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In this episode of K9 Conservationists, Kayla speaks with Sarah Owings about Stimulus Control.
Science Highlight: “Reactivity to Stimuli” Is a Temperamental Factor Contributing to Canine Aggression
What is stimulus control?
- Understanding that the environment has an influence on behavior
- Ex: if you’re really tired, the presence of the bed (stimulus), it’s going to be reinforcing to go lay down on it.Therefore the bed is the stimulus controlling the behavior to lay down, and the reinforcement is feeling good from laying down.
- It is happening all the time, every day
- Stimulus control is more than impulse control
- Fluency goes hand in hand with stimulus control as well. A behavior is not fluent if its not under stimulus control
- Clear rules, routine, and consistency can help with stimulus control as well
Cue THEN move
- Similar to click then treat. Cue then present a toy, cue then throw, etc.
- A trick to help put a behavior on stimulus control
- Cue first, then move your body or present the item
Links Mentioned in the Episode: None
Where to find Sarah Owings: Tromplo Courses | Facebook | Cyber Dog Online
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Transcript (AI-Generated)
Kayla Fratt
Hello and welcome to the K9Conservationists podcast where we’re positively obsessed with conservation detection dogs. Join us every week to discuss ecology, odor dynamics, dog behavior and everything in between. I am your host, Kayla Fratt, and I’m one of the cofounders of K9Conservationists, where we trained dogs to detect with data for researchers, agencies and NGOs. Today, I get to talk to Sarah Owings again, about stimulus control. This is absolutely fascinating conversation. Sarah and I went a little long, we could have talked for much longer, but get interrupted by both Tucker and Niffler at the end, protesting the length of our discussion. We talk about fluency and impulse control and how those are related to stimulus control. We talked about umwelt, we’re talking about ritual and physical cues, and how impulse control or stimulus control relates to welfare.
Kayla Fratt
Sarah, if you don’t know who she is, she is a Karen Pryor Academy certified training partner and a longtime educator. She specializes in the practical application of learning principles, transforming the lives of challenging dogs as well as the lives of humans that care for and love them.
Kayla Fratt
As an international speaker and regular contributor to both online and in person conferences, she is known for innovative approaches to tough behavior problems and compassionate and insightful teaching. Sarah has written for clean run magazine on topics such as stimulus control, release cues and toy specific cues. She currently gets her fills of what she calls brave learning as a member of the clicker Expo faculty, an instructor for cyber sent online and tutor and curriculum designer for Tromplo. In the past, she has also advised the Glendale Community, the Glendale Humane Society in Los Angeles, and also training team at the Marin Humane Society in Northern California. She is an avid nosework competitor currently competing at the elite three and summit level with her always thrilling canine teammate, Tucker, she shares her life with a deeply supportive husband, Fred, two dogs Zoey and Tucker, a huge garden and a tortoise named bug.
Kayla Fratt
And again, oh my gosh, y’all are gonna love this. But first we’re going to get into our science highlights. So this week we are reading “Reactivity to stimuli” is a temperamental factor contributing to Canine aggression. This was published by Sayaka Arata, Yukari Takeuchi, Mai Inoue, and Yuji Mori. this was published in June 2014 in PLoS One. And again, basically, they’re looking at what factors contribute to Canine aggression among the top 17 dog breeds and are those factors temperamental? So they write canine aggression is one of the most frequent problems in veterinary behavior medicine, which in severe cases may result in relinquishment, or euthanasia. As important to, as it is important to reveal underlying factors of aggression both for treatment and prevention. They, they developed a questionnaire on aggression and temperamental traits that were found and found that reactivity to stimuli was associated towards owners, children and strangers and other dogs of the Shiba Inu breed. In order to examine whether these associations were consistent in other breeds, they asked owners of insured dogs of EmCon insurance to complete their questionnaire. The top 17 contracted breeds were included in the study and the questionnaire consisted of dogs general information for items related information to owners, strangers, children and others, and other dogs as well as 20 other behavioral items. They had 5610 valid responses from owners of dogs aged between one and 10 years old. Their factor analysis on 18 behavioral items extracted five largely consistent factors in the 14 breeds which were sociability to humans fear of sounds, Chase proneness, reactivity of stimuli and avoidance of aversive events by stepwise multiple regression analyses using sports as the heezy, an information criteria method with aggression points as objective variables, and general information and temperamental factors as explanatory variables. They found that physical reactivity to sudden movement or sound at home was shown to be significantly associated with owner directed aggression in 13 breeds, child directed aggression and eight breeds stranger directed aggression and nine breeds and dog directed aggression in five reads, these results suggest that reactivity to simulate stimuli is simultaneously involved in several types of aggression. Therefore, it’s worth taking reactivity to stimuli into account in the treatment and prevention of canine aggression.
Kayla Fratt
So, I think this makes a lot of sense because if you can kind of imagine if someone you know on an on a quiz or a questionnaire is saying that, yes, my dog reacts strongly to noises or movement or other stimuli in the environment. Those stronger responses probably correlate to some amount of emotional response. They were getting a behavior in an area where other dogs may not present much behavior. And it’s not surprising that therefore these dogs that are, potentially quote unquote jumpy, are also more likely to then have an emotional response that could be aggressive. So yeah, the bottom line here is if you’re considering bringing a dog into your home, and you have the opportunity to examine how reactive to various stimuli they are, that may give you a clue into any tendencies towards aggression. I don’t have it written down here, kind of, you know, again, it correlated. This doesn’t mean that all dogs that are again, quote unquote, overly reactive to stimuli are going to be aggressive. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that all aggressive dogs are overly reactive to stimuli. So without further ado, let’s get into our conversation about stimulus control, and how the environment influences behavior with Sarah Owings. So Sarah, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast.
Sarah Owings
My pleasure. It was so much fun last time. Yeah.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah. So today, we are talking stimulus control. So I guess, you know, first things first, we’ve got to start with our definitions. What, what does stimulus control mean to you what?
Sarah Owings
Well, the simplest way to think about it is just understanding that the environment has an influence on our behavior, or on any behavior. So it’s the relationship between environment and behavior. And a stimulus is just anything that can be perceived with the senses. And when it has an impact on behavior, when there’s a change in behavior, in the presence of that stimulus, we call that stimulus control. Okay. So that’s how I think of it is the word control feels very tight, and it makes a lot of people antsy and confused and fussy about it, but But you think of it sort of just a B, if your behavior changes under in the influence, it’s like an more of an influencer. Okay. So I thought of a really good example. Well, I hope it’s a good one is like if you’re, if you’re really tired, right, we call that a motivating operation. So it makes the the presence of the bed, which is a stimulus, you see the bed there. Yeah. And because of that motivating operation, it’s going to be reinforcing to go lay down on it.
