Ever have a situation where your dog refuses to move forward? In this episode Kathy Sdao and I talk about what balking is, why we think dogs do it, and what we can do about it. 

 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. Today we'll be talking to Kathy Sdao about what it looks like, why we think dogs do it, and what we can do about it. Hi, Kathy. Welcome back to the podcast.

Kathy Sdao: Hey, Melissa, it's good to talk to you after quite a while of not getting this great opportunity. Thank you.

Melissa Breau: Absolutely. I'm super excited to chat. So just to start us out, as you mentioned, it's been a little while. You want to remind everybody a little bit about you. Oh my. I wasn't sort of ready for that. I have been a professional animal trainer for about 40 years.

Started off my career for a decade with marine mammals in lots of different contexts and lots of different species of marine mammals. And that early learning of extensive positive reinforcement and lots of context because there was no other option, really gave me sort of default behaviors of using positive reinforcement whenever I can when working with dogs and their families, which is what I've been doing for the last 30 years.

I own my own business, Bright Spot Dog Training. And I just realized I'm coming on my 30 year anniversary of owning my own business. And that is not for the faint of heart, Melissa, as you know. So. So I feel like I'm still relatively sane given small business ownership through lots of ups and downs. Right. As I think many of your listeners will relate to. So I'm still excited about what I get to do, which is right now be a behavior consultant for families with dogs with behavior issues. And yeah, I still really enjoy that.

Melissa Breau: Awesome. Well, I want to start off just by kind of getting everybody on the same page. So can you talk about what balking is kind of what it looks like?

Kathy Sdao: Yeah, it's such a cool word. I really like it. Balking means to refuse to proceed, especially after a request to do it. So to say, I'm not going to do that thing you asked me to do, which of course is a huge topic in training, it can be applied to pretty much anything.

For this conversation and for the webinar we'll be doing next week that I'm teaching when I focus on really dogs walking on leash with their people and not walking forward when the human says, let's go. And there's lots of different contexts where that can be true, but we're going to look at dogs not walking forward on leash with a human who would like to move.

Melissa Breau: Okay, so why would they do that? I mean, what might be going on kind of emotionally or cognitively for a dog who just. Who's doing that? Who's planting and just, like, doesn't want to move forward?

Kathy Sdao: You know, it's interesting, that question for me, because I don't see emotions or cognition. And it's really funny. Melissa, many people do not know this. I'm going to give you a little trivia here. My master's degree is actually 1990.

Some of your listeners weren't born, but it is in comparative cognition, which is a weird field, right? So I went to graduate school at the University of Hawaii to help teach sign language to dolphins. Like there's a marketable thing to study. But anyway, I was fascinated. I wanted to do it. But my master's degree is in comparative cognition of all things, how different species think, how they use their brains.

And I would say to you that even though that's my master's degree, my practice, the work that I do. I was going to say clinically. That sounds too veterinary. I'm not a veterinarian, but when I'm working with clients, I'm looking more from a behaviorist lens. And so I don't know that I'm going to so much ask the question, what's going on emotionally or cognitively? I'm more likely to look at, how are the reinforcers playing out in this dog's experience?

What's the learning history for this dog? Has been. And a big question for me to start off is, is the dog avoiding moving forward? Oh, I don't want to go there. Or not wanting to leave. Wherever they are. Oh, I'm super comfortable. Don't make me go out. So there's kind of. I'm looking at the dog's universe like it's filled with magnets. Where is the dog magnetized to go?

Oh, I really want to go back home. Don't make me leave home, said 90% of my clients. Dogs post COVID lockdown. Don't take me from my hub of reinforcement. Every good thing happens in my house. I'm anthropomorphizing for the dog, of course. So for me, it's about dog's reinforcement history, sort of dragging them back to their comfort zone of home. Or I really had a bad experience at the vet.

The dog says, I'm not walking in that door anymore. Oh, heck, no, I'm not doing that. And we're going to say it here, and we'll say it in the webinar too. But we cannot often enough call back to pain. How much discomfort our animal learners can be in that we are completely unaware of. Even though we care and we're good observers and we're trying to do everything right.

But if you didn't have words and you didn't have hands, how would you say it hurts me to walk. Right. So I see lots of dogs. I swear I'm not making this up. This morning on my walk with my 11 year old dog Smith, who was lying next to me eating a bone, which I hope is not distracting all of you. Background noises, old dog chewing a bone.

