FE445: Crazy Good! Self-Control Games for the Wild Child

WHAT COLOR is Your CRAZY?

Red, Yellow, or Green? It's a simple concept with a straightforward purpose: to gauge your dog's state of mind. This is about what kind of energy your dog is feeling, and how we can use each of the three energy zones. The Green Energy zone is calmer and operates from the prefrontal cortex. Green energy is necessary for learning new material. The Yellow Energy zone is transitional. It is responsible for shifting from one zone to the other, so we must learn to notice it and use it. At the other end, the Red Energy zone is impulsive and operates from the amygdala. Red Energy responses are automatic.

When your dog can automatically and correctly perform a skill set in your sport of choice, that skill becomes a Limbic Superpower. Any high-arousal sport will require Limbic Superpowers in order to perform without errors. We are not afraid of Red Energy! We'll know what we are doing and why. This class will help your dog learn to modulate their own arousal levels, making the Yellow Energy zone an important component of their training here. And we'll spend a lot of time in the Green Energy zone as we learn new things and develop the mechanics of our teamwork.

Your dog's energy tells you about their readiness for what you want to do. For example, do you want to practice a well-learned behavior sequence? Or work on your recall? Your dog in the Red Energy zone might be perfectly able to cooperate and nail those familiar components at speed. Operating in the Red zone, only skills which are already secured in muscle memory can be completed correctly. The Red zone is not for mental finesse. But if you channel your dog's Red Energy with predictable structure, they can be ready to work and ready to move fast. Make sure you have a clean plan in place! Your Red zone dog needs clarity and timely information. You have to give as good as you want to get! We'll talk a lot about clean clear training practices in this class.

On the other hand, are you hoping to have a training session to work on new material? For teaching new things you need very different energy from your dog. For that session you need a brain that is ready to learn. That's your dog's Green Energy zone. We can't learn complex new material in the Red Energy zone, and anything the dog does learn there will have that high arousal attached to it. When we practice previously learned material in the Red Energy zone, we're testing what the dog already knows well enough to do automatically.

One important premise for this class is that READY to WORK is different from READY to LEARN.

Here's a clip to illustrate a little test I run for my dogs who are preparing to enter agility competition. How well do they really know their skills? Are they ready to do the work in that charged environment? This video is taken from my Koolaid's first time in the ring in a real trial setting. I entered her in the Miscellaneous class so I could reward with a toy and check out her start line when she would be in the Red Energy zone. She would be incredibly excited. How well trained is my start line? Would she be able to stay while I led out? Even more important, would she be able to come back and do it again? That's a much harder test! There is no point in training at a trial if your dog cannot respond to cues.

Many sports dogs flip to Red Energy very quickly in their sport environment. You do not know whether you've trained what you think you've trained until your Red Energy dog says they can do it in that state. Anything they can do in that state is already learned to the muscle memory stage. I checked Koolaid's start line first. It only took 30 seconds. Take a look at how she feels about her start line. Have I created value for the WAIT portion as well as the GO portion of the leadout challenge? If not, it needs to go home for training. I think you can clearly see Koolaid's command of her Red Energy here. Even though she is in the Red zone and looking about at all the new stimuli, she waits, and she goes on cue.

Koolaid Start Lines at her First Trial Experience

RED, YELLOW, and GREEN ENERGY - We need them all!

We need Green Energy for learning new material. Green Energy represents an open mind. We do well with Green Energy when we set up the learning environment to favor the response we want to see. Establishing operations is important to maintaining the spirit of happy and confident learning.

We do well with Red Energy when the job at hand is already well learned and the movements are commited to muscle memory. We will talk more about muscle memory. In short, we want the limbic system to take over and perform automatically at speed. I call the foundation skills your dog's Limbic Superpowers. That's how to make good use of Red Energy. For example, in the sport of dog agility, you'll want your dog's weave pole performance to be a Limbic Superpower. This applies to any sport where utmost speed is desirable. The mechanics of "how to do a thing" need to be Limbic Superpowers so your dog's Prefrontal Cortex is available for processing instructions and steering cues in the moment. Does this all make sense? This topic would make for useful discussion in our Discussion Forum.

Yellow Energy is transitional. This is very important! You need to become the expert on how your dog looks when they begin to shift from one kind of energy to another. It's important to note that the energy doesn't just go up and down. It changes in nature.

It will be important for your dog to learn to shift energy up and down while also maintaining dynamic focus. This will let them perform a muscle memory task at speed while they are also taking in new information and working cooperatively with you.

When the zones all work together and your dog can shift between them to enjoy cooperative teamwork with you, then you've got the full benefit of a CRAZY GOOD dog! Our work will begin at home. Our goal is to be able to take our best selves wherever we go.

Julie Daniels