#100: The Dunning-Kruger Effect

If you read a lot of psychology blogs or just spend very much time on the internet, you probably run across something called the Dunning Kruger effect. Um I mostly see this lately in maybe like a dog training forum where someone will share a video of a trainer they don't particularly like. And uh someone will comment on that video done in Kruger effect, eye roll emoji.

And the implication there is of course that uh the video isn't presenting very high quality training and or um the viewer believes this uh particular person to be an idiot, which may or may not be a fair assessment. So if this has happened to you, wouldn't it be good to know exactly what is meant by this? potential insult?

But even if it hasn't, I still think it's kind of an interesting subject to look at. This sort of psychological phenomenon or or behavior pattern, depending on the lens you're looking at it through, is something that seems to be

pretty pervasive. It happens to all of us. And so what exactly do we mean by those terms? So the Dunning Kruger effect is actually a family of effects. Um but I think it's most famously interpreted as the idea that the incompetent aren't in a position to know that they're incompetent. The Dunning-Kruger effect describes the idea that those people who are the least competent at a task, often incorrectly rate themselves as

high performers because they're too ignorant to know otherwise. It refers to this sort of almost pervasive tendency of people who are are novices in a certain area to overestimate their abilities relative to other people. And that part's important. you know, maybe they think they're pretty good dog trainers because they watched a couple of dog training videos on YouTube. I think we've all experienced that phenomenon. And honestly, we've all been on both sides of it.

In fact there's a great quote from Charles Darwin that often comes up uh in these conversations. which is that uh ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. This is from The Descent of Man in eighteen seventy one. And it's a great quote, and I think is often true. And part of what's going on here is that a lot of times A lot of times when we're learning a new

task or new skill. It doesn't take that much effort to get from zero to kind of like level one. And when we're sitting at level one, you know, we've we've just gotten started, we have an we know n just enough to be dangerous, which I think is part of this phenomenon, we don't recognize that it's going to take that much more like much more

uh experience and work to get from level one to level two and to get from level two to level three. And uh with a lot of skills, it is the nature of of how expertise plays out that it takes a lot more work. It takes it's hard enough to get from just getting started in dog training to maybe competing in a sport.

And in a lot of sports, it's actually relatively easy to get that very first entry-level title. And it takes a lot more training to get from that entry-level title to the more advanced titles. So I know that this was something I was confronted with when I got started in obedience. It was not that hard. to get with with not amazing scores, but to get that very first title with my first dog.

I didn't do that much training, I didn't do that much work and I thought, Hey, I'm I'm pretty good, I'm pretty good trainer. Uh never mind my confidence that was developed over earning a CGC title, right? And then to go from there to open and from there to utility took a lot more work, more than seemed proportional. And there was no way when I was sitting at that very beginning, level one, that I could have

fully appreciated how much more I was gonna need to grow as a trainer to get to those upper levels. So it it looked it didn't look like it was gonna be that much different. So if I were to have compared myself at the time, I would have thought, yeah, you know, look how fast I got to level one. I'm gonna be level three in no time.

And this of course doesn't apply just to dog training. We do this in a lot of areas of life. It's just one of those places where self-awareness is really, really hard and not a whole lot of fun, to be completely honest. So I'm not always a fan, even though I know it's important.

The other side of the Dunning Kruger effect and this again this kind of family, this group of of effects in the same category, is that often people with higher expertise underestimate their abilities relative to other people. So maybe you're have been training for a while, maybe you've been competing in your sport for a while.

you lose sight of the difference between your level of expertise and the people who are not as far along. And we're we have a really hard time being objective. So again, it comes down to the fact that people, humans, are just really poor at self assessment and even worse at ranking our skills relative to other people. And I think that's kind of one of the the key things that I took away from reading about the Dunning Krueger effect is it very much has to do with how we rank other people.

And we'll dig into that a little bit more. So the explanation for this is effect, this phenomenon, according to Kruger and Dunning, who were two psychologists who reported um this effect. They studied it and then published an article in nineteen ninety nine called Unskilled and Unaware of It, which I love as a title. In fact, the full title is Unskilled and Unaware of It How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessment.

