E291: 루시 뉴턴(Lucy Newton) - "트래킹의 기초"

6:06

You mentioned variable service tracking, um, you mentioned something else. So, so talk to me a little more about that. What are the different types of tracking? Are there, you know, different types for different venues? How does that all work? Really? When you look at sort of, it's a, that's a really big question. I'm going to try and break it down without making it, without making it too confusing. And if you take a dog, if you take like a predator, you know, a dog that's hunting, they're not using one specific skill. Like you talk about air scenting where they might find, you know, what they're looking for based on scent that's coming through the air, um, or tracking or trailing where they're sort of finding scent that, that animal being has left on the ground, you know, or that cloud of scent that the person left behind them as they walk through, through an area. So if a predator is hunting something, they're not using one of those skills. They're not air scenting or tracking or, you know, doing some of these. So they're kind of using them all, all their senses. They're going to even use be visual at certain point. You know, they might, they might smell on the ground. They might smell the scent of, you know, whatever they're hunting, you know, a deer has walked through or they're going to smell the scent of the deer on the ground. When they followed that trail a little bit, they get a little closer to the deer, the wind might blow scent of the actual deer to them. So then they'd be air scenting. And then if they get closer, they're going to actually see the deer. So it's kind of a mix and match. They're using all those tools to successfully hunt and find something. What we've done with some of the things that we want dogs to do is pull those out and ask them to do one of those and not the others. So you think about air scenting. If a building collapses, you know, you want the scent of that person that's permeating out of the building and you want the dog to focus on that scent that's coming out. So you don't want a tracking dog in that case. So we're always asking dogs to not use some, not mix and match. A little bit less so if we're working with like a police or search and rescue dog, because we kind of don't care as long as we find whatever it is that we're looking for. But for sports especially, we not only want to pull out and ask the dog to just use one of those skills, but we can also get super fussy about how we want the dog to use that skill. And that's where you start to go into some of the different venues.

8:36

AKC tracking in mainly you need to find articles that the track layer is left on the track and the dog needs to follow the track. So they have to have a little bit of accuracy that the track, because if they're not right on the track, they're not going to find those articles. Whereas Schutzen track is even fussier. Schutzen, that's how old I am. It's now it's IGP, but it's just easier for me to say Schutzen because like I said, I'm old. Schutzen is super like you're getting scored on the precision of the dog following every single footstep, you know, on the track. If you were, say, a police canine or a search and rescue dog, there's no point in being that precise. The whole point is to get to the end and you don't want to expend that much energy sniffing every single footprint that the person has put down. You want to just basically follow the track and get to the end. So Schutzen's one extreme of super fussy, you know, police and search and rescue is the other extreme of, you know, we just need to find the person. And then AKC kind of falls in the middle. You have to find the articles. There's no requirement as to how the dog tracks. One of the cool things with AKC tracking is it's a pass fail. You have to successfully meet certain criteria to pass each level. But there's no there's no scoring of it. You know, you either you pass or you fail. So so, yeah, it kind of runs the gamut. So that's when we sort of like talk about the different types of tracking and people will get into a big debates about it. And it's just really a matter of what's what your specific sport, you know, requires. But we also have to take into account that these are arbitrary, you know, sort of restrictions on what the dog would do naturally. OK, so you mentioned a couple of skills. You mentioned air scenting. You mentioned kind of following the track in the ground. Can you kind of break down the skills that we're looking for that go into tracking for us with skills our dogs actually need to learn to like to compete in some of these venues? Well, I'm not. Let me. Why not? Since the FDSA classes are more oriented toward AKC. Sure. Then so I would kind of. Because we can really open up, you know, a lot more discussion about the other ones. You know, there's people that do a lot more shifts in tracking than me that probably would be. Um, but, um, but as far as AKC, the skills really with all of it actually is, you know, the, the reality is the dog already has the genetics to do the behavior. So if you're looking at some other sports, um, like we were talking earlier about, you

