For our first ever dually published podcast episode (both as an audio podcast and on youtube as a video podcast!) we brought back our first ever guest — Denise! — and revisited the things we talked about 10 years ago in our first ever podcast episode. Together they talk about how Denise's training philosophy has evolved, what it means to "Train the Dog in Front of You," how training has impacted Denise's approach to dealing with people, how her own fitness journey has led her to thinking about canine fitness differently, 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 and this is the first official episode that will be duly published both on the podcast audio feed and over on YouTube as a video podcast.

If you're listening to this right now and would like to watch us as we chat, you can find us on [email protected] fenzidogsportsacademy hi Denise. Welcome to the podcast and the video, Denise.

Denise Fenzi: Hey. Woo hoo. Right, New things. Cool. Very exciting. Yeah. So to start us out, do you want to just kind of do the usual and remind us a little bit about you and kind of your current furry crew?

Denise Fenzi: Yeah. I'm Denise. I'm founder of FDSA. I have three dogs. I have my little old man terrier who is Brito, he's what, 12 and a half now. I have Xen, who is my four and a half year old Belgian tervuren who is training and competing in bite sports. And I have the youngster who is 12 and a half months now. His name is Tye and he is my border collie addition. A lot of fun.

Melissa Breau: Awesome. So I mentioned during the intro, this is the first ever episode to go out as a video podcast. So I thought since you were our first ever guest on the audio podcast, it might be fun to kind of go back and revisit some of those things we talked about almost 10 years ago now for the first audio podcast. Sound good? Yeah, that's actually, that's quite a coincidence, isn't it? 10 years has passed.

Denise Fenzi: Where has 10 years gone? Melissa, I can't even quite grasp that 10 years has gone by.

Melissa Breau: Brito was your baby dog back then.

Denise Fenzi: He was. I know. We probably talked about him. Huh? We did quite a bit. Wow, what a. Yeah. What time has gone by?

Melissa Breau: So one of the topics that we talked about back then was your training philosophy and you shared that at that point you're kind of in a point of your journey where your focus was less like, what can the dog do for me? And more, where can I enjoy my time with this dog? So that was almost 10 years ago. How would you describe your training philosophy today?

Denise Fenzi: That's interesting because since then I ended up not competing with Lyra. She's passed away since then. And I ended up not competing with her because I came to the conclusion that she did the things I wanted and she trained, but there was no passion there for it.

And I had realized that as time has gone by. I really, really want a dog who wants to work as much as I want to train. And that's, it's not necessarily important to me that the dog want to do that. But if we're going to do competition, I need to have that there. So I would say I've sort of strengthened the side of my thinking which is about teamwork and making things work for both of us in a, in a team sport and really selecting for dogs that are well suited to doing those kinds of things.

The young border collie was not selected for performance. He was selected to herd a sheep. Because I need a herding dog because I a ranch now. And if he can do performance, I mean that's great. But my mental model was slightly different in that case it was, he has to be capable of herding sheep and want to herd sheep so that he can be useful. So that was a bit of a change because I don't think I've gotten a dog that way.

Like for a practical. I need a dog to do this thing for me way. So that's kind of cool and different. But the partnership element is very much the same. And I'm seeing that as I work with him in non herding activities. I really see how those relationship building events make it easier for us to do herding together. I think he's a particularly interesting case just because you mentioned you kind of got him to do herding, but he, you know, he came to you as definitely not a dog.

Most people would meet on first meeting and be like, this is going to be a sports dog, we're going to do things together. And you've kind of taken him a long way.

Melissa Breau: Do you want to share just a little bit of his story here?

Denise Fenzi: So I got, I got him at six months of age. He had not been off his, the place where he was born ever.

He had met two people and he, I believe was taken for two walks of five minutes a day around the kennel and then put back in his kennel where he was alone. So I'm fairly confident he never had toys. I know nobody ever fed him by hand. And understandably when I got him he was pretty, pretty distressed because that's like enormous change. And so I knew all of that history when I got him.

It wasn't a surprise and I was okay with it. I was sort of like, well, new direction, new journey and a lot of dogs that can't function very well in the world. Can actually function fine anyway in their own environment. So I'm like, well, he's a herding dog. As long as he can work at the ranch and he gets along with my family and he gets along with my dogs, it's okay.

I don't. It doesn't have to be more than that. I'm not in a very competitive state of my life, and. And so I just set about trying to help him be the best dog I could help him be, which is really about building a relationship, building his confidence, building his belief that I'm on his team, finding what brings him joy. So getting back to what I talked about 10 years ago, because he was so shut down and so really trying to get away from me, from everything all the time, it really was a journey into discovering what he cared about and figuring out how I could insert myself into his world.

Not because I had competition goals, but because his quality of life would have suffered very badly if I hadn't done that. Because he was so fearful and, like, he wouldn't eat if I was sitting there. You know, he had to eat at night. There was just a. A lot to work on, a lot to work through. And, I mean, at this point, he's doing so well, you really couldn't tell.