And certainly as an instructor, I can see that from the outside on a regular basis. It it's something that I'm I'm always kind of aware of when I'm talking to other people. I'll quote from the article. People who lack the knowledge or wisdom to perform well are often unaware of this fact.

We attribute this lack of awareness as a deficit in metacognitive skill. That is, the same incompetence that leads to them making the wrong choices also deprives them of the savvy necessary to recognize competence, be it their own or anyone else's.

Now, this is a problem, and this is very interesting because, of course, as a trainer, as a training nerd, someone who's obsessed with learning and how behavior works. I'm always really interested in how skills are acquired and then also how to assess them in myself and in others. So I want to be the best trainer that I can be. So that's something that I'm always, you know, trying to push for growth. Um hopefully the fact that I currently feel like I have no idea what I'm doing.

Shows that I'm on the right track or just that I have a lot of uh psychological baggage. But y we don't need to go too far into that. This is uh this is a podcast, not a therapy session. So um But I do think that it's a relevant problem for us to think about and be aware of. So this is a model that we can get some practical use out of. Because this applies for both dog trainers, but then also I recognize that it applies to our prospective students or clients.

So folks who are new to training, particularly newer to training than you are, don't realize how much there is to it and might get the mistaken idea that there's really not that much depth. Like there's not that much to know. And I think that that can lead to miscommunications between an instructor and a student. It can lead to mismatches when you're when a client is shopping for a trainer.

Um and also the fact that potential clients don't know like maybe they know a little bit about dog training. Especially if they only know a little bit about dog training, or if they know very little or nothing at all. They aren't equipped with the skills that they need to sort out.

who is good at training and who really isn't. Like if they could tell the difference between great training and mediocre training, then they wouldn't be necessarily in the same position to try and to try and hire somebody, right? Uh f for coaching, for help. And so I that's part of why I think getting clients as a dog training business is gonna often come down to having good marketing. Now that makes my stomach clench up a little bit just saying it, but I think it's um

I think is something we need to keep in mind if we want to if we want to change the world, if we want to help people. So the findings that Kruger and Dunning reported are often interpreted to suggest that the effect is directly proportional. The less competent people are, the more competent they think they are.

So we might read that as the people who are the worst at dog training are gonna tend to think that they're God's gift to dog training. And the people who are actually pretty skilled trainers may display excessive modesty. And we really I think we want that to be true. I think that that's a really appealing filter to view the world through. We want that to be true. And I think the reason we find this sort of explanation attractive is because it appeals to

Our desire for the world to be fair, right? That implicit just world theory. Um, it's part of a cognitive bias. We want to believe that. Trainers who obnoxiously proclaim their excellence at training and have really slick marketing must really not be so very good at dog trading at all. And they've they've gotta be overcompensating for their deficiencies.

It's much less pleasant to imagine that people who go around, in our opinion, shoving their alleged superiority in our faces might actually be better trainers than we are, or at least competent trainers at all. It's much cleaner and more comfortable to believe that the people that we perceive as arrogant um are actually really crappy. At least I wish it were that way some of the time. In on my smaller minded days. Unfortunately, Kruger and Dunning never actually provide any support.

for that type of filter. In fact, their studies didn't show that incompetent people are more confident or arrogant, if we would use that word, than competent people. It's just it's not connected at all. What it did show is that this cognitive bias is not that incompetent people think that they're better than common people. So

Incompetent trainers don't think that they're better than competent trainers. It's that the incompetent people think that they're much better than they actually are. So compared to themselves, they typically still don't think they're quite as good as the people who are like actually good at it, right? Who have are objectively more skilled trainers. They just think that there's not that much difference between where they are now and where those skilled trainers are. They don't

recognize how big that gap actually is. And of course confirmation bias plays into that as well. So telling people That you are a good trainer doesn't actually mean that you're a crappy trainer. Having confidence in yourself doesn't mean that you suck. Um Th you're uh you're gonna take from this what you need to, I hope. I hope this meets you where you're at'cause I'm probably hearing something different now, um, when I'm thinking about this than I might have five or ten years ago. So yeah, so

Simply saying publicly that you're a pretty good trainer doesn't take away from your training skill, and vice versa. It doesn't mean that if you're viewing another trainer another trainer's claims about themselves, that you have to particularly like their marketing strategy. You don't even have to like them, right? It's just that those things are not connected. And I think that it is really important that we separate our assumptions of skill from our resentment over

what we might see in their marketing and and just kinda be be a little bit objective there. Odds are that those Facebook ads aren't really aimed at you anyways. But what it does mean, or one thing that I do take away from that, is that if we want to help dogs and their owners and keep a business alive and make money and change the world.

