With the upcoming one day conference on matters of motivation, Denise, Crystal, and Jane joined me to share their takes on what motivation really is and why it matters.  

Transcript 

Melissa Breau: 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'll be talking to Denise Fenzi, Crystal Wing and Jane Ardern, all of whom are presenting at the upcoming Matters of Motivation One day conference. Hi all. Welcome back to the podcast.

All: Oh, hi. Hello friends.

Melissa Breau: Awesome. All right, so to start us off, let's just kind of remind everybody who each of you are, maybe a little bit about your dogs, what you're working on with them, that kind of stuff. Denise, you want to go first?

Denise Fenzi: Yeah. I'm Denise Fenzi. I'm the founder of FDSA. I have three dogs. I have Brito, my little terrier. He's 12 years old now.

I don't know where the time goes, but he's kind of an older man. He's turned into a very nice dog. So I'm a fan of age. He's, he's the dog that when I'm at the ranch I just open the garage door and don't really have to pay a lot of attention, which is sort of amazing. Who thought? Right? And then I have a border collie, 12 months old and we are herding together.

His name is Ice and he's very cool, very different. Learning a lot from him. And then I've got Xen who is three and a half year old Belgian who's training for Mondioring.

Melissa Breau: Excellent, Crystal?

Crystal Wing: Hey. I have my four year old Radish. She is a Lab Malinois mix and she's my certified cadaver dog. And I have Checkmate. He's my 7 year old Malinois that does protection sports. And then I have Yukon, my 8 year old Dutch shepherd. He's my hiking buddy.

Melissa Breau: You want to tell us something about you too?

Crystal Wing: I know the dogs are the stars of the show.

Melissa Breau: Yeah, I know.

Crystal Wing: I have been teaching art at a public high school for 23 years and I'm going to. Hopefully not. Hopefully I'm going to be a dog trainer when I grow up here in about a month. I'm early retiring and switching careers. So I'm very excited.

Melissa Breau: It's awesome. All right, Jane, your turn.

Jane Ardern: I'm from Lancashire in England. I'm a dog trainer and behaviorist. I generally specialize in gun dogs, mostly spaniels. I currently have got eight working cocker spaniels. Previous to having spaniels, I actually had Leonburgers for 20 years. So that was quite a different experience. I've got. So I've got eight working cockers. Three of them I've just retired from working this year.

One is they're 9, 10, and 12. I've got three that I currently do work, and I've got two in training, so I work them mostly in the field. So we do what is called beating, which is generally. Which is just finding and flushing pheasants, and we do a little bit of picking up as well, which is the retrieving aspect of that. And I work on two pheasant shoots through the season.

Melissa Breau: Awesome. All right, so let's start with kind of the basics for our topic for today. So how do you define motivation? And then maybe what does it look like for you and your dog? Crystal, you want to go first?

Crystal Wing: Sure. Thanks. So motivation, I think it's like the spark that makes your dog want to show up. It's their reason for playing the game. I also believe it's not binary.

Like, it's not always motivated, but it just. There's always motivation, but it's not always just for what you want. There's motivation for what they want as well that may not align with what you want. There's the idea of intention and desire. And the problem that I have with that is that it sounds like drive, but it's not interchangeable with drive, because, like, you'll say maybe high prey drive, and that's just their natural inclination.

Like, they want to chase or they want to hunt or they want to stalk. And motivation is different. It's the reason they choose to do that. It's. It's what's happening in the moment. I think it's shaped by the context, by how you reinforce your reinforcement history and what they currently need. I started asking myself today because you gave this question to me earlier, and I was like, you know, can drive be there without motivation?

And I think that's when I really started to understand the difference was that drive can exist without motivation, and the motivation is what's activating the drive, and it's only if the right conditions are existing. And I ended up chatting with my physical therapist for my dog, and we were kind of chatting, and I'm like, okay, listen to this. What do you think? What do you think? I was like, what about Reed?

Because I like to make acronyms. That's just what I do. And so my. Here's my thing for READ. I think that motivation is about the reinforcement, the engagement, the arousal, and the drive. Like, those are the pieces that create motivation. Now, the relationship and the agency, I kind of think those already baked in the engagement and the reinforcement. So that's why I kind of like they're in there.

The piece, I guess it's kind of missing is environment, but maybe it's READ. So when I'm thinking about it, it's just the best way for me to define it, I guess, is motivation is the why. Now for the drive. I think that's how I can best put it into just a couple words. Because the drive is that potential, that biological urgency and energy and motivation is the how, what when, that releases it at the right time and in the right direction that we want it to happen.

When we create the conditions. Yeah. That drive wants to come out and we channel it into the behavior that's rewarding.

Denise Fenzi: Damn. That was a really good answer, Crystal. I'm sitting there like I'm three sentences behind everything you're saying because I'm like, oh, that's. Yeah, that's true. Whoa, whoa. I got to catch up. I got to catch up. That was a great. We could just stop.

Crystal Wing: Wow. Well, I had a three hour drive to think about it.

