Welcome to the Animal Training Academy podcast show. I'm your host, Ryan Carledge, and I'm passionate about helping you master your animal training skills using the most positive and least intrusive approaches. Here at ATA, we understand that navigating the vast challenges you encounter in training requires a comprehensive base of knowledge and experience. It's common to face obstacles and rough patches on your journey that can leave you feeling overwhelmed and stressed.
Therefore, since 2015, we have been on a mission to empower animal training geeks worldwide. We've aided thousands in developing their skills, expanding their knowledge, boosting their confidence, and maximizing their positive impact on all the animal and human learners they work with. We are excited to do the same for you. Simply visit www.atamember.com, join our vibrant community, and geek out with us.
And of course, in the meantime, enjoy this free podcast episode as we explore new ways to help you supercharge your training skills, grow your knowledge, and build your confidence so that you can craft a life that positively impacts every learner you encounter. But we will get started on today's episode where I'm thrilled to welcome back to the show Ava Bjergelsen for this part three of our conversation on cooperative care.
Ava, a globally recognized authority in the field of animal training, has an extensive knowledge and experience base backed by her master's degree in behavior analysis, and this makes her an invaluable resource for trainers seeking to advance their skills. She's made significant contributions to the Karen Breyer Clicker Expo and is the co-author of the acclaimed book Agility Right from the Start.
Ava's expertise extends far beyond agility training encompassing the core principles of positive reinforcement applicable across various animal training disciplines. So without further ado, it's my very great pleasure to welcome Ava back to the show today, who's patiently waiting by in Sweden. Ava, thank you so much for taking the time to come and hang out with us again at Animal Training Academy. Hello Ryan, always a pleasure.
You know, I feel like these days I talk to you more often than some of my close friends at home. We're organizing something pretty special in New Zealand, so we have lots to talk about, and that is on top of all of the stuff that you and I just end up in rabbit holes in when we connect. But this is, as I mentioned, part three. If you haven't listened to part one and part two, not to worry, you can find part one is episode 219 and part two is episode 224. I love saying that many episodes.
I've been doing this for a long time now. In part one, Ava and I delved into the essence of what cooperative care is, and in part two we went deeper into the practical applications and the philosophy underpinning cooperative care. We discussed the critical roles of attitude, direction, and precision in your success, and strategies that prioritize respect of our learners' autonomy and well -being.
Of course, you are totally welcome, if you haven't listened to those yet, to also just hang out with us here in part three. We will still gain plenty of insights to help you grow your skills, knowledge, and confidence. And as I just mentioned, we want to remind everyone as well about something super exciting happening later this year. The amazing Ava is coming down under to join us in both Australia and New Zealand.
She will be conducting some workshops here where I am in Wellington, hosted jointly by us, the Animal Training Academy, and the fantastic Sophie Bell at Positive Behaviors, sponsored by the fabulous Bex Tasker from Positively Together. If you're interested in attending a New Zealand event, then you can head to www.positivebehaviors .com to find out more and secure your tickets. That's P-A-W-S-I-T-I -V-E Behaviors, with behaviors spelled B-E -H-A-V-I-O-U-R-S.
It's different in some parts of the world in terms of how you spell that word. On the website, you can find all the information about the event, which will be in November this year. For those in Australia, Ava will be joining the fantastic Lisa Wright from the Canine Education Academy for a similar four-day workshop in early December. So, those will be hosted south of Sydney, New South Wales. And you can find out more information about that at www.canineeducation.academy. That's spelled C
-A-N-I-N-E, education.academy. Ava, super excited about this. I can't wait for you to be here in person with us soon. That time is going to creep up on us super fast, no doubt. Oh, me too. Like, we're actually doing this. We've been talking about it for five years. I know. Yeah, it is happening. It is really happening. Yeah, so much looking forward to this. Better late than never. Good things take time. It's going to be amazing. Although, let's get going on part three.
Now, there's lots of different things that we can talk about in this episode. And we kind of started really simple in part one, got a little bit more complex. And now we're going to put the crescendo on it and chuck some ideas at Ava and see what rabbit holes we go down. So, Ava, for the listeners of this show, and for followers of Animal Training Academy, of course, positive reinforcement is implied.