I watched a woman hit her Frenchie. I watched a woman hit. Which doesn't happen that often when I'm out observing the world because the dog wouldn't go forward. So person frustrated dog wouldn't go smack the dog in the face. And I thought, oh my gosh, if that dog is actually saying, I have a sore hip. Oh, it's so fraught for these situations we get in when we're in a hurry.

I've got to get to work. Could have been that woman's motivation. I think we get ourselves into all kinds of side effect problems when we try to resolve these moments of frustration. For I'm suspecting both the human and the dog. But let's not forget pain can be a factor in all of this, including the cognitive stuff that's going on, the emotional stuff, the learning history stuff. That's more in our wheelhouse. Right. We look to our veterinary colleagues to help us with the ruling out the pain, which can be challenging.

Melissa Breau: Okay, so you mentioned in there that you think of it kind of like magnets. So how do you pull apart which of those magnets is kind of the thing after we've maybe ruled out the pain option?

Kathy Sdao: Yeah. You know, you're letting me have an opportunity to share one of the, well, I don't know, 400 bits of pithy wisdom from Dr. Susan Friedman. My getting to learn from her over many years. The woman's a genius, but I have sort of like a running log of oh my God, genius things she said. One of the things that plays in my mind most often that such a practical bit of science info from Dr. Friedman is when you ask a learner to do something and they don't do it, there's three reasons.

Three possible reasons. They lack clarity, they lack reinforcement, they lack practice. I love thinking of those three. Clarity, being around cues. They're confused, they don't really know what you're asking. Reinforcement oh, my gosh. There isn't enough reinforcement in place to make it worth it for them to walk by your side, which seems like an easy behavior. But I am saying it is a really complex behavior to walk beside a human that on its own.

I say in the webinar that I did a pilgrimage walk with a good friend of mine, actually, the veterinarian we're going to see soon as a good friend of mine. My dog Smudge, is going to the vet after this podcast recording. And Dr. Spurlich and I walked 110 miles together in Italy. We did a pilgrimage walk. And we're good friends. And I tell you, I learned right away you cannot match the pace of another being you like over any amount of time.

You can't do it. It's a very hard thing. And we're the same species, Dr. Spurlik and I, when you're a different species, that I think we undersell how hard it can be for a dog to do that. Polite walking, loose leash walking, healing, if you're being more precise. So that lacking reinforcement comes up for me a lot as a… Your reinforcers are in the wrong place. This is a really common thing for me to see.

And of course, the third one's going to be lacking practice, so do that as well. But this whole reinforcement issue becomes extra complicated. Melissa, when we say we're positive reinforcement trainers, because guess what? When the dog is stuck, we want to do training in that moment. We want to fix the problem in the moment of the problem, and you can't do it once you're stuck. You know what tools we've got a big old bucket of reinforcement.

We've got cues, we've got lures, we've got prompting, we've got cheerleading, we've got urging. We've got the whole thing. And when we go, I don't use force. I'd like to avoid using force when I can. That means our stuck dogs are often getting lots of inadvertent reinforcement in the moment of anchored to the earth. Boy, does that dig us in a rut. You get in a rut so fast and balking can become, I would say, a quite fluent and contagious behavior.

I remember many years ago listening to Bob Bailey speak, and I remember him saying, latency. When you give a cue to an animal, the length of time between when you give the cue and when they respond, quick latency, short latencies. You ask the dog to down, boom. Half a second goes by. They're moving from a stand into a down. Bob Bailey had said Response to cues is contagious.

If you get shorter latencies on a couple, it'll spread. You'll get quicker responses to your cues. Overall, I'm like, that's genius. I love that idea. And I have certainly found that to be true in my training experience. But I think the reverse is true for balking. Once you start to get an animal who says, I'm not doing that, then we start to get them not doing a lot, and then they get the name stubborn, and we put the problem inside the animal instead of going, what's the reinforcement contingencies in place that might be motivating this dog to stay put?

Very often I have looked at client situations and say, all the treats come to get him to restart. Not once when he's walking. Well, you're taking that for granted, the decent walking, because it's just walking. And when they're stuck, you remember you have a bag of treats and you're like, oh, my gosh, yes, I'm going to lure him out of the stuck. It's just not a good training plan.

And I think it happens pretty insidiously. It kind of happens quickly, and you may not even be paying attention. I have seen this a lot with the clients I'm working with. I will also just mention in response to your question, I still, five years after the COVID lockdowns, still work with dogs. I get called into cases where, because there has been balking on walks, there have been few walks.

And it means if you did an ethogram for those dogs, of where does the reinforcement happen? Just tell me the location. Let's even imagine they're wearing a GPS tracking collar. And you said, I just want to be able to track. By the way, my thigh collar, that Smudge has now the latest version. Oh, the behaviors it tracks. It's like this wonderful tracking. I'm getting so much data on my dog from him wearing a tracking collar.