Denise Fenzi: Wow. But I kind of want to do a redo on my webinar because now there's things I want to change about it. Yeah. Wow. I'm not even going to answer this question because I like her answer so much better than anything I could come up with.

Melissa Breau: Jane, do you have thoughts?

Jane Ardern: I think just for me, it's like I look at motivation as the dog. Generally, it's the dog having a desire to achieve some kind of goal.

And it might be simply that it's looking to gain a reinforcer or potentially that it might be seeking out opportunities to perform innate behaviors such as prey drive and so on. I think with mine, I always think what's interesting is when I compare spaniels to Leonbergers, is there's definitely a genetic element to motivation there with those, with those dogs. And I definitely had an eventual accepting of my breed limitations.

Denise Fenzi: You know, I think it's interesting that all three of us do working events. I didn't realize that until now. So spaniels innately hunt, and Belgians innately bite and border collies innately herd, which is just an interesting factor when you think about motivation, because when you're talking about for the task at hand, like, I don't think motivation for your birds, for your dogs to engage with birds is, you know, a lot of that's in there, isn't it?

But then when you want them to engage with you on a nice walk where they're not pulling and such. That's an interesting thing to think about, how motivation can. When it's targeted towards what the dog wants, when we're all on the same page, it's such a different event than when we're not necessarily on the same page at that time. Because what the dog's innate desire to do isn't necessarily in line with what we have in mind.

Anyway, random side thought as I kind of contemplated that we all. Because performance events are things that I think as long as you can find anything that motivates your dog, you can channel it towards the event. Whereas when I think about work, I think about a very specific sort of motivation that's largely inside the dog. Like, I'm not saying I couldn't get my border collie to flesh birds and fetch them.

I think I could, but it would take me about 100 times longer and it would never. It would never look graceful. Just like if you tried to teach your spaniel to round up the sheep. I imagine if you put a lot of time, you probably could, but it's so hard, right? So you've got that motivation which just flows out from inside the dog, the drive, as Crystal was talking about.

And then you have the motivation which we often think about in the world of performance, which is something that just give me anything. Toy drive, food drive, love of play. Give me something and I can tie it to. If you do this, then I'll do that.

Crystal Wing: I want to talk about motivation too. Sorry about that.

Melissa Breau: Go for it.

Crystal Wing: I'm always kind of imagining like there's motivation and then there's real motivation.

And for me, that real motivation, that's the joy side of it, the conversation side of it. So I think sometimes when I'm talking about motivation, I'm not thinking about just the speed because I've seen fast, but stressed. And it's not just the obedience, because I've seen some really checked out obedience. So I think that's something too, that we all feel that way. I would say so as we're talking about it today, I think that's part of it, is we're thinking about that joyful motivation, that connection, that next level, that passion.

Melissa Breau: So Denise said she was going on a sidetrack, but actually it's almost as if she read the next question. How much is motivation, you know, innate versus how much is it something you can or have to, you know, teach or build or create kind of in your dog? Jane I had you down to go first. But if anybody else wants to skip the line, they can.

Jane Ardern: So I do think genetics play a part in a specific dog. We have dogs that I would say are motivated to work with a handler. I think when we select for breed specific traits like persistence, for example, and not quitting, then that often gives us a dog who you would class is easier to motivate because it's easier to maintain the training and build training stamina with those dogs. I think there are some dogs that will, you can challenge when you're training because they're easy to motivate.

And then there are dogs where we have to, we might have to do less reps, we might have to change criteria. So I do think there's an element of looking at the dog's individual kind of motivation there and our ability to motivate that dog.

Melissa Breau: Denise?

Denise Fenzi: I absolutely think there's a genetic component to motivation. It drives me crazy when people do not acknowledge genetic realities because I think it puts people in a really crappy spot.

Well, if you just did this, that and the other, then your dog would look like this other dog over here. And you know, having had a lot of dogs over the year, that's just not what I've seen. But I've also seen plenty of people take a dog that I believe innately has plenty of motivation. And then choices they make lower it in the moment. So what Crystal said about a dog having drive but not motivation, that's not that unusual.

So you have a dog that has plenty of drive and desire and forward. But the way the dog is being handled, the way the dog is presented with problems demotivates the dog. The expectations are not reasonable. And it's not that the dog doesn't want to play the game or I mean, if you just want to use an extreme case, let's talk about prey drive. One way people extinguish prey drive is extreme punishment, right?

So the dog's prey drive is such that it's dangerous. So maybe they, they're afraid the dog's going to run away, get hit by a car or whatever. And so they come in and they use an E collar at a very high level. The dog's drive is always still there. But that's sort of a classic example of a dog with tons of innate drive, tons of motivation, that because of choices made by the handler, intentional choices in this instance, you can remove the motivation to do the thing.

And I mean, obviously I certainly hope none of us are doing that and then be surprised when the dog doesn't do the thing we want. But if you look at the extreme, I think it helps us set the more middle ground. So you have a sensitive dog who very much wants to play your games, very much likes your toys, your food, your things, and yet you present them in a way that over time suck the motivation right out of that dog.