I don't think that he had had a rough start. There's. He still has weird things, but one by one, we're actually getting rid of the weird things. You know, he recently learned how to get in water, and he started with a pretty dramatic distressed response to buckets, not whether water in. In them or not didn't actually matter. Buckets, feed buckets. He wouldn't go anywhere near them. So whatever happened there, I don't know.

But he had issues with buckets. So then he had issues with water because water goes in buckets, and now he gets in water buckets with water in them. So, like, things like that. He had pretty serious issues about getting into a crate in the car. He was fine in the crate one season, but after six months, I mean, I. It's hard to pick up a dog for six months.

And I tried earlier to work on that issue, and the time was not right. He was doing it. There was a lot of conflict in his behavior, but he was doing it for me. And then one day he said, I can't do this. And he started to run, and I hadn't actually seen the running behavior probably a month before that. And I was like, okay, well, if that's not a Pretty clear indicator of distress.

I don't know what is. When I say run, I mean run. I mean, just turn and run as far as he can, as fast as he can, going absolutely nowhere except away from me. So at that time, I said, all right, this lesson is not the time for this lesson. The answer is not to put the dog on leash. The answer is not to add motivation. The answer is to respect that.

The dog is having a lot of problems. And so a couple weeks ago, I decided, all right, I'm going to give this another shot. And we got it in one day. It was amazing. But he was ready. And even now, while he can do this, I've noticed that there are some parameters around it. So there are certain places where he just can't do it. And I'm like, it doesn't matter.

I just pick him up and put him in on those occasions. But I'm noticing that he can do it on more occasions. So we're heading in the right direction. So that whole process of building a dog's confidence and the willingness to try, the ability to try, he's had so much success in his little six months here. So much. He's winning a lot. And he has a lot of skills as a result of the fact that he's pretty confident he can do things.

I think he's a super cool dog. I mean, I am myself quite curious to see what he's like when he's two or three years of age, because the trajectory we're on now is kind of extraordinary in the sense that he is to say genetically gifted would be an understatement. He's unbelievably. It's not even about smart. He just. You show him something a couple of times and he. It's done.

You know, it's just amazing. His ability to retain information, his ability to generalize things he learns in one environment to other, those are genetic gifts. I don't. I can't do that for a dog. But to see those gifts, to watch him kind of come out and be like, I can do this and I can do this, and I can. I can do all the things. I remember the first time he did shaping with me, and I actually had it on video.

And it's. It's the kind of thing that makes you cry because you saw him standing there looking at me, and then you saw him pick up his foot and ever so slowly reach out and touch the platform, and it was just like, okay, this is the first time I've seen you do something like act on your environment to see if you could make it work. And it worked, right?

He did it and the thing happened and. And then you could almost even go, okay, okay, I'm gonna try that again. Like, and you could see. And then it. I feel like it sort of snowballed from there. Like, I actually have autonomy. I can act on the world and make it a better place. I can make things work. And that's super cool. I have never had a dog that started that far behind the eight ball.

I mean, everybody's had a puppy that had its moments, right? The first day it came in your house. And I think most of us remember or see that moment when a dog figures out that they can make things happen. But with this dog, it was so dramatic and it was just so clear that he went from, I just wait until things happen to me to I wonder if I can make this thing happen.

And that's the start of confidence, like the belief that you can actually act on the environment and change it in ways that you like. And now he's quite busy, actually. He pushes the envelope quite a bit now to get his way, get what he wants. He's quite willing to assert himself at this point. So it's just been, it's a super cool journey. I don't know where it's going to go.

So we're all going to just sit around and watch. Super fun. And you're pretty good about sharing updates pretty regularly over on Facebook and in the alumni group. So for folks who want to see what some of that looks like, you can find it there. So I mentioned that we kind of talked about your training philosophy 10 years ago. And I think that as the head of the school, you've had a huge part in just kind of shaping the overall philosophy and overall culture with the students and with the instructors.

Melissa Breau: So I'd love to just hear your takes on how things have evolved in the last 10 years from that standpoint. How have you seen the students change? Have you seen the instructors change? What growth have you seen?

Denise Fenzi: I think the well being of positive reinforcement techniques, not philosophy. But the techniques in positive reinforcement are much more deeply embedded in the dog culture everywhere. If I taught a healing class 10 years ago, the kinds of questions people would ask me would be, what is the purpose of a disc?

Why am I using a platform? How do I get the dog on it? Nobody asks me those questions anymore. Like the recognition that we can use props. When I talk about breaking behaviors down into small pieces and building them back up. Whether or not a person is doing that well or is fluent, they may or may not be, but they know what I'm talking about, even if they haven't quite figured out how to do it.

And that way of training has completely permeated the school in all sports, in all instructors. Not because we all sat around and agreed on it, but because there's sort of this recognition that it's the best way to train complex behaviors to a high level that actually hold up under stress. And I think those ideas are now pretty well established in a lot of dog sports around the world.