But let's imagine that your experimental question would be, hey, over the last few weeks, where have your dog's meals been? Where have your dog's games of hide the scent in the backyard bin? Where have you been doing belly rubs? And when your map looks like, well, the dog gets everything in the house, you have a really good kind of hypothesis about why they don't want to leave. Do you understand what I'm saying?

This is where the good stuff happens. And I felt that in my body after COVID lockdowns. I didn't want to leave. It could have been a whole cognitive thing, like, oh, my God, the world is scary and there's germs. It wasn't that I'd lost the fluency of there are reinforcers out in the world. Remember, good things are out in the world. I'm like, not. For the last several months, my good things have been on my couch.

Netflix and movie, you know, and food and wine and. You know what I mean? FaceTiming with someone. You're not getting the reinforcers in the locations you'd like the dog to be motivated to move toward. Right. That's really interesting to kind of think about it that way. Just about like, where our most. I mean, we run into that problem with engagement. Run into the problems, all sorts of training things.

Just like that's where most reinforcement happens. Of course that's where we have the best engagement. Of course that's where we have the most fluid behavior. I mean, it's just an interesting smaller piece to pull apart is a bigger piece of our overall training picture. You know, I don't. There's a name for this effect. Oh, gosh, I can't remember it. Something. It's got a German name. When you, like, buy a certain kind of car and then you see them everywhere.

Do you know what I mean? Like, or you get a new breed of dog and you're like, oh, my gosh, everyone has a Dalmatian. I see this effect of concentrated reinforcement, which I'm sure is not new. I'm just saying I didn't learn it. I had this come up in case studies with my clients over and over, and I'm like, oh, my gosh, wait a minute. This is actually anchoring you at home.

No wonder you're getting stuck at home. The dog doesn't actually see there being a reason to be out in the world. And if you think walking with a human is on its own pleasurable enough, that's true for some dogs, but I'm going to say not for most. For many, let's say that.

Melissa Breau: Right. Have you noticed any breed or age or training background patterns and how walking tends to show up or which dogs it tends to show up for?

Kathy Sdao: I tried to edit out anything politically incorrect. I think my data sample is skewed by my clients. Right. So I'm going to be like, I am. I think this is skewed because I do not have a baseline for how many. Like, what are the breeds of all my clients and how many of particular breeds show up with this problem. Although I will say I have had possibly an over representation of doodles in my balking stories.

Possibly. And the last case study I'll do in the webinar is my 11 year old dog Smudge, who I'm living with a dog who's doing more balking. I'm inside the problem and of course it's related to his age. He is going to the vet later today. But it doesn't stop me from being a good observer of behavior to say there's always contingencies in plan and we can't walk like we used to.

What do our walks look like now that he's turned 11? And how can I get ahead of his increasing frequency of bulking? Meaning I am noticing the bulking rather than in the moment trying to fix it. How am I now before we even leave for a walk, doing the antecedent arrangement to say where are we walking and when and what gear do I have with me and what am I keeping track of to be able to.

I'm calling them clean runs, Lissy. You know, I don't compete with my dog. I don't have ribbons. But I would like the clean run of a pleasurable walk through my neighborhood or wherever we're going with Smudge. And a clean run would be he didn't have to balk. He didn't have to say to me it's too hot, you're walking too fast, you didn't carry water, I'm sore all of the things.

So now we have much better walks. But it's because I'm thinking about walking differently. So I could say older dogs are overrepresented, possibly because of joint pain or arthritis or dysplasia. But that also would mean it could be a history of being dogs who balk. Do you know what I'm saying? Clients who will go, oh my gosh. He's never been really consistent about walking. I don't even bring him for walks anymore because I really don't like when he sits down in the middle of an intersection.

It just makes me crazy. Or like I can't get back home again and I'm going to be late for work. A legitimate concern that then also I think says possibly I'm not seeing this as much in puppies and sort of just coming on adolescent dogs. I see fewer of those dogs in my practice. I'm not doing I did have a normal puppy consult the other day and I had forgotten.

Seriously, I had forgotten. It is a lovely normal puppy and I thought the heavens had opened and it was a mirror. Like oh my gosh, this is a non problematic seven month old poodle. My God, it's a miracle. So I don't see a lot of younger dogs, so maybe that's why I'm not seeing the volcano. So as somebody who's a strong advocate for animal agency consent, positive training, like, how do you balance that with situations where we need the dog to move?

