Summary:

Julie Flanery has been working professionally with dogs and their handlers since 1993. She focuses on the needs of the dog and helping people form a strong relationship, through clear communication, and positive reinforcement.

She has placed Obedience, Freestyle, Rally-Obedience, Rally-FrEe, Parkour, Agility, and Trick Dog titles on her dogs. She began competing in Musical Freestyle in 1999 and was the first to both title and earn a Heelwork to Music Championship on the West coast. In 2001 she was named "Trainer of the Year" by the World Canine Freestyle Organization and has been a competition freestyle judge since 2003.

Five years ago Julie developed the sport of Rally-FrEe to help freestylers increase the quality and precision of their performances. It has since become a stand-alone sport enjoyed by dog sport enthusiasts all over the world. Julie has been a workshop and seminar presenter both nationally and internationally. She currently trains and competes with her Tibetan Terrier in both Musical Freestyle and Rally-FrEe.

Next Episode: 

To be released 9/07/2018, featuring Julie Daniels, talking about Building Canine Confidence.

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 we’ll be talking to Julie Flanery.

Julie has been working professionally with dogs and their handlers since 1993. She focuses on the needs of the dog and helping people form a strong relationship through clear communication and positive reinforcement.

She has placed Obedience, Freestyle, Rally-Obedience, Rally-FrEe, Parkour, Agility, and Trick Dog titles on her dogs. She began competing in Musical Freestyle in 1999 and was the first to both title and earn a Heelwork to Music Championship on the West Coast. In 2001 she was named "Trainer of the Year" by the World Canine Freestyle Organization and has been a competition freestyle judge since 2003.

Five years ago Julie developed the sport of Rally-FrEe to help freestylers increase the quality and precision of their performances. It has since become a stand-alone sport enjoyed by dog sport enthusiasts all over the world. Julie has been a workshop and seminar presenter both nationally and internationally. She currently trains and competes with her Tibetan Terrier in both Musical Freestyle and Rally-FrEe.

So welcome back to the podcast Julie!

Julie Flanery: Thanks Melissa.

Melissa Breau: To start us out, can you just remind everybody a little bit of information about your dog and what you do with her?

Julie Flanery: I have Kashi and she is my 8-year-old Tibetan Terrier. She thinks her primary job is to keep our home safe from all of those wild rabbits out there. She will sit forever, just staring at the fence line, waiting for one to pop its head through, or if she sees one on the other side of the fence, she’ll calmly sit and wait until they believe she’s no threat, then she goes into stalk mode. My sweet, little, adorable dog has four kills to her name now. So it’s kind of funny, because despite her breed name, there is no terrier in Tibetan Terriers, so it wasn’t something that I expected in her.

But she is really, really fun to train, and I find something enjoyable and fun about her every single day. She makes me laugh every single day. I currently compete with her in Musical Freestyle and Rally FrEe.

And maybe in the fall we might be adding a puppy to the family, but I’m not quite sure yet on that. So more news to come, maybe.

Melissa Breau: I will be excited to hear that, if it happens.

Julie Flanery: I will too.

Melissa Breau: I bet. So, I wanted to have you on tonight to talk about something that I think is probably pretty important to a good percentage of our listeners. I want to talk about heeling. Non-freestylers may not realize it, but heelwork is a pretty big part of freestyle, right? Can you just talk a little bit about the role it plays in the sport?

Julie Flanery: To anybody that has done obedience, there is nothing more beautiful than a joyful heeling dog. We all have that picture in our head, and what it looks like, and it can take your breath away. The only thing I think might be more beautiful is watching a freestyle routine with a joyful heeling dog, and maybe I’m biased there, but I think that adds a whole ’nother level of animation to heelwork.

Heelwork is really what holds a freestyle routine together. We often talk about it’s the glue that holds it together, but I think it’s really so much more than that.

In terms of holding the routine together, it’s very easy to get lost in a routine. We have 3 minutes of 50 to 80 cued behaviors, and we don’t always remember our full routine. No matter how much you memorize your routine, and no matter how much you work your routine, it doesn’t always go as planned. I have never met a freestyler that said, “Oh yeah, we went out there and it was perfect.”

So you have to be a little prepared for that, and having a dog that understands heelwork, has a strong desire to be in heel, one that defaults to a standing heel position, then your dog is always in a right place where you can make things right again.