And I'm not saying that FDSA caused that to happen, but I am saying that FDSA was one of the players along with many other players. And we all sort of came up at the same time providing what was the point? It was to provide really high quality information and training to people who wanted to learn. Because lots of people wanted to do positive reinforcement things, whether obedience or rally or agility, whatever they wanted to do.

But with the, you know, agility, it was well established. Positive reinforcement training at that point was pretty much the norm. But in sports like obedience, it most certainly was not. And you know, in the meantime, you've got Petra Ford now multi championships at the NOI with positively reinforced dogs trained within that sort of philosophy. And Shade this year was the national IGP2 champion. Again, it's that same idea.

So it sort of feels like what used to be exceptionally rare. Like people would say that my dogs were the first plus R obedience champions. And I don't know if that's true or not, but the fact that people called it out, whereas now I don't think people are calling that out so much anymore. It's just like, yeah, some people are doing it that way and succeeding. So I think there's been a pretty big cultural shift in many dog sports towards using much more positive reinforcement based techniques.

And really, even in sports where it's absolutely not traditional to use positive reinforcement like the bite sports, what I would say is training is way more sophisticated than it used to be. And the influence comes from the positive reinforcement world. So the breaking things down into tiny pieces, they're doing that too. They finish it differently. And most of them are pretty comfortable with all their tools on top of it.

But the actual pieces, the learning pieces, has changed dramatically from when I was in that environment before FDSA, when the training was really pretty rudimentary. You know, heeling was just, you put a, I guess it was a choke chain at that point on the dog and you just Jerked it along, really, it was that lacking in sophistication. Whereas now the individual pieces of a skill like healing are going to be taught very similarly, whether you're an IGP competitor who uses tools or you're a plus R competitor.

So it's not going to matter that much. Then there are places where it differentiates and you're going to start seeing some real differences. But it doesn't change the fact that the, the more sophisticated approach to training has permeated the entire dog training sphere. It's not just the positive reinforcement sphere. When we talked about training philosophy and all of this stuff, you know, 10 years ago, one of the big pieces that you, you hit on was just how much it kind of influenced your relationships with people.

How like learning how to apply this in the dog world and how learning theory work in the dog world really had an impact on how you interact with others and your relationship with your kids and your family and like all of those things. And I'm just curious, have you seen that continue to hold true? Have you seen that, you know, impact things in other ways? That's a hard question because there's two sides to it.

Every year that goes by, I think I get better at applying positive reinforcement thinking to my human interactions. But it's not positive reinforcement is in the quadrant. It's the side of positive reinforcement training which is sympathetic to the position of the other and their emotional well being. So when you communicate with somebody, it's not about trying to change their behavior. It's about communicating in a way where you can be effective by recognizing how your choice of words, body language, phrasing is impacting how they feel.

And how you are impacting their feelings is actually going to have a huge impact on the future of your relationship, not necessarily their behavior or your behavior. And that I think I was sort of intuitively doing it all along. Now there is more of an awareness of that. And I think, you know, for better or worse, I've had a lot of really rough experiences over the last 10 years and I've seen a side of people that's really pretty awful.

And I mean, I don't know how else to say that. There are some people out there who, for lack of a better word, are simply mean. And they're in the dog world, they're in all worlds. It's not a training methodology thing. I think it's just a people thing. And so I think there's a certain amount of awareness of that aspect now. And one of the big differences between where I am now.

And where I might have been then is sort of a sad recognition of that, that humanity includes people who are really quite cruel and they aren't about me and I'm not, I don't interact with those folks anymore. I have really learned that there really is something to be said for like cutting your losses. And it's not a loss in, it's a loss in the sense of I really like people, I really like to interact with people, like to understand them, and I like to think that they want to understand me.

And I think I've. I've had a boy almost a wake up call about the reality of human nature. And it spans pretty wide spectrum. But I also think I've kind of come through to a pretty healthy place where I, you know, I know that decisions and thinking is emotional more than rational most of the time. So if somebody likes the things you're saying, it's because they emotionally resonate and then that comes out as agreement.

If somebody is distressed by the things they're saying, it's emotional. It's not the facts that are in front of us. Thinking is large or actions. Behavior is largely driven by our emotions, not by our reasons, which is why you can lay out all the facts so they can be. I mean, I'm not talking about dog training, just about anything. And once a person's already decided something, their emotional systems will make those decisions for them.

And it's, it's kind of fascinating, kind of scary because it impacts the world as a whole. Really. It's, it's, you know, I think all of that has come from being in the dog world. Watching, watching behavior. I watch behavior every day. I, I listen to the responses of people to things they see, read, hear from me, hear from others. And I'm sort of constantly reminded that human nature has a pretty wide spectrum.

And I like most of it, but there's a part that's just there and it's not going to go away. And so I think learning how to be healthy in a world that has some pretty problematic sides to it is a thing. And I think I kind of got there, which is kind of amazing. Yeah, I guess it's kind of the idea that yes, in order to have a positive series of positive interactions, you're valuing the relationship over the specific behavior is kind of one of the things you hit on in there.