Kayla Fratt
Sure. Okay.
Sarah Owings
So that’s the so we say the bed is the stimulus controlling the behavior of laying down, okay? And the reinforcer is that it feels nice, because you are tired. Yeah. And that’s happening all the time. 24/7. Yeah. Yeah, I
Kayla Fratt
think that’s super important. There’s so much research and so much of our foundational work in behavior analysis, and therefore in especially us dog training is super heavily influenced by ABA. So much of it is in Skinner boxes, which is about as close to eliminating the environment from behavior as you can get.
Sarah Owings
Right, but, but the those pipes, the apparatus itself is an environment. But the idea there is to try as much as possible to isolate variables, which is what science does, right? You can kind of say, the only variable in this situation is that we change the dot from red to black. And you can kind of rather than Oh, there was a smell from the squirrel that ran by and that may be changed the behavior in a way that we weren’t, we can’t measure or something. But that’s why they put it but that whole chamber is controlling that the behaviors that happen in that context, right. So a lot of what I do a lot of the training that I do, I am constantly thinking about pulling irrelevant stimuli out of contexts. So and an odor cue would be a great example for set Mark dogs. How do you make that cue the most relevant in that environment?
Kayla Fratt
Right. Okay. So yeah, how do we make our target odor into the stimulus that controls the behavior? Is that a way to phrase it?
Sarah Owings
That would that would work? And yeah, and I really think of it as either isolating a cue or creating, making that cue very, very relevant. Rather than ideas like the dog has to control his impulses to to ignore X stimulus in order to do why did respond to why so I just think of it as well if if your dog chases a squirrel instead of target odor, then that squirrel stimulus is way too relevant. And yeah, your odors your odor cue is not relevant enough yet, so you gotta go back and find a way to make it really, really relevant. So that’s how I think of it because then I can hear In my training, I’m constantly anytime the training session goes and kind of goes off the rails or something, I can always look at the context cues and go. What, what made that happened? Because I think when we talked last time, I gave the example of when I tucked a toy under my armpit. Yeah. And my, my dog took that as a stimulus to bite. And, and he took my arm and everything and pulled me to the ground. And we might say, Oh, that bad dog is out of control, blah, blah, blah. But what I it was not very fun. But what I realized was, he didn’t have clarity on the cue that I wanted him, you know, I wanted him to wait for a cue to bite. Yes. And in his learning, the the presence of the toy, the the visual of the toy was the cue to just go for it and bite it. And so I said, Okay, I gotta teach him this. Like, I teach him to wait for cues. I gotta teach him that the words out of my mouth are relevant. Yes. And then I have to teach him that waiting for those words. That’s, that’s a way to get the toy. And there’s a lot of ways to mess that up. For example, yes, waving your toys around and queuing verbal at the same time. The toy is always going to be more relevant than the verbal. So yeah. So yeah, so anyway, that’s,
Kayla Fratt
well, yeah, gosh, I’ve got so many different threads, I want to start pulling on already. The first one that I’ll say is, so I think I was actually working on this last night with niffler, just as another example. So niffler is he’s 21 months old. And he has always enjoyed tugging, but has had a little bit of a sloppy target with his with his tugging. So he often gets me in the hand. And he also generally doesn’t hold on to toys and kind of tug with as much intensity as I would like. And it’s not super important for a lot of work. But you know, it’s fun to train your dog. So last night, I was going out. And I realized very quickly that part of these two problems are actually related because for him, he was missing the tug toy. As he was targeting hitting my hand, I was yelping in a way that was aversive to him and making him kind of nervous of talking for me again. So we started working on stimulus control of I’m going to present the toy, when I have it set, I’m going to give a cue and that is when you are able to go and go for it. And I was working on it with both of my dogs and very quickly realized that for both of them. I am so consistent about in that moment that I present the toy, I say the cue at the same time. So the word wasn’t what mattered. So we were playing with that last night. And it reminds me of you know, an agility. This is a common problem where you’re walking your lead out. And at the moment you look back to tell your dog to go you say go and therefore you get these dogs that the second you turn they go instead of listening to our cue is that are those good examples?
Sarah Owings
Those are great examples. Yeah, and always, for most animals, except obviously maybe a blind animal. Always a visual, or scent or movement. Those cues are going to be more relevant, they’re always going to be louder, more clear. I mean, our words are fairly meaningless to them. And so you really have to teach it carefully. Yeah. And, and more and more lately, I mean, certainly on toy queues. I’m pretty careful just because of safety reasons. But more and more I have been just thinking, Well, why not just go with what that is easier for the animal? Yeah, like Charlotte. When I first when I first started out as a trainer, I thought every cue had to be verbal, and it had to be like, sit down. You know, Platts, you know, all the very militaristic one syllable. And I’m actually really enjoying lately is just exploring more things like movement cues, and mean that’s how freestyle it’s so free to do Yeah, yeah. And yeah,
Kayla Fratt
that’s a great point, actually, like, if I just put it in my head, that presenting the tug toy at my sides spread out, you know, so that he’s got a nice surface to aim for is the cue. It doesn’t matter. I don’t have to put it under a verbal cue or control that so intensely, but it’s not all that much easier for me. You know, we’re such a verbal species. I think that is the I just wrote down in my notes, own belts, which Is this is a concept I’m sure you’re familiar with? Yes, yes, I
Sarah Owings
just just came up with a whole other conversation.
Kayla Fratt
I’m obsessed with France to wall and a lot of these other kind of like ethologists and primatology researchers and they talk about and in comparative cognition, they talk about this all the time where understanding the world and the perception of the animal that you’re studying or trying to work with is so important. And I think it was probably one of one of front stonewalls books, or maybe it was a oh, gosh, what’s her name? Irene Pepperberg, the woman who works with the African gray parrots at Harvard? You know, talking about how uniquely hyper verbal we are as a species. And how big of a shift that is when we’re working with, you know, dogs don’t talk much. You know, they communicate in a lot of other ways, but they don’t talk much.
