에피소드 04: 셰이드 화이트셀 인터뷰

Well, I always wanted a dog when I was a kid, and I finally got a mixed breed dog, and we did, you know, at that time you did, your training classes were kind of like AKC obedience, and she did really well in her training class, but I couldn't compete with her because she was a mixed breed. So, I always wanted to kind of compete. And then, when I got my first pure red dog, I got interested in Shipson because it's a breed test for the Shepherds, and I started really getting into it and getting titles on the dogs. So, that kind of morphed into people asking me to give training lessons to them, and once I put a Shipson one on a dog, then I figured that I could at least start training other people. So, that's kind of what morphed into becoming a professional dog trainer. I've heard you talk before a little bit about your positive training journey and kind of what got you started, but can you kind of share it for the audience? Yeah. In bite work, sports, and in Shipson and French ring, you're normally dealing with pretty strong dogs, physically and mentally, that really like to bite. So, they have lots of reinforcement history for biting, whether that is, you know, the ball or the tug or the bad guy. And there's a culture of correction in the sport when it comes to getting control, because these dogs are really strong-willed. There's, you know, and eventually you have to get obedience around that, high-value reinforcer, and there's a lot of correction involved. And when I first started doing Shipson, I definitely was no different than anyone else. I used a lot of correction with my dogs. But I really started breaking down the behaviors much more than anyone I knew at the time, teaching them at lower arousal, breaking it down in much tinier steps. And then I realized that I could use the helper as a reward. So, for instance, hey dog, heal two steps, and then I'll send you to the helper for a bite. And then I really started questioning all the correction, because that worked so well. And so, I kind of started out as a trainer using a lot of correction, and then figuring out and gradually getting more positive as I went to what I am right now. And I've seen some of your videos. I mean, you really truly managed to get that same precision and that beauty in the performance that I think most people are looking for. And, you know, I know from talking to you, you really do do it completely positive. So, it's really impressive. I think there's this thing that sometimes, I remember in Shipson, even when I used correction,

we always said, you know, we use the ball for a reward, but we can't get as precise behaviors when you do that. And that was a lot of argument against using a lot of motivation. And I always was like, well, I want both. I want the motivation, I want the strongness, and then I want the preciseness. So, even when I was figuring out how to do it without correction, I was like, I don't want to sacrifice anything. I still want really high-quality behaviors. And since Reiki took me to nationals, now I'm not satisfied with anything other than as good as I can get. So, yeah, it's been a journey. That's a cliche thing, but it's definitely been a journey to figure out how to do that. So, how would you describe your training philosophy now? Right now, I feel like I haven't said no to any of my dogs for like four years. No, seriously. I'm really currently most interested in what the dog is feeling about our training session and what their emotional state is. That's been my task. Glunzi's been definitely my teacher in that way because I really need to know what his emotional state is in bite work. They'll tell you way before the behavior skills break down, either loss of focus, stressing, whatever that looks like. So, that's currently what I'm really into is trying to figure out how the dog feels and what that tells me of my training plan. And that builds into, that kind of segues into creating the toy play as a reinforcement. So many of us use toys with our dogs because we realize how joyful they can get with that and how excited. But we could get much more efficient training done if we created more of a thinking reinforcement, if we had some rules in there like bring the toy back. When they all of a sudden don't drop the toy, they're not being belligerent. They're pretty much telling us our rate of reinforcement wasn't up as much as it should be in the training plan. So, also, when we use toys to teach stuff, it gives us ways to work through high arousal situations like we're going to encounter an agility or bite work or anything else the dog wants. I mean, really, you know, a high arousal situation for my dogs is going from the car to the beach. Which, that's a situation where they have to be on leash and it is none too fun if I can't get them to walk calmly from point A to point B. So, the toy play reinforcement gives us ways to work through that. I'd say that one is my most positively trained dog to date since he's my youngest and I bred him. So, I've known him since, you know, minute one. I feel like sometimes I've gotten so positive in my teaching that most cases where we use negative

punishment, I look at that and I'm like, we could teach that without even. that. So, I feel like I've swung really far in a very positive way in my training. So, which is good, you know. And just in case anybody's not familiar with the four quadrants, negative punishment is the removal of something the dog doesn't like, right? Exactly. And we as positive trainers tend to use that when we don't know what else to do or when we're having a dog that's doing behaviors we don't like, that's accepted for us to go there. And it can be good. There's still some fallout sometimes. But it can be, you know, a polishing technique. So, I was super lucky. I got to shadow you at FDSA training camp last year. I have to say, like, I definitely learned a ton following you around for a couple of days. And I appreciated your technical skills. Because I don't have any. Well, it was a pleasure to get to follow you around. I feel like I learned so, so much. And, you know, some of my favorites were just listening to you talk about play and how you structure some of that. And, you know, just some of the takeaways that I got at camp. Definitely, I brought them home and worked with my own dog differently. And it really has had an impact. Well, good. Yeah. So, it's been everything from play to location-specific markers kind of, you know, you ran the gambit, I think, at camp last year. And it seems like, or at least seems to me, that there's a theme that kind of runs through all of your FDSA classes and all of the talks that I've heard you give. And that's really this idea of communicating as clearly as possible with your dogs. So, do you mind just sharing a little bit why you feel that's so critical? I, no matter how you train, communicating as clearly as possible is so important because 99.9% of our problems are due to the unclarity of our teaching. And all of our problems with dogs, I mean, it's really our problem. It's not theirs. Go away when you look at the clarity or more accurately than not clarity of your teaching. When your communication is clear, arousal issues go down, frustration from your learner dog goes down, and you get more confident, fluent behaviors from them. And this holds true over trialing, over living with them, over everything, just to be as clear as possible and predictable. That goes into predictability, too. So, no matter what method you do, that is just so important, I think, obviously, since I talk about it. So, I think one really good example of that is the work you've done with location-specific markers. Do you mind just briefly kind of explaining what that means and kind of how you use them?

