If you plan to compete, you need a plan for reducing reinforcement - but so often this is where trainers go wrong! Join us for a conversation about how Sharon recommends you reduce reinforcement to maintain attitude and correctness.  

 Transcript

Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau and you're listening to the Funzi 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 Sharon Carroll about reducing reinforcement. Hi, Sharon, welcome back to the podcast.

Sharon Carroll: Hi, Melissa, thanks for having me again. I'm really glad to be back.

Haven't been on for a little while and yeah, really looking forward to the chat. Should be an awesome topic. I'm excited to talk about it.

Melissa Breau: Yeah. To start us out, you want to just remind everybody a little bit about kind of who you are.

Sharon Carroll: Sure. I'm a professional dog trainer and behavior consultant based in Newcastle on the east coast of Australia, certified behaviour consultant across multiple species with the International Association of Animal Behaviour Consultants.

I have some academic credentials in animal biology and behaviour, including a master's in animal science. I'm one of the instructors on the Fenzi faculty and I compete with some dogs. So I compete in lots of different sports. Rally Obedience, Heel to Music, Musical Freestyle tricks and scent work.

Melissa Breau: Fabulous. All right, so as I kind of mentioned in the intro, I wanted to talk about reducing reinforcement today. So big question.

How important is it for us as trainers to kind of understand the process of reducing reinforcement and then is it something that you take the time to do for every behavior you teach your dog, or are there some behaviors, you know, that you just always plan to reward heavily?

Sharon Carroll: Yeah. Okay. So I think it's hugely important. I think it's hugely important that we understand the process and we're going to, I'm sure, talk about that a little bit more as we go through this podcast.

But in terms of do we always take the time to reduce reinforcement for every behaviour? That's really going to depend on the end goals. So for most sport behaviors, it's going to be necessary to reduce reinforcement because a lot of our sports require us to not have treats and toys in the ring with us. Scent work, for example, though we don't have to because there's no sort of need to reduce reinforcement.

For those alerts. We can keep that on a continuous schedule of reinforcement every time the dog performs a correct alert. In almost every every other scenario though, there's going to be some need to shift a behaviour onto an intermittent schedule of reinforcement, meaning something other than that one for one, that continuous schedule where you're giving a treat every time they perform the behaviour, even if it's just to produce a reliable pet dog behaviour.

We still really usually want to shift to that intermittent schedule. Because when a behaviour's on a continuous schedule, then when we miss a reward just even for several repeats of the behaviour in succession, we can see this rapid deterioration in the quality and reliability of that behaviour. But once we've put that behaviour onto an intermittent schedule of reinforcement, then we have options. We can still reward on the really high rate of reinforcement.

But if we do miss reinforcing for several reps of that behavior in succession, it won't result in any deterioration in the quality or reliability of the behavior. There absolutely will be behaviours, though, that need to be maintained on that very high rate of reinforcement where we sort of reinforcing many of the performances of the behaviour, and then other behaviours where the rate of reinforcement can actually be very low.

So only a very small percentage of the performances are reinforced or potentially even the reinforcement will be provided in a way other than from us. So it may appear like the behaviour doesn't need reinforcing at all because we don't need to keep handing over treats and toys. But really it's just that it's being maintained through some other way. The reliability is being maintained some other way. Interesting. It's really kind of an interesting way to think about it.

I'm sure we'll circle back to that. But how do you kind of decide for those behaviors that you are going to reduce reinforcement when the behavior is at that point? Like, when do you look at something and go, okay, this is a solid enough behavior that it's time to start reducing reinforcement? Or maybe you start even before it's a solid behavior. I don't know. Yeah, well, there's a scientific answer to that question where we're referring to what's actually happening in the brain.

And then there's the more practical answer where we're just assessing directly from the behaviors we're seeing in front of us. So there's actually three phases that occur when our dog's learning a new trick or learning a new behavior. There's the acquisition phase, and that's when the brain doesn't really even have a clue what's happening. The dog doesn't know what's. What's going to end up in reinforcement. They're just sort of guessing.

They're just throwing out random guesses and trying to work out what gets rewarded and what doesn't. So they have no clue. And the brain is madly trying to identify some sort of association between, oh, when I did that behavior, I got a reward. And then over time, we're going to reach that next phase where we get that action outcome phase where the associations are now being identified. So the brain's going, I'm pretty sure every time I do that behavior, I get that reward.

