02x05: Steve Walsh | Q&A with a dog trainer

JEANETTE: We wanted to involve our listeners in today’s episode, so we’re doing a Q&A with dog trainer Steve Walsh from McCann Dogs. Welcome.

 

STEVE: Good morning. How are you? Well, good morning over here. I guess good afternoon over there?

 

JEANETTE: Yeah, it’s afternoon for us. You’ve had dogs for more than 30 years and taught classes for the last 15. Is that right?

 

STEVE: Yeah, at least. They’ve been a part of my life since I was a little guy. Always something that I’ve had a lot of fun with. Training was always the most important thing to me, and actually, it was the most fun, more so than anything else. [laughs]

 

JEANETTE: What kind of dogs have you had throughout the years?

 

STEVE: My first dog when I was a kid was a black standard poodle. She was the worst trained dog ever. [laughs]

 

JEANETTE: She taught you a lot, I guess.

 

STEVE: Yeah, she was a dog that when you walked out the front door, you had to try to close the door really fast so she wouldn’t run away. I think that probably started me on this idea of wanting to train dogs. Since then, I’ve had several Irish wolfhounds and whippets and border collies and things. I have two border collies right now and an Irish wolfhound currently in the house.

 

JEANETTE: You’ve been competing in different kinds of dog sports?

 

STEVE: Yeah, I’ve done a fair bit of lure coursing with the sighthounds and stuff, and now my main focus is agility. I’ve been lucky enough to represent Canada overseas at the European Open and national events around here as well. I’m very, very lucky to be able to do that.

 

JEANETTE: That’s good. So you have a lot of experience.

 

STEVE: Well, there’s always things to learn. [laughs] That’s the one thing I’ve learned. I never know enough, so I’m always trying to learn more.

 

JEANETTE: That’s good. Our listeners seem to be eager to learn more as well. We asked everyone on Instagram to send us their questions, and we got a lot, actually. There seems to be a lot of excited dogs out there because there were a bunch of questions similar to this first one “Do you have any tips on how to train your dog to not get too crazy and excited before a training or a race?”

 

STEVE: Dogs that are stimulated and excited, especially when it comes to training, are things that I love because I want a dog that’s eager and I want a dog that’s motivated to do the things that we want to do, whether it be agility or just some retrieving or some field trials or any of the sledding sports, things like that.

 

I will say before any of the sport stuff starts, though, I spend a lot of time with my younger dogs just near the environment. The reason I say near is if they’re right in it, we all know the events, especially the trials and events and races and things, are very high energy. If I can start to spend a little bit of time getting them comfortable in the area, doing basic things – having them sit, having them lie down, having them walk with me before I ever get to trialing, that can really help down the road.

 

Now, that doesn’t mean that older dogs can’t do that. We spend a lot of time trying to simulate a trial environment and trying to simulate that energy level because it is so different, and teach our dogs to listen. The more they can do that, the easier that becomes.

 

One thing I don’t want to ever do is try and get rid of that interest and excitement from the dogs. I really like it, but I really want to make sure that they can focus on listening to me in spite of that excitement. That’s a bit of a challenge to do, but like anything else, if I do it in a manner that my dog can be successful, that can help in those situations. That’s for sure. It’s a challenging thing to do, but it’s definitely worthwhile focusing on.

 

JEANETTE: Do you start when the dog is a puppy and you start from a distance and then gradually work your way closer?

 

STEVE: Yeah. Distance is a really big benefit. If you’re right next to something and let’s say the dog’s not even listening because you’re right next to the start line and there’s dogs screaming and barking and all sorts of things, going 40 or 50 feet away can really, really help to bring that puppy’s mind back in and allow it to listen.

 

I think about my dogs as having a bubble around them, and when they’re puppies, of course, that bubble is quite large. Anything that comes within that bubble really affects them and really distracts them. But the more adept they get at learning to listen with those distractions, the smaller that bubble gets and the more they can focus.

 

But it also starts with doing simple, basic behaviors, simple things that I want them to do, and really letting them know what to do instead of what not to do. This is one of our big training philosophies. I don’t want to spend a lot of time telling my dog what not to do, but I want to spend time telling them what to do and showing them how to do it to be successful.

 

If I can give you something that you know how to do when you’re in an excited mindset, it becomes easier for me to prevent the things that I don’t want to be happening. Basically, I replace behaviors that I don’t want with behaviors that I do. That’s a bit of a challenge, but that distance that you talked about is really helpful in doing so.

 

Just having a dog sit on a loose leash near that excitement – it might not happen 10 feet away, but at 50 feet away, it can be really, really successful. And then I would move slowly closer, building on that success.

 

JEANETTE: And if your dog is starting to fail, you just go one or two steps back again?

 

STEVE: Yeah, I move back. I move back to where they can be successful. Teaching a dog to offer me some focus when they’re excited is another thing that I really spend a lot of time doing. If I have an excited dog and they’re let’s say standing next to an agility ring, going nuts, if I move away, just encourage the dog to move away with me – I’m not going to tell them “leave it,” I’m not going to tell them “no” or anything negative – I’m just going to wait, and oftentimes in waiting, they will offer to look and offer a little bit of focus.

