Author: Lisagnrl

Lisa Godfrey, CNWI CPDT-KA KPA-CTP

Lisa is the Go To instructor for all of the best Competition Nose Work teams in Central Illinois.

She has been instructing pet and competition teams since 2007, and teaching K9 Nose Work classes since 2014. Lisa has instructed multiple teams through the highest levels in AKC, NACSW, UKC, CWAGS, and CPE. Lisa is a Certified Nose Work Instructor, as well as a Competition Judge for AKC, UKC, CWAGS, CPE, and NACSW ORTs. In 2022 she judged the AKC Scent Work Regional Championships.

Lisa, along with her Malinois, Copper, laid the foundation for local teams to excel in the nose work community. As the first team in Central Illinois to complete the coveted Elite-Championship designation, she blazed a trail that many of her students have followed. As a team, Lisa and Copper also completed multiple Agility, Rally, Obedience, and Trick Dog Championships providing Lisa with the in-depth understanding of the complexities of being an effective trainer as well as being an effective competitor in a large variety of venues.

Lisa’s training experiences with Copper led her seek out becoming a Certified Professional Dog Trainer through CCPDT and a Karen Pryor Academy Certified Training Partner, in addition to maintaining her CNWI accreditation. Skills attained through these certifications allow her to address the nose work training needs of both companion dog/pet families, as well as competition teams including effectively addressing mental stimulation as well as behavioral concerns such as but not limited to environmental sensitivities in a variety of dogs.

As a trial host, Lisa has worked to bring nose work competitions to Central Illinois and has been a professional reference for many of the Instructors, Judges, and Advocates in the area, making the sport more accessible to local competitors.

Lisa is a firm believer in continuing education and regularly attends seminars, in person and online, with Nationally and Internationally respected experts in the field. Her experience in behavior modification and shaping skills, helps teams develop a strong relationship built upon trust and a clear communication of criteria. These skills allow her to make nose work accessible to pet families and competition teams equally, providing opportunities for home companions to enjoy mental exercise regardless of any behavioral challenges they may otherwise experience.

House Training

I feel bad for people living in an open plan house. I mean it must be great for kids to run around AND you’re not bumping into everything. However, if you get a puppy, it’s an uphill battle on the house training.

Just because your puppy happens to pee on the grass when you set them down outside, doesn’t mean that they KNOW they’re not supposed to potty in the house. It will take MONTHS for the puppy to learn this. If your house is open plan and you’re not limiting access to areas with a thousand baby gates and x-pens, then you’re basically screwed. Your puppy WILL have accidents and there will be many of them. Your puppy will pee on that expensive rug because soft absorbent rugs are the very best places a puppy can find to pee.

Also, your puppy might learn HOW to communicate the need to potty (or you might learn the signs) in your own home. However, don’t expect them to know how to communicate at a new location. Heck, even YOU have to ask where the bathroom is.

When you limit a puppy’s freedom to go where they want to go they’re going to be pretty pissed (Covid lockdown anyone???).

So, we have to create an environment where:

  • If they have an accident we’re not going to be stressed.
  • Easy clean up of accidents.
  • Limit their access to the whole world.
  • We can see what they’re doing and getting into.

We’re going to take them out to potty:

  • Every 30min while they’re awake and active.
  • Immediately after they eat or hit the water bowl hard.
  • Immediately after they wake from a nap or we get up for the day.
  • About 10min before we leave for the day to go to work (I’ll explain that reason later).
  • After a play session.
  • During a play session, if they suddenly break off from playing to go and sniff something.

So why am I pottying the dog 10 minutes before I leave for the day? Dogs are MASTERS at learning everything we don’t want them to learn.

Imagine a situation where every time you pee your freedom is immediately taken away from you…Yes, that is EXACTLY the kind of scenario your dog is capable of learning. “Dear Puppy, The moment I get your second pee out of you, I’m going to bundle you into your crate and leave for the day. You don’t mind, do you?”

Your puppy is ALWAYS learning. Unfortunately, we generally only figure out what we’ve taught them once it’s too late.

Puppies are HARD!

Puppies are hard… Really hard! 

Scramble joined the Kudos family on last Thursday. She’s a 10 week old Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever. 

Trying to standardize training cues throughout the family and friends will be an uphill battle. Thankfully most everyone knows how important it is to me that we do this correctly. 

Each time we pick her up to take her outside, we tell her “Pick-up”, then we pick her up, and give her treats while she’s in our arms.

