtful, deliberate action on the dog's part.

And I think that in rally, sometimes we'll see handlers band-aiding that a little bit by rushing backwards in an effort to use the dogs, wanting to stay with them, but not really working on the precision aspect of that. So, for rally skills such as the side pass, they do the side passes in rally and they do backing up in heel and rally. Absolutely, this class is going to benefit those. In obedience, again, we're really looking, freestylers are really looking for the same attributes in heel work that obedience handlers are looking for. So, in many ways, a lot of these things I would totally, and matter of fact, when I worked in obedience, these are a lot of the same skills that I did when I worked in obedience and rally. The only place where there may not be carry over, and of course, this is always added later anyway, would be the sits and heel, the automatic sits, the setups and the sit. But that's going to be added later anyway. The way I train heel work, it's not something I add at the start. It's actually going to benefit those obedience folks who maybe have centered their heel work around that setup or the sit and heel. This is going to actually solidify your dog's understanding of what it means to keep their body in relation to yours while they're standing in heel and while they're moving forward in heel and while they're moving in any direction in heel. So, yeah, I think that could definitely benefit obedience and rally handlers. So, we talked a bunch about the October class, but I think you have a few other things you're working on, right? Anything you care to mention? Yeah, just a few. I'm still working on the healing class too. So, yeah, I think I just scheduled with you some webinars. So, I'm not sure when they're scheduled for exactly, but there was a lot of interest in the mimicry classes that I did. So, we thought we would kind of put that into a nutshell and let people experience what that protocol is all about and try it a little bit with their dog. So, I'll be doing a webinar on mimicry. And because my interest is musical freestyle and rally free, and I get a lot of questions from people about, you know, what is it? How do you get started? How is it different? So, I'm going to do a webinar on musical freestyle and rally free, how they're related to each other, some of the skills and behaviors that we use, how to start training for that. So, I'm really looking forward to that one because, of course, that's kind of my passion. And I have another class. Let's see. I think it's in December maybe. A new class for me also, Mission Accomplished.

And that class is going to focus on finishing up and completing all of those dozens of behaviors that we all start and never finish. And that might be because maybe we're stuck. We don't know how to finish it. Maybe it's just because we love that acquisition phase. We love starting new behaviors. And so, we have dozens of new behaviors started, but we can't seem to complete any of them. So, we'll help you get through and complete some of those. So, I'm really looking forward to that class too. And I think it will help a lot of people get over some training humps that they might be experiencing with some behaviors. And so, they just move on because they don't know where to go from there. So, that's going to be a really fun class, I think, too. Not that I've ever done that. Had a behavior that I started. No, none of us. I'm actually pretty good at finishing out behaviors because, you know, freestyle, I have so many behaviors that I could use. I mean, anything I want to train, I could figure out how to use it in freestyle. And so, I always have a motivation usually to finish out a behavior. Or if I've got a theme that I want to use or anything like that. I always have use for the behaviors that I train. And that kind of motivates me to complete them. Still, I'm sure that will be a popular class because I'm sure it's a common problem. To kind of round things out, my last question for everyone these days. What's something you've learned or been reminded of recently when it comes to dog training? You know, I've heard you ask that question before. And so, I knew that was coming up. There was a post, a Facebook post the other day from one of our Finzi family members. Esther Zimmerman talked about her golden and her golden starting to refuse some cues or just not seeming right in training. And she talked about some of the steps she went through in her own mind. Oh gosh, I'm going to get teary-eyed about this. Oh dear. About how her dog's welfare and listening to what her dog was telling her. And not assuming that the dog was being stubborn or blowing her off or spiteful. Or any of those things that, you know, we sometimes hear. Or maybe we even sometimes think that in our own training. And that by really considering our dog's point of view and why they might not be responding the way they normally do. That really hits home with me. And gosh, this is horrible, Melissa. Aw. So, I think I know the post you're talking about where she was like, you know, the first day your dog doesn't seem quite into training. You know, okay, well, we just won't do this today and put them away.

And then the next day they're still not quite into training. And you're like, hmm, I wonder if there's something wrong. And with the third day it's okay. It's time to go to the sea of bed. Right. And there really was something wrong. And it was just so kind of her the way she talked about this. And, you know, I know we all have that same philosophy. But sometimes we need reminding of that. My dog has had health issues. She's eight years old now. And she's had health issues all of her life. And it can be difficult for me to sometimes read whether this is due to discomfort. Is she not feeling well? Is it? But, you know, in the end it really doesn't matter what the reason is. What matters is that we take the dog into account that we listen to what they're telling us through their behavior. And that we don't make assumptions about their motivation. They can't tell us when they're feeling, you know, not right, not good. And it might just be a little thing. But continuing to train when our animals are not feeling up to par. If you consider, you know, how do you feel when you go into work and you woke up with a stuffy nose and a headache or a migraine? You're not going to be at your best and you're likely going to resent that workplace environment because you have to be there. So it just it just reminded me to to take my dog into account and listen more to her when she's giving me some of these signals. Sorry about that. I didn't mean to go into soap opera mode. No, you're fine. I think it's a great reminder. I think that's really, really important. And we can lose sight of that because, you know, we have goals in our training. We have goals when we when we are working in these performance sports. These aren't our dog's goals. These aren't our dog's goals. And thank goodness they're willing to to do this with us. So it's up to us to kind of protect them in these environments, in these training situations where they may not be feeling all that well. So thank you, Esther, for reminding me of that fact. So keeping track of track of my dog, my dog's health and how she's feeling during a training session. That her and Amy Cook, Amy Cook has has really changed a lot of my perspectives this last couple of years in training. So so a big shout out to Amy Cook on on her work with emotions and training as well. So awesome. Well, thank you so much, Julie. I'm so glad you could come back on the podcast. I am glad, too. It was really, really fun. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. And thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week, this time with Julie Daniels to talk building canine confidence.

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.