 

That’s a great way to build a little bit more of the idea in the dog’s mind that when you’re excited about things, you need to look at me for directions, not continue to focus on looking at that thing that is exciting to you. I want my dogs to feel free to look around the world. I don’t expect them to stare at me the whole time. But any time they do offer me some focus, and especially any time they offer me calm focus, then I start to offer a lot more reward. I simply build on that idea that yep, those exciting things are there, but I’m still here and all the good stuff comes from me.

 

JEANETTE: Do you prefer to reward with a toy or with treats?

 

STEVE: Every dog is different. People get so caught up on the thing, whether it’s the toy or the food. I want my dogs to think that I am a reward. All of me, whether it’s a piece of a kibble, whether it’s a toy, whether I’m running and playing with them, whether I’m simply talking to them, I want my dogs to think of me as a reward. All that stuff is just the icing on the cake, so to speak. The more that they think I’m fun, the more they’ll pay attention to me.

 

JEANETTE: Staying in a starting area can be quite challenging because in some sports you have a specific time. You know that “at this time, I’m going to run,” but in other sports it depends on what’s happening on the course. Sometimes you have to wait for a long time, sometimes a shorter waiting time. It can be quite hard to train this.

 

STEVE: Oh yeah, absolutely. You know with a lot of the sports that you do and a lot of the events you’ve been to with agility that sometimes the setups to go into the ring are very different from event to event. Sometimes you can be on the other side of the field and there’s a sound system where they call your name when you need to go. Other times you’re waiting in line, 30 or 40 or 50 dogs long. That’s where spending time away from those events, working on that ability to focus and that ability to settle, can really go a long way when you really need it to.

 

Of course, the other side of that is at those events, we’re also worked up. We’re also nervous or focused or a little bit more on edge, and that goes right to the dogs. They read that, as far as I’m concerned. So conditioning us both to be calm and collected can really make a big difference. Again, starting away from those events and working towards it.

 

The other thing that we really try and do, we often set up fake trials, or we play games in our training to put pressure on them, because pressure changes how we interact with the dogs. Pressure changes how the dogs react to it. We’ll make silly bets or silly games or play music really loud or do something else that simulates that environment to really have the dogs work through it.

 

Maybe it’s a challenge for if you don’t run clean, then you have to do 50 pushups, or something where there’s something on the line that we really have to work towards, and that makes it fun.

 

JEANETTE: When you are at competitions, would you use the chance to do – I like to call it false starts, to pretend that you’re preparing for a start, but then you don’t start so that the dog never knows when it’s an actual start and when it’s just a game?

 

STEVE: Yeah. I go on the adage “train like a trial.” At events, whether it be at your race starts where there’s times to warm up and then sit and wait and warm up and sit and wait, by all means I would do the same routine every single time, whether I’m starting or not so that the dog isn’t sure whether we are actually going to run or not, but they are tuned to the excitement level. That’s always a great idea.

 

JEANETTE: We got another question that’s a bit related to this, I would say. “My dog is perfect in training, but won’t listen to me at competitions. What can I do about this?”

 

STEVE: To me, that sounds like pretty much the same question. Slightly different result, though. It has more to do with the environment. One of the things that I hear from students all the time is they’re often surprised when their dog doesn’t follow something that they ask them to do.

 

The first thing they say is, “My dog knows this.” My answer to them is, no, your dog doesn’t know it in this second, in this environment. It may know it in your kitchen, it may know it in your yard, it may know it at the field or the place where you practice all the time, but in this particular environment, your dog doesn’t know it.

 

That really highlights the fact about how much environment plays a role in dogs’ learning and dogs’ ability to perform things. In that particular second, does the dog know it at that particular second in time? No. But it’s the stimulation that we talked about in the last question that’s overruling the dog’s understanding of what we’re asking them to do.

 

With that particular dog, personally, if it were my dog, I wouldn’t be doing any competitions at that particular point. I would spend a fair bit more time spending time around competitions without actually running – but again, still trying to build on a little bit more verbal control in those situations and a little bit more focus.

 

JEANETTE: I guess consistency is also quite important when it comes to these kinds of issues.

 

STEVE: Here’s the other thing. If I have a dog that’s already proven itself to be more distracted in those environments and I continue to be able to give it – we talked about rewards briefly; running agility for my dogs is a reward. But if my dog is rewarding itself by not listening and doing all the things it wants to do, it’s not doing anything for their ability to be successful and be more focused on me on a course if I continue to trial and continue to let those things happen. It’s not doing a whole lot for our relationship and our goals overall.

 

One of the things that we really try and do is take away our dog’s ability to rehearse things incorrectly. If my dog never does anything wrong because I’ve set it up that way, they don’t know how to do anything but be right.

 

Let’s say I went out with a young dog – I have an adolescent dog right now, and he listens really, really well, but there are still those times where he looks around and says, “Do I really want to listen to you or do I not?” That’s part of it. But one of the things I will make sure I do at that point is if I see any hesitation in him to respond – I’m never mad at him, but what I will do is take a step back and give him a little bit less freedom. Put a long line on him, do something where I have a direct connection to him to simply prevent him from making the mistake.

 

If I can prevent my dog from not listening to me at an event or a race or a trial or whatever, they never learn that they can. [laughs] Going back and se