Join me for a fascinating conversation with Denise on the ins and outs of engagement — from pre-engagement strategies to help young dogs to prepping for competition. We talk about the importance of acclimation, how the process differs for low drive vs. high drive dogs, and more!
Transcription
Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports Podcast brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high quality instruction for competitive dog sports using only the most current and progressive training methods. Today I'll be talking to Denise Fenzi about engagement for dog sports. Hi, Denise. Welcome back to the podcast.
Denise Fenzi: Good morning, Melissa. Thank you for having me.
Melissa Breau: Absolutely. It's always exciting to chat. Do you want to just start us out by reminding everybody kind of a little bit about you and your current crew?
Denise Fenzi: Yeah, you know, I don't know when we last talked, so I've got a new dog here. So I have Brito, my old man, who's 12 and a half now and kind of does whatever he wants because that's what happens when you're old.
Yeah. And just a quick reminder, like when I'm old, that's my expectation. I just plan on wandering through life, eating M&Ms, doing whatever I want. So he's on that path. At this time I have Xen, who's 4 years old, who let us all say a prayer to the recovery gods because as of yesterday, he is allowed to go back into training. And it's been a long road. He's been in rehab for a long time, so he's cleared, he's in good condition inside and out.
So we're going to be getting back to a fitness plan to get him back up to speed. Super, super exciting for everyone. And then I have a new young dog named Tye. Tye is a just her nine month old border collie that I've had for three months. And he's been a, he's a challenging young boy. He came with pretty severely under socialized situation, had never been off his property, lived in a kennel. And so he's been just the coolest thing in the world to play with and to learn. So those are the three I have now.
Melissa Breau: Awesome. So let's start with the basics. I know we're here to talk about engagement. Why engagement? And the webinars that we're ultimately talking about are Engagement and Acclimation and then Engagement 2.0. So why those terms?
Denise Fenzi: I guess so we're actually going to talk about pre engagement strategies for one webinar. But the second one, I used to teach a webinar on acclimation and engagement and now it's acclimation and engagement 2.0. So we'll just quickly hit on that 2.0. I felt that people didn't have adequate information to understand how to take the information I gave them in a training context and move it into a competition context. So great. When I have time, when I have space, when the gods are, you know, aligned and everything, yes, my dog can go through this whole path, but how do I take this into a competition environment where my dog cannot explore inside the ring and where there are more restrictions about what you can actually do?
So in the 2.0 portion, I spent a fair bit of time giving people a really concrete plan about how you do that. And like all things, nothing matters. The day of the show in the sense of if you haven't trained the path in training, you can't just, you know, it's like when people need a recall is usually when the dog is running the other way. And then it's like, yeah, I wish I had taught that.
Well, that's. I mean, I get it and I've been there myself. But for the most part, competition skills require the training. Time was put in first. And what I did was significantly expanded the idea that now that you've gone through this basic path of acclimation training, let's talk about how to create the path so that it holds up in competition. So that was the 2.0 engagement itself. There's two parts to engagement.
One is just the word, and it means to be mentally interacting with another. So that's sort of the common used dictionary meaning. But when I talk about engagement training, I'm not talking about whether or not the dog is mentally engaged with you. I'm talking about the path you take to train the dog that they need to opt in and become mentally engaged with you or you won't work with them.
And that last part's pretty critical. It's basically, don't drag your dog into Disneyland. Now, if you train with joy in the forefront of your mind, if training is the highlight of your dog's day, then your dog will most certainly drag you into Disneyland. And I think, especially if you're heavy on the positive reinforcement side, sometimes I think we forget that we're offering a pretty damn attractive package. I mean, we walk in with food and with toys and with hopefully some kind of personality, and we make it so the dog wants to spend time with us and wants to do our things.
And yet here we are begging our dog, who's sniffing, wandering, staring off in the distance. We're begging them to come back to training. And I think when I talk about engagement training, there's a huge mental shift from, no, no, I'm not gonna beg you anymore. I'm not dragging you into Disneyland again. How about you learn to recognize how good you have it when we train together and you beg me to start training.
And that's the whole point for engagement training. It's putting the responsibility on the dog and also acknowledging that we miss things a lot. We think we're dragging the dog into Disneyland and the dog sees it as Hades. So we have to ask ourselves, are we actually. Because you know what? If you ask your dog, do you want to train? And the dog's like, absolutely not. There's some pretty hardcore information in there for you about where you went wrong.
Like that's a training problem, but engagement will expose the problem if your dog doesn't choose to opt in. When you have set up a path, you have to set up the path first. If your dog doesn't understand that it's their job to ask to work, then that has to be addressed first. And that's what you would learn in engagement training. That's the point. But certainly there are people who have done the path and it never actually happens.