11:13

know, like dogs catching Frisbees, that's really nothing genetically that the dog is designed, you know, really specifically to do. Um, whereas tracking, you know, hunting, air scenting, those are all, you know, in the dog's genetic makeup. That being said that there's certain maybe breeds, you know, bloodlines that it's more, it's stronger. Um, but they're all kind of deriving from a predator than those, that sort of hunting skills that they've kind of got lurking around in their genetics. So really with, with the scent work, we're not necessarily so much teaching the dog, you know, from, you know, nothing to do a behavior like we would, if we were like, you know, teaching the dog to do like, you know, healing, we're setting them up to hone a skill that they already have genetically, if that makes sense. Um, so that's really our, our starting point with that is going, how can we set this up in the simplest way as we can to teach this dog to hone a skill that they, they possess, you know? And like I said, there's going to be the whole gamut. You can't say, well, everybody's starting from the same starting point, but there is a genetic component of that. And that's what we're asking the dog to use is to use that genetics. And, and it's a little bit, you know, like I always say, like, you know, predators, you know, they're not really good hunters at first. Um, they have to get, you know, they get better as they get, you know, the ones that aren't good at all, you know, maybe get out of the gene pool, but even in, you know, any other circumstance, you know, they're very inefficient. Like predators, when they first are on their own and their moms are not taking care of them, they have to get better and better at that, you know, over time. Um, and that's really kind of what we're doing with tracking is really giving them scenarios where they can sort of slowly, you know, practice that and, and hone that skill. So where do you start when you have a new dog and you're just starting to teach them to track? Like, how do you start the process off? Um, we kind of sort of experimented a little bit with this. Um, and the, the, the, really the challenge was, you know, setting up the, um, I always joke about this in the class, you know, when I start, start the tracking one-on-one is because in 2013, when Denise, um, asked me to teach tracking, you know, my first thought was you can't teach tracking online. There's no way, you know, it's like other skills where you can video the person doing it and break it down. Healing? Yes. Tracking? No.

13:51

Um, but you know, it actually kind of turns out that you can, you know, there's like, you know, there's, you know, quite a few tracking titles from people that have, you know, been through the online classes. So, but, but that was my first thought was, you know, but you sort of break it down, but it's also been really helpful because it sort of allowed me to sort of try and develop a program that kind of will fit everybody. Um, you know, there's going to be different, different dogs are going to spend different times at different levels, but I kind of want something that, you know, everybody can do, you know, go through that process. And, you know, they can all, you know, rather than having, you know, using one method for that suit one dog and, you know, another method might suit another dog. Um, so what I kind of, you know, do is sort of designed a situation where the dog is going from like, I call them targets, but, you know, little, you know, targets, you know, with food on them on the ground and basically kind of just teaching the dog to connect the dots. You know, the targets are the dots, lay 30 targets out in a row, one step apart, um, in some grass that's just tall enough that the dog can't see the targets and they're one step apart. So the dog is almost like when it eats food off of one, it's almost right on top of the next one. And, oh, that's how we kind of start one-on-one is just put down 30 targets in direct grass, start the dog and the dog just walks down the row of targets and eats the food off each one. And then the rest of the class is just gradually increasing the distance of those targets. You know, they go alternate one and two steps, all, you know, every, you know, two steps, you know, every two to four steps. And you're really just increasing the spacing between those, those targets. Um, we do it a little bit randomly so that the dog doesn't really get in a complete rhythm of, oh, I just walk one step or two step or three steps. Um, but, and if you think about the targets, that makes sense. I'm kind of, you know, rushing, describing it, but really kind of think about the targets as the rate of reinforcement. Um, and it's the same idea. How long can you go tracking in this, you know, how much your distance that you can track, how often do you need a rate of reinforcement? Um, so we really kind of just put those targets with food down as discrete spots, you know, between those number X number of steps and eventually pull up those targets and replace them with an article. Um, it's just a little bit easier with the targets. The dog just eats and goes.

