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In this episode of K9 Conservationists, Kayla is back with Liza Rader from Focus Dogs for part two about arousal in working dogs.
Science Highlight: None
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Transcript (AI-Generated)
Kayla Fratt 00:09
Hello, and welcome to the K9Conservationists podcast, where we’re positively obsessed with conservation detection dogs. Join us every other week to discuss detection, training, canine welfare, conservation, biology and everything in between. I’m Kayla Fratt, one of the cofounders of K9Conservationists, where we train dogs to detect data for researchers, lead managers, agencies and NGOs. We don’t have any new reviews or a science highlight today. So we’re just going to jump right into it. today. We have Liza from Focus Dogs back on the show to talk a little bit more about arousal and energy. We just felt like we had some things that we kind of left on the table during our last recording, and I had so much fun that I asked her to come back on and do a part two. So welcome back to the show. Liza, super stoked to have you here.
Liza Rader 00:54
Thanks for having me again.
Kayla Fratt 00:56
Yeah, so we’re just kind of touching base before we hit record, because we both had a heck of a week and have not prepared as much as maybe. So I guess first off, you said, you’ve got a minor correction to issue from our last recording. And then second off, I think we’re just gonna kind of jam on this idea of like, how to deal with these dogs that are too much, and maybe where some of some of the classic wisdom and some of the suggestions can lead us astray. So yeah, let’s go right into it. Awesome. So
Liza Rader 01:29
it’s a fun little correction. But I did talk about a dog that I love very dearly, who I care for, for my friend, Vita, who we assumed at the time of recording was a little she’s a resident from the Yukon, everybody assumed we’re calling maybe some cattle dog or things, we have found out that she is a pomsky with a whole bunch of Rottie in there, 16 pounds, and 10%, Ronnie, and then like, everything else you could think of like Cocker and Sheltie and everything. I’ve never been more wrong about a dog that I know super well. And so it just goes to show, you can’t tell by looking at them phenotype.
Kayla Fratt 02:11
Which, honestly, actually, you know, bringing the fact that she’s kind of a res dog from the Yukon back in the Husky makes sense, kind of random small dog mix. The mix kind of makes sense. I guess. Like, not a lot of Border Collies up there. No,
Liza Rader 02:31
yes. We were thinking like, hurting me. Yeah, it’s hurting. spritzy but there’s very little hurting in there. The Rottweiler also a surprise.
Kayla Fratt 02:41
Yeah, that is funny. Yeah. Who knows? I mean, the stories you could tell about trying to like piece together some of these deals. Oh
Liza Rader 02:48
my god, once it gets to a certain point, like there be dragons. Like if that’s, that’s, that’s a dog?
Kayla Fratt 02:54
Yes. Yeah. You’re just I can’t even remember whose dog it was or who I was talking to. But we’re looking at a dog and you know, everyone like we couldn’t decide on like the two breeds. And, you know, at some point, I was just like, Yeah, we just have to remember that. This probably isn’t like a 50 5050 mix between two purebred like we’re not getting anywhere with this like, sometimes they are. And sometimes you can tell that they are. But you know, I once but we’ll we’ll pull ourselves out of this rabbit hole in a second but I once fostered a litter of puppies that were Dober Doberman Husky crosses. Oops, litter. Yeah, really cute. And you couldn’t necessarily tell by looking at one puppy individually that that was the mix. But when you looked at them, it was like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, some of them are way more husky. And some of them are way more Dobby. And most of them were in the middle, but you like couldn’t really pick up on that about pattern enough until unless you were looking at like all of them at the same time. And that was so cool. They were so cute to man. They were they were naughty. But also, like I was fostering seven week old puppies. Four of them in a 450 square foot house. So like no matter what they were, they were going to be Hellions Yeah. No good way to do that. Anyways,
Liza Rader 04:15
it’s like how do you send them home? And it’s like, honestly, eight weeks old, like do you want to like, yeah,
Kayla Fratt 04:21
yes. Every time people tell me that they can’t foster because they would keep them all. Like, that is the case for some people. Absolutely. For me, I was ready to let go of every single foster I’ve had most of them I was ready to let them go a couple of weeks before they were ready to go. And especially with puppies, it’s like you’re on your 400 load of laundry and your feet are bleeding out maybe also partially as like a behavior person like when I when the shelters called me to take on foster it generally what isn’t like he’s a senior dog who just needs a little bit of extra love or like a shelter. It was like this dog has separation anxiety and has like tried to bite everyone. It’s mad isn’t cool. Love it. Alright, so, you know, yeah, when someone goes to like Jo dog trainer or Jain dog trainer down the street, and they’re like, Oh my God, my dog is scaling the walls, eating the drywall. It doesn’t matter how long I play fetch this dog is driving me nuts. What are some of the things that you see? Or you hear from your clients as like? Well, this is what the last trader said, like, what are some of the first lines of defense that you might hear from a kind of, again, Jo, dog trainer or date J dog trainer.
Liza Rader 05:51
So there’s kind of two avenues. So the one is increasing control. And the other one is decreasing, decreasing control, but without adding any information coming with that. So clarify, I know that super vague. So for example, I get a lot of conflating stillness and calmness. So like, if they’re integrate, or if they’re on a place, then they are, quote, unquote, calm, which works really great with a lot of the driver, dogs who deal with stress by moving that is just a recipe for a fight. And it can be really stressful for them. But just because they’re calm, doesn’t mean they’re going to be still and just because they’re still does not mean they’re gonna be calm. And then the other one is a really, really increasing, really structured exercise. So like, put them on a six foot leash and walk them and walk them off them are like tons and tons of fetch, like just throw a ton more exercise on them. And then the other sort of route that people go is adding in a lot of what is assumed to be reinforcement, without paying attention to threshold and arousal, and motivation. So like, look at the scary thing, eat a food, look at a scary thing, eat a food, look at the scary thing, eat a food, except what we’re starting to get is the dogs staring at the thing they’re scared of, and then coming back to you for food, because their arousal is really high. Maybe they’re dealing with their emotions by eating, instead of actually like reinforcing behavior. Like that certainly is
Kayla Fratt 07:27
a thing that can happen. I’ve never experienced that. Personally, I’m
Liza Rader 07:30
sure like, no one who has lived through the last almost four years has experienced this once, right?
Kayla Fratt 07:40
Or like seven, actually.
