The more tools in your toolbox the more dogs you can help — in this episode Karen shares her experience using box feeding (aka the "dopamine box") to build confidence, desensitize to sounds, develop duration as a concept, for scent work, tracking, and to develop working under pressure. 

 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 we'll be talking to Karen Deeds about the Dopamine Box, AKA box feeding. Hi Karen. Welcome back to the podcast.

Karen Deeds: It is always great to be here with you, Melissa.

Melissa Breau: Awesome. I'm excited to chat about this. To start us off, do you want to just remind folks a little bit kind of about you, who your dogs are, what you're working on with them, that kind of thing?

Karen Deeds: My dogs, I have a border collie mix, kind of a little crazy boy and this has been very helpful for him. Although we have done a lot of work prior to with marker cues and toy play and impulse control and all the things that he needed.

And I have a Labrador who is just perfect. So I don't do anything with him. But I did a lot of stuff with him when he was a baby so he retained all that. He's just a really good dog. We lost a dog recently quite suddenly. He was a young Malinois and he just dropped dead, which was sad, very sad. But we have an old mal, we have a couple of mixes and then we have our LSDs, our little snot dogs.

So our household is down to seven. But I really not, I'm not doing much with my dogs other than having fun and using them for videos for my students and using them for decoy work. I do, I do use my border collie, ironically, I use my border collie more for decoy work than I do my Labrador because my, my border collie is very more aloof and goes, yeah, I don't need to go say hi.

My Labrador is like, I want to go say hi to everybody all the time. Which when you're working with reactive or a dog that has a little pressure issues, that's not a great thing. But I've been doing a lot of workshops. Ironically, being relatively new here in the Tennessee area, I've found a niche with some of the sport dog people that are relatively new to the Fenzi way is what I would like to call it.

But the multiple markers and toy play. In fact, I'm doing a toy play class. God, that's going to be crazy. Workshop with a group of people I did some work with a month or so ago in Nashville and it's going to be fun. I'm looking forward to the reactive dog camp that's going to be at the Fenzi Ranch at the end of the month and then I'll be going to Tucson, hopefully to do a workshop there with some sporty pet dog people and then on to Texas to do some more stuff with rescue and shelter and pet dog and sporty people. So lots going on. Be on the road.

Melissa Breau: Sounds like it.

Karen Deeds: Lots of busy, lots of being busy.

Melissa Breau: So we had Pat Stewart on the podcast last year to talk about the idea of box feeding just a little bit. Yes. But for those who maybe missed that episode or skipped it, can you give us the basics? What is box feeding and what's it used for?

Karen Deeds: Okay, so what Pat does and the way that this was originally created was probably for a little bit different kind of dog than what I work with.

They're working with the high drive working, specifically Malinois shepherd working line. It came from the bite sport world. And part of the stuff is it really builds persistence. They want them to pull into the box and then they add pressure and conflict. And so that's really helpful for a working dog for sure. And mine, I can mimic that with my behavior cases, but my dogs are typically a little bit different than that.

But basically what it amounts to is eating out of a box. It sounds really stupid and simple and sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't, but basically you get a box and it doesn't matter. The type of box, my God, I bought a bunch of like, I don't know, wicker basket type boxes and feed bins and I don't know, cardboard boxes work really well. As long as you tape the bottom so food can't get lost, it doesn't matter unless it does.

And that's the. For me, I have modified the box to help my clients a lot. So it can matter. But normally it's just you teach your dog to eat out of the box. Sounds really simple. But what starts to happen is they go, I have to eat out of the box. I love the box. And in and of itself, the box becomes a contextual cue. Like I put down a box or the dog, I walk into a room where there's a box or out, you know, I get my dog out of the car, my box is sitting there.

Immediately the dog goes, oh God, I know what to do. I'm going to put dive my head into the box because that's where all the good stuff happens. And it makes me feel really, really, really good because that's what dopamine does. And eating is how we one way we create that. Dopamine so it creates this lovely conditioned emotional response. And I use it for a lot of just scaredy cat dogs, just to take it to novel places.