And that's kind of a common thing. And for sure, in terms of this conference is really, really relevant because I think it's fair to say that if a person knew they were doing that, they wouldn't do that. I mean, if you want to do performance in your dog, then if you had known you were the reason the dog was not wanting to work, then you would change your ways.

So even minor punishers. Deep sigh. When the dog doesn't get it right for some dogs is enough to take them. It's not a lack of desire, it's that you've done things to their motivation inadvertently that have pulled them out of the game.

Melissa Breau: Crystal?

Crystal Wing: The things that I share in my webinar. There's an MIT study and they were giving problem solving tasks, like really complicated ones to participants. These are humans, not dogs.

And they offered them $30. And if they got the answer correct when they offered them $300, then it was which group would get the problem the fastest and the most accurate. And the group that they offered the $30 to did a better job. And so going to the idea of crushing motivation, when you're putting too much pressure on, that's when you start to crush. And the idea that you can take a dog that has this great intrinsic motivation to do the thing, and then if you reward them with the thing they already intrinsically like to do, you can also crush their motivation.

So there's so many different ways that this can play out without even realizing it. Like, you may think, I'm going to give him the $300, you know, but it's overpowering. It's kind of. They call it a distraction effect. But I looked other places and I couldn't find that. So I don't know, you know, but there's just something I really found that interesting. And I think part of that too is about being innate or taught.

My dog Yukon, I tried everything with him. I mean, we just went through the gamut of things because he's a Dutch shepherd, he's young, you know, not now. He's older now. But we tried weight pull, we tried agility. We tried. It was just his nose was always the I'll say air quotes problem. He was Very motivated to sniff. And so finally I gave into that and said, okay, let's try some sniffing stuff.

And guess what? He was really good at that. So you have to kind of give in to who they are and kind of find their. Their why and then build games around that. I also think about the kids at school and something that Denise said. We can be that teacher or that counselor. There are so many kids as an art teacher that will come in and they're like, I'm no good at art.

You know, I'm the worst at it. And I'll have another kid that's really not very good at all, but his art teacher at some point put a piece into a show and then they think they're the greatest, you know. And so it's their. Their value of how they see themselves can also be a strong motivator to that. And us as teachers can really create that or destroy that.

But we have to give them the experiences and respond to those experiences to find what truly motivates them. Because I'll tell you, with Radish, she loves to sniff. I didn't have to build that. That's innate, but I absolutely taught her that. Sniffing with me, in this certain context, it's the best game in the whole world. And that's built motivation and that's layered onto that innate drive.

Melissa Breau: So if we're thinking about all of this and how it pertains to a young dog or even a puppy, how do you think about shaping that?

And maybe, I don't know if we want to say building motivation, if we want to say maintaining motivations. We were talking about how much of it can be innate, but how do you, how do you kind of think about it and how do you kind of build it into what you're doing with a young dog or a young puppy, where you really want it to kind of grow and blossom, Right?

Denise?

Denise Fenzi: I did a whole presentation on that. Imagine that. Imagine that. That I'll be presenting that. I think the most important thing is teaching the puppy that you're a fun and interesting person if you can get that. And there's a lot of directions that, that, you know, that covers everything. It covers socialization, it covers training, it covers your house, you know, day to day life. If at the end of all of that, you convince your youngster that you are a fun and interesting person, you are way ahead of the game.

Crystal, I thought you're going to go longer, but I guess since that's your presentations, come and watch.

Melissa Breau: Crystal?

Crystal Wing: I know I can't wait. I'm excited. So when I think about building it, I think about that I'm not just shaping behaviors, but I'm shaping a belief system. And I'm always saying that about my dogs. I want them to believe that training is a party that they never want to miss.

And we do that through building all the associations. Not only am I awesome, but you are an awesome little powerhouse of amazing confidence. I want to build such a little superhero that they think they can just conquer the world. And I'm the amazing wizard that makes all the cool stuff happen. So that's, I think, the best way that I can think about shaping this. And I do that a lot through curiosity and play.

I'm asking my dog questions all the time because I think that's the foundation of finding what intrinsically motivates them. I mean, this goes back to when I was in grad or in my graduate program, and my master's paper was about intrinsic motivation. Like, that's how much this has been a passion for me, because I knew walking into the classroom, if I could figure out what makes kids tick, that I would have it.

You know, like, then I could actually teach them things. And it's just. It's been this thing that's transferred through all of my dog training in my entire life. And some of the things you can do. I think one of the things you said was specifically so. I would say thoughtful sessions. So keep it small, keep it short. Let them be winners. And I always like the example of build the appetite.

Don't stuff them full. I mean, I love chocolate cake, but there's only so much I can have, so. And I. I tried it. Hawaiian rolls are the same thing. Like, I'll eat a whole package, and all of a sudden they're gone, and it's like, oh, that was a mistake. So keep building that appetite. And we've been doing an entire series of podcasts on K9 Detection Collaborative about consistency.

