E67: Denise Fenzi - "Facing Your Fears"

SUMMARY:

This week we talked to Denise Fenzi about FDSA Training Camp 2018!

In previous years, we’ve shared the audio from Denise’s opening talk, but unfortunately the camera this year didn’t do a great job picking up her voice, so instead we’re just going to talk through all the themes from camp.

Next Episode: 

To be released 6/22/2018, featuring Sue Yanoff, talking canine sports medicine!

TRANSCRIPTION:

Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports Podcast brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high-quality instruction for competitive dog sports using only the most current and progressive training methods.

Today we’ll be talking to Denise Fenzi about FDSA Training Camp 2018!

In previous years, we’ve shared the audio from Denise’s opening talk, but unfortunately the camera this year didn’t do a great job picking up her voice, so instead we’re just going to talk through all the themes from camp.

Hi Denise. Welcome back to the podcast!

Denise Fenzi: Hi Melissa. It’s always nice to be here.

Melissa Breau: For anyone who is new to the podcast or to FDSA, can you share a little bit about camp? What is it? Why is it awesome?

Denise Fenzi: Well, camp is probably the highlight of my year in relation to FDSA. For starters, we have so much going on at any given time. I think we had 15 or 16 instructors this year, and we run six sessions at a time. So if you come, you have a whole lot of opportunity to see pretty much anything, and we cover a lot of dog sports now, you know, nosework and obedience and behavior, and it goes on and on.

Probably the thing that stands out for me is how consistent all of the instructors are with things we really care about, the wellbeing of the dog, and at the same time how different we all are in what we care about and where we choose to put our energy. So it’s a pretty amazing experience for me and I think for most of our participants as well.

Melissa Breau: I definitely agree. I feel like a lot of seminars and things, as an attendee you go and at the end you feel, OK, I’ve got some stuff to work on. Whereas I feel like the biggest takeaway for me from camp was the end of it I heard over and over and over again, “I’m so proud of my dog. They did awesome this weekend.” And I really think that can be attributed to the staff and the way the instructors work with the students. I think it just makes them feel good about their relationship with their dog.

Denise Fenzi: Yeah. I think the corollary to that is that the instructors spend a lot of time saying, “I’m just so proud of my students.” Because the dogs got that from somewhere. Those dogs didn’t just show up being amazing. They’re amazing because the people who work with them have spent so much energy making training a wonderful experience. I’m so proud of my instructors because my instructors give so much to their students, and I’m so proud of my students because they give so much to their dogs. So it’s an amazing cycle for all of us.

Melissa Breau: This was the fourth annual FDSA Training Camp, and each year, camp has a theme. Do you mind sharing what the theme was for this year?

Denise Fenzi: This year we did Face Your Fears. So many students, they want to do it right, they care so much, and that’s amazing, but sometimes it’s also a little paralyzing, and what if? What if my dog pees in the ring? What if … you can fill in any blank you want, people are all over the map. And so I think that is something that is holding us back. So our theme this year was Face Your Fears. What can we do to allow us to succeed?

Melissa Breau: Do you mind … can you share the story of the dream that inspired all of that?

Denise Fenzi: That was not our original theme. We changed it. What tends to happen each year is something happens during the year that sparks a topic. So, for example, the first year was The Red Dress. That was because one of the students drew a picture of me which is often associated with the school, it’s our logo. But she put me in a red dress with heels, and it was kind of cute and fun and a lot of people talked about it, so what the hell, I dressed up in that outfit, which was actually quite hard, but it was fun.

The second year, we did a lot of conversation about the idea of ripples and bubbles, so the idea that you want to go out in the world and make change, and at the same time you’ve really got to have a safe space, so that’s a bubble that you hide in, and so I dressed up as a mermaid and represented that theme.

The third year, we had talked a lot about advocating for your dog, which is very much a focal point at FDSA, as we just talked about, and so I dressed up as a superhero, Wonder Woman.

This year, I’m not going to tell you the original theme because, who knows, we might come back to it. But I had a dream, not an amazing dream, just a regular dream, but it was something of a nightmare. What happened was at first I showed up for camp and there was some fellow teaching a lecture, a lab, and everybody was there, and he was somebody I did not know, and all of the students were riveted by him and he was teaching them about football. I remember being a little bit like, Wow, that’s different. I didn’t expect somebody I don’t know to be here teaching football, but I’ll figure it out later. And then I went outside and I saw all of these lions in cages, and I thought, I really have to talk to my instructors about telling me if they’re going to do something like that. But I was kind of OK with that too. I’m pretty easygoing. Then I came back in and looked at the clock and I realized I was about to teach, and I looked down and I was wearing a towel. I hadn’t gotten dressed yet. Of those events, a stranger teaching at camp football to the students and lions in cages outside, those didn’t particularly bother me. But being in a towel bothered me very much. And I did teach, by the way. I think in my dream I went ahead and taught. I don’t remember how it went beyond that.