But I use it a little bit differently. Whereas I am not requiring initially, if at all, that duration head in the box thing. For me, it's not necessary for some of my dogs. It's not necessary for behavior modification. It becomes a contextual cue of I know this is where things, good things happen, but yet I can lift my head out and look around and then, voila, there's food in the box.

So I'm actually using it with classical counter conditioning. So it's a classical conditioning effect. And of course I can get to the operant conditioning where the dog is offering their head in the box as a duration behavior. And maybe they're using a nose target to touch the bottom, which sometimes I teach, sometimes I don't. It does depend on the dog. If I'm working with a highly aroused, I don't know, field line golden retriever seem to be getting a lot of those to work with.

Herding line border collies got a lot of those in the sport world too. A couple of mals that are intense. Those are the ones that probably will do well with the duration with their head in the box. But when I'm working with this little soft border collie, he goes, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can barely put my head in the box. And sometimes I actually have to teach him and desensitize the box.

So I start with a flat box or a shoebox lid and then I build up the height of it because there are some dogs that go on. I ain't putting my head in that hole where I can't see anything outside. So I have to look at the dog. And so that's part of what I'm going to teach in the class. I'm going to guess that probably 90% of the dogs in my class won't need that.

But I have to teach it anyway. I have to show people how to get their dog to love the box. And if it's scary to start with, then I'm probably not going to create a great conditioning nose or response that I want. So there's different things that I do again, because I'm probably working with different dogs than what the balance work with or what Mr. Stuart works with because he's working with all of these go, go, go, go dogs.

And even the dogs that he works with that are edgy are still typically the higher drive dogs or the ones that are anxious are probably still the higher drive dogs. And in all honesty, I love those dogs. I don't want to say better, but they're easier to work with because I get more out of them faster. And it's very fulfilling. But I will tell you, the little dogs that are going, oh my God, lions and tigers and bears and they're scanning and all of a sudden the box is there and they go, but give me a minute, maybe there's a cookie.

And they put their head down and then a cookie falls into the box. They go, see, I knew it was good. I knew, I knew I could do this. And God, I am just seeing so much more resiliency with these dogs and more confidence. And of course, we start out with absolutely no pressure unless we need to add pressure. And this is where, because I'm working with mostly pet dog clients that have those kinds of dogs.

Not the sporty people, but the pet dog people that have those dogs that are worried about the world and about, you know, people or other dogs or sounds. It can actually just use the box almost as a contextual cue that that's where food's going to happen. And, and I know people have asked me, well, why do you have. I don't want to carry a box around. You know, I have one student, she's not using a box anymore.

She's using a piece of a rubber mat that she carries with her in her, in her pocket. And when her dog starts to go, hey. She throws it down. He goes, oh, thank God. And he immediately dives into the target. So we've created a target for him without actually teaching him the target. It just became, because he's one of those high drive working line border collies. And so I've modified things in that way so that it's not just about the box, but a lot of times the box, the type of box does change.

If I'm working with a dog that's very sound sensitive, maybe I don't need for the dog to see the world that's going on. In fact, it might be helpful for them not to. It's kind of like, oh, I'm a horse person, so it's kind of like putting blinders on a racehorse, right? You don't want them to see what's on the outside, so you kind of do that. However, if I'm working on a visual trigger, so to speak, I may want my dog to stick their head in the box but not feel trapped.

I worked with a little Aussie, little mini American shepherd and he was sound sensitive. He's people sensitive. He's dog reactive. He's all the things. All the things. And so for sound work, we used opaque box. But for reactivity work with me or with another dog, we actually used a…we started out with a translucent box, which I found that little wicker basket type. Plastic wicker basket or even laundry baskets with holes in them work pretty well.

And then we have now transitioned to a transparent box. So I don't know. The box also holds the cookies so that they don't bounce everywhere. So it has its pluses. So again, I just kind of look at. Okay, we need this dog to be able to see, because he needs to see, but he needs to know he's safe and that there's not going to be anybody sneaking up on him if his head's in a box.