Sarah Owings
So yes, yes. So well, they talk. Yeah, that will Yeah, communicate a lot. verbalize that. And add it in, like I said, so. I’ve just slowly softened and got relaxed, and then all my, like, art, my play with the dogs, everything has become. Also the other big thing. The big shift for me is, instead of me always chewing them, I’m starting to be better at listening to when they cue me. I love that. What game do they want to play? And what, what how are they telling me they want a tug versus a toss versus a? And I find the more I listen, and the more we’re paying attention to each other, nobody gets hurt, right? And I could do it all. I could do it completely quietly. I mean, while I babble a lot, and my dogs are used to it. But they, it’s all in the body language of you know, he’ll drop a toy and put his foot over it and hunker down. And that’s the TZ game, and then pretend to get it. And then he’s like, yeah, and then if you liked if he likes that game, he’ll repeat that to you again. Uh huh. And then after a little while, he’ll say, Okay, now target and I’ll shove it at me. And I’ll, I’ll tell ya. And I actually love this new I love going there. But in the very beginning, it was really, really important. To have him just wait for the verb or cute tag. And only when I say, tug, Kenny bite it? Because I in the beginning, I got hurt a lot. Yeah, yeah, there was a lot of confusion. And so. So it’s sort of a nice starting point. It’s like you learn the rules. And you feel safe, and then you slowly relax. And you’d go into this other place where both sides of the equation are talking. And I think that’s really cool. Yeah, yeah,
Kayla Fratt
I mean, play is a conversation and as long as you can do it safely, and I remember, one of the things that stuck with me and some puppy class I shadowed back in a while ago now was, if you can’t control the game, don’t play the game. And it wasn’t meant in this way of, oh, you can’t wrestle with big dogs, or you have to be able to win or, you know, you can’t let the dog win. It was It wasn’t anything like that. It was, you know, hey, maybe if you’re, if your kid is 70 pounds, and you’ve got a, you know, 170 pound Mastiff, tug of war just might not be the best fit for them. Because that just might not be safe. So yeah, I think starting with this, this concept of stimulus control and figuring out how to play safely. Makes a lot of sense. And then you can start Yeah,
Sarah Owings
I love Yeah. But that, you know, is the stimulus control is always happening. Yeah. Oh, yeah. What’s going on? It’s not I have heard that mistake a little bit. You know, people used to say, impulse control. And that meant a dog who was very obedient and never took the toy off cue. And, you know, and then we started talking about stimulus control. But a lot of people kept thinking it meant exactly the same thing, which is a dog that way Yeah, and never right. And so the reality is the stimulus because it’s happening all the time. So even in a, even when two dogs are playing with one another, there’s an exquisite back and forth, so many cues. That is, you know, just the way the ears go flat, or the playback or the speed or the when one dog asked for a timeout and the other dog, you know, listens. And yeah, but it’s all stimulus control because they’re constantly it’s, again, think of it as a stream of stimuli in the environment, and it’s having an influence on the behavior. Yeah, and that’s happening all the time. As my friend Dr. Rosales Reese likes to say, all the way until you die, like from the time you’re born until the time you die. It’s just this stream of, of stimuli that are Yeah. And I don’t think of it as this rigid thing, I think of it as this sort of exquisite sorting of information and, well, survival and, and a beautiful openness to the environment. And also just the the myriad of choices that you have, you know, the, they’re still all under the influence of different stimulus stimuli, like, like that example of the bed. If I was really not tired, I was feeling antsy, I could choose instead to get dressed and get in my car and go to a party, instead of go to bed. It’s not like the bed controls me all the seats. I mean, it’s,
Kayla Fratt
I think so yeah,
Sarah Owings
I can. But in order to go to a party, I have to do behaviors, I have to put my keys in the ignition, I have to get in the car, I have to follow the traffic signs, I have to I
Kayla Fratt
have to shower, take a shower,
Sarah Owings
get out of my pajamas. But yeah, all of those behaviors. Anyway, I don’t know how much that relates to training. But the more you see it, the more you understand that every training session is also embedded in a context. And so like I said, when when your training goes off off the rails, or something doesn’t happen to the way you expect, very often, in scent work anyway, it’s when the animal is chewing off of the wrong thing. In the environment, usually you most likely you when we want them paying attention to odor, and the dog starts cueing off where our feet are pointing. Or right because you’ve created a pattern of that is irrelevant, that you didn’t know you didn’t realize was irrelevant. But the dog goes, Oh, it’s irrelevant, or clicker trained dogs. I have found go through a phase sometimes in their training where it’s a great strategy, instead of seeking odor, they will pause on every object in the room until they are clicked. Yeah. Which is a very smart strategy. Right? Yeah. But it’s not what we want them to be. Right? And if you and they might get 100% Correct. But until you realize, oh my gosh, the dog is not really paying attention to odor.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, this is well, I’m like Jack, good luck once you’re starting to work blind hides. Exactly.
Sarah Owings
Exactly. That’s when everything falls apart, or a friend of mine, accidentally taught her dog because she set all her hides herself in the early phase of that dog’s training. So she got her own scent, mixed up with that odor. And so when she went to a class, finally, like a year later went to a class her dog was like, I don’t I don’t understand that cue. Yeah,
Kayla Fratt
I only know peanut butter and jelly. I have no interest in jelly alone.
Sarah Owings
Right. And so one of the ways I think about stimulus control for scent detection is I like to constantly vary all the other cues that are not relevant. But always keeping the odor cue the same. Yeah. So how many ways can I change the environment or the container or the what, what, since what smells are nearby? What I’m doing, and just constantly folding that in from as as right from the very beginning. So then, so eventually, the dog learns to tune out the irrelevant stimuli. And focus just on the one thing that has stayed constant throughout. Yeah. And that’s a great way to make your training very resilient early.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, well, I can’t remember who came who kind of came up with this, or I’ve heard it from first was probably either Sarah Straubing, or Hannah Brown, again, kind of this concept of not harder, but different. In I, you know, kind of every training session where it’s not necessarily that I’m constantly upping the ante and teaching my dog that like, Oh, God, every time we train, it’s gonna be, you know, a huge mental workout. I mean, sometimes it will be but, you know, you can’t really continue on that way forever. It’s not fun. But can we make it different? And, yeah, can we just put something else in the environment? Can we just search in a different way? Can we? Yeah, add something or take something away or yeah, just set things up in an unusual way. So that again, yeah, that’s the odor becomes the most salient cue.
