Many dogs find teeter and weaves are some of the harder agility obstacles to learn — join me, Megan, and Barbara for a conversion on how they approach training them!
Transcription
Melissa Breau: We all know the saying: "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." Well, we'd like to invite you to do exactly that by joining us for the third annual Lemonade Conference on February 11, 12, and 13. Enjoy all of the awesomeness of a dog training conference from the comforts of your living room with leading experts from the worlds of dog sports and behavior. Head over to TheLemonadeConference.com to check out the schedule and buy your tickets today.
This is Melissa Breau and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports Podcast brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high-quality instruction for competitive dog sports using only the most current and progressive training methods.
Today I have Megan Foster and Barbara Currier here with me to talk about training obstacles for agility.
Hi Megan, hi Barbara, welcome to the podcast!
Megan Foster: Hey Melissa.
Barbara Currier: Thanks for having us.
Melissa Breau: Absolutely. I'm excited to talk about this stuff as somebody who's just starting to get really into agility. To start us off today, I want to have you each share a little about you, your current pets and crew, and what you're working on with them. Megan, do you want to go first?
Megan Foster: Sure thing. I live north of Seattle in Washington state, and I've been doing agility for twenty-five years now, so I've seen a lot, done a lot.
I currently have four dogs and two of them are retired — 13-year-old Border Collie Smack and 10-year-old Border Collie Shock — so they get to do whatever they want and run around as much as they want and help me train these youngsters.
I have a Parson Russell Terrier, Shrek, who trains for Team and obedience and agility, and we do what he wants to do in those sports.
I also have 8-month-old baby Border Collie Sprint, who is learning all the things about life and dog sports and agility.
Melissa Breau: Excellent. What about you, Barbara?
Barbara Currier: I live in Cumming, Georgia, which is an hour north of Atlanta. I've been doing agility for almost thirty years. Like Megan, done it all, seen it all. I've competed a dog in every single height division. My very first dog was a Chihuahua, and I've competed all the way up to Great Danes, so I've gotten all the sizes in. I like my breeds of dogs. I'm not a one-breed person.
Currently I have four dogs. Piper is my oldest. She is a Parson Russell Terrier. She just turned 13. She had a very brief career in agility. She wasn't overly thrilled with it, and so we went on to other things. Her passion was dock diving. She loved that. She's now retired, gets to do whatever she wants, whenever she wants, basically.
Miso is my retired world team dog. She is an 8-year-old Miniature Poodle. She just turned 8 yesterday, so I'm struggling with the fact that she's getting older, because I don't like that. She is now doing barn hunt, which she loves, so we're having fun playing in the cent work with her and trying that stuff out.
Eggo is my 4-year-old Working Cocker. He is newly retired from agility, but he is now doing nosework and barn hunt and Fast CAT and dock diving. We're doing all the things with him at this point and he's loving all the new adventures that we're doing.
Fish is my youngest. He will be 2 in March. He's a French Spaniel. He is enormous and has big feelings about all the things. He is doing nosework and barn hunt and he also does Canicross, and we do a lot of the Tough Mudder obstacle course races with him, and with Eggo, actually. They just love it. They're super-fun, and as long as they're busy, they're happy.
Melissa Breau: I love the Facebook pictures you post and all the Canicross stuff you do. It's awesome.
Barbara Currier: It's so much fun, and whenever there's a photographer there, I'm like, "I'm going to be broke this weekend. I'm going to buy all the pictures."
Melissa Breau: As I mentioned in the intro, I want to talk agility today. You both have classes this coming term on teaching different obstacles, and so maybe we could start there. I want to have you each share a little bit about your class and what it's actually on, what exercises you'll cover. Barbara, do you want to go first time?
Barbara Currier: My class is on stopped contacts, two on/two off or four on, with a heavy emphasis on teeter. We do cover the A-frame and the dog walk, but it's a strong emphasis on the teeter because that tends to be the one that's going to give dogs the most problems.
The course is really centered around creating drive and love for the obstacle and independence, so that the handler is not in the picture at all, completely independent, they can be leaving the dog while they're doing their job, so that they can get to their next position on course and be giving the dog all the information in a timely manner.
Melissa Breau: Okay for total beginners? Problem solving?