16:28

And then once we hit, you're using articles and you just stop and reward the dog on the articles. So when you get to like the TD length of a track, you've got an article at the beginning and an article at the end. So that's kind of the, think about going into the obedience ring, you know, with your healing, you're no longer heal, you know, rewarding the dog for five steps of healing. You're rewarding the dog for 200 steps of healing. Um, so that's the basic concept. But as we move those targets further and further apart, because the dogs have that genetic, you know, tracking component, that's what they're honing as you're doing that is they're honing that skill. Yes, they can follow a track on the ground. Um, but they need to hone that skill, you know, and get better and better. Um, so when you go say from one step to two steps apart, then they're using a little bit more ground scent. And as the spacing increases in those targets, they're focusing more on the scent between the targets. And I always say it's kind of like they're learning how to cheat to find the next target, um, by following the ground scent. You know, we don't, we're not really, we're creating value for the targets and then we're sort of setting them up to go, oh, if I follow this path, it leads to the target or it leads to the article in this case. Um, so it's just a gradual, you're not spending, you know, months on one step spacing. As soon as they're proficient at one step spacing, it's just like increasing your rate of reinforcement. The rate of reinforcement is just really a bridge to the final thing that does not need, you know, frequent reinforcement. So when they're pretty good at two step spacing, you know, they've done maybe two or three tracks at that spacing, then we're going to bump up that spacing. We want to do it in enough of a gradual way that they're tracking really well at every level, but we don't want to stay at that level so long that they start to learn that that's, you know, that's the exercise. Yeah. That makes sense. You mentioned kind of finding the articles in there. When you get to the point of competition, do you have to, uh, fade the food entirely? Are you still rewarding at the articles in competition? No, no food in competition. You're going to just, you know, so you want the articles to have value. Um, so in training, I've always reward on my articles, you know, um, then in competition, you know, I'm going to just, you know, be just praise and, you know, just move on. Um, a little bit of that phase out, but I want those articles to, I want the dog to be seeking the articles.

19:09

So the goal is, you know, there's a lot of value in the articles and then following that track is just what the dog is doing to, you know, find that article. So, and then it also, if, if you have value in your articles, then when your track layout gets a little bit more complex, um, then, you know, you go through a tricky spot. The dog's got to go over something or through some thick stuff. Then you can put an article after the hard thing. Um, so it's a little bit of just think about like that, just that reinforcement. Oh, that was a really challenging thing. You know, I'm going to reinforce, you know, following it, but I really want to have develop a, of high value for the articles. So I can use them along the track, you know, as, as reinforcement. That makes sense. Um, so does any of that kind of change if you're instead trying to teach tracking for like search and rescue or like a professional more working role? It really does not. Um, this is kind of how I trained, you know, my search and rescue and my police dogs. Um, I did a very similar thing. What it, what starts to change is, um, how long I want to stay at a certain level and how fussy I want to be with how the dog is working the track. This type of tracking creates more accuracy than I necessarily would need, um, in a, um, you know, police and search and rescue dog. Um, it probably, it creates a little bit less accuracy than I need for say, you know, uh, IGP slash Schutzen dog. Um, and it's kind of when I, I kind of use something similar for my Schutzen tracking dogs. Um, but it's not exactly the same as what I'm doing for the, you know, tracking 101 for the FDSA class. Um, and I have had people just to get on a little side note. I have had people ask me, um, because shade T has a self-study course for IGP tracking. Um, I have had people ask me about taking my class for it. And I've had people in my class that have, you know, want to do, um, you know, IGP Schutzen tracking. Um, and my kind of answer to that always is it will work. Um, if you just, if you're not super concerned about high scores, the, the 101 class would work. Um, but you know, you, if you want to, you know, follow along with that in addition to, you know, shades, you know, self-study class. Um, but it's not how I train for necessarily train for Schutzen tracking. Um, and I can't really modify it because I'm really presenting it for, you know, AKC and similar other types of tracking venues. Like Canadian CKC tracking, um, Canada's got a really similar tracking, you know, venue to AKC.

