Jane Ardern joins me for a conversation about how our release cues can influence our dog's state of mind and ability to learn. She shares what the field-bred spaniels she's owned have taught her about frustration, frantic behavior, anticipation, and relaxation... with several helpful takeaways bound to apply to any dog sports team.
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 Jane Ardern about the difference between teaching our dogs anticipation and relaxation. That is when they should be waiting to do a thing and when they should just chill out. Hi, Jane, welcome back to the podcast.
Jane Ardern: Hi, thanks for having me. Absolutely excited to chit chat about this. It's a big topic. Do you want to just start us off by kind of reminding everybody a little bit about who you are?
Jane Ardern: Yeah. So I'm Jane Arden. I'm a dog trainer and behaviorist. I am based in Lancashire, England. I have eight working cockers now which I do all sorts of bits and bobs with.
But we mostly do gundog training. I run a training center. I have my own facility which is fabulous. And mostly I do pet dog training with pet owners and some activities. Gundog, we do gundog training. Majority of my clients that come through are kind of pet dog owners with high drive working breeds. Always a fantastic combination.
Melissa Breau: Yeah. All right, so how did I do in that intro? Can you start off for kind of explaining your version of, you know, the difference between anticipation and relaxation?
Jane Ardern: We're talking about sports dogs. Yeah. So for me, I think it's really important when we're working with any dogs that it's understanding how or what we expect from the dog and what we want the dog to understand. And there's so many different ways for us to train our dogs from a working point of view and from a sport point of view. I just think it's really important that we take into account those methods and those approaches and understand how they influence the dog on an emotional level.
Because for me, I think it's really important that we're constantly looking at the dog on an emotional level, making sure that we're meeting their emotional needs and making sure that the dog's in the right emotional state depending on what our expectation is. And I think for me, like with release cues is when we release dogs in different situations and scenarios, we are usually our expectations differ and therefore I think it's important we can create, we understand that and we can see what anticipation arousal looks like and we can also see what relaxation should look like as well.
Melissa Breau: So you started to get into what I was going to ask you next, which is, you know, why has this led to using different release cues? Can you talk about that a little more and maybe share an example of when you use what kind of cue.
Jane Ardern: So for me, examples are, you know, there's a, like when if you've got a dog who you've taken to the pub or you're waiting your turn.
So whether you're in competition and you're, you're outside the ring and you're waiting your turn, you want a dog who can switch off. And then when you working your dog and when you're, you know, so whether that's a dog waiting to be sent to hunt, whether it's waiting to be sent to do retrieve, whether it's, it's in the start line in agility, we want a different dog because we want a dog who's switched on and ready for action.
And from a release cue point of view, it's also about what that expectation is. So I have what I call my working release cue. So my working release cue is like, it's like a training cue. So eventually that will be changed into specific instructions. So when I'm using my working release cue, I want that kind of controlled anticipation. I want a dog managing itself well, but I want the dog waiting and ready for action if we are waiting our turn.
So for me, from a working gundog point of view, we have time between drives where people kind of stand around chatting and drink gin and the dogs need to be able to switch off. The dogs need to be like, we're having a break, we're having a rest. So the dogs need to be able to switch off. And so again, you know, if you're doing a sport, if you're waiting your turn, if you turn up to a show and you're not going in the ring for however long, you want a dog who can switch off.
And I just think it's important that when we're training those behaviors, that we want the dog to do that. The release cue that you use when you're training those behaviors is really important about what we want the dog to expect. So if I, if I give my working release cue and I fire the dog up, I'm not going to want, I'm not going to fire a dog up out of, you know, so an example would be when I release the dog for a retrieve, I want the dog to go out like a rocket.
I want it to be fast, I want it to be, you know, ready for action, full on brain processing as it should do when we've been sat in the pub for a couple of hours having a three course meal and I release the dog from. From its settle. And I do not want it to go off like a rocket. I want the dog to just get up and we can just potter outside of the pub.