Barbara Currier: Yes. It's good for either if you have a retrain, if you have a dog that's struggling and you want to retrain, but it's also step-by-step right from the very beginning to a dog who's never been on a teeter yet, or any of the obstacles, for that matter.
Melissa Breau: Megan?
Megan Foster: This time around I'm teaching my weave pole class, which I've named "Not Your Average Two-By-Twos," just because there are a couple of very popular methods out there for using two-by-twos in weave pole training, and I've taken yet another spin at that.
It starts from the very beginning, where you don't have to have any prior weave pole experience. We work each time up at whatever pace they need to go to the process where we start adding in all sorts of proofing layers with different reinforcement distractions, different handling distractions, layering in that independence and giving the dogs the power to complete that obstacle on their own, and all the skills that they need, and giving the handler the confidence that they need to know that the dog will actually be completing the obstacle correctly. I think that covers it.
Melissa Breau: Excellent. I think both classes cover topics where sometimes handlers struggle a little bit to explain to their dog what it is they're looking for, what that final criteria is supposed to be. I thought I would ask you each what the aspects are of the particular stuff that you're focusing on that tend to be hard to teach. Where do people get stuck or stumble? Megan, do you want to take this one first?
Megan Foster: There are so many different layers to teaching weave poles that I find that the biggest struggle is that trainers want to take on all of those layers at the exact same time, and so then when the dog is struggling, or there's a problem happening, they're not certain which piece of the puzzle is causing the problem.
The dog has to be able to seek out the correct gap of weave poles to enter correctly. They have to collect to get in and stay in. They have to dive in and keep weaving, regardless of what the handler is doing or whatever other obstacles. And then they have to follow the handling upon the exit of the weave poles. So splitting out those four main elements and focusing on one at a time, and as each of those elements is mastered, putting them together into more of a finished product is how I approach those things.
Melissa Breau: What about you, Barbara?
Barbara Currier: Quite a few in contacts. For all three of them, movement. A lot of people, when they're training the contacts, they inadvertently include themselves in the dog's picture of what the bottom behavior should look like. The moment they try to move away or leave the dog while doing the behavior, the dog wants to break their contacts because they don't realize that the handler's leg has become part of the picture of what the dog sees. That, I find, is a big problem.
Some dogs are very noise sensitive or motion sensitive, so the teeter can be very scary to them for either the noise part or the movement part. Even though teeters are supposed to be the same across the board, they're just not. All teeters sound different, they feel different, they tip at a different place. It doesn't matter how much we try to regulate it. They're just different. So that can be a problem for a lot of dogs.
Also vague criteria for the dogs. In the rulebooks it says that the dogs just need to get one toenail in the yellow. Well, that's super-vague. So when people try to either cut corners because they want fast results or they just don't know, which happens often when we first come into the sport, just getting something in the yellow is super-vague for the dogs. And when you add arousal, you add the trial environment, that one toenail in the yellow becomes no toenails in the yellow. It just becomes launching. So that's a tough one.
And then independence. Doing the behavior without the handlers being there. Knowing what their job is, regardless of what the handlers are doing, where the handlers are going, all of that.
Those are the struggles that I see a lot in contacts.
Melissa Breau: I know Megan talked about this a little bit in her last answer, but I know that for both the contact obstacles and for weaves, there are lots of different ways that people approach that training. I wanted to have you detail for us a little bit more how you address it, or how you start the process and what that process looks like. Barbara, do you want to continue what you were saying?
Barbara Currier: Like I said in the beginning, this course covers stopped contacts. There's obviously running contacts also. In stopped contacts you have two on/two off or four on, depending on the size of dog. Some people also will do four on the ground. Some want four on the obstacle, some want four on the ground, so there's different thought processes to do it.
Mostly what I teach in this class is two on/two off, or four on for small dogs on the teeter, and I use a target method so that it gets faded out very quickly. But I use it so that even going forward, particularly if I'm working on a course that has sharp 90-degree turns off of a contact, the dogs tend to figure out where they're going, and so a lot of times they want to come off of the obstacles on the side.