It also means your dog can maintain a sense of purpose. If he’s not quite sure where he should be, or what he should be doing, either maybe there’s a wrong cue, or I screwed up something in my choreography, he can maintain that level of confidence and joy by defaulting to a heel position, and it gives me the confidence then to pull us out of whatever scrape we’ve gotten into.

In freestyle, we train our behaviors, especially behaviors that we use as transitions from a position to a position, so whatever behavior I’m going to include in my freestyle routines, I train it where my dog starts in a heelwork position. In order for that behavior to be completed, she has to come back to a heelwork position, and if she doesn’t understand those positions, then I’m going to lose the accuracy and precision of the behaviors. Those positions give me a stronger execution of all of my freestyle behaviors.

So without that understanding, many of my freestyle behaviors are going to degrade, and if the dog isn’t set up correctly, then not only is that behavior not going to be accurate, but my next behavior isn’t going to start in a correct place and it’s going to lose its accuracy and precision.

So having a dog that understands their heelwork positions is incredibly important in freestyle, because without it, everything else is going to fall apart, and that’s why we say it’s the glue that holds the routines together.

I think that many see freestyle as kind of a loosey-goosey sport, you know, you go out and you move and you dance with your dog, and you have them do some tricks. But if you look at some of the world’s best freestylers, those handlers understand and utilize heelwork to give their routines that polish, that unity, that really make their routines stand out.

So I think as we are moving forward in the sport, more freestylers are trying to make heelwork a much more important piece of their training program than maybe it was in the past.

Melissa Breau: You mentioned in there that you’re looking for a joyful demeanor in heeling. Can you talk more about that and describe what you’re looking for when you’re training your dog to heel? What does that final picture really look like?

Julie Flanery: As you said, first and foremost, I need my dog to learn to love heeling. That’s for the reasons mentioned above, but also I want her both to look and I want her to feel happy when she’s heeling. If heeling allows her to be in a happy emotional state, then she’s more likely to be able to ignore the environment, she’s better able to take and respond to cues, she understands and loves that job of heeling. If she or I get lost in a routine, her default will be to stay in heel, and if she can do that, I can get us through those rough patches.

In terms of physical appearance, I like my dog’s head up. I like her looking at my face. That’s both because I think it looks pretty, but that’s kind of my security blanket. I think if she’s looking at me, she must be paying attention. So that’s part of my picture. I want her looking up at my face as part of my training.

I like that the front end to be lifted so that the weight is off of the shoulders and you can get more lift to the chest and in the front feet. I like a dog that has a little bit of a prance to it, so I try to work that into my criteria.

What people may not know is that in freestyle, the dog and handler team choose their own heelwork position. So if the dog is a little wide, but consistently a little wide, always that distance from the handler, then no points are taken off. Small dogs oftentimes are a little more comfortable not being right under the handler’s feet, so that’s an example where a handler might decide to allow their dog to have a little more distance from them. As long as that distance is consistent, then it doesn’t hurt the score any.

I like my dog to forge a little, to show off that little prance that she has. So as long as she is consistent in her position, that she’s always forging that little bit, maybe my leg is closer to her shoulder or rib, and as long as she maintains that position in relation to me, then that’s not going to hurt our score any. And it actually showcases the part of her heelwork which I really love, which is that little foot action that she sometimes has.

So in freestyle there’s some leeway. There’s some ability to customize your heelwork position as long as it’s consistent. So you can choose, or use A.K.C’s definition, or whatever organization you show obedience under, or you could vary from that a little bit to either help your dog be more comfortable in heeling or to showcase something that your dog really does well.

Melissa Breau: Obviously, heeling is a super-complex thing to train. Just from that description, you talked about all these pieces of that criteria. Different trainers start with different bits and different approaches. I’d love to hear how you approach it. How do you get started?

Julie Flanery: Like all training, we have to look at both the physical criteria and the emotional component. Heelwork is physically demanding, so I want to make sure that my dog is getting a really high enough rate of reward and value of reinforcement for all of that hard work, and I want to maintain that high rate of reward for a really long time, probably much longer and with much greater frequency than I do for other behaviors.

Hand touches are a huge part of my heelwork. They help me both create position and lift and fun, and I can do all sorts of games with my hand touches. And yes, there is a right way and a wrong way to teach a hand touch, and people will learn that in the class that I’m doing in October.