Like the dog has stopped moving and we need the dog to move. Yeah, this is a thicket, isn't it? So here's where. No one's going to hear me say this, right? Sure. Just you and me here. Just you and me. Here's where. Here's where I want to go. I don't know. Training is a wonderful, life changing, big question. Ethical. When people meet me and they go, oh, you trained dogs.

Kind of like, oh, how cute. I'm like, man. The ethical decisions, the skilled decisions we make as animal trainers, they're broadly applicable to the whole world. How are you moving forward with the choices you're making in a complex, punishing world that's bringing kindness and advocacy and all the things we want into the work we do? So as I say, my gosh, that's what I've been trying to do my whole career, both in my own practice and teaching others.

How do we use positive reinforcement for the huge majority of the time, exclusively? See, that's the catch for me. I want to go, I'd like to say, to my own beloved dog, Smudge. I'm going to minimize the use of force. I'm really going to be aware of it, even little force. I'm not going to be in denial about all the little ways I compel you to do things.

I will pay attention to those because if I call myself exclusively positive reinforcement, I might miss them. I would like to be aware of the ways that I compel you. I am bigger than you. I've got you in gear. It's kind of easy for me to make you do things. I'm going to minimize it. But I'm also going to be super thoughtful about when I say to you, you must.

So we're heading into a veterinarian appointment right now, and I'm pretty sure he's going to do his cooperative care behaviors and he's going to be, yes, for the blood sample, I don't know, but I'm going to have a plan ahead of time to go. If he's not willing to do that, what does it look like to say we need a blood sample without confusing him? So for me, it's the whole thing of being very clear to your dog, your learner, you don't have a choice Right now.

I don't feel great about it, but I'm going to be super clear to you. No agency. One of the case studies I'll present is a big intact German shepherd, Willie. I love him. I've been working with his client, his mom, Laura, and him for a long time. But the deal we've got with Willie is front door of your veterinary clinic. You have no choice. You've got drugs on board and they're going to be low stress handling and several vet, very skilled vet techs bringing you in the building.

But you are saying no the entire time. I'm sorry. We will minimize the amount of time that happens. We just had to do an exam on you. We got everything done. In that case, we hate that we had to do that. Front door, that's always true. Back door. You have agency, you can say yes or no. We are shaping voluntary entries using cooperative care training programs, but also gear.

And I'll talk about this in the webinar to have them come in the back door for Willie. Those are completely different. It's a different flowchart. Right. We're making sure there's clarity in that. They don't overlap. And it would mean for me today, practically, if we go to the vet and I expect Smudge to be comfortable with a blood draw. If he isn't, we'll leave and I'll come back another day.

And it will be a completely different setup for him in a different room where he is not thinking, oh, I'm going to just get cookies and I get to say yes or no. It's going to be, you have to do this, and we'll get it done as expediently, as kindly as possible. So for me, it's about not confusing things. And Melissa, the biggest part of what I see in working on bulking.

Let's see if I can make this concise. I think in general, the clients I'm working with, who are now typically not professional trainers, used to travel quite a bit, teach webinars and, excuse me, teach seminars. Remember seminars where there were live people used to teach seminars and workshops with actual human beings in the audience. And often those are my colleagues. Not talking about colleagues now, talking about my clientele.

True for some colleagues as well, and maybe for all of us. We put too much faith in our cues. Like, we go, oh, I've got a cue for that. And I'm like, okay, show me. And then when it doesn't work and you repeat the cue three times and you add a little body and language, and I'm like, no, no, no. Okay. It's not yet on cue. And let's not put any sort of faith in that verbal cue.

That gestural cue working. So what tends to happen with dogs who are bulking? Clients give the move forward cue. Let's go, heel, come on, whatever you're saying. Or they step broadly out with their left foot like they do the big, come on, we're going. And the dog. Absolutely not. They are pushing their butt into the ground. They're sitting. They're frozen to the center of the earth. People tend to repeat the cue right then.

So what's really happening is not only, gosh, you're reinforcing balking, like, that's bad enough. You're gonna pull out a treat to get that dog moving, because you're wearing treats like they're right there on your belly. Pull out a treat worse than that. You're likely to do it after your go cue. So you tried the go cue two or three times. You added a little bit of loudness to it.

You had your fingers crossed, sort of. Not literally, but sort of euphemistically. You're hoping the dog will go. When they don't go and the dog is still stuck, you pull out food. Your go cue is turning into a sit stay cue. So when the dog does it even better next time, they're even bulkier than they were. You get a gold star for teaching a brilliant stay. That's how we teach stays.

