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 maximising 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. We will start today's episode where we will talk to one Ulrika Andreasen, or Ulis in short.
Ulis has been practising reward-based training for 25 years and currently works full-time as a teacher and trainer, specialising in dogs, horses, and reindeer. She has demonstrated the power of clicker training in some unique areas, including training the first Labrador to become a Swedish ski drawing champion, winning two gold medals at the Swedish National Sled Dog Championship.
Twelve years ago, she also began training reindeer for film and events and has since participated in several movies, performing twice at the Sweden International Horse Show and showcased her skills at the opening ceremonies of the world champions in biathlon and alpine skiing. Today, Ulis trains hunting dogs not to hunt reindeer using a redirection technique known as tattling.
She also offers courses in gundog retrieving, obedience, and puppy training, while continuing to train her reindeer for tourist events, films, and live performances. In her spare time, she practices academic riding with her two horses. So without further ado, it's my very great pleasure to welcome Ulis to the show today, who's patiently waiting by. Ulis, thank you so much for taking the time to come and hang out with me at Animal Training Academy. Thank you so much for inviting me, Ryan.
Well, your appearance on our show comes at the recommendations of multiple trainers who are highly skilled and who I value a lot because of their skill and their knowledge. And consequently, I appreciate their opinions. So great gratitude to Morten Ektevert and Eva Berthelsen for recommending you as a fabulous guest on our show. So I can't wait to dive in and learn about your story, about your journey. Ulis, we love hearing people's behavioral odysseys, as we like to call them on this show.
So could you take the listeners back to where you started on your behavioral odyssey, where you first got started training and learning about positive reinforcement animal training? Sure. It's maybe a bit different story. I grew up in the northern part of Sweden, up on a little mountain. So I had quite a distance to meet friends. And mostly I hang out with my family's hunting dogs. And we had always a few moose hunting dogs. That's quite a big dog searching the forest for moose.
And whenever they find the moose, they start barking at it. And it's quite independent, brave dogs. They can just run around in the forest for themselves for 24 hours. That's not a problem. And these were my friends, and I started to train them. I saw movies like Beethoven and Lassie when I was a child. And all I can think about was, how did they teach the dogs all those tricks that they did in the movies?
And I knew that when I grew up, I wanted to be an animal trainer, and I wanted to teach the animals funny stuff for movies. So I did my best with those hunting dogs. I taught them tricks, and we went dog sledding. And I made agility courses and stuff like that. And I asked people around me that had dogs how to train them. And there was quite a few sled dog persons around me at that time. And they said, yeah, you have to show them who's the boss. You have to be the leader.
Tell them who's in charge. And I was like, yeah, how do I do that? And they said, it's important that you eat before them. And if they behave bad, you should just bite them in the ear, and then they'll know who's the boss. And I'm not proud to tell you, but when I was like 10 years old, I bit a dog in the ear. And of course, he reacted quite strongly, like, what are you doing? And he threw his head up and punched my nose.
So when I was coming home from that tour in the forest, my dog had a hurt ear. And blood was running from my nose. And my mother was like, what have you done? Yeah, don't ask. And I thought, for sure, this is how it's done. This is no fun. But just a bit after that, another dog sledding person handed me a book that he got from somewhere. And he's like, I'm not going to read this book. Do you want it? And it said, Clicker Training Your Dog by Anders Hallgren.
He was one of the first in Sweden to bring clicker training to this country. And I read the book. And then I knew that, okay, this is how I want to train animals. I was sure. And from that day on, I didn't bite any dogs. And I started to say no. And I began the journey of clicker training on my own, like 14 years old, maybe. Still up on that mountain, we didn't have any club or something where you could go and meet other people training dogs. So I read the book and I did my best.