Platforms also, both standing platforms and pivot platforms, are really important in my program. It’s where I start to add the cue. It’s where I know with certainty that I can get my dog to perform that precision criteria that I really want. And the dog learns to use his rear end in a way through the pivot platforms that helps him maintain position. So those are really big tools that I use.

Shaping is part of my heelwork training. I think a dog that understands how to offer correct positioning can fix an issue without waiting for the handler to do it for them, and I think in heelwork that’s huge. It also helps to build a desire to get to heel and stay in heel. That shaping includes both finding the position while I’m stationary and also while I’m moving. For example, I really like Dawn Jecs’ Choose To Heel protocol, and that’s all about shaping how to find a moving heel position.

Too, with shaping, I don’t necessarily want to use the cue I started to add on the platforms, so I want my dog to understand that she doesn’t have to wait for a cue to give me either some or all of that criteria. So shaping gives the dog control of that reinforcement in a lot of different ways, and if she can offer that heelwork criteria that I’ve been working on at any time, or those things that earn rewards, then that puts me ahead of the game, because I don’t have to work as hard at getting that criteria all the time.

And then, of course, there’s fun and games. We don’t want to forget that. Those things are where we don’t really worry about precision or accuracy at all. The rewards come for moving with me or moving to my side with lots of enthusiasm, and it’s that attitude that I want to really create and reinforce through games.

So I teach technical aspects and then I also teach the fun and games aspects all in the same timeline. I don’t do one first and then the other. They’re both being played and trained all in the same timeframe. Once the dog has some experience in each of those, I can start to combine those components. But really I find that it’s the dog that starts to combine them. You’ll be playing a game and that promotes those certain attributes, like lift, enthusiasm, and all of a sudden she’ll move into a perfect heel position. Those are the times you want to be really ready and willing to click. It’s those one or two steps in the middle of a game that she’s suddenly offering, and that’s what’s really cool, when the dog says, through their offering of the things you’ve been reinforcing, that doing this precision work is really part of the game. That’s what I think is really, really fun to see.

Of course, I use the games to sneak in the different components. So a game of chase could turn into clicking collection as soon as I start to slow down, or a game of “catch me if you can,” where I might use a bit of opposition reflex, will turn into the dog putting some lift and energy into that first step off in heel. So the dog is doing these components as part of that fun game again, and all of the components, whether they’re the game pieces or whether they’re the precision and accuracy pieces, they’re all getting heavily reinforced and rewarded, so I can get both that physical criteria, the technical criteria, and a dog that thinks that this is just all one big game.

So that’s how I look at it. Because both of those pieces are super-important, I don’t think I would want one without the other. Certainly you don’t want this enthusiastic, bouncy, out-of-control dog without that precision and accuracy, and that precision and accuracy really just isn’t the picture that I have in my mind of beautiful heelwork without all that enthusiasm and joy. So I want to make sure that in my program I’m bringing them both together, but training them kind of separately.

Melissa Breau: That’s interesting. It’s kind of a different approach.

Julie Flanery: Yeah. I think a lot of people want both those things, and maybe they’re just putting it together in a slightly different way. But I really like it when the dog says, “Oh, this gets rewarded too,” and “Oh, I really like doing this just as much as I like the game aspect of it.” Because even though they’re rewarded separately, the dog learns to bring those two things together.

They say everything bleeds in training. One piece of criteria sometimes will bleed into another piece of criteria. Or one action will bleed into another. One behavior will bleed into another. Those things that are reinforced will bleed into each other. And this is an area where you want that. Some areas you don’t want that. This is an area where you really do want that.

Melissa Breau: We talked a little bit in there about obedience versus freestyle. I’m curious, how does the heelwork you want in freestyle compare to what somebody might want for the obedience ring? What are some of the similarities or differences?

Julie Flanery: In both sports, obviously, you want that lift, that animation, that focus, the precision. In freestyle, the dog heels on both the right and the left side, so there’s some additional training time that needs to be put into that. Even if you don’t do freestyle, it’s a good idea to train heelwork on both sides to help build symmetry in muscle development, and I think more and more handlers are starting to do that.

In freestyle, we teach heelwork as a specific place in relation to the handler while standing. So there are no default sits in freestyle. In obedience, there seems to be a lot of emphasis on the sit in heel. When you think about it, though, when heeling, I would guess that maybe 90 percent of the time the dog is actually on all fours, standing.