Kayla Fratt
It takes a village to keep K9Conservationists running. One of our valued team members is Sunny Murphy who runs Black Flower Content Writing, Sunny started out as a volunteer creating infographics based on our podcast episodes, but quickly earned her place as a paid member of the team. If you need a creative, enthusiastic voice to help your company or nonprofit with blog writing social media planning and or email newsletter campaigns, check out Black Flower Writing Services, I cannot recommend Sunny highly enough. Thanks. And let’s get back to the episode.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, so one of the other things I jotted down when you first started talking was this concept of fluency and how to me stimulus control always kind of comes piggybacked with fluency. And I don’t know, whether it’s stimulus control is, like, just a component of fluency or, yeah, how are those related in your mind?
Sarah Owings
Well, I think of fluency is having a number of parameters, and stimulus control fits in, in terms of, you have a very high degree of reliability that under those conditions, you will see your goal behavior, okay? Like, it’s just, it’s, it’s not going to be 100%. Because no living creature is a perfect robot, even robots are probably not perfect. Just demonstrate. But, but if you have a very high degree of reliability, under those Mbyte conditions, I mean, there’s a queue, and then there’s a context that too, is in Yeah. And so under those conditions, if you are, if you’d like bet $100, you’re gonna get that goal behavior, that, then I check that box for fluency is stimulus control. So then other aspects of fluency involve things like latency in response to the queue? So how fast does the organism respond to that cue? Like, do you have immediate immediate I got it, you know, I’m doing it. For example, when the light turns green, and you step on the gas without even thinking there’s a very low latency there. And then there’s speed. Right, which is, how long it takes you to complete the behavior now depends on what the behavior is. If it’s like a trick, like a spin, right, that the animal might start to spin, and then kind of be really slow about Yeah, or unsure of how to get around, they can come to the right position, spin,
Kayla Fratt
or you can do the like full long performance, Border Collie, spin, spin, spin, spin spin, before you can blink.
Sarah Owings
Right? And then of course, it’s related to you know, I mean, if you have a, you know, a Great Pyrenees is going to say, differently than a border collie. But for but if you if it’s not fluent to me, if the spin happens in an irregular
Kayla Fratt
pattern, yeah, let’s go there’s some distance. See, that’s inherent in fluency. Exactly.
Sarah Owings
Yeah. Right. And so you, you kind of when you start to just see it locking in, and you give the cue and the behavior starts right away. And it’s performed in a very similar manner, every time. And then if you can start changing conditions, like a new environment, are start doing those things like, I don’t know, you know, put your hand over your head and say, the cue or whatever it is you want to, if the behavior still happens, yeah, then you really, really can say it’s fluent, and on stand and has good stimulus control, because, for example, if it’s a verbal cue, like spin, and I can put my arms over my head, or I can cover my mouth and say, spin, and the end, the behavior happens just the way, you know, with speed. And that means that I could probably bet that the verbal it’s the sound of the cue that is actually affecting that behavior, and not some little like head tilt that I’m doing or so so when you put all those pieces together, then you would say the behavior is fluent. Yeah, I
Kayla Fratt
think so. And I think kind of bringing it back to kind of scent work or detection work, I think of, you know, with baby niffler, when he was 14 weeks old, I would practice Okay, this time, I’m going to sit on the bed while he’s searching. And this time I’m going to stand and this time, maybe I’m not going to turn my back on him. But I’m going to turn my hips to face the wall while my torso is still facing him or vice versa. And just kind of constantly altering these things so that he could really learn to work independently when I asked him to not not be too, too fussed about anything else that’s happening in the environment. And that’s kind of our central goal for most of our detection dogs is you ask them to search and they search relatively regardless of what’s going on in the environment.
Sarah Owings
Right, right, with very little amount, you know, a search can take three minutes or a search can take hours. So that’s like something in the speed category of you say search, and they start out searching right away without any kind of like, I need to look around and I need to sniff and I gotta go take a pee and scratch an itch, and then I’ll start searching. That’s to me not not a fluent, that dogs not fluent yet. When I see those kinds of things, kind of creeping into the whole search pattern. Yeah, so there’s a search queue, there’s a search queue. And then there’s a queue that says, what I love about odor is there’s a search queue, which means just go out and start looking, regardless of whether or not you have odor in your nose or anything. And then there’s the moment the dog first encounters, which is also a key, right? So they you should see it, change it. That’s what I mean, you should see a change in behavior there. As soon as they the dog encounters, that next level of cue, but we don’t really want our final response, or whatever it is, we’ve trained the dog to do, to happen until the dog has all located the exact right. So that’s what’s so fascinating to me about odor keys is because they are they affect the behavior for a long period of time.
Kayla Fratt
Right? It’s such a, like serum of Yeah, yeah, it’s so much more than us than sitting when we say sit. Right, right. Yeah, if I asked you to search, you can still
Sarah Owings
I can still go home. Exactly. But I can still hold that measurement of UFC up. Even if it takes an hour, and the dog has been doing it’s trained search patterns out in the wilderness that you do. Or my, my, my accent detection, which usually is like six minutes of just so anyway, but I love that idea of applying the same idea of fluency to, to a full search and thinking of a series of cues. Bringing, you know, and creating these changes of behavior and influencing behavior. It’s a beauty. Yeah,
Kayla Fratt
I mean, it’s a chain, it’s a series of cues. It’s such a, you know, like it’s a behavior chain. And there’s so much to it. And there’s so much of it, that the handler, you know, it’s kind of our job to be supportive and understand. You know, I was just thinking about this a lot where I’m, one of my favorite things in the world is partner dancing. And generally, I do a lot of salsa and bachata, which is a pretty rigid lead follow structure. But I also occasionally dabble in swing and blues, where the lead and follow can trade back and forth and kind of based on who is exerting more pressure through your frame is who then gets to lead that next move. And I if anyone’s an avid blues fans from the audience, I apologize, I as I said, I dabble. But I think of that a lot in Senate work, where when I am directing our transects and IQ, the search and all of that, you know, at the start and the finish, I am in control, it is my job to kind of direct where we’re going and make sure that it stays in the search area and searches the things that we have been asked to search for our job. But as soon as the dog has encountered odor, I’m stepping back and the dog leads and now it’s my job to keep up and help how they however they need but not get in the way. And I love I love that. Yeah.