And I had my own dog, a moose hunting dog at this time. She was called Trixie. And when I started to clicker train her, we also started to win competitions. I wanted to do obedience training. And I had been competing for a few times, but we always got the second prize on these competitions. And I wanted to have a first prize because then you were moved up to the next class or next grade. I don't know how you say it. Next level. And after we started to clicker train, we started to win.
And that was, of course, really reinforcing for me. And yeah, since then, I just tried to be better and better. And that led me to Mårten Egtved's clicker training education. And after that, I also did his clicker instructor course. And yeah, that taught me a lot and was probably the biggest moments for me to be a better clicker trainer, to do his classes. I think they've done a lot for Sweden and the north. And it's a really, really good education that they have.
So that was kind of how it started for me. And on the road, I always enjoyed trying to motivate different animals to do different stuff that they are not like originally bred to do, like training obedience with that hunting dog. When I got my Labrador retriever, I think I competed with him in like eight disciplines. And one of them was ski during where he ran for 10 kilometers, pulling me on skis. And as Labradors are not known to be great sled dogs, I can tell you that.
But I knew that motivation is the only thing required. And yeah, I was reinforcing him for running fast for just a few hundred meters at first with a big, big Christmas feeling in the end. And just like back change it to get longer and longer and longer. And in the end, he ran 10 kilometers, full speed passing everyone else. And I knew if he do his best, he will be faster than German shepherds and other dogs that was just taking it easy, not doing their best. And yeah, he became the best.
And yeah, it was a really interesting journey for me to do that with him. So I think there's going to be people listening to this podcast and including me before I jumped on to record with you. Googling during not quite understanding what we're talking about. I think I think during is a is a unique word at least or sport to your area of the world. And now I'm not sure if that's our English word skijoring and because sled dogging dog sledding is more like riding a sleigh. Right.
And here we go on skis with the dog and then it's like dog sledding, but on skis with only one dog. OK, so along the flat or up and down. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a flat up and it's not like downhill skiing with the dog, but yeah, on the flat. So the dog pulls your weight a little bit depends on how good of a skier you are. You have cross-country skis on. And so this is a sport traditionally done with German shepherds. OK, yeah, this is OK. This was a bit deeper. I didn't think about that.
This is so special to this area, but maybe it is. OK, there's a few classes and then for one group of dogs, there's only huskies. OK, Siberian huskies and another group for German shorthair. That's one of our bird hunting dogs. That's really, really fast. They have their own group as well. And then in the third group is all other breeds. No Siberian huskies, no German shorthair, but all other breeds.
So if you have a Labrador, you compete against, yeah, German shepherd, but also Kofa, Dalmatians, you name it. Any other dog breed in the country. Yeah, maybe there's lots of people listening to this podcast who are like, right. And we know what Juring is. I don't know. I didn't know what Juring was. So it's new to me. So you had a Labrador and you said that this was the first Labrador to become a champion. Was it the first Labrador to compete or just the first Labrador to become a champion?
To become a champion, I think there was one Labrador before us, a female dog that competed. But this was the first Labrador to be a champion, if I'm right. After that, we had a few more, but you know, you always have to, someone has to go first, right? Yes, that's what I was thinking. So there's Juring, which you've all learned about what Juring is, and how did you get drawn into wanting to compete in Juring? Is it just because it was part of your upbringing and part of your...
Yeah, I trained a lot of sled dogs through the years and helped people. You know, people live with 50 dogs in the forest and whenever they want to go on a vacation, someone has to stay there. And that was kind of my speciality when I was 14, 15 years old. I lived at the homes and took care of 50 dogs when these people wanted to go on a vacation. And I competed a bit with their dogs and so on. A relative of mine also had sled dogs and I helped out there a lot.
So I was kind of in that sport already since I was young. Well, you say, you know, people live with like 50 dogs in the forest. I don't know that, because in New Zealand, I don't think people live with like 50 dogs in the forest. I think that is, again, because you're talking sled dogs, right? Yes, sled dogs. So some people have 50 dogs whose job is... Each individual dog's job is to be a sled dog? Yes, they are pulling a sleigh. And few of these people are working with tourism.