So for me, it's very much about what the expectation is afterwards, when you've released the dog, about what you. What you actually want from the dog. So just purely how we train, anticipation and relaxation is. Is important. So we create that correct emotional state that we're looking for. And I think if you've got. If you're training and then you've got certain release cues, you're just creating predictable patterns for the dog so the dog knows there's just clarity there for the dog.
Melissa Breau: Can you go into the emotional state part just a little more like, why is this so important for us, I guess as handlers or trainers kind of understand?
Jane Ardern: So I think when we're getting a dog to wait, for whatever reason, that we're asking them to wait if we've got over arousal, if we've got frustration and frustration, especially with the working breeds and you're working dogs, frustration tends to be the one that a lot of dogs struggle with.
So for me, I think it's really important that we manage frustration. I like to have a dog who is processing well once we release the dog, if they're processing well while they're waiting. When we ask the dog to do the job, if it's processing well beforehand, it's going to process well when it does its activity. And it's the difference between having a dog who understands it's like, I've got to manage myself before I get released to go and do what, whatever the dog's doing.
From a job point of view, if the dog is managing itself well, if it is still, if it is focused, if it's breathing correctly, all those things like, tell me that the dog's managing itself well when I release that dog to perform, the performance will be good or the dog will do its best. So. So when we release the dog, the performance is going to be. The performance will be good and the dog's going to offer you its best because it's functioning and processing.
If we've got a dog who's waiting in anticipation, but you've not got that controlled anticipation and you've got potentially frustration, anticipation. Generally, what the dog does when you release it is their focus is not to do the task, but their focus is actually just to relieve their frustration and rebalance themselves out. So for me, with a spaniel, what you will find is like the hunting, if you cast a dog out to hunt and it's been in frustration, stroke, anticipation.
When you cast them out, they will be quite frantic and you can see that the dog's just moving to make itself feel better. So my question will then be like, how, how well is that dog doing its job? So, and I've seen a lot of clients that I've worked with that do agility and they've had the same, that if they can get that start line stay that like the dog processing well during that start line stay, then the performance is better.
And I've had clients who've gone on to win because they've literally changed how the whole process starts and how that dog is from a mindset point of view before it does, before it does its run. So for me, I think it's, it's really important we learn to read that. And I see a lot of dogs who physically can stay and wait, so they're there in the stay. And people can say like, you know, my dog can do that for two, three minutes or whatever.
But when I'm looking at that dog on an emotional level, that dog, I would say the dog isn't doing it emotionally, so the dog isn't managing itself well. So it's really important for me that when, that when we're doing the behaviours with our dogs, that we look at whether the dog's physically doing the behavior, but more importantly whether the dog's emotionally doing the behavior. Because if something's going to fall apart, especially under pressure, it will because the dog's not in the right emotional state to manage itself. It's always that bit that cause. But I think that causes behaviours to fall apart.
Melissa Breau: Okay, so how do we think about reward strategy in this picture? Right. How does your reward strategy change? Maybe depending on the desired emotional state that you want your dog to have. And I know arousal obviously factors into this too. So feel free to talk about, you know, reward strategy and arousal because I think they're kind of maybe tied together.
Jane Ardern: But yeah, so I think how we, how we deliver rewards and the kind of rewards that we use. So for example, if I'm teaching a dog to kind of relaxation and wait, so waiting its turn, having a break and I want the dog to switch off. I'm probably going to use food when I teach that, just because the food for my guys is definitely less arousing than a ball, for example.
So if I want to teach controlled anticipation, I will potentially start with the foundations with food, but then I will move on to using a toy because what I will want to do is I want to rev the dog up and then I want that stillness in there. So I want the dog to learn to do that and I will do that through the rewards that I use.
So I would definitely, if I'm kind of teaching settle and relaxation, I will just step start that with food. There are some dogs where we have to remove the food because the food is stimulating, arousing and we can't get that relaxation. I won't use a clicker when I'm teaching relaxation either, just purely because I think that, you know, it kind of triggers that dopamine. And dopamine is awakeness, alertness, focus, concentration, and I'm looking for relaxation.
The food with some dogs can have the same, same effect where it keeps the dog in a state of arousal and anticipation. So I'll teach the physical behavior with food. But sometimes with some dogs, what I've got to do is take the food out of the equation to get that level of relaxation. Some dogs are touchy feely and some dogs do respond well to physical and tactile contact.