Liza Rader 07:43
I mean, I had my dog at the vet the other day just for a checkup. And he was like, You need to keep feeding me and I’m not reinforcing behavior, it just makes him feel better. So like, our will keep feeding you the bad, but like not pretending that I’m dog training, right. And I see that so much of like, we’re working these dogs, because they’re able to perform a behavior. And so we assume that they’re comfortable enough, and that we’re reinforcing what we want to be reinforcing. Because that tends to work with like, your chill little lab, or my roof quality. One of those things work really well, and not providing enough like information about what to do about stuff and how to get what they need. Yeah,
Kayla Fratt 08:21
when actually I want to, I want to dive in on something that you just said that, uh, I’m finding kind of interesting, this word enough, you know, it’s working enough. And I wonder in the sport and working dog world, you know, depending on who you are, and depending on your skill set, you’re well at your definition of enough and my definition of enough probably aren’t the same, like as far as like whether or not it’s working well enough, or that it’s performing well enough or the dog feels comfortable enough. That’s a very, very variable target. And, you know, I’ve certainly been in seminars or workshops or watched videos, where one person’s definition of adequate performance or optimal arousal is not mine and sometimes that is like, you know, I think that there’s a genuine disagreement over like what we’re looking at that definitely as part of it sometimes. And sometimes people just have different like kind of comfort levels and their skill set might be a lot higher than mine You know, when I watched some of these like bite sport people who are really good they’re working with dogs in a in a mental state and doing it skillfully and ethically in a way that like, I couldn’t keep up with those dogs. So anyway, like, yeah, what do you think about that?
Liza Rader 09:49
Messy right, like it’s really hard. There’s, there’s no one true way to do everything. And I think the kindest thing for the dog is consistency. Write the more than anything else, like just being clear, so they can figure it out. That is really what I’m always going for. And then being really clear with yourself about like, what am I actually what do I actually want? Do I want my dog to look at the other dog? And then look back at me just using maybe like a barking monkey behavior? Do I want my dog to look at the dog and then go back to sniffing? What do I want? Then? Am I getting that? Yes or No? If it’s no, then we’re going to change something. Like I just changed your protocol that I’m doing with my dog who will bark out the window at noises when he is either bored or overtired. And I’ve shifted what I’m doing. So now I’m only giving him food for when he or I hear a noise that might be a trigger, and he doesn’t bark. Because I realized I was getting, I was not seeing the kind of reduction in barking that I was expecting to see. And so I looked at the whole picture, and I talked about it with the trainer, friend, and we shifted what we’re doing. And immediately like I’ve been doing this for three days, and it’s dramatically reduced. And it’s like, these are like one kibble, right? Yeah. So if you’re doing something, you’re not getting the result that you want, then something’s wrong. You need to know what you’re trying to do know where you’re trying to get.
Kayla Fratt 11:21
Yeah.
Liza Rader 11:22
And it’s okay to not, not everyone’s gonna have the same goals, and not everybody’s gonna have the same definitions for things. But that’s why we need to operationalize things we’re talking about, like, I want the dog in an optimal arousal state. What does that mean? What are you looking for? How are you going to test that? Yeah, right. And it’s okay, if you know, handler a needs the dog slightly lower than handler B. Because that’s the system that they have. But you need to know what you’re going for. Right. And you need to work on that system. So that it works for
Kayla Fratt 11:59
you. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And, you know, and then I think also being cautious of times where you may be using arousal to mask fear or uncertainty. You know, I think we see this, I think it’s, we see this a lot in the detection world. Because moving fast, and covering ground quickly, is often rewarded or like, looks flashy. And it’s not as obvious as in like, in agility, if a dog is moving fast, but doesn’t have their head screwed on, right, they’re popping out a weaves or missing contacts, like there are things inherent in the sport that to a degree, mean that you can’t have a dog who is like, totally spun out winning agility competitions. Yeah, I don’t compete in agility. So obviously, feel free to
Liza Rader 12:59
correct a certain point, things are gonna start falling apart. Yeah,
Kayla Fratt 13:04
same with detection to a degree, but we’re working with something that’s invisible. And particularly if you’re working in an area where you don’t, where you as a handler are blind. And you don’t know where your hides are. To be really, really easy to say that the dog is moving fast, the dog is cornering, the dog has their nose down. So therefore the dog is working. And if you don’t really know what you’re looking for, the dog could be totally blowing off odor, or maybe the dog is finding it, but they’re just being inefficient. jumping onto something that the dog isn’t actually comfortable with. And yeah, yeah, there’s a lot there. There’s a
Liza Rader 13:45
lot there. And so that’s another thing that I kind of come up against again, and again, again, with specially the sporting dogs is they will often not always, but very often deal with stress by being frenetic. And we don’t recognize that like culture, we have an idea of what an anxious dog looks like. It does not look like my dog at the vet, my dog at the vet is looks like he’s super stoked to be there. For like, you know, ever people in the waiting room. We’re like, Oh my God, he’s so happy and like, I guarantee you he’s not that tails, going a mile a minute. He’s like, feed me Feed me. Feed me. Feed me feed me. Oh, my God, that that’s coming here. Oh my god, I love it. I want to go in the exam room. I was like, stop him be like you can’t break your knee going into the exam room. But yeah, we have to take a second before we walk in. He does not want to go in the exam room. He does not want to be handled. He likes his bed. He doesn’t want her to, you know, squeezes tummy and make sure he doesn’t have a tummy ache. Yeah. Right. So it’s very easy to miss. And so I have a lot of dogs come into my behavior, my program labeled as hyperactive and that is the complaint. And they’re actually fearful. They’re aggressive. They’re reactive.
Kayla Fratt 15:00
Yeah, and like, I might be walking in a somewhat dicey anthropomorphizing territory here. But like, I identify with that pretty hard. I am highly extroverted and highly motivated and highly focused and competent. And when I get stressed, I get manic. And I, you know, I haven’t had an episode like this for a long time. But, you know, when I was maybe at my poorest and was freelance writing and building websites, and just like really, really struggling to get by, I would often, you know, I would go out and I would have drinks and like, do the things with people. And then I would come home and I would work until one in the morning. And I would say I was happy. I would say I’m building a business. I’m like doing the thing. But it felt good. It felt like relief. I don’t know. So it’s just it’s complicated. Like, if that is something that we as humans can experience, I think it’s relatively fair to assume that our, you know, our furry buddies can experience something akin to that.