Then you need 50 dogs. Where tourists come and drive their own sled with dogs up the mountain for a week or so. But there's also people, quite a lot from the Netherlands and Germany, moving up here, buying a house. And they might have somewhere around 20 and 30 dogs. And they might just go on sled dog drives for fun and for competition. They don't work with it. But, you know, if you're competing in a long distance sled dog competition, you can have a team of eight dogs.
But then you need eight dogs in full condition. And you always have a few older dogs. You have a few limp dogs. You have puppies that you want to compete with in the future. So if you need a good team of eight dogs, you always end up having like 20. That's how it is. And it's hard to go on vacation with 20 dogs only. So you need someone staying at the kennel taking care of them. And it's cheap with 14-year-old girls that like dogs, you know.
Yeah, I mean, those kinds of opportunities are available. So that's who you hire. We normally tell people to go and volunteer at the shelter. But I imagine that's a great opportunity to go and work with a lot of dogs. Yeah, because we don't have any shelters up here. So help people. Yeah, it is.
And help people understand that one of the things I love about this show is finding individuals like yourself and showcasing the unique places we live in the world, the unique relationships we have with animals and the unique things we train with animals in different parts of the world. But the glue that holds us all together is we're all singing the same song from the same song sheet, Positive Reinforcement and those ethical and humane ways of training.
So I love that you're there doing what we're doing with your moose and your 50 sleigh dogs. Explain to everyone where exactly you are. Because, I mean, I think when people think of Sweden, they think of maybe Stockholm or other large cities. But you're up in the snow, up in the mountains. Yeah. OK, so Sweden is a really long country. And actually, I live close to the middle, but it's considered the north. But the north is everything from the middle, not from the middle even.
The lowest third of Sweden is considered like Sweden. And then the two thirds above that's in the north. You know, there's much fewer cities and more wood. Forest, forest, forest, forest. And yeah, I grew up in the middle of the forest. We have a good winter. We have one meter of snow. And yeah, we have quite a lot of sled dogs up here because of all the snow. So it's big. We have a lot of sled dogs. We also have a lot of moose.
So those moose hunting dogs and sled dogs are really common around here. And I live close to Åre, which is quite a famous ski resort. Maybe not in New Zealand, but in Sweden anyway. And yeah, snowmobiling, downhill skiing. Yeah, that's also big sports around here. Yeah, that's all very cool. I didn't realize moose were there. I was thinking about moose being in Canada. So I'm learning. We have a lot of moose and also bear. And so you grew up around all of these sled dogs.
And as a 14-year-old, you were looking after large groups of working dogs for people as they went on their holidays. And you got into drawing and you saw what was involved. And you wanted to do it and you had a Labrador. So that was a dog that you had to do it with? Or you went like, no, you guys aren't using Labradors. I'm going to do it with a Labrador. No, okay, this is a bit silly, but I'll tell you anyway. I wanted to do obedience training with a Labrador.
And I wanted to do, how would you say, tracking and searching for people. That's also different competitions you can do in Sweden. Searching people, tracking people. And I wanted to do that. So I bought this Labrador. And then a friend of mine said, oh, but the Labrador, is that even a real dog to do training and competitions with? Aren't they quite lazy just wanting to lie down on the couch eating cinnamon buns? And then I got a bit annoyed, you know. And it just came out of me.
I said, no, this Labrador will be a sled dog, competition dog. And I was like, why did I say that? I just did because I was like, yeah, you'll see. And then I had to do it, you know. But I love to go skiing with dogs. I've done that since I was like five years old. And we trained the hunting dogs by, yeah, doing ski during. So I like to do that ever since I was a child. And I think it's really good physical training for every dog.
