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DS460: Optimal Arousal: Consent and the Working Dog

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DS460: Optimal Arousal: Consent and the Working Dog

Course Details

Optimal Arousal: Consent and the Working Dog is a six-week deep dive into understanding and working with arousal.

This course is about establishing and maintaining optimal arousal in the working dog. By “working dog”, I mean dogs who work in partnership with us using the instincts they were bred for in venues where maintaining optimal arousal levels is critical for success: herding, agility, scent work (SAR, tracking, nose work etc.), protection sports, and the like.

 

This class is critical for anyone who trains in dog sports, especially for those who work with intense, easily aroused, and/or easily shut down / sensitive dogs.  

 Why is achieving Optimal Arousal important? Ok, I’m going to get on my soap box for a moment:  


We use way, way, WAY too much arousal in dog sports. And we need to stop it. Now.  
(*steps off soapbox*)

 

Having highly aroused dogs is counter productive to learning, it’s detrimental to performance, and it creates behaviour problems.

So, why is it so common in dog sports to use high levels of arousal in training? Because of the widespread but mistaken belief that dogs need high levels of arousal for speed. Which is simply not true. 

Instead, what dogs need for Optimal Performance is Optimal Arousal, which comes from the tripartite approach of understanding, ability, and confidence. When they have those three aspects of training in place, speed is a natural by product. 

When we use arousal to get speed, we end up with dogs who bark, spin, fly off course, slow down, sniff, bite, shut down, make errors, crash through jumps, leave their handlers, bite sheep, lose their track, false alert, visit the judge, lose enthusiasm, do spontaneous victory laps, become anxious, or just simply quit.

 If any of this sounds a little too familiar, come join me in Optimal Arousal!

 

A few more details: 

Our working (and sport!) dogs have strong impulses to do the work they were bred for, yet many struggle with optimal learning and performance due to excessive arousal. At the same time, we need that arousal to get the job done. Our task is to help our dogs achieve the mental sweet spot for learning and performance. The good news is, we can do this through training! 

To move toward this optimal state, we will focus on balance in our training — alternating between intensity and calm — to help teach our dogs to learn how to regulate themselves. We will learn their “tells” and create a plan to respond in real time to keep them ‘in the zone’ and working effectively.

There are two major factors that come into play in achieving our goal: Consent and (self-)Control.

Consent is critical for ensuring an engaged, willing partner, and asking our dogs for their consent before proceeding will go a long way towards achieving the mental state we seek.

Consent, however, is only the first of two critical questions we must ask our dog. Let’s face it, most of our working bred dogs WANT to do the work. So, while it’s critical to ask the question “Do you want to do this?”, we need to go one step further and ask “CAN you do this?”. 

This course will provide you with practical exercises and a clear roadmap for achieving Optimal Arousal in your sport of choice. Gold and Silver students will work with me, using this foundation, to create a tailored plan for their unique dog and working situation.

Helene LawlerInstructor: Helene Lawler

Hélène Lawler (she/her) got her first dog, a border collie named Jake, in 1989 and has been training dogs ever since. Over the years, she has trained in obedience, search and rescue, protection sports, rally, tricks, and freestyle, among others. She discovered agility in 2004, and herding in 2005, which have become her main focus and passion in dog sports. (Click here for full bio and to view Hélène's upcoming courses)

Syllabus

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The following is the syllabus we will be following in this class.

Please note: Because we'll be developing unique training plans for the active participants (Gold and Silver) there may be a few changes to the order of the material as it is rolled out. Furthermore, I may add a bonus lecture or two should the need for additional material arise.

Unit 1) Arousal and the working dog:

      • Sources of arousal: Biology / environment / training
      • Arousal is our friend
      • Optimal arousal: How much is enough? What does it look like?
      • The other end of the leash

Unit 2) Working with Arousal - Part 1: Super-charging our training

      • Understanding poisoned cues
      • Errorless learning through loopy training
      • Impulse control vs. stimulus control
      • FLOW as Optimal Arousal

Unit 3) Working with Arousal - Part 2: Reinforcement

      • Food and toys
      • Markers
      • Movement and Control as primary reinforcers

Unit 4) Working with Arousal - Part 3: Practice

      • Balance in training
      • Dynamic vs. static impulse control
      • Premack: when food and toys aren’t enough

Unit 5) Choice

      • Coercion vs. Opting in
      • Start buttons
      • Arousal checks
      • Building the “choice muscle”

Unit 6) Putting it all together

      • Start and end routines
      • Building in check-ins
      • Having an exit strategy
      • Transitioning to the work / sport environment

Prerequisites & Supplies

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Prerequisites:

There are no prerequisites for this class.  