22:05

And then I have quite a few people in Australia, um, that are tracking that, that follow along to it. So, but that's a question that I get commonly. So I want to just pull that in there that it's not teaching that level of precision. Um, it's not encouraging that level of precision that you necessarily would need for Schutzen IGP tracking. And I get the same question. I get people that ask me about it for, you know, mainly for search and rescue tracking. And that's kind of a little bit different answer because it's probably fussier and more precise than you necessarily would automatically need for search and rescue. But as we know with dog training, it's much easier to slack off and not, you know, lower criteria than it is to raise criteria. So if we teach a, if we teach a behavior that's more precise than we need, then it's pretty easy to not hold the dog to criteria and just allow the dog to be less precise, you know, later on. Versus if we want to go the other way and go, oh, I didn't teach this precisely enough. Now I need to raise criteria. That's a lot harder. Um, so if that makes sense, so it's kind of a middle, you know, middle in terms of, you know, your level of precision that you're asking for in tracking. And what kind of dogs are we talking about? So are there types of dogs that typically make for good tracking dogs? Are there traits that might make you think a particular dog is more suited to tracking than another? Um, you know, I don't really, you know, it's kind of something less similar to nose work. It can, you know, all dogs can do it. You have to kind of look at some physical limitations. Um, but I just run the gamut. I really hate to, you know, eliminate. I had a miniature dachshund in, you know, in-person seminar that I taught once that was amazing. I mean, the dog was just, it was so funny because I think it wasn't even like it was on the track. It was so close to the ground and it was right in the track. It wasn't even, you know, but it was just this, the teeniest little dog. Um, but, you know, really sort of all the, you know, more dogs that are, you know, more working breeds, more oriented to, you know, using their noses and hunting for things for people. Um, you know, for, for the, the, the one-on-one class, I kind of, you, because of the way the class structure is, we are putting food on those articles, on those targets. So it kind of helps, you know, if the dog is pretty food motivated.

24:35

Um, that's kind of really the only, the only qualifier that I kind of put on it as far as, you know, um, just because I've had so many different breeds and different sizes of dogs. You know, obviously, you know, the traditional, you know, sort of tracking breeds, you know, some of the hunting dogs and some of the working dog breeds, you know, do really well. But I've also had some, you know, pretty far outliers that have done amazingly well and are super fun to watch too. Yeah. Uh, so one of the things that, uh, I think is kind of interesting about tracking is how much the handler needs to learn kind of about how to set tracks appropriately. Can you, can you talk a little bit about that and kind of what factors handlers need to consider when they're laying a track? And then maybe how it can be easier or harder and, you know, kind of what those factors are. The biggest thing I see, and it's a lot is because a lot of people come to tracking from other sports is they're trying to have input into the dog's performance, like in the moment. Um, and really the goal, we want the track to do the teaching. So your job as, you know, the track layer, you know, training your dog to track is to be mindful about what you're putting out for a track. Um, we want, we don't want to have a lot of input from the handler because that's very hard to fade. Um, early on, like in the first, you know, like right now we just started, you know, we're in the first week of tracking one-on-one. The handlers are holding the dogs pretty close to the track. Um, but we want to fade that pretty quickly, um, because that line can just start to just become just a little bit of help and information to the dog. And that's really hard to fade. And it's also sometimes too subconscious for the person. So they continue to do it, not realizing that they're doing it. Um, so our, really our goal, our main goal is to lay out a track that allows the dog to self-teach, hone that skill to track. Um, so that's a little bit of a challenge for people that have come, you know, come into the sport from other things, you know, agility, where they're giving the dog a lot of information. You know, I work with somebody in person that also does agility and some of his sort of bad habits and agility. I mean, in tracking are really good habits and agility. You know, if the dog misses a turn and he kind of knows which direction the track goes, um, he's apt to take a couple of steps in that direction. And that's kind of, you want the dog looking agility, picking up on that cue.