So I've done it with all my dogs forever just for keeping them in shape. But now I said, yeah, he'll do competitions as well. And, yeah, that's how it started, actually. Okay. And so tell us about what you learned from that, because there's this. And how would you describe that breed now in terms of during? Would you be like, yeah, yeah, they're fine during dogs? Or would you be like, no, maybe get a different breed?
Like, how does that influence your thought about breeds and training and individuals? I think if you want to win competitions in ski during, Labrador is not like the breed you'll pick. But I don't think there's any specific breed. Okay. German Shorthair, most of them, they run and they run and they run and they run. Most of the people wanting to compete in ski during, they buy a German Shorthair. Okay. But if you have another breed, you can pick any breed.
They might like to run, but most of them are not motivated to run their best kilometer by kilometer by kilometer. And if they, because the problem is on the competition, it's always fun to run in the beginning. But then you find another dog on the track. And most dogs is like, oh, hey, your friend. Hello. Can I run beside you and hang out? And maybe it's a good luck getting a female dog as well. And, you know, they stop up. They start to trot.
They interact with the other dog instead of focusing on running. Right. And then they don't run as fast as they can. And I knew this. And I thought if he just runs his best, he will be better than the other dogs that have better opportunities to run fast for a long time. If he just do his best, he will still be better than them. And if he just, if he just have the motivation to do it, like that's the only key that I need. So I just built it really small, run full speed, 200 meters.
And in the end, I often had a moose leg. Sorry, maybe this is a bit gross for other people. But, you know, since it's minus degrees up here all winter, meat doesn't get rotten if it's outside. And in the end of the moose hunt, which they chop off the legs and like throw them away or give them to dogs. And dogs love to chew on moose legs. All right. So I had a moose leg frozen on the balcony in my apartment and I brought it to the ski during training.
And I had it in the end, like when he finished his lap. Would you say it like that? Yes. Yeah. When he finished the lap for that day, he had his moose leg in the end of the course and he could have it for 15 minutes. And he was such a happy dog. And that just made him motivated to run longer and longer and to pass other dogs on this lap and just keep going. You're soon in the end and there's your moose leg. So I basically built this competition dog on a moose leg in the end, right?
Reinforcement is everything, as always. Of course, you always have to make sure your dog is physically strong enough to do it, of course. And he was always, during his whole life, fit for running 10 kilometers. But if they're physically well enough trained, it's all about motivation. So in this competition you entered with this Labrador, there were other breeds that are genetically predisposed to do the behavior that is wanted by the humans. Yes. But what can out-compete that?
What can out-compete a breed that is designed to do the behavior that is being competed? What can out-compete a not as well -trained individual from that breed as a well -trained individual from a different breed? Yes. Is that what you wanted to show? Yes. That Labradors are not lazy. If you want it, you can do it, right? And so when you won the competition, were people like, okay, cool, she won the competition? Or do you feel that that impacted people's beliefs and false beliefs?
People that know me, I don't think that they thought it was as crazy as going to obedience competitions with the moose hunting dog. But people that know me is like, yeah, it doesn't matter what thought she gets in her head. She's going to do it, you know. But probably people don't come up to you like, what did you do? I think it absolutely gave people a different perspective, but you have to just show it's possible.
And when you were doing it, because you said that it kind of just came out of your mouth and then you were like, oh, my God, why did I say that? Did you experience after that conviction? Did you know that you were going to do this? Or were you like, oh, my God, can I actually do this? Oh, yeah. No, I knew I could do it. That's always my I know it's possible. I just have to find the way.
And after doing that, it was like, OK, because I was always motivated to to train stuff that I love to train stuff that no one else trained before. So I can figure out if it's possible and how is it possible? And sure, a few things I'm not sure if they are possible about this. I was like, sure, it's you just have to train this dog and you can do it. But then and it was the same thing later on when I when I got back, got back to this idea about training animals for movies.
