Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, guys, it's me, Daisy. So I want to share this conversation with you that I had just a few days ago. It's from a podcast called the Doggy Stoic. Podcast S T O I C.
Andrew was the host. And Andrew and I got into some really interesting territory about training methods, the Kinology group, and the agency accountability framework, which is something I've been talking about a lot this year, and what it's actually like to compete at a high level while being open about using complete training methods.
What I loved about this conversation was how it evolved pretty naturally. I'd never met Andrew before. He kind of just reached out to me out of the blue.
Um, we scheduled an appointment because I thought, sure, why not just talk to some random guy on the Internet who has podcasts like I do?
And then I hurt my back, so I was kind of stuck on the couch, and he was kind enough to reschedule.
But anyways, we started with agility. We talked about that Kinology workshop that I hosted here in December with Forrest, Mickey and Dr. Stuart Hilliard. And then we got into some bigger questions. Things like why clarity creates confidence for dogs and what it means to prioritize a dog's quality of life, and why error free learning is really more of a fantasy than a, uh, reality.
Andrew and I come from different corners of the dog world, but we found a lot of common ground in wanting our dogs to live their fullest lives and being willing to have honest conversations about how we get there. If you want to check out more from Andrew and his podcast, the Doggy Stoic, head over to YouTube.com oggystoic and I'll go ahead and put that link in the show notes for this episode as well. All right, you guys, here we go. Hope you guys enjoy this guest appearance that I made on Andrew's podcast, the Doggy Stoic.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: Guys, you're in for a treat. I know I'm in for a treat. You guys might know her. Daisy Peel. She competes in agility sport. We're about the politics of, uh, both agility training and behavior modification training.
[00:02:03] Speaker A: So agility is an interesting space because it's a really popular sport. You screw around and you get better, and you keep screwing around and you get better, and then maybe you read a couple things and you get better. But like, the dog that's bouncing around and has tons of energy, the owner really just wants it to be better behaved. And they get into agility as a means to do that. And there's no basic obedience that happens or not enough the dog training space, get into it because we love dogs and our social skills are maybe not what they need to be to be a good business person.
[00:02:40] Speaker B: Guys, you're in for a treat. I know I'm in for a treat.
So Daisy comes off incredibly humble, but what's behind the scenes that you guys don't see is it's just a proven winner. It's. And not just that, as a competitor, someone who holds herself to an incredibly high regard.
And you guys might know her. Daisy Peel, she competes in agility sport. And depending on which corner of the dog world you're in, there are, uh, these corners, protection work, agility work, behavior modification, obedience, and everything in between. And we'll get into that in the next 60, 90 minutes. But what my virtual mentor, and then I had him on the show said, learn from everybody, right? Uh, everyone in this space, if they have some pedigree, if they've done some things, if they've stood the test of time, they have something to offer you.
So Daisy Peel, we're going to kick it off with, uh, some agility stuff because she's a high level competitor in that and in bodybuilding actually. But we're going to talk about the politics of both agility training and behavior modification training. I want to hear her story as to how she got into the dog training space in general. I want to ask her about her dog Savvy, who might be the best looking dog I've ever seen. And then we'll let it flow from there. So, Daisy Peel, without further ado, welcome to the Doggy Stoic.
[00:04:01] Speaker A: Good to meet you, Andrew. Thanks for having me on. Looking forward to where the next hour takes us.
[00:04:05] Speaker B: And what's cool about Daisy is, uh, she had a pinched nerve and she still shows up. Nothing stops you.
[00:04:12] Speaker A: So if during the next hour I end up standing like this, you'll know why you're allowed.
[00:04:17] Speaker B: Don't knock over those trophies on, uh, the second and third row though.
[00:04:21] Speaker A: I know that's ridiculous. Gotta put them somewhere.
[00:04:24] Speaker B: Where did you get Savvy? How did you get such a good looking dog?
[00:04:28] Speaker A: So her name is short for Sativa, so that should tell you something about me.
I bred her. So I bred a litter in 2021. I bred her mother and she was one of eight puppies, so I kept her and my husband kept a male from the litter. So we kept two. Conventional wisdom, don't keep two puppies, but whatever.
Um, and they're both that gold color, so when they popped out, I didn't expect that color. I was pretty horrified, but I've come to really enjoy it. It's pretty, it's real striking.
[00:04:55] Speaker B: Does it matter for select for protection work? This is what I've seen and this is completely anecdotal. It's mostly male dog driven for whatever reason for agility. Is it 50, 50 split females to males? How did you decide to keep a.
[00:05:10] Speaker A: Female over a male when I kept her? Well, first of all, I think at the highest level, last I looked there were slightly more females than dogs. I think the bitches, I think in a protection sport it's a little bit different because the males are physically more powerful, but in agility the females are a little lighter usually. And for power the male is going to win. But if it's lots of turning and direction changes and speed change, the bitches are going to be a little bit more lightweight.
So it's a little bit more than 50% bitches at the top. But the males are the ones typically who drive the sport in terms of breeding. So we get a lot of popular sire stuff. You'll have a male dog that wins something big and then suddenly he's everywhere because he just can't spread. Bitches can't spread themselves around as much as males. So that happens. I can't remember the rest of your question. I've already forgotten one of the things.
[00:06:01] Speaker B: I wanted to ask you, Daisy, when I first asked you to be on the show, you were like, hey, as long as I could ruffle some feathers. And I'm one of the unique people in the uh, agility space that uses aversives and as long as I could talk about that. But I want to talk about something different before we get into that.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:06:17] Speaker B: So you had the. Am I saying this right? The chronology event with Dr. Oh my God.
[00:06:20] Speaker A: It was super cool. If you get the chance, run, go.
[00:06:24] Speaker B: Well, tell us about that because I think you made four or five posts and it's hard to convey emotion through caption. But when I read your captions for that event it felt like it was fun learning non judgmental. It was eye opening. It was just like one of those events that if you had to be there for. I know it's going to be almost impossible to convey what it was like. But it was in Ohio. I think it was at ah, your facility. Right.
[00:06:49] Speaker A: It was single digits outside. My facility is. It's pretty fancy but it's a barn. We've insulated it pretty well but it's still just a barn. So here I have these guys coming to town it's mostly lecture. And I'm just thinking, oh, my God, it's going to be seven degrees out. How am I going to make sure people don't freeze?
So we managed to keep the barn warm. But anyways, if you get the chance, you should absolutely go. And I got hooked on it maybe a couple years ago, because I started really getting into Michael Ellis's stuff. And I'm sure you know who Michael Ellis is. He's kind of the goat. And I really enjoyed the content that he shared. I just started buying a bunch of courses off of him that he had done off of Lehrbird, because I was kind of curious about E collar training and some of the other stuff that he had done on loose leash work. And I just thought, God, this guy's great. Not only is the content really good, but he's also a really good instructor. Just his teaching styles. Just. I could listen to this guy all damn day.
And then I heard about this kinology event, and Forrest Mickey was one of the other guys. Well, Forrest Mickey's from Oregon, and that's my home state. He lives in my hometown. So I thought, well, that guy's got to be pretty cool.
And then this third guy, Dr. Stuart Hilliard, I'd never heard of him before, so I dug into it, and then I found some podcasts that he'd done. He's been. Not on the periphery, but one of these people who's so busy doing really cool shit that he doesn't have time for the nonsense on social media. And so I was like, if I can be in a room with two of three of these guys and breathe the air, it's going to be. I just know that it's going to be magic. I just had this feeling about it. And so I went to a kinology workshop that they were putting on in Pennsylvania back in May, and it was Forrest and Stewart.