Even if I'm working with a dog that understands contacts and knows their job, sometimes they need a little reminder of "Yes, I know that you know we're going to be turning, but I still need you to come down this contact straight." And so it's easy for me to bring the target back out and be like, "Remember, you had to go down and target that. That's where I need your feet or your nose" or whatever. And so they're like, "Yeah, yeah, it's that thing."
So I like to teach that in the beginning so I have it to pull back out in the future. But like I said, it gets faded out very quickly when they're competing. At that point you don't see them doing any type of nose target or foot target, because it becomes muscle memory. But it's a nice thing to have to be able to pull out to help remind them of positions, if they're starting to question it for one reason or another.
Melissa Breau: Megan?
Megan Foster: Like I touched on earlier, the weave pole class that I teach is primarily a two-by-two method, which simply put is you start with two poles, and when two poles are mastered, you add two more poles, and when four are mastered, you add two more.
Except I draw my ideas from a lot of the different weave pole methods that I've used and seen across the last couple of decades. So as far as entries are concerned, I have broken the entries into … I want to say six quadrants, so working the dog from three different main positions and the handler in a different position from the dog, because a lot of times on course the dog is coming from one obstacle from one direction and the handler is already positioned somewhere else. So the dog needs to be able to find the weave poles when the handler isn't right next to the dog, but we also need the dog to be able to find the entry when they are on the same line as the handler, and we have to teach them to find it whether the handler is on the dog's left or on the dog's right side.
So we break all those entries up into the quadrants, and we work on those different quadrants throughout the entire six weeks, because the reality is some dogs are going to need some quadrants more than others, depending on what types of courses they'll be running and what their agility goals are. Some dogs are going to need a lot more distance to their entries and a lot more independence than others as well.
Then we also look at when we add weave poles. I think this is the magic that I've seen happen with this particular iteration of wave pole training is that when we add weave poles, we back-chain them together rather than forward-chaining them together. When I start adding weave poles, I actually look at the first two poles that we've been working on, and I look at them as Pole 11 and 12 versus 1 and 2, and then we add poles back. And as we add poles back, then that means we can start working more on the exit, and so we continue layering different types of handling, and working on that dog's ability to stay in the poles no matter what the handler is doing. And then we add in more and more entries as we go along.
So it kind of starts with nothing, and each week we just add another layer until you have twelve beautifully independent and confidant weave poles.
Melissa Breau: Excellent. I think there are probably almost as many ways out there to train both contacts and weaves as there are dog trainers who teach it.
Megan Foster: For sure.
Melissa Breau: You're both nodding at me.
Barbara Currier: There's definitely a method out there for every type of dog, and it's not one method works for every dog. So if something is not working for you, try something else, because there's enough methods out there that there's something that will fit for you and your dog.
Megan Foster: A hundred percent. Every time I've taught especially this weave pole class in particular, we start with the basic exercises, and you see the character of the dog, and the way the handler likes to train, and the way they like to communicate, and you go, "I know it says to do this lecture next, but maybe you should go here first and let's see how that's going to work, and then we'll circle back around and add that in."
On paper it's going to look like I use the same way forward with every team, but where each individual gets actually placed might look a little different. So those gold threads are literal gold.
Melissa Breau: We've teased some of this stuff as we've been having a conversation today. Obviously, beyond the basic obstacle — just being able to do the weaves, or just being able to do the contact behavior itself — there's a lot more that goes into it before you can plug those things into an actual course and compete successfully. What are some of those other things? Can you break them out? Can you name them, talk about them for a minute? Megan?
Megan Foster: I think we can. When piecing any obstacle to obstacle together, there are some handling skills involved. The dog has to be able to follow the handling from wherever you're starting before the obstacle to the obstacle, and then follow the handling after the obstacle. We will get into that in the class a little bit, how your handling affects weave poles and how we can make that work for your current communication system, or look at a bigger picture of what handling skills you might want to add to make weaving easier for you and the dog.
But I also think we need skills surrounding how to reinforce the weave poles and a variety of different ways in how to reinforce these obstacles so that it's easy to transfer those paths to reinforcement to the other obstacles, and getting that reinforcement further and further delayed, so that the dog isn't just looking for the reward every time they exit the weave poles.
I think those are the main two things.
Melissa Breau: Anything to add to that, Barbara?