So I think it’s important in training to separate out the sit-in-heel from the stand-in-heel from the move-in-heel. They’re all very different components with very different criteria. It’s easy to start to lump them together in our training, and I think that’s oftentimes to the detriment of some of the overall wholeness of our heelwork. If we spend too much time on that sit and heel, sit and heel, getting into to sit and heel, we may not be spending an appropriate amount of time on teaching the dog where he should be when he’s standing in relation to our body, and when he’s moving in relation to our body. Does that make sense?

Melissa Breau: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s an interesting point, because you’re right, I see a lot of people practice especially that setup.

Julie Flanery: The setup is huge. In freestyle, the other thing is that we heel in a variety of directions, not just forward. We’ll go sideways or laterally, we’ll be backing in heel or backing in right heel. In obedience, the dog generally is always propelling themselves forward, whereas in freestyle the dog learns that the handler may move in any direction, and that their job is to stay in position no matter what that direction is.

While we do see more and more obedience handlers seeing the value of that, teaching multidirectional heelwork, it’s not required in the obedience ring the same way it is in freestyle. So it’s something that freestylers spend a lot of time on, whereas I think obedience trainers don’t spend quite the amount of time on it that we have to in freestyle. So I think that gives the dog a much better understanding of where that position is.

I train it, I think most freestylers … maybe not all, but I know I train heelwork as a stationary position in relation to the handler. It’s not a moving skill for me to start, for my dog to start. The staying with me is a byproduct of the movement. So if my dog understands that she should be at my left side or at my right side, with her shoulder at my pant seam, then if I take a step backwards and she finds enough value in being there, she’s going to work to get there and stay there. If I step sideways, she’s going to work to get there and stay there. If I step forward, if I pivot, wherever my leg goes, she’s going to work hard to stay there.

But I think some handlers skip the step of building value in the position in relation to the handler and spend more time on teaching the setup, the sit, or teaching forward movement. I think they would have those things if the reinforcement, the time, the energy was spent in teaching the dog to find value in just staying in the position stationary before we start adding a lot of movement, and then teaching the dog to move in more than one direction.

I think that generalizes what we’re trying to teach them, that this is the place we want you to be, this is Disneyland, this is the sweet spot. Everything good happens here, and you only have to do one thing. You don’t have to think about moving forward, you don’t have to think about moving sideways, you don’t have to think about a pivot. All you have to think about is being right here at my side.

I use only a single cue for all of my heelwork, whether I’m going backwards, whether I’m going forwards, or whether I’m doing a lateral side pass or pivoting. It’s all the same cue because it’s all the same behavior to the dog. I think that might be a little bit different than what many obedience handlers train. I think a lot of time is spent on forward-moving heelwork and on the setup. So I think that’s something people will see a little bit differently in freestyle training.

Melissa Breau: I could certainly see how teaching the dog the concept of heelwork from that perspective of sticking with the handler rather than necessarily about a specific direction of what have you. I can see how that would be really valuable, regardless of the sport.

Julie Flanery: To me, I think it simplifies the skill for the dog. It totally simplifies the skill. And in freestyle, again, we have a lot of cues in freestyle. We’re constantly saying, “Oh my God, I’m running out of cues.” To be able to have all of those behaviors — backing in heel, pivots in heel, side passes in heel, forward in heel, forward 360s — to have all of those behaviors be a single cue, I think that really clarifies it for the dog, and it makes it so much easier on both the dog and the handler. The dog doesn’t have to learn all of these different cues and what are the behaviors that they attach to those. They need to learn one cue and one skill. So I think it really simplifies it and clarifies it for the dog.

Melissa Breau: If I understand correctly, one additional piece that maybe you didn’t get into so much is the value that you place on teaching the dog to really listen to a verbal in freestyle and not be cueing so much off your body language. Can you talk a little bit about that, why it’s important and how you work on it?

Julie Flanery: No matter what, our dogs are always going to cue off of our bodies to some extent, and even if you have strong verbal cues, they do look to our bodies for information.

In freestyle we want our verbal cues to override the value of what’s happening with our bodies. That takes a very strong reinforcement history for verbal cues and it takes a very specific process or protocol to teach those verbal cues. I may want to use my body, my arms, my legs, how I tilt my head, to interpret the music, to basically dance to the music or convey a story through a skit.

I want my dog to be able to ignore what I’m doing with my body and favor what I’m cuing verbally. I want to appear as if my dog is performing of her own accord. I don’t want the audience to see my cues, as that can really disrupt the magic that we’re trying to present. We’re trying to show that the dog is not just a willing participant, but is actually initiating parts of this dance.

