In honor of our current sale, we're bringing back highlights from several previous conversations on choosing your sport puppies, dealing with adolescence, what it means to have a confident dog and what it means to have a high drive dog... and combining them for one final takeaway. 

 Transcription

Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports Podcast brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high quality instruction for competitive dog sports using only the most current and progressive training methods.

In today's episode we're doing something a little different — in honor of our conference session sale, happening from this Sunday, December 22nd to January 1st, we've gone digging through previous episodes of the podcast and fetched a few clips that give you some insight into our presenter's perspectives on the topics at hand.

First, let's talk about puppies — for this interview, I was talking to Shade Whitesel, Megan Foster, and Erin Lynes and they were super honest about what they look for when adding a new puppy and where they start with a new puppy.

So since the topic of the day is puppies, I thought it might be kind of fun to start off by talking about what you guys consider when you're looking to add a new puppy to your own household, kind of what do you look for, why you all kind of do different sports. So I thought that would also be kind of an interesting spin on it. Megan, do you want to start us off?

Megan Foster: Sure. So given that agility is my sport and I do prefer to compete in the large dog classes, I am very attracted to working with border collies. So first and foremost I'm looking for pedigrees that have, that are doing what I want to do so that parents or relatives are competing in agility and or herding.

Because I do like that herding headspace that border collies can have. And I reach out and talk to owners of relatives of that potential pedigree first to see if, you know, they kind of mesh with the kind of dog that I want to live with and how I and how I want to work with the dog. But then once they are on the ground, I'm really. A lot of border collie breeders are not necessarily going to like let you choose a puppy.

You're just going to have some input and you might have the puppy chosen for you. So I really like to see a litter that's kind of consistent that maybe there's not a superstar in the litter like one really outshining the others. So that's one thing that I'm looking for. And obviously I've chosen a pedigree, hopefully for good health and good structure, good temperament. Um, so I want all of those things and hopefully the litter that I choose produces lots of options within that range.

But the most serious thing is that they have to look so good. So I do prefer smooth coats and dark faces or you know, really, really try like lots of brown face. So like it either has to be like super dark or super brown, but smooth coat. I mean I have to look at them hopefully for 15 years. So they need to be super, super cute and super good to look at.

So I do, I do end up choosing pedigrees that will produce a very good looking dog in my opinion. Don't you like, so I hear you, but I swear, like, like, don't you think you would love them anyway and then you would think they were so cute because they're yours. I just would never look at a litter that wouldn't produce something that's pleasing to me. Like it just when I was looking for my first border collie, the first litter that I was on the list for produced two black and white dogs and the rest of them were red. And the first two people in line chose the black and white dogs. And I declined. Like I said, I just, I really, I did and I mean it worked out in the long run, but because then the border collie I got was smack and he was this perfect brown face. Try. So yeah, it's real. So yes, absolutely. If a dog fell in my lap, I would absolutely love them. But I do have a preference for my, my dark face girls and my brown face boys.

Shade Whitesel: It is funny because I sell it as my least favorite color in German shepherds and I have three sables now. And then my puppy is, he doesn't have like his mask is only on his nose. It doesn't extend to his forehead, which is my least favorite. Like, I don't like that. I want dark faces. Kind of like you think he's the cutest thing ever because he's mine.

Megan Foster: You know, it's like, okay, so there was a plot twist with Sprint when her DNA testing she is genetically brindle. Like there, she's not black and white. There are, there is specks of brown under her black. So like in the sun you can see it. And as it got more and more obvious, I'm like, what is, what is the deal here?

You're black and white. Why are you so brown? And I went back and I actually read her DNA report and she is genetically brindle. So I guess maybe brindle is on my list now of aesthetics I'm in love with because she's perfect and there is, there isn't a dog cuter than she is. So. Right. I guess brindle''s my jam now.

Erin Lynes: I'm a little jealous of you guys. In breeds where there's colors, that cuteness factor, like when we have lab puppies, we know what color they're gonna be.

And all the black ones are black. There's no, there's not like the cute marking, like, oh look, this one has a cute little heart on it or something. So yeah, the cute factor is a little. Yeah, I'm a little jealous of that. Who knew that today's topic would be choosing puppies? They're open to can of worms there.

Melissa Breau: Yep, it's all good. Oh man. So other than color, so shade, obviously you're not choosing based on that. What are you choosing your puppies based on?

Shade Whitesel: At this point in my life, I'm totally choosing my puppies for being able to compete in the sport of Schutzhund. And I want a male, not to say the females can't do well, but I find that your males are generally stronger and you want. So I. So I pick the males. I want as little chance of the dog not working out for Schutzhund as possible.

So I'm also looking at pedigree, I'm looking at the parents and I actually, because I'm picking for the sport and I want a strong, pushy dog, I'm not picking for a dog that fits nicely into my household. Otherwise I would pick a different temperament for sure because I end up like right now I have three strong, pushy males and two of them can't be together. So if I wanted a nice harmonious household, I would pick a different temperament.

I did for Ion because there's a lot of dog aggression in the shepherds. I did specifically research the breeder and his parents for other animal aggression. That was so important to me and it was a non negotiable because of my cats. And just you just when you have like a certain amount of dog reactivity is kind of normal in the shepherds. So there's kind of what I call normal and then unreasonable.

And it just. You spend so much time working on it that you don't have time to work on the other stuff. So. And again it's. You don't. The genetics can be perfect like parent wise and the puppy is who you get. So. So I just did as much research as I could. And I remember when the breeder, when I asked her, I was like, so. And, and it's so funny because you don't know the breeder and you don't want to offend them.

And I was like, so what do you think about the dog aggression in the breed? I'm kind of seeing more. And she's like, oh, I hate it. I don't want to get, you know, she's like, I breed dogs. It's like that. I'm like, cool, great answer. And then I'm like, so, you know, I know you have a lot of dogs, but like, have any of them had experience with cats?

And she showed, she sent me like video after video of the mom, like interacting with cats. And I was like, okay, I've done as much as I can and I definitely Ion is very open towards other dogs, very neutral, very kind with the cat. So that was my non negotiable for this puppy and I did a good job with that.

Melissa Breau: So awesome. Yeah, there's a good thing when your dog doesn't want to eat your other critters in the household.

Shade Whitesel: So yeah, I mean, the 10 year old does. So yeah, I love him to death, but the cats will be tap dancing on his grave. You know, I can't blame them. I think that's how the Sheltie feels about having all these other hooligans in the house. Think she's just. Yes, exactly. I think she's trying to outlive them all just to have her alone, her, you know, her home to herself again.

Melissa Breau: Right. So, Erin, you're coming at this from a little bit of a different angle, I think maybe since usually the puppies, I think most time you probably have puppies you bred, right?

Erin Lynes: Yeah. So as a breeder, it's a little bit more complicated. In some ways it's easier. So if I'm keeping a puppy, planning to keep a puppy from one of my own litters, actually, I really liked what Megan said about finding a litter that doesn't have like a standout superstar.

That's actually a really big thing. When I'm keeping a puppy from my own litters, I look for the litter where there's, it's really consistent where I could almost pick any puppy and be pretty assured that I'm going to get what I want. That is super helpful. And I think part of the reason is that I don't really see, see super strong correlations between behavioral assessments when they're really little versus how they turn out.

There's a lot of information you can get over generations by looking at like, okay, these particular puppies at seven weeks behave this way and then they grow up to be such and such. But within the litter itself, you're probably not getting as much information as you think you are by just sort of cold evaluating puppies based on whatever standard you're looking at. So that individual puppy assessment, I like to see them all happy and active and alert and confident.

