Dogs with a lot of interest in the environment, who come to the outside world with big feelings or who need an outlet but aren't safe off leash are our topic in this episode! Erin shares how dog powered sports can help and Tracey shares insights from working with prey-driven dogs. 

 Transcription

Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breaux 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. Today we'll be talking to Tracey McLennan and Erin Lynes about meeting our dog's needs by building their skills. Hi, Tracey and Erin. Welcome back to the podcast.

Tracey McLennan: Hi. Delighted to be here.

Erin Lynes: I'm very excited to be here too.

Melissa Breau: Awesome. All right, well, to start us out, do you guys just want to remind everybody kind of a little bit about you? Who wants to go first?

Tracey McLennan: Well, I go first. Hi, I'm Tracey. I work with high prey drive dogs pretty much exclusively. I run an all online membership to help people with dogs like that. And yeah, that's pretty much my focus.

Melissa Breau: Awesome. Erin.

Erin Lynes: I'm Erin Lynes. I live in Quesnel, bc, Canada, and I have a facility where I train people and dogs for all kinds of dog sports. Dock diving, agility, dog powered sports, shed, antler hunting, all the things. And I read Labradors. So I'm just up to my eyeballs in dogs and dog stuff all the time. All right, well, I wanted to have the two of you on the podcast together because next week you're doing back to back webinars on topics that while initially they maybe seem unrelated, it seems like they benefit kind of a very similar type of dog.

Melissa Breau: So to start us off, do you each just want to talk a bit about your upcoming webinar?

Tracey McLennan: I'm going to talk about arousal and prey drive. It's one of those topics where lots of the people I speak to are keen to lower arousal and sometimes they're a little bit concerned that their dog's actually stressed when they're interested in prey. And so I was keen to do a webinar to talk about that subject because it's not as straightforward as it may be for in some other circumstances.

Erin Lynes: So yeah. So my webinar is all about dog powered sports and the three key things that each team needs to be successful. So I'm going to be talking to people about why it's important and how to teach your dog to line up, to pass distractions and to take turn cues right or left while you're along the trail. So I mentioned that I think that there's probably some things in common the dogs who do these two things maybe share.

So let's talk about the type of dog that you're both likely to be working with. And we're talking about these topics. So for me, really they can be any sort of breed. I've worked with dogs from toy breeds to giant breeds. Any dog at all can be one that ends up with a high prey drive. But typically the dogs that I see have got lots of energy. In some situations they might not be particularly high energy dogs normally, but the presence of pre or the thought of it will bring that in them.

And so yeah, I guess that sort of, it's that sort of drive, it's not there. They're not necessarily dogs that are lively all of the time or even dogs that you would do a lot of training with. They're not necessarily motivated by that sort of thing. But the presence of pre will make them become very active. So I guess that's perhaps those are mostly the dogs I work with.

So the, the dogs that I will see in dog powered sports training are pretty wide range. The dogs I don't see are the ones that are sort of couch potatoes who would rather, you know, lounge then go out. But if you've got a dog who's excited to go for their walk every day, who needs to run to survive if they just thrive on movement, those are the dogs that do really well in dog powered sports.

And it can range from like I've had dachshunds in my class that do really well all the way up to Euro hounds that are specifically bred for sprint racing. So there's a pretty, pretty wide range. And just the main common denominator is dogs that are motivated by movement. And I think maybe the common thing that we see between the dogs in my webinar that might be interested in Tracy's also is because they're motivated by movement.

They, you know, they probably are more inclined to see and notice prey and get the urge to chase. So maybe some of those dogs could use a dog powered sports outlet for some of that running around.

Tracey McLennan: For sure. It's one of the things I recommend repeatedly. You could take up, you could do some canicross specifically. Certainly even if they're not doing a dog paired sport, I find that if people get the gear, it helps them be able to go out into the places where they otherwise avoid going because the dog's so difficult to handle.

And then it's night, the dogs enjoy that. But it also, even if they're just walking, it encourages them to be out in the places and I feel as though that's helpful for them. So yeah, there is a business near me that runs specific cani-hiking classes where they just walk and I'm always encouraging people. So, yeah, I definitely think that people who would come to my webinar would really benefit from your one as well.

Erin Lynes: That's really cool. One of my best lead dog Venom is very prey motivated, but when she's in harness and she's pulling, she's very focused. So we can pass like grouse flying and squirrels running and deer and stuff. And she's like, maybe later. I'm kind of busy right now, so. That's kind of cool that you've noticed that too, Tracey.

Tracey McLennan: Oh, it was completely transformative with one of my own dogs. That was why I noticed it made such a diff. Absolutely made such a difference with him. So.