27:10

That's what the information that's giving them, you know, where you want them to go is them watching your, you know, body language. Um, whereas we don't want that in, in, you know, in tracking. So that's a little, I do that a lot, you know, when I'm, you know, doing, you know, teaching in person classes is really trying to cut down on the involvement of the handler, which is really hard sometimes for, you know, from people. Um, but that's the main thing that you want to look at as far as the handler is, you know, just really setting up that track so that they're minimally involved in cueing the dog as to, you know, what, what is the correct direction to go. Mm-hmm. You mentioned, uh, you're in the, you know, kind of first week or the first little bit here of the foundations tracking course. Um, and it's running in December for anybody who's curious. Can you talk a little bit more about kind of what you cover in the class and maybe what people should expect to learn or not expect to learn? This it's one-on-one. So mainly people are coming in, the majority of people are coming in with no tracking experience. Um, so we're just really starting with the real basics of, you know, like I said, putting those targets down one step apart. Um, we want to be trying to set things up from the beginning to really minimize the dog's error. Um, especially because like I said before, there's not a lot of ways we can prevent error where the dog doesn't come to rely, you know, on our help. So really setting the track up to minimize error and letting the dog just figure it out. You know, a lot of dogs, when they first start, they eat food off that first target and they're like, well, that was great. You know, and you're looking for the light bulb of them to go off on them and going, oh, hey, there's, there's another one, one step apart. You know, and that's what we're really looking for in that first week is just the dog becoming aware that there's a row of targets. You know, we kind of don't even care if they're tracking yet. We just want them going, I just ate the food off this target. You know, I'd like another one. Um, and that's what we see over the first, you know, week or, you know, two weeks is just that dog starting to move down that row of targets, you know, eating food off of one and then moving on to find the next one. And once we have that, then that's what we need. Then it's just a matter of what kind of spacing do we want to gradually increase, put, introduce in there.

29:28

And also then what kind of other changes do we want to, we want to put turns in, you know, how are we going to lay out the targets in a way that shapes a turn? You know, it's just all building upon that first steps of the dog going, I just got food off of a target or I just found an article. Now I'm going to move on and find another one. So in a little bit of the mechanics right now, we're just sort of like working out the mechanics of, you know, I mean, it's, it's the, how do you walk in a straight line? You know, we kind of want those targets to be, you know, in a little bit of a straight line right now. So it's just, you know, really working through those mechanics of, you know, just the, the setting up of the, of the tracks is, is what we're, you know, people are working on now. Kind of who should think about taking it? Um, kind of, you know, anybody that wants to, you know, give tracking a try, um, you, you know, get reasonably far along in the first class. Um, there are, it's set up in a series of classes. So there's 101 and then 102 is just continuing on, you know, from what we started at 101. So 101, I get a mix of brand new people that have never tracked before that want to track. Um, and then I often get people that have started tracking previously and want to go back and build some better foundations or, you know, want some troubleshooting. Um, so that's kind of 101 and then 102 for this sequence of classes, you know, we'll start in February. And then I have 203, which will, for this group, we'll start in April. Um, but 101 is kind of, you'll get far enough along that people can get an idea of whether they kind of, whether it's fun for them and, you know, whether it's something that their dog is going to like. Um, but that's sort of, and I also get like, uh, usually class, I usually have a few people that the dog has done other sports and they're looking for something lower impact now, like older dogs. Um, that, you know, need still want to be active, but are not necessarily, you know, doing anything that's quite, you know, high impact. Um, and on the other hand, I, sometimes there's no puppies in this class. I always feel like I should just like have a puppy discount just so I get to look at a puppy. Um, just like people always ask me, you know, is my dog too young? And I'm like, no, absolutely not. Please. I want to watch puppies track. My first, my first patrol dog was a shepherd and I started this exact method with him and he was like watching a little baby raccoon from behind, you know, when I learned to taught him to track.