And I'm so passionate about that right now. So building that novelty and consistency and a balance, it doesn't mean that it's always the same. There's flexibility within that. And so I can go off on a tirade, but I won't. So I guess when I'm starting a puppy, it's not all OB focused. It's what lights your fire. Where are we going to go? So I want to meet my dog, see who they are, and then let's start making our path together.

Melissa Breau: Jane?

Jane Ardern: Yeah, I think very similar to Crystal. I think when I'm working with a young dog. For me, it's very much about building a mindset and focusing on the dog's emotional state as well. So how does the dog feel about learning? How does the dog feel about training? I wanted to help dogs believe that it's worth persisting. So for me, it's very much about criteria setting. I don't tend to focus on behavioral goals.

When I'm working with a young dog, I'm going to have things I need to train, but it's very much about building that relationship and helping the young dog learn to learn and learn to be a good learner. And I think that's all about the criteria you set, the reinforcers that you're using, and also looking at what naturally motivates the dog as well. And as Crystal said, like when I've had a litter of puppies, I've said to the puppy owners, you know, you can take your puppy away and do agility, you know, obedience or whatever you want, but I advise that they all do scent work early on because I know that the dogs are going to be good at that and that they're going to find that reinforcing.

So for me, the foundations are very much about if you want a dog who's motivated to interact and engage and work with you, we have to kind of really look at what they innately find reinforcing as whatever breed they are.

Melissa Breau: So you guys have talked about this a little bit already, but I think a lot of the times we're talking about motivation, people kind of think reinforcers, right?

So they think motivation. They think of toy motivation or food motivation. I know we've talked a lot about kind of things the dogs naturally have kind of innate motivation for. But what about things like sports where maybe an obedience exercise isn't innately motivating necessarily. Necessarily. How do you transfer the love for those things that the dog is naturally motivated about to the work or sports that you do with your dog? How do you get some of those controlled behaviors around the sheep or around the birds or what have you? I think. Crystal, do you want to start for this one?

Crystal Wing: Sure. I. One word. Purpose. I think it's really cool to build purpose. So maybe this doesn't exactly answer. So I'll give you two examples. So when I first started. Keep talking a lot. Tell me to shut up.

I'm too much. When I first started training Rad for Human Remains, she was all about the toy. So that's what I used. And we used it a lot in the beginning, and that built the motivator and it built the motivation. But over time, you know, she would start searching harder when I added challenges, and I would start adding more and more complex challenges, deeper hides, tricky puzzles. I'd create odor pools and keep building these lessons.

And that's when I knew that the work was starting to matter to her. And it's not just because it earned that reward, but because it had meaning. And that's when I knew that motivation had transferred. So that's kind of what I think about when you ask that question. Motivation for the reinforcer. That's just the beginning. And I don't know if you guys get this too, but I'll get people that'll say, well, I can't use that in trial.

Well, of course not. I'm not asking you to. This is the beginning. This is how we start. So the food and the toys, those are tools. So I use the reinforcers to show them that the work is the way to get what they want, and that's where the transfer begins. So I'm also really focused on making the work a game. It has to be fun for both of us, because if I'm checked out, that's half the battle.

Like, I have to be in this and having fun, and that's going to build the momentum. So if my dog. So, like, okay, Radish. Loves to tug. If you want to tug, then premack do this to get that. I talk a lot about that. My little webinar thing. I think about how, okay, so your reinforcer two, you can kind of pair it with the rhythm of the work.

Do you know what I mean? It's like the way it flows. It kind of goes back to, don't compete your reinforcers with what they already love to do. And I think that's where the art of training comes in. And that's the part that I love so much. Go figure. The art of training. So I guess that's where I feel like I'm not explaining what you asked specifically, because, like, agility and scent work and detection, the bite sports, the game is the reinforcer.

And so you're using the reinforcement there to amplify it and not replace it. So if your dog. I'm trying to have another example that would be against. So I'll let you guys do that one that answers more what Melissa asked. I'm going with the ones that already are reinforcing in themselves.

Melissa Breau: Fair enough. Jane?

Jane Ardern: Yeah. So I think again, when I'm working with. With the spaniels, I'm always looking at what motivates my dog naturally. And one of the big things with spaniels, if we look at their job in, in this, in simplicity, is, is it involves movement and stillness. So they're either moving or they're still. And the stillness is not innately reinforcing for the. For the spaniel, but the movement is. So I will Premack. I will use Premack when I'm training. Yes, I'm using my toys and I'm using my food, but what I'm also doing is, is I'm being mindful about what is reinforcing for the dog.

So, for example, teaching the stop whistle. The stop whistle for a spaniel, I would say, is naturally, it's a punisher, because every time you blow the stop whistle, you're stopping your dog from doing something that the dog is innately motivated to do. So it's very important to me, through reinforcement, that we have to kind of try and really kind of counter condition and build the stop into part of the process of everything else.