But the brain's going to keep constantly monitoring at that point, every time that behavior is performed, they're going, let me check, am I getting that reward? Because that's what's telling the brain that that was the correct choice, that was the correct behavior for that cue. That is the correct behavior, and that's what's going to get rewarded. Then we move through to this habit formation phase. That's where the brain actually goes, okay, the association is really clear.

Now. I do understand that when that cue happens, I should do this behavior in order to get the reward. And so this is really clear, associations being formed. And the brain's now able to monitor less closely. So it's sort of like, okay, I know that I'm right. Now I don't need to monitor every time this behavior is performed. So it's more the behavior is going to be performed just in response to the cue without as having.

Or without the dog having to consciously really make a decision and really think about what behavior to perform. And the brain's sort of pretty sure that that's the right choice. So it's not going to keep monitoring now from a practice or not monitor as closely. Still keeps monitoring, but just not every rep. And so from a practical perspective, in that early phase, we just see lots of guessing, some correct, some incorrect.

We're still doing the luring or the shaping. We're using props. That's certainly not a time to reduce reinforcement. In that next phase, we're going to see lots of accurate responses happening. But when we skip a reward, there may still be an immediate change to our dog's behavior in that next replacement. Whereas when we reach that end phase, what actually happens now is the behavior is occurring rapidly and accurately in response to our cue.

We see that happening. So without rewards being apparent before the behaviour is performed, but still giving a reward after every performance of the behavior, but importantly, when we consider at that point, we can start considering skipping a reward after one of the reps, and if the next rep is unaffected, then we can start the process of reducing reinforcement. I like that way of thinking about it, of actually being able to test, okay, does the behavior change as we reduce reinforcement?

And if not, then we've kind of gotten it solid. We're at the right phase in the process. Exactly. And that's remembering that it's always that one rep. We skip one rep and we go back to rewarding, and we skip one rep and go back to. If we start skipping multiple reps, we might see some disintegration anyway, but just that one rep, that's what gives us information. We skip that one rep and we look at what happens that very next time we deliver the cue.

Melissa Breau: Can you give us kind of an overview of how you actually approach reducing reinforcement? So you've done your test, you got that one rep, and the behavior did not degrade. What next?

Sharon Carroll: Okay, so, yeah, we start at that point. We check the behavior is established. So we know the couple of things we want to check here is that we don't need treats or toys present before the behavior is performed.

Now, that's separate, really, to anything to do with reducing reinforcement. But a lot of the time when we look at just problems that are occurring with people trying to get reliability from behaviours, it's because they haven't even reached that point yet. So we don't. We definitely don't start reducing reinforcement until the behavior happens reliably and accurately in response to cue without us having treats and toys present before we cue that behavior.

So that's the first thing. And so once we know that behavior is rapidly and accurately occurring on our first cue without the need for anything, any treats or toys before it, then we can skip that one reward. Now we analyze what happens. Okay, great. If the behavior just is solid, nothing changes the very next rep, everything's the same. Now we can start to shift to that intermittent schedule, but we still keep that rate of reinforcement very high.

So we might be only missing 1 out of every 10 reps for a little while. And then we can start skipping two, but maybe not even two in a row, too close together. Maybe do one with a reward, one without, one with a reward, one without. And then we might gradually move down to where we were on the opposite sort of end of the spectrum, where we can ask for nine or 10 behaviours before we even need to give a reward.

But we do need to do that process gradually. In that process, though, if we miss a rep and we see any delay in response to the cue or any change to the accuracy or enthusiasm, we just sort of abort the mission temporarily and go back to rewarding every time.

Melissa Breau: Interesting. All right, so how do you decide? I know you kind of answered this there, but if you're moving too quickly or not quickly enough when you're removing the food or the toys from the equation, how do you kind of keep an eye on that. Or how do you monitor that you're not moving too fast or not moving quickly enough?

Sharon Carroll: Yeah, well, if you're moving too quickly, then we'll see signs of confusion and frustration. We'll see. And that frustration, depending on the individual dog, that frustration might result in quitting. It might result in them just walking away, going, no, I don't want to do this anymore. Or it may result in them getting amped up.

