In this episode Petra and I discuss the difference between attention and engagement. Join us for Petra's advice on preparing your dog for the competition ring.
Transcript
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. Today I have Petra Ford here with me to talk about engagement for the competition ring. Hello. Welcome back to the podcast.
Petra Ford: Thank you. Thanks for having me. Always happy to be here.
Melissa Breau: Always happy to have you. Do you want to start us off? Just remind us a little bit about you, your dogs, kind of what you're working on with them.
Petra Ford: Yep. So I have three right now. I'm holding strong to three, even though I've been tempted to get a puppy for the past eight months. I have my old guy, Zeal. He's 12 and a half, retired from obedience.
He still loves to work. I was showing him and preferred it was getting a little hard for him. So this past weekend we did our first time ever in rally, me and him. He loved it. It was so cute. So he got at 12 and a half, he got his rally novice title this weekend.
Melissa Breau: That's awesome. Congrats.
Petra Ford: Yeah, so we'll, we'll do that a little bit more since he still just loves to work.
And then I have Zaina, she's eight, she'll be nine very shortly, which makes me super sad. And so she's my seasoned dog training. I mean, competing in open and utility. And then I have Zesty, he's four, and he not so long ago finished his A. So still obviously showing an open and utility and just working on building up his confidence and getting him more seasoned. And that's it.
Melissa Breau: Awesome. All right, so I wanted to talk about engagement. So when we're talking about engagement, you know, how are you using that term? What do you mean by it? Do you have a definition in mind? And how, if at all, is engagement in training maybe different from engagement in the competition ring?
Petra Ford:So in the old days we used to call it attention, right? Because basically we said to the dog, you must pay attention to me.
Right? So if they wanted to look at something, we said, don't look at that, look at me. And so they did. But to me, the difference between attention and engagement is kind of like Zayna's a perfect example of this. Like, she could be looking right at my face in the middle of a super busy environment and I'm looking in her eyes and I know she is not really thinking about me and the task at hand.
Right. So it's kind of like when you're having a conversation with someone, and all of a sudden you can tell that their brain just went south. They're looking at you, but they're not fully engaged in what's happening in that moment. So that's the difference. I want my dog to be so involved in what we're doing that the environment ceases to exist with attention. I think there was often conflict as well, and that, I think, put pressure on the dogs.
Right. So, like, the dog wants to look at something, I say, don't look at it. The dog looks at me. But they're. They still have this desire to look at the other thing or attend to it for whatever reason, whether they're curious, whether they're nervous, whatever. With engagement, my dog is offering me their full focus, so there is no conflict. They don't care about those other things anymore.
At that moment in time, they're fully engrossed in what we're doing, and so they're super happy. Their attitude is really good, and they're in an optimal state now to focus and be able to do their work. Is there a difference there, then, in kind of what you expect from engagement and training versus what you expect or want to see when you're actually in the competition ring? No. I mean, I want.
When I train, I want 100% engagement, 100% of the time. That's what I'm striving for. Right. Do I get it all the time? Of course not. It's hard, but that's what I'm striving for. Because in the ring, until a dog is really seasoned and your training is really good, it's hard to get the same thing, same exact performance and behaviors in the ring as in training. Right. So I theorize that I am more than likely.
So, for instance, with Zayna, I'm right now getting the exact same thing and training as in the ring. Right. But with Zesty, no, I get a little bit less. Which means that in order for me to have the engagement I need in the ring, I need to have really phenomenal engagement in training. Right. And in training, I don't just mean, like, in my backyard or in my training partner's building.
I mean, like, when I take them to different environments like stores, parking lots, etc. So that's what I need to have in training so that I have enough in the ring so that my dog can still do their job well. Is there a relationship there between engagement or kind of how much your dog can engage in their arousal level? Yes. Just like a human. Right. I mean, because I'm exactly the same way.
If I'm too relaxed at a trial, I am not going to do my best job. It's guaranteed, believe me. Been there, done that. Doesn't work, right? If I am super nervous and wound up and just, you know, like. Or get myself really hyped up, well, that's a little bit too much now, right? Then you can't focus either. So just like a human, the dog, you want them in that optimal zone where they're aroused enough that they're animated and happy and, you know, into what we're doing, but not so aroused that they can't think straight.
And so that's another strategy that we used to use in the past. The answer to every problem was tug more. Get your dog more adrenalized, right? Because if your dog is super hyper and adrenalized, then they'll be able to work. But the problem is they're not. They have so many chemicals going that it makes them, like, really twitchy. It actually makes them more aware of the environment, and it's not a comfortable state for them to be in.