And like, if you're trying to foster a relationship with somebody, you're kind of valuing that relationship over necessarily. Specific behavior change and then the fact that not Everybody wants that. And so you can't just assume that everybody's aiming for that goal. I guess, you know, I don't know where I stood on this 10 years ago, but I know where I stand now. People ask me if I'm trying to change the behaviors of others in the dog world, and the answer is no, I'm not.

I'm not trying to get other people to train the way I train. I really like the way I train dogs. I really like what I get from it. I think there are other ways of training that are not for me, but are not cruel to the dog. It's just not how I'm getting from here to there. I don't want to do it, and I want people to know what I do, why I do it, how I do it, so that it's an option for them.

But I'm not doing it because I'm bound and determined to change how everybody trains dogs. That's not where I'm at. And then there is a side of training that goes past that line and then that's different, but I can't influence those people. So that's. I mean, that really the only place I have a chance is the people who actually do care about what they're doing and how they're training their dogs.

And maybe they just don't know that they can get from here to there another way. And so, I don't know, maybe 10 years ago I was trying to change people to be. To train more like me. And now I'm like, well, really what I want is for you to know what that even means. Because there's vast misunderstanding about positive reinforcement training still in the world as a whole, what that even really means.

I mean, I just saw something the other day where somebody was saying, you know, this positive reinforcement idea of ignoring behavior you don't like. Well, I tried it. My dog chased his tail for three hours or something. And I thought it was just kind of interesting because as I looked at that, I thought, I don't know any trainers who just ignore behaviors that are self reinforcing. Like that piece sure got missed.

Like, you can't ignore behavior that's self reinforcing. But I just, as I read it, I thought, this is where it's a problem that we don't talk easily to each other. Because the idea that that's a common way of training dogs in the positive reinforcement world, Maybe it was 10 years ago, I don't know, but it certainly isn't now. That's far from a standard way of thinking, but that people think that's still a standard way of thinking.

That kind of thing I would like to change because that's just faulty information. That's just lack of. And that's because of lack of flow. So that's kind of where my brain is at. I just want people to know the things that are. Options are. Yeah, yeah. And then go where you're going to go. Yeah, I'm going to put free educational materials out there for people to consider, essentially.

I tried. Yeah. So most recently, it seemed like just kind of, you know, talking to you and following some stuff on social media and whatnot. You know, back then, we talked about how kind of the. The dog training behavior piece of the world had influenced your, you know, everyday life and your interactions with people. And it seems like you're seeing a little bit of the opposite happen now, where some of the things you're exploring in your own world around fitness and health and stuff like that have begun to impact the way you think about training and working with your young sports dogs.

Melissa Breau: Can you talk about that a little bit? Well, the one thing I will say is that getting older is no good alternative, but it's just. It's just no good. So I'm 57 and I was fifth. I was 48 ten years ago, roughly when we did this interview. And there's a lot of territory between 48 and 57. There's a lot of things I cannot do anymore. I could not teach the seminars I used to teach because they involved playing tug for.

Because that was really what I did, was play for, you know, a whole day in a seminar. I am physically not capable anymore of things I used to be able to do. And I kind of look at that now, and I find myself accommodating a lot. And so I still can do a lot, but just an awareness. And so I started my own fitness journey, probably for the first time in my life, so that I would feel better as opposed to trying to look better.

And that's a pretty dramatic change. Like when you're 25, you just want to look good. Right. I mean, that's all it is. And now I'm like, you know what? I actually not as concerned about that. I want to feel good. I want to get out of bed in the morning and not have to put my hands down to stand up. Right. I. I don't want to be injured because my stomach, my core is not strong enough to support me when I'm picking things off the ground.

Right. I don't. I Don't want to. I don't want to go down that path. And then recently, I just finished basically a year of lost time with Xen because of a few injuries he had that took a lot of rehabilitation and stem cell treatments and therapies and the whole thing. And, I mean, thank goodness to him. He's. We're back at it, right? We just completed a trial, a couple, and he was in wonderful condition.

But I do think about these two things together a lot now. So when I'm asking him to do fitness, and then that night I'm doing crunches, let me tell you, I think about the fact, how many did I ask my dog to do today? How hard was that? Like, he can't tell me. If I could not tell you how it feels for me to do exercises, and that cheerful person on the YouTube video saying, you're doing great.

Just one more, a little bit higher, and I'm thinking, I can simply opt out. I mean, it's kind of a joke. It's like, yeah, you just keep going a little higher. I might take five seconds off. Right. I'll get back to you. I have that freedom. I have that autonomy over my own body. And I think about it every single time I exercise and every time I work with my dog, I think about, this is hard.

And you're feeling physical things that I don't know what you're feeling because I'm not in your body. And then that makes me think about all the things we do with our dogs, especially those of us who do things that require either lot of physical or mental concentration and effort, that we ask a lot of our dogs, and we can never know what's inside their bodies. And that makes me super sensitive to the idea of having ways to read them, because a lot of our dogs will go over their discomfort.