That’s really the magic of freestyle is when those cues are hidden, when you can’t tell that the dog is being cued, and it appears as if he’s initiating these behaviors. That, to me, is really the magic of freestyle. That’s what I want to portray out there. In getting that, if I really want it, if I need my dog to really respond to my verbal cues, I need to count on his response to those verbal cues, I need to follow a specific protocol that’s going to help her truly learn the meaning of those cues.

I think that, for the most part, handlers make the assumption that if they’re saying it, the dog is learning it, or if they make their hand cue smaller and smaller, the dog will take the information from what we’re saying, rather than that little bit of a hand cue that’s left, and that’s just often not true. We know that by the number of times we say things and our dog just looks at us like, “What?” It’s not until we provide some measure of body cuing that they say, “Oh, it was this. This is what you wanted.” They’ll certainly pick up meanings of certain words that way and phrases over time, you know, “Are you ready to go for a walk?” “Are you ready to get your ball?” And even obedience cues, yes, they will understand those to a certain degree. But I don’t have the time or luxury to assume that they will learn it, either on their own or using a less efficient method.

Like I said, I really need to count on that response in the ring. Otherwise, my performance is just not going to appear polished. If my dog misses a cue in a freestyle routine, the music keeps playing. I can’t give the hand cue then and hope she does it right, because I’ve already lost the opportunity to showcase that behavior. I’ve already lost the opportunity to have it match the phrasing in the music.

So having strong verbal cues is imperative to the freestyler, if they want to put out a really polished routine. And again, we want those cues to be hidden. We don’t want it to look like I’m showing my dog that he needs to spin. I want my dog to spin at a point in the music because the music moved him to spin, or it looks like the music moved him to spin, not that I’m actually cuing him to spin.

And in that same vein I need to proof my cues against my own body movement, because I might be doing something totally different. I might be moving my arm in an opposite direction of the way I want him to spin. So I’ve got to proof those cues against not only the distractions, like we normally proof in training, but I’m going to have to give my verbal cue and make my body do something weird, and reinforce my dog for choosing what I said over what I did.

So that’s a little bit of added training in terms of cueing for freestylers

And then as well, freestylers teach choreographed body movements as new cues. If I know I’m going to use my body in a certain way, I’m going to spin a certain direction, I’m going to put my leg up this way or whatever, I can actually teach my dog that that movement, even though it’s not a lure-like or a leading action, that movement means to do something. It is a cue to do something. But it’s not being used as a leading cue, like if I were putting my hand out in a circle to get my dog to spin. But that’s a whole ’nother podcast. That’s freestyle, not heelwork.

Melissa Breau: Right, right. I know you have a class coming up on this stuff in October. Can you share a little bit on what you’re planning to cover there? What level of class? Is it foundations? Is it intermediate? Problem solving? And maybe a little bit about what skills someone should have if they’re interested in taking it?

Julie Flanery: In a sense, it’s a foundation class. However, it’s going to be most suited to teams where the dog already has some understanding, and has some reinforcement history, of being near or in heel position in relation to the handler. They don’t have to have strong heeling behaviors. They don’t have to have perfect heelwork by any stretch of the imagination. But if they have started on their heelwork skills, and they want to get more out of their training and more out of their dog, they want more joy and lift and precision — we’re going to go over precision and accuracy as well — but if the picture they see in their head of a beautiful heeling dog is not what they’re getting out of their dog in training, then this would be a great class for them.

We are going to go over some precision and accuracy. We are going to go through a lot of different ways there are to build joy in our heelwork training. And then we’re going to be using a lot of reinforcement history and value in each of those pieces to allow the dog to bring that together.

We’re also going to talk a lot about appropriate expectations in your heelwork. There are certain limitations. If you have a certain picture of what you want, and your dog’s structure dictates that that just isn’t going to happen, we still want to get the prettiest and best performance out of your dog that we can get. The Bulldog is not going to heel the same way that a Border Collie or a Belgian is going to heel, so we do want to take those things into account, but there’s still things that we can do to work towards that picture, or build a more dramatic style of heelwork for your dog.

Melissa Breau: You mean a Bulldog can’t get quite that same lift?

Julie Flanery: Not quite, not quite.

Melissa Breau: Poor guys.