But what are some other positive reinforcement tactics, let me know if that's a good way of framing this, that we can use when thinking about cooperative care? Love that question. Like, starting from, let's start from thinking positive reinforcement. And you know what? That takes me to where it might be, or for me, it has been valuable to treat cooperative care partly as just another possible training venue.
Just like, I mean, for me, I started with animal training, with dog training, because it was so much fun. Because I got to play with my dogs. I got to teach them things. We built communication. I think a lot of people are like that. We love the excitement and the animals looking forward to play with training with us.
And for anybody who's been doing, like you've been doing some trick training, or you do agility, or obedience training, or Raleo, if you come into that from the perspective of this is a fun activity that we're going to do together, and we're going to start, I'm going to do my best to use positive reinforcement techniques to teach my animals some cooler, interesting things. And the main focus is we're going to have fun with this. This is going to be an enriching activity for both of us.
It's not because I'm going to train this so that we can win a championship later. It's not I have to teach you this so that we can accomplish something. We're really just doing it for fun.
I think a lot of people and animals have experienced how liberating that is, and how enriching it is, and how it's much easier for us to be really good trainers, to really frame things, positive reinforcement, and set up training situations where my learner not only chooses to engage, but where everything in the interaction is just built from positive reinforcement.
So when we do that with cooperative care behaviors, dare to take away the pressure at least for some time, or at least for some behaviors. Don't worry about the competition that comes later as in we have to go to the vet. To do cooperative care training in a different framework when it isn't because we need to do this because I have to be able to brush teeth or take a blood draw or whatever.
If we can allow ourselves to go never mind that, take that away from my thinking, and just go can we teach some cool behaviors that have happened to have the label cooperative care and that can be useful for these needs later on. But can we do the training in a way that's just oh this is cool, this is fun, this is enriching. That means that we open up for any silly version, just like you can teach any silly trick.
We can be super super creative and I think this we can totally dig deep into what this might look like. But I wanted to just suggest this as a framework of can we do this, can we do training sessions that are literally just for the post reinforcement for the both of us. It reminds me as you're talking of my own journey transitioning from working as an employee in zoos to starting animal training academy, doing dog training, living with a dog for the first time.
There wasn't a lot of dogs when I was young and I was always renting. And having that pressure, not cooperative care pressure, but there's so many things I need to work on at home. My dog does this in the situation and I don't like it and I want them vocal cords to be still at this time and I want them to stay in during this time and I've got this cooperative care. And I remember a friend of mine was saying well just teach some stuff for fun. I was like I don't have time for that.
I have all of the serious stuff to do. And it wasn't until a couple of years ago where I started doing training and getting training titles that I was reminded of why I do training. So I'm bringing this up because I imagine there's listeners of the show, especially maybe people who were at that stage newer to training and once you start to learn about it you see all of the applications.
And maybe especially because social media you see everyone doing cool cooperative care stuff and that kind of adds pressure too. And you have an identity of you're a cooperative care trainer and what does that look like. And so there is a lot of pressure on us, real or imagined. Yeah and I find that so unfortunate because we know from our animal training that working for positive reinforcement is a very different thing and gives us like we trust this process.
We see positive reinforcement being really successful and then if we end up in negative reinforcement contingencies ourselves, like not I'm training this for the positive reinforcement outcome but I'm training this to avoid aversives. I'm avoiding and I have to do this or else. I have to. My dog really has to enjoy going to the vet or else I am a bad trainer. Something like that. It's like oh that's really unfortunate if that is what's happening when we get better at something.
But I think sometimes there is a bit of ignorance is bliss in terms of if you've never seen something done you are not expecting yourself to do it either and then it's okay to not do it or to not be good at it. But with like you're saying with social media and with the development of the field which is amazing and super inspiring but I do believe and I do find that there comes some unfortunate pressure that it would be nice to relieve.
And then adding in play elements, training sessions that we really do with the focus of just the joy and the positive reinforcement for everybody involved I think is important. Yeah because when you have that pressure it's stressful, it can be overwhelming, frustrating when your outcomes don't match your expectations. Yeah and then you start pushing like you're not your best trainer if you're trying to speed up the process and take shortcuts to get to that goal because the goal is so important.