They might be barking at us, mouthing our clothing, doing zoomies around the room. So if we're seeing signs of confusion or frustration, we've tried to reduce reinforcement too quickly. Either we've started before the learning process was complete, or we're just trying to get that rate of reinforcement down too quickly, like the actual rate of rewarding down too quickly. And also we're going to see reduced reliability. So maybe they need repeated cues to get the behaviour.

Sometimes they're responding accurately to the cues, sometimes they're not. Or there might even be a lag time between the cue and the behaviour. So we give the cue, there's a pause before they do the behaviour. All of those things would tell us that either we've started to try to reduce reinforcement before that behaviour is established, before it's reached for habit formation phase, or. Or we've got onto that intermittent schedule, but we've been in too much of a rush to get down to a much lower rate of reinforcement instead of sort of doing that quite gradually now.

Fortunately, though, there's never a point where we've waited too long before starting reducing reinforcement. So a lot of people think it's like, oh, you know, you could be. You could start it too quickly, but maybe you could also start it too late. Like you've stayed on that continuous schedule of reinforcement for so long and now your dog's reliant on it. But that's not actually what happens. It's not that we've waited too long, it's that people then suddenly do a sudden shift.

So no matter how long we've waited, if we've kept that behavior on a continuous schedule for a long while, then we need to incrementally still shift onto that intermittent schedule, not try to make that shift really suddenly, or try to drop that rate of reinforcement really quickly, because that's when the problems actually occur. We still need it to be systematic and incremental. And I think at this point it's probably worth talking about, like I keep saying, continuous schedule and intermittent schedule.

Continuous schedule of reinforcement just means one for one Every time they do the behaviour, they get a treat. And intermittent schedule, just meaning not every time they do the behaviour. So sometimes they do the behaviour and they get a treat. Like the treat comes, sometimes they do the behavior and they don't get a treat that time. And if we look at it from a human perspective, it's often talked of as that continuous schedule of reinforcement being like a vending machine, like where we go up, we perform the behavior of putting the money in and hitting the button and we expect a treat every time because that's what it's a continuous schedule.

Same with a light switch. We walk in the room, we flick the light on, we expect to see the reinforcement of light because that's what we want for our putting a light switch on. Continuous schedules are great for learning new behaviours because it's very easy for the brain to identify that association between the cue, the behaviour and the reward, because the reward's happening every time. But also extinction occurs really rapidly because the reward is expected.

So if we sort of miss too many in a row, we will get extinction of that behaviour, the behaviour will deteriorate and we'll get such good quality behavior, we'll lose some reliability. Also, the risk of frustration based behaviors when rewards aren't delivered is really high when we're on a continuous schedule. So you know how many times people start sort of banging on a vending machine because they want the treat, because it was guaranteed, it was expected and it should have come.

And so now we get these. And it's the same with our dog. If we're on that continuous schedule and we are not delivering the rewards and we're skipping more than just one that first time, that can be hard on them. So we might see frustration based behaviors. Now, the intermittent schedule, a lot of people in the human terms will refer to that like a slot machine. We put the money and we hit the button and we know that sometimes we're going to get rewarded, not every time we perform that behavior.

Now intermittent schedules of reinforcement are really great for producing some persistence, some resistance to extinction. So you will keep hitting that button multiple times in a row. And just because it doesn't get rewarded every time, it doesn't deteriorate your desire to keep pushing the button. And that's what we want from our dog, is we really want that behavior to just every time they hear that cue, they perform that behavior really persistently, really reliably, because in their mind they're still sure at some point it is going to be reinforced and that's what we're trying to get, what we're trying to have happen when we switch from that continuous schedule to the intermittent, is just to help them build up that understanding that it will be still reinforced, but it's just not going to be reinforced every time.

So just persist, just keep going, just perform the behavior, and at some point that behavior will be reinforced. And I think it's easy for us from a human perspective to look at those examples and not realize how complicated that is for our dogs. Because for humans, we use language, like verbal and written language to explain these things ahead of time. Someone told you that's how a vending machine works.