And I just. It was amazing because, uh, because I expected they had some really pragmatic viewpoints on what to do in training, when to do it in training. We did talk a lot about aversives, uh, but not because that was the main thrust or the main tool in their toolbox. Just mostly because it's a topic that doesn't get talked about. So we have to play cat up with it a little bit. And by the end, I was just begging him, you guys have got to please come to Ohio. And so it was super cool, because not only did I get them to come to Ohio and be an evangelist for the stuff that they had to Talk about and get people to come to those workshops. They stayed in our house, we got to have dinner with them. It was just one of those really cool they're bummed when they go home experiences.
[00:09:12] Speaker B: And what was the goal of the workshop? So you saw them, uh, I think you said in Pennsylvania. What was the goal was, were you attracting pet dog trainers?
Were you attracting protection dog trainers? Were you attracting full gamut? Was it your crew from the agility side? What were you hoping to get out of bringing them to your barn, to, uh, your facility?
And what did you actually get out of it?
[00:09:34] Speaker A: What I was hoping to get out of it was to bring some awareness of trying to think of even a good. I hate using the word balance training because that implies that you're using everything in equal amounts. You know what I mean? But what I wanted was to bring the information that they are very good at talking about and demonstrating to the agility community because there's a real need for it. There's a real need for the conversation to happen.
There's a real need for people to be more aware of the things that they are and are not doing. The people who showed up were a pretty good mix of agility people, bite sport people, and again, a lot of the bite sport people are also doing some pretty solid work out there with behavior cases. So pet dog trainers. And that was basically what I got out of it. I got. We had quite a few people that joined via live stream with several dozen people that joined via live stream.
And it got people talking on social media in person.
The first couple days were pretty quiet. But then on day two and a half, day three, it was pretty interesting because the air changed in the room, people relaxed, they started asking questions.
And then it turned into this really neat collaborative discussion facilitated by Forrest and Stuart, who got between the two of them, decades of really high end practical knowledge. I mean, it was fucking amazing. It was super cool. Just go. I'm going to try and go to the one that they're doing in California in April.
It'll be my third one. It's just good stuff and they're just good to be in a room with.
[00:11:10] Speaker B: So the way I started my dog training career was like, I think, um, this probably this story is similar to a lot of people is we're at a point in our life where we're kind of just trying to get a dog to be a friend, someone, hang out with someone, to do whatever activity that we kind of enjoy. For a lot of my clients, that's cuddle on the couch and watch Netflix, so they get doodles. But for me, I was just like, I want to be more active. So you got a dog. And I started running off leash with. With her in the woods behind my house. And I was a stage of my life where I've been doing business for a while, but I didn't know what the next stage was like. And some of my neighbors wanted to join in. Right. So they're like, hey, I see what you're doing. Can we tag along?
And I. I became known in my community, I'm in South Florida here, as, like, a pack walk guy. And I wasn't on the Internet. I had just come from collectibles, sports cards, that industry where I see how much they tear each other apart online.
It's like I made a candid. Very clear. I'm, um, not going into the online world of dog. I'm just going to put these dogs on long lines, run around. When I feel like it's read the dog's ready to be off a long line, I'll take it off. The dogs would chase squirrels. And I was like, well, is there a long line? That's not a long line. And then I found it's an E collar. I accidentally put the E collar on my little lucky, uh, stomach first. And I was like, wait, this probably isn't it. I put it on the neck. And I just learned through trial and error what life was probably like, like, right. 40 years ago. Right.
[00:12:35] Speaker A: Right. And your dogs weren't traumatized by your efforts, I'm sure, ever.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: They were never traumatized because they knew we're about to go have fun. And that doesn't mean I didn't make mistakes.
[00:12:44] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:12:44] Speaker B: Which. The Internet is so black and white where almost if you. You could make a mistake, but then you're labeled and you're put in this box. So people are dissuaded from ever admitting that they made mistakes, made tons of mistakes. I hope I'm a better trainer now than I was then. And then just this year. So this is year four, year three and a half. I started going to seminars, and I went to Larry, Jack, and Joel. I went to Dylan Jones's, and I'll go to more in 2026. And I was like, man, this is so much fun. Everyone's so supportive of each other. No one's judging each other. But then as I started following these people, I found the Internet, the dog training Internet. I was like, this is crazy, everyone. And I guess the algorithm spits it back in your face.
I was like, no, Everyone comes after each other and no one really asks, what's the dog's quality of life? Why are people using aversives? Is it just to use aversives, or is it to help that dog live its fullest life right in the agility world? I know it's a long story, but I want you to get to know, like, where I came from in the agility world. I'd assume that you guys love your dogs. You. You. It's so cool to have that bond. I would call it like a dancing with the dogs. And I'm assuming everyone wants to have fun with their dogs. What's the politics behind using aversives in the agility world and not using aversives? And, um, if a dog makes a mistake, do you use negative reinforcement to teach it? You use an E collar to correct it. Talk me of what you've seen and what you've seen. And then if Daisy was the commissioner, what do you think would be a better way to go about it?
[00:14:14] Speaker A: So agility, it's interesting space because it's a really popular sport.
I can't remember what the exactly the stats were, but the one of the American Kennel Club agility reps had given us some numbers, and it was in the millions of runs.
Excuse me, not millions of dogs, but millions of runs each year. So it's pretty popular.
And the way a lot of people find their way to agility is they'll show up in an agility class and they'll say something to the effect of, oh, well, my neighbor said I should try dog agility because my dog's jumping over the fence. And they thought he'd be really good at agility or he's jumping over my furniture. And I thought he'd be really good at agility. And it has nothing to do with obedience or any of that stuff. And so I think in a lot of cases, the dog that's bouncing around and has tons of energy, the owner really just wants it to be better behaved.
And they get into agility as a means to do that. And there's no basic obedience that happens, or not enough, I should say, I'm not going to say it won't happen at all. And part of it is there are enough agility instructors that if you go to an agility class and the instructor that you hook up with wants to start with some basic obedience, how about if we teach this dog to walk on a loose leash first? How about if we teach this dog not to be shitty at other dogs? When we're walking down the street, the person will say, I wanted to do jumps and tunnels, so I'm going to go down the street where that instructor will let me do jumps and tunnels on day one. So there's this pressure to get people to do the fun stuff as quickly as possible to keep them hooked so that somewhere down the line, the behavior stuff gets dealt with.
[00:15:48] Speaker B: Do you. I was watching some of your runs, and I think it's interesting that people don't take.
Some people call this pack drive, but take into consideration the connection between human and dog.
So I find a lot of bad behaviors are because there's actually a lack of a connection between the human and. And the dog that they have. Their only connection is in the house versus, if you really like, on, um, my pack walks or in play. You're building a true relationship. And a true relationship has friction involved, I think, in the friction, in the mistakes. Both in Daisy's mistakes and Sativa's mistakes and Andrew's mistakes and Lucky and Buddy's mistakes is actually where the relationship is formed, where we learn how to communicate better to each other.
[00:16:32] Speaker A: Sure. A lot of that's, again, um, in the agility community, a lot of that, it's not addressed. There's a lot of information lacking on motivation and engagement. How do you get your dog motivated? How do you even know what pack drive is? Do you know what your dog's food drive is? Do you know? There's a. It's pretty sad how many people need help learning how to play with their dogs.
And also in the agility world, a lot of people are coming to the sport with dogs that are already either adolescent or adults. So it's not like they're getting puppies. A lot of the higher level trainers are and people, once they get into it, people get their next dog. Usually they get a puppy. But a lot of people getting into the sport are not starting with puppies that they've raised to deal with all the stuff that they're gonna have to deal with in the ring.
[00:17:13] Speaker B: When did you start? When did you get into it and why?
[00:17:16] Speaker A: I started in 1998. I did not have a dog. I saw it on, um, I wanted to get a dog. I was in college, so I wanted to get a dog. I didn't know what kind of dog I wanted to get and I didn't know what I wanted to do with it. And then I saw agility on TV and started researching breeds that would be good for agility. And then I went to the shelter and got a dog that I thought was that breed. And that's how I started Kali Mix.