But as I brought that up on the alumni list and I talked to the students about that dream and said, “Oh, I must be anxious about camp,” and that led to an amazing discussion where people talked about things that had happened to them for real at dog shows. Funny things, mostly. Well, it depends — funny is from your point of view. It’s not funny when your skirt falls off. It is funny when somebody else’s falls off. But the thing that came back to me is that people overcame those experiences and did continue to show, because they’re on the alumni list. They’re still in the community.

That led to my thinking about how is it that some people are able to face the fears that have happened, the clothing failures, and how other people are really more worried about what might happen, and how much of that is centered around the issue of being embarrassed. It’s not physical harm that most people were worried about. It’s emotional harm. So that was the dream that inspired our theme, and that was where we went with our discussion.

Melissa Breau: I think it’s funny that you say of the three things, the thing that bothered you most is talking in a towel, so you actually made that happen. For anybody that wasn’t there, Denise came out in a Pac-Man towel.

Denise Fenzi: I did, yeah. I think next year I’m going to go for a lot of clothing. It’s a little easier.

Melissa Breau: Fair enough. During your opening talk, you had three tips for helping to deal with embarrassment. Can you rehash those for us?

Denise Fenzi: Sure. The first one is a little bit of an understanding of biology. When you are anxious, your body releases a variety of hormones that tells you, “Oh my goodness, you’re having an emotion.” But what’s interesting is those hormonal experiences are the same if you’re excited or anxious. It’s your brain that tells you, “I’m really excited because this amazing thing is going to happen,” or “I’m really anxious because this horrible thing might happen.”

That’s actually a fascinating and powerful thing to know, because if you know that, then you actually have a lot of control over the situation. So rather than saying, ‘I’m really anxious about showing my dog. She might pee in the ring,” you have the option of saying, “I’m really excited about showing my dog. I’ve never done this before. This is going to be new.”

And admittedly you have to do a little mental gymnastics, because our natural tendency, I think in particular for women, is to assume anxiety maybe when it really isn’t anxiety. Maybe we really are excited. They’ve done some really interesting research on that topic that you can tell yourself “I’m excited,” and that will help you become excited as opposed to anxious. So that would be one thing I would recommend is an awareness of that, and then just keep telling yourself, “I’m so excited to be at the dog show. This is going to be amazing,” rather than “I’m so scared.”

The second thing I talked about was preparation. When you’re afraid, instead of hiding it and smushing it down in your head, pull it out. What are you concerned about? And then prepare to make those incidences less likely. So if you are afraid that your dog is going to pee in the ring, teach your dog to go to the bathroom on cue, if that’s important to you, if that will give you comfort, so that when you go in the ring that is less likely to happen. Or if you think that you might go in the ring and your dog is going to have a meltdown of whatever type, ask yourself where that is coming from and is it a legitimate concern, because if it is, there are things you can do to prepare your dog and yourself to make that less likely. Don’t turn away from the things that concern you. Address them.

The final thing I suggested was train yourself and treat yourself with the kindness that we treat our dogs. We talk a lot about criteria with our dogs. Don’t put your dogs in circumstances that will over-faze them and make them uncomfortable. Don’t put yourself in circumstances that are above your readiness.

Your first dog show does not have to be a great big show with six rings and a lot of activity. Maybe start with some video competitions or a smaller local trial or a fun match. Ease into the dog show world or the world of competition. You may never go to a dog show, but I guarantee you will be just as nervous at your first video competition when you turn on that video camera as you will at a show.

So treat yourself with some kindness and set yourself up for success, because success really does breed success. That is absolutely well researched. We know this is true for dogs and people, that when people have many successful experiences they build confidence in themselves and they are willing to keep trying and moving forward. Failure, it’s wonderful to say “Well, just get back up,” but the fact is failure has a tendency to beat people down and they don’t keep getting back up. They stop trying.

So those were my three suggestions: a little understanding of biology, prepare yourself well so that you can feel like you’ve done everything in your power, and set some criteria that will set you up for likelihood of success.

Melissa Breau: You also shared some advice on what to do if it DOES all go to hell. How would you recommend people handle that?