And for my interests, I like all the sports. Everything is really seasonal here, so we're always changing what we're doing. We just came out of dog sledding season, which sounds crazy with labs, but they love it. We're starting into nose work and agility and dock diving season in the fall. We're doing duck hunting and stuff like that. So things are always changing. And in my big, busy household, it's really important that the dogs all get along.

And so a big part of what I'm looking at in puppies is their, their, you know, agreeable nature. So do you like to do all the things that is great? We can pick any sport at any time. That's awesome. I'm pretty confident with my training abilities for all the different activities we're going to do, but I really want to make sure that our household is harmonious. And from the breeder angle, most people who are choosing labs, even the people that are really hardcore about a specific sport, that's something that they also value about the breed.

So that, that aspect, that good nature aspect, is something that is really important to me when I'm on the puppy buying end, which happens occasionally. My, my youngest little guy actually came from a different breeder, and obviously the beagle came from a different situation. I do have some criteria that I'm looking at, and we can't really talk about the beagle here because that was an impulse. I wouldn't get a dog.

How I got the beagle, don't do that. But I'm very, very meticulous about how I get my lab so I can share a little bit more insight on that. And the pedigree research that Megan and Shade both mentioned is important. And asking breeders and people with related dogs deeper questions is so valuable. So you can ask about all the things that you can't really test for, like health stuff for me is big.

I want to give my dogs the best chance of having a long, healthy life as possible. I don't want to have to deal with allergies and epilepsy and all the stuff that you can't really control. So I ask about related dogs. I try and find out those aren't the things that people advertise. And there's no dog, there's no line that is perfect. That is free from all problems.

So getting honest answers for me, when I'm talking to a breeder is more important than getting, everything is fine. My dogs are perfect. We've never had that issue. If I hear that, that's actually, to me, a bit more of a red flag, because I feel like it's probably not the full picture. So asking about the health stuff is important. Asking about behavior. If they have a lot of dogs like I do, how do they get along?

Do they have to manage some of them? If they have few dogs, how do they react in group situations? That sort of thing. And from my sort of unique perspective as a breeder, I'm not always looking for lines that are super well proven. There is a lot of labs out there. We have a lot of genetic diversity. So for me, I'm usually looking for, like, maybe a hidden gem, so maybe a pedigree that's a little less representative of what is doing really well in other sports.

And I can take a puppy, evaluate it, hopefully turn it into, you know, the next star. It fits in well with our breeding program. It could contribute that way. Um, but as long as the health and the behavior criteria are met, it comes with sound structure. It's had a good start in life, all those sorts of things. Even if it doesn't work out as a breeding prospect, it's probably still going to be a pretty nice dog.

So that's sort of the big picture overview. And cuteness. I mean, I like a dog that's easy on the eyes. Isn't the top priority. I don't get any cute markings to choose from, but, you know, I've been trying so hard to get a yellow female, and I don't have a yellow female currently. Most of my labs are black. It's just sometimes the things you really like are still lower priority than all the other stuff. That's a necessity. So. Dang it, one of these days. But, yeah, priorities are hard, man.

Melisa Breau: Yeah. Oh, man. All right, so when a new puppy comes home or you decide they're staying, where do you start? Like, what skills do you look at introducing? Is there anything you guys kind of hold off on introducing that the puppy grow up a little bit? First Shade?

Shade Whitesel: Actually, yeah, I kind of hold off on socialization. I know that's probably not a popular answer, but especially that first week. And since I just gave a webinar on puppy's first week, I really realized that I don't quite take the puppy out that first week. Like, I want them to get settled and feel safe in their home and that's a huge priority to me. And we're doing so much other stuff. They're, like, exhausted going out, so they don't want to leave home and all that kind of stuff.

So the stuff I do do is I always teach them eye contact right away. I teach them what a marker is. I teach them eye contact. And one of the things about eye contact is it teaches them to look away from the treat in my hand and to offer that. So looking. So I think that's just such a good skill. Look away from the treat to get the treat, and then they're learning their marker.

And they're also learning that food comes from your hands. Sometimes baby puppies don't look at you. Like, they don't make automatic eye contact. And sometimes, too, they think food's on the floor, so you'll like mark and they'll sort of look at the floor or, you know, just their learned experiences. So that's a good thing to teach them. Food's coming from the hand. All the confinement stuff, you know, like, be okay in a crate, be okay behind baby gates.

That's a little later, but that's all that confinement. Quiet in the crate and comfortable is really, really important for me. And because I have bitey, bitey puppies, basically the beginnings of starting to redirect onto toys, which is also super important for me because I want the dog to one, I want them to like biting and tugging, and I also want to see how they react. Like, do they.

Are they really into the tugging? Are they so. So about it? Are they really biting on you? You know, some of that's learned history, but also some of that's genetic. And I've definitely had dogs that have not done very well in IGP that when stressed, they don't bite. And we kind of want dogs, when stressed to bite. I know that sounds like not a good pet, but we.

We want them to go, hey, I feel a little stress. I need to bite the toy. Because that's going to be a behavior we. We want under some frustration. And of course, I want them to control themselves later. But you need to have that motivation and that want, because if they're stressed and they're gluing their mouths shut, shutting down, that's a much harder dog to work with.

So. So those are kind of my biggies right there. I'm sure there's stuff I'm forgetting. Super highlights, though, like how different these answers are going to be depending on what sport y'all do. And all that kind of stuff. So yeah, so I suspect we all want strong, confident dogs and you know, the biting is going to be less important with other breeds, but you still want your dog to react maybe forward under stress instead of shutting down. You know, maybe that's the kind of behavior trait I'm looking for or temperament trait.

Melissa Breau: Yeah. Erin?

Erin Lynes: So I was really excited to hear you say Shade about that, taking that first week when you add a new puppy to your home because that stuff, that's kind of a recent change to how I deal with incoming puppies and what I advise. And I also don't take them out for socialization.

In that first week I did, I decided to name it orientation week. So when a puppy joins my home or if I'm sending a puppy to a new family, really that first week is new to them. There's a new person, there's a new home. They're actually getting a lot of new experiences that you kind of don't think about because as the human we knew we were getting a puppy, the puppy didn't know it.

Right. They didn't have a chance to prepare for all that. So there's so much new stuff that already happens in that first week when you're adding a puppy to your new home. Training wise, I try to keep it fairly straightforward so marker cues because then if we have a way to communicate with each other, any little moment I can take during the day to do a little bit of training is really easy.

I try and get them chasing a cookie on the floor and taking a cookie out of my hand because if the puppy hasn't actually had any pre training, any reward based training, lots of times they smell food and they're just frantically looking for it and they don't actually know where it comes from. So that's, it's actually kind of a skill for some puppies. And it's sort of annoying because I've got a new puppy home before and I'm like, okay, first training video, I'm going to shape something or you know, do something cool.

And the dog's like, I smell food, my brain is off. So just really simple stuff. And then the other thing that I sort of prioritize when a new puppy comes home is how I arrange the situation so that I'm able to meet all the puppies needs. But they are not harassing my older dogs. So even though labs are really agreeable and for the most part all of these guys have raised many puppies before, when they get to a certain age, they're like, I've, I've had enough.

You've had enough puppies, my friend. Human, we're not doing this again. So arranging things so that the puppy still has like a really interactive life while being unable to harass and torment the older dogs is part of it. So they have to be okay, okay with being in a crate a little bit being maybe I've got outside dog runs. They have to learn to be a little bit outside by themselves for short periods.