So I want my dog aroused, happy, animated, excited, but not over the cliff. And so that's kind of how I train my dogs all the time. So from when they're puppies to my more advanced competition dogs in training, I'm constantly, constantly adjusting their arousal to keep them in that sweet spot. So that's where they learn to be. And then sometimes in the ring, they'll. I'll see them adjust themselves at times, but if they need a little help, I have cues built in so that I can keep them where I need them.
Melissa Breau: You mentioned, I think, the phrase optimal zone in there. How do you. I mean, how do you kind of determine what that looks like or what that optimal zone is going to be?
Petra Ford: A lot of it. You can see in their eyes. So it's just like if you talk to a person, right? Like if you're having a conversation and you're looking at that person and they're looking at you, you can kind of tell from their eyes if they're, like, not paying attention or if something else crosses their mind, or if they're all of a sudden, you can see they want to ask you a question, you can see those things in their face.
I can see it in my dog's eyes. So if my dog's kind of looking at me, but with this kind of blank look, right? Well, you're not aroused enough. You're just. You're kind of like, it's like, wake up, buddy. Come on. Right? Like, so my dog comes out of the crate. I don't expect them to work that second. They're gonna stretch, they're gonna sneeze, they're gonna do a few things.
They're going to do these things to bring their arousal up. So if you observe your dog, right, they. They do these things themselves. My dogs will shake, they'll sneeze. Each dog's a little bit different. If I get my dogs too adrenalized, like, their eyes look like they're going to pop out of their head. A lot of times they get eye flicky because there's just all this adrenaline running through their system.
They'll be panting really hard and they start to get very, like, impulsive. They'll get vocal. So those are all signs that they're kind of, you know, off the scale on one end or another. When the dog's in an optimal state. They're looking at me. Their eyes are wide open, they're clear. Their breathing is, you know, relaxed. Their ears are up. Their body looks like it's ready to go, but it's not so tense, like they're about to explode any second.
So I think with each dog, it can look slightly different, But I think the biggest thing is just start observing your dog more. The huge challenge with training our dogs is that we need to think about what we have to do with our body and our. We have to think about the cues and our markers. We have to think about how we're going to teach the behavior to the dogs.
And so all this stuff is going on in our heads, and people don't also have the bandwidth to look at the dog and observe the dog and interpret what's happening. So I find that challenging for people, but if I push them to do it or if they challenge themselves to do it, they actually do a pretty decent job of interpreting, like, where their dog's arousal is. So thinking about, like, the day of competition, right, you're talking about, like, your dog comes out of their crate and they maybe sneeze or they stretch or whatever.
Melissa Breau: I would imagine that, you know, if you know that you need a certain level of arousal, you kind of want to develop a routine before you go in the ring that kind of gets your dog where you want them to be right first. Is that right? Am I kind of getting that right? Am I guessing that right?
Petra Ford: Yeah.
Melissa Breau: And then can you talk a little bit about that? Like, what does it look like? Or how do you do that? How do you develop one of those?
Petra Ford: Sure. So the key is to do the same thing at the trial that you do in training, right? So you want. Because remember, our dogs are operating in a vacuum, right? They don't walk into the building and go, oh, mom just spent a whole lot of money on entry fees and on gas and on a hotel.
And mom really, really, really wants me to, you know, get this cue or get this placement or get this score. Like, they have no idea. They just walk into a building, right? So the only way they know what to do is from cues that we give them. So we want to give them cues that are well established, that they understand. So whether I'm just doing a little bit of training here in my sunroom or training in my yard or at a show and go or at a trial, my routine is the same.
It's not the same for each dog because they're different. Right? But each dog has a routine. So when they either come out of their crate or when I say come over here, like, they look at me, they look at my body, they look at my face. That gives them cues. And also whether or not I have food on me, that's a cue to my dogs or a toy, that's a cue.
We're gonna. And then I've developed like a warmup routine that works specifically for each dog with engagement. Now, it's a series of steps, but ultimately I teach my dogs to offer engagement. This way I don't have to nag them, I don't have to harass them. I literally say nothing. Right. I stand there and I wait. They do whatever they have to do to get their arousal in an optimal place.
Stretching, sneezing, whatever. And then they start offering me engagement. And once they do that and I can tell they're ready to go, we do whatever little warm up routine I do for that specific dog, and then we're pretty much ready to go at that point. I imagine part of that is kind of training through the types of challenges or distractions that you know or a possibility. Right. So teaching your dog how to stay engaged even in the face of some of those distractions.
What types of distractions or what types of challenges do you foresee and intentionally maybe train for because, you know, they're a possibility when you're…Basically, I train for the unpredictable because I've been doing this a really long time and weird, unusual things that I've never encountered before will still happen at trials. Right. So it's impossible to train your dog for every situation. So basically, I teach my dog a concept.