31:59

Um, but a lot of times dogs aren't quite ready for other sports, you know, physically. So it's a good kind of just something to do, you know, with a younger dog that isn't quite ready for, you know, other sports too. But it, you know, it really runs the gamut, but it's really assuming, you know, nothing in terms of, you know, the dog's skill level. There are some requirements as far as conditions. Um, the whole sequence gets offered twice a year. So this three seat, you know, group of three classes starts now in December. Um, and then it'll start, another group will start in April. So tracking one-on-one will also be offered in April. And because the challenge with tracking, unlike a lot of the other classes is you have to do it outside and you kind of want really to set up the conditions to be favorable. Um, so I want to, you know, kind of if there's three feet of snow, that's kind of not ideal. Um, dogs can definitely track in snow, but we really, most of the trials, you're not going to necessarily trial in snow. Um, there's a few exceptions, but the majority of time you're going to be trialing on grass. So you want to lay a foundation on grass. Um, and it's just a little bit challenging to start, you know, on snow and then you're going to have to switch over at some point. It's going to, the dog's going to learn to follow that path in the snow. Um, so I try and generally avoid that. If people are somewhere where it snows off and on, or, you know, you don't get much snow and you get like, you know, a couple of inches that doesn't last long, you know, or something. It gets a workaround. But if you're in sort of an area that it's going to be full on winter, then sometimes it makes sense to, you know, take the spring class. Um, but that's kind of always the challenge of sort of offering the class when, you know, the conditions are the best for people. And that's why I do another group like, you know, in April, because this fall, like this winter class is perfect for, you know, down South. You know, if you get into July and August in certain parts of the country and world, yeah. And you get fire ants and, you know, there's other issues. So I try and split the difference and kind of get as many people as I can, you know, so it's offered whenever it's, you know, when the conditions are best. Makes sense. Is there anything else that you think students should know if they're considering signing up? We talked about snow and conditions. You know, we want, we want, you need, you know, an area that's got some grass.

34:19

A lot of people contact me privately, you know, to ask about, you know, what they need in terms of grass. And, you know, I definitely encourage people to do that. There's been some people in the class, you know, the grass is a little bit too short. So we have to kind of work around that. But, you know, we really kind of like, you know, any other type of training, we really want to set up that environment to be most favorable to the dog. We really want to set them up to be successful. So, you know, we got to kind of look at the, you know, that big thing of where we're laying the track. We want to, you know, I'm super fussy about that with my own dogs. You know, I'm like, I will wait till the time of year. If I get a puppy that I want to track with, you know, I'm going to wait until the time of year where, you know, I can best set up the, you know, the best conditions to, to shape that behavior. One question that I'll get, what people ask me a lot is whether you can do nose work and tracking at the same time. That's a really common question. And it kind of makes sense that, you know, people would ask that, you know, they're kind of wondering if the dog will be confused as to which of those, you know, venues that they're working on. And the dogs can figure out the difference in the contract, you know, the context. There's, you know, there's sort of an exterior outdoor searching element, you know, of a lot of, you know, nose work trials. But you're really kind of, your start rituals are different. You know, the dogs are well able to, you know, figure out, you know, the difference in context. The only thing I would not necessarily do is I wouldn't necessarily probably enroll in, like, you know, nose work 101 and tracking 101 at the same time. I think that would, that would kind of, yeah, I mean, doable in a perfect world. But I think, you know, it would be better to, to split those up. But there's really, you know, it's not going to influence the, you know, the dog's nose work. They're just going to figure out the difference in that context pretty fast, especially with the way that the tracking 101 is started initially. Because we're not really even leaving anything up to the dog to figure out. We're just, you know, putting those targets so close together that the dog's just going to go out and, you know, follow those targets. And similar to nose work, we kind of want to have a start routine. You know, we will develop a start routine at the beginning of the track, which is just cueing the dog into, you know, the exercise that we're asking them to do.