Someone told you that's how a slot machine works. But animals need to learn that through experience. So if a behaviour is on a continuous schedule, there's an expectation of a reward. We need to shift that behavior onto the intermittent schedule very gradually until they go, oh, okay, so maybe just every five or six times it's going to be rewarded maybe every 10 or 12. And we can't suddenly go to 40 still because we're going to get a deterioration.

We have to build that gradually. So remember, just remembering that habit formation really just means the behavior will happen in response to the cue without needing conscious assessment or decision making. And the brain monitors less frequently, but it still monitors. So if we walk into the room, into a room, and we turn the light switch on and the light doesn't come on, okay, we work out that it's blown globe.

But when we go in that room again, we're going to turn that light switch on again because it's a habit, it's reached habit formation. And we do that quite a while before we walk in the room and think, before we turn the light switch on, we go, oh, that's right. No point. The light's not working. So it's important to remember, extinction still happens. It just happens more slowly once we've reached that habit formation phase.

And whereas, if, for example, someone gave you a button that wasn't guaranteed to have a light come on, so it gives you a torch, and you press it the first time, the torch doesn't work, and then you press it a second time, torch works, and then next time you use it, it's like you have to press it three times and then it's two times and then five times.

But when you know that that's how it works, you will start just pushing that button multiple times and you won't be as frustrated as you would be with a light switch or a vending machine that's not working anymore. So I don't know if that helps people to understand the concept at all between continuous and intermittent, but hopefully it helps someone to understand it.

Melissa Breau: Yeah, no, I think that was a good explanation. Does any of this change depending on what behavior specifically we're looking to reduce reinforcement for?

Sharon Carroll: Fundamentally, no. The process is the same, but some behaviours may need to be trained for longer before we reach that end point. So some behaviours are really simple. Within a couple of sessions they're already at habit formation. The dog knows, oh, I do do the cue, I do the behaviour, I get the reward.

Okay, we're ready to start reducing reinforcement. Boys, other behaviours or different types of dogs. We might be working for weeks and weeks, sometimes months, before we're really ready to start reducing reinforcement for that behaviour. And different behaviours will require different rates of reinforcement to maintain them as well. So a very easy behavior won't need the same rate of reinforcement as a very complex behavior. And it's also going to be affected by things such as the innate traits of the individual dog.

So a high energy dog doing a really fun thing is going to need a very different rate of reinforcement to a very low energy dog being asked to do a high effort, high physical effort. They're going to want that reinforcement fairly frequently to maintain it. And you know, same as if there's an intrinsic value in the activity. That dog really just loves doing that thing. You're not going to need to probably give them treats or toys once they've learned the behaviour.

Or you may certainly only need to do that very infrequently. Same with a dog that might love the challenge and complexity of work versus a dog that doesn't love that so much. So our rates of reinforcement will vary with things like that. Also the familiarity of the behavior. A very new behaviour might still be on a very high rate of reinforcement, whereas a very familiar established behaviour might be way down on a very low rate of reinforcement.

And even the influence of the environment, maybe we increase the rate of reinforcement for a specific behavior just to help increase the reliability of that behavior, because the environment's more challenging for that dog at that time. It's kind of an interesting thing to think about from the standpoint of a lot of the times we are seeking to reduce reinforcement so that we can have those behaviors held up in the more challenging situations which like, yeah, but we have to separate that in pieces.

It's like, okay, initially in that challenging environment, we increase the rate of reinforcement, then eventually we decrease back to our lower rate of reinforcement. But yeah, it is common. People go out into those bigger environments, and they also want to stop using the treats and toys at the same time.

Melissa Breau: Yeah. And you can see why that maybe makes it really hard to accomplish your end goals, which is where I was going to ask you next, which is, why do you think so many teams kind of struggle with removing reinforcement? Sounds like maybe that's part of the answer.

Sharon Carroll: Yeah, Yeah. I think sometimes thinking about their end goals too much before they even start training the behavior they're already worried about, like, right, well, I need to really not have this. Need too much reinforcement. You're like, no, no, the dog's learning the behavior at this point. They need lots of reinforcement. And so, like, trying to limit the rewards too soon in the process, or not building motivation to perform the behavior enough, not building enough.

A lengthy enough history of reinforcement before they're all quickly trying to drop out the treats and toys. Yeah. Maybe they still have rewards present before cueing the behavior that interferes a lot with the situation. So we need to have stopped that happening before we even reduce reinforcement. So reducing rate of reinforcement too quickly is a big reason why people have problems suddenly skipping too many rewards in succession.