Because I did a session one time where we had his head in a cardboard box. And I moved. He did not hear me move. And when he lifted his head, he looked where I was, and then he went, oh, shoot, she moved 10ft. And actually probably over 5ft. And he was just like. You could see kind of like the little startled response on his face. But then he went, box.

And he went right back into the box. So it works. And this woman's done an amazing job. Uh, but it works. But I wanted to eliminate that potential for any kind of fallout for him to become suspicious about what might be happening around him if he couldn't see it or hear it. So that's why I changed the type of box that I use. So anyway.

Melisa Breau: All right, so that was a big, long answer, but that's okay. We're going to dive into some bit more detail. So I know that, you know, I mentioned that we kind of had Pat on the podcast last year. How did you become familiar with the topic? When did you become familiar with the topic? You've obviously done quite a bit of playing with it recently, so. And recently is key.

Karen Deeds: Absolutely. I think I saw, of course, social media. I want to say I saw Denise make a comment about it. And then I did a dive. And of course, you know, my husband did bite sports, and we do working dogs or have done working dogs. Thank God we're not doing. Doing that stuff anymore. And so the high drivey type dogs. And I'm going, wow, this really kind of is cool.

And then I went, but just like all the other stuff I steal from sport and working dogs, maybe I can steal this too, or borrow, because of course, I always want to give credit where credit is due and certainly the belongs are the biggies from what I understand when I did my research. But I just started messing around with it because my border collie is definitely a very handler sensitive dog.

Grooming is not his thing. And I've done the cooperative care with the chin rest and all that works pretty well for him. But let me tell you, this box stuff made a huge difference in comparison to a chin rest. Don't ask me why, it's just a huge difference. But again, he's also a really high drive type of dog. So I think for those dogs that are more edge like he is, I think the operant behavior of duration in the box, the incompatible behavior of do the nose target versus just, you know, counter conditioning is very helpful and important.

But I again, I saw it on social media. It's probably been less than a year ago, May, yeah, less than a year ago because I started fiddle farting around with it with a couple of my clients probably last maybe last spring. So it's been about a year. And I've got one, the vacuum cleaner, we work through the vacuum cleaner. The other one, we're still working through the dog and the people stuff.

And I've got a little dog actually remotely in Texas that was the trash trucks. This dog would, was spending days in the closet because there were four days of trash trucks or recycle trucks in her area four days out of seven. And so the dog, there's, there were no good days. So we started doing the box work. And now he can, he can look and realize there's trash trucks going on, but he doesn't run to the closet anymore.

I'll freaking take that as a win. Absolutely. So he's, he's living a much better life. And so he was kind of one of my first ones and I did him remotely. And it was just an old friend of mine back in Texas that has this cutest little wiry haired thing. And so that's when I went, okay, I need to dig into this more. But. And of course I listened to the Pat Stewart podcast after I saw it on social media and yeah, cool stuff. It's just. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Done quite a bit of playing with it since then.

Melissa Breau: So tell me a little more about the adaptations that you've made specifically for behavior work. I know that, you know, you kind of talked a little bit about some different size boxes, some different types of boxes, some different, all sorts of pieces there. So can you kind of summarize some of what you already shared?

Kareb Deeds: I don't want a dog crawling in it. Although it's irrelevant if they do. I mean some dogs like to put their front, their front feet in the box and keep their head down. Again, those are typically going to be your more confident, pushy dogs, drivey dogs. Right. And I did work with a working line shepherd up in Kentucky.

I did an immersion program up there. She's amazing. Love her. And we used a turkey, aluminum foil turkey roasting pan. And we would take this roasting pan, it was probably 6 inches high, maybe not even that, but big. And we would take it and we took it to the parks in March in Connecticut. It was loads of fun. And I'm not getting the improvement with her dog. And I had my dog with me, I had decoy dogs with me.