We have to learn to communicate on their level and market to them along those lines and not just depend on letting the results speak for themselves, which was my marketing strategy for a very long time because it won't be as effective because people who Don't who don't have your level of expertise are not going to be able to appreciate what that looks like. They're not gonna be able to tell the difference between your results

and more mediocre results because they don't have the skills. The lack of skills that prevents them from getting those good results also mean that they're gonna have a hard time interpreting what they see and understanding that value. So I think from a marketing perspective

And changing the world's always gonna come down to marketing. I don't wanna get political here, but there's something to it there and I am trust me, I'm fighting this tooth and nail as well, um, along with you. This is this is something that I'm This is part of my self talk, honestly. So anyway, so that's something that I'm trying to keep in mind as I'm reaching out to help other teams, because the whole point of me being a teacher and instructor is to find folks who

whose level of expertise is not uh not up to my level and help bring them in this direction. So I'm always going to be faced with that gap.

And also I think it's important to recognize that Everyone on the planet. is exposed to this effect. We are all subject to this phenomenon and to these types of behavior patterns. It's not that, oh, he's so stupid, he fell victim to the Dunning Kruger effect. No, no, no. No. We are all part of the Dunning Kruger. The Dunning Kruger effect is part of us. It's it explains

sections of our behavior in a lot of areas because you can't possibly know everything in the world. You cannot be an expert in every area. You can't even really be an expert in every like sub area of your of your field. I am not an expert on every area of Of never mind animal training, dog training, competitive sports, clicker like clicker training, positive enforcement training. I know a lot of things in my narrow slice, and I know a little bit.

enough to be dangerous, um, about a a fairly wide swatch, but I don't know everything about everything. So I am automatically going to overestimate my knowledge and understanding in any subject, that's not my specific area of expertise. If I've been exposed to it, I'm gonna take what I have what I what I have learned about that area and I'm gonna plug it into kind of my mental model of how things work and that's gonna

automatically introduce some flaws in judgment and gonna trick me into thinking I know a little bit more than I do. One of the problems is the first rule of Dudding Kruger Club is you don't know you're in Dunning Kruger Club. Because if you had that knowledge, you would be more expert, right? So, okay, so this plays out in dog training a couple of different ways as I see it. So, one, there's the obvious one. Um, new trainers, folks who are are fairly new to dog training.

just don't realize how much more there is out there. I see this on social media all the time and it Well I used to feel superior, but now I it just kind of I don't know, it it I feel it in my heart a little bit now. I'll see folks post especially if they're they're posting frustration with a problem. They're like, Oh, I tried training with food and it didn't work and I realize, oh my gosh, training with food. I mean

I just came back from a whole conference about training with food. Like there's so much to training with food other than just having food. And I think if you're listening to this podcast, you know that there's there's so much in the application, there's so much nuance, there's so oh, the mechanics, the timing, the criteria. motivating operations. Oh my gosh, there's just so much there.

But people who have been training, you know, they're on their first dog or or even they've been training a little bit a little bit longer, but it's again that maybe it's not their area of expertise, they just they don't appreciate that depth because they don't know. And so they're a lot more likely to miss other solutions or options. And that also means that you're much less likely to notice your own mistake.

You're not gonna see it. And I think this is probably what feeds some of these slightly snarky comments on some of the videos that get shared on Facebook. you're a fairly novice trainer, you think you're pretty hot stuff'cause you just fit into C G C maybe this is your second dog you got a C G C on. You're a pretty good dog trainer. And so you post a video of your work and people who are maybe further along than you see it and take advantage of your proud moment.

