What’s different?
and
What to look for in my videos,
Why this podcast?
This podcast is brought to you by our viewer Zaki, who wrote a comment, sent a question to me, and then gave valuable feedback: “The newbies need to know what they should be looking for. Small steps. I need to keep telling myself – slow down. Look for reactions. Don’t just do. Matt’s words keep playing in my ears “you can get away doing this with a cupcake dog…” “ Zaki refers to Matt Welch, an outstanding dogman who has helped MANY dogs and owners and has also studied SATS.
(Matt doesn’t work much with cupcake dogs, and neither do I. I have often worked with very large, dangerous animals – like elephants, bears, rhinos… With SATS, I can train anything, and look! (I am holding up my hands, showing I have all digits, after decades of working with animals that can kill us.)
Receipts?
In training, if I state something, I almost always have the video to prove it. Most of my training is done at liberty, often in front of audiences. At seminars, I don’t select a demo dog. I train every dog that presents. I don’t care if they like food or tugs, or they don’t like those things. I work with animals I have never met, of almost any species, and I teach them whatever they need to know about to live their best lives in harmony with their humans.
But in today’s age, many of us are challenged to focus. Heck. We are challenged to READ the words before us. I have sent out many announcements to the effect of:
“You can join a live training event, bring your animal, and participate. Click here for details and more information.”
I would get an onslaught of emails: “I am interested! What do I need to do next???”
“Click the link!?”
To see the ‘receipts’, you must focus long enough to evaluate them.
Do the work. You must observe, you must measure, you must think and you must analyze.
As the originators of NLP described, most experts don’t do as they say they do. If I were willing to explain everything to you, it might all be incorrect! Without even intending to mislead, trainers are often not aware of what they actually do.
Because I know that many trainers don’t prove their own work or claims, I was frustrated by viewers who complained that my videos weren’t good – they did not explain anything. Really? I show you every single step of the training, (in most cases). You see everything the animal sees, hear everything the animal hears. You see the animal’s success. And you want a lecture??? I mean I can tell you anything, but you will only know the truth if you analyze the training before your eyes. If you like thinking you are a superior being, you really need to keep up with the animal, whose native language is not English, or even spoken.
As SATS trainers study SATS, they learn what to expect – through study and experience. Over time, they often say “I didn’t like your videos, but now they are better.”
Spoiler alert: I did not remake the videos. They did not improve. The trainer became more skilled and knowledgeable. The trainer learned to SEE what the videos showed.
I cannot show beautiful, edited videos that are also real time, full session videos. Those videos are edited and staged. I give you real-time video.
In the videos, I am not talking to you, the audience. I am working with the animal before me. If I make him wait while I explain something to you, I frustrate him, and dull his enthusiasm, and get in the way of his learning process. When I am with the animal, the conversation is with him, not you.
In training presentations/demos/shows, the animals and I agree to make you, the audience, the focus of the event, and we work together to show you things, sometimes even real time training, but the animal always takes precedence, during new training..
If you have tuned into the podcasts on the foundation of SATS, you will recall that integrity of the essential practice of SATS. Integrity means we keep faith with the animals as well as we possibly can. Integrity is explored in the beginning podcasts. In addition to the YouTube videos, we have an entire collection of podcasts at kcetu.podbean.com, where you can find the basic structure and philosophy of SATS.
Observing my training – really any training.
Don’t get distracted. What does the trainer promise? Is it delivered?
I recently watched a bunch of videos claiming they would show you how to fix the behavior of your reactive dog “in fifteen minutes” or even “fifteen seconds”! They got my attention. This is one of my specialties and sometimes I can do this very quickly, but I ask people to expect an average of 15 hours. Where do I get that number? From many, many case studies and many, many seminars where we empowered the animals to manage their own behavior, and fix their behavior, and we often have video, and we only had up to 15 hours.
What about these videos claiming to heal reactivity in fifteen minutes? Not a single one delivered. I saw many lectures on what you should do and none – zero- demonstrating how to do it or proving the results. Some of these videos were from big name trainers. I really expected better. For a bit more detail, see the podcast “Trainers need to produce receipts.” https://youtu.be/4eKzmBYY0p8 Many times there was not even a dog or any training in the video. Click bait.
You, the viewer, need to remark that and hold the trainer to a higher standard.
Does the animal make objective progress? Can you SEE the training steps and the progress?
This requires work from you. You can watch a video once through to get the gist of what happens, but to KNOW what happens, you must watch multiple times, ideally with a paper and pencil in hand, and tally the critical facts. Each viewing allows you to discern a single aspect of the training session. (Believe, me, I have tried tracking multiple variables in a single viewing. It about drove me nuts. At least at the beginning, one variable per viewing).
For example, I just published a video of Rocky learning some Bridge and Target heeling skills. https://youtu.be/i1sUttfSz7s It is real-time video starting with the first presentation of the concept “Back!” (in my notes, the ! signifies a cue).
First, determine the gist of what is going on. Do you like the results you see? Do you see solutions to problems you have encountered? Do you like the relationship?
Next, dig on.
Here are things training explorers need to ask:
- What is/are the points of the session?
- Was Rocky successful?
- How many steps or trials do we see?
- How big are the steps?
- Is there a predictable progression?
- What percentage of the trials were successful?
- How was food used?
- What percentage of trials were fed?
- How many mistakes were made?
- What corrections were made?
- Was the Terminal Bridge used? Correctly?
- Was the Intermediate Bridge used? Where and how?
- Is the animal listening? Is he thinking?
- Is he frustrated? Or, is he enthusiastic to work?
- Does he ask to work?
There is more to be seen in the simplest videos, but this is a start. You will need to watch the video from start to finish, 15 times to answer those simple questions. (60 minutes, in this case). Many people watch a video and get an impression, which I can often then demonstrate was erroneous. To really watch training videos, you must track every moment, tally every moment, categorize every moment, and THEN make your analyses – for it to have any validity.
Identify the training steps.
How many steps do I show in the heeling skills video?
How many successes does Rocky have?
Identify the teaching cues and information.
What do I say to Rocky?
How do I ‘say’ it?
Can you see him thinking and processing?
Does it look like he understands?
What do I show him? (Look for targets, which can be delivered by target pole, target station, finger targets, or even visual targets).
Look for polishing understanding and details of performance in early videos.
Priority
I want the animal to understand precisely what the behavior requires, and I want him to demonstrate mastery of the information, BEFORE he rehearses it, speeds it up, increases duration, etc. In other words, I don’t want him to rehearse mistakes! So precision first, speed second.
Okay, this is a start. If you do these things you will get a wealth of information from these videos. I know this for a fact because I have been studying them this way with my colleague, Sylwia Matulewska, and we are studying them exactly this way. Every viewing reveals a new level of important events. We are having a blast doing this together. It would be fun to do a webinar on this. Hmmm…
Thanks for sharing time with me. Wishing you great success in your training and in your relationships with your colleagues.
The latest podcasts: these two go together:
What’s different, what to look for in my videos https://youtu.be/fzQh5E4zJck
Kayce Cover, Bridge and Target skills for heeling https://youtu.be/i1sUttfSz7s