Being in an ex pen, those are sort of the top priorities for when I first get a puppy. And sport related stuff sort of filters in as they are able to do it. Socialization out in the big world starts kind of in the second week. But that's sort of the rundown about the very first things that I worry about with new puppy.

Melissa Breau: Megan, what would you add to all that?

Megan Foster: Yeah, so the first week I definitely agree with Shade and Erin about not getting them out right away because they like, they said they don't know that you have their back yet. And I think that, that, that's certainly something that I've changed in the last couple of puppies I've raised. And I think that that's really common in at least an agility to like take your puppy to all the agility trials and pass them around and make sure they can eat and tug there.

And so I hold off on that. Sprint was very, in comparison, very old before she visited her very first agility trial and she's almost two and she's only visited maybe three or four times period. And I, I, so I, I definitely hold off on taking my puppies to super high charged events without any skills, without any knowledge that I have their back sort of thing. And so the first week is really just about integrating them into my life and how to work with me and how to deal with my schedule and getting to know them, you know, how do they play on their own?

How do they interact with my other dogs? How do they, you know, are, are they crazy about the food already or do I need to work on that? Are they possessive with the toy? Do they like to fetch? Do they like to tug? Because border collies can be so different when it comes to both food and toys. And, and so a lot of it is just about I just sit down, you know, in the, in the living room and just kind of let, and just kind of be with the puppy a whole lot and see, you know, do they bring me toys naturally or do I have to encourage Them.

Are they jumping all over me for the food? I know I keep. This is not a joke, but I mean, it sounds funny, but my. My puppies also have to learn to not knock my beverages over, whether it's coffee or sparkling water or wine or cider. Like, they have to learn that. Like, that you can't do that because I almost always have some sort of liquid around. So I'm, like, always training. Like, there's always something that they could knock over and they need to not. So that's like, number one.

Megan, I gotta interrupt and request a webinar on this subject, because I live with my beverage in a travel mug.

Megan Foster: I have so many videos. I really do like the one that really comes to mind, like, Sprint is just this tiny baby puppy, and I just, like, sit down and I've got my sparkling water can in my hand, and I'm like, yeah, where this is just happening.

I'm gonna interact with this puppy and somehow not spill this drink. So I don't know. That's very, very important. I will see about that webinar. That's hilarious. It. Yeah. So, I mean, but then, like, skill stuff. Yes, obviously, like, as I kind of learn about who they are and what they like, I'm developing those reinforcer skills, teaching them how training works with me and. And things like that.

Getting them used to any sort of hardware that they need to wear. Collars, harnesses, leashes, long lines, you know, again, still observing. Like, do you react? Do you have big feelings about the harness, or are you cool with that? And then doing as much as I can to make them comfortable with being crated and sleeping overnight and trying to get some work done in between. And, yeah, sort of like what Erin was saying, the sporty stuff just happens kind of naturally, kind of on its own. The puppy just kind of tells me when they're ready to start doing more things and how to progress from there.

Melisa Breau: From puppyhood to adolescence, we see some changes. For that conversation, we had Megan and Erin both back, and they were joined by Dr. Amy Cook and Julie Daniels. In this clip, they shared how they prepare for adolescence and those typical teenage moments.

Melissa Breau: So since the topic of the day is adolescence, I thought it might make sense just to kind of start off by talking about why the topic matters. So what changes are typical, or have you maybe seen in your own dogs as they've gone from kind of those baby puppies to these adolescent dogs? Megan?

Megan Foster: Sure. I kind of think of it as they. They know a little now about how the world works. But they think they know everything about how the world works. And so they're developing their worldview. They're maybe coming into some bigger feelings about things that they have exposure to.

Like when they're puppies, they're. Everything is neutral, and they're like, okay, whatever, like, this is fine. But then they start to learn about things and they. What they like and what they don't like. So they have more feelings, they have more opinions than they did when they were puppies. And so we just kind of. That. That's what it is to me, is that they think they know everything and they really don't know anything, and we just have to survive that gap together.

Melissa Breau: Yes. What about you, Erin?

Erin Lynes: I, like Amy, said, actually really enjoy adolescence with dogs. So I think that something that is interesting about adolescence is how things that maybe were sort of neutral or uninteresting in their life up to that point suddenly become more interesting. So there's a little bit of, like, a rediscovery period, both for what the puppy is going through and how they're experiencing and perceiving the world, but also how we are experiencing our dogs and how we're sort of in that new place where they're noticing new stuff.

They're. They're. Maybe we're not the focus of their whole world anymore, which can hurt our feelings a little bit. Sometimes. I'm sad that I'm not as cool as I used to be in comparison to the world around me for my dogs, but it also shows you maybe new aspects of their personality that are developing and how they relay that to the world around them. So there's. I think you can.

I think you can really enjoy adolescence if you think of it from that perspective, about how. How things become new again. So you've got another opportunity to reconnect with your puppy in new ways.

Amy Cook: Amy? I think that in adolescence, what I really think of it as is that they're going to go through big emotional changes and big opinion changes because they're getting big adult bodies and some bravery around what they can now do.

They're not baby puppies anymore, and I love that every day is a different day. Every day is an adventure. Reminds you to stay not on the track you necessarily thought you were on. You know, when you woke up that day, what you were going to do, what dog you had yesterday. There's more, you know, flexibility kind of built into the system. Who do I have today? A bit.

And I think it's important because so often people are worried about this time, their Puppy left and their dog's gotten suspicious, and there's a whole bunch of changes. And there's so much about this that's, stay the course, you're okay, your dog is growing. It's going to be fine. And that's not always the message we kind of bring out. So I'm really glad that we get to isolate adolescents and talk about it so that we can reassure people that it really is just. It's a stage and there's a plan for it, and you're going to be fine.

Julie Daniels: Awesome. Julie.

Julie Daniels: Yep. I think they just all covered it perfectly. Yeah, I love adolescence. And when I see it coming, of course, course it carries mixed emotions for the person, just like there were so many mixed emotions in the dog. I love sympathizing with that brain that didn't notice something yesterday and today just blows up with alarm, because who knew that was there, even though it had been there throughout their puppyhood and it was nothing to them, all of a sudden, it's a big deal.

Thinking about planning ahead day by day, because like Amy said, it's a different dog every day. And you've really got to just meet them where they. Because their brains are all over the place, processing things at a phenomenal rate. And their brains are guessing machines, trying to figure out where does this fit and how does it affect me, and how to categorize and catalog everything, which is what they're trying to do every single moment of every single day.

So the biggest takeaway from me is when I see an interesting day coming up, shall we say, boy, just put on the long line again, like, I don't care how that puppy followed you around as a baby. Like, that's gone. And it's certainly gone today. And it is different day by day. But we have to bring out, Bring back all those maintenance, good habits, the maintenance of good habits that we've already created and perhaps we thought we, you know, had installed pretty well.

And it's still in there. I think that's the thing to remember throughout adolescence. It's not like that perfect recall is gone, still in there, but it's just being overwritten by all this attraction to novelty that the adolescent naturally feels. A healthy adolescent is drawn toward novelty. So it's good to remember that, just prepare for it, refresh all the things that you thought they already knew. And like Amy said, don't worry about it.

It's a phase. It's a phase. And how we handle it, handling it with, you know, preparation, good preparation and patience and meeting them Wherever they are right now, today, that's the best way to get through adolescence. Might as well enjoy it.

Melissa Breau: That leads us perfectly into our next question, which is, you know, kind of what, if anything, do you do to prepare for this phase of your dog's life? Are there skills or expectations you kind of think about in advance, training plan tweaks, kind of, how do you approach it? Erin?