They won't really show it. Like I can say that with hindsight. There were things in Xen's work that should have clued me in to the fact that something wasn't quite right in his body. So these are small things, like going over a significant jump. So we do meter jumps in my sport. If I look back at those videos, I can see that one leg dangled a little bit more than the other.

They weren't even. So that tells me he really wasn't able to pull up as well. On one side, he was still making the jump. So what am I seeing? I'm seeing that he's clearing the jump. But why was he doing that? He was compensating for me. But he can't tell me then I'm compensating because something isn't right. You know, it wasn't until it became, you know, somewhat dramatic when I asked him to jump on a grooming table and he says, I can't, that I went, oh, my God, like, that's really bad.

And the interesting thing is he was absolutely normal. Like, if you just watched him running around the house, trotting around, working, everything was absolutely normal. He just couldn't jump up at a certain angle. So if I had not on that day asked him to do that, I don't know how much longer it would have been before I went, what? Like, that's, that's really extreme. And so I think I'm really in a place where I'm so sympathetic to the idea that our, our dogs are somewhat hostages to our interests, to our lifestyles, to everything.

And they have extremely limited ability to communicate subtle things. They can communicate big things. But by the time your dog is lipping their lips and curled up in a ball looking the other way, that's pretty far down the path. Their ability to tell us little things like, you know what, I got a headache today, so could you maybe not be banging that loud? Stick around. They can't tell us these things.

And it's more than just reading dog body language because high drive dogs go over the top of that body language. They're not, they don't want you to know because what, you know, it's like if you have a little kid who has 103 fever and it's his birthday, he's going to be telling you, I'm fine, Mom, I'm fine. I can. Absolutely, I'm. Because he wants to do what he wants to do.

But what do we say to the little kid? We go, you know what, I know this is really terrible. I know you're really disappointed, but you're really sick and you're going to stay in bed even though it's your birthday. Our dogs, they don't have words. So that's, I think, one thing as I get older, just an awareness that my body doesn't work as well, that our dogs in middle age are often in their prime competition years.

So let's say between the ages of about four and seven or eight, some of our dogs are really in a great place. But at the same time, any dog that's in that age range that's been training for any length of time almost certainly has either some low level chronic issues or has periodic days of acute pain, just like we do that we don't know about. And so that's on my mind about what kind of responsibilities do we have to try to be as kind and fair to them as we can?

Because we love them, they're our pets, you know, so even if you go beyond the fact that sentient beings maybe just right there, should have certain rights, it's a lot more than that because they live in our house. Like, I have livestock, and I don't attend to my livestock the same way I attend to my dogs. I want them to be comfortable, but they're not the same as my dogs.

They don't get that much consideration. But my dogs, I give extra, you know, so I really do want to do right by them. And I also realize that they love to do my games. So I want to play my games. I just want to be sensitive. And I think as I get older and more aware that body parts don't work as well, I think it's easier. I think that.

I think everybody who does fitness or anything like that with their dogs, dog sports, should just spend 10 minutes doing sit ups, push ups, and just remind yourself what it feels like to exert your body when you're tired and maybe when you don't want to do it. And just be aware of that. Yeah. Thinking about that a little more and thinking about kind of what we talked about that first podcast episode.

You know, we talked quite a bit about the idea of training the dog in front of you because you just finished writing that book. So taking that into what you were just talking about around, like paying attention to your dog and reading your dog and the relationship pieces and all of those bits and pieces, you know, you kind of have two very different sport, young sports dogs right now.

They have very different mindsets. They're very different bodies, they're very different, you know, even goals, I guess. So can you talk a little bit about the phrase train the dog in front of you, what that means to you today with, like all of that now behind them? Yeah, it's actually really coming to life. I think it was just yesterday somebody asked me because I took the border collie onto a dog sport field for the first time a few days ago.

And it was a fenced field. So I just let him off leash and there were puppies playing on the outside of the field, and he was going and visiting them. And then I would call him, he'd come back, we'd play ball, and for 10 minutes he kind of blended between going and visiting the puppies and coming back and Seeing me, and I thought it was a very successful session where he was really opting in.

And somebody asked me two questions. She said, would you have done that same thing with Xen? And I said, absolutely not. And her second question was, why did you? What is the benefit to you of doing that? The reason I wouldn't do that with Xen is because Xen has a lot of interests and I am only one of them, me and works. And he does not satiate on the environmental options.

He adds them to his repertoire of fun things to do. So with him, I would have taken him to the other side of the field and I would have kept him far enough away and slowly worked closer so that he was always kind of under the threshold of wanting to leave me and wanting to go visit. And I would have played exactly the same games, but I would have used distance.

Whereas with the puppy, with Ty, he has, I would say, very limited environmental interests beyond curiosity. So he has curiosity, but that satiates. Once he knows what it is, it's like he's a worker, he's a workaholic. He's just work, work, work, work. So with him, I thought, well, before he even has a clue that fields are for working, this is a working space. Before we even try, I actually want him to realize that his choice is between sniffing another puppy through the fence or playing ball with me.