Liza Rader 16:11
Yeah. And I’ve noticed correlations with some dogs. I certainly seen it with my own dog, where there’s a correlation between needing to sprint like just sprinting hard. And pain.
Kayla Fratt 16:28
Yeah, that’s fascinating.
Liza Rader 16:30
Isn’t that weird? Yeah. And you can kind of imagine, though, like, if your body is uncomfortable, and it’s tense, that that stretching of the muscle and warming up of the muscles might be helpful, or is it just an emotional thing? Is it a cope? Maybe? Yeah.
Kayla Fratt 16:45
Or is it when other things are engaged physically, you can’t feel that pain to the same degree?
Liza Rader 16:54
Yeah, that’s sort of the first step. There’s a theory and like human mental health of dissociation, dissociative disorders, and the spectrum of those, those dissociation where, you know, the first step of that is athlete piece peak performance. Where you dissociate slightly from your body in order to push it harder. The next step is post traumatic stress disorder. Right, there’s a middle, I don’t know, I could, I could, there may be one in the middle, I can’t actually remember off the top of my head, but I may or may not be one. But it is that like, and that’s still considered like peak performance is still considered, quote, unquote, functional. Right. And so maybe that is a little bit of what’s going on the theory, using access of that activity to cope a little bit, or maybe it just physically feels better. Or maybe they’re anxious. So they’re, they have too many jittery feelings, they need to get them out. But I’ve definitely sort of seen that happen a number of times. And so when I get a hyperactive dog, we’re going we’re going hunting for pain. Because they often really hide it very well. The only reason I found actually that it was a thing with my narc was that he completely stopped sprinting, the day after he went to the massage therapist for the first time. They’re really good massage therapists he goes to, and he would just bomb on every single walk for like a good hour. The day after he saw her he stopped. And he has not again.
Kayla Fratt 18:27
That’s fascinating. Yeah.
Liza Rader 18:29
And I’ve just seen it again and again and again. So who knows, right? Who knows is not something we’ve studied, we don’t actually have a look at what it is, of course, we can’t ask them. Right. But it is something I’m always conscious of. I have also noticed that there is one of the signs that my dog is stressed is that his hunting, searching behavior starts to fall apart. He does a lot of memory retrieves and retrieves a high cover with me and a lot of searching for food in high cover and in the woods and stuff, just as an activity. And I will definitely notice that correlating with a stressor in his life, his ability to find that bumper can decrease and there are times when he I start noticing instead of cornering, he’s circling in a way that he doesn’t usually. Yeah. Focusing enough to see if he might there’s one time he was going. He kept almost stepping on it. He’s going back and forth, back and forth. I know you can find this. Yeah, can’t slow your brain enough to get there. And so yeah, like if you’re working on something we’re it’s one thing when I’m staring at the bumper was like white in the ground. No, it’s almost stepping on be like, Bro. Like, maybe take a breath and come out of the field and like eat a scanner and we’ll ask that question again. But it is entirely different when you don’t actually know it what they’re missing? Yeah, I
Kayla Fratt 20:01
mean, I think this was a huge factor for you know, we’ve talked about this quite a bit on the show. And I meant at some point to do like a full episode on like niffler. In Guatemala, when he, you know, he just had a really, really hard time on this Guatemala project he had done to successful seasons working on a wind farm. And, you know, my poor trainer brain was just, you know, I had done all this work with his new target odor, I’d done a fair bit of work on getting him ready for longer searches. But what I really, really missed was all of the other contexts differences, you know, the odor picture in the jungle and that scent picture and how that moves. And the picture of working on a narrow trail with dense jungle on either side. And having people with us, we had a team of like five to 15 people with us in the field following us
Liza Rader 20:59
would be weird. It was really
Kayla Fratt 21:01
weird for him. And the behavior that we saw is I would tell him to search. And he would sprint top speed down the trail, just straight past targets that we had put out, and he might find a couple of them. And he did have a couple live finds as well. But it was just like, Oh, he’s not working. The
Liza Rader 21:24
brain is not actually that’s so interesting, because just that quick description that you gave is so similar to what I see in the gundogs Yeah, when they’re not ready, like they’re just too high to do the thing for whatever reason, maybe they’re too excited. Maybe they’re
Kayla Fratt 21:40
gun doggy sorts of tendencies. I mean, like they’re, you know, working dogs or dogs or dogs working dogs can be working dogs, but he Yeah, he he’s such a border collie in some ways and then there are other ways where like, the, the way he’s physical about his body reminds me of the way that people talk about upland bird dogs in a lot and the upland bird dogs
Liza Rader 22:02
are so much so much dog
Kayla Fratt 22:08
feelings than a lot of Border Collies, which would be like a fascinating little like, you know? Yeah, question because he’s like, he’s way lengthier than most Border Collies, he’s got a pretty deep chest, he’s big. Anyway, but you know, I think as I’ve been doing, you know, a year of navel gazing about, like, why was niffler not able to pick up 50% of this project? Why did barley have to do 80 or 90% of it? I think a huge part of it that I missed at the time, and I’m hoping to have more adequately addressed for him in the future is the stress picture because it looks like that arousal as we said, It looks like he was having fun. It looks like he was blowing us off. You know, it looked like he was just like sprinting around but woods, but like, why? You know, why is he doing that in the jungle when he never did that before on the wind farm? You know,
Liza Rader 23:07
I think that why question. That’s always what I’m, I’m always trying to ask the next question, sir. Like, okay, what’s the dog doing? But then like, that, like, really? What’s the dog doing? Like? So first thing, the dogs blowing us off? Like, literally, what are they doing? He’s sprinting down the trail. Okay. Why? Right? Like then Ned, what’s the next question? Yeah, what’s different? Okay, what why is that different? Okay, what’s the specific of what, what is that? Where is he encountered that before? Like, how many next questions? Can we just keep asking until we actually figure out? Oh, there, oh, this thing is different.