And reaching that goal to circle back to something you were saying, your consequence you're looking for is the removal of the pressure that's on you as opposed to the positive reinforcement that you as an individual human learner can get from the process that we label training. That is what I've taken away from what you've just said in terms of positive reinforcement tactics.
It's for both learners obviously the non-human learner involved in the situation whatever species you are working with as well. But also for you as a human learner to look at the contingencies that you're operating under. I think that is huge and I'm wondering if there are listeners of this show who, well I know there will be, I'm wondering if there are.
I speak to our Animal Training Academy members regularly and I know that one frustration is that sometimes people get a little bit lost in jargon and with mixed understanding of applied behavior analysis and I'm worried that in us talking about these contingencies on ourselves some of our listeners might be getting a little bit lost in that conversation. Can you unpack a bit more what you're talking about when you're talking about how we are operating under negative reinforcement contingencies?
So if I wake up in the morning and I'm going to have breakfast, I'm going to go for a walk with my dog and then I start thinking, oh those nails, I really need to trim those nails. The nails are now getting long, I've got to trim them and we're trying to do this training so I need to speed up the training so that I get to trim the nails because look at what they're looking like now.
Then I'm doing the training for just to get the nails trimmed, not for any positive outcome in the training interaction in that moment. So if I'm doing it just to avoid the, oh no the nails are getting longer and longer and maybe then I need to go to the vet or I have to do this. It's like as soon as we, to just put it easily, as soon as we put some I have to do it rather than I want to do it. I think that is what we're looking at here.
And another aspect of it is to have, I'm doing this now for an outcome that is much, much later and lacking a now outcome that's beneficial for me. I think that often also, it seems to be similar as in, are you doing this training because of reinforcers that are built into the training with your dog that this training is reinforcing in itself for you or are you doing the training so that you get closer to this future goal of being able to trim the nails.
And I think we need more of the doing the training for the inbuilt reinforcers of just doing this training session with our animal. So I can imagine there's lots of people who could really resonate with that example of waking up in the morning, getting your coffee, going for a dog walk and then going, oh, those nails are starting to get really long. I've been there. I know what that feels like. Me too.
I know the stress and I know the pressure that then is felt to take action to address that challenge. So if the antecedent is long nails and the behaviour is us getting the nails short, whatever that looks like, and the consequence is short nails. If we're acting in a negative reinforcement contingency, the consequence is the removal of the long nails. Yeah, and of all the aversives that long nails might come with.
Broken nails, painful for the dog, you need to go to the veterinarian or other people scold you for your dog's nails being long. There are other consequences that come along with the nails just growing. And the removal of the long nails, the removal of the consequences of long nails, and the removal of the stress and the pressure that you felt because the nails were long. So as the listeners of this podcast show, you understand most of you.
If you're brand new and beginning to animal training, I love that you're here and listening to this and I hope you're following along with it. And if you aren't, I apologise, please feel free to send us a message and we can explain things. But you understand how to change behaviour, right? If you're listening to this show.
And you might be going, because when I first started to really think about this, Avery, I was aware of how many negative reinforcement contingencies I operate within my life and still do. And that's changing by my environment, what's happening in my daily routine, it influences my ability.
So I know that as the host of this show, the one who chose that we're going to have this conversation on our show, I know how hard it is personally to change behaviour and to change my own behaviour and to acknowledge as a 40-year-old, four decades of reinforcement for doing this behaviour, you know, it's hard to just ignore that reinforcement history or it's impossible. And then to go, okay, cool, now I'm going to operate in a positive reinforcement contingency.
Yeah. So what I would suggest, if you want to go, can we do something that has to do with co-operative care and put it into positive reinforcement contingencies for the human, maybe for some people, it would require removing any label and any future goals, like any label of co-operative care. We don't even have to call it that.
Just do trick training, whatever, like find something that you're already doing, find something that has to do with training, that you're already doing with your learner, where both of you are operating for positive reinforcement in that training session, whatever that looks like. Something that you do, that you don't have to do, there's no other benefit from it than just for doing it. Like, just the interaction in itself.
