E121: 리즈 레이드로우(Liz Laidlaw) - 예절 그 이상: 기본을 넘어선 훈련

He's super fun to train. So we get on really well. And I always find myself wanting to do stuff with him. He's one of those dogs. I have to admit, though, we've probably dabbled more than we've focused. I enjoy the training process so much. And trials are many, many hours away from where we live now. But he's always up to try anything. And we've trialed in rally obedience, agility, tracking and herding when he was younger. But these days, we're focused on online titling opportunities like team and tribal and rally free. Awesome. What kind of originally got you into dog training? Well, I always loved dogs. Like, I know we all say that. But I always loved dogs. So as soon as I moved out and had rented my own place, you know, the very first thing I did, I'm like, yeah, I can get a dog. So that was, yeah, that was back in 1996, I guess it was, but knowing nothing about it at the time. So what I did was just call around the local pounds. And that's what we call the dog shelters here in Australia, the local pound, to see who had puppies. And one had a litter of German Shepherd Cross Border Collie puppies. So I just went to have a look, right? That's what you do. Just went to have a quick look. Anyway, long story short, I left there that day with two puppies, litter mates. And I'd chosen them by the simple method of opening up the gate and grabbing the first two that pushed their way out. What could possibly go wrong? But luckily, all was well. Tyler and Jessie were great dogs. But having two really active puppies together, it definitely made me decide that dog school was in our future urgently. So off we went to the local puppy school. And from there, we went on to the local obedience club. And that's where it all started. That's awesome. Was it positive training from the start? Or what really got you started kind of going down that R-plus journey? It wasn't. I didn't know about positive training at the start. I guess I didn't know about dog training at all at the start. I was probably like everyone else. I'd grown up with a pet dog, but we'd done no training at all with the dog I had as a child. My parents weren't interested in animals particularly. So I think what got me started on the positive reinforcement type journey, well, it was actually probably a combination of two things. So one is that in my head, I was already not quite loving the way I was being taught to train. And ironically, because I guess I fundamentally didn't want to be yunking my dog around, I was really, really bad at it.

My timing was because I would always be putting off doing the corrections, hoping that I just didn't have to do it and hoping it would all magically fix itself. So I was not a great traditional trainer, which is what I was being originally taught to do. So there was that part of me already that wished that there was some other way. But then, you know how there's always that one trigger point? There was one night at obedience. It was really, really cold. And my dog, Jessie, refused to lie down. I asked her to drop and she didn't lie down. And first thing in my head, because I'm just a bit of a sook myself, was, oh, it's just too cold. I wouldn't put my tummy on the ground either. I was okay, but the instructor was not okay with that. And, yeah, he sort of took her off me and roared at her and forced her to go down. And she yelped and sort of fell in a heap. And that was it. I was done. So I asked around to see what else there was to do with dogs because I decided that that wasn't for me. And I found a local agility club. And luckily the head instructor there, he was really enthusiastic. He'd just found out all about this new thing called clicker training. And I was hooked. And that was where it started for me. That's awesome that, you know, you were lucky because you looked around and that just happened to be what you fell on to. It was really lucky. And the instructor was actually from, I'm in Australia. And he'd found out all this information from the UK at that time. Because I think it probably would have been relatively new still at that time. So I think I was really lucky to just fall into where there were people that already knew the things that I didn't know I wanted to know. But I did. How would you describe kind of how you train these days? Well, I guess I have to give a shout out to Denise Fenzie here. She's taught me well in that space, I think. Because honestly, my philosophy these days is pretty much just to train the dog in front of you. So do what's kind and makes sense for that dog. Or if you're training someone else and their dog, do what's kind and makes sense for them as a team. For ages, I think I had so many rules and regulations in my head about training and the shoulds and the shouldn'ts. But I think after a while, you just relax into it and get more comfortable with just trying things. See how the dog feels about it. Does it work? Is he happy? Am I happy? Great. So I think those are actually my biggest rules now. And everything else I know sort of just sits in and around that. Absolutely. I like that way of thinking about it. Does it work? Does the dog like it? Do I like it?