So concepts are more challenging, right? It's not like saying sit or down. It's like, here's a general concept that no matter what you see or hear or smell, ignore it, right? And stay engaged. So in order to do that, I take my dogs lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of different places for weeks and months and years. And I. So that my dogs, over time, learn that, oh, yep, something weird happened.
But whatever, whatever, you know, it doesn't matter that something weird happened. I just ignore it and keep doing my job. And as a matter of fact, if something. If I hear or see something odd, actually what I should do is attend to mom and something good will happen. So I think the biggest problem, like, the reality is when you watch people in the ring, the dogs know how to do the exercises.
That's the easy part. Engagement. That's the hard part, right? And it's typically because people are just not exposing their dogs to enough variety of challenges and for a long enough time. Like, you can't just go to the Walmart parking lot three times or once a week for four weeks and expect your dog to be able to work around chaos, which is what a trial is. A lot of the times I make all my poor students, I'm like, get in the car and get out of the house.
Melissa Breau: Yeah. Do you have any particularly crazy stories? What's the craziest thing you've encountered that's happened during a trial?
Petra Ford: You know, I think I've had so many different things happen that nothing really phases me anymore. And I think it also depends. It's really more like, what phases the dog?
Right. That's more important to me because I kind of feel like. So it's my job. I get so focused in the ring because I know my job is I'm steering the ship here, right?
Like, I'm the team captain. My dog's relying on me if I hear something. So I had a training partner once, and, like, he used to go in the ring and be like, oh, my God, did you hear that dog barking? And of course, my dog had to look at it. I'm like, no, you should not have heard the dog barking. So he would hear things and react to them, and then subsequently the dog would react.
Right. When he learned to not pay any attention to anything, oh, look, his dog was perfectly fine. So I've had, like, I was heeling Zeal once, and I guess a dumbbell from the other ring came through the gates and rolled right under his feet. But he never noticed. So I never noticed because, you know, he was really good at his job. Zayna notices most things whilst looking at me and is kind of like, hey, mom, did you see that?
Did you hear that? And I'm like looking at her, I'm not like, yup, now leave it alone. She love, she's just curious. Curious. She just loves the environment. When you have a new dog, like Zesty, like I was in the ring not so long ago and there was a super weird noise. Like, you know when you hear a noise and you just can't place it. So kind of in the back of my head I'm like, that's weird.
I don't know what that is. And I'm. But then I'm like, you know, whatever, just do my job. Well, apparently suddenly the judge is like, oh my God, I can't take it. Like, what? She's like, you don't hear that? I'm like, oh, yeah, I did kind of hear it. But, you know, so I'm used to tuning it out. Zesty notices everything just because he's still new and worried, right?
Like, so he's kind of like, oh, that's weird, what's that? And then I just have to project: "It's fine." Actually, I almost. So now that you mention it fairly recently, I don't get rattled. I got rattled. So there was a dog in the other ring or going into the other ring and it was like screaming and frantic high pitched barking like it was crazy. And as soon as it started, Zesty looked at me like, he's like, I thought he was going to have a nervous breakdown.
So I was headed like, I'm in the ring, headed towards that corner. So I just stop for a second and I'm like, oh my. I say out loud, like, oh my. And the judge is like, yeah. So I just had to, you know, control myself, force myself not to pay attention, force myself to look at him, be like, you're fine, everything's good. And I got him through it.
I mean, it was a little bit of a, you know, I thought the dog laughed. Then the dog went back into the ring. It was chaos. It was super crazy. But again, I can't prepare for everything, right? Like, it's just impossible. Like fans, weird noises, sudden unexpected things, things falling. So I try to put as much variety into my training. Like I always tell my training partner every time we train we need to do distract different, we need to move in a different way.
And I go to all these different places, like stores where things are not predictable, right? Things. Weird things always happen in there. Weird noises happen in there. And so the dogs just learn. But most importantly for the handlers, they have to learn to be disciplined and stay focused. Because if you're in the ring and something super crazy happens and you hold it together, together, there's a much higher chance your dog will hold it together.
Melissa Breau: Okay, so I'm going to shift gears just a little bit here. Talk to me a little bit about kind of reinforcement strategies when it comes to teaching engagement. So I'm assuming, again, dangerous word. But I'm assuming you start teaching the concept with cookies or toys, right? And I think people are usually pretty familiar with the idea of like reducing reinforcement for a competition behavior that they'll need in the ring.
So is that process the same when it comes to engagement? Are there other things to think about when it comes to reinforcement and engagement? Talk to me a little bit about that. Yeah, so sure. Engagement, it's a skill, right? So initially I reinforce it really heavily. Basically I look at it like it's mental concentration, right? It's kind of like a muscle, right? It starts where or it starts like it's a little kid, like a young 2 year old.