Yes, I have had this happen to me before. Um I've posted a video that I was posting to share something that I was proud of, a breakthrough that my dog and I had made. and instead received unsolicited advice. So um it doesn't feel good. Um now this is not to excuse again that personal growth aspect of it, but I think it applies to all of us there. So I would have us look at this with a little bit of empathy from both sides. If you feel like you're stuck.

Or if you're looking for a solution for a problem, know that there's automatically gonna be more depth to this area than you're aware of and someone may be able to offer you um some insights that you wouldn't necessarily have. But also if you see somebody sharing and you know that they are more of a novice than you are, have a little bit of empathy and remember the trainer that you were five years ago.

And maybe be more supportive and less critical and that could be helpful. You know, we can help each other in this way. The other side of this is that very experienced trainers often forget what it's like to not be so experienced.

I think one, you know, if you've been doing this, you've been really putting your heart and soul into being the best dog trainer you can, learning about behavior, taking all the classes. You've done KPA, you've done Susan Friedman's LLA class, you've you've done all those things and you're so deep in it. You don't realize, like you forget how much effort you went you put in to get to where you are now.

and you don't recognize how big the gap is between you and someone who's a little bit newer, like what that what that looked like, you don't realize how special your skill and experience makes you. And then because a lot of us become instructors, even if it only on a volunteer basis, we We assume that things that are easy for us now are easy and obvious for everyone. And that's uh it's untrue, right? There's there's a lot of stuff that I

realize,'cause this is something that I work hard to keep in mind, that I recognize is seems obvious to me now. I take it for granted. But I did not know it ten years ago. And I will often Leave that out the first round of writing no instructions for an exercise. I will assume that something is obvious and

Fortunately, I have a good relationship with my students and they give me some feedback and let me know that no, that's not obvious at all. Like, okay. And then part of my job as an instructor is I need to break that down. So I have to always be open to feedback from my learners so that I'm can adjust the instructions. First pass is never gonna be is never gonna be perfect. And then you know keep it um keep it evolving, iterate. Performance feedback revision, right?

And so always keeping in mind, and I think especially when we're working with pet owners, don't make assumptions, come from a place of empathy, and really try to be objective about how much they need to learn to get to where you need them to be.

The a third thing that I thought of that I see in the that I think this effect plays into, the Stunning Kruger effect, is that we tend to get into arguments between Let's say methodologies, right? Philosophies. So I I see arguments between maybe a trainer who um self-identifies as say force-free and a trainer who self-identifies as balanced. And they'll be arguing with each other. Maybe indirectly, often indirectly, maybe with you know

boring YouTube videos or or vicious passive aggressive or or aggressive aggressive Instagram stories. Depending on your how you choose to communicate on the on the internet. And they're they may be arguing, oh, food trainers, they don't know what they're doing, they don't understand. Electric collars are totally the way to go. Uh food training is so dangerous for dogs. And then on the flip side.

We may see the force feed trainer arguing, Oh, electric collars ruin dogs. There's only one outcome here. Uh it makes dogs terrified. There's so much more to training with positive reinforcement that you just don't understand. And if you understood it, you wouldn't choose to use these tools. And both sides may have a point and I know. It's not my favorite thing to say, but I I think we need to recognize it. Um if a training with a particular

set of techniques or tools. It's not your area of expertise. You are not gonna be as competent. You're not gonna understand the depth and the nuance of what goes on there. And that's gonna make it really hard to have a conversation if you're coming at it with the attitude that you know everything there is to know, and vice versa, right? So I think it's something that

Again, if we want to change the world, we wanna keep in mind, keep an open mind about it when we're entering these conversations. Know that they don't appreciate the depth. Of your experience, of your expertise, of how much there is to it, how much nerdy and awesome detail, the layers, you guys. It's just it's their onions don't have enough layers because they're like atomically tiny layers. It's beautiful. Uh which is why I get so excited about it.

you know, the it plays out even if we're talking about the other, you know, the other side of the quadrants or however you wanna describe it. So we need to be aware of that weakness so that we can have conversations and we can learn more about how the world works.