36:39

But that's a really common question that I get a lot is whether those two things can be done together. Yeah, I can see why. I mean, if you're into that kind of sniffy stuff with your dog, I can see why you want to be like, okay, I don't want to mess up the one thing I'm working on, the new thing, but also this new thing. Exactly. So, right. Yeah. So, to kind of round out our chat, if we were to kind of drill down what we've been talking about and do like a key takeaway or one piece of information you really want folks to kind of understand, what do you want to leave folks with? I guess probably for me, I always remind people that all scenting, tracking, nose work, whatever, you're shaping behavior. It's really no different than if you're teaching, you know, any other, there's, you know, I always have a joking thing of like, you know, it's not magic. You know, it seems like magic because we can't, we can't, we can't analyze all the variables as well as we can from other things. You know, if you take your dog to the park, you can go, okay, there's squirrels and there's a dog over there chasing a frisbee and there's kids on the playground. So, you kind of know, like if you're working on your healing, here's how distracting I'm making it, here's how challenging I'm making it. Scent work is a little bit harder because a lot of that stuff is invisible. I have a park near me that, you know, there's always something crazy going on in this one park. I take, it's always, anytime I take the service dogs there, there's always some new bizarre thing. You know, one day there was a guy, there was a guy walking a pig on a, in a harness, you know, and you couldn't see it initially. Yes. And the dogs could smell it from a long ways away. And they were just like, there's something really weird in this park. And that's sort of like, that's the big thing with, you know, scenting is that we don't have a good grasp of the variables. So we kind of have to set things up really incrementally for the dog. And, but recognize that they're sort of the expert. But we are shaping behavior. You know, those targets are, you know, I increase those in increments. And I give as much thought to the spacing of my targets as I would to my rate of reinforcement. You know, because the same thing, obviously, I'm like, I want to fade that reinforcement. You know, I'm like, you're gonna, you know, I've got your toy, I'm going to go into the ring, I'm going to do this, and then come out and you're going to get your toy. It's me starting that dog on the track, and then following the track to the end and finding an article.

38:59

um so but that's sort of my one takeaway and anytime i'm problem solving or i'm introducing a new concept you know with both nose work and tracking i want to look at that from a point of i'm shaping behavior finding that scent following that track finding scent is is the you know reinforce reinforcing to the dog they do a certain behavior and they locate scent then you're going to get that behavior again um so that's kind of always my my take my reminder people is just really think about it from in terms of shaping behavior and that's really what 101 is that we're just shaping that behavior um and then we're just making it more challenging you know in 102 and and then skill building skill building is kind of the third in the sequence and that doesn't have any lectures that's just kind of that sort of started with the very first class when everybody went through the first 101 and 102 and then just felt like they still needed some supervision um so that's we added sort of the skill building and a lot of times people come into skill building that have taken the class in previous years and you know just want to come in so it's not doesn't have to follow 101 and 102 directly um but but that's all the classes that i teach all this the tracking classes are really from that that standpoint of or just we're shaping behavior i like that it's not magic i feel like that could be a good registered name for somebody's dog exactly yes that actually is awesome i'm gonna have to write that down so i remember all right well thank you so much for coming on the podcast to talk about all this lizzie awesome i'm happy to you know i'm always happy to answer people's questions so if they have any questions about whether it's suited for their dog or whether they have the right conditions or you know whether their grass is too short you know then they can always just you know contact me through fdsa and you know i can answer those awesome and thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in we will be back next week with denise venzie and we're going to talk about integrating your online and your in-person classes um if you haven't already subscribed 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 you you you you you you