Erin Lynes: Expectations that are flexible is very helpful and, and not being afraid to take two steps back. So when that new dog appears out of adolescence and you're, you're seeing all these behaviors maybe you didn't see before, avoid panic reactions. It's not necessarily permanent. These phases that they go through, through adolescence are just, are, are just a blip on the radar.

So like Julie said, put your long line back on. Maybe today's not an off leash day. Maybe that spooky stranger is going to be someone we don't visit today. You might find yourself revisiting training locations that you've already used before. Recycle those things as new places because your, your adolescent dog is noticing new things about them for the first time and a little familiarity doesn't hurt. So just being, just being open to the idea that it's not going to be necessarily a steady upward climb on, on building skills, you're going to be going back a few steps here and there to revisit things and, and not worrying about that too much, it's normal, it's part of the process.

All puppies have some sort of regression in some aspect, and it's not, it's, it's not going to be the end of the world. You're going to get through it. For me, already having established myself as somebody that the puppy trusts to make good decisions is something I really try and set up in advance. So any situation while the little one is growing up where I can show them that I make good decisions, that doesn't put them into a scary place, it doesn't overwhelm them, is something I hope that we can fall back on later on during adolescence when times get tough. So that's probably the main pillar of what I want to be building in preparation for adolescence.

Melissa Breau: Amy?

Amy Cook: Well, you know, for me it's about, you know, I care less about for the, for the most part exactly which skills they're doing really well, you know, precision wise as part of my larger goals for them. And I, I think about it a lot as how are you in environments that I bring you into?

What is your emotional life like for you? What is your relationship to your own arousal? Can you handle, you know, being excited about things without kind of losing control of that? What is your emotional landscape and how are you taking in the world that I bring you into? So in preparation for that, I want really good interaction skills with my daughter. Good interactions so that I can read where they are right now.

Right. My interaction with them will be assessment. How are you feeling? Can you do what I'm asking you to do? Can you play with me right now? If not, do I need to give you some time to settle where we are? I come in with a prearranged idea. We're going to work on these things. I want my dog to know these things here. Then I might not be really tuned into.

How are you feeling where we are right now? Can you do some of this fun stuff we do together so that I can assess how you're feeling right now? It's really important for me not to have dogs overwhelmed. Right. And I think it's important for all of us. We don't want our dogs overwhelmed. But if you don't go in with a plan of how you're going to assess overwhelm, instead of maybe cover the overwhelm by doing fun things, you know, I want to kind of unveil.

I want to reveal that there's some overwhelm so I can make good decisions for my dog emotionally. So, you know, that period is about, am I reading you accurately? Am I supporting you well? Am I giving you the right things to do in the right environments? More than, what can you do, dog? What, you know, preparation have you had? Like, what. What preparation have I put into it to make sure I'm reading you well?

Because I want to make sure that my main goals are achieved, that you have emotional safety. You. You are safe where you are. You can think through things where you are. You're not overwhelmed. And that. I have a lot of ways of having fun with you that assesses that because. Because after that, whatever behaviors I particularly want, those are. Those are just going to fall in line. Like, you know, that's the relatively easy work.

I don't mean to minimize that, but that's the. It's the more straightforward work of raising your dog than the emotional preparation really is. So that's how I see it.

Melissa Breau: Awesome. Julie?

Julie Symons: Yeah. So I'll take this opportunity to mention a category because you mentioned skills that you start when they're a baby that maybe you're going to either revisit or continue with. And one, the skill sets, if you will, that didn't make it into my presentation, but I wanted it to was is the potty skill set.

We haven't talked about that. Like, developing when the dog is a puppy, the potty routine. And when we. How long we go overnight, what time we get up in the morning, what time of day, this and that and everything else, how we go pee. Can you go pee? The four permutations. On leash, off leash, at home, and away from home. And I find that, boy, nothing falls apart in adolescence quicker than the potty skill set.

And it is a skill set. It's very important in terms of traveling and daily life and sports and all that stuff with your dog. So refreshing. All of that, I think, is really important. And as it's not just girls that mark in adult. I mean, it's not just boys that mark. I've had lots of female dogs that mark right up there with the best of the boys. And that bit about when to mark, like, we go pee first, and then we do this or that, and then maybe we have free pee sniff time after the work session.

One of my dogs in adolescence was a terrible marker in a search area in nose work when she became an adolescent, Something that never occurred to her as a puppy. You take them to pee, you go do the nose work thing, and then, you know, you take them to pee or so socialize again afterwards. And, boy, that just fell apart in adolescence. And all of a sudden, we were marking all the search areas, which, as you can imagine, is very unpopular in the nose work crowd.

So, like, it became a whole training regimen. Like, I got a certain harness for her, a fleece harness that I put on her when we were ready to go to the search area. So first we'd go out to the peace sniff thing that every adolescent really needs. Acclimation is so important for an adoles. Then put the harness on, go to the search area. No peeing happens with that harness on ever.

And as soon as we're done searching, take that harness off and go back to peeing and sniffing. And I had to maintain that pretty much throughout that dog's adolescence to make sure I could control the potty skill set in scenarios where adolescent dogs often lose their minds and lose their good manners. So I'll just mention that one as one example.

Melissa Breau: I love that example. Megan, what about you?

Megan Foster: Yeah, so this is the part we're going last is like, everything that they said. So I'll try to summarize. But when they're puppies, it is like Amy was saying about getting to know them and what they're like and how they react to things and how they deal with their own feelings and their relationship to arousal and then how the skills that I'm building with them around those things.

So. And like Erin was saying, trust in me that I know things, I know cool stuff. You can always count on me building some desire for the things that I have to offer them. Because when they hit that adolescence and they start thinking of other things, think when I'm not as important, if I have some things that they also really like, that I can convince them that I'm cool still, that's important.

So like really making sure that, you know, can keeping their interest in food and, or toys, depending on the dog, keeping that really high. Teaching them some management skills when they don't need them. Right. Teach those management skills when they're puppies and it's just fun for them because what else are you going to do with a puppy? Teach them precision, healing. No. So Hope, teach them some management skills, teach them some self regulation skills.

Teach them how to get excited over something and then come back down and get excited over something and come back down so that when they don't have as much control over those things during adolescence, you can help guide them back through that concept of, oh yeah, you do know how to do these things and I'm still cool and we're still cool and this is going to be okay.

But I'm always, you have to always be open to tweaking and adjusting and, you know, setting expectations that aren't for your, mostly for yourself, that if you misjudged what your puppy could do that day, you're not a loser and you can try again tomorrow and it's going to be okay. So if so not only putting like reasonable expectations on your puppy, make sure you're putting reasonable expectations on yourself.

Because we also all have lives and things to do. Even though it feels like we're supposed to center our lives around said puppy, we know that that's not possible to do 100% of the time. And so just do the best you can and it is going to be okay. I love the reminder that we have to look at our expectations of ourselves as well. It's not just, not just our expectations can get a little bit out of hand sometimes of what we expect from other trainers or even what like we're all instructors and like leaders, right?

They're looking to us and so sometimes it can look like we're doing perfectly 100 of the time and that is not the case at all right. Sometimes the adolescence just goes in the crate with the chew and I can't deal with it right now. Right. Like, we all just like need a break sometimes. So it's a cumulative experience, not an everyday reset.

Melissa Breau: The third conference we've brought back sessions from is our Confident Dog conference. So what is a confident dog? And is confidence something we can influence? Dr. Amy Cook, Julie Daniels, Petra Ford, and Sara Brueske joined me for a conversation all about confidence. Since we are here to talk about confidence, I want to start things things off with a conversation about what confidence is when we're talking about our dogs. So how would you describe it or define it when you're talking about a confident dog?