And then that's when you have to step back and say, why won't the dog opt into even the most basic step of looking at you for two seconds, that's super, super important information. I tend to see failure as information. Well, let me be more clear. On reflection, I see failure as information. Not in the moment. In the moment I'm like, damn, damn. As are most of us. Yes, I want to get my way and I'm not getting my way.
So I have feelings about that. Right. But on reflection, when I'm not getting my way, I'm not stuck at that point. I recognize a dog's failure to do the things I want is the information I need to change my path. So if you're working on engagement training and you come to the point when you're like, damn, damn, it's not working, then at some point you need to step back and take some information and ask yourself, what's the bigger picture here?
And why is my dog not interested in working? And that's. It can be a little painful, but sometimes we just need to recognize that the problem is much bigger then lack of understanding of how to buy into training. And then the third part of this, so we've got the 2.0. That's the part that's really emphasizing competition readiness. We've got a what is engagement and how does it vary from engagement training?
And then the first part is acclimation and engagement. And acclimation is a piece that people let's just say it, like me, have a tendency not to acknowledge enough. So when you have the higher drive dogs, and they really do love training and you don't have to do any engagement training because they walk out the door staring at you and begging to work, super, super easy to think you're fine.
And often you don't know you're not fine until you're preparing for competition and you're taking away the toys and the food and you're adding more formality, and suddenly your dog, they really are still engaging with you, but the quality of the work declines significantly and you start noticing whining and arousals going up as those toys and really, like in front of your nose options, high rate of reinforcement, new environments when you start changing from the comfortable backyard with lots of fun things and the dog is a magnet and you go somewhere new and it really does start out perfect.
But the little signs, the increasing arousal, the maybe it takes two cues, the accuracy seems to be going down the piece. Many of us, and I'm including myself in this, the piece we're missing is the emphasis on insisting on acclimation to the environment. Because if you don't insist, the dog will not take it for themselves. They're such workaholics that they will put their safety aside, they will put their curiosity aside and simply engage with you, because that almighty toy, almighty cookie overwhelms it.
And that's fine. But as you're preparing for competition, the cracks really start to show. As I'm at a phase with Xen where I pulled toys out of his training so he no longer gets toy reinforcers. He does get food, but food isn't really a reinforcer for him. I would say it's a marker of correct behavior. But he's just not that much into food. So he eats the food and he takes it, and he understands what it means.
It's the ball, though, or the tug that he really wants. And all that. Rehab took that off the table. And so what that did was open up some cracks for me to see. What would he do in the space between a toy to prevent the cracks from showing and the food that he doesn't care much about and the work that he does care about, and that space in between the work that he cares about and the toy that magnetizes him is the information I needed to say that I actually did have an engagement problem.
And the engagement problem was a function of lack of acclimation. Not insisting, insisting that he take the time to look around. And I've been through this before. I've had other dogs that put me through this path, but I actually thought I had dodged the bullet this time, and I hadn't. And there's nothing like a competition where your dog goes through the roof high to show you these things.
And I'm currently in a class with Ashley which talks about arousal and fitness in the relationships. And a big part of that was me recognizing that he simply could not or would not do those fitness exercises if he hadn't acclimated properly. In my own training yard, he was whining. And so when I say acclimate properly, I mean past the point of staring at me and whining. If you're whining, if you're breathing hard, if you're showing your overarousal, we're not gonna start working.
And it was so interesting that as I've been pushing that, literally standing there for 20 minutes. 20 minutes. You think 20 minutes, not a long time. Multiply that by 60, because that's how many seconds you're standing there. It's a lot of seconds. It's hundreds of seconds. And realizing that the key to reducing his arousal was the fitness element, which pushed the idea that the work itself is not going to magnetize you.
It's stillness. So that's not magnetizing him. So I took the work off the table as a way to magnetize, even without toys. So you're going to do fitness and only food, which is like, whatever. So what? What is the space in between? And it's forced, for lack of a better word, acclamation. And forced means I'm going to stand here, and I don't care how cute you are staring at me, until you stop whining, breathing like that, I'm with you.
I'm your friend. I'm petting you. I'm massaging your hair. I'm perfectly happy to feed you too. I don't care. That's not the issue. But we're not going to work when you're like that. And the piece, as I really kind of boiled it down, was not using acclimation as a routine thing, because I didn't need to, but I did need to. But his behavior fooled me in exactly the same way that Rekha's behavior fooled me.
And I remember years and years ago realizing that I had to teach her. It's not a choice. You can stare at me. And until you look around, until I see you look around, until I see the heart rate go down, until I feel the calm, and then you look at me again. Now we can talk about going into work. And that is what I'm doing with Xen. And I find myself eyeing this young border collie who went from could care less about frankly anything.
There was just nothing in his world that mattered besides looking actually terrible. A shutdown dog is a terrible thing to watch. It's so sad watching him come out of that shell to where he is now, where he also doesn't look around. He also is not interested in mentally making a note that it's my responsibility. And so I was thinking about this today. One thing he loves to do, he takes his toys and he thrashes his toys and he'll take toys and run circles.