Then we're good. Yeah. Well, I mean, big picture, that's kind of all that matters. That's what all the technical details are getting us towards in the first place. So I try and start with the big picture. And it helps me not get too bogged down in the details, I guess. I kind of want to transition a little bit here. Because I was hoping we could talk a bit about some of the topics you included in the book you put together for the Pet Professionals Program. So that first chapter talks about the types of training. It gets into classical conditioning, operate conditioning, and observational learning. Can you just talk a little bit about what each of those are? Maybe why understanding them kind of matters? Yeah, sure. Okay. So operating conditioning is probably the one that most people know about and deliberately use, I guess, in training. So it's those principles that are happening when we're training and we see the ABCs in action. So, you know, if I had a puppy, I might move my hand up from his nose, which is like the antecedent. Then he sits his bottom down on the ground. So that's the behavior. And then as a consequence, he'll get the treat that I'm giving him. So that's like a really nice, simple example. But basically, in operant conditioning, the dog, like in my mind, the important part of it is that the dog is voluntarily choosing a behavior. So to try and get the outcome that they want, for example, the treat. Whereas in classical conditioning is a bit different. It's all about associations, basically. So it's the Pavlov's dog experiments that most people have probably heard of. It's when one thing that originally had no meaning to the dog, it's consistently paired up with another thing like food. That definitely has some meaning for the dog, inherent value to the dog. And so that first thing ends up as what we call a conditioned stimulus. And that means that now when that happens, when that's presented, the dog has a similar response to that that they did to the food or the other primary reinforcer. And they don't choose that response. It just happens. It's been classically conditioned. And like Pavlov's dogs, they didn't choose to salivate when they heard that metronome sound or that bell sound. It just happened. It had been classically conditioned and they didn't have much choice about it. And so I think because of that, classical conditioning is incredibly powerful. We probably don't purposefully use it in our training as much as perhaps we could or definitely not as much as we are aware of using other types of learning.

And I guess I can't go into too much detail here or we will be here all day. But in the book, I talked briefly about a lot of people have talked about or have heard about Bob Bailey saying that Pavlov is always on our shoulders. And I think that's really important for us as trainers to really internalize and understand. And because classical conditioning is always in play, no matter what we might think we're doing, it's happening there in the background anyway, in multiple ways. And I think unless we're aware of that, things can catch us by surprise. And a lot of the things that, especially if you happen to be new to training or new to positive reinforcement training, there's things that catch us by surprise and seem to have come out of the blue. But they really don't. There is actually, if you think back through it, once you understand a bit more about how dogs learn, a lot of things are a lot less surprising. And I think that's helpful as a trainer to know that. Observational learning, I only covered that very briefly in the book since the book was designed mainly for pet dog trainers. And that way of learning is a lot less common there, I guess. But FDSA has whole classes on things like mimicry. Julie Flannery is incredible with some of the stuff that she has been able to teach people to teach their dogs to do just through observational learning. It's incredibly cool, I think. And also, I guess it's going on again all the time in the dog's lives. They're observing what's going on around them. They might be learning from other dogs. They're most certainly learning from what they observe of us as we go around through the day. So I think overall, as trainers, it's just helpful to know and be aware of the different types of learning and how they work, simply because they are in play, whether we realize it or not. Dogs are always learning in one way or another. So if we know what's going on, I figure we just have a chance of stacking the odds in our favor, pretty much. I like that. The odds always in your favor. Yeah, that's right. And that way we don't have to be too bossy about it. If we're stacking the odds in our favor, chances are it's going to come out the way we were thinking anyway. Right, right. So chapter two then kind of gets into different ways to actually get the behaviors that we're looking for. And you talk a little bit about learning, a little bit about shaping, talk about capturing, you talk about prompting. I think most of our listeners probably have a basic understanding of some of the differences here.