Petra Fiord: So as far as how they look, I feel that when my dogs are really confident, they look first and foremost, they look relaxed. There's no real tension in their body. If there is, it's their alert, right? They're if they're almost anticipating because they know exactly what I want. They know exactly what's coming next. Their eyes are like bright, their ears are up, their tail is typically wagging.

If they're really concentrating, sometimes it's actually not. But I can always tell by how they respond to my cue, right? So if I give my dog a cue and he. So I'm envisioning signals because that's super hard and the dogs need to be very, very confident. And so if I him my cue and he responds really quickly, then I'm like, okay, good. He knew that was coming. He's comfortable performing that cue in this environment.

Same with the sit or the come, for example. Dogs, you know, some dogs will respond quickly to cues even if they're not comfortable because of some pressure or compulsion. But those dogs will typically have ears back. They're panting pretty heavily. Their eyes are a little whale eyed. They just don't look what I would describe as just relaxed and happy. So I think that's the most important thing. My dog looks relaxed and happy.

And my dog, when I give them the cue, does the behavior quickly and happily and it meets criteria. And my dog looks fairly relaxed. If my dogs are anticipating, I kind of like that because it says to me, all right, they know exactly what's happening, they know exactly what's coming next, they know what I want. And so I'm pretty happy with that.

Melissa Breau: Okay, awesome. Next. Amy, what do you have to add there?

Amy Cook: That's, that's great, Petra. I love the low latency sort of, you know, measure. It's like, are you jumping right into what you see here. Right. So it's a great description of that. You know, as usual, I tend to think of it in mentalistic terms. Right. And, you know, in pondering confidence and what that is in, you know, inside you, what is it for you? Right. I tend to use the words.

And I'm certainly not alone in this. I know probably all of us do. I tend to use the words like optimism and pessimism and. And at first, I think people go like, well, but that's a mushy word, and you can't. But you can think about it specifically. So if I'm going to say a dog is optimistic about where I just brought them, I'm going to be looking for things like, are you hesitating to explore something that's here, or are you boldly and, you know, quickly with low latency, as Petra was talking about, just going forward, Right.

Into whatever is available to you, do you hesitate or, you know, do you just behave with, you know, boldness? And. And what I want that to. What that sort of tells me is you're not expecting anything from this environment that is negative. You're not expecting anything from this environment that you should be concerned about. You've arrived somewhere you've never seen before, or you're in front of an object you've never seen before, and your default assumption is that this is going to be great, or this has some kind of reward or reinforcement situation for you, or it's interesting.

Right away, you are curious instead of. You are hesitant. You are unsure if this is going to work out. Not sure if this is going to be great. I want to see just this default or that we get to a default position in them that says, this is probably going to work out. This is probably going to be awesome. I should go check in. I should go see what it is.

I should. I should go right toward it. And to me, that's saying that the orientation, if you will, inside the dog is that things are going to work out. And outside of that, for me, it's actually quite hard to quantify it because confidence looks a little different in every person and in every dog. But if I can think, you're not hanging back, you're not unsure, you're not scared, then we're probably going in the right direction. So that's how I think of it.

Melissa Breau: I love those two answers because, Amy, you talked about novelty and environmental and, you know, those pieces, and Petra was talking about, you know, skills specifically and trained behaviors. Right, Right. So I think it shows us kind of how big this conversation can be totally. Sara, you want to step in?

Sara Brueske: Yeah. Yep. So I'm thinking about when I am looking at my dogs and they're being confident, the way I kind of define that is I love Amy's description of optimism.

Right. They're excited about what we're doing, they're opting into what we're doing. But it's kind of hard, like she said, to define exactly what that looks like because it's different for every dog. And so this is where having a relationship with that dog is so very important. Because what I'm looking for is that that dog is responding as they normally would to the games they're playing. The focus games are playing the cues I'm asking of them and as they normally do is different for every single dog.

So I have some dogs that wag their tail and they're super excited and I have some dogs that their tail's more neutral and they're kind of checking out the environment and that's their normal. And so it' really difficult for me to really define what a dog looks like or how they respond in terms of confidence because there's so many dogs out there and there's so many different responses.

You have your fast twitch, excited, do all the thing dog like vibrant. My 3 year old Koolie who is just excited to be alive and her brain runs at like 5,000 miles per hour. And then you have like Edgar, my little Boston terrier Shih Tzu mix. And you know, he's excited and happy, but when he's not confident, it kind of looks the same. So I'm looking for the subtle little, little changes in how he is responding, how he's acting that are different from normal.

And so for him, he might be panting a lot more, his breathing might be a little bit more excited and you know, for some of the other dogs I work with, they might be a little bit slower, a little bit more thoughtful about the things I'm asking. So I really try to know what my dog normally does in a space that they are confident. So in my home, in our yard, that sort of thing. And then when I take them to those new situations, new environments, I'm looking for deviations of that normal. I like that. Julie?

Julie Daniels: Boy. There's not much to add, so let me be the recapper. So they look happy, they look ready to work, so to speak. They look optimistic. We have a relationship with them so we know what their little individual tells are when they feel a little bit insecure versus a little bit confident.

So just in general, evade the question entirely, since I don't have a lot of different information to add, and I'll just say yes, a dog who is confident is a dog who exudes an air of looking forward to whatever is going to happen in the space. There you go.

Melissa Breau: Fair enough. We'll let you take the next one first so that you get stuck as the caboose again. But so kind of building on that, right? Like, is confidence something that's kind of innate to the dog? Is it something that can be trained and taught? Are there some, some considerations maybe to the answer to this question that we need to break down first? Go ahead, Julie.

Julie Daniels: Oh, boy, this is a fun one. Right. So I think what is innate? So I think the hardwired part would be a tendency toward the optimism that we're talking about.

And so I think, think many dogs, really all puppies come into the world curious. But many puppies come into the world with a sense of this is great. And that's of course, what we want to nurture. There are many puppies who don't come into the world with that optimistic expectation about life in general. For example, that'll show up early on in aversion to novelty, that kind of thing.

Suspicion, Suspicion of novelty. What can you do about that? I don't know about. Can you out train that? Well, you can overwrite that. And by continually overriding insecurities with successes, quick successes and happy experiences, I really think, and this will be part of my presentation, I think you can turn a pessimist into an optimism, into an optimist. I think it can be done.

Melissa Breau: Yeah. Petra?

Petra Ford: Yeah. So I. So if I'm going to look at it from the competition perspective, but I pretty much agree, like, you know, I feel there are some dogs that are innately more confident than others, just like with humans. I think those, the dogs that are not innately confident, which I have had and have, and I've had students that, that you just have to put a lot more work into it. But if you do, if you work really hard and create, break everything down into pieces and just build on every piece.

Every piece. Success, success, success. You can teach them to become confident in competition or in certain environments. It's not going to be as easy as it is for other dogs. And you're going to have to, you know, a lot of the games and pressure work things that I created were all born out of necessity for zeal because he was and is like, he's just everything makes him concerned and nervous and so by doing that, I was able to change things as late as eight years old, which I thought was pretty fascinating because that's a long history he had of struggling.

And at that point I was just curious, like, can I, you know, certain things, can I change him? Is it possible? And it turns out it was. So I think that's really encouraging information for people that if you're willing to, you know, yes, I understood him and no, I did everything I could not to over face him. But by being very mindful and thoughtful and careful, I was able to turn him, at least in competition, into a different dog.

Melissa Breau: I like that. Amy, the question being, is it innate or can it be trained?