That was my goal since I was seven years old. Right. And I actually wanted to buy moose, but moose is a wild animal in Sweden. So you're not allowed to train them and ride them, for example, that I wanted to do. So I tried to to catch a moose when I was 12 years old, but I didn't manage. And later on, when I wanted to buy one, I understood that you can't ride them and you're not allowed in Sweden. And then I was like, OK, then I don't want the moose because I want to train animals, you know.
And I came up with the idea that reindeer are tame animals in Sweden. We don't have any wild reindeer. And if it's a tame animal, then you're allowed to train it. And I googled around and I couldn't find any trick trained reindeer in the whole world at that time.
And I thought if I'm the first person to have trick trained reindeer, it should be possible to work with it a little bit anyway, since they have such a strong symbolic value for the northern part of Sweden, the mountain area and Christmas, of course. So and I knew at this time I'm such a good clicker trainer. I just have to make a good training plan and go out to train those reindeers. Of course, it's possible. You just have to like figure out how to do it the best way.
And then I bought reindeer and I never hesitated. It was going to be possible. But of course, you have to with every new animal you train, you have to figure out like, how do I do it the best way with with this kind of animal? And for sure, I wrote a lot of training plans. I went out to train and then I sat down and and edited them and added criteria and went out to train again. And on it went like this for four years. But but I never hesitated. It could be done.
And where do you feel like that confidence? And I'll share why I'm asking this question before I ask it. Because self-doubt and a term that gets used a lot is an imposter syndrome is something that people talk about a lot and that they experience. And it's quite novel, I think, and unique to have someone sharing that they're so confident in these things and you've gone and done these things. You had every right to be confident. You achieved what you said you were going to achieve.
I'm just curious because you've had such a different upbringing and you live in such a different part of the world and you've got your own culture there. I'm just curious, where do you feel that that self-belief and self-belief and that confidence came from in you to look at something and just be like, yeah, I can do this. No worries. I just got to figure out how. OK, so that in the area where I come from, it's a really long way to any service.
It's so far that if you need something done, you do it yourself. That's kind of the mentality. And it's really ambitious people that live there that figure out how to do stuff, help each other out and whatever has to be done, they do it themselves. So I'm really happy that I grew up in an environment like that. And I could tell my dad like, oh, I need a ladder to go up my little tree house. I don't have any ladder. Do you have one? And he's like, no, I don't have one.
But let's go out and build one. And he followed me out and he taught me how to build a ladder. We built it and then I had it like that. It was with everything. I need this. Yeah, let's go out and build it. So I think that's one part of it. And then when I when I started to learn about clicker training, I immediately understood like the basics. How does it work? And and when you know the theory and you understand the theory, you just know what's possible. Don't you? Isn't it like that for you?
I knew clicker training worked. So I just I knew I just had to find the right way to do it with this with this dog, with this breed, with this kind of animal for the purpose that I wanted to train. So, no, I was I wasn't sure I could teach a reindeer to sit down in a sofa. But that wasn't due to training, more to reindeer physics. Right. And I actually I didn't manage to do that. So that's one thing I failed a bit with. But but that's it was also a really nice journey to figure that out.
So the reason that you haven't taught yet, I don't know if it's physically possible. The reason you haven't taught yet a reindeer to sit on a sofa is because of the physical limitations of a reindeer to sit on a sofa. Yeah, it's they don't do they don't do that movement naturally.
You know, if you teach a horse to sit, they always when they have been lying down and get up, they first raise their front legs and then they are sitting on their butt for it for a little moment before they raise the butt. Right. So they do it naturally. Reindeer doesn't do it like that. They do it the other way. They raise the butt first and then the front end. So, yeah, I have to, of course, it should be physically possible to just lower the hind end, but they don't do it.
They never do it naturally. So you have to, like, create a really specific bum target or something to tell them, hey, you can also lower your hind end, even though you never, ever do it naturally. So it wasn't a job either to teach him. It was just a fun idea. So it ended up I taught him to back up to the sofa and and step up in it with his hind legs. Yeah, that was that was kind of when I gave up like, yeah, how much time should I put into this? But yeah, who knows?