And the reason that works is in my mind, I'm about 99.9% confident that the opportunity to play tug with me, to chase the ball and to work, is going to win. And I would rather he have access to all of the alternatives so that he could mentally eliminate them from his checklist. And then I never have an issue where the grass is greener on the other side, where he wonders what it might be like if he could go visit that dog.

You already did that. How'd that work out for you? He chose to come back and work. I think that gives you a stronger long term picture. So that's a pretty good example of two dogs who have a lot of drive to work. They really do. And at this point, I'm actually going to say he's a pretty confident dog, but at the same time, his exposure to dogs is extremely limited just because of his circumstances.

I've never seen him. I don't think he's a problem with dogs, but he really doesn't know what dogs are. And so now he's in a place where there's dogs all around him and they're doing things. And why not just make that a Life experience. Oh, this is what a dog is. And this is. You know. Whereas Xen, from the time I had him, had some access to places where other people had their dogs.

And while he wasn't interacting with them, he was really around them. He was kind of soaking around. He knew what dogs were. And I think to this day, Xen, I have to work to keep his focus because he's really. It's not that he's particularly environmental, but he is an intact male. I think that's a big part of it. I think there's always an awareness that there might be a girl out there, you know, that wants to meet him.

I think that's always on his mind. We do bite work, which is not Denise focused, it's decoy focused. So we're always sort of fighting that conflict between what he wants that is in the environment and what I have, the kind of work I have, the balls I have, because he'd really rather do bite work than anything I do with him. And while Ty has sheep, Sheep don't show up at dog sports competitions.

They only show up at sheep herding competitions. If sheep started wandering around the property, it would be a different matter. And then I would not just let him go to visit the sheep and call him back. Right. So there's an awareness of what's important to them. So in terms of training the dog in front of you. Yeah, they're a pretty good example of that. The way with Ty, he learns very, very fast, but everything has to be tied to a thread that he already knows.

So he does not do well with just new ideas. Because I think that confidence thing starts to come in. So everything is sort of built on. If I want you to touch the fence, you already know how to touch my hand. I put a piece of tape on my hand. You touch the tape, I put the tape on the fence. You touch the tape on the fence, I take the tape away, you touch the fence.

Right. That works incredibly well for him now. It works for Xen, too. But with Xen, I also have the option of just sitting by the fence and waiting. And then he offers something, and I can reinforce that. With Ty, that stresses him a lot. And he sort of. Instead of moving his body and trying out stuff, he sort of shuts down. And you can. You can almost. It's not shutting down emotionally.

He gets stocky, stiff, border collie type. When he's unsure. He doesn't offer movement. He offers staring. That's not great when you're trying to get a dog to offer behavior. So the way I look at new exercises. Everything I do with him, I ask myself, how can I tie this to something he's done before? How can I make this familiar? I don't think that way about Xen. I just, it doesn't really occur to me because I have more options.

With Xen, I can make a lot more mistakes because he doesn't learn as fast. Tye learns very, very fast. So you really like. The other day I was doing a sendaway and at home he's doing them fine. And I took him on a field and I did a send away and it started to look a whole lot like an outrun for sheep. So instead of going straight out, he went woo.

I did it once, I reinforced it, I stopped and I said, I need to think about that. Because if I do that three times, that is going to be what he does on a new field when he's doing a send away. And that's because he learns super fast. You know, with Xen, I don't have to worry about that. Xen isn't going to learn instantly. And then if I want to fix it and change it later on, it's going to be very easy to do because I can.

He's malleable, but once the border collie decides he knows what I want, plus it's self reinforcing, he likes to run in curves and arcs. It makes sense. So I sort of immediately said I have to find a way to clearly differentiate these two things before I go any further. Yeah. So I feel like with Tye, I need to be a few steps ahead of where I need to be with Xen in similar circumstances.

Yeah, yeah. So they're both smart, they both love to work, they both have quite a lot of interest in toys. They're both definitely toy dogs. Both dogs had to learn to take food to work because neither one is particularly injured. They'll take food, but it's not a driver doesn't push them. So those things are all like when we talk about qualities we want in strong working prospects, they have all those things.

And yet after that, I mean, on some ways they really couldn't be more different. And it's one of those cases where somebody would walk in and say, I really prefer that or I really prefer that. I don't think very many people would walk in and say, oh, it's a toss up. I think, you know, the. Would you rather have a dog that moves around a lot, maybe gets a little frantic in the work, or would you rather have a dog that's slow and thoughtful and methodical as he learns and then he picks up the pace.

Like it's just different. Different styles of dogs. Yeah. Just because you were talking a little bit about kind of the way Tye maybe doesn't do quite as well without that thread of something that he knows. You are working on. Some resilience webinars coming up.

Melissa Breau: Yeah. Do you want to just talk about those a little bit? I know they're a little ways up.

Denise Fenzi: Yeah. I mean, how could I walk away?

I had this dog who just was. He's such an opportunity to discuss it. Resilience is a super hot topic right now in the dog world. And it concerns me a little that some people think you have to add misfortune to the dog's life in order to show them that they can get through it. And Tye, one, you can certainly argue that he had plenty of misfortune in his life.