You know, markers are such a good thing. And people are exploring them and figuring out that it's really nice to bridge what behavior your dog's doing to get the reward. Tell the dog where to collect the reinforcement. Like, technically, I want a different marker that means collect it from my hands, whether that's food or toy. And I want a different marker that means collect it away from there, whether it's go pick up the toy on the ground or whether I'm going to throw the toy. And, again, it's just that clarity. And I noticed with my own dogs, if I had a different marker word for strike the tug out of my hand versus I'm going to throw it, the dog stopped mugging me. They stopped looking for where the toy was all the time when I was asking for behaviors because they knew that I would tell them exactly how to get the reinforcement. And, again, it just goes back to the clarity. So location-specific markers is just the dog knows exactly where to go, and they don't have to be checking where the toy is or the food. Is the food in your pocket? Is it over there in the dish? Because you're going to tell them. So they can put 100% of their attention to figuring out what behavior you want them to do because they can trust that you're going to tell them where the reinforcement is. Yeah. I think a lot of trainers tend to rely really heavily on one or two training methods. So somebody may lean really heavily on shaping, while somebody else tends to mostly lure behaviors or throw a ball or whatever. I know that in the current session at FDSA, which will be current when this goes live, you're going to be teaching a class to help handlers better use all their tools. Do you mind just talking a little bit about what that class is, what it's about? Yeah. So I think the more we know and feel comfortable about all the positive ways we can train our dog, the more effective we're going to be as a teacher. And then if we know how to lure and we know how to shape and we know how to capture, we can then be more informed about what technique that we want to use to teach a certain behavior. I think we all could use a little more knowledge on how to get behaviors on cue, how to name it, how to get it on stimulus control, whether that behavior is lured or shaped. And the one constant that I know I always struggle with is timing. Click, pause, treat. And I see many students coming through the academy who are great at wanting a technique, but they're kind of unsure of other techniques. And I'd like to help out with that. I'd like to, you know, teach that and help people figure out what effective technique they want to use

to teach their dog a behavior. Now, does the class have specific behaviors that you try and work on through the course of the class? Are the students going to pick their own behavior and use different techniques to accomplish it? What kind of how have you structured? I'm going to have like a couple, you know, like I'll give a couple examples of what they can do. They can use behaviors their dog already knows or they can pick new ones. But it's really more about like we can, for instance, go to a map behavior. We can lure that. We can shape that. We can capture that. So it's not so much about having behaviors already for your dog, but about how the different, explaining the different ways of getting there. So it's good if your dog has some behaviors already on cue. But so they can be an experienced dog with a handler that just wants to learn more about it, or it can be a dog that's brand new to stuff. So when you're working with your own dogs, how do you decide which technique to use? I assume you're probably better with all of them than, say, me. Well, it's a steep learning curve for everything. But how do you decide whether you want to lure something or shape something or capture something? Like how do you pick which method to use when you're teaching something? Well, I have to say when I first started training, I was a big lure. And then I came late to shaping. I really had no idea. And my evolution in my last, I don't know, six, seven years has been really getting better at shaping. And I'd be the first to say I'm not the greatest at it, but I'm getting better. So for my own dogs, shaping and capturing shaped behaviors, like the dog offering a completed shaped behavior, that's my preferred technique at this point. If I can communicate to the dog effectively through shaping and then they can choose the behavior, I always teach that way first. I think it creates stronger and then more confident and faster behaviors out of the dog. But I can't always figure out how to communicate via shaping. And so if I can't figure that out, I'll lure the behavior. I have no issue luring it. But I'll then always put it on what I call capturing. And so even if it's a lured behavior, I'll eventually want to have the dog offer it. And then it becomes a strong shaped behavior, so to speak. So to round things out, I have three more short questions that I've asked everyone so far at the tail end of the interview. So first, what's the dog-related accomplishment that you are proudest of? That's such a hard one because every single dog has had their accomplishments that I'm really proud of with individual dogs.

So I don't think of it so much as what I've done but more of what me and the dog have done. So Shutzen is tracking, obedience, and protection, and you get 100 in each. And he got 99 out of 100 in tracking, the tracking phase. He got 95 out of 100 in obedience, and he got 96 out of 100 in protection. And that's a pretty good score for a young dog because in the one and the two in Shutzen, we're really kind of just seeing, you know, what does he know, how's my training going, and you kind of get your three. And then if you want to compete, you compete nationally, and that's where you start to get your good scores. So I'm excited for what the future holds for us. So what is the best piece of training advice that you have ever heard? So it sounds cliche, but listen to the dog. I'm so into listening to what the dog says at this point. It holds me accountable in my training. It holds me accountable to reinforcement. And I feel like many people say listen to the dog, but I think we could be doing a lot more of it. And the last one, so who is someone else in the dog world that you look up to? That's always such a hard question as well. I've been training dogs for 20 years. There's too many people that I have too many to name. I've learned so many things from each and every trainer and person that I've encountered and trained with. So I've just learned from so many people, and I look up to each and every one of them. All right. Well, thanks, Shade, so much for joining me. Yeah, thanks so much. And for those listening, thank you for tuning in. As a heads up to those of you who aren't currently part of the FDSA community, registration is currently open when this airs for February classes, including Shade's Crucial Concepts for Competition class, the one we talked about during the podcast. And in two weeks, we'll be back with Loretta Mueller to talk about why one size does not fit all when it comes to dog training. If you haven't already, subscribe now on 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 is provided by Chris Lang. Transcription is written by CLK Transcription Services. Thanks again for tuning in, and happy training.