And then we can take a look at, can something that comes from that, from all these other silly things we do with our learners, is there anything in there that we could spin to be relevant for co-operative care behaviors? For me, agility is an obvious example. I love the agility training. I find it utterly fascinating.
And it's just, it's apparently reinforcing to just, oh, I have a dog and I have something that might look like a tunnel with a little bit of creativity, like a chair with a blanket over it. And there's a puppy. Can I teach the puppy to go under the chair? Cool. Look, let's see. Oh, puppy enjoying this, me enjoying this. I might never meet this puppy again. I'm just spending time with a friend. And it's just clearly reinforcing for me to teach a puppy to go under a chair, just doing the process.
And then if I can think, okay, is there anything in this that could be co -operative care relevant? Yeah. Like putting your head under something, going into and touching something, like going under a blanket, leaning into a novel material, going past a person, like maybe it's a tunnel made by a person. So the person is sitting with their legs up and the puppy can crawl under the legs and maybe even crawl under and stop and continue.
If we start looking at, oh, are there possible veterinary care procedures? Are there aspects of veterinary care procedures? Are there aspects of everyday life care that we can find in these daily training sessions that we do just for fun?
And that opens up so that what might go under the label preparatory training for co -operative care, what that looks like gets just super wide because anything where we teach the individual to move in different directions and closer to a person or closer to an object to go under something like our old agility, go over, under, between, around, through. For agility, we teach that at rapid speed.
If we can teach that a little bit slower, then it can be go under something that eventually becomes a blanket or a coat. Go through something can be put your head into a cone. Go step over something can be anything that is like objects that will be touching your legs or your stomach, but doing it broken down or doing it so far away that it doesn't look like a veterinary procedure at all and doing it in the framework of, I wonder if I can teach you this.
I wonder if this would be reinforcing for the both of us. Can I teach you silly tricks? Can I teach you to spin around? Can I teach you to put your butt toward me and face in the other direction? Can I teach you to turn your butt toward me and actually move into my hand with your rear end? Oh, cool. I can now take your temperature and do anal glands and all sorts of things.
That's like anything where body parts move and lean and go up or down or touch a human or touch a fabric or touch an object. All of that can be incorporated into future cooperative care training and can be taught as just fun and silly activities where you just go, oh, I wonder if I can teach you to target my finger with your tail? So to improve your cooperative care game, do not, this isn't a well thought out statement.
So to improve your cooperative care game, do not think about cooperative care, just have fun if you learn that and build a huge repertoire. Yeah, and start adding glasses of, you can start from any games you're already playing and go, is there anything in here that could in any way be used for any kind of medical procedure? My dog is putting its foot on a target. What might I teach my dog to put their foot on that could be helpful for a medical procedure? My dog is moving close to something.
Oh, what could something be that my dog could move close to that would be helpful for a medical procedure? And you can also turn it the other way around and go, okay, for our vaccination, the dog needs to stand still and hands needs to be touching on its back, on its withers. Is my dog in any other circumstance standing still? Do we have stand still as part of some activity? Do we have go to a spot and stand still there for a moment? Is that a part of something?
Maybe we even have go to a spot that is close to a human and stand still, move into a human or move into something and stand still. Do we have that? And then we can see that, for example, something that we use a lot might be coming to heel position. A lot of dogs have, as part of their repertoire, a really solid positive reinforcement, swing around and put their body very close to a human's legs. Okay, then we can go, can you swing in toward my legs if I hold a towel next to me?
Can you swing in so your body touches the towel? Can you swing in so your body touches a pool noodle? Can you swing in so your body touches a glove and my hand? Can you swing in so that your body touches this glove and you sort of press yourself into this glove? Ah, from there we can start touching and maybe start working on a vaccination, but sort of begin pretty far away and begin with things that we already have.
I think this kind of take weighing from one behavior or one topography or one setup to another to find a thousand in-between steps. For me, that's like super reinforcing. I enjoy doing that. It's clearly a part of a game for me that's just reinforcing in its own right. Oh, how many different creative versions of this can I do? And I don't think it would have been if I was in a rush to accomplish the final goal.