Sarah Owings
Yeah, I love that. And that’s that it kind of ties back around to our what we started with a plan where it gets, you know, again, originally, the training was very strict. It was like, go find the target. I’m gonna do weird things. I’m not relevant, right? Because that’s important. It’s that clarity, you’re clarifying things in the dog’s early learning. And then when you start really working as a team, it starts to become a dance. And it gets more and more set on so that word ovale that you brought up, that’s what a nose work coach of mine. It was one of the highest praise I’ve ever I was just was such a kind thing to say, which was that he’s he’s seen me sort of surrender myself to my dog’s own belt when he’s worked.
Kayla Fratt
Oh, cool. Yeah. Is like
Sarah Owings
which is the, I guess we should define that. He defined it. You probably know more than I but about kind of that, that place where intuition takes over because you don’t have the words for your kind of beyond your kind of beyond language,
Kayla Fratt
we’ve passed that conscious thought, necessarily, right.
Sarah Owings
And that’s, I am not, I will confess, I’m not always this good. But I have felt it when I’ve worked with my dog because of just the beauty of what he’s doing. And I love that idea of just like if handling a good handler knows when to surrender to that and not be and let go of control, because we don’t know what the doing. So if he goes way out of bounds, or, you know, or gets really focused, I, I’ve try really hard to say, well, he always has a good reason for it. Because, you know, and so I have to I always trust that my dog at this point, really knows what he’s doing. He really knows what he’s doing. Or if he’s, if he says, Let’s not go into this area at all. He’s almost always right. There’s no reason to go into that area. So and so that’s
Kayla Fratt
yeah, that’s something I’ve really noticed, especially with barley, but honestly, with niffler, as well as generally, if I start seeing this kind of off task behavior, we call it cratering, a lot of the times where he’s starting to check mole holes and think about other hobbies. Almost almost always, that is a sign that there’s just no odor in the environment. There’s nothing going on. And, and we can trust that though because we’ve put in this groundwork, it’s, you know, it’s like what we’re talking about with play as well, where once you can play safely, and you are not getting bitten every time you try to present a toy or even readjust the toy and you’re not even moving towards present, present presenting it, then we can start breaking the rules and dancing a little bit more. Right? Yeah, like, you know, when niffler was seven? I don’t know, actually, that’s not even a good example, cuz I started with him play when he was still young. But when Barley was three and a half when I first got him, and we hadn’t even started, we’d barely started our nosework classes yet. No, I couldn’t take him to, you know, an urban farm or a fairgrounds or whatever. And trust that if he was off task, it was because there was no odor. He didn’t know the game well enough. He didn’t. He wasn’t under stimulus control well enough.
Sarah Owings
Right. Right. Not fluent enough. Yeah,
Kayla Fratt
yeah. But now at this point, we can kind of say that, and yeah, it’s beautiful, and just so much fun. Um, so we had a couple of things kind of jotted down that I don’t want to miss even though I’ve got so many other directions I want to go. But we’re going to try to get through a couple of these questions that I had written out. So one of the things I had jotted down that you wanted to talk about was this concept of cue, then move and I’m not familiar with this. So can we jump into that?
Sarah Owings
Sure. So cue then move. And I always spell it for my students, capital T H, E n. So it’s because the hardest thing for humans, as you notice, I’m very I just take you like a lot as I speak to very difficult for humans to, say a verbal cue, and then present it. For example, it no matter how hard you say or click, then
Kayla Fratt
Yes, uh huh. Right.
Sarah Owings
So this is the way to make any cue salient is by putting it in front of a known cue or a known pattern, expected pattern. So click, then treat. So when you the known behavior, there is eating food out of your hand, almost every dog in the world knows that if you offer food in there, they can come eat it, that behavior is pretty fluid. Right? Here’s your failures, your food. Now we want to make the click relevant.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah. But the click has to you first because otherwise, and isn’t this has to come. This is like the overshadowing effect, right? Where to the dog, the presentation of the food visually is going to be so much more salient than your verbal cue that if you do them consecutively and try to do this simultaneous pairing, it’s going to be far less effective than if you click then treat. Exact Yeah,
Sarah Owings
so and that’s a perfect example. But for for toys if you really need that dog to pay attention to the verbal, or I mean, we could expand that to your your left eyebrow going on. I mean, it could be anything. You could nod your head and then present the toy and that would work as well. But if we want a verbal cue to stand out, I say cue then move which means move into the gotcha. The other the other thing so if it’s click then treat. Cue then present a toy cue them throw cue that chew then throw and what I have what I did with my dog Tucker, when I really needed him to learn this. He couldn’t learn it with toys. Yeah, because the toys were already cueing all the things I didn’t right. Barking, biting, right, he already had this repertoire of just go nuts when there are toys. So I couldn’t actually teach these things with toys. Remember, I tried to tuck it under my armpit. That was silly idea. So I started with food because he was a little more able to think with foods. So I would say go check a piece of Yeah. Oh, that Chuck a piece of food. And he could pry he could process that. Or I would teach him. Wait. Okay. He’d move. Then I present a bowl like a Zen bowl, or so he was learning to wait for to pay attention to these silly noises Yeah,
Kayla Fratt
mouth. All our human babbling so the top
Sarah Owings
things would the top things I taught him were when he could take a reinforcer when when to run, you know, versus when to wait, when to release. I taught him all those things with food. And then I well, I call it fading in I brought in the stimuli that were more difficult slowly so so instead of going okay, great. He’s learned. Tennis. Right? No, no, no. So I would start I started just in the quietest room possible, with me sitting down and a very very boring toy that he he barely cared about. And but repeated the patterns. Hey, this is just like the just like the food games, because he liked you know, he liked anything to do with anything at interaction. Yeah. And then I just slowly, I call it fading in you just slowly bring in the stimuli that are more challenging. Which what that means is it’s the stimuli that already have repertoires attached. Yeah, right, exactly. So for example, pulling to the play yard already had the repertoire of Scream barking attached to it. Yeah. So so I had to work up to that slowly with, I had to build the new repertoires, and get them very strong and reliable. And then I can slowly work outside. That sounds
Kayla Fratt