Barbara Currier: For contacts, there's a lot in this class. Everything is broken down into games. It's all a lot of games that are building blocks into the major big picture. At the end of the day, the major big picture is having independent contacts that they drive to the bottom. The handler is doing whatever they want, the dog is doing their job until they're released, and then we ride off into the sunset together.
The first things that we have to look at when we start this class is can the dog do simple behaviors, for instance "sit" and "down," when the handler is in motion, because if they can't do those simple behaviors, how are we expecting them to do this contact behavior, come over this contact, come down, go into their position while their handler is racing by and running up to something. So we start by teaching them to ignore handler motion and continue with the job that we ask them to do.
And then we need to work on body awareness and body control. Being able to control their body as they start coming down an A-frame — that's harder for some dogs than others a lot of times, depending on the dog's structure. We've got dogs that are super front-end heavy. We have some breeds out there that 80 percent of their body weight is in their head alone. They want to roll down the A-frame. So we need to work on body awareness and how they can control their bodies safely so that they can do the A-frame and the teeter and not have any issues with that. And then we need to work on handling, having them understand the handling going to the obstacles, handling going off of the obstacles.
Also we address what to do when we get in a trial situation. If they don't do what we're asking them to do, what do we do now? Where do we go from there? How do you fix things if problems start to arise? How do you catch things quickly before they become a huge problem? That type of thing.
Melissa Breau: That's such a big piece of specifically contacts, how not to break them once you start trialing with your dog.
Barbara Currier: Yes. It's so common that you get these beautiful contacts in training, and then it just goes to crap when you start trialing. Everyone just gets pulled into … the dogs become aroused, we didn't do enough proofing, you want that cue, "But they got a toenail in! We were clean!" but we totally let them go with their criteria and now they're confused. We have this criteria at home, but this is okay at trials. It's all the things. It's really important that students, when they leave this class, understand what they're looking for, how to stay consistent, and what to do if things start to go off the rails.
Melissa Breau: And like you were saying before, no matter how much you try, the equipment is going to be somewhat different. So now we're adding that piece into the mucky whatever that our dogs do or do not understand.
Barbara Currier: Absolutely.
Melissa Breau: We've been talking about this a little bit, but I feel like we're doing a good job today of getting slightly ahead of my questions. But that's okay; that means that they flow correctly. How much do you go teaching the various bits and pieces, and some of the proofing, and some of the different approaches and obstacle independence and commitment? How much do you go into those things in your class, and at what point do you teach some of those skills? Do you layer them in as you go? Are they something you teach after the dog has the basic idea of the obstacle? Can you talk to that a little bit? Barbara, I think it's your turn to start us off.
Barbara Currier: As I was saying before, my class is made up of a lot of little games and they all build on each other. Right from the beginning, we start to proof all of the behaviors as they're building, and so all of the gams will build on each other, and we slowly start to put the pieces together to form the main picture of the finished contact behavior.
But as we're going along, we already have been proofing those behaviors, so then, when we get to the full picture of the contact behavior, we're not throwing anything new at the dog. They've already seen, "Oh yeah, we're doing that proofing stuff." It's all very familiar to them. We're only changing things small amounts at a time so that the rate of success is very high.
Contacts can be boring if not done correctly, and so the dogs tend to want to find other things to do. Or they get stressed. So I like to try to keep it fun for them, challenging but not so much that we have a high failure rate. It's really a lot of success involved with them. It all comes together, you've got the big picture, and it's pretty awesome how everything builds and all of a sudden you're like, "Look, I have a full teeter! When did that happen?" Because you have all these little things and then the dog is like, "Full teeter. Got it. Not a problem." And it's really exciting to see it come together very quickly for the dog, because all the layers have to be built into it along the way.
Melissa Breau: Awesome. Megan?
Megan Foster: Definitely layering different types of reinforcement distractions or handler distractions, building that independence pretty much from … I won't say day one, but pretty soon after that you're going to start changing the picture pretty frequently.
I think one of the biggest detriments in weave pole training is that the picture doesn't change quickly enough often enough. And so while we might get a dog to weave in six or twelve poles very quickly, if those different types of situations — where the handler is, how much they're moving, what's happening after, what's happening before — if those things aren't layered in soon enough, some dogs habituate faster than others, but they will habituate to "This is how weave poles happen." It can happen with any method if you stay at two poles for too long, or if you're using channels and you keep them open for too long.