He's dog reactive, he's people reactive. And she has continued to work with it. So for her, you know, I had taken some boxes, other big heavy wooden boxes, the 1 foot in diameter box, and he's like, yeah, I'm fuzzy headed. I'm not gonna stick my head in that box. It's just, it's, it's not gonna work for me. So he was a little iffy with that. And then we tried the laundry basket and he had to crawl into that.

So we ended up going with this stupid turkey pan. And it worked really well. He could easily see out of it, which I think was, for him, herding dog was pretty beneficial. So again, I don't really think that the size matters, but I do think for some dogs not being able to see initially to learn the process is helpful. And when they're learning the process, if I'm wanting them to get any kind of duration with their nose in the box, I want to use the opaque box.

However, there are going to be some times that I can't get that. There are going to be some times that I don't have time to get that. I was at a shelter two weeks ago, something like that in South Carolina. We took this rowdy, jumpy, bouncy, pitty mix that was bouncing all over people and I threw down a cardboard box and started feeding him. In less than, I don't know, three, four minutes this dog was going up, head in box, head in box.

And I had people approaching him, he'd look up at them and then he'd go, head in box, feed me. I mean, this guy was brilliant, hard. What a cool little dog. Sport potential out the wazoo. But he was he was a lot of dog. So for. For a dog like him, I could easily have gotten more duration in the box in a very short amount of time. But then if, you know, I've got a little border collie here, and for her, she, like, puts her nose in the box, eats a piece of food, lifts her head out like lions and tigers and bears.

So it's going to take a lot longer. So I keep the box a little bit shorter to help her not feel so trapped. But then once I get the dogs feeling comfortable, if I'm wanting that duration of the head in the box, then I might go into the translucent or transparent type box where the dog can see out. Sometimes they see out, you know, through little slats. That might make things a little.

You know, it's kind of like I envisioned the calming cap from… I think it's called the… It's now made by T Touch, I think. I don't remember Pet Save somebody. But basically, it's like wearing pantyhose over your dog's eyes. It's a visual block, but that it's translucent, the dog can see through. So I kind of envision using boxes like that for dogs that need to look but that may get overwhelmed if they see too much.

And then I go on into using the transparent boxes where the dogs can see out without any problem. And they're able to go, yeah, I don't care. That's really what I want, is I don't care. That's the goal of any kind of behavior work. If I'm working with a trigger is I don't care. So boxes depend on the dog, depend on what I'm working on. And. Yeah, so that's it.

Melissa Breau: You just said something I thought was really interesting. So, you know, a lot of times when we're dealing with reactivity or we're dealing with a behavior thing, we think about decreasing the intensity, right? Like making something further away, making something quieter, making something. You're just decreasing the intensity somehow. Are you looking at this as another way of decreasing the intensity?

Karen Deeds: Essentially, yes, absolutely. Absolutely. You're still using desensitization and counter conditioning, if you can.

There are times when I might use classical conditioning. For example, my border collie, when I first started with it, if I. His head is in the bucket and I used a bucket and I touched him and he went, hey, don't touch me. And then I went ahead and threw cookies because I touched cookies happen. Even though he looked at his head in two repetitions, I can touch him all over and he keeps his head in the box.

So I started out maybe with some, you know, some forward trace conditioning is I'm going to touch you and feed you and then it was I'm going to touch you, not touch you and then feed you. So there's forward trace and there's forward delay conditioning. So I'm using the classical conditioning aspect of it. And then for him and for many of the dogs, I do get that operant incompatible behavior.

So it becomes more like a differential reinforcement procedure. But I still use desensitization and counter conditioning. I still want to do that. So if it's a sound that I'm working with, I might start out with a lighter sound. But what I found is I can get away with a lot more, or should I say a lot less. A lot less desensitization and a lot more counter conditioning. More classical counterconditioning where let's say I make a sound.

Ding dong, doorbell. I mean, how many of us have a doorbell and we can't turn down the volume? And how many dogs react to a doorbell? I don't know. Pretty much all at once. I have never ever really successfully been able to desensitize, encounter condition or the doorbell, ah, challenge. Because I don't have a client that's using it for doorbells. But I could envision, based on what I have seen with sound sensitivities and the desire to do something else is where the dopamine box is giving them a desirable behavior to do that's kind of incompatible obviously with the other thing like running to the door.