Maybe maybe I'll pick it up sometimes when I don't have so many things to do. Could be a fun task to get back to. But trying to figure out this kind of stuff is like what what keeps me going and no one did it. I want to try and do it and let's see if I can figure it out. That gives me so much energy to do. Can I can I teach this reindeer to do this behavior in this specific environment, for example? Is it possible? And yeah, that's that's what bring the joy to me.
And also helping people out with with problems, making their and their dogs lives happier. It's also it's always reinforcing to help others. But but figuring out new new behaviors to to train this is really, really reinforcing for me. So you said you have to. It's really far to travel from where you are to get to any services. Yes, it's 200 kilometers to the nearest city with the hospital. If you were giving birth, for example, then you had to go to this this big city 200 kilometers away.
It takes two and a half hour to drive there. So when you're when you're out in your in your property with your reindeer and your animals, you're training this reindeer to not sit on the sofa, to put its back hooves on a sofa. Like, how do you how do you brainstorm? How do you do you have peers to bounce ideas off? Are you just by yourself in the environment? OK, sorry. Sorry. That's a misunderstanding. I wasn't perfectly clear there where I grew up when I was a child. We grew up.
That's that's up the mountain to 200 kilometers to to this big city. But now I moved where I live now in Kluk is only 50 kilometers to the same city. So I live in between the city of Östersund and Åre. So I only have a 45 minute drive to town, 45 minute drive to Åre. So I live really central now in a village with 10 houses. So I do have neighbors now and I can even see them from my house. So it feels really central, even though most people ask, like, do you live here all year round?
They think it's like a summer house or something. But, yeah, of course, for many people, it's remote. For me, it's more central. And I do have a lot of friends training animals and many of them live far away. And we mostly speak on the phone and we don't meet that often. But, yeah, I have a lot of crazy ideas myself. And some of the time I also get inspiration from others.
Absolutely. You know, I think at least for me, you end up hanging out mostly with other people doing the same things, having the same interests. So, yeah, most people I hang out with are animal trainers, for sure. And so you said a while back that you went through Morten Egtevit's canine, canis, sorry, instructor course. How long ago was that? Actually, I did that course only last year. I did the trainer course maybe 15 years ago from now.
And I wanted to do the instructor course just the year after, but it was canceled that year because of something. And then time went on. And last year, I wanted to do an update and did this class. And it was so much fun. And even though you train for many years, you can always get a bit sharper, right? And, yeah, I did it with my border collie that I compete in obedience with. I think we had three second prizes and you need three first prizes to be a champion. And I was a little bit annoyed.
Every competition, something failed. And I did this course with Morten and we trained basics the whole winter. And he got really, really, really fluent on many behaviors. That's kind of, you know, Morten's parole to teach fluency. And I also love that. And, yeah, he had a really, really high fluency on different basic behaviors. And I think I took five weeks this spring to put together all the behaviors to do this obedience competition last level.
And he took the first prizes that he needed in May. And he got to be this champion that I wanted. And I was so happy about that. And I think, yeah, really well taught basics is the key to most success when it comes to animal training. And so what you got out of Morten's instructor course was to spend more time on the basics. Yes, I was challenged to spend more time on the basics because when I have a task, I really go fully into it.
And one task on this course was to teach 25 basic behaviors and measure the fluency on them four times during the year. And he was already fluent in many of them when we started the course, but he wanted to see progression. And I thought, like, yeah, we have to be better every time we measure it. So we did. And on a few behaviors, Morten said in the end, yeah, I've never seen such a high fluency before on the behavior. And I love the competition. And we just we were competing against ourselves.