So my first goal is to get the dog to the place where they can weave four poles at competition regulation pretty soon into the training, so that at any point I can at least tell the dog, "This is where we're headed. This is what it's going to look like." And I don't have to stay there. I have the liberty to increase the distance between those gaps, rotate those gaps. I have all of these tools so that as I turn up the intensity of one layer.
If I really want to work on building distance or speed, and I don't want to focus on the precision of weaving, I can always make the weaving easier, but my dog still knows what the end result is going to be. So I can always remind the dog, "I know weaving was super-easy today because I made this one thing harder, but the next time we do that, weaving is not going to be as easy. I'm going to make the weaving a little bit easier because you're okay with this challenge. So as you layer it in, you have the ability to turn one challenge up and turn the other one down, but always relying on that the dog understands the big picture and knows what the end result is going to be. Like Barbara was saying, you wake up one morning and you're like, "Holy moly, the dog is weaving. This is amazing." That's been the experience, whether I'm teaching it online, and very dedicated for six weeks, or teaching it in person, when the students only see it once a week. You just go, "Oh, they get this." I think that comes from folding in all those layers and showing them, "This is the same game; it just looks a little different. But the same answer will win." It gives the dog that confidence that "I know how to win this game, no matter what is going on before or after or during."
So day one, one hundred percent, independence, commitment, all the things.
Melissa Breau: Excellent. I like that you both have that approach. So it's not that it works for some things and not for others. It's building it regardless of what the obstacle is, regardless of the challenges, making sure the dog understands the pieces before you put them together. Also you both made the comment that you wake up one day and it's there. It's a sign of you're shaping the people and the dog, not just the dog, putting little steps so everybody can be successful until suddenly the final picture all comes together, which is excellent.
You both have talked about, from the ground up, how you teach it, but I also wanted to ask about if somebody has the basics, they have a dog that maybe knows weaves in some situations, at some times, in some ways, or knows contacts sometimes at home. They have the basic idea, but they're struggling with some piece of it. Would the class still be helpful for them? Should they do Gold so they get custom advice? Should they take it at Bronze so they can pull out the pieces they need help with from the class without necessarily instructor tailoring? Some of that stuff, and what you'd say to somebody who has some of it, but is struggling with one or two pieces. Megan?
Megan Foster: I definitely believe that the class is perfectly suited for any team that either wants to train weave poles from the beginning, or plug in some new skills, or enhance their weave pole behavior.
As far as the Gold students go, they do have to be willing to go back from the beginning and humor that route for me. Like I said, I'm going to start everyone in the same spot, but I have that ability to go, "You've got this. Let's start working on this layer. Let's pull in this."
But a lot of times I find that their basics are good, but the basics weren't split down quite enough, so that there are some microscopic holes in the understanding that the dog just needs to go, "Oh yeah, that is the same thing." Once you connect those dots, they're like gangbusters and they don't really need me anymore.
I would say if you're retraining or you're struggling with one or two particular things, and you really want that very specific, "Yes, do this, now do this, now do this," Gold spot is for you. If you are a great questioner of material, and then you can create your training plans from there, Silver spot is going to be plenty for you, because you'll be able to ask questions about, "If the dog is doing this, what do you think the next spot would be?" And, as a Silver spot, I can signpost you to Golds that sound similar.
But if Bronze is more your speed — because keeping up with classes, I know the struggle is real — I do have a teaching assistant this term for the weave pole class. So Lynn Madden will be available in the Facebook study group to help people, answer some questions, signpost to specific Golds. She's great. She was one of my original weave pole graduates and she does such a great job helping students.
So I think it's well-rounded enough it can work really well for pretty much anyone.
Melissa Breau: What about you, Barbara, for contacts?
Barbara Currier: Absolutely both. Whether you're learning it from the ground up or you're needing a retrain, two of the most common problems that I see people coming in for retraining, whether it's online or even my in-person students, are creeping on contacts — that's the number one I get a lot. Their contacts used to be good, and now they're starting to creep down the down ramp versus drive all the way to the end.