Like they can't pay attention for more than two seconds, right. Unless they're like watching TV or something. So that's how mental engagement is. Like, a dog can only initially maintain it for a very short amount of time, which means they're going to be getting a very high reinforcement rate. As they get better at that skill, they can maintain their engagement for a longer period of time. I can start drawing out the reinforcement, right.
As soon as possible. Like, I'm always thinking in my head from day one when I start training a puppy, like, ultimately this dog's gonna have to work in the ring for like six to nine minutes multiple times a day, over multiple days with zero reinforcement, right? So I'm always thinking, okay, can I push it just a little more? And just a little bit more. Ultimately, you have to go to variable reinforcement, which is.
And this is where people go awry. They go from heavy reinforcement to no reinforcement. Right. And then the dog's just completely confused. So I switch to variable reinforcement, where the dog never knows when they're going to get reinforced. It's completely not unprofessional, predictable. The timing varies constantly. You know, how much effort they put in to get the reinforcer varies. But I also, over time want my dogs to give me an enormous amount of like, effort to get reinforced, right?
So I'm at this point with my dogs, for example, if they jump into heel position, they don't get a cookie for that. It's too easy. And they like it and they like doing it. So then maybe I'll heal for, you know, a couple of minutes and they're really working hard that whole time. Then I'll go, yes, and I'll give them, maybe we'll do a nice tugging game. But you always have to mix it up.
People just tend to be too predictable, right? Too predictable with the reinforcement. And they're typically reinforcing too much. And then it's just a really hard jump for the dog. But as the dog gets better and better at engagement and mental focus, it gets easier and easier. And so then they can give you engagement for a longer period of time. And hopefully you're also making the work and pieces of the work inherently self reinforcing, which also helps with the food, right. Because you can start decreasing some of the food or toys. Because I'm throwing in behaviors that the dog's finding reinforcing, and they act a little bit almost like a bridge.
Melissa Breau: All right, so part of the reason we're talking about all this, right, is that you have a new class on the schedule in February. So that is just started as of when we are having this conversation. It's called Enhanced Engagement Building Competition Skills. Can you share just a little more about kind of what you're covering in the class? Maybe who should consider joining you?
Petra Ford: Yeah, so I had, last year I did the basic engagement class, right? Like foundations, like how we start to teach engagement and kind of laying the foundation. But for competition, we have to have engagement when we leave the dog, when the dog's away from us, as we're walking away from the dog, when the dog is coming towards us, the dog has to be engaged every second, every step of the way.
So we're looking at ring entrances, transitions. So engagement engage for having really good engagement when you set your dog up before you even start the exercise, and then how to maintain engagement through every piece of every exercise. So it's just taking, you know, moving from foundation and now moving into what. What is all. Where is all the engagement that we're going to need for the ring, which is basically from, you know, when I walk into the ring until when I leave the ring, I want my dog to be fully engaged the entire time.
And ideally, I want the dog to be offering that engagement. Right. I don't want to have to be like, Zesty up here, up here. Look look, buddy, buddy, you know, I don't want to have to do any of that. I want my dog to just know and have this skill level to be able to do that. So that's what we're working on in the class. So there's, as usual, a lot of material, but that's because I always have students at, like, really different levels, which I kind of like, which I'm fine with.
Right. Because all dogs are different and all trainers are different. So as long as their dog has a basic concept of engagement, you know, and has some understanding of engagement to people that are advanced and just looking to get better engagement when they for competition, they can all benefit from the class, I think. So is there kind of a prerequisite skill level or, like, skills that students should have on board before signing up?
Yeah, they should have basic engagement concepts. Right. So the dog should understand that they should look at the handler and stay engaged with the handler, maybe like, if they're heeling in the yard or, you know, if they're just doing basic behaviors at home. So most of the dogs have those basic skills. Right. It's just taking it to the next level. Gotcha. All right, any final thoughts or key points that you maybe want to mention again or kind of leave listeners with?
No, I think the main reason, you know, I did these two classes is just because I think that engagement is such an important skill for the dogs. And with this class, it's super fun because more and more, like I said, over the years, I've worked on having my dogs offer engagement. So they offer it when I leave them, they offer it when I face them. Like, I've just come up with all different ways to get to make it the dog's idea, which I think is super fun and so super excited to share all that and work on that with my students.
Melissa Breau: Awesome. All right, well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Petra FordL Thank you for having me. As always, my pleasure.
Melissa Breau: And thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week with doctors David Lane and Chris Zink to talk about canine sports medicine. If you haven't already, subscribe to the podcast in itunes or the podcast app of your choice, they have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available.
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!