That would stop my creativity and I would go, what can be the fastest path from A to B? But rather, I'm just going just because I think it's fun to train. I enjoy the training process and the creativity of what's another version of doing this? So that's something I really hope to encourage in others and maybe provide some antecedents and possibly also some consequences that that type of creative exploring of how much, what might a slightly different spin on this be?
We do this a lot in seminars and it's typically, it occasions some laughter and some playfulness in humans, it seems. So I've written down here, sort of reverse engineering your thinking when considering how you're going to achieve your goal with whatever cooperative care goal you've set for yourself. Acknowledging that, as I say, that we've just discussed how we should remove that cooperative care label and try stuff up. But like, stay with me. I know you're staying with me.
You know that you do want to achieve something with cooperative care. Rather than thinking, the reverse engineering part and why I wrote that down and where my mind was going was, it was rather than going, okay, I need a dog to stand still and lean into me so I can do this thing. It would be saying, how do I, it would be asking instead of how do I teach this? What does my dog already know?
And how can I take it from that context where it knows that behaviour and move it into this context where I need to achieve this cooperative care goal? Yeah. And can I do it in more than one way? Can I do it, can I find many, many different possible spins on the same thing? Can I get to spend some more training time just doing one more version of this? And that if we, it's both, that is something that we wish to see happening.
And when we see that happening, like, oh, I'm just going to do this in that, in this, this other version too. I don't have to, I'm just going to see if I can do it. Then I think we are also approximating training for post reinforcement. So it's a good, good sign when we go, oh, I'm just going to try this too. I wonder if this would work. That's a, that's a good sign in us as human, as for us as humans, I think.
We talked about like my favourite list of priorities, attitude, direction, precision last time. And I think this goes really well together with that and can help spark some creativity too. In the whole picture, the attitude, what might we be looking for? I want to be able to go both high intensity, like agility style training. And I want to be to go cuddle in the sofa relaxed style training.
So to open up for that, to say, okay, I can do things that look like cooperative care on that result that can be useful for future cooperative care behaviours. I can do it in speed and intensity and whole picture that looks like, that looks like agility, or that looks like a super speed recall away from some game in the forest. Or I can do it as some of my physical therapy exercises, which are a bit slower, focused on balance, or I can do it cuddle style on the sofa, all the different versions.
Because if we can build both fast and slow, both high and low intensity, working for a variety of reinforcers in the high speed ones, for me, that's also more often maybe throwing toys or games of chase or really intense game of tug and all the way to working for treats in a snuffle mat or continued cuddles. And then the direction part, I think for me, that's been super helpful in finding what, how can we use a variety of behaviours for cooperative care use.
Anything that goes into contact with something, anything that's like leaning in rather than leaning away, going past something and stopping rather than rushing away from it. So in all my, like in the agility style training, it could be going into a tunnel type thing and hanging out there rather than just rushing through it. Or going under a cloth and keep moving while it's hanging on your back.
Or put your nose in a cup and move and balance the cup on your nose so that it's not just like the opposite of the learner is still and we are doing things to them. We are reaching out, touching them, and they are just still accepting our touch. Anything that's opposite to that, anything where the animal is doing the moving, the leaning, the engaging their body parts with our activities rather than vice versa.
So we want to encourage that broad spectrum of behaviours and ways of engaging with behaviours that make contact with something or the reinforcer of engaging in fun training with your learner. But also with the awareness of the benefits that these specific behaviours can have in cooperative care. Yeah, yes that. Do you have any of those with Phoebe that you're thinking of already? Like okay, we're doing this thing. Yeah, definitely.
I think my identity as a father of two and a business owner and the narrative I have about my available time and the training sessions I do fit in, which can be few and far between. I know that they are focused on stand still, hold disposition and let me do things to them. So I think the words that come to my mouth are like all of the things. I'm thinking about an open mouth behaviour for example. So if I've got Phoebe with her mouth open, can she walk?
So Phoebe opens her mouth with me using two fingers and she rests her teeth on my fingers. So that keeps her mouth still. She does no movement when we do that though. She's very still. So I think we could add any movement in there as one example. Cool. And you could add, can she do that same behaviour on a variety of objects? Yeah. So far you've done it on your fingers, yeah? Yeah, so I have a little bit of a popsicle stick that is specifically measured out to 15 centimetres. Perfect.