And it was such a great reminder this last week that him doing that it actually really matters because at this stage of the game before I'm actually doing formal engagement training because he's more in the pre engagement strategies phase because while he's nine months old, I've only had him for three months while I'm teaching him things, I'm not teaching him formal engagement yet. And that time he is spending running and playing and self entertaining, he's sucking in the environment and in his own way he's creating his own acclimation path that's going to serve me well long term.
And if it means holding a toy and looking around, that's a billion times legitimate. And if I allow this to continue, it's going to save me trouble, I hope down the road of the dog that comes out the door staring at me and now he's surprised and spooked when he looks around is like holy crap, this isn't even where I thought I was. You know, that's what I want to avoid.
So sadly I find that I have to learn my lessons over and. And this is true even for topics I teach, I still have to relearn my lessons frequently. So that was. This is sort of the lesson of the month. The importance of acclimation for the high drive dogs, the ones that buy in so hard that they don't actually see where they're at and they build up a lot of arousal and it really can destroy your work when you're at the other end, when you're now preparing for competition and it's this weird little space that takes a year.
So you're like a frog in hot water and you don't even know that you got on that path because it was looking really good. Yeah. Are some dogs just naturally better at this stuff? Like do you think it's. Do you think it's. You mentioned high drive dogs are one pack. And of course we get those dogs who are the other end of the spectrum. Like I would say, I used to teach engagement as a class.
It was a very popular class and it was so I saw a lot of dogs, I taught it several times and I would say it was almost 50, 50 half the dogs who came in the class. We spent most of our time on acclimation. And let me tell you, that's a battle. It's actually very. It's not the dogs. It's very hard to get the handlers to buy in because in the last 10 to 20 years the dog sports community has so emphasized that dogs have to stare at you all the time.
And if they're not, you gotta make it happen, you gotta be more exciting, you gotta up your toys, you gotta up your reinforcers. So we have severely undermined the value of letting a dog acclimate to a space. Now that has changed hardcore, I would say the last, what, two to five years as we've spent more time talking about the emotional space. And frankly, I give the FDSA instructor community a lot of credit for this.
A lot of emphasis has come out of work, like Amy Cook, Sharon Carroll of the importance of the emotional state of the dog. You did not hear people talk about that five years ago. That's really acclimation. So that's that sort of new. Like let's take another look at this. That side emphasizes the acclimation side. And when I taught this as a class and I've stopped teaching classes several years ago now, that really wasn't this emotional component was not at the front.
And if you like look at how I talked about things in class, my lectures, I do talk about it, but it doesn't have that strength that it has now. Right now I think a lot of people talk about it. So what I found in the class, when I would tell people that their dogs needed to look around, I got a lot of pushback. And if their dog would even show the slightest interest in glancing at them, they would just start the party big time.
And I'd be like, no, look, don't do that. I'm not talking about a drive by attention. I'm not talking about. Your dog looked away for two seconds and that was the acclamation. I mean, hardcore, your dog doesn't have a working problem. Your dog has a comfort problem. And those are the dogs that I would say half really needed the acclimation. And they do tend to be the more working Type higher drive dogs who tend towards externalized arousal issues down the road.
Now, when I got them in engagement class, that's not usually where they were at. Usually they were showing it in a training context. They were super twitchy and the handlers thought they had a problem, but I think they didn't have the problem they thought they had. What they had was an emotional comfort problem, not really an engagement problem. And once the dogs got through that basic first step of looking around, the rest of the pieces tend to come quickly.
And then the other half of the class would be the opposite. These are folks who kind of let the dogs do whatever they want. They check in, they check out. It's. They're very dog centric about how they see their dogs, which I appreciate. But if you're super dog centric and you want to do dog sports, you're likely to run yourself. And when I say dog centric, I mean if the dog wants to do this, he can do that, that's fine.
But if you do that, what happens is the dog buys in hard when they want to and the slightest distraction pulls the dog away and then they come back when they want and that becomes the problem. So what I tell my dogs is it's absolutely Disneyland. But that doesn't mean that you don't have to make an effort. Once you've entered the gates, you don't get to just wander in and out.
You are making a choice. And my job is to structure training such that they frequently have the opportunities, if they need them to recalibrate, to make sure they want to be there. And I think that's important with the opting in. Having said that, you can't opt in and then in the middle of healing, opt out and then opt in. Because that creates a problematic dynamic on so many levels, not the least of which is the dog's quality.
But the other problem is it builds up frustration in the handlers. And whether they acknowledge it or not, it's very frustrating when you're trying hard and your dog is all over the place. But if you train that in, it's kind of on you. So the second half of the class I found those folks, I had to say, you know what, your dog already acclimated. Your dog doesn't have an acclimation problem.