Amy Cook: And of course, my answer would be yes, it is both of those things. We know from plenty of studies about cross fostering in rats that then that early maternal care can really set the, you know, an animal's, a young's, stress response. I won't go too far into, you know, the terms of all of that.

But how they're treated very early can make them hesitant to explore or make them very bold to go out and just see what the world has to offer. We do know that there are things that can happen very, very early, before we ever see the animal at all, that can tune them toward being what I'll just shorthand into pessimistic or optimistic. But we also know very much that an animal is the product of its experiences, right?

And so the part about confidence being is it, is it learned well, there is optimism learned well, you know, what you expect from an environment has very much to do with what you've had happen to you in environments before. And if the experiences you've been shown and the life you've been given has brought you to nothing but great things. When you go new places, what you know, what else should you expect?

You might have come in with a tuning of caution, a tuning of, let's see, let's make sure, right? But if all of your experiences have been, or the majority of them have been confirming that everywhere new is good and everything you try is great and it's okay to experiment and if you're not sure what your person's asking, try something, it's going to work out, your person is kind and, and all of that, you are, you are, you can make up for, in a way, if there is a cautious sort of orientation in the beginning, you can make up for that by how you're, what you're putting in front of them.

Not having it be so challenging that it's confirming for them that maybe they should have been cautious. Maybe it is really hard out here in this. In this life.

So is it innate? Yeah, you know, in a lot of ways, for sure. And we've seen dogs who, no matter what happens to them, they just approach everything with confidence. But regardless of what innate situation they came to you with, so much of what we put in front of them colors their expectation for what will be in front of them for next time.

Melissa Breau: So a lot of it is in our hands, for sure. Sara?

Sara Brueske: Yeah. So my views on this is that genetics play a big role in the dog's natural optimism level, confidence level. I believe that genetics gives you a spectrum. Right. So if I've got this long spectrum of a super confident dog and low confident dog genetically, my individual dog is going to fall somewhere in that, with a peak high and peak low.

And so training, in my opinion, can get us as far up on that peak high as possible. But at some point, the dog's genetics are just going to be too powerful to overcome that confidence. I think there's a ton that we can do to help help create situational confidence and kind of mask those genetics by creating pattern games, by building confidence in working with the handler and creating confidence in certain environments.

But there's going to be a certain point where if those things aren't there. So if I don't use my pattern games or somebody else is handling my dog, or it's a novel situation, or I'm asking for novel behaviors or whatever it might be, that the genetics are going to overpower that, and my dog inherently then is not confident. They're confident in situations, and I can create that, and I can mask their lack of confidence.

But I do believe that overall, that confidence is dependent on being secure with the handler, dependent on knowing what's happening in that situation and the predictability and the games that we create. So we can definitely create situational confidence in our dogs and train that into them. But underneath that, when that gets all stripped away, where is their confidence level? And that falls into genetics, in my opinion, and epigenetics and those early learned experiences that Amy talked about.

Melissa Breau: All right, the final conference that we're bringing back is the High Drive Dog Conference. I had presenters Crystal Wing, Denise Fenzi, Helene Lawler, and Jane Ardern on the podcast to talk about what high drive means and how it's different than arousal, even though it's sometimes easy to confuse the two.

What do you think of when you're talking about drive? And how can listeners maybe know if they Have a dog who kind of qualifies? Denise?

Denise Fenzi: So I have a really generic overview statement that I say to people. I say, high drive dogs stay in the game under adversity. And it doesn't matter what the adversity is. It could be everything from really piss poor training all the way to terrible weather, to physical or mental pain, to long training sessions, to low rates of reinforcement. They stick it out, and they stick it out when any sane dog would opt out, when things are just not working out anymore.

That's my high drive definition, because it crosses sports. And I think it's easy for people to kind of say they look at their dog and they look at what's going on around them, and they can place themselves on a relative scale, which is really important because drive is relative. It's not. It's not like this is high drive. This is not. It has to be compared. It's a relative term.

But I think the more interesting question for this group, for this webinar or this presentation at the conference, is the root of the drive. And so for me, the root of the drive is really how pronounced is the dog's interest in the predatory sequence. So how much chase does the dog have, how much bite, how much kill, how much shake? All these. These things that we sort of associate with the predatory sequence.

Now, whether or not that's actually what's happening, because I also say there's an element of the dog has to suspend belief. My dog knows perfectly well that a tug toy is not a rabbit. But the willingness to suspend relief, to play the game of the predatory sequence is where I think that stays in the game under adversity quality is coming from.

Hélène Lawler: I love Denise's definition of it. I'm gonna work with that because when listening to, to you, you described that Denise. What comes to mind is this video I saw recently of a working Border Collie being sent to gather sheep in Ireland up the side of a mountain. And the dog had to cross a river to get there and it was spring flood time and the dog went into the river and got washed down the river over rocks,

over boulders under heads underwater. He scrambles back out, he scrambles out back on the side, he started on and gets right back in and scrambles across the water and then has to drag himself out on slippery rocks. And he gets up to the other side, he shakes once and he's off like a shot to get to get the sheep and then he goes up like out like 800 yards to go up the side of a mountain to get the sheep.

And so that is most definitely a high drive dog. And one of the things in the working Border collie world that we, we, we really place a lot of emphasis on is the importance of desire, the desire to work. And so for me, drive is the desire to do the job. Now, and I'm gonna talk a lot about Border Collies cuz that's the breed that I know best.

I have had a couple of Marrema and the kelpie and stuff, but, but I wouldn't speak with any authority about any other breed. But with the Border Collie you can have that intense incredible passion and desire, but you can extinguish it through pressure, through poor handling and so on. Even the strongest desire can be extinguished. So that's where with the dogs that I work with, when I, when we say they'll work through adversity, one of the things with the Border Collie in particular is that they are selected to be very handler sensitive. And so that dog would work through the adversity of being like half drowned and then having to run up the side of a mountain to get his sheep. And, and so he has that incredible desire, but that same dog could actually be put off working through handler pressure. And so that's something that we have to kind of keep in mind that we can have these dogs with a lot of desire, but they don't. But there's different aspects of that, what was the word you used Denise? That just, that willingness to work through adversity, work through the pressure, work through the challenge it in, in this breed, in my breed we select for different things. So we want high, high intensity and, and desire for the work, but the way it's controlled is through having this very sort of handler soft side. And maybe that's what you encountered as well, Denise with your dog that you got that you said your first dog that you mentioned that you said she was actually very sensitive, super strong desire to do the work, but if we wanna maintain some control over these dogs, they need to wanna work with us. And so finding that balance is, is part of the package that we look for and when we have, so yeah, so I'm not sure where I'm going with this.

Denise Fenzi: I love, I love your additions because I think Border Collies are generally more handler soft than Belgians, but Belgians are way more handler soft than people recognize. They think that they're all hard ass dogs. My dog is, I'm gonna say he's medium hard. He's not, he's not handler soft, but he's not handler hard. He actually wants to cooperate with me. I think we're on the same page. I agree that Border Collies are a little further on that scale just because Belgians have been bred to contest humans so they have to fight humans. So I don't think you can completely eliminate some degree of general hardness towards humans even though they have the softness towards their handler. Again, it's one of those areas where I think there's so much misunderstanding about what it means to be a driven dog or hard. Cuz when someone says your dog is hard, I say, what, can you tell me more about that? Hard how, you know, what have you done? What, what does that mean to you?