So not 15 centimetres, 1.5. 15 millimetres, yeah. That I can squeeze between my fingers. So I know the open mouth, like I know I've gone above that and she's found it uncomfortable and I know if I go below that it's not open enough for me. So we have a popsicle stick that I squeeze my fingers through, but we could find anything else that's kind of the equivalent size. Yeah. Have you done any carrying or retrieving training with her? I haven't. Just grabbing objects? Just the open mouth.
My embarrassingly limited time to train at the moment with my five-month-old human learner and my four-year-old is a bit restricting. So it's been more on that. Yeah. And that could probably, that can probably be something that might even speed up the progress or just give you something like, what do you do for a break? If you do, okay, now we're doing open mouth training and now we're going to take a break and do something different. What might that look like?
She normally gets some kind of other food item to go and destroy whilst I go and get an open mouth. Yeah. You could even look at, okay, this food item that you get that you go and destroy, are you comfortable grabbing something that is quite big, like bigger than these 15 centimetres and that you carry for some time or that you lift up and throw down and lift up and throw down to get the food item out of it?
And you could even do like, if you have like a toilet paper roll and you have, you just, yeah, cool. So if you fold that and you hold it at a distance, will she go for it and grab it? Take it out of your hand. Yeah. Because if she can, if she can go get it in your hand, most likely she might actually move a few steps before she puts it down. And do you know if she typically does, opens it on like on a mat or does she open it anywhere?
She opens it relatively where I throw it, but if I open the door from the room that we are generally in, which leads outside, she will pick it up and run outside of it in her mouth. Yeah. Cool. So just changing the delivery from you putting it on the ground to you hold it in the air so that she actually grabs it from your hand. You get an opportunity to observe what does it look like when she grabs something from your hand.
You get to experiment with how, where, where should you hold it for her to actually grab it and not just stand around waiting for you to put it down. Do you need to make it a little bit more flat for her to get it from your hand? So that one delivery of an item that she gets to open can be part of your open mouth practice indirectly, just through her getting to practice to open wider and wider to get this toilet roll that she can then move away with.
And if you then can predict that, if I give it to her in this location or in this fashion, she's likely to move away with it and go for some distance, then she's already practicing. I'm holding my mouth open and I'm carrying this thing and I'm moving with it.
If you want to add to that even further, when you see that she grabs this thing and moves with it, before she puts it down, just throw some really tasty food right in front of her so that the reinforcer for carrying this thing isn't just, I get to get what's in it, but there can be added reinforcers that just come flying while she's carrying it.
And that way, you can easily segue that into her starting to learn to grab things from your hand, four food reinforcers coming from you, and you get to practice wider open mouth. So it doesn't have to take a lot of repetitions, but it's just this, here we have something where she's opening her mouth and she keeps her mouth wider open for a longer duration time.
And she's actually grabbing something and holding onto something that isn't your fingers, but that can extend into and be an additional way of training the open mouth behavior that you're already working on. And supposedly without taking a lot extra training time or training energy for you. So I think that was really cool. Cool example. It was really cool. I have never thought about that before. Let's put it this fun way. I was this many days old.
I was today days old when I first thought about that for the first time. It made me think about something that I was talking about. I can't even remember what we're talking about. What's the start of this episode? We're talking about training for fun versus training for your goals. So rather than I've just got to trim those nails because they're too long, I'm just going to do some training to get the reinforcement of training, which I know the listeners of this show all understand.
And with the example you've just shared with me just now, it reminded me of something I was thinking back then, which was that it all sounds so simple and so easy. And it's so interesting. And it's something that I get from you. And it's something that I think is really unique to you Ava. And I don't think I know many other people who think like you because the ideas don't seem huge. They seem so simple and so small yet.
And they don't necessarily, when you think about it like that, oh, they're so small and they're so simple. They don't seem revolutionary, but they really are. They're like tiny little small thoughts or bits of curiosity and like tiny little small hinges, but the doors they swing are huge, aren't they?
Because that's the feeling I have from this episode today is that these things are like, they're like ways of thinking because it takes a different way of thinking, to not choose any better way of saying that. It takes some new thoughts to ask some new questions, to make these small changes that can yield significant outcomes. Yeah, I agree. Do you think about it like that? And when you're teaching this stuff, like, is it, is that a reaction that you get from people?