So using Premack to pair that up so it just becomes a part of the sequence and it doesn't feel like a punisher for the dog. I remember another example, my Leonberger I did when I was at college. I did heelwork music freestyle for my advanced dog training with my Leonberger, decided I was up for the challenge. And for her, she really liked to do behaviors that were close to me.

So she liked to heel position and contact behaviors. And she actually didn't like the distance behaviors. And I had to build a three and a half minute routine with a Leonberger with no food and no toys on me at the time. So one of the things I did was my whole routine was based around whenever I asked her to do a distance behavior, I always made sure that I followed it in the routine with something that I knew she found reinforcing, which enabled me to maintain and keep the motivation through the duration of that.

Melissa Breau: Denise?

Denise Fenzi: So I tend to think about behaviors where you have to put in the stop and behaviors where you have to put in the go. So in general, working behaviors, dog on sheep, dog on birds, dog doing protection. The go is in the dog. Your job is the stop. And so both Jane and Crystal sort of got to the heart of that, because if you want to go first, you have to stop with your spaniel.

Or in the case of my border collie, his motivation is there's a huge element of movement, but there's also an element of control. So I ask him to Stop when he's in a place where stopping will create control. So you put the sheep in a corner and then you ask him to stop. That's gratifying to him, reinforcing, because otherwise he'd want to be moving. So you can sort of pair the things that are harder with things that are either easier or sort of naturally allow the dog to be successful.

So he's got him in the corner and lie down for me now, and he's like, oh, I was kind of thinking about that anyway, but once they start moving, let them up. So that's for things where the go is in the dog when the go is not in the dog. Like, there's no real heel, you know, drive for most dog. No teeter drive for most dogs where you have to pair things.

I really try to get, let's call it motivation to the point of habit. So the dog has just had so much fun doing the things with me for so long that the only way they know to feel when they're in these situations is happy. And that's about learning your dog really well in the training process and maybe even unconsciously applying things that matter to them anyway. So the border collie likes to use his brain, and the Belgian likes to solve problems.

The border collie does not like to solve problems. As a matter of fact, the border collie, swear to God, absolutely cannot do shaping with that dog. It makes him miserable. He's like, just tell me what you want. He cannot stand the indecision. He does not want to guess. He wants me to tell him, show me what you want, and my God, I'll do it till the cows come home.

Oh, that's a good expression for him, huh? Like, the sheep come home. He'll do it. And so for him, motivation is actually directive. I teach him what I want in tiny pieces. So he doesn't really know he's learning and he's happy. But the Belgian. So Crystal brought up the idea of challenge. Today. I was doing position changes in the back of an atv, and when I would ask him to put his chin down, it caused him to lose contact with me because he couldn't see me over the edge.

Now, first of all, this makes a really cute social media video. So if you haven't seen it, go look at it. It's on my face. It's super cute. But what I observed, which you don't see in the video because that was another part, was that at first it was hard. I had to help him understand how to do that. And then I noticed his tail was wagging really fast.

And that's. Oh, my God. I get it. I know what you want. I understand. I can do this. And it was just. It kind of warmed my heart, you know, it's just like, look at him loving the little challenges. Whereas the border collie doesn't have any interest in making a mistake in learning a new thing. The border collie wants to know how to do things. And I just kind of like, I had a moment thinking about how recognizing your dog and who your dog is and constantly reevaluating the plan.

The art of training over the science. The art is experienced. How many billions of dogs have you looked at and what have you learned from each one to allow you to recognize that you better stop shaping with this dog, or you're going to literally shut this dog down forever. This dog will not want to work with you anymore because he doesn't want to guess. And that's fine. 90% of dogs love shaping. Yay. Good run with it. But sort of recognizing the motivation of the individual, that's what gets you to habit, because the dog is always getting it in a way that works for that dog.

Crystal Wing: The thing I want to add to that is I feel like we also have motivation for dogs that we like to train in different ways. Because I've always been inspired by the problem solving dog and the shaping dog, and Radish has now challenged me very much on that because that is not really who she is.

So that's. That's been a huge. A huge part twist in my brain. Currently is. All right, how can I rethink this? And how can I work differently to motivate you in a different way? So when Denise talks about Ice, I'm always going, my ears are wide open because I'm like, all right, this is who I have, too. So thank you. Crystal. How much time have I cried in my porridge to you over that dog?

Like, I had to keep him on a long line because he just run off, and I've not. I'm not used to that. You know, my dogs don't do that. I had to train them on a long line, which I hate because it's always wrapped up around my ankles and I'm going to get hurt. And it. I hate long lines now, you know, So I just want to get that line off that dog.

But I can't take the line off the dog because if I added any stress, the tiniest amount in the. In the most roundabout way in his training, he was out, he was gone. He just like, I can't be here with you because you're stressing me out. And I was pretty upset. I mean, I was like, I don't know if I can train this dog. I mean, he's got some really weird, weird little sensitivities.