What your dog has is a recognition of buy in. And you don't get to buy in and then flip out and buy in. Now, you as a handler are obligated to frequently give your dog an option. Are you sure you still want to do this and that's where your dog gets the choice. But that's a function of structure. And so I would say it really was about 50, 50.
I will say it's easier for me to add structure to handlers whose dogs have not been given structure. I think because they experience frustration at their dog's behavior. I find it harder to get folks who had the structure and, you know, did the fake it till you make it really buy in, push the dog hard to see. This is fun. Those kind of people. I found it was harder to get those folks to recognize that the dog needs a chance.
You know, when you walk into a new space, just give your dog some time to breathe because many of them were so indoctrinated with the. You got to be more exciting than everything around you. And it causes a lot of problems for you when you think that way. So it sounds like you're kind of describing two different pictures. Right. So like on one end, the dogs who are higher drive, maybe the problem we have might look like too much arousal in work, or you're getting lots of extra noise or you're getting lots of extra twitchiness or you're getting lots of extra something.
And the other case, dogs who are opting out regularly is that are those kind of the symptoms that you'd see? Super, super fair. Yeah. And there's more to it than drive. You could have a high drive dog who's also high anxiety. So you're going to see a lot of issues and you can have a low drive dog that's actually stable as a rock. Right. So it's not. There's the perfect dog out there, I guess, and that's the like so stable that even if they never look around when they do get distracted, it just doesn't register.
Right. So you've got it that extreme combined with super high drive and low arousal. And that's like everybody's dream dog. And then you have the other side where the dog is just challenging. They're very low drive, they're very high anxiety, they're very high curiosity. So that package which actually leads us into the other webinar, the pre engagement one, that brings this other set of challenges. So those are kind of your extremes.
And you don't normally get that, but you can. And how you address each of those things, like if you look on a scale, like how stable is the dog, that actually is going to influence not just your engagement training, how much you're going to spend on acclimation versus engagement, but all of the pre engagement conversation strategies, the way you socialize the dog. So let's talk about pre engagement.
So let's dive in there. So what does that look like? At what point do you start with pre engagement? At what point are you starting with engagement? Where do you begin with, you know, you mean you have a new dog, so where do you begin? With that new dog or that puppy? Yeah. So Crystal Wing is teaching a workshop this week on joy. And the reason she's teaching it is because I created a webinar on resilience.
And I haven't taught it yet, but it's in the works. And Crystal happened to be reviewing part of it and I put a lot of energy on you have to find your dog's joy, you have to find what the dog loves and pre engagement strategies. And that topic is really about what do you do when you have a new puppy or a new to you dog? Like where are you starting?
And it's really about getting to know your dog, who is your dog. And part of that, especially with a dog who comes with some problems, is finding something they love, finding their joy. So I started with a dog who did nothing but sit in a kennel with his head down, staring at the wall for two days. And when you're there, the dog won't eat. The dog, he would eat at night when I wouldn't watch, I would just leave food out for him and I'd watch him on a webcam and I could see that he just sat.
He had a double kennel and the front part of the kennel was a four foot square. He did not leave the four foot square even though the door was open to the back kennel. He didn't explore, he did nothing. And my brain said the only thing that matters right now is finding joy. It's not about trying to engage him. That's irrelevant. It's what do I need to do to get this dog to look up?
I mean, forget looking at me. How do I get this dog so life is worth living? Because if you don't have something that sparks the dog's interest, then you have to do. What I did was literally pick him up and take him out of the kennel bodily. He would not leave his corner and then attach a double set of attachments because he wanted to escape. That's all he wanted to do.
So with a dog like that, the last thing on your mind needs to be teaching him to sit down. Come, you've got nothing. You've got nothing to motivate. You got nothing. So pre engagement Strategies, while that was an extreme case, is about finding your dog, who is your dog, getting to know your dog, watching your dog. And once you start having an idea of who your dog is, then that is going to influence how you socialize that dog.
If you have the world's friendliest dog, you really don't need to spend a lot of energy introducing them to a bunch of people. You just don't. And getting to know your dog is what sets the parameters about how you spend your time. Because you've got a certain amount of time when the dog comes home before you're going to start training. And to be clear, I start. Well, I couldn't with this dog.
But in general, with, let's say, a typical puppy that comes home, sort of normal, happy puppy, ish, I start training right away. But while I'm teaching, I'm not worried about engagement. I just let the dog come and go. They can do whatever they want. I have the food that usually does the trick. So I am teaching them things. But more important, I'm paying attention. What do you care about?
You know, what food do you like? Do you like toys? You don't like toys? Okay, if you're not much into toys, what can I do to build that? What if you're really not much into food, what can I do to build that? What if you're manning about toys? All right, well, then I better spend more time on food, because you want to create a balanced puppy. And the whole first webinar is really about getting to know the dog you have.