And so I can counter condition the doorbell and they go, oh, yeah, but I should stick my head in the box. And so I could probably use the full doorbell ding dong versus trying to mute it and play it low on my phone. Which is the normal desensitization and counter conditioning process. Right. There's a lot of things I can't do that with. Apartment dogs. Oh my God. People that live in apartments.

Yep. Yeah. They can't increase distance. They live in a fricking apartment. Their dog goes out on a balcony in a glassed in area and it sees stuff. Yep. We can put barriers up, we can do all that. Done that. But there's still, you know, the dog, the opening of the elevator. Yeah, I can't slow that down. I can't predict who's going to come in or come out. Oh yeah, I've got one of those.

I'm doing the phone consult with next week. Dopamine box it is. So. Yeah, but so I think I can get. I hate to use the term get away with because I don't want to ever put the dog over threshold where they can't re-engage with the box. But for me, sometimes it's a matter of, you know, the trigger. And I'm going to use that as a loose term.

The trigger happens. They've got their head in the box, the trigger happens, they lift their head and they go, yeah, I don't care. And they put their head back down. Fabulous. That's the first repetition. Trigger happens again and they go, yeah, I remember. I don't care. So I'm going to keep my head in the box because I know food's going to happen when the trigger happens. So. Yeah.

Melissa Breau: So what do we, what do we think is happening here? What do we think is causing this to work? Or what do you think is causing this to work?

Karen Deeds: I mean, it's all about dopamine. In fact, golly, maybe because I'm using the words dopamine in a lot of my social media lately, I have been seeing advertisements about the dopamine cleanse for people. And I'm like, I haven't even looked into it.

And I'm like, what? Or is it the dopamine? Wanting more dopamine in your life because you're lazy and you're lethargic in the morning and you need more dopamine? Well, I think it is basically, my God, this makes me feel so good. Because eating is what causes dopamine to be released. It's one of the many things that causes that. And then that feels good. And so you want to do it again and again.

Because feeling good, I mean, that's. It's addiction. Right? That's what I mean. I'm almost creating some dogs that are addicted to the damn box. In fact, I would absolutely say that the border collie got addicted to the box. Now, we did have a problem with that one. So I have to be careful. And I know some of the people say you never want to put the box on cue, that it needs to be a contextual cue, but let me tell you, this guy decided to resource guard the box because he's a resource guarder.

Anyway, so I went, okay, well, we're going to have to make that contingent on mother, may I go to the box. So we had to adapt a little bit with him because he was diving into the box, and then she couldn't even approach to throw food. Isn't that weird? Like, okay, you're guarding the box and I'm here to give you more cookies, which is what made you like the box in the first place.

Yeah. So. And I would love to sit down and talk with somebody who knows more neurologically neurological information about this than I do. You know, God, I'd love to talk with are Bloom. Lordy. Shoot. Even Dr. Liu and Dr. Cook. I have a feeling I'll be talking about this with them in a couple of weeks. So. Yeah, so, yeah, I'll probably know more the more I do it, the more I like it. But also the more I realize that there's more going on that I don't understand. And I'm. I have a feeling, in fact, if I remember right, was it Pat, or was it another. The podcast, or was it somebody else? I heard him talking about, you really can't screw it up unless you start punishing the dog for going in the box or taking it away or taking it away when there's food.

I don't remember whose said that, but ... So, you know, even though I don't think I'm screwing it up, I'm. And I don't think you really can unless you try pretty hard. There are probably going to be little nuances about the ways it can be used, and that's kind of what I'm trying to find are little nuances for the pet dogs and the dogs that I work with. Yeah, trying to adapt it.