But, you know, that's why you have friends. You call people up and you say, I'm gonna shoot myself if I don't get my, you know, help, help. And you look at videos together, and then your friend says, maybe you did that too much and you got a little carried away there, and you. Would that have happened? And then you. You reevaluate. And I think that's where the curiosity and the.

The just communication with others really helps. But, man, it's a challenge. I'm struggling. And that's where. That's why you have to have people to talk to. You've got to have people to call up and talk to you, no matter how long you've been doing this game. I watch your progress with Ice, and then I watch my progress with Rad, and I'm like, come on now. Like, the next conversation, you've got it figured out.

And I'm still like, all right, then we're going to just keep trudging along. And I love that we all have our own kind of timelines and our own journeys, and that's also reassuring to me. Jane, do you have somebody you can cry to when. When things are rough and you're not getting your way? It's usually just my other half. Poor thing. Poor thing. That's all right. Glad they're there for you.

If you need to phone a friend, I'm here for you. So we've talked a whole bunch about. I think Denise put it as stop and go. Right. Like, the things you kind of need to put into the picture.

Melissa Breau: So how do you handle it when motivation goes wrong? When you have the motivation to bite, but you don't want the dog to bite all the time or whatever piece it is that. That kind of go. Can go wrong when it goes wrong, and I would love to hear stories of how things have gone wrong. Jane, do you want to start us off?

Jane Ardern: Yes. So I. I've got an example of my first cocker. She was. Well, I would say she was at the time. My view was that if we went anywhere near water, she was obsessed with going into. Especially doing water retrieves.

And she literally. If we got anywhere near some water, she literally couldn't function. And she couldn't take food off me. She wouldn't play with toys. She was just completely focused on. On just wanting to go into the water. And what I ended up doing with her was recognizing that my food and my toy reinforcers were not working in that environment. I did reduce down my criteria for her, but I ended up just doing some simple behaviors and allowing her to have that reinforcer, so allowing her to go into the water.

And we actually ended up with, like, beautiful, competitive heel work off this dog. When we would. When we were near water. When we were near water, she had, like, the best heel work you've ever seen from a spaniel. But I ended up. I just. You. I just utilized the environment and the reinforcers that were there, which. Which I can. What I do a lot of now, early on, and I do kind of cover a bit of this in my webinar, is I incorporate eating food into this, all my sequences, so it becomes a part and parcel.

So literally, with a young dog, I'll go, you sit, I throw the dummy out, you eat a piece of food, you go get the retrieve. And that has enabled me that I don't get a dog who goes, I can't take food, because food has become a part of the sequences of what we're doing when we're training. So I found. I found using that more recently is really. Really helps you avoid those types of things, because we. We see that with spaniels all the time. I get people who just say, my spaniel won't take food outside. I can't train it.

Melissa Breau: Yeah, yeah, Denise?

Denise Fenzi: It's actually exactly what I've been working on with Xen for the past six weeks or so. I took toys out of training, and it's like, food is on the menu. It's like, but I don't want the food. That's fine. That's what's on the menu.

You can work for nothing. That's fine, too. But you could opt out. He's never done that. So now he eats. And now, even when I brought the toy back, which is still quite rare, but you still need to eat, eat. It's a behavior. You don't come out of the car and work until you show me you can eat. And in the beginning, that, that meant minutes of waiting at the car, and it was a really good decision.

And I would say now we've gone from eating as a behavior that gets him what he wants to. I think maybe he actually tastes some of those pieces of food going down. Up until now, like, if I didn't pay attention, he was just storing them on his tongue. And then, seriously, I could see them all just lining up there. And now he swallows. And I think he might even be liking them, because now it looks like he's even looking to me like he wants a piece of food, which is just sort of an interesting kind of thing.

I knew I should have done this a long time ago, but I'm such a toy trainer. I love my toys so much that I have a hard time motivating myself to use the food and the training. But anyway, that was the story that. Gosh, what was the original question? I got stuck with Jane's response, just how do you handle when motivation kind of goes wrong? Oh, yeah. So I really suggest that people learn to read their dogs well, because you don't ever want to get to the point of a dog quitting.

And actually, I was just talking to Helene about that today with sheep herding, because in sheep herding, I am not a positive reinforcement trainer in the traditional sense of the word. And what that means is, I have to protect those sheep. Those sheep have the right to a peaceful existence and the own. That's my line in the sand. Shenanigans happen when you're training a young dog. I accept that.

But if you show me shenanigans, you grab a sheep and you don't let go, I'm going to come down on you pretty hard. And that's because that sheep needs to be at peace, and you can do better. So when I was talking to Elaine about it, I said, I have a very simple line in the sand. If my dog is afraid of me, something's very wrong, and I never use pain.

I'm not going to hurt you, but I am going to tell you that is 100% unacceptable. And I will get between you and the sheep, and I will push you away from those sheep. I will physically drive. Well, he's 50ft away anyway. But I will move into your space. I will push you back. That's not okay. That's not okay. That's not okay. But what I said to Elaine is, but if I ever saw any inkling that he was thinking about quitting, something went really, really wrong.