I thought it was an Australian shepherd. This is how little I knew at the time.
So I went to the library because it was the late 90s, the Internet was not what it is today.
There were books on Australian shepherds, and they were very friendly. And they all said that Australian shepherds were easier, uh, to live with version of a border collie. And then there were the books on the border collies, and they were all black and white.
And all the books said, you don't want one of these dogs. These are for serious people only. Blah. So I thought, all right, well, I guess I'll get an Aussie. So I went to the shelter and I got what I thought was a red and white Aussie with a tail, because I thought border collies were only black and white.
So that's how I ended up with my first border collie, thinking it was an awesome.
[00:18:23] Speaker B: What was your decision to action threshold the same day?
[00:18:27] Speaker A: Did you think about was probably a few weeks. If you think. If we're going to define action as going to the library, I probably went to the library the same day.
[00:18:36] Speaker B: What about RescueLink?
[00:18:38] Speaker A: From the time I got the dog, from the time I saw the info to the time I got the dog, probably three or four months total.
[00:18:44] Speaker B: Did you ask anyone's opinion? No, I asked that because I want to know Daisy, the real Daisy. You know what I mean?
[00:18:51] Speaker A: Yeah. No, I just did it.
[00:18:53] Speaker B: All right.
[00:18:53] Speaker A: Um, and my boyfriend at the time, who later became my husband, I got into a lot of things.
I'd get into photography, and I'd get into this and get into that, and he's like, oh, whatever. She'll. She'll be done with this in six months. And that was 1999.
[00:19:07] Speaker B: Dogs are really. They're emotional beings. They grow on you. Once you get into dogs, it's almost impossible to get out of dogs. Right.
[00:19:14] Speaker A: It's pretty addicting. Now here I am.
I was a college student at the time, and then I was a chemistry teacher for 10 years, and then I jumped ship to be a dog agility teacher.
So now I teach full time. It's pretty much enveloped my every aspect of my life.
[00:19:30] Speaker B: One of the. Did you have any problem behaviors with the dog?
[00:19:33] Speaker A: Oh, so my first dog, his name was Gonzo. I wouldn't say problem behaviors. He wasn't aggressive or anything like that. There was a lot of.
He was pretty nervous and he was pretty shy, and there was a lot of submissive Urination.
And I just really didn't know anything about the breed or dogs, to be honest. We had dogs when I was a kid, but they were never trained. They could have been houseplants, basically.
So I definitely was not prepared for how emotional that breed is. They're pretty. Think of them as the stoic farmer's dog. And they are pretty stoic, but they're also pretty sensitive to everything. They're pretty sensitive to their environment, they're pretty sensitive to movement, they're pretty sensitive to their owner's emotions. So they're a lot. And they're also. To compare them too much to people, but they're also on the spectrum in a lot of ways. They're not great pets for a lot of people, I don't think.
[00:20:23] Speaker B: And so you thought it was an Aussie, but it was a border collie. That's interesting. And so in the pack walk when I first started, one of my first neighbors, she had two Australian Shepherds. One was a death dog, which, uh, deaf dogs are super cool. If you guys ever get an opportunity to train or work with a deaf dog, they're super cool. But I. So they were two Australian shepherds, and I've had quite a few Australian Shepherds. I've never had the privilege of working with a border collar.
[00:20:46] Speaker A: That's kind of surprising. They're not that rare and a lot of active people really enjoy them. So I'm kind of surprised nobody's wanted to join you for a run.
[00:20:53] Speaker B: So what's happening is we're recording this Tuesday, December 30th, my last podcast before the 2026. Uh, crazy. We're saying that.
Thank you, Daisy, for sharing this moment.
I have a young trainer who I like how she trains, right. You never know through Instagram, but she's 20 minutes south, so I invited her up to do. I'm bringing my photographer out, and she has a reactive border collie, and she has her own border collie, and she's coming tomorrow morning and we're doing like a big 15, 20 dog pack walk. And how I typically do those, by the way, for people wondering is it's only one new dog and the rest are mentor dogs like that. And, uh, when I say mentor dogs are they're neutral around other dogs or they're playful, they're off leash, trained, reliable in any environment if they have. And they have to be calm in the house, but that's irrelevant for this. So if they meet those criteria, and these are all dogs I've trained, they're good. So she's bringing her reactive border collie and then her own dog, who's like, mentor dog in training. So those are gonna be my first two border collies.
[00:21:54] Speaker A: Yeah. I have to follow up with you and see how that goes, because the border collie and the Australian shepherd in particular, seems pretty prone to what we call reactivity, which is, uh, kind of a weird misnomer because it. It ends up.
If you call a dog reactive, it makes it sound like it's a character trait, but it's really just sort of a constellation of behaviors.
And Australian shepherds are pretty prone to it, which is not surprising because the way they herd, if they have any herding instinct, is to charge and bark. They don't really eye up the livestock. They're pretty loose physically.
And so when they react, basically just misdirected charging and barking. And the border collies are not typically as overt with the charging and barking. They're usually a little quieter about it. But they version of reactivity can be a little trickier to spot because they're more subtle about it. You know, I'll see it kind of puffs up and then bam, bark. And the border collie, kind of what they would do in a round pen with the livestock if they felt too pressured. They kind of down and then, boom, try and plow through the space.
Um, I'll be interested to hear how that goes for you. They're also. In my experience, it's pretty easy to curb that behavior. I'm just never really had huge problems with reactivity with my dogs, because I just don't let that happen.
[00:23:12] Speaker B: How?
I'll give you my two cents, but how?
[00:23:17] Speaker A: Well, from the beginning, I work on strategies so that they can redirect any arousal that they have towards me. So that's part of it.
Um, they're pretty border, since that's my breed. Border collies, they can be very pressure sensitive. So when they're puppies, I usually do a lot of rough play with them. So a lot of scruffing, a lot of shoving, a lot of smacking, a lot of rough play.
Um, I teach them to jump up at me, like, mass stuff, a lot of center mass, um, play.
And then I get them tugging pretty good on a toy. So I work pretty diligently to construct toy play. And I smack them around a whole lot with the toy as well. And so I'll develop all these little triggers where if they hear me make a little sound or if I whack the toy on the ground, or if I whack myself with a toy, or I whack them with the toy. They'll whip around and redirect onto the toy. And then I pretty, um, methodically, but, like, it doesn't take that long. It's pretty easy. Pretty methodically, introduce them to triggers that I know they're going to be exposed to, like a dog running in the ring or another dog just sitting there. And I'll let them watch.
And as long as they're, um, their ears and their demeanor stays kind of soft, I'll let them watch. But I always need to be able to get them back. So I'll work on, you know, get you to redirect.
And the quicker you redirect and fully engage, the quicker I'll let you watch again. So there's a lot of switching that happens.
And then also in the real world, on leash, there's see it coming because I'm pretty in tune. There's also. I'm going to say no and bop you on the head. Sorry, I just am. And that's usually the end of that. It's inappropriate. We don't do that here. And now stay in heel position and I'll give you some cookies.
But I'm not just going to cookie them through it.
[00:25:02] Speaker B: So there's this concept of identity that I think a lot about.
And Daisy and M. He touches. She's going to give 100. I think you guys know this. 25 minutes in, she's. She. Go get her. You know her that from her Instagram profile. You could just see that from her demeanor.
Identity is such a powerful, um, say it's like a compass on our life. And the first thing you said was like, I don't tolerate that.
[00:25:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:25] Speaker B: What I always found fascinating was like, that where, like, I, uh, have a reactive dog that we're working through the reactivity.