I tried to adapt it. Yeah. So in general, Karen, I think one of the things that's really interesting is you tend to look at a lot of different methods that are out there and try to pull out pieces of the things that you see that work and experiment and figure out where there's cross applications and all that good stuff. So how does box feeding in particular compare to some of the other tools in your training toolkit right now?

I know you're experimenting with it a ton, so you're using it probably a little more than you may eventually. But when would you reach for box feeding versus something else? Are there cases where, like, you're like, let's not use box feeding for this? Because that's a great question. And I think a lot of times I'm picking and choosing my clients more than I am my dogs, because there are a lot of dogs.

I go, God, you would do so great with a Dopamine Box. But for people, they're going, you want me to do what? I said? Just. Just feed him in a box. I promise. And they're like, yeah, I don't get it. And I understand that. So I think right now I'm probably picking and choosing my clients more than I am the dogs. But what I like, what I why I think it works better than some things is because it is very, it's predictable.

There's a box, there's going to be food. It's very contextual. There's a box, there's going to be. The context is the box or the mat or whatever. The target, we'll call it a target probably. But the other thing I like about it is because the dog is lowering its head and using its nose to find the food in the box. We're building up that calmness that comes from breathing and sniffing.

And we all know decompression walks, sniff-aris. I mean, I use a lot of hunting for food to get the dog into a calmer state of mind. And so that's one of the reasons I think it works so well, is because it does calm down the dogs, whether they are in that over aroused go, go, go, go piece like the high driving dogs or even when they're in the over aroused shutdown.

I know that sounds contradictory, but the dogs are that are worried again that sniffing is going to help them. It's going to help them, you know, get a little bit more thoughtful and to slow them down. So like I say, I think I right now I'm using it with my clients that I think will be amenable to it. I still use, you know, marker cues and really, truly, it imitates a scatter, but the cue is a visual versus a verbal and it's, and that, it's just very specific.

I can't walk around saying, scatter, scatter, scatter, scatter, scatter, scatter, scatter all the time. But the box is there saying, hey, hey, hey, hey, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here all the time. And so I don't know if that made sense, but, but I see it just part of me goes, I wonder why this is working? And part of me goes, dopamine. And then I go, but do I know enough about dopamine to be able to use this?

And I finally decided, you know what, sometimes as long as we're not, we're not doing any harm, the dog is obviously benefiting from it and it's actually pretty freaking easy. Just use it and figure out why it works later, huh? And that's, I hate to say that, but, you know, so, so for me, I think really it is about the sniffing and the contextual cue, the visual, you know, and, and I can modify that.

Like I say, for convenience. Like I say, I've got this person who lays down a little, little mat and he goes, oh my God, there's my dopamine box converted into a mat. And I have the same thing. Have I done this with a mat mat? Absolutely. When I start teaching my, my settle or my relax on a mat, that's actually the first thing I teach is I don't teach a go to click treat.

I teach it eat here, eat here, eat here, eat here, eat here. And so I didn't realize that for the last 15 years that I've been doing that, but that's what I've been doing. And I look at this thing for pet dogs and if we could just get pet dog people to condition their dog to eat food and then get them to the vet. Because I work at my sister's vet clinic now two days a week.

Wow. The people that come in there that, you know, if they would just teach their dogs to eat off of a mat or a specific contextual cue, they would be so much better. It would be so much easier. So much easier. But alas, I'm working on it. I think it would be great for the veterinary profession to see it. I actually presented this at Texas A and M Vet College in January.

Melissa Breau: Very cool.

Karen Deeds: So, yeah, that was cool.

Melissa Breau: Yeah. All right, so talk to me a little about the class in particular. What are you going to cover? Who should take it? Wow.

Karen Deeds: I am still writing the syllabus because every time I think about it, I think of other things and I go, oh, but I need to do this first. And you know, because I've got so many pieces of it that I don't want to make it too complicated, but it is a six week class.

In fact, when I mentioned it to Teri, she says, how are you going to fill six weeks with that? And I'm like, oh, honey, just watch me. And you know, so, so the class is, you know, it's. For some people it's going to be start off probably a little slow, but just the application of it. I can see agility dogs that go crazy when they hear the tunnel.