She’s fascinated with going under the desk where all the cables are. I’m going to have to engineer something to keep her out of there while we reinforce the settle on the Cato board. 

  • Scramble
  • First Training Notes for Household

Letter to Scramble

Dearest Scramble,

About six months ago I had to say goodbye to our Mom. She’s been hurting a lot since then but once she heard about you, I saw that she was filled with joy again. 

You might hear talk about this Malinois, larger than life, that changed your Mom’s world. Ignore it all. 

Your job in life is to take Mom on a bold, new, wild adventure, one that I could never be a part of. I took myself too seriously and only let my guard down when I was really too old to enjoy it. 

You’re going to have the bestest life with Mom and Auntie Kristin to look over you. I hear that you’ll even be meeting Auntie Michelle too, please remember to give Kim a kiss from me.

I’ll be watching you always, keeping you safe, like I did for our Mom. Please try to make friends with Tuppence. I was too set in my ways, but she seemed like she could be pretty cool… For a cat at least.

Most importantly, have fun, play, roll in some really stinky stuff, and don’t take the world too seriously.

Your friend and confidant from the other side,

Copper
https://youtu.be/3n3N2NirQUc

On the clock for 15 years…

Copper, our busy senior Malinois, was not an easy puppy.  Few Malinois are.  If you’re a first-time puppy owner and for some reason think that it’s a good idea to get a Malinois, go and get yourself checked in.  Few people are qualified to take on this kind of level of responsibility.  I have LITERALLY been on the clock for over 15 years.  15 years of training, 15 years of preventing boredom and the inevitable destruction that follows the boredom.  Every Day.  Don’t get me wrong, he has an off switch and as he’s gotten older we’ve been able to relax our guard little by little, but still, at the age of 15 years old, he has the capacity to get bored and get ‘into stuff’.

At a little over a year and a half, we started competing.  He had shown that he was starting to understand complex concepts in locations that were unfamiliar to him – he had learned to generalize. 

At about three and a half years old, I was finally at a stage where I genuinely liked him.  Don’t get me wrong, I have loved him since the moment he fell asleep in my arms at the tender age of 4 weeks at the breeder’s house but liking him is a different matter.  At three and a half I was able to let my guard down a bit and really trust him to not make crap decisions constantly. 

Photo by Pupart

Somewhere at about eight years old he really wowed me.  This boy had come into his own and we seemed to have this near telepathic connection.  We seemed to know instinctively what we each needed.  It’s not that we didn’t have plenty of miscommunication in the ring, but the emotional support that we each required was crystal clear. I understood him and he understood me, and there was this connection that I can’t explain except that it was akin to finishing each other’s sentences.

At ten years old I sat him down and asked why he couldn’t have been this dog for the past ten years.  He explained to me: “I was cookie dough. I wasn’t not done baking. I wasn’t finished becoming whoever the hell it is I was gonna turn out to be.”.  I asked him why he was quoting Buffy?  He told me to throw the damn ball.

Photo by Caprise Adams Photography

At 12 years old, I could start to see the body was telling him he wasn’t four anymore.  His mind called BS on his body and he kept on pushing.  His mortality starting weighing on my mind as I had already seen some of his peers pass away.  He injured his iliopsoas and I was grateful that I’d already retired him from agility and obedience.  My planning for his future seemed almost prescient, as that injury is generally considered career ending.  I was just grateful that I’d started his nose work journey a couple of years earlier.

He’s 15 years old now and he’s probably the last man standing.  He is still completely capable of getting ‘into stuff’ and I am still ‘On the Clock’.  If you leave a plastic bottle at dog height, it had better be empty because he will steal it and use it as a toy. If you leave a bag on the couch, he will rummage around in it until he finds a suitable toy (aka something that is clearly NOT a toy). If his ball ends up under the entertainment center, he will annoy the crap out of you until you rescue it and then he will immediately punt it back under the entertainment center.  He will still chase a groundhog/rabbit/squirrel out of the yard.  He will still bark at cars/bikes/trucks and other offensive vehicles on his roadway.  However, he can still find the 8ft hide or the deep inaccessible one, or the hide that’s 4ft from another hide.  He can still jump on the bed, leap into the car and other crazy Malinois crap that his Vet and Chiropractor cringe over.

He’s 15 years old and I wouldn’t give up a single one of the grey hairs he caused for the world.