And once you have a clue about what you think you might have, setting up an appropriate plan to accommodate that dog's style and behavior, what does this dog need? So if we think about that, right, if we're thinking about kind of those two pieces, both pre engagement and the engagement training, ultimately, when we're on the other side of all of this, like, what is the picture we're aiming for?
Like, what is the kind of end goal here with all of this work? I say balance. I want a dog that's balanced. I want a dog who likes food and toys and balls and likes to play with me. I want a dog who's comfortable in the environment, but not riveted by the environment. I don't want a dog that lacks for curiosity and stares at me. I've created huge problems in the past with dogs where I spent so much energy teaching them to engage that they quite literally never saw the world.
So recognizing that I had a sensitive dog and a sensitive breed, and then not really making sure. I mean, she was already staring at me all the time. Why did I put energy into that? I should have been putting my energy into, hey, and you're safe. Let's take a look at the world together. Whereas another dog who's already, you know, it's a bull in a china shop, it's absolutely safe.
It's looking at all the things. Maybe with that dog you should spend a little more energy engaging with you. And that's what it's really about, is how can you get to a balanced dog? Because you know something Ashley talks about in this fitness class I'm taking with her, Drive is not a function of movement. Drive is a function of mental awareness and desire. So a dog, look at a dog herding sheep.
You know, they're not moving and they're staring. Are you saying they're out of drive? The important thing is they can go from 0 to 100 in exactly 1 second. And the trigger for the 1 second is the appropriateness of the behavior. So if the sheep aren't moving, there's really nothing appropriate about a sheepdog that's moving. But if the sheep are moving, then a dog that's out of drive lays there and ignores it.
So what you're looking for is a dog that's in drive and aware of the appropriate behavior at that time, and then goes to 100 miles an hour if that's appropriate, and then stops when that's appropriate. And for that to happen, the dog has to have a clear head. And for a dog to have a clear head, they have to feel very comfortable in their surroundings. And that kind of stuff.
You can learn so much before you even get to any kind of engagement. Just getting to know the puppy you have, the young dog you have, and finding their trigger. With my border collie, what I discovered very early on, it was movement. He needed to move his body and that gave him great joy. Unfortunately, he also was a runaway, like hardcore, like I've never seen. So he was on a 50 foot long line in a 2 acre area, fenced enclosed.
And I held onto that line because if I let go, he was running, he was running, he was running. He's just, that's. But at the same time I watched him and I thought, he's running. The only time I see his head come up, the only time I see his eyes is when he's running, admittedly the wrong direction, but hey, you know, start there. And so then everything became around.
How do I give this dog opportunities to run? What can I do? Because if running makes him feel better, now I have a chance. So if you have to run first and then I give you food, you're more likely to eat because you did something that sparked joy. If I want you to come out of your kennel and I don't want you to pick you up, take you out a hundred times, there has to be something outside that kennel you care about.
And if running is what you care about, then you're going to run. And that's the kind of observation that so for example, Crystal talks about in her workshop, finding that joy. But for me it's a baseline with every single dog that comes in before I can really worry about engagement. And that's really what we're seeking in this webinar is get to know your dog. Not just what brings them joy, which is huge, but what do they really need to end up balanced as an individual, as balanced as you can get them.
I mean, you're never going to take the individual out of the dog. And that's not the point, otherwise we'd all have the same dog. The point is to figure out what you have. And if your dog is a 10 in drive, but a one in stability, you really need to be spending your early time trying to get that stability up to a 3. Even if the drive, you know, stays at a 9, it really doesn't matter.
The balance matters. And for the rest of your life you will be tweaking these things because you don't change the dog. That's not the purpose of socialization and it's not the purpose of pre engagement strategies. What your goal is, is to bring out the best that your dog can actually be. And from there you will be aware forever that this dog is probably always going to need a little more work to bring up drive, a little more work to bring up environmental comfort, depending on which end of the spectrum you've discovered on that, on the, on those particular characteristics.
So it never goes away. It's a lifetime process. And that's really why the pre engagement strategies. Somebody asked me, is this suitable for a five year old dog where I'm having, you know, this issue and that. And I said, well, if yes, because you can always look at it and say, you know, I never thought about that. You can always tweak these things. It's not like you only do it with a young dog.
The difference is with a young dog, I would not start an 8 week old on an engagement path. I just wouldn't. I think that's kind of missing the point, you can train all you want, but engagement is a very formal and specific thing where the dog opts into training. I don't care if my nine month old puppy, who's been here three months opts out of training. It doesn't matter.
It's just information. And eventually I will care. But we're way, way, way too early in the path to even start thinking about that. So what does that look like when we start training engagement? How are you breaking this down? I mean, I know you mentioned kind of getting the dog to opt into work, but what does that, what does that look like? Well, it starts out super, super small.