Kayla Fratt 23:50
Yeah. Well, and you know, like, one of the things that I failed niffler on in this particular situation was like, not clocking some of the things that were going to be challenging for him before we got there. And then trying to figure out a progression plan to get him ready for those things that like, again, I was focused on it was focused on the target odor, and it was focused on search duration. So I had clocked a couple things that were going to be really different for him. But I really, I really, really missed a lot of the big things that were going to be changed for him. And one of the one of the things that, you know, this happens in a lot of work or sports situations, we got there and we were being paid for, I think, nine survey days that were spread over 14 or 15 days. So by the time like day two or three came around, and it was really like okay, he’s not getting better. This is not working. We were like a third of a way into our time there and I didn’t have adequate time built into our project, to be able to say, hey, I need to take a step back with this dog. And we’ve got to do a week or two of like, acclimation training and this and that, you know, and instead of, you know, luckily, we’ve got the two dogs, luckily, it was only nine days. So we were able to kind of say, alright, barleys just gonna do kind of everything, we’ll take niffler out and do training with him in the afternoon. And, you know, again, it’s only nine days and barley can just do it all. But, you know, it was definitely a learning a learning thing for us, you know, in the future with dogs that are kind of as unproven as niffler was, at that point, we really need to make sure that we’re figuring out a way to get them on site, you know, two weeks in advance. And, and asking, you know, like, I guess I, you know, I underestimated how much having people following us was potentially a factor there. And, you know, it’s, I can’t really, there’s no pie chart that says that that was 10% of the problem versus 35% of the problem. Because also, if we’re being realistic about training, I don’t have access to primary rainforest, or a group of 10 people to follow me around. And, you know, so also, when you’re thinking about these trading plans, you know, there’s only so much you can control as well. And I think also like,
Liza Rader 26:17
is extremely hard when you go in to doing something collaborative with the dog. And you have expectations for how it’s supposed to go. And like, either, you know, we’re going on this job, or we’re doing this big training seminar, or, you know, this is a trial that we’ve entered, like, whatever the big thing that’s kind of like looming. And you step into it, and dog
Kayla Fratt 26:48
goes, Oh, actually,
Liza Rader 26:50
I got I got no burden blue overdue, and I got it. No, no, no, I can’t. And it’s really hard to not go. You need to figure it out and do it properly. Because you get so it gets so emotionally difficult when it just, you just go like, Oh, it’s not working. And so I think especially when it looks kind of like how you’re describing where they’re just what it’s all the things that I hear all the time with the retrievers they’re just being an asshole is just blowing you off. The dogs being having fun. Just yeah, you got to stop letting them have fun in the field. Right? It is so easy to go to that. And then to go. And the problem is that I need to crack down. Yeah, and I haven’t cracked down on them enough. It’s a
Kayla Fratt 27:45
line of thinking that leads directly to an E collar. And,
Liza Rader 27:50
and, and, and then on right and then then on from there. And it’s very hard to do it. You just did and went. Oh, I didn’t ask the right questions beforehand. Oh,
Kayla Fratt 28:04
I mean, I cried a lot first. That called My ex boyfriend and said, Hey, you really love niffler and you said that you wanted him if I couldn’t keep him? He’s fired.
Liza Rader 28:16
I mean, you had Have you ever done like anything you really care about with a dog unless you’d like lead face down floor and sob for a while? Right. But it is. It’s so much easier to just go there being an asshole. It’s so much easier to do that. And it’s really, really hard to get like, I guess there’s the adult in the room. I
Kayla Fratt 28:38
will do better next. Yeah, well, it’s funny even so like my little our plus brain didn’t go he’s being an asshole. Which I guess is growth. But my little our plus brain went. I’m asking too much of him, which is true. But then it went. He’s not the right dog for the job. I need to rehome him. He can’t do this. He’s not cut out for this. He’s not serious enough. He’s not driven enough. He’s not focused enough. He’s not resilient enough. And like, Thank God I kept kept him around because I mean, we haven’t. I haven’t taken him into the field again. Yet since then. We haven’t had a project that was a good fit for him yet. But man three looks really good on him in a way that two didn’t. Oh man, two year old
Liza Rader 29:31
in he’s intact, right? He’s intact. 22 year old intact. Males are just silly. So doubt, silly babies.
Kayla Fratt 29:40
I swear to God. He was better at 15 months than he was at 26. Like 15 months is supposed to be the worst of adolescence. I mean, he was worse at nine months than he was at 15. I
Liza Rader 29:52
always felt like 910 11 are just like that’s and you’re just like, I’m just gonna tie them up. Like the ASPCA, like the only answer.
Kayla Fratt 30:04
I’m going back to the dog by Karen Pryor. And I’m rewriting all the conclusions because the answer is to shoot the dog. Yeah, when it’s just funny, like, I feel like if you graphed my confidence in niffler, it like climbed and climbed and climbed until, like 16 or 18 months, and I can’t say for sure whether his performance declined around 16 or 18 months, and then like, started coming back up again around like, you know, 28 or 30, or whatever. Like, I don’t have this graphed out, but like, somewhere between a year and a half and two and a half, he got a lot worse, and I’m not entirely sure how much of that is. He got a lot worse, versus my expectations was like, now he’s two. Now we’re moving out of adolescence now. I should be seeing more maturity and Cincy out of him. And the funny thing is, we’ve got another two year old, intact male on the team who’s about six months younger than NiFi. Totally different dog. He’s six months younger. And, like at so he was when when so this is Scotty when we took Scotty to California. He had been in the program for like four months, he was the same age niffler was in Guatemala. So niffler had every advantage in the world as far as being raised by me since nine weeks. And Scotty blew it out of the water. Scotty had no problems with being followed around by NatGeo film crew you don’t like? So it’s just that was
Liza Rader 31:32
not that just makes it worse. That was this one particular dog and me as a person have failed? Yeah, absolutely
Kayla Fratt 31:42
bursting joke like intact blue merle Border Collie boys. And I was just like, well, one of these is the area of the set. And that’s not true. But you know, it also helped me see I had so much more compassion and patience for Scotty in California than I did for NiFi and Guatemala, because he wasn’t my and it was like, Wow, if I came in and was just looking at niffler with fresh eyes every day and not thinking about the time I put into him six months ago, I would be a much better trainer with him in a lot of ways. Oh, that’s a hard pill to swallow. I hate that.