We have a distraction, we do things, we bounce up and down. And the dog is like, oh, I'm not being fooled. You're proofing my stay. Don't do that accidentally. Don't watch people and go, oh, my gosh. They're literally, from the dog's perspective, brilliant shaping, long duration, really intense stay. Nobody intended that. You've really wrecked the cue. No one wants to hear that sentence. Nobody wants to start over with a fresh cue.

But you can see how then the balking pops up in different contexts, because you're still going to use that let's go cue. And remember, you've just confused the dog for what that actually means. Oh, you'll see it. I promise you. You'll see it. You will. And. And this is not me on the mountaintop looking down. This is me watching me do it. Sometimes with Smudge, I'm like, oh, my gosh, it's so easy to make this mistake.

Melissa Breau: Yeah. So how do we. How do we avoid that? How do we avoid reinforcing the barking while still honoring the dog's experience. How do we handle it?

Kathy Sdao: Yeah, you know the biggest question that comes up for me, and not biggest, I was gonna say the most. Annoyed my clients. No, that's one of the ways my clients can be annoyed with me on this topic is I am in the middle of an intersection.

What do you expect me to do? Okay, I would like you and the dog to not be run over. I mean, sincerely, get out of the intersection. But don't have that happen twice. I mean, yes, you get stuck in an intersection, I would say to Smudge if that happens. When that has happened, going to put my hand on the handle of your balance harness. He's wearing a balance harness.

I do not normally grab that. If I grab the top of his balance harness, it means I'm actually going to steer you like luggage down the airport. You know what I mean? I'm going to. You're now luggage. I mean that. Do you know what I mean? I'm going to move you. You're £60. I'm still able to do that. I'm going to get you over to the curb. But here's the big but.

I'm going to make sure we don't get stuck in that intersection again. This is not something I want to practice. I don't want to be forced to force you and I don't want us to be at risk. So very often what's going to happen in the moment of the balking is you can wait it out now. You can't do this in perpetuity. You will go crazy. But you can say, I will wait until you're ready to move.

If we're safe right here and I don't have to be somewhere, that is not a solution. It's just minimizing the reinforcement for the problem. It might be the least reinforcing stimulus you can give for a problem behavior. I'm not going to do anything to reinforce you. So what I'm doing in the moment of balking, this is legit. Here's what I was doing until about a month ago. I'm going to be out on a walk with Smudge.

He's balking. It's embarrassing. I mean, no one's watching me. Who cares? Nobody sees a 64 year old woman anyway. I mean, like, I think people are watching me. And I'm at the grocery store this morning, like someone almost ran me over in an aisle and I thought, oh, I really am invisible. So no one's watching me. And my dog barking out in the world. Right. But I'm embarrassed, right?

I think people are often embarrassed when their dogs won't move. So I started to go, hey, when you're stuck, I'm going to look for a listen for bird. I bet there's birds around. I'm gonna actually try to have this be a bird watching moment so I'm not tapping my foot and looking at my watch and being disgusted with you. I love you. You're stuck. I'm gonna watch birds until you.

So you're ready to go. Lately, in the last month, I'm doing balance exercises in those times because I've decided that I need to work on my balance exercises. And I've been telling myself that a lot. I'm not actually doing it. So guess what? You're lying down on someone's front lawn because that's nice grass. And you've decided, yeah, we're a mile from home. I don't want to go. I don't know.

I think that's what's going on for him. Okay, I guess you need a break. Right now I'm going to practice my balance exercises, but I'm keeping track of how often you book. My new data is. No, no, this is not a random fluke thing. It's behavior. You're telling me something. I'm going to track that. And I found out variables that might in retrospect, seem really obviously important to him.

I was paying no attention. Temperature, air quality, inclines, pace, all those things that are integral to walking with an animal, they were invisible to me because we've had years and years and years of successful walking the same routes, the same pattern. We get our 35 miles in a week. We did the things until we're not able to do the things. Like stuff changes. I shouldn't be surprised, but I don't want now in the moment of the balking, to go.

Here's where I have to fix things. You can't fix problems in the moment of the problem using positive reinforcement. If you say, when you balk, I'm going to drag you. I'm going to leash pop you. Well, you might have a strategy to get that animal moving because now it's more costly for them to balk and they're going to move. But if I'm not using that, you must. I've got control.

I'd like to avoid that thing. Certainly as a training technique for some species. Not marine mammals, but dogs or horses or however you've geared up your animal to go. I can make you move if you're not doing that in the moment of the stuck. Don't reinforce it as best you can. And remember, if you've trained your cues with positive reinforcement, your cues are reinforcers. Your cheerleading is your luring.