Hélène Lawler: Yeah, exactly. So for me, drive is the desire to do the work. And in that, you know, in the case of the Border Collie, it's the work on sheep. I can take an incredibly driven dog and, and take that drive and, and extinguish it in a heartbeat in agility for instance. Whereas that dog might be willing to work through an awful lot more poor handling, poor training and, and pressure and, and environmental adversity on sheep. So it also isn't a black and white thing. And that was a lesson I've also hard learned where I had an incredibly driven dog on sheep. She was my second agility dog and I completely shut her down cuz I didn't understand. That took me a long time to figure out.

Melissa Breau: Jane, what about you? Do you have a definition?

Jane Ardern: So yeah, kind of going along with the others, I think for me it is a dog that from a genetics point of view has got the drive to work, to wanna do the job that they're actually bred, that they've, that they've been bred to do. And I think it's, you know, sometimes I see dogs that have got like the motor patterns, so you can see the physical behavior patterns can kind of kick in with arousal.

But that's actually kind of like the purpose and the focus that they actually have on doing the job. My first cocker, Pickles, I remember the first day that I introduced her to game and literally she kind of that exposure, she went up about like 18 gears and I remember that she flushed a bird, I blew the stop whistle and she was not stopping and she ran, she ran, crashed through a load of really thick brambles after this bird she dived into a river, she swam across to the other side, she went straight through the other brambles, she ran through an electric fence out onto the field, picked the bird that had been shot, she ran back through the electric fence back into the river and brought the bird back to me.

And I remember that day everyone else was like, oh my god, like wow. And I'm like, she didn't stop on the whistle, but I just, I just always remember that like that level of intensity, like that instinct being awakened. And she was what I would class as a hard dog. She was very independent as well, so she wasn't soft. Where some of my other spaniels are soft with it like, like the Border Collie is. And then some of them are hard as well where, and I think the hardness is where the dog kind of looks at us as though they're like, you're slowing me down, I've got this. And they're quite driven to do it on their own.

Melissa Breau: Crystal, you wanna round us out?

Crystal Wing: I'm gonna go a little different angle. That's kind of what I do. I think sometimes I'm gonna say river dancing squirrels. Can you imagine that? Can you picture that? Because in my world that's what drive is and I'm seeing it as this, there's that Laurie Haine art, she has a thing that says I don't have ducks or a row, I have squirrels and they're at a rave. And so that's how I kinda imagine drive if we have, you know, imagine this like bunch of squirrels and they're at a rave. It's kind of fun to think about in my brain, but it's not an easy place to live day after day. You know, it's really hard to choreograph squirrels or dancers, especially when they're at a rave. I mean, can you, I don't think you're supposed to. Like, that's the opposite. And so if we keep this kind of dancing squirrel thought, I look at it as when you have high drive, those squirrels are at a country line dance. And when they get even higher drive, well now you've got the intensity of the river dancers.

And I think that goes back to Helene's where it's like literally river dancers, you know, I mean it's like they are all lined up, they're doing their thing and it doesn't matter what happens, you know, the, the whole place can burn down and they're like, nope, we're still doing the thing. So maybe instead of dog trainers we're just really excellent squirrel choreographers, maybe that's what, you know, high drive is and what we are as high drive dog trainers.

Denise Fenzi: My brain is very busy thinking about a line dancing squirrel, but I got a picture in my head of line dancing squirrels. So we're doing good.

Crystal Wing: And I apologize to those that can't picture things in your mind. So maybe if you like use some AI or something, you can like type in line dancing squirrels or river dance squirrels, you can see what I'm imagining.

Melissa Breau: Fair enough. I think you started to hint at something there though that I wanna explore a little more. So I definitely think there's a tie in there between drive and arousal, right? Like there's a, there's a piece there and I'd love to just have you guys talk a little more about kinda what that relationship looks like. What is the link between drive and arousal, maybe what isn't it? Hélène, do you wanna start us off for this one?

Hélène Lawler: Sure. So yeah, arousal is, if I know Denise, you had posted, you saw the difference, I'm sorry, I don't mean if you're gonna talk about this to, to steal your thunder here, but you described it as, you know, arousal as the gasoline and drive as the kindling when you're building a fire. I see, I I love that. And when I thought about it I was like, I pictured a little bit differently. I see drive as the engine and arousal as the gasoline. And so if you think about you're like, you know, driving a sports car and you've got this big engine under the hood, so the drive is the engine and you give it gas, that is the arousal and we need arousal or right. That's what has us awake and has us moving and so on. But if you, if you step on the gas too much, you you're, you quickly start to lose the ability to turn to avoid things on the road to right. Like you can, you can spin outta control really if you picture going way too fast in a, in a car with a big engine, it's really easy to totally lose control. And so when we work with our dogs and we have these high drive dogs, we add arousal to the picture or they add it themselves, right? They, they will probably have this natural propensity to go quickly into over into higher arousal.

And if we then allow that to go into over arousal, we can get outta control really fast. And we see a lot of that. One of the things that I see a lot of is people using arousal to get speed and thinking that that's how they're getting more drive out of their dog and that it's really, really important to separate those two.

I'm gonna argue that we can't add more drive to a dog. We bring the drive out, the dog is born with how much drive it's gonna have. And as I said earlier, like you can, you can squash that drive or you can nurture it and bring it out. What arousal does, it's like, it's the gasoline that revs the engine, but when we add too much things get outta control. And so we don't want to actually use arousal as a way of bringing out drive. We want to have the arousal to, to get the performance we want without losing control. So we separate those two. Like I said, for me in my mind it's the engine and the gasoline.

Jane Ardern: How much gas do you actually need to be able to still stay in complete control and that's what you're seeking.

Hélène Lawler: I like that Jane.

Jane Ardern: Yeah, so I think arousal is arousal for me genetically. The dogs have drive, arousal is something that you can use to your advantage and it's something that can also create you lots of problems. So I think for me it's really about understanding arousal in the dogs. I know with my cockers to be able to crash through the brambles, they've gotta be on an adrenaline rush because if they're not on the adrenaline rush they'll they, they just won't get in the cover and they won't hunt hard and they won't put themselves under pressure. So we kind of need that, that kind of level of arousal there. With the dogs I've been through, I've, I've trained dogs and I've trained them like overcome as such I've trained them to manage themselves too well and then they don't, they just don't do the job because their job requires this, this level of arousal. And I do think that most, most time people have, when people have problems with high drive dogs, it's actually the arousal that is usually where they're having a problem. Interesting.

Melissa Breau: Crystal, you wanna kinda take it from there?

Crystal Wing: Yeah, I'm thinking about kinda what I'm talking about in my little part of the day and if we think about it every, and this is dogs, people, whatever, but every response that a dog shows it's is triggered by something. So some dogs are gonna react easier than others to different stimuli. And so we call this the stimulus threshold. So we're looking at the lowest level of stimulation that will trigger response, right? So when we're talking about drive and arousal, I think we're seeing and talking about the stimulus threshold of the dog.

And some dogs do not react quickly or easily when something happens. But this doesn't say anything about their ability to handle that situation. So once they perceive it, some dogs will react faster to the movement, some won't react hardly at all. And I really wanted in protection sports to have my dog almost look sleepy so that, you know, he just looks like he's like there things are good.

But then the moment the stimulus control comes in and I say bite, he is on fire and that's the drive part coming out. And I think I was talking to Jans Frank from Scandinavian working Dog Institute just recently. We were doing a podcast with him and he was really talking about how it seems like a lot of the handlers and trainers United States, they want the high arousal and the high drive and he said he kind of made a joke, I dunno if I should share this or not, it was off the recording that, go ahead take 'em. We don't want them, we don't want the high arousal, high drive, we want lower arousal and we want higher drive because we don't want the dog barking their fool head off. You know if they're doing military type ops, you don't want a dog that they start getting excited and they start barking like crazy.