exactly like what I did with barley and Barley was my first dog that I’ve ever worked with, that had such big feelings about toy reinforcers that I had to do this. And it was something that I wish I had had a little bit more guidance on when I first got him because it would have saved me so much frustration, to just be like, you know, because for him, and you know, I can’t complain too much, because as he he freezes, with toys, he freezes any stairs. And I would just be so frustrated that I can’t get ice still to this day cannot get him to sit with low latency. If I’m holding anything that even resembles a toy. It is so hard for him. And you know, it’s not high priority. So it’s okay. But I think the biggest thing that God I wish I just was so frustrated with him for so long, because I did not know how to deal with a dog that had this level of emotion around his toys. Right,
Sarah Owings
right. Yeah. And that’s a real common one, especially for Border Collies. Right is you think you’re gonna make a faster behave by using a toy. But think of all that genetics, you know, and so they go slower, and they start to stare. And they get just really low loetscher Set
Kayla Fratt
the word posture,
Sarah Owings
and it’s a beaut, but it’s a beautiful example of a previous previously learned very strongly genetically boosted repertoire. And that’s not the way so you can’t fight it. Yeah, you have to change. So that’s what I that’s what stimuli if you understand stimulus controls really cool. You go okay, so this context is to nothing that I really don’t want. All right, how do I change the whole context? Start over? Maybe with food, maybe what we did with filing was like, yeah, do some scrapes and then just do it and then and then you’ve slowly again, if you want to use toys, maybe you decide it’s not even worth it. But you slowly bring that in once the new repertoires are strong enough. But isn’t that so much. It’s so much. It’s so great because as trainers, we can control the environment, but we cannot control inside that dog. We can’t control their, their, their learning history, their genetics, or we can’t control that or their impulses. We can’t, we really can’t, we can’t open them up and flip switches. No, right. But we we have, we do control the environment. And it’s the more we understand how behavior interacts with environment, which is stimulus control. That’s where we can be better teachers, I think it’d be fair teachers, for the things that are for the things that are important to us
Kayla Fratt
and important for our dogs. The two things that I just jotted down were ritual and physical cues. So like, one thing that I’ve found incredibly helpful for barley in particular is having this, these rituals, and clear rules and consistency about where the toys appear and when they’re in play, and when they’re not. And if I break those rules, then we are more likely to have problems and you can say, yeah, that means maybe we’re not totally fluent, maybe we’re not under perfect stimulus control. But I’m okay with that. Right now. You know, and like, for us, our big example is I have a very cool giant training fanny pack that I wear in the field. And it holds our toys, and it holds my GPS and everything else that we need. And then I wear it on the front because it’s a really cool fanny pack. And he, that fanny pack lives in a closed cupboard, at all times, if I pull it out, I will have a dog walking on his hind legs backwards, staring at me. Luckily, quietly, but until we go to search, and I, I have a verbal cue and a start start ritual, I was gonna say start line ritual, but it’s not because it’s not a competition quite. But honestly, all I need to do is take that training bag. And it’s so powerful that I have been able to teach several novice handlers working with barley because all I have to do is head on the back. As soon as they have that bag, they have his attention, he will work for them. And it makes him such a good instructor because we have put all of these behaviors in into the context of this ritual that is embodied with its bag. And all I have to do is hand off the bag, and I have so many people be like, I don’t think this is an I handed the bag. And I’m like, No, you’ve got it. You don’t have to do anything. You can be the worst handler and if you have this bag, he will work for you.
Sarah Owings
That is so cool. What a beautiful example of of stimulus control, you know, under those under these specific conditions. I find it really interesting because I do a lot of practice searches in my house. And Tucker is never confused on when I let him into a room and he’s supposed to search it versus it’s time for a nap. Yeah. And we’re done. Like even if there’s probably like little odor leftover found the search for an hour ago. Like, I find it fascinating that he can be that clear. And at home. We don’t have all the trial ketones, right? You know, waiting in the car. I don’t do a bit hardest change like some people do. He’s he wears the same heart for walks through. But he is never he never goes into a trial environment, no matter how different if it’s looks like if it looks like a park, it looks like a building that like a vet’s office, it doesn’t matter. He will work perfectly. And I just find it really, really fascinating because there’s probably a whole variety of cues that is telling him when that’s
Kayla Fratt
happening. This is making me wonder if hard hats are going to become a cue for barley and niffler to search because they were hard hats all day on the wind farm. And I wonder I’ll have to try putting a hard hat on elsewhere and see if that starts getting their attention right away. Right. And I think being directly under a wind turbine is probably a cue for them. At this point, I don’t see myself visiting otherwise, but it would be really I bet you that if I just drove to a random other wind farm and let them out of the car they would want to start working immediately.
Sarah Owings
Now with your your dogs who are doing you know wildlife indication on wildlife and things like that when you go hiking. Do they ever get confused?
Kayla Fratt
No. I’ve never I’ve never really had them indicate on anything that they’ve found in the field. Yeah, no, I
Sarah Owings
was just curious if there seems to be you don’t use your bag. You don’t have your bag on yeah,
Kayla Fratt
don’t have the bag on I would be curious. You know if you know part of it too, though, is kind of you know, I don’t know what they what they do or don’t miss and I would be curious If I put a bat out intentionally two miles down a trail, so I knew where it was and just walked them past. I wonder if the odor would still be a strong enough cue that without any of the other context clues they would hit on it. But I genuinely don’t. Don’t know and kind of doubt it.
Sarah Owings
Yeah, I’m, I’m curious, I’ve heard of people doing that with nose work dogs is you just sort of put odor out and pretend it’s a walk and see if they notice it. I’ve never done yeah, I
Kayla Fratt
guess what would I don’t think I see utility in that necessarily. Because that’s
Sarah Owings
well, in one sense, it might be kind of the ultimate of is the odor relevant in any, in any situation we do. With my students, we do a little, we do a little what we call an odor test. Similar to that actually, where their original training is all in a colander, just for their initial condition. So and then we kind of ask the dogs is odor relevant to you outside of that, just as a little, it’s like a very mild little, little test. And in that situation, we do have them like put a little tin out in their kitchen. And then you pretend to be making dinner. And you just see if your dog notices it. And then in and soon as your dog notices that you reward Yeah, even though. But what’s interesting is sometimes a lot of dogs will come in, and they will go lay on their mat in the kitchen, because they’re in the kitchen, and you’re cooking dinner. And that’s what they’re supposed to do.