So what are some of the things that we can do to avoid getting trapped by the Dunning-Kruger effect? Well, I think one of the most important things is talk to other people. Ask other people for advice. I'm not saying you need to go out and open yourself up to unsolicited advice. I also find unsolicited advice unhelpful. I've never met someone who really enjoys it. But I think if we want to grow, we need to go seeking feedback and particularly constructive feedback.

There's a saying, I forget where I read it, the road to self awareness runs through other people. And we need to be able to, you know, view ourselves on screen to really see what's going on. And I videoing your own training I think is good and reflecting on your own training is good, but another set of eyes is gonna help me see even more. 'Cause they're not making the same assumptions that I do. So that's definitely those are relationships you can cultivate, you can r look for

with your friends, um, certainly online. And of course, you know, instruction. Working with coaches and instructors is a good way to get some feedback. If you are faced with a training problem, whether it's with your own dogs or maybe you're taking a case on as as a trainer, as a professional trainer. If it's something important, check in with someone else before you act. Just check on your training plans. This seems like a reasonable way to approach this. Am I missing something? If it's a new

uh a new behavior, a new exercise, a new type of case. Maybe this is your first dog dog reactivity case. Maybe this is your first separation anxiety case. Um if it's if it's a new a new situation to you, check in with somebody else. Um especially I think Where where we are most likely to get run in trouble here is actually not the very first time we work with dog dog reactivity, because the first time we work with a new situation we're

we're being very kind of mindful, like we're very aware that we're new and so we're we're a lot more thoughtful about it. It's it's the third or fourth similar case where We're more likely to succumb to overconfidence. So I would encourage you definitely, you know, definitely get help for that first case, but I would I would make it a point to circle back and get some feedback from someone else, another trainer, someone

you know, someone in your professional group on like your third and fourth. Same thing if you're training your own dogs, you know, check in with somebody else. If you've got established habit of attending classes or working with other trainers, you're probably fine. You're probably all set.

But if you're like me and you're are you know very much isolated, both professionally and geographically, you may be training entirely by yourself. And so having those deliberate points that you you check in with somebody and get some feedback can make all the difference.

And of course how much you get out of that comes to my next bullet point, which is to keep a beginner's mind. Now this is tough for me because how well how do I operationalize a beginner's mind? And this kind of comes down to A little bit of a mindset issue, and I always get a little bit squeamish talking about mindset. Again, super hard to operationalize and put into my behavioral terms.

But I think again it's it's about making assumptions. So one of the ways that I try to do this is when I am writing out instructions or I'm making a training plan for my own dogs or for myself. One of the first things that I'm gonna do is try to read it as if a student were to read it. And I can put myself, put my student hat on and read that. And then also Just check at each point. Is there another way? Just check.

Check like for a lateral option here. Is this the is this the only food delivery that's gonna work here? What's another option? And then weigh the two. Um and just having that little bit doesn't take but a second, that little bit of what else could I do here? I may still go back to my original plan, but um just comparing it with other options helps me stay a little bit I guess k just keeps a little bit fresher. I think also putting yourself

in a position where you are an actual beginner is also really beneficial. So while obedience is my primary sport. It's the one that I have the most experience and expertise and success in I also like to put myself out there and learn other things. I mean, I'm currently playing around a lot with nosework and tracking with my older dogs. I'll go and attend agility and I'll I'll work through um agility training and compete there. And every time I get into this new situation

as a student I gain a lot of empathy and compassion for my own students because even if I'm working with a friend who trains in agility and teaches agility and knows me really well and she'll give me an instruction for something to do and she'll leave out some peace that she's assuming that I already know.

then I don't know that thing and so I'll feel totally lost. And while feeling lost is not super reinforcing in and of itself, it makes me think about how lost one of my own students might be under similar circumstances. So that helps me again, just gives me some motivation

gives me some perspective. Uh when I am thinking about what I'm doing. It also of course, you know, gives me an excuse for a little adult ADD and I can jump from uh from from dog training activity to activity. And it's all in the name of professional development. So it's totally legit.