Kayla Fratt 32:19
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Liza Rader 33:20
The other thing is like it’s a bit of a myth that in order to push the dog either like someone is going to come and take your force free card. Or that the only way to achieve that is by being really hard on them or being really like coming in with the heavy corrections or like hauling them out of the field and not letting them do the thing anymore. This is a thing I will admit this isn’t this is a thing that I am not very good at. Because the way that I was originally taught to do it was really, really heavy handed. Yeah, so I’ve really had to like pull back and then try to figure out again Shut up to set our streaming. How to like I’ve got one hell of a little dog. He works hard. He is super driving. He’s also really sensitive. And so it’s been really difficult to figure out how to hold him to standards and how to push him harder and expect more from him without, you know, grabbing him by the scruff and shaking him as I was originally taught to do, yeah. But you don’t have to escalate in a level of correction or a level of aversive to actually like oh actually that was not what we asked for. Could you try again please? And I think so often we get into these situations where we’re maybe stagnating or plateauing. We’re not weren’t getting where we want to be and the answers that are available are to come down on them harder. Yeah. And I love if we started talking more about how to be more conversational, and it’s really hard because like, the way that I might handle a really high drive working Cocker in my be my program is very different than I’m going to handle the really gentle little Springer that I’m currently working with, like a little like BYOB spammer, who’s an absolute love, and he’s got like some timing issues and just a sensitive soul. And so it’s not something we can like put on a single Instagram post about like how to deal when your dog makes a mistake. But the dogs that are really pushed to do the work, they have that internal motivation to keep doing the work. They’re designed to do the work, they have the skills to do it. It’s not an either don’t ask them to be better, or drop everything and like completely go back to the Training Board and redo it. Yeah. Or, to quote my grandmother shot the shit. Right, like there’s more than two options.
Kayla Fratt 36:11
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, there’s so many like little things, I want to pull out one of the stories that’s swirling around in my head that might be might be kind of old news for some of our some of our more kind of trainer minded listeners. But maybe the story is a little bit different. So one of my favorite books is Thinking Fast and Slow, which is written by Amos Tversky, I believe, posthumously with Danny, Danny Kahneman, or maybe the other way around. And there are two Israeli psychologists, or behavioral economists. And they in that book, Thinking Fast and Slow talk about training Israeli fighter pilots, which also this is a very weird anecdote to be telling right now. And I would like to just say here that this is absolutely not a statement in any way meant to support the IDF or Israel’s actions in Palestine, I have been going to a lot of ceasefire protests lately. However, this point stands and is written by one of my favorite authors. So we’re gonna kind of go into this anecdote here. So and they were talking about how after a fighter pilot does a given maneuver, the trainer’s would, if the if the fighter pilot had just done a spectacular job, and they praise to them, the next rep was often worse. And if the fighter pilot had just done a terrible job, and a messed up, and the trainer then reprimanded them, the next rep was often better. So if you’re tracking how you’re interacting with your students, and how the next rep relates to the one before it, you were going to think that praising a student for a good performance had a detrimental effect, and that reprimanding them for a bad performance had a good effect. And this is there’s a logical fallacy in there called regression to the mean. Which is that if you’re if my average performance on a task is a seven out of 10, and you scream in my face, when I do a five out of 10, odds are a four out of 10. Even odds are my next rep is going to be closer to my average, which is seven, so it’s going to look like it worked. And if I buy some trick of the wind, accidentally do a 10 out of 10. My next rep is likely to be closer to seven out of 10. So anyway, I think like this all just goes back to this idea of like punishing and reprimanding, looking like it works because if you were selecting the worst repetitions to punish, which is what you should do, if you are going down that route, you are going to see a trendline that looks like it’s working. But it might actually be regression to the mean, and not actually, the fact that punishment is working in the long term.
Liza Rader 39:18
There’s a real problem that we run into when we’re working with the dogs, which is really hyper focusing on what exactly is only what’s in front of us at this great moment. And on one hand, we need to be paying attention. You know, we get told all the time, like the dog in front of you today, not the dog yesterday, not the dog two days ago. Find it out in front of you. And, you know focus on the stuff that you’re in and all these things. And you also need the ability to pull back and go like are we trending in the right direction? Was this a one off? Like, came out of the car, like a bat out of hell and just like bombed around and like actually needed a second to like, kind of like I just didn’t quite set them up, right. And they made a big mistake whatever? Or is this actually? Is their foundation missing something major falling apart? Do I need to go back and rebuild something like what is a miss. And you can’t notice that if you’re only looking at the thing that you’re doing at the second, you have to be able to pull back and look at the broader picture. And I see that a lot like in in pet owners where like, it is so common with the like four or five month old, really HYDrive gundogs. I’m sure it’s probably the same for the other just like Big Lots of feelings, dogs, that they’ll have like a small regression and potty training as they sort of hit the next level of like, energy levels and feelings about everything. Four and a half, five months, where and it’s a very It looks very specifically where they’re they’re like they’re playing, they’re playing, they’re playing and then all of a sudden, they like pee themselves. Yeah, it’s because your baby, and you don’t know how you’re you don’t know, like, what your body feels like, yeah, and you’re so excited that you’re not paying attention to what’s actually happening to you. And then all of a sudden, you have to go back.
Kayla Fratt 41:14
I mean, ask anyone who was trained for a marathon. And like, we have this experience as adults, where you’re, you don’t plan your route appropriately. And again, it’s like it’s kind of an extreme example, but like,
Liza Rader 41:29
what happens a lot of times like people, you know, we’re doing so well with potty training. And then this happens. And like, people have like actual panics about it. Like they’re like, the die is never gonna pan like be housebroken ever they fully regressed, like, on and on and on. You guys, but we’ll get there. It’s like, I don’t consider my boys fully potty trained until they’re over 12 months old. Because how many times I had a teenage male do something really obnoxious in a house? I’m like, I’m gonna pretend that you’re not potty trained into your 12 months old. Yeah, like this get peed on as breeders bed at 1010 months. Sometimes things go right, if you hyper focus on the things that are going awry, and don’t look at the bigger picture. And you don’t have reasonable expectations. Like, you know, it’s a pretty reasonable expectation that a four and a half month old puppy who’s really apt might take
Kayla Fratt 42:26
Yeah, well, just this is probably a little too myopic on the potty training example. But like when I back when I was doing a lot of client, you know, client based dog training. Whenever someone would come to me one about one of those things like I would just be like, You know what? 99.8% of dogs. If the owner gives a shit about potty training, ultimately end up potty training and the 2% that don’t, there’s probably something really wrong. Yeah, take a breath. I Pinky promise. If you care as much as you do, almost all dogs end up potty trained like this is you’re not trying to change train for Crofts right now.
Liza Rader 43:07
Yeah. God, if that happens, the puppy has an accident. And you are so in that moment. And you catastrophize that moment. It is so easy to turn that into an actual behavior problem. Oh, yeah. Right. Because if you lose it at the buddy, another one is like when they’re like five, six months, and they get weirdly spooky for a while.