Kayla Fratt
Well, I could just see for a really workI dog. And especially, you know, for someone who’s in wilderness search and rescue, or in the conservation realm, if you want to be able to continue hiking with your dog, or cat, if you did human remains detection or something I like that my dogs aren’t searching at all times. Because I think it would be very, I could just see it being so easy to get to the point where barley would never have a decompressing walk again in his entire life. Yeah,
Sarah Owings
absolutely. That would be so important. Yeah, yeah, that’s what and that’s a beauty. That’s another stimulus control. Benefit. Is if you have a dog that’s like always on, because basically, it means the green light for reinforcement is is always on Yeah. It’s always on that one, the dog is going to be exhausted. To the dogs actual work time will be very impacted because of that. I just think of it like, like, a wash out. Like, instead of focus work, it’s frazzled. I’m always on kind of, you know, so that’s another beautiful benefit of really understanding stimulus control is it can your dogs know exactly when they’re working, and when they when they’re not working. So, again, it’s about conditions. So my dog, my dog can live in the house that he does a lot of his practicing in. But he’s never, he’s never, he never starts searching, unless I’ve set it up. And but he doesn’t have any of his other cues, like I don’t put his harness. You know, I’ll give him he has a verbal cue, get to work, I say get to work, and he gets to work. But that’s just so crucial that he’s able to rest.
Kayla Fratt
And that’s, I think one of the things I really like about this idea of, you know, we’ve kind of circled on this a couple times this idea of putting our making our cue part of something physical. I’ve really, I’ve really enjoyed having, you know, these physical props that I can then manipulate and control as a way to put things under stimulus control. Because, you know, this is this is not breaking news in the dog training world. It’s easier to fade those props if you need to, than it is to fade, something that you were doing behaviorally, I also love being able to hand those things off or put them away or whatever I need to do in order to get the lifestyle that I need with my dog the rest of the time because he’s he’s sacked out sleeping on my feet right now. But yeah, if I had that training bag out, I’ve tried to do demos before with him where I have the training bag on. And he’s just in this constant like he’s sitting pretty, he’s lying down. He’s rolling from one hip to the other. He’s trying to like we are sort of rendered peanuts. He does the like Karwa carwash where he comes in, stands in between my legs, and he will like try to like push his way between my knees as I’m trying to deal with Talk, unless I get wise and I just like I literally just put the training back in the hallway, because even if it’s like up on a table, it’s not out of play quite enough for him. So
Sarah Owings
I can do that.
Kayla Fratt
Because the bag is so powerful. You know, I guess where I was trying to go with it, because if it was me, that was the most salient part of that queue. I can’t, I can’t get that away, you know, I guess I would just have to create him while I was talking, and then come grab him at the end, for the demo one time, right,
Sarah Owings
which a lot of people a lot of people do that for working dogs is the the only way to get them up to just chill out is to put them in a crate, because that’s the that’s the context where they go,
Kayla Fratt
Oh, God, this is something we didn’t even think of. Yeah, like how having good stimulus control on your behaviors could actually be a huge welfare thing for these working dogs.
Sarah Owings
Absolutely. In fact, I know, I remember seeing an A, I don’t know, some training video or something is the person bred mallomars. Right? A lived with them, bred them, train them for shoots, you know, did all high energy, high intensity training. And he said that he never does any formal training in the house, ever. So the only behaviors that they do in the house are relaxing. And starts from a puppy, you know that they’re there in a pen in the house. So but that way, the only time they keep those dogs jack up into super mal noir mode is in the training center or on the training field? Hmm. But in the rest of their lives, they’re actually able to be fairly normal dogs. And I thought that was fairly early. Like if you’re, if you’re living with five mountain lions, or something, you know, or fifth, I don’t know how many melanomas yet. I mean, that’d be very, very, very important, I
Kayla Fratt
think, you know, like, so barley part of his struggle. And like the first two or three years that I had him was all about having rules and ritual and stimulus control over play. He grew up in a house with three kids under the age of 10. And he is incredibly persistent about finding and asking to play fetch with something, you can put all the toys away, and he’ll bring you pieces of hair, you know, if anything, and I think part of that is probably because, you know, on surprisingly, three kids under the age of 10, very hard to have rules. And therefore, stimulus control about fetch. And it’s, I hadn’t quite put it through that framework. But the other thing I was thinking is this concept of, you know, when we talk about teaching a dog and off switch, there are some a lot of people kind of, yeah, in the breeding world, or in the sport dog world where they’re like, well, Border Collies have lovely off switches, or my working Malinois or my working labs or whatever it is. And I think you just put your finger on a really clear reason why some people may be really successful with that it’s not necessarily something intrinsic temperamentally about these dogs that have these off switches, it’s that you know, how to run a household with dogs like this in order to create the environment that promotes something that I guess isn’t off switch. I was gonna say it looks like but it’s off, off enough,
Sarah Owings
right? And I’m actually personally not the best at this, because I’m sort of a training junkie, and I like to be at home. Right? So both my dogs and I, you know, for leaders was like, Okay, let’s do an impromptu shaping session in the living room. And let’s, you know, and over the years, I’ve had to be, I’ve had to clarify better, because it’s sort of like the green light is sort of on all the time. We could train at any time in any room.
Kayla Fratt
But that’s I’ve had this incredibly strict role with all
Sarah Owings
about me, all about me, right? Like you said, I’d love to have just a bag, that’d be fantastic. But it’s me if the dogs can get me to activate and they’ll get the treats. You know. So my, when I moved to a new house, the best place to build new habits is new contexts. So when we moved to a new house, I made one room, the office area, and it sort of the bedroom kind of turned out that that way, too. Is this is this this is a space where there’s napping, dogs can nap in here, but I just made a rule I will never ever train in here ever. So that this context could at least, you know, signal time to just be relaxed and you know, meet their needs as much as possible all the rest of the time, of course, and that but that took that took some time in it. And I know a lot of people Will that struggle with a dogs that? They’re just basically expecting reinforcement all the time? Yeah. And that is its exhaust. Yeah,
Kayla Fratt
I mean, that was, I know, I’ve talked about this previously on the podcast. But with barley, we have a very strict rule of no fetch in the house, especially with guests, I can do it occasionally. Because, you know, once you’ve got the rules, you can break up occasionally. But I am really strict with friends and dog walkers and friends and family. And it’s taken, you know, barleys, eight and a half now. So I’ve had them for five years. And probably the last year, maybe two years now he can relax and interact with strangers in the house without constantly asking them because he is absolutely one of those dogs. That if you if he asks you 1000 times, and you, even if you flick it, flick the toy off of your knee? Yes, yeah, he will ask you 1050 more times, you know. And so the stimulus control is so important with these dogs that are so persistent. And so everything is so important, we have so many more things I want to talk about. But one thing that I wanted to bring up as well, is this concept that, you know, you can just give it a little nod is that I think stimulus control is something that has to come after welfare has been met. And that is something that hopefully is evident in all of our conversations on this show. But, you know, I You said it, oh, yeah, with your dogs. And you know, the fact that you don’t train in these rooms, you’re still making sure to meet these needs elsewhere, and having really high demands of stimulus control. Say, for example, offer a dog has been in a crate for eight hours while you’re at work. You know, you can work up to that. But making sure that the dog’s needs are being met is an important part of this. Right?