I think it's also really helpful and important to travel outside your bubble from time to time. Now you don't have to go all the way outside your bubble. You don't have to go crazy here. But I think every time we stretch ourselves a little bit, going to a conference, watching a llama training video, we have the opportunity to um to learn something

from that and and to keep our our views and our perspective a little bit more flexible. I I I love conferences for this. I'm I'm of course recording this freshly home from Clicker Expo in Seattle and so I've got all of the that information and the the perspectives I got to absorb from other trainers um are really fresh in my mind and that that new knowledge, that new experience has made me and gives me that kind of stretchy feeling and and very aware of how much more there is to the

the th our field, the things that I'm passionate about, how much more there is to learn, which I find really exciting because I like learning. So learning is reinforcing for me. And so conferences are reinforcing for me, even if they're a little tiring for me as as an introvert. And then one of the ways that I found it really helpful to kind of just check myself. Um, I don't know, maybe helpful is too strong of a word.

Effective. Effective,'cause I can't say that I enjoy it. Um have you ever looked back at some of your old training videos and wondered what the heck you were thinking? And maybe even been a little bit embarrassed? Because this is totally my experience. In fact, I do this periodically. I'll go through my YouTube channel and I'll look at some of the videos that I posted back in oh my gosh, a really long time ago, 2009 I guess.

And at the time again I was posting them because I thought that they were okay training or I just thought that my dog was cute. It's hard to know where I was in that mind space way back then. But I I'm often a little bit embarrassed and I want to I want to take those videos down. And I leave them up because I

I just right now I feel like there's something in their authenticity. This is where I was ten years ago. I am so much better now and I hope that when people run across them on YouTube, they compare the dates and recognize that no no, that's the trainer she was ten years ago. And now she's a a much better trainer, hopefully. At least I think that I am. And I even recently had the experience of when I was preparing some of my materials for Clicker Expo, um to put my presentations together.

there was a topic that I thought, Oh, I've written about this before and so I went back looking through some of my handouts that I had put together for classes five or ten years ago, with the idea that I would be able to take some of that material and, you know, reform it um to help fill out this presentation a little bit. And of course I'm reading through this this handout and oh my gosh again the embarrassment. I gave this to people. I wrote this.

I thought it was good enough to be seen in public. I thought it was good enough for people to pay for. And now I am mortified and would like to drive to their houses and take their handouts back and give them something better in its place. But I'm I'm resisting that because that would be really creepy. It's been quite a while. And I'm sure most of those students have moved on and aren't hanging on to that the way that I might.

Check out your past work and see how it compares, how your future self would evaluate it. And if you feel a little bit embarrassed and like you could do better and like you can do better, then you're probably on the right track and you're actually making some progress.

Now having said all of that and knowing that some of you are coming to this episode maybe from more of a position of insecurity like I tend to, I don't want you to let the fear of being overconfident just be another obstacle because there is a place for being confident and there's a place for being more cautious and mindful. I want you to use these tools.

to avoid overconfidence before you get your dog out to train or before you meet with the client. Check in with your village, right? Check in with with fellow trainers, your friends and colleagues, before you get your dog out, review your training plan with them. Ask them the questions then. Once you get your dog out of his crate and you're actually engaged in the training session,

Now is the time for you to turn on that confidence. Be overconfident. Train like you are 100% positive that you know what you're doing and don't second guess yourself. Because if you worry, oh gosh, is this where I think I know what I'm doing, but I don't really.

You're gonna be hesitant and that means your timing is gonna be off and it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you come into the training session thinking you're a failure at dog training, you will in fact fail at that dog training session. Now that doesn't mean that you're a failure as a trainer. or bad person. I have crappy training sessions all the time. I had one this morning. We don't need to talk about that again. This is a podcast episode, not a therapy session. Uh but