So there are some dogs that I will use physical and tactile contact. Especially from looking at a relaxation point of view. Some dogs just kind of need everything from a learning point of view. Some dogs just need the environment to be quiet for them to be able to learn how to switch off at first. So again, sometimes it's just, sometimes it's the rewards that I've got such as food, toys and tactile praise and sometimes just some quiet verbal praise with the dogs.
I originally come from an obedience background and so I was kind of taught to like whoop and holler every time the dog did something brilliant. And then when I got spaniels, they're kind of like up there anyway, they're whooping and hollering dogs and they don't really need that whooping and hollering. And sometimes the weeping and hollering just like, like blows their mind. I remember training with one of my friends who's like had gundogs for years and years and we were out and I think I'd blown the stop whistle and stopped my dog to flush and I was like woohoo.
And the dog just went woohoo. And then ran off and chased the bird. And I remember he said to me, don't excite the spaniel, Jane, it's already excited. And that was, that was definitely a valuable piece of advice. So one of the things as well is, and I think sometimes when we're reward based trainers, we're very much about like excitement, high value rewards. And I've learned that the, you know, the power of calm, quiet praise, especially when we're looking for relaxation, is because it's information.
If you've got a nice relationship with the dog and you can give them that information and say, yes, this is, this is what I'm looking for. And for some dogs, that's all they need, like, oh, okay, I've got this, I can do this. So the calm, quiet praise with some dogs is really, really helpful. I will use how I deliver the food so I'll feed to the mouth.
If I'm looking for more stillness, I'm going to throw the food around if I want to rev the dog up a little bit. But I think how we provide reinforcement because it's all about steps and sequences. So if the dog's learning, I do this and then I do that and then I get that reinforcer. That reinforcer is going to impact how that dog feels as soon as you give that cue.
So for me, you know, the dog's aware of the process. So I think it's important that we create a process that ends in a reinforcer that is going to support the emotional state that we, that we want from the dog. Are there other things that impact your reinforcement strategy? So arousal is usually, so arousal is usually everything. The dog as an individual, I think every single dog reacts to reinforcement differently.
So I always think you've got to train the dog in front of you and you've got to assess how the reinforcement plays a part. One thing that I will often do with dogs that's really, I think it's really important when we think about thinking about reinforcers is when I've asked for something or I've captured something and I reinforce the dog, I will always assess what the dog, the dog does after the reinforcement because for me, like that gives you so much information about how your dog's feeling, what it's thinking.
And just today we was doing some training and with my young dog and he's quite a sensitive dog and we introduced him to shots. So we was doing some clapping and what was interesting was when I threw the food, he was coming off the placeboard. When I released him and threw the food, after the clap had gone off, he ate the food and he looked like he was just like, yeah, whatever, I'm doing this.
But he ran towards me and jumped up at me and he did that twice before and then he went straight back to the board. So I knew that when he was going straight back to the board that he'd like rebalanced himself and he was dealing with that. So for me, I'm always really, really observant of what happens after the reinforcer as well. If the dog's straight back on, the dog's functioning well, it's doing what it needs to do, it's in the right place.
If the dog's going, doing something else and then coming back saying, what are we doing next? I want a dog who gets its reinforcer and comes straight back to go, what are we doing next? If that dog's not coming straight back, then my question will be why? What happened? Is the reinforcer not right for the dog? Did something occur in the environment that's concerned the dog? So that's one of the big things for me when I'm looking at reinforcement.
Was there a particular dog or moment or you know, that kind of made you realize the importance of this stuff of teaching, you know, different types of release cues. And then eight working spaniels. So like what impact have you seen this have? Like now that you've kind of implemented it into your training. So I've got, so with my spaniels, they are all, although they're all spaniels, they are all very different.
And I've got a dog who just manages himself. You know, he's just like chill and you know, when I take him out for a day's work, it's like a walk in the park. He just sits and waits and he just, and then, you know. But when I cast him off, he doesn't hunt like the other dogs, he does his job. But you know, he's very much like, I'll be like, get in there and he'll air scent and go there, there's nothing in there.