I think he just had more. Plenty of the absence of interactions more than anything bad happening to him. But if I had tried that with him, if I had tried to add pressure so that he could see how he could work through it, there is really no question in my mind that I would have broken him completely because he can't help the fact that he has feelings about feed buckets or whatever and a lot of stress around it.

Those aren't, you know, or that he can't get in a crate. I mean, I watched somebody. Their solution to that was just to take the dog by the leash and drag it in the crate. And I guess that, you know, after a couple weeks or whatever, they had a dog that went in the crate. But frankly, the dog looked like it had been dragged in the crate. If I had done that with Tye, could I have done it?

Yes. So what he would have learned is that he does not have a choice about his environment. Not that he can act on his environment to make good things happen for himself. He would have learned that once again, he is at the mercy of the world and all he can do is escape and try to figure out how to escape. Does that build confidence in a dog or does that build resignation?

I would argue that you're building resignation that you really don't have power in this world. And while I wasn't thinking about doing a webinar when I got him, I wasn't thinking about training resilience or confidence or anything. As I was working through the process, it became pretty clear to me because I put a whole lot of videos online for people to see it. The feedback from people saying this is exactly what I needed to See was how to work through these situations so that not only does your dog get through the situation, but maybe more important so that your dog looks a little bit stronger every day that goes by.

And what I'm finding is that, like that last time I had to work him through the car issue, how fast it went, because he's now had several things that we've had to work through, and he's done it, he's been successful. And you can almost see him going to each challenge rather than saying, oh, well, I might as well just adapt because one more thing that I'm going to have to grit my teeth and get through because I don't have a choice in the matter.

It's almost like I can take this on. Give me a challenge, you know, I can take on a challenge. And you can watch him almost going beyond. Like, I was putting his water. When I was working on the water issue in the bowl, I was just trying to get him to take his ball and I was putting his ball in the water. And you just saw the moment when he said, oh, no, watch what I can do.

And he just. He just like stuck his whole head in the water, got in the water bucket and was like. And I was sitting there going, I can't even believe this. Like, it was. It was such a dramatic moment of, I can do way more than you think I can do. It was so amazing. And then just to be telling him, yes, you can. Aren't you amazing? And to watch him looking back at me like, I can do all the things and he.

I feel that in him. I feel like he thinks he's a little superman, like he's really growing. So I'm turning it into two webinars. The first one is just big picture of how I even started the process. And really that was about finding something I could insert myself into his world. And it ended up being movement. Running was really important to him. So unfortunately for me, I had to do some running.

But the idea that I could watch you and figure out what mattered and then I could make that happen for you. I could find a one acre field that was closed in and I was able to make it secure and let you run and make sure you got lots and lots of running and did lots of running with you. And then he picked up an object. Honestly, probably for the first time in his life, it was in my backyard.

I could see he didn't even know he could pick it up. And then he finally he did. And then you could just see him kind of going, now what do I do? And then he just started to run. And that, believe me, I got my hands on that object as soon as I can so that I could throw it and make it come to life. Not so he'd bring it back to me, but so that he could see that I understood some of his games.

And so the first webinar is really about that process of how I observed him and how I tried to find ways to insert myself. And the second one was a little more specific, like, what do I do when he starts having a barking fit? Because somebody came in the house and we were in the middle of doing some training, like, what option did I pick? And when that option didn't work, what did I do next?

How did I work through these moments of life that were complicated? Or he had developed a habit of running out of the house every time I came into a room. And I knew he wasn't afraid of me anymore. So what did I do? Because I really believed he was not afraid and that it had just become a pattern. But the problem is, we don't want dogs rehearsing behaviors that are negative because they reinforce that emotional reaction of running.

Right. So how did I handle it when I started going, I think you're not afraid. I think you're just such a habit of behaving that way, but you don't remember who you do, what happens. Yeah, you don't even know why you do it. And so I took his choice away. So the webinar talks about structure and choice and why you really kind of need to be thinking about both, because there were a lot of.

I would say that if I gave Tye total choice from the day he got here, he would still be sitting in the back of his kennel. I find it very unlikely that he ever would have voluntarily chosen to leave the kennel. And that means I would trap him. I don't know how else to say that. I would trap him in the kennel, and I would pick him up and I would remove him from the kennel, because, I mean, I couldn't take him by the leash.

He would have been a fish on a line. But I really felt that I had to take him out and take him places so that he could run, so that he could find joy, so that he could understand that the world had options, because at that time, he did not understand anything but being in a kennel. And when you have a choice between the unknown and the known, it's pretty common to choose the known.

If you have zero experience with trying something new and so, as gently as I could, I had to remove him a few times until we started getting better. So there were definitely moments where I had to stop and ask myself, am I going to just give him more time? Because sometimes that's the answer. Right. Do I feel like he's developing, let's call it a negative groove in the brain, the habit of I show up, you run to the back of the kennel and you cower.