And I found that that's really counterintuitive because you have to just decide that we don't tolerate this behavior anymore.
And the tactics will come, but there's not infinity tactics, if you really think about it. I think about it just as a scale.
How do I build value in myself? Which is what Daisy did with different sounds that are like markers, but, like, valuable. When you feel like you're excited, you come to me. I'm a valuable asset, whether to help you through that emotion. Or we could play. We could tumble. We could do. Right. Infinity. There's not infinity. But you guys understand what I'm saying? And then there's one which is, you don't do that right and how you get to that result with an E collar, with spatial pressure, with your tone, it's so irrelevant. What's cool about these dogs is they're bred to be with us, so they know. But to me, reactivity is an identity issue.
[00:26:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
Not my identity. I am not someone who works on reactivity. I am someone who does not have reactive dogs.
I have dogs that get on the counters occasionally. I have dogs who will be laying on my freaking dining room table occasionally, you turds. But they're not reactive.
So there's definitely plenty of behavior that I would tolerate that other people would be horrified at, but reactivity is not one of them. Ah.
[00:26:47] Speaker B: And that'd be, uh, dogs. When my parents are here for the holidays, my family's here for the holidays. They love my dogs around the kitchen table. I don't do that when no one's here. But like, every day, like the owner, pet owner, they're like, hey, come here. I have some scraps of meat. And they like, I don't do that. But like.
[00:27:03] Speaker A: Right.
[00:27:03] Speaker B: Funny to watch. One of my dogs is super pushy. This Buddy, he's a, uh, statue. And the other one, Lucky and Migo, actually this is a new one, is a golden retriever that one of my clients, Ah, Relatives had to give up. Buddy's pushy. So if you start giving him food off the table, he's going to jump on the table the next time.
Whereas Lucky and Migo will never do it. So a lot of it is like genetics, but not tolerating reactivity. I love how you even worry worded it. You're like, I don't tolerate that. And I think that's such an important thing because we get so caught up in tactics in this world. You know, what tools you use? Are you force free? Are you fear free? Are you positive only?
Or do you balance? It's so silly because the buckets we put each other into, but the reality is it's an identity shift of, like, don't do that.
[00:27:50] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm primarily interested in outcome.
That's my primary interest. I'm primarily interested in owning dogs that I can compete with at a high level and that I can enjoy living with and that I can enjoy training. And I enjoy the challenge of trying to over and over create that quote unquote product with different dogs. Can I take every dog that comes my way and turn it into a product that will yield results? Which sounds kind of cold, but, you know, sleep on my bed. So there's that. But I want to. The challenge of working with the dog that I have and the methods that I have to produce something that I want to have in the ring for me is the biggest challenge and professionally. And part of the reason that I kind of talking more openly about stuff is that I do see a lot of handlers struggling with behavior problems, not sport training problems. And so that's kind of why I lately have been looking more at Michael Ellis's stuff. Because that stuff all supports sport dog training. Absolutely, 100%. Stuart Hilliard stuff, uh, Nikki stuff, Yvonne's stuff. Like people who are making real impacts in lives of the pet side of things and behavior. Like going on in that world.
[00:29:11] Speaker B: Um, of your videos. I uh, wanted to ask you about this. So you're doing a performance with Savvy and the dog is going ballistic in the back, barking like crazy. A different dog. And I was wondering, like giving Savvy commands, right? Like over through and this dog is barking like it's really loud. Is do you have any impact on you or the dog? Are you in such a flow state? You didn't even hear the dog like expression right now? It's like you don't even remember the dog barking. This is just.
[00:29:35] Speaker A: No, I don't. She barks a lot. She barks on course quite a bit.
Um, and I don't usually tune it out.
[00:29:41] Speaker B: This is your Sweden trip. This was when you went to Sweden.
[00:29:43] Speaker A: Oh, that was dude. So that was actually dude, her brother, the male, um, my husband kept because he was kind of a potato, nobody wanted him.
So he didn't be my office dog. He'll just live in the office with me. So that was Dude.
No, I don't remember the other dogs barking at all. You don't remember any of that stuff really?
Mhm.
[00:30:03] Speaker B: It was super loud. I thought that your dog couldn't hear you giving commands.
[00:30:07] Speaker A: Well, he might not have been able to because we did have some errors.
Um, I think they were mostly my errors. Just mental game nonsense.
[00:30:15] Speaker B: But like an error that you make because I've seen this. Like you have to run pretty fast. She has to beat the dog to the next obstacle before sending it. Like it's not easy for the handler at all.
[00:30:27] Speaker A: Well, lots of people that use more distance work and distance commands, I just kind of run. But I still get to those big events because I didn't play sports as a kid, so I never really.
I had to learn how to be an athlete later in life. So I get to those big events and I still have to work pretty hard on not psyching myself out, um, not, not getting in my own way. Like I have the skills to be where I am and I obviously have the physical ability to be where I am. But it's not even conscious second guessing. It's just kind of if you can't get out of your own way, you're just never going to get into that flow state.
[00:30:58] Speaker B: And is it just trusting the work you put in because you can't control the dog either. You don't know what's going through the dog's head. Like there's a mistake. But we've prepared for it. We've covered the basis.
[00:31:07] Speaker A: It's not even sure it's that clearly thought out. It's just if you can't check that higher order thinking before you go in the ring, it's tough physically be loose enough to be in the moment to perform.
[00:31:21] Speaker B: And uh, do you feel like if you're off, the dog will be off too?
[00:31:24] Speaker A: Oh, 100. They do not cover my ass at all. Not some dogs do for people. Mine do not.
[00:31:29] Speaker B: Why do you think? Why not?
[00:31:31] Speaker A: I don't know.
Maybe it's the kind of dog that I like to have around. Maybe.
I don't know. I'm not real sure. They, they do not make good decisions without me though. They're kind of idiots. They're fun and they're fast, but they don't typically make great decisions on their own.
[00:31:46] Speaker B: So you got this first dog, 1998, submissive peeing. What were some highs and lows since then? So you've been doing this for 27 years.
Were there ever times where you thought I don't want to do this anymore. Were there ever times where you're like kind of pet dog trainer?
Talk to me about the journey from when you got that first dog from the shelter, Border collie in college to.
[00:32:08] Speaker A: Now, Uh, a bunch of dogs between then and now.
Um, my lowest point was Covid. That really sucked because everything shut down. I lived in Oregon at the time, so everything shut down. All the competition shut down.
Um, couldn't go to class, you just couldn't. Social aspect of it was just kind of, that was kind of low point.
Another low point was I don't even remember what year it was.
Maybe it was 28, 2017. So in 2017, a week before the big Team USA tryouts, I had this dog and he was really ready. We were so ready.
And the, the week before tryouts, another one of my dogs crashed into him on a trails and tore his cruciate just exploded as cruciate so we had to have CCL surgery, had to have a TPL a couple days later, and we had to miss tryout. So that was a pretty depressing year. That whole year was depressing. Uh, I didn't know if he was going to run again.
And, um, with a pretty high energy dog that can't move is always tricky. And then there's all the rehab.
But then in 2018, we went back to tryouts. Um, he won three out of the four rounds, I think, and we made the team. So it was a kind of a cool comeback.
But not being able to go to tryouts that previous year was rough.
[00:33:30] Speaker B: Were you pissed?
Did you bop the dog that ran into him?
[00:33:34] Speaker A: No, I didn't see it happen, but I'm pretty sure that that's what happened. I don't know how else you could have a traumatic tear like that that busted the joint capsule.
Um, I wasn't pissed. I was pretty devastated because at the time, um, I don't think I was as healthy about it as I am now. My whole identity was kind of wrapped up in it. And so when I couldn't. And that was part of the deal with COVID too. When your whole identity is wrapped up in something and then you can't do that thing, you're kind of left with, well, what am I? Kind of back to your thing on identity with reactive dogs. Well, if I don't have a reactive dog, then who am I?