 

Social Distancing Continues

You might feel like I feel, we’re all just marking time until we’re released from our enforced ‘Social Distancing’.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m a believer in flattening the curve.  However, it’s tough as a small business, when I have rent to pay and no income. 

Here is something that you can believe in – Training dogs at Kudos for Canines has always included Social Distancing. Not because of the potential health hazards for the humans, but because of the dog’s need for space in order to learn. In our pet training classes, dogs (and humans as a byproduct) have been socially distancing since we first started offering puppy manners classes – long before COVID-19 hit the streets.

When the Governor’s orders came down and we temporarily shut our doors, it was a gift to hear that clients would have felt comfortable continuing classes at Kudos because our dog training stations were already a good 10+ft apart. Our pet training classes have a 5-dog limit and with 2,000sqft in our classroom, that makes for plenty of space for dog and human learning alike. 

Kudos has always been committed to fostering an environment where learning can happen.  We have been taking this down time to pursue online continuing education – participating in webinars on subjects from aggression to loose-leash walking to nose work.  Our passion for understanding behavior in dogs remains unchanged.  Our commitment to sharing that understanding continues. 

The moment we’re allowed to reopen our doors, we’ll be there, socially distancing with toilet paper and hand sanitizer.

Keeping your hot dog cool

Copper was diagnosed with laryngeal paralysis about a year or so ago. It means that he can’t breathe as easily as he used to, he’s also at higher risk of aspiration. The big fallout, from our competition perspective, is that his temperature regulation sucks. Yes, he gets hot, mouth breathes a whole bunch and when he’s panting his scenting goes to hell. Not a good situation for a Nose Work dog.

I wanted to share some things that I’m learning about keeping our competition dogs cool.

If you think that your dog is starting to get a bit warm, you should have started cooling them down two hours ago. Taking your warm dog into a search area and asking them to scent is going to heat them up faster than an A-bomb going off. It’s too late. If you have other searches to do, later in the day, you may be able to save them, but it’s too late for this search.

Copper historically had pretty decent heat tolerance. Now, if I ask him to search outside – and it’s above 45 degrees – he’s going to heat up fast.

I was recently at the Rocky Mount, MO trial and the high of the day got up to 65 degrees. The weather was spectacular. I wanted to share these videos. When you watch them, look at how far open his mouth is from his first search of the day (the outside patio) to the second search of the day (the inside gym). Neither were overly warm, but I SHOULD have immediately implemented cooling strategies the moment we returned to the car from the Patio search. My mistake, and an expensive one points-wise.

Patio search – https://youtu.be/U0luoZxU2Us
Gym search – https://youtu.be/xDbWiosAX4w

After we’d crashed and burned on the gym search (we’d been given a range of 3-8 and we’d only found two) I implemented our cooling strategies. Here’s what I did:

  • Put a fan on him. These Ryobi fans are the fans of choice. Expensive, but worth it. Get the bigger batteries for it too, as they last a LOT longer. https://www.ryobitools.com/products/details/18v-one-plus-hybrid-fan
  • Pulled out his cooling coat (essentially a huge chamois soaked in water) and put it on him. I’ve had his cooling coat so long that I don’t remember exactly where I bought it. It’s a bit oversized, but that worked just fine for us. Do a Google search and you’ll find a few different types.
  • Pulled his thick foamy bedding out of his crate and had him lying on a yoga mat – not as cushiony, and also increases the risk of stiffness, but he’d be a LOT cooler. There are cooling beds available for purchase online too
  • Made sure that he had fresh water and put a few ice cubes in the bowl. Copper is fussy about weird things and won’t eat ice cubes, and I constantly have to nag him to drink. So this time I had pieces of watermelon for him and that worked like a charm. Hydrating him but cooling him.
  • Ensure that there was LOTS of ventilation to his crate. If it’s too hot, you may just have to turn on the car and kick on the A/C. Just make sure that you don’t gas out your neighbor with the exhaust fumes. Also check with your auto mechanic about what this might do to your car, just idling with the A/C running for hours.
  • Put a shade cloth over the vehicle, and the windshield cover in place. Aluminet is the way to go. You can buy it at Clean Run or really big ones here: http://www.greenhousemegastore.com/product/70-percent-aluminet-shade-curtain/shade-material.  Also, you can buy a WeatherTech windshield sun shade and it works great for the big minivans.

