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When you first look at all of the Master Rally signs, it can feel a little overwhelming. There are a lot of signs, some of them are pretty complicated, and it's easy to look at that list and think about how many new things you need to teach your dog. 

But here's the good news. Your dog doesn't actually need to learn every Rally sign as a completely separate behavior. Many of those signs are made up of the same skills used in different ways. If we spend our time teaching those skills really well, suddenly that long list of Master signs becomes a whole lot less intimidating.

Petra joins me before picking up a new puppy to chat about how she approaches foundations these days... and what she considers important for a resilient, capable, competition obedience canine.

Many of the sports we do with our dogs require us to play keep up — whether it's running our dogs in agility or following them on a long track. And if we want to keep playing those games with them for the long-term, that means paying attention to fitness on both ends of the leash. 

If your dog is forging, wrapping around your leg, sitting crooked, or drifting wide in heel position, take a look at where you're delivering your reinforcement.

Reward placement in heeling matters. A lot.

Dogs are very good at figuring out where reinforcement happens, and they'll adjust their position to get themselves closer to that spot. If your treats are consistently delivered too far forward, your dog may start forging. If you're reaching across your body to feed, you may end up pulling your dog's front end toward you and pushing their rear end out. Even small changes in where and how you deliver reinforcement can make a big difference in your dog's heel position.

When I'm troubleshooting a heeling problem, reward placement is one of the first things I look at. Sometimes we spend a lot of time trying to fix the dog's position when the way we're reinforcing is actually contributing to the problem.

Following the Multi-Dog Conference, I think a lot of us are eager and ready to begin teaching our dogs how to wait their turns while we train our other dogs! It's such a useful skill for any dog to have, especially in a multi-dog household.

And as much as I support teaching the skill, one thing that I have seen often is that while a handler has good intentions and is rewarding the waiting dog for being patient, they are also simultaneously disengaging from their working dog. And though that may not lead to a big response, I do notice a change in the working dog's behavior whether it's signs of stress, disengagement, or decreased motivation.

So I ask you—have you ever checked with yourself, "how does my working dog feel when I'm also reinforcing or managing my other dog for waiting?"

CANIS is less than a month away, so we brought Michael Shikashio on to talk about what folks can expect and how the conference is coming together behind the scenes. It's not too late to join us — FDSA will be there in booth #114!

If you've ever had a dog that couldn't train around food or who stopped eating in certain environments... you know that training with food isn't always as simple as "Click, Treat, Cookie!" In this episode Sharon and I dive into the ways food can interfere with teaching behaviors and what we can do about it.

In honor of the upcoming multi-dog conference, we have several of the presenters — Christina Young, Kim Palermo, Karen Deeds, Irith Bloom, and Dr. Amy Cook — on the podcast to talk about the realities of living in a multi-dog household. 

What do cues and mechanics have in common? A lot, it turns out! If you've ever asked your dog for a behavior you'd have sworn they knew, only to have them stare at you like you're speaking Greek, this episode is for you. Behavior expert Karen Deeds shares how conflicting cues come to be and what we can do about them.

Laurie Huston joins me for a conversation all about crosses — from what they are (for the non-agility folks), to how she uses her course map and her time walking the course to plan out which cross to use where... and the elements that determine if a cross looks like dancing with your dog or ends in an on-course collision.

Nose work is about so much more than setting and finding hides — in this episode, Michele and I dive into how you can be more intentional in skill building for your nosework dog, both by developing your own observation skills and by thinking through the challenges you set them a little differently.

One of the biggest ironies in dog training is that the dogs who struggle the most with stillness are often the ones we've trained the best. They're the dogs who think. The ones who are engaged, eager to learn, and constantly trying to solve the puzzle in front of them. They've learned that offering behaviors is valuable: try something, and if that wasn't it, try something else. Keep participating. Keep thinking. Keep working. 

It's no surprise that jumping is hard on your dog's body... so what can you to minimize that impact and keep them moving (and competing) as long as possible? This week, Kelly and I discuss the impact of jumping on sports dogs, how different sports impact things differently, and how handlers can approach fitness with jumping in mind.

If you've ever searched for how to get your dog to pay attention, you've probably come across the same advice over and over again. Teach a "watch me" cue. Say your dog's name. Make noises. Wave a cookie. If they look away, find a way to get their attention back.

There's nothing inherently wrong with any of those suggestions, and there are certainly times when they're useful. The problem is that they don't answer the question I think matters most. Before I ever ask my dog for a sit, a down, or a heel position, I want to know whether they're mentally available for learning. Instead of asking, "How do I get my dog to pay attention?" I've learned to ask a completely different question. 

Wondering what it actually means to be a good nosework handler? Join Julie and I for a conversation on how your handling impacts your nosework dog and what you can do to become as good at your role on the team as you expect your dog to be at theirs.  

AKC Novice rally has 40 different signs. That number tends to overwhelm new competitors, and honestly, I understand why. Forty signs feels like forty things to memorize, forty different pictures to learn, forty separate puzzles to solve before you ever step into the ring.

Here's the thing though. Every single one of those 40 signs comes down to the same six skills: heeling, sits, downs, fronts, finishes, and stays. That's it. Once you understand that, the entire level starts to look a lot less intimidating. 

Ever wondered how leading competitors build the incredible engagement we see in the ring, where the dog stares up at their handler and the team looks totally in sync and in step? Petra Ford joins me to talk about how she builds engagement strong enough to win Obedience Nationals with mulitple dogs.

 Teaching our dogs the concept of "stillness" is more complex than we sometimes realize — after all, how do you teach a dog that what we want is the absence of a behavior? In this episode, Nicole and I talk about how she teaches the concept, and then how it serves as a foundation behavior for teaching rock solid stays to her competition dogs.

In this episode I interview clinical psychologist Dr. Jennifer Kunst about the intersection of dog training and psychology. We look at how her three-strand approach to living a good life—embracing reality, choosing change, and surrendering control—applies to dogs and dog training.

Four of the presenters from the upcoming one day conference, Arousal Modulation: Building a Clear-Headed Dog!, join me for a conversation about how arousal works, why it's not all good or all bad, and what handlers who have dogs that tend toward overarousal should stop doing... then what they should start doing instead.