All I want is for the dog to look at me. That's it. I mean, that's not hard. Although it's actually quite hard when you define looking at you as more than a drive by glance. Because you'd be amazed how many people. He kind of looked sort of vaguely in my direction. I think it was my belly button. It's like that's not actually looking at you. Looking at you means eye contact and a question in the eyes of are we going to do something?
And yeah, we are. And you reinforce that. So you're going to start so, so simple. And you slowly work up expectation until the dog is physically pushing you, driving in your direction and, and somewhat demanding that you stop what you're doing and do something. And then we continue on with that to the point where pushing you and driving does not lead to reinforcement, it leads to work. And now you have a dog who understands the reinforcers will come.
But first you're going to insist that the work start, not the reinforcer. At first it's just the dog insists on the reinforcement and then it becomes, no, you're going to push and push and push. Now the doors to Disneyland open, but you still got to walk all the way to the first ride. You don't just get on the first ride and that's what you're teaching the dog now.
You're going to work and then you're going to get the reinforcer and the path becomes reinforcing in and of itself. And that brings joy into the work itself. Well, before you get to the reinforcer, because there's really good evidence that what sparks the brain isn't the actual eating of the cookie or the getting of the toy, it's the anticipation. And with the anticipation, the work becomes the anticipation of the reinforcer.
And that's what we're striving for in engagement training. So when we think about that, we think about the pushing us to work. I absolutely, you know, there's some portion of handlers out there who are going, yeah, but if we have those dogs who, like, stare at us all the time, they just don't turn off, how do we make sure that there's also clear communication there around? Now's the time when you should push me to work, and now's the time I want you to just go be a dog or go do something else.
Don't be obnoxious. Right now. I need to sit at the computer for the next two hours. Like, how do we. Yeah. Oh, context, context, context. I do not play with toys in my house ever. I'm not saying there's not toys down. There's toys all. All over the place. But you. You know what? You can bring me those toys as much as you want. I will not pick that off my lap and throw it.
Because I. It's super important for me, especially with the higher drive dogs. I can't live that way. You know, I taught a dog years ago inadvertently, to be the most obnoxious thing you've ever seen when I was on the phone. Because what would happen was as soon as I got on the phone, if she huffed or whatever, I would be like, okay, you have to be quiet. I'm on the phone, right?
So I would pick up something and give it to her. Biggest mistake of my life. I mean, it got to the point where. And this, by the way, was, you know, back in the day when we didn't have, like, text. I never talk on the phone anymore, right? So it's. Everything is text and email. No, back then, you actually got on phones, you talked to people, and as soon as the phone would ring, the.
There she was. And I was like, oh, my God, now what? Right? So I had. What I had actually done was classic engagement training. And the more I tried to ignore her, the worse it got. So then eventually I had to stop her. So we very nicely worked through one, two, and three stages of engagement. The only one we didn't work on was making her work before she got whatever it is I stuck in her mouth to shut her up.
So I have learned if you have that kind of dog, I would think 100 times before I'd be playing ball in my house. And I will train in my house, but I don't train everywhere in my house. I have one space that I train in. I don't train anywhere else. And guess where everybody runs when I open a door? Like, to my bedroom. They all run there because they're hopeful, like, maybe now's the time, but it's the only place I train.
Shows up in all my videos. You all know what it looks like. It's one space in my house, and that's intentional. But you know what? Getting back to the pre engagement strategies, if you have a really low drive dog and that dog asks you to work, don't be stupid. Like, get off your chair and work that dog. So if you have that kind of dog, this is what the whole pre engagement thing is about.
My dogs are a pain in the butt. But if I didn't have that kind of dog, I would be much more flexible about that particular rule because I know that that dog can easily be dissuaded by saying, hey, I'd love to work with you now, but not now. And they're gonna go, they're gonna go away, right? With my dogs, if I said that in a working space, they'd be back every three seconds.
Did you change your mind? How about now? How about if we just do it this way? How about if I just. Over here, I'm just going to be super cute and you can do whatever you want for five minutes. I'm going to throw everything. I know, but feel free to ignore me. And of course you won't, Right? So now who's trained who? So that's context really does matter.
And there's also a way you tell yourself, I am available now. It's a way you look, it's a way you interact with your dog. Those things tell your dog, now we can do something. And there's also a way you stand when you say, seriously, I don't care how cute you are. We are in acclimation time. We are moving, we are walking. We are ignoring each other. Because I'm nothing if not flexible with my own dogs.
I with my own dogs. With Zen, the way I do his acclimation is actually in contact. Some of you know about contact. It's when the dog. I feel like I'm going through a memory lane of everything I've ever taught. But anyway. And this webinar and that way in contact, heel. My dog leans on my side. And so for acclimation, what I do is I put him in contact position.