And like you said, that's common in trialing. They'll keep the rewards up in training. Then they go to a competition and suddenly drop reinforcement in one go. And I think the other thing is confusing working for longer periods of time with reducing reinforcement. They're two very different things. Reducing reinforcement is specific to reinforcing individual behaviors. Every behavior is on its own, intermittent schedule of reinforcement. Working for longer periods is about mental stamina.

That's about how long can a dog work before they reach what I refer to as the CTP, the critical time point, the point where there's going to be deterioration. There's going to start to be some distractibility. They're going to start looking for something better to do. They're going to look around, start sniffing the ground, you know, stop performing the cue behaviors. But that's not to do with the rate of reinforcement or anything.

Reducing reinforcement. That's to do with building that mental stamina, that ability to work for longer between rewards, which is actually, yeah, a little bit of a separate. A separate thing. Often it does get tangled into reducing reinforcement, but it is actually quite separate. And I think, yeah, just not preparing for long periods of work without treats and toys before entering the competition ring. So people just, you know, sort of think their dog won't notice that they're just suddenly Working for, you know, three minutes without any treats and toys, it's like, yeah, if you can't do it in practice reliably, frequently, then, you know, probably not the best thing to just try and do it for the first time in the competition ring.

And I think also, I guess somewhat related issue is not training an end of exercise cue. So a lot of people have an end of session cue, like, you know, all done, do a treat, scatter. But not training an end of session, end of exercise cue can be really tricky when you're in a sport that requires you to reset and do multiple different exercises. Because a lot of people end every section of work with a reward marker.

So they work for maybe longer and longer and longer periods, but then they end with throwing a ball or end with a strike on a tug, or end with giving treats, end with a treat toss. It's like, but what are you going to do when you're in the ring? And you just need to end that exercise and then walk off and set up for the new exercise. Dog's going to be going, where's my reinforcement?

Where's my treats? Where's my reward? So training that end of exercise cue where the dog understands, oh, end of exercise, okay, I can have a little mental break. We're going to go and reset for another exercise. Stops us from having to actually just work through the whole thing. Like, I'm going to end this exercise, then I'm going to heal to the next exercise. You know, we want that dog to have that little mental break and know that they're on a little bit of semi free time.

They can just move with us to the next exercise. But they need to be able to do that without feeling like they, they missed out on a reward. So, yeah, I think that's another important point where reason why people have trouble in competition rings when they haven't got a solid end of exercise cue that doesn't involve giving treats and toys. That's so interesting. I mean, we've pulled apart so many different pieces here, right?

There's the reducing reinforcement for the individual behavior. There's the building the mental stamina so you can do a whole routine of multiple behaviors that you have already reduced reinforcement for. And then there's the piece of like, okay, yes, ultimately most competition venues or sports are going to require finishing one thing, break next thing. And again, you have to transition all of those pieces without classical reinforcers. Right. So it's just so much more complex, I think, than people who are new to dog sports. Take the time to really understand.

Melissa Breau: So part of the reason we're talking about all this is you've got a new class right. On reducing reinforcement on a calendar for August. It is now open for registration. People can go sign up. You want to share a little more about the class, kind of which pieces there you're going to cover in the class and maybe who should consider joining you?

Sharon Carroll: Sure. So it's in the foundation section because the content's not specific to one sport. It's called progressing your training, reducing reinforcement without reducing enthusiasm. So even though reducing reinforcement is in the title, the class covers, like, a lot more than just reducing reinforcement. So in week one, we do a lot of the building of the tricks and the behaviors. So we talking about shaping and luring. We get the behaviors happening on cue.

We're assessing current tricks and sort of saying, okay, which category do they fall into? Are they still at the point where, you know, they're. They're at that acquisition phase, really, or the early action outcome phase? So we're still doing lots of luring and shaping. They're not ready to put a cue there, are they at the next level where we're kind of ready to put a formal cue in there? Are they at the point where they actually are reliably happening, but only when the treats and toys are present before the trick's cued?