Like, like kind of like, oh, yeah. Yeah. So I'm not alone. Totally not. Yeah. I do get, I do get that a lot. And I think it's, it's a matter of what we are used to seeing, I think. Like it might not match most people's learning history. And I'm not sure how to like verbally describe, I think you did it, you did it just now better than I can do in verbally describe what the topic is that we're talking about here.
But this take, finding these small openings and possibilities and see what we can do with them. That's something that I really enjoy doing. And I agree with you that it opens new doors. It is a frame, it's a way of thinking. And my way of teaching that is typically partly through just multiple examples and partly through practicing breaking down procedures into components. So something like the open mouth to go, what is included in open mouth? What's including in looking at teeth?
Well, there is the obvious, the open mouth. And there is also, if she's doing it with your finger fingers, it's teeth touching something. And then it's the tactile bit. And it's the closeness to your hand. And it's the duration aspect of, and it's the material that she's touching like your fingers or is it something else? And then are there any smells involved in this? Is there any taste involved in this? You're sure that can be, is there a, what do you call it?
A structure of the thing that she's touching with her mouth? Or is she opening like in thin air? What's her body position while she's doing this? All of these, if we can split them like that and just start to think of them one at a time, and then we can go, can I do different varieties of this? Can she be in different body positions? Can she touch, can the material she touches with her teeth be different? Can it be different in how wide it is?
Can it be different in if she's moving or standing still while she's doing that? Then that opened, for me, that opens up this more, you might label it creative, brainstorming, quick thinking of, oh, this might have to have something to do with it. And then if we go from there and go, okay, in what other scenario is she doing any of these aspects? Like, oh, mouth open. What does that look like? When else is she doing that?
Well, she's doing that when I'm thinking she's doing that when she's carrying something. She's doing it when she's grabbing something that might be toys, that might be treats. What else might she be opening her mouth, even just open so that she can reach something or move something? Is she holding her mouth open for a longer period of time before her teeth touches? Like when we don't speed up and go, how can I use this for toothbrushing? Just stop it at, oh, the mouth looks open like this.
When might that happen? And allow it to sort of spin in these different directions. I think that's where what looks like creativity might be coming from. Years and years and years ago, I had a period in my life that I'm really grateful for where I read a lot. I try to read a book a day, but I failed miserably. But my idea was to train my mind to be more empowering for myself because I identified that there were some areas that I wanted to develop.
And one of the things I read back then that stuck with me and my idea always was like, you read a book and if you take one thing away from that book that you carry with you for the rest of your life, that was an incredibly good investment of your time. And so I don't remember what book it was in or what context it was in, but the author was Anthony Robbins.
And I know a lot of people know that person and different people have different feelings about him, but he had a saying, it's just was quality questions equals a quality life. And I was going to ask you, what are some questions you ask yourself? And you just rattled off like 20 of them for us. So the listeners of this episode, I hope that you wrote down some of those or you've taken heed of some of those.
And if you listen to this episode and one of those you carry with you for the rest of your life, you have made a very wise investment in your education today by listening to this episode. I'm going to go back and listen and write down all of those questions because I find it helpful. And I find the more we can ask ourselves good questions, the better outcomes we often get. So thank you for sharing all of those for us. I thought for one, that was really helpful.
To end this part three up, there's one other question that one of the listeners of our show has wanted us to talk about. And I think it ties quite nicely into what I just asked you about in terms of how your human learners respond when you share this simple yet profound approach with them, these ideas with them. But what else might you have to share for the listeners of this show about educating others, specifically clients?
So now we're going to cross over into not a trainer teaching other trainers, but a trainer teaching a pet guardian, an animal guardian about cooperative care. How do we do this effectively? Any thoughts or ideas to end part three on in that aspect? And then we'll wrap up. Yeah, to continue on the sort of same theme, I would say, identify something that the client and their non-human learner are already doing.
And do this work that we've been talking about, this sort of creative thinking, do that for them. So I might, through observing, through seeing people work with the dogs, through them talking about other things that they're doing in their lives, then I can start asking some questions that can lead to, oh, you already have procedures, you already have games, you already have training types that could be useful.