Yeah, that's a good one. Absolutely. Barn hunt dogs. I've got a client in Nashville that I'm working this with her, Border Collie, who is also. She's a very high drive dog. She does agility and barn hunt. Guess where she struggles in the blind at barn hunt. Guess what we're doing? Dopamine box!

Melissa Breau: Awesome.

Karen Deeds: The dog is doing so much better. And so I can see the sport dog applications for those dogs that get easily over aroused or have big scary feelings or you know, over aroused feelings or scary feelings, either one.

It can be beneficial, of course, for the pet dog. Basically, where to start with, you know, can your dog eat out of a box? And can we eat out of the box and enjoy and create this, oh my God, I love my box. And then we start taking our box to different locations and pretty soon our dog who goes, I don't want to go new places goes, I'll go anywhere, where's my box?

And that might include the vet clinic for sure. I've got one, I've got a client in California who is using this at her vet clinic. In fact, I think I used her video in my webinar or at the Barkaeology conference. And so pet dog people, sport dog people, just other trainers that want to know how this works. I'll probably have more information. Well, I'll already start my class in June, but I'm doing another workshop of it in the middle of June.

And of course I'm teaching it at the Reactive Dog Camp the first of June. But so I'll have more experience and probably be changing my syllabus even more after I do that. But you know, there's different, I kind of call it different levels of how I would apply the box. So can I just use classical conditioning with it, you know, some forward trace and forward delay conditioning without actually having the head in the box?

Yes, I can, because I have. And then do I need the dog that has to have their nose in the box? And it's, this is my job and I have to do this and I don't care what's happening. I'm sure I'll have those dogs too. And I'm actually going to go through the process of some of the things that are beneficial to have is a dog that has some impulse control.

So I'm going to show them a little bit about how to teach some impulse control, how to teach a duration behavior, you know, reverse luring, delaying the marker. For some dogs, I use a marker when they put their head in the box and I feed in the bottom of the box. For some dogs, I don't. Again, it's, it's all very, it's, it's all very specific to the dog in front of me.

You know, this dog absolutely needs help to know that I want him to put his head in the box. Little Frenchie, he's like Ah, yeah, I can put it head down there, but I don't know if that's what you want or not. So instead of creating, you know, a marker, I do use marker cues. So for some of the dogs, I use a marker cue. That means I'm going to feed you in the box, so there's no point in lifting your head.

So. And then for some dogs, I'm going to teach a marker cue that means please lift your head. And sometimes it's going to. And again, that's going to tell me whether the dog is able to listen. So I still want that ability for the dog to hear me give another cue, whether it's. I'm going to. Because if I want a dog that can. Can work through the pressure but still be in tune with me, that means I still need a dog that can respond to a cue, whether it's a food cue, a toy cue, or a behavior cue. You know, the dog is in there and I say strike. I want my dog to lift his head and come bite the toy.

Melissa Breau: So awesome. All right, well, it sounds like it's going to be a good class. Any final thoughts or key points that you want to leave listeners with before we call it?

Karen Deeds: I am sure I'm going to learn as much from them as they are for me, and I think it is going to be a fun class.

I have been having a lot of fun with it, and I've just seen a lot of dogs that benefit from it. And, you know, I'm making modifications as I go based on the dog in front of me, and I'm sure that's going to be a lot about what the class will be is I'll say, oh, I want you to do this, but I want you to do that.

And again, even though I use for reactivity work, I use a lot of integrated approaches, whereas, you know, well, I don't want you to work on this, but I want you to work on that. It's going to be the same thing. I want you to do this, but you don't do that. So fun stuff. It makes class for me a big challenge because. Because I'm going to have all sorts of different types of dogs, but that's.

That's what I deal with every day. Every day.

Melissa Breau: Yeah. Fun stuff. Fun stuff. All right, well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast to talk about it.

Karen Deeds: You're welcome. It was great to be here, Melissa.

Melissa Breau: Always good to have you. 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 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!