And so we look at that as a separate issue that we work with. We look at is everything going well, but we're still using a lot of props, so we're talking about that as being a potential thing we need to work on. We actually work on that in week two, but we're assessing those exercises in week one. We look at. Are we at the point where maybe it's that the trick's really, really good, but when we go into a different environment, suddenly it all falls apart?

Okay, that's something we deal with later in the class as well. And then we're also saying, hang on, there's a problem with this trick. So the gold students will be saying, I've got this trick, and I don't know why it's not working, but something's going wrong. When I don't have the treats and toys, the trick's not working. And so we're going to be looking, you know, maybe it's not always accurate, it's not always occurring on the formal cue, or maybe it sometimes needs repeated cues.

So we're going to look at those sorts of things. And that's in our week one. Week two is all about reducing Reinforcement and using and fading props. Week three is about creating and maintaining motivation and rehearsing, like reward events and effective use of reward placement. Week four is about using remotely placed rewards. So having our dog being able to leave rewards behind in an unconflicted way and go out and work and then return to them.

And we're talking then about building mental stamina, working for longer periods, using all these behaviors that are already on an intermittent schedule, but we're piecing them all together and being able to work for longer and longer periods. And we're talking then about delayed rewards for that reason as well. Week five, we're talking about the training, the end of exercise cue that we talked about, and eliminating anticipation of cues.

So training and reinforcing the behavior of waiting for a cue, which is a big one for a lot of dogs, especially when we're using props. We just put the prop down, they just start doing the behavior. And then we're like, hang on, we want them to wait until we cue it. So we talk about that and we talk about preparing for competing without treats and toys. And then in week six, we just talk about working around treats and toys.

So when we want to be able to keep those behaviors reliable and occurring in a focused way, even when there are treat containers nearby or toys on the ground or interesting smells or drop food. So that's what we're talking about in week six. So, yeah, it's pretty packed class.

Melissa Breau: Yeah. And I think you did also ask who might it suit?

Sharon Carroll: I think it's going to suit. I honestly think, I mean, everyone, I'm sure everyone you talk to would go, well, my class will suit everyone.

But honestly, I think this class will be great for a big range of people. So people who are brand new to dog training or brand new to positive reinforcement based training, as well as experienced trainers looking to further refine their skills. I think it's great for people who instruct probably dog training classes as well, or sport dog classes, because they. The theory topics provide a lot of solid understanding of why we might make different choices with different dogs.

And I think the theory for the experienced people will let them get their geek on because there's lots of really cool. You know, I think I'm just grabbing for some pieces of paper here. But like week one, we talk about cue salience and overshadowing and cue transfers and extinction and superstitious behaviors and all these sorts of fun things. So I think the theory part for the experienced trainers will be really cool.

But there's also just the practical stuff is step by step processes for the newer trainers. And in fact, I think in week one I even say if you're brand new to training, maybe skip reading these, you know, certain three topics that are in week one because, you know, I don't want you to get overwhelmed. There's tons of other theory and if you're really keen you can go back and reread those.

But the rest of it is very much practical step by step processes for people that are newer to training or people that are having current issues with something to do with their tricks that aren't working well.

Melissa Breau: All right, final thoughts. Key points you want to leave folks with. What else do we need to know on this?

Sharon Carroll: I think I just harp back to that. It's never too late to reduce reinforcement. I think a lot of people go, oh, I don't want to do it too soon, but I don't want to do it too late. And it's like, well, it's never too late. Like rewarding for too long is way better than trying to reduce the rewards too early or too quickly. So the key is gradual shifting, though, from that continuous schedule to the intermittent schedule and treating each behavior in isolation.

So some behaviours will need to be maintained on that much higher rate of reinforcement than other behaviours. So just, yeah, treating each behaviour separately. Just remembering it's never too late to. Even if you've been just giving lots of treats all the time for everything and you're like, oh no, I've got in this horrible habit of I give treats all the time for everything, then come and join the class.

Because it is never too late to change that to the situation where those behaviours are performed really, reliably, really rapidly and accurately without needing treats and toys after every performance of the behaviour.

Melissa Breau: Awesome. All right, well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast to talk about all this, Sharon.

Sharon Carroll: No worries. It's been fantastic talking to you again. And yeah, I'm looking forward to the class starting.

Melissa Breau: Absolutely. 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!