And that means he can rotate around my body any way he wants. He can look wherever he wants. Until his engagement path is until he's in contact, not breathing hard and not whining and relaxed. When I pet him quietly, we don't start our path to work. The path to work now starts with A sit on a platform. And that's because each dog is an individual. And everything I teach you or anyone else teaches you, when you get to a point in your life that you understand paths and there's a part of your brain that says, I think I could tweak this for my dog and make it a little bit better.
And that's where I am with my own dogs. And frankly, I am the first one to cheer you on. If you take something I taught and you make it work for you. People tell me all the time I did it this way, but I liked this better. And I'm the first one to say, if it's kind and if it works for you, I say, more power to you.
Yay. So for Zen, his engagement takes place out of a slightly different path, which is lean on my body rather than. And I will move so he doesn't move on a loose leash. I move around so he can sniff. He can do whatever he wants while I move around. But until he is calmly leaning on my side, not breathing hard, not whining, we don't go into our next stage, which is sit in front of me, look up at me, and I'm feeding him.
And I want that to be very calm and very correct. I'm looking for a fitness element. I want you sitting forward, up, head up, nice, straight sit. We call it a posture sit. And when that looks really nice for a minute or two, now we're going to go into actual work. So that's how I've tweaked it, because that made sense for my dog. So you're talking about the contact healing and the importance of acclimation. Now for dogs who I guess are either at that end or the other end of the spectrum, I'd imagine context.
Melissa Breau: You kind of mentioned that that's a big part of when work's available, when it's not. Do you see that there are some contexts where dogs, they can acclimate, mate easily, they can, you know, get where you want them to get in terms of engagement, or other dogs who, like, you know, those dogs, maybe need that little bit of extra help for engagement?
They really struggle to engage in some contexts. How much is all of this, I guess, really context dependent, and how do we figure out what aspects of that context are harder or easier for our dogs? Does that make sense? I kind of wandered a little bit that question, but.
Denise Fenzi: Oh, no, I. I understand that. So I've said this a hundred times. I'm on team genetics. So what that means is I really believe that who your dog is, you influence a couple notches, one degree or to the left by your choices.
But the genetics of the dog does not change. Some dogs are exceptionally environmentally curious, Some dogs are not. Some dogs are exceptionally handler focused by design. They were born that way. Some dogs are not. You're never going to take the individual out of the dog and you don't want to and you don't want to try, but you do want to know what you have, and you will know that forever.
With some dogs, you're going to spend a lot more time on acclimation and on other dogs, you're going to spend a lot more time on the stages. And that's fine. That's who your dog is. But training won't ever get you to a place where now, in an unreinforced way, your dog is now, you know, instead of being like, I can't wait to get out there and explore, your dog now just stares at you.
That's not likely, but it doesn't actually matter. I mean, for what we're asking of our dogs, this is about work. This isn't about turning your dog into something they're not. It's about getting excellent performances. And dogs are all over the spectrum in terms of temperament and excellence in competition. So it's not like there's only one kind of dog that can thrive. And then there's also the question of who are you and what sports do you do?
Some people, like, I bring a lot of natural energy to my work, maybe too much. And other people struggle with that. They just have a calmness. So it shouldn't surprise anyone that I actually do better with dogs that are in intrinsically lower arousal. Now, do I actually buy those dogs? Oh, absolutely not. Because I'm drawn to like meets like. Right. But I do better with dogs that are lower arousal because whether I mean to or not, I bring up arousal and edge.
Other people are just calmer by nature, a little bit more thoughtful in their training designs. And those people might do better with a naturally higher arousal dog. And so, I mean, I believe you should try to buy a dog that is going to make you happy. I think it's an exercise in frustration to get dogs and some people do it repeatedly that really don't mesh well with them either the way they want to live in the house or like, it frustrates me when my golden retriever greets my guests at the door by jumping on them.
Well, that's fine as long as you're willing to make choices that keep your guests safe and your dog comfortable. You can crate or whatever, but you shouldn't be too surprised by that. Now, if you happen to love the temperament of the golden retriever, I think you should stay with goldens. But if you suddenly find yourself irritated by everything about a golden retriever, that makes a golden retriever a golden retriever.
I would suggest rather than trying to turn your golden retriever into a Belgian shepherd, maybe you should get a Belgian next round, you know, so it's a balancing act. And for sure, the dogs I own are not the dogs I enjoy living with. I can tell you that a hundred times. They are high maintenance dogs. But it's okay because I love the other things they're bringing to the table.
And some of those things they bring are the things that make engagement, training and that path easier for me. I have said many times I do not enjoy behavior work. My worst nightmare is a fearful, shutdown dog. And look what I went out and got like. I would much rather work with an over the top, temperamental, maybe slightly aggressive dog than a soft, shy, scared, fearful dog. And yet you still, you look at what you like and then you look at what you have.