And yeah, he just doesn't lose his head. You know, you can get like loads of birds under his nose and he's just like, yeah, whatever. And I just always think it's interesting because people see him and say like, oh, he's such a good dog. And I go, but that's not training, that is like who he is. He just manages himself. He doesn't get over excited about everything and he just naturally manages himself really well.
But as a sport dog, I would say that, you know, he's not, he, he's, he's not, he's never going to win anything. He's got, he'd he like be the perfect dog for, you know, an eight year old kid to take, to take shooting with because he would just be dead easy to handle. But he hasn't got that, he hasn't got that edge and he hasn't got that, you know, and it's, it's never going to be there.
That's, that's like who he is. Then I've got Mia, who's like one of like my wildest cocker, as we call her. So she's the kind of dog who would struggle to wait in the start line. She is the kind of dog that if she, if you don't manage her well, she will, she will be erratic and frantic in the behavior that she does. So again, she's a totally different dog.
So, like, how I train her and how I train him is very, very different. And I'm also realistic about what I'm gonna get out of those dogs. What, what I'm gonna get out of those dogs as well. And my first cocker, Pickles, she was like a Ferrari with no brakes. And she was a huge learning experience for me. I went from Leonburgers, 20 years of owning Leon Burgers to getting this little chocolate cocker that was like a rocket.
And it was a huge, huge dog training experience for me. And she was, she always struggled to settle, she struggled to switch off. And once you got to go in and she was working, she was great, but she was always on the edge and she was always, you know, she, she was a hard dog to handle and she was like, you know, she made me nervous when I was handling her.
I was always nervous. You never knew what was going to happen. And you would get moments of brillian and then you would get moments of her just like, usually embarrassing you completely. And what was really interesting. So then I got Stig afterwards and Stig was probably a stronger feel bred dog than she was. And I was really, really focused on. I wanted a dog who could manage himself better.
So I did loads of relaxation and settle training and what I did with him was he was ended up so kind of super chill that I managed himself and managed his arousal well that when I was asking him to go into the COVID and work, he, he didn't want to go in because he wasn't like. Because if a spaniel's got to go in the COVID they've got to, there's got to be a certain amount of adrenaline, there's got to be some drive there.
And so I'd gone to like the other extreme. So I had one dog who was like fired up and was crashing through the COVID but not quite under Control. And then he ended up with a dog where I had so much management of arousal. And. But. But he was. He then ended up making noise because he was getting frustrated because he wanted to get in with.
Because he could scent the birds and. But because he was in a low state of arousal, he was like, that's going to be uncomfortable for me. So I ended up with this conflict and I ended up creating noise in him. So then when I got to my third dog, I was like, right, we. We need a dog that can switch off when it's between drives and when it's in the car and that kind of stuff.
I want a dog who can switch off. But what I also needed, I need a dog who's in a state of arousal but managing itself well. So with my other dogs, that's. That's what I've always worked on, is I want the dog who is. Is gonna fire up. And I think there are some dogs that just do that naturally. There are some dogs who can switch off and then they can just fire up in an instant.
But we're not always blessed with those dogs, if only so. So we have to kind of put that work into to help those dogs. And each one of my dogs that I've owned have taught. They've all taught me something, and especially from an arousal point of view. And for me, my focus is always that I've got a dog who is happy and I've got a dog who can perform well and perform at its best with the information that I've given to it.
Melissa Breau: It is a little refreshing. I don't know, soothing to hear that, you know, it takes a couple dogs to get to the point where you feel like you can find the balance. Right. As somebody who's, you know, on dog three, I guess, yeah, it's my dog owning experience, but yeah.
Jane Ardern: I, I always say to people, you don't. You. You shouldn't make the same mistakes, but what you will do is probably make different ones.
Melissa Breau: Hopefully. Hopefully not the same ones. Yeah. So working on all of this, I mean, I think it makes a lot of sense in terms of how it can impact performance. Right. Have you seen the impact on the handler dog relationship? Do you think that it has a positive influence on just other aspects of life with your dog?