Um, I can't be someone that fixes reactivity if I don't have a reactive dog.
[00:34:09] Speaker B: Weren't you a chemistry teacher during this time as well, though?
[00:34:13] Speaker A: I was a chemistry teacher from 1999 to 2008.
[00:34:22] Speaker B: What made you get out of that?
[00:34:24] Speaker A: I really love teaching chemistry.
Um, and I really love teaching the kids, and I really loved science, but I didn't think about it 24 7. And most of the really good teachers in the school, and I think I was a pretty good teacher, but the really dedicated teachers were thinking about it 24 7.
And I just thought, you know, thinking about it until it's time to leave, and then I'm thinking about dog training. So if I'm going to do something for the rest of my life, I want it to be something that I'm thinking about 24 7. So that's how I did it.
[00:34:55] Speaker B: My buddy, one of my most difficult points was he is incredibly high drive. And I didn't know better. I didn't know dogs could get injured. I. I can't believe I. I didn't realize that. But I. I tore both of his. And I take full responsibility because I would go out there and I play fetch with him and I should have known that, like how fast he decelerates for the ball.
Gonna tear his knee.
[00:35:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:20] Speaker B: Both of his cruciate were torn and like quality of life goes down. And this is where I think people maybe they don't love their dogs. I don't know. I think everyone loves their dogs. It's like. It felt like something inside of me died because I really enjoyed that. Like, got into nature. We'd go somewhere far in the woods. My little lucky dog was just chilling. She's just like a little like Puerto Rican 30 pound mutt. And then I would start playing fetch with Buddy and it was so much fun. It was true flow state. And then we couldn't do that. And he was limping. And you know what changed my life?
It. It pushed me. It test becomes a testimonial. It couldn't afford surgery.
I didn't have insurance because a neighbor passed like his dog up. He was aggressive.
And I started looking into rehab and I was thinking about, like, for my acl. You know, they make me do. They made me do stability exercises to rebuild that VMO because my VMO atrophied. Okay, I can't afford surgery. Can I go in the pool with him and kind of his muscles? And then I could get a Bosu ball and I could get a wobble board and start working with him. And I actually didn't get either of his knees repaired. This is two years later now.
And he runs and plays like he was before. Maybe, um, 80%, let's be fair. But all through stability exercises, all through Bosu and wobble board. And I've seen this on my Instagram. It's a game changer. It's how I do it as injury prevention for every single dog, once a week for 15, 20 minutes. Nothing crazy.
[00:36:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Big part of, um, they're pretty serious about agility. It's a pretty big part of it now because they just cannot stand up to the stuff that we're asking them to do without that. But that's great that you got to rehab them without having to do that surgery. The surgery is brutal.
[00:37:05] Speaker B: My pet peeve, because I've talked to a few people, there's so much gatekeeping with it. They make it act. They make it out like disability exercises. Like you need like a PhD to put your dog and have them just stabilize for a minute and then take them off.
It's infuriating. To me, I've spoken to quite a few of, like, the main people in the stability. If your dog wobbles too much, you're rushing progress. And I was like, dude, you're putting a dog on there. Their muscles are gonna adjust. They're not dumb creatures. I put them on there as. And they do the best they can. We take them off, put them back on, take them off, done. And if they're making progress, like stress.
[00:37:45] Speaker A: I think some of it is. I, uh, go to the gym regularly. You work out regularly?
[00:37:49] Speaker B: Obviously.
[00:37:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
There are some things to be learned, but like you said, they don't need a degree for them. You just go and you try it and you screw around and you get better, and you keep screwing around and you get better. And then maybe you read a couple things and you get better, but, like, you just keep flopping around and you get better. It's kind of the same thing.
[00:38:09] Speaker B: But the thing is. So I used to go to the gym. I played college soccer, Drexel. So I did power lifting and, like, cleans and like.
[00:38:15] Speaker A: Yeah, question.
[00:38:15] Speaker B: You could hurt yourself there. And you know this, but I think the last, like, six of my life, I did Pilates. You're not gonna hurt yourself in Pilates. It's all resistance. It's your body weight.
So, like. Like that. These dogs, if you put them on a stability ball, if they fall off, they're. They're gonna be okay. It's their body weight. And in fact, there's a great book, it's like the Inner game of Tennis. And it talks about.
[00:38:39] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, good one.
[00:38:40] Speaker B: It's your body already knows. And we actually have to get out of the way of the body. Yeah, this kept acting like these were like, you have to, like, put the right way, and you have to do it on a stable surface first. You have to do that for three months. And, yeah, they have to sit and then stand. And if you go up to, uh, the wobble or the Bosu ball or the exercise ball too soon, you're gonna set them back. And I just don't believe that I had hundreds of dogs come through my, uh.
I just do five, ten minutes, maybe three times a week, and then we go out for our pack walks, have a blast. It's not even a big deal.
[00:39:12] Speaker A: Yeah, I, um, mean so much information out there that it can be really easy to just kind of analysis paralysis and not know where to start. And then, like you said, everybody's saying, well, if you do it wrong, there's gonna be bad consequences. And then you just end up doing nothing.
[00:39:27] Speaker B: They do that with the E collar as well.
[00:39:29] Speaker A: Oh, because there's all these traumatized dogs everywhere from bad E collar use, which I've never seen.
[00:39:35] Speaker B: But you don't do pet dog training, so why are you hanging out in these crazy Facebook forums?
[00:39:39] Speaker A: You like the banter, I like the banner. But also I'm results driven.
There's want to help people. A lot of most of my local clients that come to me have motivation engagement issues. Their dogs don't have recalls. Their dogs don't want to be with them in the ring. They lack the basics with timing criteria and rate of reinforcement. And so what they need are basic behavior strategies. They don't need agility stuff. They know how to do that. If only the dog was interested. And so that's kind of where my interest started growing initially was like, wait, these people, they don't need agility help, they need basic behavior help. And I don't really like, I know how I trained my dogs, but a lot of it was frickin trial and error. And they don't want that. They want me to be able to say I have some experience dealing with this or that.
And that stuff comes from agility.
Because agility, we're really good at making protocols for teaching tricks and conditioning and the behaviors that are required to get around an agility course. But there's a pretty big gap in our knowledge of behavior. We have an increasing number of reactive dogs at the shows, um, increasing number of aggression incidents at competitions.
And people think that they can just give their dogs more cookies and keep them under threshold and then put them in the ring and ask them to rise to threshold and perform.
And it's really, uh, mentally not a great situation for the dogs. It's just they're pretty confused, they're pretty bewildered. They don't know what to do with themselves when they're at or above some imaginary arousal threshold.
And so that's kind of why my interest in pet dog training has gotten higher. Plus, as a teacher and a human being, it is absolute bullshit to think that any creature can learn without ever making errors and that any creature is going to be a well adjusted creature if it experiences zero friction in its life.
[00:41:36] Speaker B: So your identity is just. I'm not a pet dog trainer though, because you obviously have the skills and the mindset that do it.
[00:41:43] Speaker A: Are you thinking I don't have the experience? So I would never say that I'm qualified to teach. To help someone with a behavior issue like reactivity is largely not actually um, like, not an aggression issue. It's. It's a pretty bait. It's a behavior issue. It's a pretty basic one. And if you present to me with a herding dog and you say it's reactive, then I know right away what's going on. And that's well within my domain to deal with behaviorally. But I would not overstep my balance and say, oh, yeah, I can teach a dog to weave. I can teach it to not be aggressive.
I'm just not.
[00:42:18] Speaker B: So you have done some pet dog training, though. Like, these reactive dogs that come to you, they want to do agility. Do you say, hey, you have to work with me 10 sessions. First on behavior.