But can you kind of talk us through maybe how you decide which option to use when you're training your own dogs? Oh, good question. So with my own dogs, I think I actually make different choices with each dog as well as making different choices depending on what I'm trying to teach them. So Ludo is a really calm, laid back, thinking kind of guy. He really enjoys the process of training and learning, same as I do. So for him, I use more shaping as well as various prompts like platforms and other tools like that because he knows and loves those games. And we can get places pretty quickly doing that and have fun. Whereas Lacey is more of a think with your feet kind of dog. She, yeah, she doesn't enjoy the cognitive processes quite so much as Ludo does. And she's also got a trickier background. Since I didn't have her as a puppy, she can be unconfident at times, lacking in self-confidence. So she feels safer and a lot more comfortable when things are very straightforward. So with her, I tend more towards luring and lots of strategic reward placement to kickstart behaviours without her even really truly realising what's going on. And from then on, the process is easier for her. So that's why I make different choices for her. Prompts are good for her too because having a physical object, like prompts like physical objects in the environment are really helpful for her because that's really clear on how she can interact with that thing. Ricky is the opposite of my other two in terms of energy and speed. He's fast and he tends to stress up quickly at times. He can get frustrated and bitey. So for him, I'm happy to include some luring as well as basically all the rest for him. I find when I'm training him, I need to keep the flow, keep things going. And definitely I need to avoid putting him in a position where he has to guess too much. Ludo will get away with that. If I have poorly planned or set up a session, but not Ricky. So that's, I guess, yeah, the short answer there is that it depends on the dog and the behaviour, what I choose to use. But it really is a combination of all of them. I think you can set yourself up more for success when you're thoughtful about how you're going to approach teaching. Keep the learner in mind. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's kind of like what you were talking about earlier with training the dog in front of you because you know you're on dogs. You can really kind of make smart choices. Yeah. And that did take me a while, especially for Lacey. I've not had a dog who thinks the way she thinks. And it really has taken me a while.

In a way, there's a reason why my daughter trains her too because I actually, it's not my preferred way of training. I don't have quite as much fun doing this stuff her way as I do doing it, you know, Ludo's way. That's just my personal preference as a trainer. But at least she's taught me what she does need. She's taught me how she can learn and how she really struggles to learn. And that's been really good information. It's broadened out what I do. So how do you take that then if you're teaching someone else to train their own dog? Are there different things that you consider when kind of choosing which technique you want to use then? And if so, can you kind of talk us through that a little bit? Yeah, for sure. So when I'm teaching someone else how to train their dog, it's no longer just about the dog. So when I'm making decisions for me and my own dogs, I'm really looking, I guess I internally know what I can do. So I'm just focused on the dog and how they need me to express that to them. But that's different. I need to take into account the person on the other end of the lead when I'm training, working with other people and their dogs. I've got to look at their needs and experience and what they want or what they're comfortable with. I guess while a lot of people, like they do end up loving training and getting a bit addicted and wanting to learn more. But in the first instance, I won't necessarily even mention all those things, let alone try and teach them. We just get started with what matters most, whatever they've come to me for right there and then. Usually a person will come to you with specifically wanting help with a particular thing or a few things. So we start there and I guess I test what will work for that person and that dog with their coordination and their ability to get good timing. And then I let it evolve from there, I guess, and just be led by their progress and their enthusiasm for more. And I just add extras in as we go. So one area that I think that a lot of people, especially positive trainers, struggle when it comes to dog training and teaching other people especially is kind of dealing with unwanted behaviors. And I know you went into that a little bit in the book. So, you know, what are some of the options there? Luckily, there are still quite a few options for positive trainers. So I think that's especially true when we're thinking about day-to-day living with dogs as opposed to the sort of more specific training that we might do for sports and that kind of thing.