Yeah. You're like, I learned how to lure in my puppy class. Luring is a legit training technique. Indeed it is. But when you pull out that lure contingent on the balking, then it's a consequence. It's a positive reinforcement for balking. So it's I, I'm not here to go. Like, I have the Zen way to go. It's not frustrating when the dog balks. I want to through my good antecedent arrangement and my reinforcement plan.

Always I, I'm always going, how are the reinforcements in the wrong place at the wrong time of the wrong type? How is the dog? I would say to you, Melissa, Smudge and I walk five miles a day. That's what we do. We did that for eight or nine years up a huge hill. I wish I had a picture of the hill. We walk. We like this super 2000 foot, 2000 foot, 200 foot elevation hill.

Boy, I am exaggerating. But it was this beautiful steep hill. We'd walk in and my calves looked great. And we haven't done that hill in a while because a pleasant, safe walk together. That's changed. But it's changed because I'm making decisions before we leave the house about how we're going to do clean runs on our walk. When I get data that says, oh, this was too hard for him, I'm like, that's interesting.

What's it telling me about the limp? He's got a little tiny limp in his right front leg. Therefore we're going to go see what that limp is about. But, but do you understand I'm saying it's more to me information when he is balking and not the continuing problem of it's happening more often in more places for longer amounts of time. The problem is getting worse. That implies there's reinforcement for the problem.

And it's also going to be that red flag of going, what expert do I need to help me have a perspective to say, something's wrong here? Is there something wrong? And I've had a lot of clients say to me, oh, but the dog plays fetch just fine. It can't be pain. And probably every veterinarian on the planet has heard that it absolutely can still be pain. So we want to go, hey, just make sure walking doesn't hurt.

Melissa Breau: I think it's really interesting that you listed the factors. You did, too. Like the, you know, up a hill, maybe that's harder. Or maybe the heat's a factor or maybe. So I'm assuming that you are making decisions. Like you said before you leave the house. Okay, it's really hot today. Maybe we take a shorter path or maybe we wait till this afternoon or maybe we wait till the sun's going down or whatever. Right? Is that kind of what you're…

Kathy Sdao: Absolutely. And do you know, I'm going to tell you something, Melissa. For me, how. How would a behaviorist say this? Here's how the behavior would say this. I tend toward compulsion. You could say, if you're a geneticist, OCD runs in my family. I think both those statements are true. So I know my tendency to get compulsive about trivial behaviors. It's a thing.

So if I write down the miles, I have a paper daytimer. That's how old I am. I literally have a pen and a paper date timer. And if you looked at my daytimers for the I keep the company in business. Seriously, I don't know who buys them. But if you looked at my cache of daytimers over why am I keeping these? But you could spy and look and you will see for Smudge's entire life, every day, I wrote down how many miles we walked.

Why? Who's looking at that? I don't know. It's just like a cool thing because I'm getting to 35 miles by the end of the week. Why? Who said you had to do that? Nobody. I just sort of had this goal and I go, we kept our streak, by the way. The GPS collar facilitates this score keeping. Right. This streaking. Right. So I'm going to go, oh, my gosh, we've still got our streak of five miles a day.

At some point, this is really unhealthy. And so I have to go, oh, no, don't write that down. Nobody cares. You love this dog. Your saddest day is going to be when you can't walk with him. What's the new way to walk? What are the wiggliness. Where can you walk differently? And I didn't know my iPhone very easily when you scroll up, the weather app tells me air quality.

I didn't know that's just even like a number. I can do a calculation now and tell you if the temperature is over a certain amount and the air quality is over a certain amount, 100% he's going to balk. I would bet you $500 the balk is contingent on its smoggy and it's warm. It's not super hot, but it's too much for him. He's out. Well, that's good to know then.

I'm not going to go out at that time. I'm going to do a super short walk. I'm going to walk under the trees in the park that has old growth trees and it's cooler and shady there. But it's informing where we're going and how long we're walking in the plan. That's different than being in the moment and getting stuck again. I don't know. Yeah, I like that. I think those are important factors to think about, right? Like trying to break down what pieces.

Melissa Breau: You mentioned the feeling embarrassed thing in there. And I think that's not uncommon. I think a lot of handlers, like, okay, I'm a millimeter section. My dog's not moving or even just I'm trying to walk down the street and my dog is quickly not having a good time with me. That feels embarrassing, right? Or helpless. Their dog is not budging in public. They're sitting in the doorway of the vet's practice and they're trying to get in. Other people need to come out. What do you say to somebody in that moment? How do you help them with their feelings?