[00:42:29] Speaker A: We're going to work on recalls. Today, we're going to work on marker cues. We're going to work on recalls.
Um, work on. This is how you play with your dog. This is how we do motivation and engagement. And it's been interesting for me because it's been more rewarding than just having a client who comes to me for several lessons and then has a dog that can weave, like, someone report to me that their dog didn't run away from them is way more rewarding than, oh, my dog had a clean run for me.
[00:42:57] Speaker B: Uh, I agree. So why are you saying you're not a pet dog trainer, Daisy?
[00:43:01] Speaker A: I just want to be really careful about staying in my lane. I feel like I have a lot to learn from people that are out there putting themselves on the streets and working with people who don't want to do sports. They don't want to. They just want to have a functional pet.
[00:43:17] Speaker B: Because you've been around the sports so long, and you see the faces both in pet dog training and agility, you respect the pedigree. So you're like, I know my lane, and I don't want to dive into stuff. The forest. Mickey's the.
[00:43:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
I mean, I want to learn from all of them as much as I can so that I can help more people.
Um, maybe I'm not going to be doing agility. Maybe I'll be doing bite sport. Or maybe I will be working with behavior cases or whatever interests me at that point. But at the moment, I would be really careful.
Um, really, I'm just personally careful with it.
[00:43:49] Speaker B: I understand what you're saying. Like, now that I think back to it, for a while, I didn't do any training. I just did pack walks. Because when you take someone's money and you promise them something that you now knew can't deliver on you can't put your head on the pillow and have a clear conscience.
[00:44:03] Speaker A: Right.
[00:44:04] Speaker B: Okay, See what you're saying is that advice for young trainers, too? Are you seeing a lot of young trainers come in and promise the world?
[00:44:11] Speaker A: I see a lot of younger trainers.
I'm not even sure age is a factor, but I'm seeing a lot of people come into the space and make a lot of noise, but it's not the same as expertise. And there's some people who are really good at making a lot of noise on the Internet, but I'm pretty skeptical, typically, of what their actual expertise is because they haven't had that many dogs. They haven't had any dogs that they've struggled with, or they've not worked with lots of client dogs, or they've had some success in the sport, but just with one dog who happened to work out for them. Okay, that's great. Now do it again and again and again.
Um, tough for me, things considered. I'm tend to want to listen to people who have been around longer just because I think probably they've got more expertise. Expertise. And people like Stuart, Dr. Hilliard, who are so busy being experts that they're not out there talking a lot about it, are the people I want to be around the most.
[00:45:11] Speaker B: Do you think that we live in such an attention economy? Right. So you're 20, 25, 30, even if you're older. And you're like, careers change. Right. So Covid. What I think Covid did was it displaced so many people. I think it said, you don't have to work that office job anymore. I could work that office job from home now and maybe grow up with dogs. And I want to start training dogs.
And we think of getting engagement on social media as kind of Jen. It will lead us to getting clients. It gives us this really incorrect feedback, uh, reinforcement loop, so to speak. Right. Where we think if we create content that gets a lot of engagement, that will lead us to getting more business, but it's actually just attention. Do you think that's kind of misconstrued thing of.
[00:46:00] Speaker A: Uh.
[00:46:00] Speaker B: And I'm young, not necessarily by age, young by experience.
People have that just got into the space five, 10 years ago. They're trying to build their reputation, and they're doing it through noise, and they think they're doing something for their business.
[00:46:13] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's a lot harder these days than it was when I started because there's just more people in this space. One thing for someone who's been in the sport for 30 years to say, oh yeah, I've won five world championships. Okay, when were they all 20 years ago because good luck doing it now because it's way harder. There's just a lot more people out there doing their thing. And so you, you are wanting to have a large number of clients, you're going to have to make a lot of noise.
Um, opposed to days where I'm at, I really don't care that much anymore how many clients I have. I'd rather have the right kind of clients. I'd rather have clients that are curious and that want to learn and that I can maybe learn something from as well.
[00:46:58] Speaker B: Explain bodybuilding, why did you decide to do that?
[00:47:01] Speaker A: I don't know, I have no idea. I used to when I was a kid I lived way out in the country so after school I'd go to the YMCA and kind of on the weights. But that was a long time ago. And so last year I buckled down and I been working out but not really consistently. So I thought all right, fine. I freaking hate getting up early in the morning like we said. Oh yeah, I knew we could get together at 6:30 in the morning. I was like cannot, because I can get up and go to the gym in the morning, but I'm not human. So I just finally started getting up in the morning so that I would go to the gym consistently. And then I thought, you know, for my 50th birthday I'd like to do a bodybuilding contest. Just kind of a list. I'd like to go through the whole process, learn about my body, what it's capable of.
Um, and so I found a coach, a local um, guy locally who's a coach, who's a pro and he's older than me, which I really important because I didn't want to a 20 year old giving me some cracked out protocol for my almost 50 year old body.
Um, and he said, you know, close now I think we could do it this fall. So that's how that happened.
[00:48:04] Speaker B: You're really, really good at seeking out the right types of coaches.
[00:48:08] Speaker A: Yeah, he phenomenal experience. I mean I'm going to do it again.
Um, I'd like try and get a pro card this next year or the year after.
Um, but it was going to my first posing class, walking into a room full of strangers with a bikini on in heels that I could not walk in.
It was the, I mean I was thinking I could do anything because it was the, even though you're there to have your body evaluated, it was the least Judgmental experience I think I've ever had. It was just so supportive. Such a cool community.
Um, and that, that was because of that coach. He's fostered that community.
[00:48:44] Speaker B: Do you feel like your identity went to kind of the level where you saw that? Like, hey, I set my mind to anything, you know, the change I could like, the change I could make it, you know.
[00:48:54] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. I actually am in the middle of, um, my harebrained idea. I'm in the middle of taking a course to become a certified personal trainer because I thought I would learn more about it. I have a lot of clients in my online platform who are asking questions like, how can I get more fit? What can I do to support my dog agility habit? And I can give them advice, but I kind of feel like, well, maybe I'll just take some classes and get more informed.
[00:49:20] Speaker B: And give us your three. What? We'll do the fitness and then we'll do the trap at the fitness. The three like pillars that you can do to transform their health or their body.
[00:49:31] Speaker A: Three things.
[00:49:32] Speaker B: I'm going to go five or you want to go one?
[00:49:34] Speaker A: Three. No, three is fine.
[00:49:35] Speaker B: Let's see, um, three or five or one year. Three.
[00:49:40] Speaker A: Three is fine.
Uh, clean your diet. Okay. And that includes drinking enough water. Um, pack on muscle. Because especially in my sport it's mostly middle aged women that's the biggest demographic. So you've got all these women that are um, getting to an age where we're going to lose bone mass and we're going to lose muscle mass. So pack on the muscles, stop doing steady state cardio, stop running for hours on end, start, um, weight. So clean up your diet, drink lots of water, start lifting weights and do some plyometrics.
[00:50:10] Speaker B: How did you clean up your diet?
[00:50:12] Speaker A: I have been tracking my food in a nutrition app for over 550 days now. So I'm kind of an obsessive tracker.
Um, I eat according to macros. So I'm super high protein. I adjust my carbs and fat depending on where I am, if I'm going to bulk or cut.
And even that was a big game changer for me. Like women, we tend to think, oh, I'm so fat I need to lose weight. We're just constantly losing weight. And when you start bodybuilding you're like, wait a minute, it can be cyclical on purpose. I can take some time and eat more than I need to and gain some weight as long as I'm working out in the gym. And then there'll be this Other period of time where I'm going to cut and that can be normal. Okay, that's healthy. Instead of obsessing on losing weight constantly.