And the border collie I had in front of me just pretty much required that I take another path. Now, by luck, if nothing else, his genetic package is such that he is not that dog inside of him. And because he's not that dog inside of him, he's actually, frankly, I'm shocked at how much dog is in that dog. He is actually a little Belgian in a little border collie suit.
Who knew, right? I got lucky. So that was genetics. So what happened is through good handling, he stopped being nervous, shy, fearful because he was just so under socialized. The world was this great big new thing. And what happened is he's able to express who he really is. And who he really is is a lot of dog. That's a good thing. Because while I knew what I was getting when I got him and I was prepared for a life with a fearful, nervous dog, it just so happens that his genetic package is the package I really like and he's showing me that.
So, you know, you can only go so far. I would imagine that if a person got him who really liked the soft kind of border collie, they would be somewhat appalled at what happened. Like, who the hell are you? He's, he's a lot. And then other people go out and they get a dog and they, they thought they were getting a balls to the wall dog, and they're not.
It's genetically not that dog. So you get as far as you can with what you bring to the table. And engagement training won't get you past that. But what it will do, the pre engagement in particular will help you identify what you need to work on and the engagement will help you get yourself buy yourself a couple notches in the direction you would like to strengthen your dog.
Melissa Breau: All right, so we've talked a whole bunch about all of these bits and pieces and we're talking about them because as I mentioned, I think towards the beginning you put your webinars back on the schedule. The Pre Engagement and the Engagement 2.0 are both on the schedule for the first Thursday in January. So January 1st, do you want to talk more about the webinars themselves? Like kind of what is in those hourish long presentations and who maybe should think about signing up?
Denise Fenzi: Well, honestly, as I'm mentally going over it and talking to you about it, I'm just realizing I'm sort of reminded that kind of everyone can benefit from the first one. Dog sports, not dog sports. Who doesn't want to bring out the best in their dog? Who doesn't? You know what, you want to fall in love with your dog. And falling in love with your dog is largely a function of knowing who your dog is and then learning to value that.
So I think that first one, you can be an engaged pet person who just wants to do a nice job with your dog. And I don't really think it matters that the dog is new to you. I just frame it that way because that's when most of us are most fascinated with our dogs. You know, over time we start to just accept them. That doesn't mean that you won't benefit if your dog has been around for a good long time.
So that seminar I think is just generically useful. The engagement one is much more targeted. I think it's way more appropriate if you actually have goals of some sort of competition. Doesn't really matter which kind, whether it's online or in person. It really is targeted to those folks who need a dog to stay engaged for extended periods of time. How long that is is going to depend on your event.
You could have a quick event, it could be 20 seconds. If you've got a super fast agility dog, it could be 10 minutes if you're doing obedience at a higher level. So it's really about people who need a dog that opts in in complex environments when things are difficult, stays with you throughout the event and can manage that week after week. Year after year, many dogs will do beautifully for a couple of competitions and then really struggle.
So engagement training kind of gets you past the promise of a cookie that your dog quickly learns isn't actually going to happen in the competition setting. It helps the dog learn in training that, no, actually there won't be a cookie until the end, and that's okay. So I think that seminar is particularly well suited to the folks that recognize that they would like to go forward into competition.
Or if you just train for fun, but you get frustrated with your dogs in and out, and you like to train new things, then you might just enjoy this as a path, a training path. So I think that's how I would target it in terms of who joins me. I would also like, look, it's on New Year's Day, right? So if you're like me and New Year's Day lost its shine about 30 years ago, you know, what a fine way to spend.
So you're not hungover, right. Because you're past that. So you're feeling good, you had a nice day. It's six o' clock in the. I don't know which slot I'm at or where you are in the world, but, oh, I have both slots. So your head is clear, you know, come join me now. You can grab your glass of wine and you'll have a break in between. So it's not quite as painful.
And you've got the recordings you can watch later. So. Yeah. So Teri said, do you want to do it on New Year's Day? I'm like, it makes no difference to me. That day has long, long since fallen off my radar of important things on the schedule. Yeah. And I mean, even if they do go out drinking the night before, it doesn't start until 3 o' clock Pacific time.
So, you know, they've got plenty of time to wake up and have a late breakfast and all that good stuff and still show up if you want to. And if they don't, it is in the library. So you should be okay by the next day. Like, even if the whole first day is rough, the second day, you should be.
Melissa Breau: All right, fair enough. All right, Any final thoughts or maybe key points you kind of want to leave folks with as we wrap up?
Denise Fenzi: No, I love to see people. I love to have you live and address all your questions. And I'm kind of excited to be looking at this again because I really am revisiting it with my own dogs and thinking about where I'm going. So that's kind of a fun time to teach such a webinar.
Melissa Breau: Awesome. All right, well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Denise. Thanks, Melissa, and thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in.
We'll be back next week, this time with presenters from the upcoming Active Dogs Fitness Planning and Injury Management One Day Conference. 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!