Kathy Sdao: Maybe it's because I actually experienced this enough and it's interesting to me to limit this to dogs, because when you have a balking walrus or elephant or do you mean like, this is.

It is not only dogs, Right? But it's such a normal thing. So to be able to say you are doing this dance with another being and sometimes they've got information about how they want the dance to go. This isn't like a flaw. It's like, of course there's a conversation going on about the walk we're doing now. We can look at that, at the broader perspective and go, that's nice.

There's agency and the dog is participating and they're. They're engaged. You're empowering the dog. All of that sounds great until you're stuck in a threshold or a crosswalk and you're like, oh, my God, do I have my training logo on my shirt? I sometimes think, like, I legit don't want anyone to see my business name right now because you're like, how dumb are you that you're stuck right here?

So I want to go totally normal. In fact, this is. This is a new thing for me. I really do sound like I'm a bazillion years old. But walking a dog is a super interesting thing. So I walked along the waterfront in Tacoma this morning. It's gorgeous. There are seals and sea lions and Mount Rainier. I mean, it's spectacular. And I'm doing a little sort of observational study on how many people walk out of the really ritzy condos with a dog on leash.

And their eyeballs never look at the dog because they've got a phone in their hand and they're scrolling. How many people are scrolling on the phone? The dog is attached to them somehow, but they've literally. There's not even, like, I don't even understand how that qualifies as a walk. Like, when we go, we want there to be like a. We can each say how we're doing on the walk.

It's so far from people's experience of take the walk off my busy morning schedule this morning. I suspect for a lot of those folks still in their pajamas. Right. I don't know what they're doing, but I'm like, oh, my God, is that what a walk looks like? So to normalize, walking absolutely happens. Maybe we give it a less sort of. It sounds like a disease, right? Like, I want to give it a different name.

Like, you know, animals stop on walks sometimes. That's totally normal. How are we going to make sure it doesn't take over your walk for the future? And in the short term, how can we help minimize your embarrassment and frustration? So one of the things that happens now on my walk with Smudge, this is going to sound silly, but I'm, you know, whatever I'm showing you, I'm in the thick of this problem myself.

It has made a huge difference to me to find a container that I can carry water that Smudge can easily drink out of. So I've carried lots of different kinds of water, and all of it's clumsy and I won't do it. And I finally found one that's convenient. I have a carabiner clips to my treat bag, and I can give him water. And weirdly, lots of my clients have bought this because they're like, oh, it makes giving the dog water easier.

So now sometimes when he's lying down. So Smudge's form of balking is he's going to lie on some grass. I'm going to pull out the water and go, water break for you. Now I realize that reinforced that bit of bulking. What I'm going to try to do for the rest of the walk and the next walk is go. I'm Going to get ahead of the. You having water?

So now a balk can be. We're taking a water break. I'm just reframing the stop. Not in the middle of the crosswalk. Not in the veterinary doorway. I get it. But I think I'm too ready to beat myself up about what a sucky trainer I am. That my dog is saying no. And they. I don't have a toddler. I've never had a toddler. But I swear they're yelling, no, you can't make me.

This is not a proud moment for any parent. Dog, parent, kid, parent. I don't know. I don't want to get in that resistance thing where I'm like, you must. No. Everybody's emotions get amplified. I want to be able to take a breath and go, yep, this happens. If I have to move you out of the way of the truck. Gonna run us over in the crosswalk or you're blocking the entrance.

I'm going to grab your balance harness and I'm going to let you know I'm moving you. My hand on that strap on the balance harness for smudge is. Honey, I'm moving you. I'm not touching you otherwise that way. And he's going to do a little bit of the. Oh, do you have to? Yeah, you actually really have to. But I do not want this to become a normal part of our daily routine.

I really don't. I'm real aware of when that happened. So the webinar is going to have plans for. Oh, my gosh, Willie, the German shepherd. Absolutely. His, you know, 85 pounds of him. Not going in that vet clinic. You're going to have to drag me. What's our long term plan to go. You need vet care, buddy. We're literally going to create a new route in the vet clinic.

Now we have a particularly cooperative vet who's letting us do some of this training. I'm not suggesting every veterinarian has to go. My God, separate entrances to my clinic. But it's a way to get ahead of the problem rather than to be stuck in trouble trying to solve the problem in the middle of it. Yeah. You know what I'm talking about. Yeah. And it's a plan for that one dog in that one situation.