It doesn't have to be the best, it just has to be, or it doesn't have to be, but I would be looking for something that matches something that they are already doing. Like, I know this last year I was in Switzerland and did a husbandry camp, and we had a dog that needed to learn to wear goggles, like for being in snow and sun with sensitive eyes. And then I learned that, oh, this team, dog handler team, they really enjoy training hoopers.
So we quickly put together, how can we start introducing the goggles in the hoopers training? Well, we can put them on the ground, and we can pick them up in your hand and say to the dog, okay, are you ready to go? And then you do a little bit of hoopers training with these goggles in your hand as just step one. Okay, the goggles are now involved in your hoopers training. We wanted to condition these goggles to become positive reinforcers, to become something valuable for the dog.
And rather than go, okay, let's teach the dog to touch the goggles or do some pairing procedure of you see the goggles and you get treats, let's just incorporate them into the hoopers training. And then we can approximate dog coming into the starting position where the trainer has the goggles in their hands, for example.
So just anything where we can take an aspect of our cooperative care that we see that the client needs to work on and help them find how to incorporate that in something that they are already doing and enjoying together with the dog. I love that. And I think that is another super, that falls into the category of the things that we've just been talking about. They're small, simple things, but they're huge. They're small hinges that swing big doors to carry on that metaphor.
So I am confident, Ava, that the listeners of this show are all thinking right now about specific examples that they can use with their clients and Sasha will be thinking about that next time they are with a client. So thank you for the ripples that you've just helped spread. As we wrap up today's episode, I want to extend a massive thank you to everyone out there who's tuned in and hung out with Ava and I for the past hour and Ava for joining us and sharing your valuable insight today.
Ava, it's been an enriching session and we hope that everyone out there found it as enlightening, as enjoyable as I did. But before we sign off for today, a quick reminder about the exciting workshops. If you're in Australasia coming up, Ava is going to be gracing us with her presence right here in my hometown, Wellington, New Zealand, for a series of workshops hosted by us, ATA, and Positive Behaviors with the generous sponsorship of Positive Lead Together.
These workshops are a golden opportunity for the Australasian community to deep dive into practical, force -free learning techniques and strategies. For our New Zealand listeners, visit www.positivebehaviors .com for all the details and to grab your tickets. That's P-A-W-S-I-T-I -V-E, behaviours, and behaviours over here is spelled B-E-H-A-V-I-O -U-R-S, and you'll find all the information you need about the November event. But of course, we're not going to forget our Australian friends.
Ava will be collaborating with the Canine Education Academy in New South Wales for a four -day workshop in early December. So that's another fantastic opportunity to enhance your training skills with Ava's expertise. For our Australian listeners, for more information and to register, head over to www.canineeducation.academy, that's canine, spelled C-A-N-I-N -E, education.academy. And we will, of course, link to all of that in the show notes as well. Ava, thank you so much.
We've done three of these now, so gratitude from myself and on behalf of everyone listening, we really appreciate you taking the time to hang out with us so much here at Animal Training Academy. Thank you. Thank you so much. I mean, talk about there is positive reinforcement built into the activity. Having these conversations certainly ticks that box. So thank you so much for tonight.
And I am super much looking forward to hear what people's thoughts and ideas and both what you're already doing, because I mean, people are doing such amazing things, and any ideas that you get from this episode. So let's keep in touch. And thank you so much for listening as well. This is your host, Ryan Cartlidge, signing off from this episode of the Animal Training Academy podcast show. We hope today's conversation inspired you and equipped you with new tools for your trainer's toolbox.
Remember, every challenge in training is an opportunity to learn and sharpen your animal training geekery. Embrace the rough patches, learn from them and keep improving. And don't forget, the path to growing your skills and expanding your knowledge continues beyond this episode. Visit www.atamember.com to join our supportive membership, where you will find a community of trainers just like you. Together, we're making a huge positive difference in the lives of animal and human learners worldwide.
Until next time, keep honing your skills, stay awesome. And remember, every interaction with an animal or human learner is your opportunity to create ripples. We're here cheering you on every step of the way. See you at the next episode.