When when you're trading for two minutes at a time, run your trading plan like you are like you're confident. Be be confident. Embody the competent uh confidence and competence. I like both those words there. And then when you put your dog away get back to that think plan do review cycle and check in with those outside sources for um for feedback, for validation, for constructive criticism. Hopefully you have good sources who

can be more constructive than critical, but again we need to know what it is that we need to fix, and hopefully that can be d delivered in as clickerly a manner as possible. But it is super important to keep the think plan due in review as discrete steps, so you aren't in the middle of training your dog and wondering if this is the right thing to be doing. Um if you start feeling that

my best recommendation is pop your dog on station or pop him back in his crate and then do your evaluation or check the video and see what happened there. Uh if you're thinking while you're training, you're gonna get into trouble and you're just not gonna do as good of a job. So I think that's where being confident is something you need to be able to turn on and off to some extent. Uh there's a lot of labels in that I know. But I I just I felt like it was important because I I see This sort of

weakness in self assessment playing out in so many different ways with the trainers in my life. And I I and I know that I'm guilty of it as well. Um I see people exhibiting a kind of false modesty or just being worried about saying that they think that they're pretty good and and doing themselves a total disservice. And again I I don't think that that helps dogs. But then of course being completely unaware of

how much there is that we can do to help a dog be comfortable with nail trimming. Like just nail trimming, like you guys. There's so much that we can do and we don't have to suffer. Um, the same thing, you know, with with crating or with walking on leash. There's just there's so much that we can do.

And there's so much we don't even know yet. And so I I don't know. Okay, so I just I want us to make sure that we're appreciating both sides of this and just really being objective as possible and not just making ourselves or more neurotic. Well, let's just be objective about our neuroses, maybe. Okay, so one last note for you guys. We have merch. So we're currently have a campaign running and this is

I don't know why I said we, it's the royal we. I have a campaign running on Bonfire where you can get t-shirts or sweatshirts. And you guys, these shirts are soft. I checked on that um with the last order and all the feedback from folks who ordered uh t-shirts last year.

or that the shirts are soft. And not only are they soft, but you can get in a V-neck. Or regular crew neck if that's more your style, if you like being partially strangulated. I don't know. There are currently two designs to choose from. We have last year's, again Royal Wii, but no Wii. Me, me and you together is a Wii. That That's worth a plural.

So we have two designs to choose from. Last year's hashtag Ball Feeling shirts. If you didn't get one last year, or maybe you did get one and you love it so much that you've been wearing it every single day and so you feel like you need another one, one to wash and one to wear. That's a thing, right? So there's that one and there's also a new design, brand new.

Designed by moi, featuring one of our favorite topics, training in loops. So this design was, well, it's taken directly from a couple of my slides that I use in my presentations, but inspired by the model of the behavior cycle from Dr. Ogden Lensley. end my obsession with loopy training, which I've absorbed from the brilliant Alexander Curland. And you can find those both of those designs on a lots of different kinds of

of shirt products of clothing. Head over to bonfire dot com slash store slash drinking from the toilet with hyphens between the words in the title. Which now that I'm saying it out loud is kind of a lame URL. So obviously I'm gonna include a link to that in the show notes to make it a little bit easier. And now that I'm talking I could probably also set up a shortcut link on my own website, but I just now thought of doing that, so it's gonna have to come later.

But for now, bonfire dot com slash store slash drinking from the toilet. Don't forget the hyphens. And don't delay, because of the way these campaigns work, it's only gonna be open for two weeks so that we can get all of the shirts ordered and printed and shipped in a batch.

Um, it saves money, it makes it possible for us to do these things. So if you do get a shirt, I really hope that you will take a picture of yourself training in it and post it on social media and tag me in it so that I can see. That's really Really reinforcing for me. I love it when you guys do that. And I cannot wait to see how good you make these shirts look. Until next time.

Thanks for listening. If you like this episode, well you've good taste. And I hope you'll hit the subscribe button on your podcast app to make sure you don't miss the next episode. It might be even better than this one. If you are already subscribed, well thank you. I really appreciate it. And there are still some ways that you could reinforce me if you were so inclined. You could always leave me a five-star review on iTunes or Stitcher or wherever you happen to be listening to this podcast.

And you can also check out and support the sponsors because they help make the podcast possible. You can find links and information about them and the other things that we've talked about in this episode by going to the show notes, which can be found at www.wonderpups training.com/slash podcast. And while you're there, you could also pick up a free PDF training template.

to help you plan your training sessions. There's also some other articles and previous podcasts and that sort of thing, which you can always find. So until next time, happy training.