Kayla Fratt 43:36
Yeah. Or they eat something niffler the only thing he ever destroyed was when he was like seven months old. Maybe five, but like, older than you kind of think for like the only thing a dog is ever gonna destroy. Yeah, but it was it was so late in his life, like anyway. And so then your response is
Liza Rader 43:59
to have it yeah, if you have a big huge meltdown about it, or you or like another one is like, yeah, like, again, I know Sarastro has been talking about this a few times, because she has Carson right now, like sometimes, like the Border Collie. Puppies just get spooky, at a little barky at stuff. And if we go like the dog is reactive. And then we like manage them like an adult dog who’s had a three year history of barking, lunging every single dog they see like, you’re going to create a problem. So you have to balance being like, Oh, you need help in this area, or like that rep did not go as well as I wanted to or put you in the situation. You weren’t able to handle it with being able to pull back and look at everything in context and everything as a trend and go like, Okay, what exactly is the problem? Again? Why is it the problem? How big of a problem is it? And then what am I going to do about it? Yeah,
Kayla Fratt 44:56
one one of the things that we’re hitting on a lot that I wasn’t expecting to hit on with to you tonight is also knowing what’s kind of appropriate age appropriate and what problems to maybe expect at a given age. And you know, within given breed groups as well. One of the things I want to kind of go back to that we use it like way back when we did our pre interview before Episode One was this idea that sometimes one of the things that balanced trainers do better, because we’ve been talking a lot today about why suppression is an ineffective route to go with these dogs that I’m just kind of saying too much. Because that encompasses the arousal and the activity level and the drive and all that kind of motion together. Is that they teach skills. And sometimes the folks who are really, really focused on AR plus, don’t so can you can we can we pull on that thread a little bit? I’d love to hear more of your thoughts on that. I think I agree. But I want to, I want to share it with readers.
Liza Rader 45:51
Yes, let’s get me counsel on the internet. Hell yeah. So actually, there’s so many, like, there’s so many little parts of this that are like, really fraught, and so I just like, whoever is listening to this. I promise you that whatever you are doing with your dog, I’ve probably done worse, right? As far as like ethics, like, I promise you like old school gun dog training, guys come on. And while I myself feel like I probably roughly under that force free umbrella. I learned so much from so many trainers who are not. And my main concern with the dogs that I’m working with, is that I’m as effective as possible for them and for their people. And that that is a really fair balance that everybody is getting their needs met not one and not the other, and that we’re doing that in the most effective and ethical way possible. And so and this stuff is really, like complicated and tricky to talk about, because everybody has really big feelings, but but I’m just gonna give her. So in my experience, when like, when certain, for example, like balanced training handles reactivity? Well, it is
Kayla Fratt 47:15
because a caveat and a great place to start.
Liza Rader 47:19
Like, no one has feelings about training for reactive thoughts right now.
Kayla Fratt 47:26
Anyone on the internet had an opinion about this, it’s great.
Liza Rader 47:30
When it is effective with that is because it focuses on teaching skills. And it proves those skills to a really high level. And when forced retraining is ineffective. It is because it does not teach skills. Yes. And when balanced training runs into a lot of problems, and starts creating the problems that then has everyone going well, we need to ban everything and have all these rules. But who’s allowed to be a dog trainer is when it doesn’t teach those skills? Well. Yeah.
Kayla Fratt 48:04
Or would it? I would argue also, when they like the suppression just go yeah, we’re
Liza Rader 48:09
just like, we’re not actually teaching coping skills, we’re not actually teaching, like training a thing, we’re just going stab it, right.
Kayla Fratt 48:19
And you get into like an arms race.
Liza Rader 48:21
That’s a really good analogy you definitely do. And the thing is, is you can teach dogs to stop doing a thing without using something that’s going to hurt them or scare them, or cause them enough discomfort, that they avoid it. And you can teach high level skills and maintain high level skills with reinforcement. And everybody’s lying about what they count as aversive enough is going to be a little different. But I think everyone that I am learning from is focusing really heavily on meeting the dog where they’re at finding an entry point of what they can do training to a really high level teaching skills. And then slowly making those skills harder and using those skills as a way to have a dialogue with the dog. So that we can get where we want to go. And we run into a lot of problems when what we’re doing is conveyor belting chicken into the dog’s face all a homer in hell. That doesn’t teach any skills I want to things that I see a lot with so many of the people that I work with is, well, the dog is biting me, not because he’s aggressive but because it’s a dog and he has got a lot of feelings about putting the thing in its mouth. And we would really like him to stop. And while I don’t start with stopping the thing, we can’t do that. Not anymore. I also tell people like there, there is going to be a point where like, we’re going to be focusing on teaching him to like my dog right now not bark in the house, don’t bark in the house and coming into scatter, like actually quiet. Right? Or to chill learn that, that yes, there are other ways to ask for attention, other than grabbing your person by the arm. And also, grabbing the person by the arm now that you’ve learned those other things is not going to be effective anymore for you. Yeah. And so it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s complicated, and it’s messy, and we need to be able to keep talking to each other about it. And coming from a place of like, if, if we’re trying to do the best possible job that we can. Great. Now we now we have a baseline to work off of. And I do think that teaching skills, especially with these dogs who have who are, they tend to be incredibly intelligent, they are driven, they are have all of these feelings, they have all of this sort of gas in the tank, that when we really focus on teaching very effective skills. That is going to get us where we want to be very well. Yeah,
Kayla Fratt 51:17
I mean, it goes back to you know, again, like I think Sarah strumming is the person that I’ve heard say this the most often, and I’m sure she is not the only one saying it, but like good training is good training. And if your animal is healthy, and you’re meeting their needs, and you have a solid progression plan, you know, whether or not a tool or punishment procedure is introduced later on, is not necessarily relevant for my opinion of how you and your dog are interacting. The way that like, we collectively force free our plus whatever whatever club get upset is when people are missing the welfare point.
Liza Rader 52:09
And then that stress starting from that welfare point, starting from the building up their confidence in their skills, teaching communication systems, all of that when we start there, then you can go and I really need to cannot park in my home.