Materials and supplies:

Should you wish to put into practice what you learn, you'll need a dog.

A clicker, food your dog enjoys, and a favourite toy or two will be useful.

Exercises are designed for small spaces, and to use items you likely already have around the house.

Gold and Working Silver students will need a video system of some sort (a phone is fine) and a tripod or means to hold the video camera steady. I strongly encourage Bronze students to video your training for your own review.

Sample Lecture

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Arousal: Understanding "THE ZONE"

According to Wikipedia, “arousal is the physiological and psychological state of being awoken or of sense organs being stimulated to a point of perception…. [It] is important in regulating consciousness, attention, alertness, and information processing.” 

In other words, arousal is not only a normal, but a necessary state. We want our dogs to be focused and alert, and to do work we ask of them. For that they need to be aroused! It’s pretty hard to work with a sleeping dog.

Arousal is a complex, physiological response that helps us interact with the world. It involves our autonomic nervous system (heart rate, bodily functions, pupil dilation, fight or flight reactions), our endocrine system (adrenals, thyroid, etc.), and the ascending reticular activing system (ARAS). 

the ascending reticular activing system (ARAS)

What the heck is the ARAS, you ask? Great question! This little piece of our brainstem is critically important. It effectively acts as a filter, helping us tune out all the extraneous information that is constantly bombarding us. Scientist estimate that, at any given moment, we are receiving around two million separate pieces of information from our environment. TWO MILLION bits of data per second! 

Our brains, big and complex as they are, can only process around 100 bits per second. Without the ARAS, we would be completely paralyzed by all that input. As such, the ARAS helps us function in the world by filtering out everything that is deemed unimportant, allowing us to focus on what matters.

Have you ever noticed how, when you start thinking about something in particular, suddenly you see it everywhere? You learn a new word, for example, and all of a sudden you hear everyone using it. Or you put on a purple top and then notice that everyone is wearing purple that day?

Here’s another example: I recently bought a new car. During the shopping process, I evaluated brands and decided on a Subaru. Suddenly, all I saw on the road was Subarus! Before that decision, I thought they were a rather unusual brand. Nope! I just never noticed them until I set my ARAS filter to Subaru.I ended up buying a white, 2009 Forester. Do you know how many white, 2009 Foresters there are out there? They’re EVERYWHERE! Who knew? 

On the flip side, while I see Subarus everywhere now, especially white Foresters of the same vintage as mine, I couldn’t tell you what other brand of cars I passed on the way into town yesterday. My ARAS, set on Subaru seeking mode, filters all other brands of cars out. They still drive by me, but they no longer register. 

Similarly, when your dog’s ARAS is set to Sheep! or Amazing Scent!! his brain is going to start filtering out everything it perceives as extraneous to the goal of acquiring said sheep or following that scent trail.

Importantly, all our senses except for smell—that is sight, sound, taste, and touch—are filtered through the ARAS. 

When we get focused on something, our ARAS starts to block data in considers extraneous to achieving that focus, including from senses not involved. Once our dog gets locked onto a scent, for example, she may stop tasting food, stop noticing physical touch (including corrections), and even stop hearing! At least things that don't contribute to acheiving the goal her ARAS is helping acheive: following that scent.

For this reason, our dogs will often stop responding to our cues when in arousal. As such, when we give our dog what we thought was a well-trained cue and she does not respond while hyper focused on some task, she is not "blowing us off". Rather, she literally cannot hear us. Or rather, her brain does not interpret the data. Her ARAS filters out our voice—a sound not connected / contradictory to achieving the goal at hand—as being unimportant data.

This filtering system also explains why so many dogs won’t / can’t eat around things that excite them, and also avoid touch or find it annoying.

Interestingly, the sense of smell is not included here and, instead, information from scent goes directly to the emotional center of the brain! We can use this to our advantage. More on that in a later discussion.

The Yerkes-Dodson Law

Another piece of this puzzle we need to consider is the Yerkes-Dodson Law. According to this law, there exists an optimal level of arousal for performance. Too much arousal, and we can no longer function. Not enough arousal, and we have the same problem (for different reasons).