Julie Flanery: Doesn’t mean they can’t do beautiful heelwork. I just saw the most gorgeous bulldog — actually it was a mix. I think there was some French bulldog in it, and something else, and oh my gosh, that dog just had such spark in his heelwork, and it was beautiful. It was just gorgeous. No, it wasn’t a Terv and no it wasn’t a border collie. It was just … for that dog, it was just gorgeous heeling, and I enjoy that as much as I enjoy seeing the some of the dogs whose structure is more conducive to the type of heeling that we picture in our heads as being beautiful and joyful.

Melissa Breau: One of the things on your syllabus that caught my eye was that you’re planning on including some information on reinforcement strategies. I know that that’s a big topic. What are some of the common reinforcement strategies someone might want to use when working on heeling? And maybe a little on how to decide which ones you want to use and when?

Julie Flanery: Something to note about reinforcement strategies that I think people aren’t fully aware of, or don’t fully grasp about why we use different reinforcements strategies: Reinforcement strategies are a way to alter future behavior and not the behavior you are currently rewarding.

For example, if I feed with my dog’s head slightly away from me, it’s not an effort to lure her bum in, but rather to get her to start thinking about where reinforcement happens for the next reps.

So if I reward the dog — let’s say just for fronts — if I reward the dog for coming into front by tossing between my legs, I’ve already clicked the behavior. I’ve already said, “You are getting a reward for what you just did.” But by tossing the treat or the toy between my legs, she’s more likely to line up straight and in a way that she can efficiently get to reward faster on the next rep, and that benefits future behavior.

So if I want my dog, say, to take the weight off of her front and drive from her rear for heelwork, I’m likely going to have her reach up and forward a little for her reward, maybe give a little jump up to get her reward. If she starts thinking about that on the next few steps of heelwork and begins to think of, Reward’s coming, reward’s coming, where is it? Oh, it’s going to be up high, she starts to lift herself in preparation for that, and that gives me something I can click. That bit of lift she’s offering in preparation to take the next reward gives me my criteria shift, lets me click that behavior.

Melissa Breau: Even though you designed the class thinking about freestyle, would the class still be a good fit for somebody whose primary interest is obedience or Rally? We talked a little bit about this already, but how would the skills that you value in heeling and in the class for freestyle carry over into those sports?

Julie Flanery: Just given the things we’ve talked about, I think that all of those things, any obedience handler or Rally handler would like to have those things. Especially in Rally, the backing up, in backing up we want that skill to be a very thoughtful, deliberate action on the dog’s part, and I think that in Rally sometimes we’ll see handlers Band-Aiding that a little bit by rushing backwards in an effort to use the dog’s wanting to stay with them, but not really working on the precision aspect of that. For Rally skills such as the side pass — they do side passes in Rally, and they do backing up and heel in Rally — absolutely this class is going to benefit those.

In obedience, again, freestylers are really looking for the same attributes in heelwork that obedience handlers are looking for. So, in many ways, a lot of these things … as a matter of fact, when I worked in obedience, these are a lot of the same skills that I did when I worked in obedience and Rally. The only place where there may not be carryover, and of course this is always added later anyway, would be the sits in heel, the automatic sits, the setup in a sit. But that’s going to be added later anyway. The way I train heelwork, it’s not something I add at the start.

It’s actually going to benefit those obedience folks who maybe have centered their heelwork around that setup or the sit and heel. This is actually going to solidify your dog’s understanding of what it means to keep their body in relation to yours while they’re standing in heel, and while they’re moving forward in heel, and while they’re moving in any direction in heel. So yeah, I think that could definitely benefit obedience and Rally handlers.

Melissa Breau: We talked a bunch about the October class, but I think you have a few other things you’re working on, right? Anything you care to mention?

Julie Flanery: Yeah, just a few! I’m still working on the heeling class, too. I think I just scheduled to do some webinars. I’m not sure when they’re scheduled for, exactly. There was a lot of interest in the mimicry classes that I did, so we thought we would put that in a nutshell and let people experience what that protocol is all about, and try it a little bit with their dogs. So I’ll be doing a webinar on mimicry.

And because my interest is Musical Freestyle and Rally FrEe, and I get a lot of questions from people about “What is it?” “How do you get started?” “How is it different?” So I’m going to do a webinar on Musical Freestyle and Rally FrEe, how they’re related to each other, some of the skills and behaviors that we use, how to start training for that. I’m really looking forward to that one because of course that’s my passion.