Sarah Owings
Absolutely. But just to clarify, it’s not. Once again, we’re not stimulus control is not counted.
Kayla Fratt
Oh, no.
Sarah Owings
Like I say, time to play ball and we go outside, and my dogs learn that the outside area is the context for ball playing. I’m using stimulus control in a very helpful way, or
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, it’s not that they’re posing, it’s just that I wouldn’t want someone to listen to this and think that they can and should expect perfect stimulus control without meeting the dog’s needs. First, especially for something that is really important to the dog.
Sarah Owings
Yes, and particularly for my dogs, I don’t attempt to have them relax in the office until they’ve gone on a hike. They’ve had some training. Like today before this session, my my dog Tucker got to go swimming. There are some dogs that have a high need for that.
Kayla Fratt
I mean, it’s all part of our in those arrangements.
Sarah Owings
Exactly. And that’s that motivating operation idea I started with which is the bed is more reinforcing to you, when you’re really tired, you’re already tired. But it’s not going to be reinforcing if you’re really antsy and in the mood to go socialize. And so part of understanding stimulus control is also working with those motivating operations. Yeah, in a harmonious way, rather than rather than just manipulative way but just a acknowledging that those are shifting all the time to
Kayla Fratt
yeah, this came up when you were talking about fluency and this idea of if you tell the dog to search, and then it goes and sniffs, and then it marks and then it rolls in some grass. You know, one of my first thoughts as well as, oh, gosh, if my dog is that disengaged from me, I probably shouldn’t be giving the cue yet. And like, did I potty the dog after I drove two hours to get to wherever I am? Because it’s, it’s both it’s like, well, sure, that means that we’re not quite under perfect stimulus control. But also, if they’ve got a need to check out the environment and make sure it’s safe, and they need to empty their bladder. I wouldn’t necessarily say that’s a huge failure of stimulus control if they’re meeting those needs for. I have one more question from Patreon. I know we’re starting to run a little long. But it is about kind of the concept of stimulus control related to cue hierarchies. So, you know, if we want our dogs to know, and this is a big thing we talk about in this field, like if my dog has an odor, and they’re kind of working on sourcing a problem, and I call them for a check in. Generally, we want her dogs to obey odor instead of a check in but then if I gave my recall, cue that Trump’s odor. So this might be too big of a question. But how do we think of stimulus control in the context of these cue hierarchies? and which queue we want to override? Which other queue? I mean, I guess that is the whole thing of stimulus control, isn’t it?
Sarah Owings
Right? I mean, it is all one. It’s one big queue hierarchy all the time. Yeah.
Kayla Fratt
You’re breaking my brain here. This is great.
Sarah Owings
And I love it. I mean, I’ve had a number of examples, which I could send you it, which are really funny to watch, in competition, where I call Tucker out due to a time limit or something, and he vetoes me stays in and finds a hide. And I’m like, Yes, but in the rest of his life, I really, really want him to come when I call him, you know, yeah, like he likes to chase wildlife. And it’s really important to me to build that up. Again, I think of it more in terms of context, if you can teach the dog that in this context, this is the cue that’s going to pay, right? The pay the most be the most reinforcing the biggest reinforcement in this context. And then in another context, when there’s like, when you’re not in the middle of an odor problem, then this queue is going to be top of the hierarchy. Yeah. I don’t know how to. I don’t know if that can explain it any better than that. It is a little variable sometimes. Yeah. And but I have such faith in context, that even if you’re out in the field, and it’s really an emergency, many dogs will still come when called. In those situations. Yeah. But not if it’s not an emergency. If it’s kind of like you’re just sort of half calling them? I don’t know. Yeah, I mean, I know.
Kayla Fratt
Like, I haven’t actually taught like, oh, maybe emergency recall,
Sarah Owings
versus maybe like on whistle, like a whistle is top. And you would only use it.
Kayla Fratt
Right? Yeah. I know, I definitely kind of have, there’s the like the typical recall of like barley come, you know, and it’s always kind of in the same tone and the same. And then there’s a
Kayla Fratt
look at that one, even though I have not trained it, that heightened emotion, certainly gets results in a way that you know, it’s fine.
Sarah Owings
And you think about learning history. In those situations where Tucker vetoed me, he got paid really well for that. You see what I mean?
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, exactly. So you’re saying let’s call me this time? Yes. Well, Sarah, thank you so much for coming on. If people want to take any of your online classes, learn from you all of that, where can they find you on the internet?
Sarah Owings
Well, the best place to go I think is Trump low.com. Right now. I have a number of classes starting in September and November. Okay, new ones couple on scent detection, and one called Brave learning one on one, which is just about just diving into teaching and learning with positive reinforcement. And, and I’m also on Facebook, Sarah Owings, on Facebook, and that’s about it. Those are also cyber dogs cyber dog online, I do a foundation in the indication training for scent detection on there as well. Excellent.
Kayla Fratt
Well, we’ll put all those links in the show notes. And again, thank you so much for coming on. This was so fun. But yeah, I think we both need to go out some dogs outside.
Sarah Owings
So yes, my pleasure. Thanks so much.
Kayla Fratt
Thank you. Bye. Bye. Bye. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you learned a lot and you’re feeling inspired to get outside and be a canine conservationist like Tucker and Fiffler were begging us to at the end here. And you know, do whatever suits your passions and skill set. You can find shownotes transcripts, cute stickers of Barley and Niffler and Ellie, and Sookie, you can join Patreon for our book club and our group coaching calls as well as private one on one mentoring, all of that and all of those links can be found at K9Conservationists.org. Until next time!