And I don't even think that's ever crossed his mind in any way, shape, or form. And that piece is important. People need to look at their dogs and know what. What is the ear carriage? What is the tail carriage? What. What behaviors does your dog show you that suggests they might be having slightly less fun? And then you better do some thinking, because if your dog ever just truly walks away and opposite of training, which is what the border collie was doing.

And I couldn't. I was like, how can that possibly have caused you to opt out of training? I didn't do anything except ask you to do something twice instead of once. But you. You just have to honor the dog. If you see something happening and you have learned that if you ask for two retrieves instead of one, the dog's gonna opt out. You just really, really, really need to be rethinking what you're doing, because that'll kill motivation so fast because you're ruining your habit.

And if habit is everything, habit is getting the dog to the point where they simply work out of habit and joy out of joyful habit. Every time you do something that makes the dog rethink that, you're going to have a problem.

Melissa Breau: Crystal?

Crystal Wing: I'm thinking about your question when you said genetics and how they're playing into their choices and motivation gone wrong. One of the stories that comes to mind, and I think it ties back into the very first thing about drive and motivation.

My old dog, Quinn, he was my heart dog. IGP3. Like, he was amazing. Strong grips. And so I don't know why I loved playing this game with him so much, but it's the blanket game, and you've probably played it before, where if you, like, pop your hand up under the blanket, like your hands under the blanket, you just kind of poke the blanket up, and then they go to bite where your hand was, and it's kind of like whack a mole.

And then your hand pops the little blanket in another spot. And we would play this game, and it was like our favorite game, and he was. Would really get into it. And so that might be one of those. The idea that so drive is his prey. Drive to bite the little hand that pops up. And then the motivation was that I created the environment with a little whack.

A mole that brought that drive out. So that's my way of kind of tying that back in from the beginning. And the time that it went wrong was he really got a hold of my hand one time and just, crunch. Broke two fingers. Oh, my God. Yeah, because I. I just got. I let the arousal get a little too high. Right. And he would never, ever want to hurt me.

That was not that dog, you know, and when he realized what had happened, he was like, oh, you know, And I have a pretty high pain tolerance, so I just kind of played it off. But it was just one of those moments where I thought that was dumb wing. I say That a lot to myself, but that was, that one was a. Oof. My other story, I think I've shared this one on other podcasts, but Yukon, my Dutch shepherd, you know, they're, they're bred for agility, right?

For confident problem solving dogs. And that's awesome if you want to protection and protection sports. I got him for protection sports, but he just liked to chase butterflies instead. But what happened was his motivation showed up as climbing on anything that he could. So he would scale fences, he would leap onto sheds, and yes, he would get on my roof. So the drive was amazing, but the application was absolutely chaotic.

And he wasn't being bad, he was just motivated without a job. That's. That's the way I saw him. So my thing is I never want to shut him down. I just need to redirect it. I gotta channel that. Because he loved to be high. Like he always wants to be like climbing a tree. And so I started giving him climbing games with structure. We do search stuff and he would love to find stuff that's elevated.

So let's do that. So the motivation didn't just go away. I just tried to give it a purpose. So when I think about these guys, they don't come with breaks. And so what I'm constantly doing is I look to the behavior they're doing and, and I say, what need is trying to get met? That's always the question. I ask that to myself every day at school with all these kids, you know, when they're doing something, I'm like, what need?

You've got something that's happening and I need to figure out what it is that you need. And let's put this in a different angle. So like crittering with Radish, I just need to go hiking more. So when she started, you know, seeking out and chasing deer during a search, I'm like, got it. I'm not giving you enough, you know, off leash hiking to actually go kind of express and get some of this out of your system.

If they're too into a behavior, I missed a step, there's something that I missed. So if they got too much, go. I didn't build enough of that. Stop. You know, so it's constantly, I'm just asking those questions. So try not to squish the fire instead build the fire pit. And I kind of talk about that in my webinar. If you don't watch it, at least watch the last like five minutes.

That's my favorite part of the webinar. I have this really precious moment of my best friend and her dog. And I will forever treasure that she shared that little moment with me to put in my webinar because it is all about the fire and the fireplace. And so you, if you watch it, you'll get it. And so you got to let me know what you think. But so with that I just say create boundaries, create rituals and celebrate the individual, but don't make a spoiled brat. That's not what I'm saying.

Melissa Breau: Fair enough. Speaking of the presentations, I think everybody kind of mentioned it in passing, but what are you each presenting and can you share a little bit kind of about the presentation itself? Just give people kind of a sample of what you'll be talking about. Denise?

Denise Fenzi: So I'm doing pre-engagement strategies. When I talk about engagement, I'm not using it in the dictionary sense of the word of engagement.