Kayla Fratt 52:26
Management is so much more unfair if the dog does not have the skills to do the appropriate. Okay. Yeah. And when we did have this same issue, though, with the R plus, folks, it’s the same. If you’re maybe, you know, I would say maybe some of these are plugs, folks are more likely to get the welfare piece, right. But miss the skills piece, but that’s not necessarily true, either. You know, when I think back on myself, as like a baby brand new trainer, you know, I, I was too scared, and not knowledgeable enough to necessarily really quiz my clients on like, the welfare side of things for their dog, and how that may or may not interact with the skills that I was teaching. And I was just jumping straight into skills. So anyway,
Liza Rader 53:16
ya know, it’s, it’s such a, it’s such a rat’s nest, and there’s a million things going on. And kind of going back to the dogs that were really specifically talking about. meeting their needs, can often look like teaching a lot of skills. Totally. So one thing that I see a lot as a as a skill that I go, Oh, you need help with this, you need me to teach you this is the specially retrievers who have so much drive to pick the thing up and put it in their mouth and carry it around. And then they have no idea what to do with it. And it starts to cause and you’ll see them that like if you have a chance to observe venture retrievers, if you will see this, they have a thing in their mouth, and they’re starting to be like, well know what, yeah, I had to teach biscuit a system for if you find a ball in your walk, because that, oh my god, finding a ball walk could not any nothing could be better than this or absolutely nothing. That there is a way there’s a system around, I’m going to having a drink of water, where you put the ball on the ground, I’m going to rest my foot on it next to you. And then you can drink out of the bowl of water. When you were done. I will take my foot off of it, put my foot on it because that’s like my general like, cue that like we’re not nothing is interacting with this toy. I’m not going to pick it up. No other dogs are kind of gonna come near it and it’s not really available to you. But it’s right next to your face. I also had to teach him that he could give me give me a toy to eat food. That was a skill that he did not have. Yeah. Like that’s a that’s a welfare thing. Yeah. You don’t know how to like function. If you’ve picked up a stick in the backyard and you’re like, well now what do I do with it? You start to panic. Because you can’t put it down. It’s too valuable. Yeah, that’s a problem if you need that skill. Yeah,
Kayla Fratt 55:07
yeah, absolutely and, and a meeting the welfare needs of these dogs, quote unquote, also requires so much more. Because you know, as we talked about in part one, this is not just buying a couple Nina arts and puzzle toys and taking a dog on a safari every day, it is a lot more than that. And if you want to be able to take these dogs off leash in the woods, there’s a hell of a lot of skill involved.
Liza Rader 55:38
skills. And I just got a shout out actually on that one specifically, my very dear friend, Adams kendaraan, he has like, the most phenomenal offleash skills class that has and it’s so much more than a recall because we just we think it’s a recall, just come back when you’re called. But there’s a million other parts that come into it, especially when you’ve got these hunty dogs, especially when we’ve got really handy dogs that we have encouraged to hunt, we want you to go hunt, we want you to use your nose, you we want you to range we want you to quarter, but there’s there’s brackets around that. Also, when I asked you to do X, Y or Z, I need that to happen. So we need to turn that to a high level fluency. I know a lot of people get really uncomfortable with the word obedience. And I really do like the word obedience just means fluency. It’s just fluent skills that are under stimulus control. Yeah. And so, uh, one ways we can kind of start getting in arguments is when, you know, person A is saying, I need my dog to be obedient. I need them to do these behaviors. And someone else goes, that word makes me really uncomfortable, which, fair enough. But we often are talking about the same thing, even though we’re using different language. Yeah. So if you’re going to have a GSP off leash in the woods, you need some behaviors under stimulus control, or everybody is going to be having a panic attack, and I’m crying. Totally dog. Now the dog will be having phenomenal time. Generally runs
Kayla Fratt 57:09
full speed into a barbed wire fence or there. Yeah, a rattlesnake. A cactus, there’s a lot of things out there. I just want to shout out, you know, like, so my, one of my current favorite podcasts is the canine detection collaborative, unsurprisingly. And I was just today, so we’re recording in mid to late December. So and this episode is going to come up quite a ways after this, but I was just listening to their amazing episode with Julia Sarah, who has been on this show before she works with new to end OB doing turtle detection work, love her to bits. And you know, they were talking a lot about safety skills, and how safety skills or obedience and you know, whether you want to call it safety skills or field preparedness, or whatever, or, or obedience or and whether you want to call it fluency, or obedience to a command, it’s all the same thing. It
Liza Rader 58:08
is and those things can help you. So, you know, if I’m noticing that my dog is searching for his bumper, and I’m noticing that some of his patterns of movement indicate that he’s not like he’s he is doing the little like I’m running instead of actually like doing the thing. If I have some fluid behaviors, I can ask a question. If I give a stop whistle, can you actually listen to it? If you blow a stop whistle, that I know you can listen to under these circumstances, when you are in a thinking brain? I’m coming to get you. Because something’s not right. Yeah. And so we have these ways of asking the questions, both before and during the moment that we’re like the room when we’re asking them a question that we can, we can test and see what’s going on. Because often it looks really, really similar. Again, the amount of dogs that I work with who are labeled as hyper, and needing more exercise and just blowing you off, who are actually having an anxiety about it, or they don’t have the skills to be in this environment, they just aren’t prepared for it. And that’s coming out by zipping around with his little spaniel tail going a million miles now. And like, taking all a million little right angle turns and buzzing full of BS. But if we can ask the questions, and we know you are, this is an obedient skill that you have. This is a fluent skill that you have, and you don’t have access to it right now. Okay. I’m asking you the wrong question. Come on. Let’s go work on that. We’ll figure it out. Right. Yeah.
Kayla Fratt 59:56
All right. Take a break.
Liza Rader 59:59
That was a little harder. I thought it was okay. And you can actually help them. Having those kinds of parameters allows you to do that. Yeah. The problem becomes, though, when the expectations aren’t fair to the dog. So, like, I just did a big conversation with a bunch of people about really big feelings have wandered through dogs. And the questions that I kept asking, were like, Did you teach this dog unextended? Place cue? Like, is that how you taught her to relax? Did you teach her to relax by doing a chin rest? Did you like wearing like, oh my god, you guys know, because she couldn’t if I just asked her if she wasn’t relaxed, I asked her to be still she would have exploded. She couldn’t be in any confinement because she would explode. Yeah, so she had to learn how to relax. Just as a concept. Like that was a new concept for her. And it took clicking Close, like all the blinds in the house. And mom sat on the couch with her. But we turn on the TV and we turn on the music and it was cozy blankets and everyone was reading. And that was like the first time we were able to get her just that all like we set it up so that she was gonna settle and then we just we dog trained it, we just dog trained, relaxing. But then she also had to learn how to be heavy how to barrier and then she also had to learn to be still and to not have to have her movement restricted. All of those things had to happen separately before we could put even two of them together. Can you be still behind a barrier? Can you relax behind a barrier? Not just can you stand there and not scream at it? Can you actually go chill? Yeah, yeah. And over time those things have started to to come together for her to be able to start to handle concepts like being shot in the hallway potentially being created being confined in
Kayla Fratt 1:01:56
one one of Gosh, one of the things that you’re hitting on that is like these these were some of the things that I think I was worst at back when I was doing a lot more behavior consulting is when management requires a lot of skill.