Or do I think that's still based in an emotional reaction, things like that? That's what the second webinar is about. It's much more specific to the strategy. So, anyway, I hope people who have dog that are maybe just under socialized. I've been very open about the fact, by the way, that I absolutely believe that Ty has very high genetic resilience. I do not think I created resilience. I think he had very low confidence because of his lack of exposure and all.

What I did was build his confidence in himself. Yes, you actually can be successful. Yes, you can do that. And then you end up in a feedback loop, because the more the dog is confident in the world, the more they have experiences where they're unsure they succeed, and that builds their resilience. So the two, you can't really tease out confidence and resilience, but they're not the same thing.

And then there's other dogs that are, frankly, pretty confident in themselves, and then something goes wrong in their lives and they crash because they actually don't have resilience. Yeah, but most dogs are probably more middle. And I think this webinars probably pretty helpful to a person who has either. Either kind of dog, you know, so hopefully I'll see people there who are interested in watching the process kind of in real time, because the videos were just, you know, whatever was going on with the dog.

And then I would throw it on social media and talk about what I saw and why I was going to address it a certain way. And then we would just see and then change direction if I didn't like it. For anybody who does want to kind of flag their calendar, I did just quickly peek at the dates. So the first one of those is going to be 4-3-30, which will be about two weeks after this airs.

And then the Second one is May 7th. So those are the dates on those in case anybody wants to stick them on the calendar. So when we started the podcast, we used to end the podcast with the same three questions. You probably don't remember, but we used to routinely use them. Every single week we'd revisit those same three questions. So I'd like to, as long as your game, kind of do that again.

So kind of revisit those three questions and kind of see how you answer them today. Okay. The first one is, what's the dog related accomplishment that you're proudest of? Are we talking like forever or like probably getting my obedience championship on Cisu because it was really hard and I didn't think I could. And the process of getting her through a very bad time was an enormous learning curve.

So I thought that was, I would say right now, as I look back, that was pretty cool. That was definitely an example of resilience on my part because it was hard. Was she the dog that you stopped trialing, retired, and then took out of retirement and got it in two months? Yes. That is the same story you shared last time. So that's kind of cool. Oh, that is your proudest moment.

Melissa Breau: What is the best piece of training advice you've ever heard?

Denise Fenzi: So I don't know where I was 10 years ago on this, but I think recognizing that behavior flows from emotions is so central and critical to my thought now. I remember how much I struggled with the idea of giving a cookie to a dog who is behaving badly. So a dog is barking and I'm feeding it. A dog is showing reactive, aggressive behavior and I'm giving it food.

I think. I don't, I don't know if we call that a process or whatever, but recognizing that if a dog feels good, that the good behaviors will follow is pretty good advice. And I think most people would do well to recognize that. The more you can do to make your dog feel good, calm, successful, and all is probably lacking in pain. Physical pain is probably going to give you the best possible behavior that that dog has inside of them.

I like that. It's very in line with what you said last time, though. A slightly different take on it angle. Last time it was, it's just behavior. So it's. It's a slightly more nuanced version. I think it is. It is more nuanced. And I would guess that again, I have to guess about where I was mentally back then, but I would guess that what I meant then was a little.

Well, fortunately was, you know, you can observe and accept, but I think I was still in a more operant frame of mind. You know, it's do things to increase behaviors you like. Don't do things, you know, like reinforce what you like and punish or whatever you want to call it things you don't like to make them stop. And now it's more about get your dog in an emotional state that it's wants to do the things you want to do the way you want to do them.

So I think that's where I'm a little bit different now. All right, last one was, who is somebody else in the dog world that you look up to? Hmm. Well, you know, I kind of have to say Crystal Wing. And the reason is she's staying with me right now at the ranch, and she might. She might get you in trouble if you don't. She might get me in trouble because she's the person I bounce so many ideas off of.

So in my training with Xen, I'm sort of new to the ring sports, so I had one leg with Reika in Mondioring 1. Xen has passed twice. You know, he has his Mondeo ring title, and I'm going to do a French ring title trial soon. So this is new territory for me, and it's really nice to have somebody to talk to who can give me suggestions and kind of as a, you know, and a person who's involved in the process.

So I would be definitely a lot more lonely if I did not have her to talk to about the specific sport. So we're going to give this one to Crystal.

Melissa Breau: I like that. All right, well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and being both our first podcast ever guest and our first video podcast ever guest.

Denise Fenzi: Yeah. Thank you for having me, Melissa. Appreciate you being here for 10 years.

Melissa Breau: No, it's crazy how long it's been. I mentioned the other day, I think it's the only thing I've ever done in my life for 10 years straight. It's a long time. It is a long time. So thank you again and thanks to all of our listeners and our viewers now for tuning in. We'll be back next week, this time with Christina Young to talk about teaching the dogs in your home skills to help everyone get along, including how to actually move away from conflict.

If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in itunes or the podcast app of your Choice or in YouTube, you can hit that subscribe button to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone or to be notified when that next YouTube video is released. Today's show is brought to you by 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 Friday by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training, everyone.

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!