HebbianYerkesDodson

[Image credit: By Yerkes and Dodson, Hebbian - Diamond DM, et al. (2007). "The Temporal Dynamics Model of Emotional Memory Processing: A Synthesis on the Neurobiological Basis of Stress-Induced Amnesia, Flashbulb and Traumatic Memories, and the Yerkes-Dodson Law".]

The Zone vs. The Red

Our goal is to try and keep our dogs in the “optimal arousal zone”—henceforth referred to as “The Zone”. There is no measure for this, and every dog will be different. But we can test for it through regularly checking in with our dogs as we work (once again, more on how to do so coming soon!).

Two points to keep in mind: 

1) We need arousal! We want our dogs focused and alert enough to respond to our cues and the task at hand. We do not want a dog who is apathetic nor totally relaxed. Strongly focused is fine. Is good. Aroused to the point of being unresponsive is what we want to avoid.

2) Stressing low is NOT low arousal. Some dogs “stress high”, meaning they get very agitated and display behaviours such as barking, chasing, biting etc. These worked up dogs are easy to recognize and are pretty common in the sport world.

In contrast, some dogs “stress low”. These are the dogs who seem to “shut down”, freeze, or quit etc. 

It’s critical to understand that BOTH types of behaviours are symptoms of being aroused to the point of impaired performance. That is, both the high stressing and the low stressing dog can be found on the right hand side of the optimal performance curve, the area labeled “the impaired performance zone”. We’ll call this The Red. 

Applying arousal raising factors to a low stressing dog (getting excited, clapping, making high pitched repetitive noises, etc.) can push her farther into The Red, thereby shutting her down more. Or, if we are able to elicit a response in this way, we can be left with the emotional fall-out of a negative conditioned emotional response (-CER).

Note: The Red, the zone to the right of optimal performance in the curve above, is where the use of aversives and punishment typically come into play in traditional training. Specifically, if the dog is kept a little afraid, their focus is thereby split. The ARAS has to filter information to keep track of both the task and the scary thing. This serves to broaden the spectrum of focus and bring the handler back into the picture.

If we wish to use an +R strategy instead, we must find a way to get our dog's ARAS to consider our cues important for the successful completion of the task at hand, without using fear. To keep their focus broad enough to receive the data we send them. To stay in The Zone, and out of The Red.

Therein lies our challenge!

So, how do we keep our dogs in The Zone? Answering this question is what we'll be exploring for the rest of this course!

Testimonials & Reviews

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A sampling of what prior students have said about this class ...

This was a fantastic class. I loved the various topics and gave me lots to think about regarding work and arousal. Her review of gold students was very detailed and spot on. She always took the time to really understand the student and dog.         


Helene, Great class! Looking forward to your next one. Thank you for all the time & work you put into the comments. Especially liked seeing the herding videos with you breaking things down with still shots & explanations. Lisa Gasser       


Thank you for doing this course !!! I have an over the top rescue BC who loves to work. I could only take your course at the Bronze level as I am working 24/7 at the moment and even stayed up later at night to see what you had posted. I have been practicing what you presented daily in small increments not trialing and am seeing a difference. I will be trying the routine at a trial soon. I will be looking to take future courses from you as you are so thorough and present training that works for me and my dogs. I also took your sheep herding course as I will be starting sheep herding with another rescue who is a natural and not over the top and impulsive as the one I needed this course for. I loved both of your courses !!! So Thank you again Looking forwards to your future courses     


Helene has an amazing eye for detail. She picks up little nuances in the video to help you communicate clearer. I would definitely be happy to work with her in the future.          


Super job, love the theory in the lessons, and I've learned so much. Most of the training tips I already use, but haven't put them in the context of lowering arousal. Also I'm so impressed by the way Helene gives negative feedback, in such a kind and constructive way, I've read that with extra interest to try to learn since I'm kind of blunt myself. Would love to take another course for Helene. It has definitly been the best Fenzi course I've taken so far, I think I've done 8.     


I thoroughly enjoyed this course. There was tons of interesting learning material presented in a really easy to understand way with lots of visual aids. I love the detailed analysis that Helene gives to each of the students videos. There was a lot of handler thinking and self-analysis required for this course - which was great, but really required serious engagement from the students. I would love to do another class with Helene in the future.   


Helene has an amazing eye for detail. She picks up little nuances in the video to help you communicate clearer. I would definitely be happy to work with her in the future.

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