And it's just an example. Maybe a different plan is the answer for a different dog in a slightly different situation, but it really is. And because I like telling stories, it's what gets me in trouble, makes me run over on things. The webinar are case studies and they're all different. They're all different versions of bulking. It is a big topic, but I'm, I don't know, I'm seeing it more and so I'm thinking about it more and trying to bring some forethought and antecedent arrangement which every great trainer wants to go before I even leash up the dog and bring them out before I even say, hey, want to go for a walk?

I got a plan. I'm going to have my reinforcements in place and I'm going to be collecting simple data. Not that it makes me roll my eyes and go, I don't want to go for a walk. I hate data collection. Hey, lots of it. Technologically we can do with tracking collars and really right now I'm just counting balks and I didn't have any this morning on a three mile walk with smudge. Woohoo. For me, that's awesome.

Melissa Breau: Congratulations on a clean run like a ribbon Q right there for you. So you mentioned the webinars. Let's talk about it a little bit more. Heck No, I Won't Go. That's what we named it or what you named it. What's going to be in the webinar? Who should join you? Is it just, you know, for people who have this very specific problem, Is it broader? Talk to me about it.

Kathy Sdao: I think it's broader. I had a good friend of mine say, gosh, I've just got a friend and she's got a little doxy and she's not a trainer, but she's really frustrated. Should she attend? I'm like, yeah, I really think it's accessible and has some practical suggestions for anybody with this problem. I'm going to say pretty much that's everybody who's had a dog that they walk on leash.

So it's geared toward anybody with the dog. And it's I wanted it to be Melissa. I wanted it to be six case studies, but I edited one out in the middle because it already ran long. So it's five case studies and a story of a whale. But I'll leave you with a story temptation, the teaser of how does a beluga whale get into this story? But my act, the beluga whale, taught me a lot about how to inadvertently train animals to be stubborn.

I didn't know what I was doing at the time. It was a very long time ago. But I'm like, oh, why'd we give her the moniker stubborn when we did that all on our own? We trainers and didn't know what we were doing. So, yeah, that's in there. And the beginning and the end videos are of my. My friend who said. Having heard my material, said to her friend, I have a couple of suggestions, and I love.

The before video is Dachshund, who is literally, no, no, nope, not going. Not going anywhere. And then after a week walking with mom with a couple of practical changes that rippled forward from this. So I'm like, so you. You know, you're so heartened when you're like, training is a thicket, right? It really is. Like, you try not to offer advice anywhere. Like, I'm a barista whenever I'm on a plane.

Like, hey, what do you do? I am a barista. I seriously don't want to just sort of out myself as a dog trainer. It can be sort of frustrating sometimes. So when you see, oh, my gosh, some practical suggestions, helped a woman and her dog have pleasant walks, there's nothing more important to me. I love walking. I do it all day long. If someone would pay me just to walk.

I think walking with a dog is one of the world's great joys. So to be able to help other folks have that, be more pleasurable and safe and, yeah, I don't know, makes me happy.

Melissa Breau: Awesome.

Kathy Sdao: And it's really cool to be like, yeah, it took a week and there were some changes, and that's really fast turnaround time. And for me to go, like, I'm one degree apart from this.

And I say to my friend Lisa, can I have a couple of those videos? Like, you're always trying to scam videos. I don't just want the story. I want the before video, after video. And what's funny is, in several of these case studies, there's a husband somewhere who's doing the videotaping. And I'm just saying they're not getting a lot of love for doing this thankless thing. Like, I can just imagine the husband being asked, honey, can you follow me on the walk with the dog and shoot a video?

And poor guys are like, why? What? So in a couple of cases, you could kind of see, like, the woman walking the dog is giving, like, instructions to the videographer, who's probably going, what is this for anyway? The video of Nancy and her doxie having a pleasant walk. Yeah, I don't know. That makes me happy.

Melissa Breau: That's awesome. Any final thoughts or key points you kind of want to leave folks with?

Kathy Sdao: No. I think it's really fabulous to talk to you, though. I love talking about training. Like, training makes a difference in people's lives and FDSA just such a good job of providing material that's accessible and I don't know it really matters. So I'm still fascinated with training and I love to get good information out there and I'm so happy when I watch a webinar from one of my colleagues teaching for FDSA. I learned so much, so I'm just happy to be part of that.

Melissa Breau: Awesome. Well, we're thrilled to have you. Thank you so much both for coming on the podcast and for doing the upcoming webinar.

Kathy Sdao: Thank you for a great conversation, Melissa.

Melissa Breau: I gotcha. And thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week. Don't miss it. If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in itunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available, today's show is brought to you by the 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!