Additional items for you to consider:

If you’re in the market for a new car and know that you’re going to compete, get a white car with beige upholstery. It’s cooler. Full stop. I traded in my dark blue Grand Caravan with black upholstery to my white Grand Caravan with beige upholstery and the difference in interior temperature is unbelievable.

Also think about when are you going to potty your dog. I’m fortunate that Copper is pretty well regulated and is generally not a leg hiker. Though I recommend Pee-Search-Pee, I can get away without doing it with Copper because when he pees, he empties his bladder completely. So when I potty him at a trial site, I do NOT potty him right before our run because I need to keep him cool until the last second. I’ll potty him about 4-5 dogs prior, then cool him back down again.

The last thing that I did was make sure that Copper was wearing his cooling coat until the last possible minute. This helped a lot when a dog puked in a search area right before our turn and we were left in the heat for an extra 2-3 minutes longer than anticipated.

Here was the next search. As you can see, his temperature was back under control. https://youtu.be/QuzKliZ350M

We still have time, but maybe not enough.

1 Comment

You’d think that one of the hardest parts of dog sports is the crushing failures.  When you set out to do something, then promptly crash and burn because you didn’t know enough, or didn’t think through ALL of the possible ramifications, or the variables required for training a behavior.

That’s not it.  It’s seeing your dogs’ peers grow old and pass away. 

Photo by Angel Sallade Pet Photography

Maybe it’s because many Malinois have the beginnings of a white soul patch by the time they hit a year.  Maybe it’s because I’ve seen him almost every day of his 11.5 years…But I don’t look at Copper and think of him as ‘old’. 

The guy still leaps in the air, chases the rabbits (he caught one last year, his first!). I only just retired him from Agility this spring – He was going to kill himself not slowing down for the dog-walk.  He had achieved FIVE Agility Championships.

Copper enters agility retirement after completing his NATCH3 and VNATCH2 (Bernie Doyle Judge)

 

I retired him from Obedience about that time too, but not because he couldn’t do it (though, I’ll admit, at his final trial we used an Exercise Modification to drop the jump height down). 

Copper entering Obedience Retirement after completing his Championship under Sharon Jonas

 

Obedience was always my ‘bag’, and who can blame him since I introduced heeling with old school pop-jerk methods – I shaped every behavior after that with R+!  So, when he got his Obedience Championship, I told him that he never had to ‘Heel’ again.  He’d still love to do it though,  but sadly Obedience requires heeling in ALL the classes.  Maybe one day they’ll come out with a ‘tricks’ only class, that has everything bar heeling.  Until that day…

I know that several of his old Rally buddies have passed away.  Dogs that got us into the sport, which we ended competing neck-to-neck against.  Rally was our first love, our gateway drug to dog sports.   His Obedience career spanned 9 years and overlapped with a lot of his Rally buddies, but some were Obedience only.  When you compete regularly, with the same crowd, sometimes one of the regulars stops coming to a trial, and you can’t help but wonder.

Mary and Herc inspired me to do more. We finished our RAE at the same trial under Donna Darland.

I judge too, so I travel around the Midwest for competitions.  It might be 6 months between seeing dogs and that’s when the aging hits you.  You’ll notice that there’s more grey and maybe they aren’t throwing themselves into it as much as they did six months ago.  Other things will stand out too, the lumps and bumps that most dogs get as they grow older.  Copper even has some too.

This morning I found out that one of his Agility buddies passed away.  In class these two would regularly ramp each other up, so we kept a close watch to avoid an ‘event’ where a bad decision might be made – Agility can be very exciting and can be difficult in a group class.  When you have a herding dog, they generally like organization, and the chaos of other dogs running around, having fun, can sometimes be too much.  We had excellent instructors who knew the issue, were careful and encouraged using R+ methods to work on keeping them calm.  I discovered Control Unleashed which helped me a LOT! 

I’ve been looking after this dog too.  Over the past year, when her mom was out of town, I’d walk her and watch her give the squirrels and bunnies an extra look.  She was fun, sweet and full of character.

It just hits you though.  At any moment you could lose them. 

You also think about your dogs’ litter mates.  To my knowledge, Coppers are all still trundling around the USA, though I know that one of them has ill-health.  I do know that Copper has lost at least one half-brother to cancer – the big ‘C’ that everyone hates in every species.  Copper’s daddy was prolific and pretty popular in his day – A regular stud!  I take comfort knowing that his Mom lived to 15 and his aunt lived to 16.  I remember seeing them when they were about his age and they were pretty spry too. 