Melissa Breau: Yeah, definitely. Do you want to share that story?

Tracey McLennan: So the dog who really got me into working with prey drive was a collie cross. He was really interested in just the smell of prey. It wasn't necessarily the animals or themselves, but the smell of deer was really exciting for him and he would get lost for hours sometimes.

So he was very difficult to walk off the lead for a while. And he also really liked to run. And because he was so hard to handle on a lead I took up, I started running with him. And then I joined a local canicross class and we did lots and lots of running together for years. We did it. I was never a runner, but I did three half marathons while I had that dog.

And he. And the difference that it made to him was that I could take him then places where there were deer and he was safe. And I was safe because he wasn't going to injure me by pulling or dragging the line out of my hand, which used to happen when he was very young. And over time it absolutely helped. He eventually was a dog. I would just run him and he would be loose running next to me.

But that happened because I could take him to places where there were deer, whereas previously I'd been really avoiding going into woods or anywhere where we were likely to have deer nearby. Made such a difference to him. Yeah, it was incredible.

Melissa Breau: It seems like it's really important for those types of dogs or even, you know, not necessarily prey driven dogs, but just dogs that maybe have big feelings about life or that excess energy to have some sort of an outlet for those behaviors. Can you guys talk to that a little bit?

Tracey McLennan: Yeah. So from my point of view, what I often say to people is if your dog's got high prey drive, they need some. They need an outlet for it. They do need to be able to move. Movement's important. And I'm always encouraging people and this is part of the webinar. It's to find an outlet where they can use food or toys or depending on what the dog wants to do with prey, sometimes prey itself.

But they need to give the dog regular outlets that kind of match what they want to do with prey. And that really helps because without it, the dogs are often like their welfare is not as good as it could be because they have these sorts of things, you know, typically these have been deliberately bred into them. The interest in prey has often been deliberately enhanced in some way by selective breeding.

So we. So I'm always encouraging people to find something to do. So for my dog that just really liked the scene running through woods where the word year was just perfect. But what my older spaniel, I did Erin's shed hunting class with her when I just moved. I just moved house to be closer to my family and I found there were suddenly a lot of deer, more deer than I was used to where I live now.

And they don't move away as much. They're urban deer, they stay quite nearby. And my older, she's my older dog now, but she was really, she was like just going off to find them constantly. It was really hard. And so I started to do lots of teaching with her. Can you find things that are near me? I did lots and lots. And that's now the deer aren't such a thing for her anymore.

The smell of them is quite interesting still. But she's happy, she can find things. She knows that I will give her things to find and that's important for her. So the deer aren't, aren't really an issue for us anymore.

Erin Lynes: I think that's kind of important, isn't it? We've got dogs who have these innate instincts and drives and sometimes those are difficult for us to manage in a modern world.

So our dogs' lives can become pretty small if we don't have a good way to let them express that or move their bodies or search or whatever that is that they need to do. And as far as dog powered sports go, it's a really great and reasonably low cost entry level thing you can do to exercise a dog who needs to move even if they can't be off leash at the moment or if you don't have a great place where they can just run and play.

The other thing I think that it does beyond just moving their bodies is it gives them an outlet for focusing. So mentally tiring out your dog through nose work is pretty well known. People know that you can do that. But it also is very tiring to maintain your focus on a trail and ignore all the distractions and all the people and all the dogs and all the deer smells and everything else you might come along, all the sandwich wrappers and things that might be along the way and just.

Just keep moving. It's. They're so satiated when they're done. It's like, you don't have to necessarily run long distances when they're maintaining that level of focus. It is. It's very fulfilling and tiring, and it's good for a lot of different types of dogs, too.

Melissa Breau: So I want to talk about arousal for. In particular, for kind of a moment here. And Tracy, if you don't mind, I've got a question kind of for you first here, which is, you know, how does arousal interact with prey drive? And then, you know, why does that make it kind of a tricky combination?

Tracey McLennan: So arousal is really all about getting ready to do something. Rising arousal levels. It's just a dog's body getting ready to take action. So when there's prey around or the dog thinks there might be prey around, that those arousal levels will typically go increase. But one of. But what arousal does for. What arousal does for animals is.

And for humans as well as it helps them be able to focus. It's what produces the. The ability to focus on what they're doing. And so when the focus is entirely on the pre, that. That does make it difficult for us because often most people then are very concerned. What if my dog just is gone? What if something happens? What if I need to call them back and they're busy, completely focused on a squirrel or something?