Jane Ardern: Yeah. So I just think the more information, for me, the more information and the more detail that we can give to the dog, it just creates that level of clarity, so the dog clearly understands what our expectation is.
And so I just think the more. More information that we give to the dog, the more that the dog's gonna wanna be around us. It's like if we make sense to them, then they're gonna want to hang out with us. So for me, I think creating that clarity with your dog and being really, really clear about the expectation that you have is definitely gonna help that kind of handler, dog relationship.
I think creating predictability dogs. So I think if we can create those kind of drills and sequences when we're training so the dog knows what's coming, it's got that level of predictability. It just helps them and it, and it enables them to do the things that we want them to do. So for me, I think, you know, just having one simple release cue when the expectation on release, on a release cue is so different that I think men, dogs, dogs really struggle.
So, you know, for mine, if I'm giving my working release cue, what that says to them is, or what I'm telling the dog is what that working release cue means is it means you can move out of position, but we are still doing stuff together. So that's why I call it my working release cue. So literally my working release cue just says the dog, it's, you can move out of position.
And my working release cue, as I layer on my training will eventually be replaced for cues to hunt and retrieve and to do the actual activity. But what I won't do is like do the stay and then the activity because the activity in itself has got its own reinforcement in place. And when I'm teaching that stay or that wait in anticipation, I want to be able to manage the reinforcer so I can build the dog on an emotional level to what I want.
So, and then I'll put the activity in, I'll put the activities in later. So my working release cues simply means you can move out of position, but we're still doing stuff. So when I release the dog, I want the dog to kind of jump out of their stay. But what I want them to do is go, and what are we doing? And then I'm going to apply that reinforcer when I'm looking for.
When I'm working with a dog who is, I'm looking for settle and relaxation, what I will generally do with that is I will just kind of get them up and heal them out of it. So again, it'll be a low level arousal activity. Like they're going to get food for it. But you know, he'll work especially for spaniels, they're just like, oh yeah, it's just heel work. So I'm always going to bring, I'm going to.
How I release the dog from that is going to be very different because I don't want the dog going. We're going to be doing heel work. We're going to be doing heel work while it's in that state of relaxation. So I'm just going to make sure that it's quiet, it's low key. And generally when I release the dog from a settle our relaxation when we're out and about the dog again, I want the dog still with me.
And then what I've also got is when we go out for a walk in the morning and they're just dogs being dogs and I clip them off lead and they're free to go and just like have a sniff and a mooch. Then again, that's a different release cue because the ex. Because I'm asking the dog... Basically my release cues are cueing specific behaviors. So when they're released to go off on a walk, they're not free to do their own thing.
There's always rules in place. But obviously the element of what I would call freedom is much bigger with. Within that. So I think if when we're saying to the dog this release cue, we're actually not just releasing the dog, we're actually giving them a specific instruction about what the expectation is thereafter. And I think that just, it just helps the dog.
Melissa Breau: So a big part of why we're chatting about all this is you're re offering your webinar Anticipation versus Understanding and Training release cues on August 14, which is right around the corner. Do you want to just share a little more about kind of what you'll cover in the webinar and maybe who should consider joining us?
Jane Ardern: Yes. So I will cover my different release cues. There's videos in there. So there's, there's plenty of practical application within this and there's explanations upon kind of arousal, different arousal levels in the dog. There's also my different release cues that I use and then there's also some practical videos in there with regards to like how to, how to apply that and how to do that.
Melissa Breau: Awesome. Any final thoughts or key points you kind of want to leave folks with?
Jane Ardern: I think really that you know, the webinar, the webinar's suitable for anybody because again it, it applies to any sport and yeah, I think hopefully it'll be quite useful for lots of people. Final thoughts are really. Yeah, read, read your dog. Focus on the emotion. That's what I'm always. That's what I'm always big about.
And I like the think about what's happening after reinforcement, too. You mentioned that in there, and I think that's a good reminder for everybody to pay attention to that.
Melissa Breau: Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Jane Ardern: Thank you.
Melissa Breau: And thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week, this time with our 2025 National Obedience Champion, Petra Ford. 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!