So some good examples, I guess, that I use all the time include management, you know, where you're simply just managing either the environment or the dog so that the unwanted behavior just simply can't occur. And incompatible behaviors. So you're teaching a behavior that's incompatible with the unwanted behavior. So they can't physically be doing both at the same time. They're both really useful, especially for around the house, everyday type things. So, and I guess in my mind, I also am quite strongly believing that just because we're trainers doesn't mean we have to train everything, all the things. Because sometimes I find with people when I first start working with them, they want to train everything. They want to train this and train that. And I feel like there are certain things that it just makes more sense to manage, either instead of training them in some cases, like, you know, put up a fence rather than trying to teach your dog to stay in the unfenced yard even when you go to work. That makes sense to me to do that. Or you could be just putting management up as an extra thing while you're putting your training into place. You know, like when we crate train puppies to help with their toilet training. I think management is a huge part of what we do as trainers. To me, it is, you know, I mean, it isn't training, but boy, it really plays into our training in the sense that it helps avoid so many things that you're going to have to fix later. If you don't put it into place. And the book also talks about some options out sort of outside of daily living for handling errors in training. That can be another area where I think as positive trainers, we can feel a bit stuck. In the book, I borrowed a quote from Denise because it always strikes me as being so spot on. I've heard her say multiple times, I think, now, don't just stand there, do something. And I think that's really important. Often what we do is actually probably less important. We could do a bunch of things. We could cheerfully reset the dog, throw a treat and have another go. Or we could help them out, dial the difficulty back a bit until they've shown that they do understand what we want. Or we could just take a moment to reconnect. Often the error has come because we've lost the connection or the engagement that we thought we had. Because I think our dogs, and especially our more sensitive dogs, they've definitely taught me this, that they feel it more than we realise. If we handle errors by suddenly freezing up or going all quiet and still, that can feel like, I mean, I don't know the science of this.

But to me, they perceive it as a kind of a social punishment to them. You know, like you've suddenly frozen them out, like if a friend would do that to you. And obviously, likely, that's not what we were going for at all. We probably just froze because we go, oh, what do I do? And I know that's definitely been and probably still is a real area of learning for me personally. I do have sensitive dogs. And I also have a tendency to freeze up a bit when I'm unsure what to do in the moment and I've got too much going on in my head. I'm trying to remember what the instructor said and remind my body to move in this new way and keep my connection with the dog all at the same time. Some people seem to find that really easy, but it's something that I have to work at. So my dogs are great at letting me know how it is for them, which definitely helps. But, yeah, I always try and keep Denise's thing in mind. Don't just stand there. Do something. Just move. Do something to get things unstuck and then you can get back on track from there. So a big part of the Pet Professionals program is kind of this idea that dog training can be positive, kind, efficient and still effective. I know you included a chapter in the book on balancing keeping people, dogs and the community at large all happy. And I wanted to ask you why it's really important to kind of think through all three of those elements. Yeah, I think it's important just because, well, we all have to share this big old world of ours. Often our expectations of what's appropriate and not appropriate might be different to another person's. Actually, in fact, I can pretty much guarantee that they'll be different to another person's. And the same as each dog is different. So some will cope fine doing certain things while another dog would be an anxious mess in the exact same scenario. And once you add in all to all of that, that third element of the rest of our community who have to share the same spaces with us, well, I think it's important that we've thought about that. If we don't take the time to think about it, I think our natural tendency is just to be human. We just tend to do what we do, whatever works for us and our dogs. And we maybe don't realize that we're also impacting on other people in what we do. So I think that's why it matters to me to put that thought into it. Can you share some examples of what respecting all three of those elements kind of looks like? Yeah, sure. So I guess I'll give you an example from my own life with dogs. That'll hopefully illustrate it a bit. So I live on acreage out of town now, but I used to live in town.