I have another class, I think it’s in December maybe, a new class for me, also, Mission Accomplished. That class is going to focus on finishing up and completing all of those dozens of behaviors that we all start and never finish. That might be maybe because we’re stuck, we don’t know how to finish it, or maybe it’s just because we love that acquisition phase. We love starting new behaviors, and so we have dozens of new behaviors started, but we can’t seem to complete any of them. So we’ll help you get through and complete some of those.

I’m really looking forward to that class, too. I think it will help a lot of people get over some training humps that they might be experiencing with some behaviors, and so they just move on because they don’t know where to go from there. So that’s going to be a really fun class, I think, too.

Melissa Breau: Not that I’ve ever done that — had a behavior that I …

Julie Flanery: No, none of us! I’m actually pretty good at finishing out behaviors, because in freestyle I have so many behaviors that I could use. Anything I want to train, I could figure out how to use it in freestyle. So I always have a motivation usually to finish out a behavior, or if I’ve got a theme that I want to use, or anything like that. I always have use for the behaviors that I train, and that motivates me to complete them.

Melissa Breau: I’m sure that will be a popular class because I’m sure it’s pretty common. To round things out, my last question for everyone these days — what’s something you’ve learned or been reminded of recently when it comes to dog training?

Julie Flanery: You know, I’ve heard you ask that question before, and so I knew that was coming up. There was a post, a Facebook post, the other day from one of our Fenzi family members. Esther Zimmerman talked about her Golden, and her Golden starting to refuse some cues, or just not seeming right in training.

She talked about some of the steps she went through in her own mind — oh gosh, I’m going to get teary-eyed about this, oh dear — about how her dog’s welfare, and listening to what her dog was telling her, and not assuming that the dog was being stubborn, or blowing her off, or spiteful, or any of those things that we sometimes hear or maybe even sometimes think that in our own training, and that by really considering our dog’s point of view, and why they might not be responding the way they normally do, that really hits home with me. And gosh, this is horrible, Melissa!

Melissa Breau: I think I know the post you’re talking about, where she was, like, the first day your dog doesn’t seem quite into training, OK, well, we just won’t do this today, and put them away. The next day, they’re still not quite into training and you’re, like, “Hmm, I wonder if there’s something wrong,” and by the third day it’s, “OK, it’s time to go see a vet.”

Julie Flanery: And there really was something wrong, and it was just so kind of her, the way she talked about this. I know we all have that same philosophy, but sometimes we need reminding of that.

My dog has had health issues. She’s 8 years old now and she’s had health issues all of her life. It can be difficult for me to sometimes read whether this is due to discomfort, is she not feeling well, but in the end it really doesn’t matter what the reason is. What matters is that we take the dog into account, that we listen to what they’re telling us through their behavior, and that we don’t make assumptions about their motivation. They can’t tell us when they’re feeling not right, not good.

And it might just be a little thing, but continuing to train when our animals are not feeling up to par … if you consider how do you feel when you go into work and you woke up with a stuffy nose and a headache or a migraine, you’re not going to be at your best, and you’re likely going to resent that workplace environment because you have to be there. So it just reminded me to take my dog into account and listen more to her when she’s giving me some of these signals.

Sorry about that! I didn’t mean to go into soap opera mode!

Melissa Breau: No, you’re fine. I think it’s a great reminder.

Julie Flanery: I think that’s really, really important, and we can lose sight of that because we have goals in our training. We have goals when we are working in these performance sports. These aren’t our dogs’ goals. These aren’t our dogs’ goals, and thank goodness they’re willing to do this with us. So it’s up to us to protect them in these environments, in these training situations, where they may not be feeling all that well.

So thank you, Esther, for reminding me of that fact. Keeping track of my dog, my dog’s health, and how she’s feeling during a training session.

Her and Amy Cook. Amy Cook has really changed a lot of my perspectives these last couple of years in training. So a big shout-out to Amy Cook on her work with emotions and training as well.

Melissa Breau: Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Julie. I’m so glad you could come back on the podcast.

Julie Flanery: I am glad too. It was really, really fun. Thanks for having me.

Melissa Breau: Absolutely. And thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in!

We’ll be back next week, this time with Julie Daniels to talk building canine confidence.

If you haven’t already, subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available.

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 and transcription written by CLK Transcription Services.

Thanks again for tuning in -- and happy training!