It's actually a pattern I take dogs through. So there's a bunch of steps and it's to help dogs learn to focus and move forward and work. When I talk about pre-engagement strategies, I'm talking about the things that happen before. I'm worried about teaching the dog a formal engagement path, like things that the dog does to show me they're ready to work. I'm talking about how I set the stage and I think it's called staged to engage.

So it's basically from the time I bring a dog home until I do anything particularly formal, I'm training the whole time. But it's a different kind of training at that point. It's just more learning to learn some of the things Jane talked about earlier. So what is my socialization path? How do I handle it when the dog is nervous or scared? Where do I bring them? Where don't I bring them?

How do I handle, like other people wanting to interact with my dog. And spoiler alert, I don't care if people play with my dog. Thinking about how to learn the dog, how to motivate the dog and get myself a nice solid foundation and understanding the dog so that I can make good choices when I go forward.

Melissa Breau: Crystal?

Crystal Wing: Mine's more than the cookie co creating motivation. It's really similar, it sounds like, to Denise's.

I wish that mine had a little bit more practical because I did end up talking a lot about, about you as the handler and how you can respond instead of react. So I think that's an important piece of it. And if you don't use Premack, Premack's going to use you. That was one of my favorite lines that Jens ever told me. And I was like that stops like that was it right there. I talk about how pressure divides attention and presence multiplies it and a lot about curiosity.

Melissa Breau: Jane?

Jane Ardern: Mine is called Too Hot, Too Cold or just right. And it's covering troubleshooting in reinforcement. I do a lot about troubleshooting with food reinforcement because that tends to be the big one people have problems with and really kind of how to build more of a variable toolbox of reinforcers to work with the dog.

I cover using Premack in my food with things that are reinforcing for the dog. So kind of traditionally people always told you to pair the food to make things good for the dog, but sometimes the food's not good enough. So it's about what you can you pair with the food to make the food more of a valuable reinforcer. And there's a few training exercises in there and really just looking at them from a motivational point of view as opposed to achieving behaviors.

I'll tell you what I'm most excited about now is that we get to do a panel discussion together too. That's going to be so exciting. I'm having such a nice time chatting with you two. I know. Let's keep going. Now we get to do it at the conference.

Melissa Breau: All right. So I do want to give you guys each a chance to maybe share some final thoughts or key points, stuff that you kind of want to leave listeners with or that you're excited to talk more about during the conference. Crystal, you get to go first?

Crystal Wing: I feel like I've said a lot. I am. I'm really looking forward to the panel discussions and listening to what all the presenters have to say. Like that's so exciting for me. So I'm hoping that people enjoy my little corner of the webinar and looking forward to what you guys have to say.

Melissa Breau: Awesome. Jane?

Jane Ardern: Yeah, I'm excited as well. I think it's a really key thing at the moment for a lot of dog trainers with regards to motivation. So I think it's a really good topic and quite timely as well with a lot of problems I especially see with people. So I'm pretty excited about the whole thing. And yeah. Listening to the webinars panel discussions.

Melissa Breau: Yeah. Denise?

Denise Fenzi: So I'm thinking about more experienced trainers. I just want to speak to them specifically. I because I have a young dog in a new sport to me herding.

I am now attending clinics and such and sometimes I spend a fair amount of money and I have learned over the years if I come home with one exceptionally actionable item. It's very unusual. I get more than three. Not because I don't hear more than three interesting things, but my brain can only hold three things, and then I'm basically done for the day. When I go into. As an experienced trainer, when I go into something, I'm really happy to get three ideas that are workable, and one epiphany is awesome.

So I'll take one or the other. And motivation is so critical. It is so key to training that even if you feel pretty good about where you're at, your skills, your training, I want you to think about that, because if you. You go through this whole day with the presentations on offer, you're going to pick up those three things, and that's really. That's where advanced trainers have an opportunity to move forward.

It's. It's sorting and listening and knowing a lot of it and then going, wait, wait, what? Back that one up. And taking the time to work with it. That is, especially if you're feeling a little flat with your training or you've kind of feel like you've been doing this for a while and you're not learning new things. First of all, recalibrate. Don't expect eight hours of new material.

Actually, be grateful for it, because when you get a bunch of new material like that, it's not even fun. It's overwhelming. But go in and really strive for one to three things that change how you think and then see what you can do with those.

Crystal Wing: Awesome. And I love that about the presentations, too, because I feel like we've geared it toward the highly motivated dog, and we've also geared it toward the dog that needs motivation.

So, I mean, it's the whole gamut. And for the new trainer and the advanced, like, how cool is that?

Melissa Breau: Yeah. And the nice thing is they're recorded. So if somebody gets their three things and then you can come back six months later and watch it again, you'll probably get three different things.

Denise Fenzi: Absolutely. Your brain is ready for a different set of information.

Melissa Breau: Super. Yeah. All right, well, thank you all so much for coming on the podcast.

Denise Fenzi: Thank you all. Thank you, Melissa. Thanks so much.

Melissa Breau: Absolutely. My pleasure. And thanks 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. Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy.

Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music Providers 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.

 Credit

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!