Or something happened with the teeter and they either got scared or they were never fully taught to drive down to the end and ride down the tip. A lot of dogs want to drive to the tipping point, ride it down, and then go into position. Especially for small dogs, that can be problematic because every teeter tips in a slightly different place.
And so when the dogs will pattern to, "I get to this point on the teeter and it tips," because that's what their home one does, they'll get to a trial and they'll get to a certain point and the teeter doesn't tip, and they just stand there because they're like, "It's supposed to tip now."
We can definitely address those problems, because like Megan was saying, oftentimes I find just going through the games — because again you're going to start just the same way everyone else does — we find where those small holes are in the games as we're going along, and "That's one of the issues. That's where it started to go downhill." You'll find those holes in the games.
Some dogs will move through things much faster. There will be many dogs where I'm like, "This game, you got this one. On to the next exercise," where another dog I may, "Let's take a look at this one a little bit longer. We need some more work on this."
So for Gold spot, either retrain or somebody that is learning from the ground up. I even have some people that have contacted me about they have running A-frame, but they really want to do a stop-teeter, and would it still be okay. Absolutely. Like I said, this class is very heavily emphasis on the teeter because that tends to be the most difficult one for people. It's fine if people have running A-frames. We don't have to address the A-frame with that particular team.
If your teeter performance could be a tiny bit better, you're not unhappy with it, but you're always looking for ways to improve it, Bronze might be for you, because you can see maybe there's some games I have that I do with my dogs that's a little bit different that you haven't done with yours, and that might help build a little bit more value for the end and do a little refresher. So Bronze might be better. If they're good with their questions and they're good at self-regulating, then Silver works great too.
So really it's how you work best. If you need someone to keep you accountable and help you with problem solving and what's the best road, then Gold might be the better option.
Melissa Breau: Excellent. One last question to round us out. If we were to drill everything we've been talking about down to one takeaway, one key piece of information that you want to impart on listeners as we close things out, what would that be? Barbara, you get to go first on this one.
Barbara Currier: I really feel like this with all my classes, but the most important thing is to go at your dog's pace, not trying to stay at the speed that the assignments get put out.
I don't know for Megan, but I would assume this might be true for her. I know with me, my in person stuff, it doesn't always go as fast as the six-week courses go. We're on a six-week time schedule, so we're moving this out, but if you're dong your own dog, or in person, it goes a bit slower. So don't get sucked into trying to skip over steps or move through steps before the dog is ready because you feel like other dogs in the Gold spots are moving along faster.
Getting sucked into that is only going to create more holes, and you're going to get to the end and not feel like you got what you wanted out of it, or you're just going to be taking our classes again because you found some holes along the way. So go at the pace that your dog needs you to go at.
Melissa Breau: Megan?
Megan Foster: I was feeling and thinking on the same wavelength because it's true. When I look at the syllabus and the amount of material, and then we put that "Get this done in six weeks," absolutely not. There's no deadline pressure to get that done. It's a plan. The six weeks will give you a start-to-finish blueprint that if you follow it, odds are you're going to end up just fine. Better than fine, most likely.
But when you are actually training, you have to take that individualized approach. You have to look at, "Do I want to be training this every day? Can I train this every day? Does my dog need to be doing this every day? Is there some other way?" And also just be willing to look at a lecture and go, "If this is an optional one, does this serve me?"
Especially in my class with some of the different proofing layers. If you tell me that your version of agility doesn't look like that and you're not going to need that, you don't need to do that assignment this week. But if in six months you decide that, "Oh, I do want to do that version of agility," you know where to find the material and you know how to add in that layer.
So it is definitely a take it one step at a time, and listen to your dog and listen to your team, and work through the material in a way that works for you.
Melissa Breau: Thank you both so much for coming on the podcast!
Megan Foster: Thank you for having us.
Barbara Currier: It was fun.
Melissa Breau: It is. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in!
We'll be back next week. Don't miss it! If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available.
Credits
Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called "Buddy." Audio editing provided by Chris Lang.
Thanks again for tuning in — and happy training!
Credits
Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called "Buddy." Audio editing provided by Chris Lang.
Thanks again for tuning in -- and happy training!