And at that time I had four dogs. The house was surrounded by neighbors, some of whom had dogs or kids or cats or, well, you name it. It was busy. It was noisy. And it was really important to me that my dogs weren't impacting negatively on other people. So I had to think about what I could do to lessen the possible impacts of living that way with dogs in town. So, I mean, I ended up with a range of management and training things to do. But just to give one example, I made the decision to only walk the dogs two at a time. I noticed when I was walking out and about that sometimes people were overwhelmed by this, you know, vision of four biggish dogs all walking along under the apparent control of one person. So I didn't want to make, even though I knew that, yes, I had everything under control and things were fine. And it would be easy for me to justify to myself that I was fine in doing what I was doing. But I needed to be, I guess, aware of the responses of other people. And so I ended up deciding that, you know, it wasn't fair to expect everybody to work around me because it's not just about me and my dogs and what we want to do. So I made the decision to just take them out two at a time. People are much more comfortable seeing one person with two dogs. It meant, yeah, that I had to go out twice instead of once. I don't think the dogs cared either way as long as they got to go out, although probably they didn't love being left behind. But to me, that's an illustration of the balancing act that we have to think about when it's not just about what we want and what our dogs want. It's also about how that affects the community, I guess, that we're a part of. Yeah, I didn't want it to be that other people in my community were just forced to work around me. I wanted it to be more mutual. So a bit of give and take all around. I think the way I see it, the essence of it is, and I think I said it in the book too, it isn't a set of rigid rules that's limiting our freedom. It doesn't feel like that at all to me. To me, freedom is what you have once you're aware of the world around you because then you can make choices in the moment based on what's best all around for everyone involved. So I think as dog trainers, we're often already pretty good at thinking about what's best for our dog and what's best for our training. And all it is is a little tiny extension of that, just bringing in that broader element as well and asking how is this for everyone? So last three questions here, and these are, you know, it's your first time on the podcast.

So these are the three questions that I used to ask all the time, but it's been a while, so I've had a chance to kind of roll them out. So first up, what's the dog-related accomplishment that you're proudest of? So far, it's probably actually Ludo and the things we've done and learned together. He's a spitz type of dog at Finnish Leppund. He's not a high drive working type of guy. So the things that I learned from my previous dogs didn't necessarily apply there. They let me get away with a lot of things that I didn't realize I was getting away with at the time. And so I've learned so much in the process of training and trialing him about motivation and about training and about caring about the emotions that are built into the things I train and the places we go and the things we do. So I don't know that that's necessarily something to be proud of. I'm proud of him for teaching me all that. But yeah, I think that's the most important thing from dogs that I've had lately. Okay. What is the best piece of training advice that you've ever heard? Oh, I love the importance of reward placement. It's almost kind of ridiculous the amount of mileage you can get out of thoughtful reward placement when you're training. So that's big for me. Oh, and also I had to put this quote from Dr. Amy Cook in the book as well, because it's meant so much to me since I first heard it a few years ago. I was in one of her classes and she said, every time you teach your dog what to do, you also teach her how to feel. And I think that's so important to keep in mind. And not only even when we're training dogs. I think I take the same lesson to heart when I'm helping my daughter with her homework or helping a pet owner with their dog. While I'm teaching them what to do, they're also learning how they feel about this activity and I guess about me too. And that matters a lot, I think. And then final question, who is somebody else in the dog world that you look up to? Oh, man. Well, everybody at FDSA for sure. But rather than name names, I'm probably going to say basically any person who's as conscious of being kind and open-hearted to people as they are to dogs. I really admire that. But I feel like it's so important if we want to be able to teach others and share the things that we've learned. Because to me, that's the way to not only have a better life for all of our dogs, but it'll also sort of get us to a better and kinder world overall. So they're the trainers I admire. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Liz. This has been great. Thank you. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in.

As a reminder, the next couple of weeks, we're going to be chatting with instructors of FDSA's new sister school, the Pet Professionals Program. And we're going to be talking about things like whether playtime puppy class is a good idea and how to handle tricky training situations. 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 Buddy. Audio editing provided by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training. Today's show is brought to you by the pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense