ep198

[00:00:00] Chrissy Neumyer Smith: Episode 198 This week we're talking about repetition. Why is repetition important to learning? Why is that something that we would want to use in dog grooming, and how can that help us in dog grooming?

[00:00:12] Find out this week. This is the Creating Great Grooming Dog Show. I'm Chrissy Neumyer Smith. I'm a master groomer behavior specialist. I'm a certified professional dog trainer, a certified behavior consultant for canines, a certified professional groomer, a fear free, certified professional. I'm an instructor at the whole Pet Grooming Academy and I am also the owner of Happy Critters in Nashua, New Hampshire.

[00:00:32] And this my friends and colleagues, is the show where we talk about teaching dogs to be good for grooming and other types of care. Let's get into repetition every once in a while. I think that we forget that we learn by repetition and our dogs do too. And there are so many little moving parts in the dog grooming process.

[00:00:53] There are a lot of things that we do and if we spend some time thinking about how we can break it up into smaller bites, little pieces that an animal can learn from, so what kind of things might we wanna add? Repetition to. So let's say we just want to have a dog be comfortable with us touching their foot.

[00:01:14] Now we could go ahead and just do the nails and hope that they learned that that repetition of doing their nails didn't hurt. I think that's what most of us were taught to do. I was taught to do it that way. , he'll figure out it didn't hurt. But what if we can break that down even further.

[00:01:31] What if it's, can I touch your leg? Can I touch your paw? Can I touch this toe? And doing repetitions of, can I touch , your leg? Can I touch your paw? Can I touch this toe? Can I touch this toe with a nail clipper? Can I trim the nail? Can I touch this toe with a nail clipper? Can I trim that nail and breaking it down into smaller little, little, little pieces.

[00:01:51] Repetition is also about learning the small pieces, so I'm gonna use a whole bunch of human examples 'cause I think they will help us. If I handed you, let's say you don't know how to knit or crochet, and I hand you a ball of yarn. A couple of sticks or maybe just one stick and I show you some stuff now, you might remember how to do a little bit of it in six weeks or eight weeks.

[00:02:19] Probably not. If I hand you a ball of yarn and say, Hey, here you go. Let me show you a bunch of stuff over our grooming appointment. You know, like, let's, let's just work on some stuff. , take that away and in six to eight weeks hand it back to you. You're probably not gonna remember how to do it.

[00:02:37] What you might remember is the feeling you had about doing it. And what I mean by that is you might remember, Ooh, I was really excited. She was gonna show me how to knit. Or you might be like, oh my God, that was so frustrating. Not everyone wants to learn how to knit. Okay? So just be told, I like to knit. I like to crochet.

[00:02:57] I like lots and lots and lots of kind of hobbies and crafts, but if you want to learn how to do something like that, you need to do it often. You need lots of repetition, right? Repetition, repetition. Repeat it, repeat it, repeat it. So as an example, going back to our knitting or crochet, if I wanted to actually teach you how to do that, we would spend our time doing smaller amounts.

[00:03:27] We wouldn't spend two hours making a blanket and see you in six weeks or a scarf. Let's say a scarf. Scarf is usually a really good first project. You're just making this big rectangle. You know, maybe it's a pretty yarn, but it doesn't need to be anything too interesting. But you're probably not gonna learn much doing it that way.

[00:03:48] Now, a good instructor, right, even with people, is gonna say, okay, let me show you how to cast on, , let's pull it apart and lemme show you again. Lemme show you again. Now let's go ahead and work on some knitting. So a knit and a pearl. Oh God, this is, this is not a grooming show anymore, is it? But if I show you how to knit and how to pearl.

[00:04:10] Maybe I, I just work on those two things and then I show you how to cast on again, and then we try it again. It's the repetition, not just doing something start to finish and hoping for the best repetition. Okay. And that would help you remember for the next time, but the next time has to be pretty close to the first time.

[00:04:33] So for instance, if I were teaching somebody how to knit or crochet, I might want to meet with them every week or every two weeks, right? There's a reason why a lot of classes are once a week. If I wanted to teach somebody something specific, I want to help them get enough repetition and we would still cover the basics.

[00:04:58] Each time until those basics were things that they absolutely knew. So I'm gonna give you a different example. I know we're, we're not really getting into grooming yet, are we? Here's another example. Um, when I was in the eighth grade, before I went to an agricultural high school, I was going to my regular junior high eighth grade, and we were doing foreign language and all of us bombed this test and our instructor, instead of backtracking and helping us with it.

[00:05:28] She was not a good instructor. She just decided to move on. So whatever it was in German that you couldn't quite get, you're just outta luck. So amazingly, the rest of the class, including myself, we just didn't do all that well in that class because we didn't understand it the first time We bombed the test and she's like, too bad we're moving on.

[00:05:52] Okay. That's part of repetition. A good instructor would say, let's backtrack and see what you missed. What core concept, what basic things did you miss? That's really important for learning. Another human example because I like my human examples and they help us. I remember trying to learn standard I already knew how to drive and I had driven tractors, which you would think is fairly similar 'cause it's a standard but not the same as my dad's little pickup truck.

[00:06:21] So I'm trying to learn standard on my dad's pickup truck and my dad is super frustrated with me, so. The next time I tried to learn Standard, I was with somebody else, a friend who was like, let's go to a parking lot where no one is around. And we just worked on getting into and out of first Gear. Just first gear, let it coast.

[00:06:44] We have no place to go. There are no hill starts. We're taking it to its most basic pieces. Okay. And repeating it so many times that you are comfortable with it before we move on. And then backtracking. Each time we try something new, we're still gonna backtrack to those basics. Repetition is super important.

[00:07:07] Repetition is why I say calm, comfortable, and cooperative. Just about every episode because it's important for us to understand that, we need to keep some core things in mind. So what other things do we repeat often with our dogs? So maybe it's a dog who is particularly worried about someone reaching for them.

[00:07:31] We would want to set them up in a way that made them feel safe and made them feel comfortable while also setting them up for how many repetitions can we have of just reaching for you and having you be comfortable with it, reaching for you, and maybe throwing a ball, reaching for you and doing something else, reaching for you so that you get lots of experience with someone just reaching for them.

[00:07:54] Without necessarily grabbing them, holding them, reaching around them, holding them securely against you and lifting them up, and then proceeding to do all the other things. Okay. Sometimes we just try to go, oh, well, I reached for 'em and it wasn't that bad, so we're gonna keep going. And I wanna caution you against that repetition.

[00:08:15] In a point where they can learn, where they're not overwhelmed, where they're not insecure, where we can go in and say, I just want to reach for you, help you feel comfortable with that part, before we do the rest. Before we do the rest. What if I can get you actually comfortable with that part before we do the rest?

[00:08:36] Now, I know that right now a whole bunch of groomers are saying, how do I get the job done if I do that? Oh, it's such a good question. So you are sitting there thinking, yeah, but I've got a job to do. And this is where we sometimes as groomers need to help our owners understand your dog is not well prepared for our services.

[00:09:01] Let's see what we can do to help your dog be better prepared for our services. So if I know a dog is particularly nervous about something. I have a solution set. If I'm like, Hey, I wanna help this dog feel comfortable with me handling them and moving them around, or be comfortable around loud noises, then let's set it up so that we can do that work, so that we can get those repetitions in.

[00:09:30] Now as a groomer, that could be that you're sending an owner home with some homework. That could be that you're sending them to a trainer, like, listen, I would like for you to work with this trainer. This, this dog is not comfortable with strangers. You know, there are a lot of behavior problems out there that we may say, you need to work on this.

[00:09:50] Or we may say, we need to set up some appointments where we're not gonna get much grooming done. Now if you're a groomer out there saying, but I need to make money. I know you do, I do too. Charge for it. No one's asking you to work behavior cases for free. Take a deep breath and think about that, right?

[00:10:12] Nobody is expecting you to work behavior cases for free. What we're hoping for is that if we are setting things up so that we can get lots of repetitions in and we're looking for improvement, and we're tracking improvement and we're seeing improvement, then eventually we don't need to do all of these repetitions.

[00:10:34] I don't have to think about it. If I drive a standard, unless I've been driving an automatic for a long time, like right now I own an automatic. If I switch to a standard, I'm gonna have to like, okay, switch gears. Think about that, what my left foot is doing. But everybody does what they're used to. And if I went back to driving a standard, I could easily do that.

[00:10:56] There are just some things that you don't have to think about anymore because you have worked on them through repetition. So for instance, dog groomers. We know how to bathe the dog, dry a dog, brush out mats. We don't have to think about that stuff anymore. But there was a time when you were still learning that I did a lots and lots and lots of nails and baths and brush outs before I ever held clippers.

[00:11:26] Before I ever held shears, that was the start. Okay. Like lots and lots and lots of repetition of that. And then when you do start holding shears and clippers, lots of repetition before you are really good at it. , if you've ever played sports, how long did it take for you to get really good at maybe, uh, I don't know, throwing a baseball?

[00:11:50] Catching a baseball, How long did it take for you to get good at that? And maybe there's somebody who's particularly talented, but most of us it would be repetition, repetition, repetition.

[00:12:00] That's going to take a lot of practice. And I think that sometimes we forget that we can set dogs up so that they practice things more. And in the next part, we're gonna talk about a particular situation with my last dog. If you're enjoying the show, please remember to tell a friend, tell a groomer, tell your vet, tell a trainer.

[00:12:24] Maybe send your owners to an episode. But there's a lot of information here for a wide variety of folks. So I'm gonna give an example from, uh, myself about 20 years ago and what I would do differently now, my last border Collie, little Miss Isa, who was the Disney princess of Border Collie's, she was about a year old, and we were playing in a field, and I looked down and I saw that her de claw was bleeding and she had ripped her de claw. And I took a look at it and she hadn't noticed yet, but now that I pointed out, she's like, Ooh, was super worried. But she had already learned about being really good for grooming. So what I did was I brought her home, I decided , it was broken in such a way that I could very quickly just snip off the part that was dangling, put a bandage on it, um, and then.

[00:13:18] I would say about two months later after healing is when that nail needed to be trimmed again. So nail injury and about two months of healing, and then a time for another nail trim. And she used to get her nails trimmed about once every two weeks. That dog was a toenail farm.

[00:13:39] She just always needed her nails TriMed up. So every time I did her nails about once every two weeks, I would go in and I'd do all the nails. And then when it came time for that one Dew Claw, she was really nervous. She would trust me, but you could see her like hold her breath, turn her head away, and I'd calm her down again and trim that nail.

[00:14:04] Now, that took about a year's worth of nail trims to get her past that. Trimming her nails about every two weeks. It took about a year worth of nail trims to get her past that. And you might be thinking, yeah, that tracks okay. But here's the thing. What Chrissy of 2024 would do differently than Chrissy in 2000 ish did is now, instead of only working on it when we actually had to trim a nail.

[00:14:39] I would be working on it every day because this is a dog I live with and I had access to her every day, and I could have made sure she was comfortable with me touching her leg. I could have made sure that she was comfortable with me touching her delaw. I could have made sure that she was comfortable with me putting the tool near it.

[00:14:58] And then the every two weeks actually taking that little snip. The tiniest of little snips. Maybe I would do it once a week, but working on all of that stuff instead of just doing it during the nail trim. Yet, how often is that, how we address the problem? Right. So often we're like, whoa. This is how it went, this grooming session.

[00:15:24] See you in six to eight weeks, and that's not enough repetition for a lot of our dogs. So what took about a year's worth of nail trims for her to get past it? I probably could have accelerated that to a month or two, probably less if I worked on it every day, because there's also a bit where between six to eight weeks.

[00:15:48] You can totally forget everything you learned. So six to eight weeks for a regular grooming session. For a dog who maybe is learning about, like allowing a dryer near their head, six to eight weeks, anything that they might have learned during that time probably disappeared. The emotions are gonna stay.

[00:16:07] The feeling they had about what we were doing is gonna stay, but it's not enough repetitions to make fast progress. We can still make progress, okay? But to make faster progress would be how can we do more repetitions and see this dog more frequently? Okay, so frequency, like I said with my, my border collie, who had.

[00:16:35] Ripped her Dew Claw if I had worked on it every day because I'm her owner and I could see her every day much like if we gave an owner homework, what if I could get her totally comfortable with all of the touching and stuff I needed to do and lining up clippers and getting used to this idea that like, no, this doesn't hurt it.

[00:16:55] It hurt long ago, but it doesn't anymore. I probably could have made faster progress. Now, I did consistently make progress every time we did a nail trim because I'm looking for calm, comfortable, and cooperative. I didn't call it that at the time, but that's still what I was looking for. Like, okay, are you comfortable with this?

[00:17:16] Can you be calm? Are you allowing me to hold your paw if I open my hand? Are you still choosing to let your foot stay there? Are you choosing to be part of this process in just a little snip, you know? Um, but it took a lot longer because I wasn't doing it frequently enough. So we can add some more frequency for some of our cases, and that's where we have to talk to owners about like, but.

[00:17:46] What if we meet this dog once a week, once a week, and just work on this piece? Sometimes that can get us the real progress that we're looking for. If we wait and do it every like six to eight weeks, it could take a year. And I'm not saying that all of my grooming customers are, are like super frequent.

[00:18:09] That's that's not the case. It depends on what the problem is, but I am always looking to make progress during that session and to continue to make progress each time we meet. Sometimes I do see them every six to eight weeks and once in a while an owner's like, well, geez, you've been grooming him for a year.

[00:18:27] I'm like, ah, but to remember we talked about this, if you wanted faster. Change. We need to see their dog more frequently. You chose to stay on a regular grooming schedule. So we are seeing change. It's going to take longer, but each time we're going to have a nicer experience. So it really depends on, , what the problem is, how significant the problem is, how you feel.

[00:18:55] You can work on it. Now, there are ways to add repetition. During one grooming session, and that's something that every groomer should be able to try to make time for. So what I mean by that is if we have a dog on our table that we know gets a little bit nervous about, let's say, brushing his ear, you know, handling ears and brushing ears, I can take out the brush, do some brushing on that ear, and then move on to another area, do something else, come back.

[00:19:28] Do some brushing on that ear. Move on to something else. Come back, do some brushing on that ear. I don't need to brush that ear. Start to finish as only one repetition of ear brushing. Because I have this dog on my table and we have a wide variety of things that need to get done. So if we start thinking about how we can add repetitions, that is going to be really, really helpful.

[00:19:55] Especially if this is a situation where this owner is going to be bringing this dog in for just, just regular grooming sessions, right? Like six to eight weeks. I don't know about you guys, but it's pretty rare that I allow anybody to, to come in like. Longer than that. I have a couple of people who do bathing on their own and, , I don't worry too much about them.

[00:20:16] And a couple of people who go down south for the winter, so they have a different groomer for part of the year and then they come back and that's okay. But most of my customers, like if you wanna be a my one of my house call customers, we are on a regular schedule. So in that regular schedule during a grooming session, when I have this dog.

[00:20:35] For a bath, drying, nails, clipping, all of those other things, I can make time to work on that sensitive area, that challenging area. Over and over and over again without ever having to take this dog to a point when they can't handle it and they take 'em to the point where, , they're super frustrated or where it's the last thing I have to do and I absolutely have to get it done right now.

[00:21:04] . We can avoid all of that and we can do lots of repetitions in one grooming session. So repetition is really important to learning. Because that's how it gets drilled into your head.

[00:21:18] So think about how we can add repetition to dog grooming to help these animals feel better. About grooming to help with the things that they find challenging, and there are lots of opportunities to add repetition during a full groom.

[00:21:35] There are lots of ways to add repetition in between grooming sessions. And there are lots of ways that we can send owners home with some homework. And before I wrap this up, I'm going to also add in here. It is really important if you're going to send an owner with something to work on that not only do they understand.

[00:22:00] This is how we do it. They also need to understand why when I talk to owners, I want them to know that ideally their dog does not show any signs of stress. I want it to be about as interesting as watching paint dry. And that's the key piece. , I want him to be so relaxed that it's boring. If we don't say those words, what often happens is an owner goes home and says, I don't know. They said, I gotta, I gotta get you used to this. I gotta get used to this buddy.

[00:22:36] And the dog is kind of panicking and they're holding them down, they're getting them used to it, and really kind of forcing them through it. So it's really important for us to be able to say The mood is important. The mood is the most important part. That is so much more important than where you touched him or what you were using.

[00:22:57] The mood is the most important part. I want your dog to feel like that wasn't so bad. Hey, I can trust this person. I don't mind that at all. So the mood is super important. So if you are sending an owner home to help with some of these steps, make sure that they know that calm, comfortable, and cooperative is our goal.

[00:23:20] And you might say, is that really something we can tell owners? I made that for owners. That was what I was telling my owners for years before I ever started doing a podcast and talking to you. So calm, comfortable, and cooperative. Yeah. Owners get that. It might take a little while for them to kinda get the feel for it, but if you ask them like, did he seem calm?

[00:23:41] They know if their dog is calm. Okay, does he seem comfortable with it? They know if their dog is comfortable with it or not, and is he cooperating with you? They'll know. So there are lots of ways for us to add repetition and have our owners help with adding repetition and helping animals learn what we need them to learn.

[00:24:03] So. If you enjoy the show, please remember, like, subscribe, follow. You can find the show on YouTube. You can find the show anywhere you listen to podcasts. You can also find it. Creating great grooming dogs.com. I do teach the Master Groomer Behavior Specialist Diploma program at the whole Pet Grooming Academy, and that is a 32 week program four eight week courses for groomers who wanna learn more about the behavior side.

[00:24:31] And I usually start a new one up every month. So come and find it if you are interested. Everybody, have a great week.