[00:50:54] Speaker B: What do you think dogs should eat?
[00:50:55] Speaker A: Food.
[00:50:56] Speaker B: So I had raw on and, and uh, I don't feed my dogs raw. I'd love to hear your opinion on it, but the ability side of things, you saw my passion for like helping like kind of their math as they get older, uh, just build up stabilizing muscles, put on a little muscle as well. And the food industry, man, like you go to these vet offices and they have the science diet. And like one of my clients got me like this pamphlet and like I opened through it and it was like the Captiva guide to getting a puppy. The stuff that they. You feel like you're. You're these days. I, I find it crazy that we do kibble. Uh, even if you just fed them basic stuff from, from your fridge that you eat, like, just like tracking, you know, I think they'll be infinitely better off.
[00:51:38] Speaker A: I mean, fair. I eat a lot of protein powder and so that's not a whole lot different than kibble. Right. So high quality protein powder. It's pretty processed. High quality kibble, still pretty processed.
Um, I thought for a while. I'm not feeding raw at the moment. I may go back to it, I may not. But. But whatever they'll eat whatever makes their poops and their hair and their nails nice.
Whatever they'll hold weight on.
Um, because. Pretty tough to hold weight on because they're pretty active.
Um, that's what feed. And I try not to feed the same thing for too long.
[00:52:11] Speaker B: Interesting.
[00:52:11] Speaker A: But it just seems like it would. If you're stuck somewhere on a trip and you run out of your food and you can't find your food and your dog's gut only has the bacteria to deal with one kind of food, then you're. You're a shit creek, literally.
[00:52:25] Speaker B: And was that why you got off raw food for them or was there. Were there other reasons?
[00:52:29] Speaker A: No, we got off raw this last round. Um, my who pretty. My best friend lives pretty close to me, so she was in the process of breeding her, trying to breed her. And so we took them all off of raw for that just because there's. If pathogens and one dog gets it, they're all going to get it and that can put a. At risk if you're trying to breed. So they're. And they've been doing pretty good on the kibble. I've got them on.
Um, it's A kibble. That's pretty. It's kind of a boutique kibble that some guy in the. I think he was in the canine sports or dog sport, bite sports or maybe sled dog or something like that. So it's pretty high calorie.
Um, and they do pretty good on it.
[00:53:08] Speaker B: So are you going to breed any more collies? And how do you get gold collies that look like Savvy?
[00:53:13] Speaker A: Isn't that funny? That is. Um, so we bred her mom in 2021. We bred the mom to some frozen semen that had been collected in 2013. And that dog was long dead. And so that was before DNA tests, so we didn't know that he carried for that gene. And so that's. He carried for it.
And then they popped out the gold ones. There were three of them.
[00:53:39] Speaker B: Uh, how does that happen?
[00:53:41] Speaker A: Not very.
It's like 1%.
I, uh, know how we didn't see any in any of their relatives, but we couldn't find any in the pedigree anywhere. And then there they were.
[00:53:51] Speaker B: And do you feel like a sense of responsibility because you go to Sweden and you go to these competitions and everyone tells you how beautiful Savvy is. So you can't have Savvy coming in last place. So you have to, like, Savvy's look good and. And play good.
[00:54:04] Speaker A: I don't think anybody remembers whether we won or not. They just. Nobody cares. Nobody really cares about me.
[00:54:09] Speaker B: You care.
[00:54:10] Speaker A: Um, I care, but nobody else cares.
[00:54:12] Speaker B: Yeah, but they'll come up to you and tell you savvy's beautiful.
[00:54:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:54:16] Speaker B: You eat like tenka a show.
No, come on.
[00:54:20] Speaker A: No, I mean, piece to seeing them at this point. They're. And they are pretty striking, but, um, no, just. They are what they are.
[00:54:27] Speaker B: I'm not gonna ask for your three, you know, kind of pillars, you know, you put on muscle. Okay. That's for the training side. Let's wrap with this force. Mickey.
Dr. Stuart Hillard. What are one, two, or three? You could choose. I'm not going to push you on this one.
Things that they left you with after the chronology event at your facility.
[00:54:48] Speaker A: A deep. The thing I think was a deep and profound appreciation for the work that Dr. Hilliard in particular has been doing, um, without knowledge really, for the Department of Defense and the military for the last 20 or 30 years, you know, we'll never know about, but that. Who knows how many lives they have saved with the work they do. So really, um, profound of that, um, watching and forest work with dogs.
A profound appreciation for their dedication to their mastery of the craft. I mean, it's born being a great dog handler, you know, and they're, um, open about, like, these are mechanical skills. If you invest your time, you can grow these skills.
Um, but, I mean, that's a lot of content that I came away with, but, but that deep appreciation for these people that are just really good people.
[00:55:50] Speaker B: So for the Department of Defense, and I don't know if this tracks to Dr. Hillard. I'm going to choose to believe it does.
And there's a Shane Gillis special about how President Trump goes, uh, on like a minute monologue after they killed the ISIS guy, Abu Bakr or something like that. And the way they did that was with a robot and dogs.
[00:56:11] Speaker A: Yeah, that's me.
[00:56:12] Speaker B: Did you know that?
[00:56:14] Speaker A: No. But it doesn't surprise me. They do some amazing things and they, they're motivated to be better trainers and to, to a lot of money and time and effort and care into these dogs. They don't want to see them blown up, so they're putting them at risk.
So this, this so high and the, the is so important that, that knowing what they're doing is really worthwhile, I think.
[00:56:45] Speaker B: Is it fair to say, right, that, uh, like, these live unique lives? These are not your pet dogs, for sure. I don't even know, like, what's the day in the life of that dog life? Like, is it just like, you know, it's time to work, it puts in a shift and then goes back to the kennel? Like, I'm very curious, uh, if. I don't know either. I don't know if they could actually disclose that information. But, you know, for pet dog training, I think most pet dog owners, they just want their dogs to stop doing things and just kind of let couch with them and, and have them be their best friend.
[00:57:15] Speaker A: Right. Which, that they don't just do that unless they're old or really fat or.
[00:57:20] Speaker B: Well trained or well trained. Do you ever see yourself getting anything other than a border collie?
[00:57:26] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I, Someday when I'm, uh, a grown up, I would really like to have a nice Malinois M.
Or a nice, um, working line German shepherd.
[00:57:35] Speaker B: What are you leaning towards between those two?
[00:57:37] Speaker A: I think I'd probably do better with a Malinois because I there, um, there is probably more similar to a border collie. They're kind of nervy and pretty animated. And I think that, um, the line German shepherds that I have met seem like incredible dogs, but I'm not sure I Have the understanding to yet to be able to be a competent trainer with one.
[00:58:00] Speaker B: And from my experience, like what you correct me if I'm wrong is you like where uh, I'll use the word punishment, but disappointment comes from you. And I think both with the collie and the malinois, like you mentioned, they're so sensitive to your energy where like if you're. Hey, they'll pick up on that.
[00:58:18] Speaker A: I'm. I'm pretty careful these days to avoid using social pressure as a correction. So I'm pretty careful to um. The big thrust of any aversive that I'm going to use with a dog in training is that I want the dog before I'm going to use it. I want the dog to know how to turn it off and then how to avoid it entirely. And social pressure, um, in my experience, you know, doing that it. Because dogs are pretty motivated and they tend towards being highly aroused. Social pressure, it seems like it. It's like putting a drop of food coloring in a bucket of water. It kind of. And then they want to try harder, but then you get these efforts that are not clean because they're a little anxious. And so I'm really careful these days to try my best to avoid social pressure and rely on um, uh, aversives been constructed almost like you would construct a normal behavior that you would reward the dog for. So I want you to know how, uh, this is going to be applied. I want you to know how to shut it off and I want you to know how to avoid it entirely. And then my no reward markers are conditioned a lot like my reward markers. So the dog knows how to respond when it hears a no reward marker, not just a coward or whatever.