That's where the concern comes in. It's the. The arousal creates an intense amount of focus on the pre, which is what it's supposed to do. It's absolutely fulfilling its function. But then when you're very focused on one thing, everything else kind of drops away to an extent, including, like, nonsense chatter like somebody calling. And for the dogs as well, that's. That is partly a safety thing for the dogs.

You know, if you're. I've got little cocker spaniels. If they're running fast through woods, they need to be concentrating on what they're doing. And if they're. Because otherwise they could really. I feel like they could really hurt themselves anyway. But certainly if they were to be suddenly paying attention to me, me at a moment when they were leaping over a log or something, they could land badly. They could easily hurt themselves.

And for some dogs, if they're, if what they were bred to do would cause them to, to be actively encountering prey, then they need to be able to focus on that because otherwise they put themselves, they are at risk. So that, so it's got a real purpose. It's absolutely got a very real and important purpose. But, but it's just, it does make it challenging from a training point of view because the dogs are then less able to pay attention to anything other than the prey.

Melissa Breau: Erin?

Erin Lynes: When we're talking about dog powered sports, arousal also seems like kind of an inevitable part of the puzzle. What are we looking for, what are we talking about when we talk about arousal and pulling sports? So as Tracey mentioned, how that arousal helps the dog to like focus on prey. We can use arousal that occurs in our pulling dogs to focus on the task at hand. So there can definitely be perks to having a dog who's in high arousal for dog powered sports.

Especially if you're working in a high distraction environment and they already have the skills of sort of bypassing distractions. If you're racing, we want them really focused on running as fast as they can or as steadily as they can under those conditions. So, so that is helpful there. Where we often see problems with arousal and dog powered sports are if the dog has the arousal but not the skills.

And we see them in pretty specific situations like at the start line if the dog doesn't know that they should be holding themselves forward and with the line out they can be bouncing all over and circling and twisting and getting all caught up in things and it becomes pretty chaotic. You might require extra help for, for your dogs to get started and that means it limits your training opportunities.

It makes it more difficult if you're racing because you need extra helpers in situations where you're training with other teams or racing against other teams. If your dogs don't know how to ignore the other dogs and that arousal gets channeled outward. You can see issues between dogs if they're grabbing at each other or they're just overly whether they're friendly or aggressive or whatever their, their feelings are in that matter.

The arousal directed outwards is undesirable compared to directing it forward on the trail. So there's that and the other place kind of where I'm seeing this as a, as a helpful tool in relation to the skills I'm talking about in my webinar is we want really like low latency responses. So high arousal helps there too. So if I ask my dogs to turn right or left. It needs to be like snappity snap right then not what did she say?

What is she, did she talk to us? Like they need to be pretty quick on those responses when they're, especially when they're traveling at speed. So we can, we can take the natural excitement that comes with the sport and blend it with some skills and actually put it to work in our favor. And it also just, I think a lot of high arousal dogs need an outlet for that.

They can't just be calm all the time. I think there's gotta be productive ways for them to express that. And this is, this is one way that they could do it. So we're really talking about building some baseline skills in both cases. Both we're talking about prey drive related problem solving. Is that fair, Tracey? You call it problem solving?

Tracey McLennan: Yep. And when we're talking about kind of needing that fluency for turning and things like that in pulling sports or dog powered sports, sports.

So how do we get there? How do we build a skill to the level that even when the dog is highly aroused or very excited or whatever, like we can still influence their behavior, we can still get the response that we need. So for me, where I see it coming most often is with habit and practice. So obviously I like say to everybody will start off training at home because it's easier and your dog will be able to concentrate.

But then once they've reached a level, I start saying to them, so now you find somewhere. So I typically talk about find somewhere that's outside but where you're not going to be surrounded by squirrels or birds or whatever it is your dog's most interested in, but is outside. And then I would, I encourage people to gradually find different training environments to go into and gradually work to where they can perform, they can do whatever it is the person's training them to do.

I do lots with release cues and lots with like specific rewards that they can, that they can get that meet their predatory needs. But, but working on doing those sorts of things in lots and lots of different places. And I find it's just like as it goes on, the habit of it and the practice of it helps the dogs. So really for me time's a big part time and consistent practice is a big part of it.

And I think that's hard for people because like time and consistent practice is, is I would say one of the most challenging things to do when you're training dogs because you tend to get a bit focused on, oh, that time it went wrong. Maybe, maybe it's not working and what should I, what should I do next? But really. And then that tends to make people go, well, I'll just go back to where it's safe and where it works.