We have to be better than last time we measured this behavior. And yeah, that kept us going and motivated me a lot. And yeah, we reached really high fluency because of that. So if you have been a listener of this podcast and if you're part of the Animal Training Academy membership, then you have potentially watched and engaged with some of Morten's content and learned about what fluency is.
But for the listeners of this show, all of us who don't might not know what we mean when we say fluency or might have a different definition of fluency. Can you explain to people what you're talking about in regards to the sport of collie and winning these competitions? And then also define when we say the basics, what do you mean? What are the what are the basics? Yeah, absolutely. OK, so easy, small behaviors, easy, but small behaviors like grabbing a dumbbell from the floor and lift it.
That's one basic for obedience dog, I would say, grab the dumbbell and lift it. And to be able to say what kind of fluency we have on that behavior, grab the dumbbell and lift it from the floor. I would count it. That's what we do in Morten's class. We count it for one minute. So I actually just put up a camera filming the session, filming one minute of training. And and I count how many times in one minute can my dog grab the dumbbell and lift it from the floor?
For example, that's one basic skill. Another skill is to to come sit in a competing position, sitting to my left, right. What do you call that? Heel? What would you call that? Sitting in a heel position? Yeah, heel position, not competition position. Yeah. To to for the dog to come sit in heel position. How many times in one minute can you move to heel position? So we count these kind of behaviors for one minute. And on the class, it says like, OK, your dog is fluent.
If we can do 14 to 18 repetitions, one minute in one minute, for example. So you have like a goal number to reach. And then, of course, it depends on what do your dog look like? Is it is it physical, physical? If it's is it possible for this dog to move physically? You know, if it's a Newfoundland dog, you have different opportunities with a Border Collie, of course. So you have to look at the physical aspects.
But but the more the more numbers you can do in one minute, the higher fluency you have. And when the dog. OK, this is not really scientifically correct, but I think you get my point. If the dog doesn't even have to think about what it's doing, it's just doing. If it's really fluent behavior, it takes less effort from the dog to to do the behavior. As soon as it swallows the treat, it just grabs the dumbbell and lift it again.
When it swallowed the treat, the head is already going down to grab the dumbbell again. If you have high fluency, if you have a low fluency, the dog would choose its food, look around, look at you, look down. Oh, yeah. The dumbbells here. OK, I'm going to grab it and lift it. And it takes then you can't do as many in one minute. Right. So a fluent behavior take less effort from the dog to perform. That's that's like the bottom line of this teaching really fluent basic skills.
And then it's easier to put this behavior together with others to do a full retrieve, for example, or other challenges in an obedience class, for example. Awesome. And I think we'll link to previous episode with Morton in the show notes for this, if you wanted to learn more, because Morton explains that really well and goes into much different, much more in different areas of training around this concept of fluency and precision and a lot more things. And a podcast episode we did with him.
So we'll link to that for you, the listener. We're going to talk about reindeers in part two of our conversation. All this I've been refraining, been biting my tongue from asking more about reindeers because we are going to do a whole podcast on training reindeers.
We're going to do interspecies contrasts and dive into reindeers and learn what we can from working with their species and how that's different and how that's the same as working with dogs and horses and whatever species you're working with. So I'm really excited to do that. And part two of my conversation will be this for the end of this episode, though.
I was wondering if you could just share with everyone listening where they can go online to find you to see your website, maybe come and visit if they're in the northern part of Sweden or to get in touch if they want to reach out. Yeah, of course. My homepage is ullisrudolf.se and there you can read more about the dog training. And if you want to come and visit us, see the reindeer, you can book a tour there and you can also book a class where you come and train the reindeer.
And that's really fun. So all of that, read more about us or reach out through ullisrudolf.se. Wonderful. And we will, of course, link to that in the show notes as well. We will officially now wrap up part one of our episode with Ullis here. This has been so much fun. So on behalf of myself and everyone listening, thank you. We really appreciate you coming on the show with us today. Thank you for inviting me, Diane. It was really fun. 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.