So there.
[00:59:37] Speaker B: Do you use negative punishment a lot now?
[00:59:40] Speaker A: Yes, I use negative punishment. I use positive reinforcement. So. So pretty much any behavior that I'm going to train is going to be constructed primarily with positive reinforcement and then, um, negative. Right. So with giving food, withholding food, that sort of thing, and then negative, um is kind of magic. Is that.
So that. That the contingency square I'm less familiar with.
Um, I'm sure if I look at my training over the last 20 years I've been using it. But could I say when and where and could I reproduce it? So that part of the contingency square, um, I'm more about trying to get better about. And then the positive punishment part of the contingency square.
That would be one where I think most people want to stay away from it because they equate. It with social pressure. Right. Someone gets angry and then they. But avoiding social pressure and you want to use positive punishment, can you use it in a way that the dog knows how to shut it off and then knows how to avoid it entirely? Well, fine. And lots of things, you know, tickle a dog with a feather, that's positive punishment. And that dog might really not like that.
So being able to think about what constitutes positive punishment and being able to talk about the fact that it's not punishment doesn't equal abuse is a kind of a big deal for me.
[01:00:55] Speaker B: Can you talk to us really quickly on how you condition all four of those markers? All four of those quadrants?
[01:01:01] Speaker A: Sure. So I'll, um, use my marker cues as an example. So if I say good, so my dog is in a sit, stay.
Um, I would struck the sit with positive reinforcement. Right. So lure them into a sit. Give. Give them cookies for sitting. Put it on a verbal. Um, if in a sit and I say good, they'll stay in their sit because they know that means I'm going to come back to them and give them some food.
If they're in a sit and I walk away and say yes, they're going to break their sit and come to me for some food.
If they're in a sit and I have a toy in my hand and a toy on the ground, if I say get it, they go for the toy on the ground, and if I say strike, they go for the toy in the hand. Um, what do in response to a no reward marker? It depends on the context. So if I'm working on a station or a perch or something like that, and they come off and I say no, they know in that context the solution is to get back on. And that's super easy. You can teach that with negative punishment. You know, treats in your hand and the dog comes off the perch and you dramatically yank the treats away. That's a huge marker. It's not non verbal marker, but you can very easily pair that with a no reward marker, say no and then yank, and they learn that very, very quick. So that would be what positive reinforcement and negative punishment.
Pretty good example of negative reinforcement would be interesting. Introducing a dog to leash pressure. Right. So, um, can I condition them to leash pressure such that I could just use my little pinky finger and have them respond?
Um, and positive punishment, that's kind of a good example.
Oh, here's one that we use a lot in the house. If they're doing something that we don't like, which is Often they're like, mauling to be petted. We say, no and blow in their face. So that's a pretty good example of positive punishment. They do not like it. It works every time they come back later. But that's a pretty good example of positive punishment.
[01:02:49] Speaker B: Anything you want to say before we wrap this up, Daisy?
[01:02:52] Speaker A: It's been interesting.
Thanks for reaching out to me. I don't know. I think that's about it. Anything else you want to talk about? Why'd you reach out to me? Just out of curiosity.
[01:03:01] Speaker B: I like learning from people who do things that I don't do. So I don't do any agility. I don't do any protection work.
Uh, and I'm right. So you do agility. You have to be so precise, but you're also on the move, and you're running fast. I. I didn't have. All the competitors are running as fast as you, so I was super curious about it. And also by me, there's this, uh, place called the Zoom Room. One of my clients and I. I just went there just to watch a few times. His name's Rolex. A little doodle. She would work with him on agility, and I just thought it was really cool. Like, it built a really strong bond with her. Taught her how to tell him, ready? And he, like, he here's ready to go. And he's a pretty low drive, like, 18 doodle. Uh, so you were the first agility guest I had on, and you were esteemed. Savvy was beautiful. And I was like, I. I know I'm gonna learn a lot.
Then I had Darshan Haran on, and he's out in south, uh, South California, I believe. San Diego, Louisiana area. And he said, you know, amazing. Dr. Stuart Hillard's amazing. And then you just had them at your facility.
Uh, and one of it is you had. You were doing, like, somersault.
[01:04:09] Speaker A: Another.
[01:04:09] Speaker B: Ah, girl. You guys were somersaulting each other. You look like you're having a bunch of fun. So agility, something new for me.
[01:04:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:04:16] Speaker B: You know, you had two, you know, games, so to speak, to. To. With a ton of knowledge, and then it looked like what you do, you had a lot of fun with. And I thought those three criteria, regardless, if we agreed and disagreed, I don't really. That stuff doesn't bother me. I was like, daisy's kind of a cool person. So I was like, let's have a conversation.
[01:04:34] Speaker A: Yeah, well, for inviting me. You're down. How far from Punta Gorda are you from Where? Punta Gorda, Florida?
[01:04:42] Speaker B: Yeah, I am an hour north of Miami. I'm in this little town called Boca Raton.
[01:04:48] Speaker A: Okay.
So there's a, there's a agility facility down there in Punta Gorda called Brady Paws.
[01:04:54] Speaker B: 121 miles, 2 hours 34 minutes. Like a little south.
[01:04:57] Speaker A: Yeah, it's called Brady Paws. They're doing some pretty stuff there. It's uh.
[01:05:02] Speaker B: Define that. What do you mean by doing cool stuff?
[01:05:04] Speaker A: They're having agility competitions year round. It's an indoor artificial turf, air conditioned facility.
So they're doing some pretty high end agility down there. A lot of people go down in the winter because there's nothing going on up here in Ohio in January and February.
So a lot of people go down there in the winter.
Um, and then they've also got diving and I think they've got a fast cat track. They got a bunch of cool stuff going on down there.
So that, that would be something to check out too.
[01:05:31] Speaker B: You like the formal, the formal sporting dogs.
[01:05:36] Speaker A: I like the performance aspect of it.
[01:05:38] Speaker B: Like, and the bodybuilding, the performance that like you work towards the. Something is the word.
[01:05:43] Speaker A: Yeah, I like, I like the like having the goal at the end.
[01:05:47] Speaker B: That's fascinating because I went to 2 cents and everyone there's like aspiring to like, I'm gonna be protection dog. I can't wait to get my Malinois or you know, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna do Bird, you know, what is it? I was like, dude, I'm just gonna go for a run with my dogs.
Yeah, that is. And maybe that. I really don't think it will, uh, I think if my niche in this space that I really like is I, I like helping young trainers or newer trainers.
[01:06:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:06:14] Speaker B: Turn their businesses around. You know, I like business, Joy. Business. And uh, I, I think there's some tweaks that dog trainers can make if they're good dog trainers so that they don't have to suffer and struggle and worry about paying the bills. Because there's this illusion that if you're just getting by, uh, but you're a good trainer, that's okay. But I actually think if you're able to, to get over that hump and you're going to be able to help more people if you're well and you're not always in fight or flight or in survival mode, you can go take a weekend off and go to a seminar and learn from people. So I've got the privilege behind the scenes to work with some people on um, one off and just help them grow their business. That's really what I. Yeah.
[01:06:57] Speaker A: And a lot of people, a lot of us that get into the dog training space get into it because we love dogs and our social skills are maybe not what they need to be to be a good business person.
[01:07:08] Speaker B: It's a learned skill, Buzz.
It's a learned skill.
[01:07:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:07:12] Speaker B: Daisy, I'll let you go. I appreciate it. This is a great last conversation before2026, all my listeners. I wish you guys an amazing start to the new year.
[01:07:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Happy New Year. Thanks for having me. Enjoy the sunshine.
[01:07:26] Speaker B: I will.