All I can say is that every day is special.  Treasure them.  Give them that extra sniff walk they’ve been begging for.

 

Dedicated to Dede

 

“My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today.”

― Richard Adams, Watership Down

Letting go of the guilt

Brain in the Game

Mental Management training is as much a part of everyday life, as it is sports.

Some local K9 Nose Work folks have recently gotten into Mental Management training, and I can see why — in all other dog sports, you can normally see the mistakes as they’re happening; however, in the upper levels of K9 Nose Work, you’ll spend the entire day agonizing over whether you or your dog screwed up in some way (btw, the dog never screws up). Often, you’ll know — you’ll hear the dreaded “No”, from the Judge, signaling that you won’t title (and get your shiny ribbon); but, sometimes you don’t know if something was missed, so you sweat A LOT.

Unfortunately, with my busy schedule, I haven’t had a chance to fit in one of Nancy Reyes’ (our local guru in Chicago) seminars, so I’ve largely been on my own. I did download this book and listen to it on Audible:  The Art of Mental Training by DC Gonzalez

While it’s certainly no replacement to a day or two with Nancy, it has helped give me some insight that I’ve been able to apply, immediately, to all of my clients (whether a “Nose Work” team, or an “At Home” pet).

Letting go of the guilt

One of the reasons I got into dog training was because of bad advice — some trainers thought that dogs “needed a heavier hand”.

Now, I’m not saying that it’s all their fault — we didn’t sufficiently socialize our dog, which led to some problems (he’ll always be territorial of our house, but we have a crate for that).  If we had regular visitors, then I might be able to work on that; but, we don’t — so, it’s not a big issue.  With age, and long term exposure, a certain amount of mellowness has come.  He’s more forgiving of ‘stuff’ than he’s ever been.

For a long time, I was hung up on how we had failed our dogs, in one sense or another. There’s always a better way to train a behavior, or handle a situation.  The problem is that when you’re “in the thick of it”, you don’t always make the best decisions.  Things will spiral out of control — and, the next thing you know, you’ve got a ‘situation’ on your hands.

This is where the book helped me.

I realized that guilt was hampering my forward motion: I would often get stuck in it, and the assorted nasty mental states that come with it.  We’ve all made mistakes, but the best we can do for ourselves (and, more importantly, our dogs) is to learn, and MOVE ON!

Yes, we screw up. We’re human!

Though the book was very much about “staying in the moment”, and “keeping a positive mental outlook”, it also talked about how to deal with events when they go wrong — we will frequently get sucked into the awful vortex of utter crappiness, and NO GOOD can come, from that!

I’m not talking about forgetting that the events ever occurred, but resolving to do better next time. I can honestly tell you that every mistake that we made with our next dog was a completely different mistake (I know, “not a great testimonial”, but it’s true)!

I continue to learn, grow and expand my knowledge base, so that I can help my students and the people who call me, distraught, over the events that somehow unfolded without / beyond their control.

To you, all of you, I’m telling you to “let go of the guilt”.

You’ll be able to move forward.

I’m not promising that it will instantly be better (it may get worse before it gets better) — but, you’ll grow through it, and LEARN!

Chipping your pets alone isn’t good enough

My Dad lives in Florida, nowhere near the hurricane’s path, but he has a dog and it got me thinking about all the pets in Hurricane Matthew’s path.  Which, in turn, got me thinking about my own furkids.  I thought about when was the last time I logged into the Home Again website and updated my dog’s information.  It had been a LONG time.  One password reset later and I found that though my info wasn’t grossly outdated (home address and cell were still accurate), some updates WERE needed.

  • Updated Copper’s photo
  • Added Penny’s photo
  • Added Penny’s breed
  • Updated Vet info for Penny (still showing breeder from 7 years ago – oops!)
  • Updated Penny’s spay status
  • Updated husband’s cell number

If your dog isn’t chipped, then I recommend that you make it a priority and do it as soon as possible.  There is no logical reason to not have your pet chipped, unless there is a serious medical issue preventing it.  The security that I feel, knowing that my dogs are chipped, is significant.  We’ve had several tornado events in Central Illinois over the past years.  I remember hearing about all the missing pets after the Washington tornado.

If your dog is chipped, log into the website and get the information updated today.  Remember that the Washington tornado occurred in mid-November, so just because we’re going into fall it doesn’t mean that we’re out of the crazy-weather-woods yet.