And sometimes you just, sometimes it's important to like revisit the times when it didn't work regularly because time and practice is probably. Those are the most key things that I see in my world anyway. And I would imagine like, you know, kind of we've talked a little bit about some of this stuff before, but I would imagine that also sometimes there are factors that you don't know that may have made it more difficult the previous time that maybe won't exist this time.

Or, you know, especially talking about things like scent. Well, yeah, that's the thing. You could have gone the time you went and it was, it was really didn't work. That might have been because a deer was passed by there 10 minutes before you got there. You never saw the deer. You didn't know it was there. But that would be a huge distraction to a dog, to many dogs with a high prey drive.

So, yeah, revisiting things and not getting too, like, too caught up in. But it didn't work and it needs to be perfect. I am a big fan of working without perfection because I find it impossible to get my. I find it impossible to have perfection all the time. So I try and encourage everybody not to aim for that. So off putting.

Melissa Breau: How about you, Erin? How do you think about this idea that we've got these skills that we're going to need to be very fluent at some point?

Erin Lynes: So I like to introduce important skills out of context first. So all of our dog power sports stuff takes place on a trail. And in the big picture, we want the dogs moving forward. We want them to be pretty steady. There are some elements of things that we can work on while we're on the trail and we like to do that, but the really specific skills are better done when we can get a higher rate of repetition and more reinforcement.

So practicing in your backyard, practicing in your hallway, different exercises that we can do so we can say, okay, I'm going to teach you how to turn left and right. And in this five minute session, we're going to be able to do that like 20 times and you're going to get 20 cookies. You'd never be able to do that even on a, like a five mile run with your dog because it's, you're just not going to have that many opportunities to turn.

So concentrating the skills out of context into smaller doses where you can have more flexibility and reinforcement and get a higher of reinforcement is really helpful for. For those things. So there are definitely like a number of dog training factors. Right. That like good trainers kind of take into consideration that kind of seem like they'd maybe be extra important in both of these cases. Right. Whether you're working on high prey drive or teaching skills for dog powered sports, things like choices of reinforcement and timing and choosing your training environment.

Melissa Breau: Can you each kind of talk about those factors a little bit and how you think about those pieces related to kind of what you're working on?

Tracey McLennan: Yeah, so I would always, as Erin was saying, teaching things out of the context of the pre is really important and choosing the right reinforcement for the dogs at any given time is vital. I prefer to use. I prefer to use foods when I'm teaching anything new because I find it easier to than.

Than toys you can get more repetitions in. So I'm often encouraging people to use food and even to as they're building. If they're looking to build a dog's interest in something that could be a pre substitute, use it. Food is a really great reinforcement when you're doing that at home because it just encourages more interaction and for the dog to have a better time with it, which is really what we're looking for.

So yeah, those sorts of things. Timing is important. Absolutely. Timing of reinforcement is massively important because otherwise it's really easy for the dogs to get confused. If they have say, gone off, picked up a toy that you think would be useful and then the reinforcement doesn't come, they might go, well, was that the right thing to do? Maybe, I don't know. And because the prey, because what they want to do with the prey is so unique to them and it's much more interesting than anything else.

It's going to stand out much more than anything else. The skills with. The skills with. In terms of release cues and the skills in terms of playing with toys really need to be good to be to in any way become something that dog can focus on when there's as huge a distraction around his prey. And yeah, finding training areas we, yeah, home and home and immediately outside are often the easiest places.

Although I say for that, I say that. But for some of the people I work with, the yard space immediately outside their house is where their dog is the most distracted because they, you know, if they have a lot of squirrels or birds or whatever, that can be a challenging place. But inside is often, it's often where they can start and get some, like, get some good repetitions and.

Melissa Breau: Yeah, Erin, how about, how about with what you're working on?

Erin Lynes: Yeah, same with the dog powered sports. We really are thinking about the type of reinforcement and the, the overall context. So when we're out on the trail, my dogs are pulling me. There is zero scenario where they would turn back to me for any reason that would be desirable. So out on the trail, I never use food rewards, I never use toy rewards because then inevitably I would need them to bring them back to me or something like that.

But training out of context, when we're first building those skills, I can use those things. So this is another reason why there's like we kind of separated into, in those two different things. I can use food pretty efficiently when I'm trading out of context. I can put food on targets. I can use a manners miner. I can toss food. If a dog has really good toy skills, we can use those in some limited circumstances as well.

But really picking the scenarios where we're training out on the trail is important too. So another trainer skill, just evaluating if this circumstance is something my dog can handle. Is it too distracting? Is there going to be too much opportunity to put them into situations where they don't have those skills yet, or is there a way we can simplify this and make it easier for them? Just pretty much like any dog sport, any behavior situation, we got to look at the big picture and make sure that the pieces we're teaching are going to get us to where we want to go in the long run.