Liza Rader 1:02:10
Oh, that’s Oh my God, that’s the worst
Kayla Fratt 1:02:14
killer Oh, hard when you say what your dog needs is less stimulation and needs to be able to relax after you have met all of their exercise needs during that lovely three hour off leash trail run you did with them. And they say we can’t because they scream even after their needs are met. That is when as a consultant I would always just like cat Okay, I think I need to refer this out like my consulting like if I had this dog on board and train I would probably be able to do it but I can’t coach someone through that like I’m just I don’t have
Liza Rader 1:02:54
it. It’s so hard the one thing that I would just like I just bang on about whenever I talk to puppy people is like I start the puppies in a crate in a car. Always without fail. Because oh my god do you not want to reactive dog that is not crate trained in the car. Oh my god. That’s the worst. Right?
Kayla Fratt 1:03:13
Just skiing with a friend and the whole way up there both dogs whining pacing wining pacing front seat, trunk, backseat trunk front seat, and I was just like a I would kill my dogs. Be we’re all gonna die. Yeah, this
Liza Rader 1:03:27
is a car crash waiting to have it. Yeah. And
Kayla Fratt 1:03:30
they weren’t. They weren’t bad. You know, they weren’t actually reacted. They’re just jittery. Like, yeah, it was so unpleasant. So unpleasant.
Liza Rader 1:03:40
But like, in my case, again, like, most of the puppies that I’m working with are these little gunshow screaming nightmare. Dog babies. And, but I go really, really hard on teaching. Like, I don’t care. If you don’t sleep anywhere else, you need to learn how to sleep in a great, you have like we are going to be traveling in the car and a great you like, these things are required, you need to learn how to handle your own long line. So you’re not dragging me around. Because there’s so much more necessary as adults, with these guys, like the level of management that these guys need, especially if something else becomes a problem is really, really high. And man, do you not want a dog that loses it every time a person comes over and also loses it when they’re integrating the other room. Right?
Kayla Fratt 1:04:35
That’s that combination guys. These things we can train. Well both of these things we can like try to head off starting at eight weeks, 10 weeks, 12 weeks whenever the dog comes home, six months whatever. One of them is a lot easier to work on at home and on your own than the other. It’s kind of like being able to be managed and being able to be created has a million and for us. You know, I think we would also like to prevent the like big feelings about strangers stuff. But I would rather have a dog that had big feelings about strangers but also could be created than a dog who couldn’t be created but was a gem with everyone else. Because you know what, at some point, you’re gonna have a tplo At some point, you’re gonna have a torn toenail at some point, there’s going to be 75 Kids, somewhere for some reason. And even if your dog is a perfect, sweet angel, baby, you just don’t need another child running around.
Liza Rader 1:05:35
comes to mind for me if there’s gonna be a natural disaster folks. Right? Like you never know, when you’re at just shove everybody in the car and get going pretty fast. I would really like my dogs to be comfortable in a crate where they’re safe if I ever have to be in a public place with them like that, like, totally. But these guys are so much harder because yeah, like a lot of the kind of, you know, like, your average, cockapoo is not going to need to be taught to not have a personal vendetta against baby gates. If the amount of pointers that it worked with who were like, they will see a VBA and be like, I hate that thing. You’re like, well, you and all your people and ever all of your toys are on all on the same size as baby gate. And I’m like one still gonna go and yell at it because I’m mad about it. Yeah, I have such a negative association with the baby just existing. Yes, I can’t handle my freedoms being restricted at all and being asked to not move whenever I want.
Kayla Fratt 1:06:34
All pointers are from New Hampshire.
Liza Rader 1:06:37
It’s so hard. And so like, having these skills installed, and also teaching them in a way where the dog can be successful. So that dog is legitimately safe and comfortable and calm with them. It’s again, like stillness, calmness, those are two things. They are not the same thing. They can sometimes be happening at the same time, but they’re two different things. And then letting you know, letting all of these things happen in conversation with the dog, so that I’m not requiring my dog to do something that they’re not ready to do, which is the inevitable way that we end up having a fight with the dog.
Kayla Fratt 1:07:18
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think we need to wrap it up here. It is 920 at night where I am.
Liza Rader 1:07:32
sitting here waiting to be fed there. Yeah,
Kayla Fratt 1:07:34
I forgot I was gonna be in the Midwest when we scheduled this. But I really enjoyed this. I don’t know if we covered exactly what I thought we were gonna cover. But this was delightful. I really enjoyed it. I think I have a lot of takeaways for myself, and I’m excited to like listen to this again. And yeah, so where can people find you online? I also will make sure we’ve got I pulled up Adam Skandarani and I will make sure that they get a shout out in the show notes. But where can people get you? Okay, thank you.
Liza Rader 1:08:14
So if you’re not, if you’re going to, like send me an email about how terrible person I am about seeing the things feel and seeing the beatings are the same thing, or you can’t find me. But if you’d like to learn more about what we’re actually doing, and be chill about it things. You can find me on Instagram at focused on x. And you can find me on Facebook Liza Rader Focus Dogs and you can find me focusdogs.ca. Excellent.
Kayla Fratt 1:08:44
And for everyone at home. I hope you learned a lot and you’re feeling inspired to get outside and be a canine conservationist in whatever way suits your passions and skill set. You can also always feel free to email or call your reps about a ceasefire. If that hopefully it’s not still going on. By the time this comes out. But you never know I’m not optimistic about the state of the world these days. You can find show notes, donate to K9Conservationists, and join our Patreon over at K9conservationists.org. We also will be running a live course or a live version of our online conservation dog course starting in February 2024. So you can go ahead and sign up for that even if this comes up after the start of it. You can still join and hop on in a little bit late you have lifetime access to the course. Again, all that’s at K9conservationist.org. We’ll be back in two weeks. Bye!