That's not what you want. You want a very kind of clear head that will react when it's when it's time and not just because, so you know, some dogs react to every movement I've seen trainers label them as high prey drive is that high prey drive. You know, we can't stop there. We have to assess different areas to talk about the drives and the arousal, not just the threshold. So maybe they react quickly to the movement but you know, that doesn't tell me are they able to fulfill the rest of the task. Yukon, okay, I'll bring up Yukon, my dutchie, I got 'em for the purpose of protection sports and I remember it was so clear I can see it like I wish I could have a picture from my mind cause it was so great.

I'm thinking we're having crazy fun. He's, you know, into this play and we're about less than a minute into it and he sees a butterfly over my shoulder and he totally lets go of this tug that I think I'm highly aroused, he's highly aroused. I'm thinking we're in this and he's chasing a butterfly really. So it brought the question of inconsistent drives to mind and that's when I really started to question arousal versus drive and how they work together.

I thought he was driven to play and tug with me but his arousal tricked him into, into biting the toy and then his attention shifted. So I think the arousal can be the facilitator for the drive, but I also have to share, I think he's a neurodivergent dog and I need a steady state of drive and I'm an ADHD human so I think my creativity comes from my distractibility.

So if we say okay, let's say that we all live in a box and we all have our like little package and I see that both, you know, Yukon and me, we both kind of live in this box with holes and those holes are all of our distractions. But I think it's where, because we're both kind of chasing butterflies, I'm still gonna say we're both driven, we're both driven to do the things we want to do but that drive changes. And so I think we have to recognize too that sometimes you can have a highly driven dog that's also kind of neurodivergent. Like their drives may change. And so I don't know, I think that's just something to kind of play with or kind of throw out there, maybe see what you guys think about it too. I don't know.

Denise Fenzi: Nice. I will change my analogy going forward. I like Elaine's way better than mine. Engine and fuel makes more sense than kindling and the idea, it's basically 100% agreement with the way she laid that out. I want a dog with an enormous engine and exactly enough arousal to get the job done. Now how much that is gonna vary.

So like I don't know about Border Collies, I won't speak on Border Collies but I will say that if I'm watching a Border Collie stare at sheep for an hour, only a fool would think that dog was not a drive because it's not moving. Doesn't mean it's not a drive, it's just that the amount of arousal required that's externally showing at that time is zero cuz the sheep aren't doing anything.

But when the sheep do something, that dog will turn to 100 because at that moment a high level of arousal is necessary to get the job done. I often use that analogy when I'm talking to people who think that arousal means movement. I say, well are you telling me then that a Border Collie staring at sheep is not in drive? It's about what's appropriate with my own dogs, much as Crystal said, I want my dogs practically dulled and it doesn't mean that they cannot show arousal or will not show arousal, but I do nothing to bring out arousal because my experience is if you let them mature it will come up just fine. If the drive is there, the dog will bring the amount of arousal to the table that is required at that time without losing control.

And what I see so much is that people work so much in arousal getting the dog so high, so excited about the job that it's no longer a thinking occupation anymore. It's running and it's moving and is, well this is so fun. And what I tell people is most eight week old puppies of any breed you can bring out arousal through movement. You can bring out a toy and get them to chase and then the dog is a year old and people are like, it doesn't really do it anymore. And that's cuz it grew up and when it grows up, arousal goes down, drive goes up, the head gets clear. I work so hard to minimize excess arousal because it's just much easier to put it in than it is to get it back out. And that's why I use so much control with my young dogs and I hate to say that cuz it implies that I smash them down but I really don't.

It's just the way I work with them, how much do you need? And then I compare that to my other dog, my low drive dog breed, it's all about arousal, it's all about forming and shaping behaviors around arousal because I don't have the drive to work with. So I'm working with what I can access and because I'm working on fly ball where the exact amount of time he needs to do something is roughly six seconds if I'm lucky.

And then he's gonna get the thing, I can whip him up with the toys and the play and the ball and the environment is super high arousal. So everything I do is get him as high as I can channel it into the work. That's the last thing I wanna do with my Belgian because my Belgian needs to work for 30 minutes, not six seconds.

And the vast majority of that is in control. So if he's on the field for 30 minutes, about two minutes of that might be active biting exercises at the far end of the realm. And that's including some like barking phase, which shows a lot of arousal. So I, you know, Hélène, you get it from this day forward I will now pick up your very fine analogy and hope that people get it cuz I know this is a struggle and I agree that in this country we struggle terribly to recognize the difference between drive and arousal and it's harming our breeding programs, it's harming our training and frankly it's bringing an unnecessary amount of force to dog training because we cause a problem. And then we say we have to fix the problem with compulsion because look, this dog is so in drive. No, no this dog is not in drive. This dog is so high in arousal that you caused by your training that now you have to, that's what you have to fix.

So that's what I speak to with Radish. She's a mix of a lab and a mal. And for her job I have to have her go out and search very large areas and when I want those types of searches I need a more active search. But a lot of times we're doing cold case stuff and we'll be doing, you know, forensic type stuff and I don't want a dog that's gonna go out there and burn their energy out really fast.

I need her to have a high sniffing frequency and I need to have her in that right arousal, right drive for me. It's been interesting cuz she's a lower arousal than I would I've ever had and she looks sleepy sometimes and it, it really has taken a shift for me to say I need a dog that can work longer, they can have a better heat tolerance and I need a Jeep, you know, I need like an off-roading jeep, I need this really reliable, can get the job done. Not flashy, not flying through the woods, but that, that's what I need. So kind of to tie what you guys were saying together, that's what I, I'm looking for now and I think it's important when we look for the dog that we need, we need to look at the activity we want to do and then hedger, I bet's the best by getting the best breedings that we can. So I mean that's, oh my gosh, I thought my mom was gonna disown me. She has an animal rescue and so when I got into protection sports, I'm like yeah, so I'm gonna go to a breeder.

I thought she's gonna lose her mind. But that was such a huge point of it too, was that I know what I'm looking for and the best that I can do is to try to find the right genetics and the right kind of arousal and all of that throughout the whole pedigree to get what I need. So I'm gonna set her up for success and myself the best that I can.

I think It's extra interesting to kind of add that component in cuz both Hélène and Jane breed, right? So you guys and Denise, you're not actively breeding but you've been down that path for sure. So just like as this whole other component to the conversation, Go ahead. But I say that but also radish is a mutt. So she's, she was a total accident, but I know the pedigree on both sides and it's funny that her grandpa is like super stellar, you know Dutch KNPV lines. So when you look at her embark, it's hilarious to see all of these other dogs with pointy ears and they're like, you know, the Dutch police and, and then on the lab side it's a lot of field, you know, field line labs and I thought this is perfect for what I wanna do.

No dog is going to be perfect and they all require us to help build them into their best selves by balancing their natural tendencies and talents with our training so that they become as well rounded as they're able to.

Melissa Breau: All right, I hope you enjoyed this departure from our typical episode. If you want more episodes like this where we pull together snippets from previous episodes, or even knit together snippets from multiple new interviews, let us know.

And in the meantime, I hope you'll go check out the conference sale on the website benziedogsportsacademy.com where for the first time, we're actually offering you the opportunity to buy individual presentations from four of our most popular conferences. Thank you for tuning in. We'll be back next week with Denise Fenzi to talk about her Circle Walking Program recap 2024 and look ahead to 2025. 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 Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy.

Special thanks to Denise Fenzi 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.

Credits 

Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi 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!