Melissa Breau: That makes a lot of sense. So we talked a little bit about the webinars, which obviously is part of the reason we're having the chat. But I think you're both also, you kind of have classes that relate to these topics too. So do you guys just want to talk about them for a moment, just a little bit maybe on what the class covers versus the webinar, that kind of thing.

Tracey McLennan: So my webinar is going to really focus on talking about what arousal is, what difference it makes to prey drive. I'm going to talk a little bit about why some of the models that we use to look at arousal might not be as helpful with prey drive as they are in other areas of dog training. And then I'm going to just quickly cover this sort of three things that you would, that you would do teaching, like using toys or food as reinforcement as like pre substitutes, and the two separate release cues that I'd like to use.

One like kind of, I call it proximity based but I just mean the dog staying in like a bubble around you even though they are free to do what they want. They like free is free is relative. You know, I don't want my dog five miles away from me when they're free to do what they want. And the other one is like more of a targeted release cue, targeted to a reinforcement rather than you're just free to do whatever you want.

So I'm going to talk about all of that. And then the class, it covers the same sorts of things but in more detail. So we can do more about finding suitable games to play with the dogs that can substitute for prey, because that takes a bit of work to find that out and a little bit more about like much more detail about the steps of teaching the release cues and then using them out in the world. So yeah, the classes covers the same sort of subjects but just in a lot more detail.

Melissa Breau: Fair enough. Do you want to talk about when the class is going to be running?

Tracey McLennan: So the class starts in October. It's so it's one of the October term classes. It's called Controlled and Focused around Critters because it's all about helping get that. So yeah, I ran it last year and I have revamped it to take out the bits that turned out weren't that helpful for people and to add in some more of the things that were helpful. It's had a whole refresh for this year.

Melissa Breau: Excellent. All right, Erin, what about your webinar versus your class? What are the differences, the similarities? What are, what are you kind of covering in each?

Erin Lynes: So in the webinar I'm really focusing on those three key skills, the line out, the turns and passing distractions. The class has everything from the ground up. So if you are brand new to dog powered sports, you need help fitting a harness your dog has never pulled before.

You just have no idea where to start. You're going to want to look at the class because we go through everything over six weeks and it's really, it's a pretty super comprehensive class and by the end of the six weeks you're gonna know what you're doing and have all those things. If you're looking for a bit of a teaser, maybe not sure, maybe you've already got a dog that's done a little bit of pulling.

Maybe you feel like you know a bit about dog powered sports already or you just need a little bit of help. The webinar might be a good place to start because we're covering those three key skills, how to train them better. And honestly, when I'm on social media or I'm talking to people about dog powered sports, those are the things that they have the most trouble with or those are the things I see teams struggling with that maybe they don't even know they're struggling with.

So we can make a lot of progress on those three key skills just by being aware of what they are and putting a little bit of groundwork into those as well, just because I think we haven't touched on it yet.

Melissa Breau: Erin, do you want to kind of talk about which sports do you consider to fall under that umbrella of dog powered sports?

Erin Lynes: You bet. Yeah. So anything that is a light pulling sport is what I'm covering under that umbrella.

So cani-cross bike touring, scootering, kick, sledding, dog sledding. What I don't consider as part of that umbrella are like weight pull or sulky driving. So that's kind of hopefully helpful to narrow it down.

Melissa Breau: Awesome. All right, any final thoughts or key points? Either of you want to kind of leave listeners with?

Tracey McLennan: These both sound. These both sound like they would complement each other nicely. So. Yeah. So in other words, people should join us for back to back webinars next Thursday.

Melissa Breau: They should. Yeah, absolutely. I think that would be the best thing for people to do. What about you, Erin? Any final thoughts?

Erin Lynes: Well, I think people might consider a double header this webinar night. If they've got a dog who has got a lot of energy, he's got interest in critters and you're looking for a way that might be helpful for them. I'm super curious to check out Tracey's webinar myself.

But I really am keen to help people help their dog powered sports future stars get some skills under their belt and talk to you a little bit about how much your runs can improve by just working on those three things. In other words, if you have a dog who's either really interested in prey or who just needs an outlet for, you know, energy and they're not at a place where they can kind of be off leash, you know, might be the night to join. We got you covered. Yep. Yeah, I think it will be a good night.

Melissa Breau: All right, thanks to you both so much for coming on the podcast. This is an excellent conversation.

All: Thank you. Thanks for having us, Melissa. Thank you.

Melissa Breau: Absolutely. And thanks to 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 Language. 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!