Denise Fenzi: I’m a pretty big fan of preparing for everything, because I find that if I have a plan for how I’m going to handle it if it doesn’t go right, so just in a very straight training sense, I have asked my dog to do something, I have asked my dog to spin, and my dog just looks at me, has never heard that in her life or his life, it’s actually important to me to already know exactly what I will do. I asked you to spin, you didn’t do it, I am going to move my hand in a way that is going to cause you to spin and make it more likely.

When I do that, what I find is two things happen. One, I am more likely to recover quickly because I’ve already made a decision about what I’m going to do. But the second thing is, in a very subtle way you send off signals to your dog that tell them you have a plan and you are in control.

So if I think it is possible that my dog might run amuck in the ring and take off, I’ve already worked on an emergency recall and I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to kneel down and call my dog to me, because standing and looking paralyzed, not only is that very, very hard on you emotionally, and your dog, it creates long-term issues. Often if I give someone a plan for when things don’t go wrong, I’ve noticed that they have this instant change in their demeanor and then they never have a chance to practice their emergency situation because the dog reads their confidence. So I absolutely believe that you should have some ideas for everything if it’s going to go right. You can’t pick every possibility, but the ones that are biggest in your head you can pick some strategies in advance.

Melissa Breau: Our shirts this year all said, “Game on,” and they had a Pac-Man theme. I’d love to hear how you came up with that, and obviously it connects to the
“eating your fears” concept. So I’d love to hear where all the awesome designs come from and where the thought process occurs for that.

Denise Fenzi: Well, the school, FDSA, is quite a bit more than me. It’s many, many, many people. Teri Martin is sort of, well, she’s kind of everything, you know, she’s always right there supporting me in many ways. She is the one that came up with the idea of the Pac-Man creature eating up your fears. And then Rebecca Aube is my designer, and she’s designed all of the T-shirts for camp. She took Teri’s ideas and said, “I can run with that.” There’s always a process of back and forth, so we had power-ups. Eating the fruits in the real game of Pac-Man gives you power, so for us, eating up your fear, your anxiety, your worries. So it’s a cumulative process and effort of many people on our team to come up with these ideas.

Melissa Breau: That was all for the welcome talk or the intro talk, but you also gave a short closing talk, and your focus for that was on the importance of being happy in order to learn. I’d love to have you elaborate a bit more on that, why it’s important, and what made you talk about that.

Denise Fenzi: Well, I think most of us are aware that when we are embarrassed or afraid, we do not learn well. If something happens in a circumstance and we find ourselves embarrassed, most of us lose the next 15 or 20 minutes of the talk or the event or whatever it is, because we’re stewing. I mean, some of us lose days or months or years, even, over embarrassment. And fear is the same. When you are uncomfortable and nervous, really, fear dominates everything and we tend to focus on that.

Now, if you think about it, camp can be a very high-pressure situation for both the human and the dog. You’re standing in front of maybe a hundred people, you’re about to be taught and directed, and that’s stressful, so it’s so important that we have people as comfortable as we can possibly make them.

As a result, everyone — the instructors and the students and the dogs — we all think so much about the importance of maintaining happiness, and I know our students think about it a lot in relation to their dogs because we talk about it so much. That’s called a CER: a conditioned emotional response. We want our dogs to be conditioned to loving being with us and training and finding it fun and low stress. But the same is true for the people, and as a result, staff at FDSA and the design of camp is set up to minimize the human stress as much as possible, and to make sure that people are happy and feel loved and warm and excited to be there and understand that if they make an error, there’s nothing to be embarrassed about. It’s OK.

What I found as the years go by this becomes easier for all of us. We all become more comfortable with how this works. You could see the effects in camp. You could see that people were able to learn in real time and they were happy, so then of course their dogs are happy, and then of course the staff is happy, and again you have that circle.

I do not choose my closing speech in advance. I just talk about whatever stood out for me at camp. And it really stood out for me, was almost a bit of an epiphany for me, that CER, that conditioned emotional response, the importance of it, the importance of happiness and feeling good is just as important for the handler as it is for the dog and that we all take some responsibility for making that happen.

Melissa Breau: Of course the other thing you talk about during the closing talk every single year is the date and location for next year. I want to talk a little more about that, but first, where and when is it next year?

Denise Fenzi: All right. It is May 19 through the 21st, it’s three days, 2019, in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. The location is the Lebanon Valley Exposition Center. Once again we have lots of space. We go to some trouble to ensure that we have a lot of space so that we have the best possible sound. Once again we’ll have a wide variety of instructors. We do have a few changes, I think people will be excited about that, a couple of new people coming in.

Melissa Breau: I wanted to get in a little bit more into what goes into choosing the location and the space and stuff like that. I know everybody at camp was pretty excited about where camp would be, but obviously choosing that location is a very involved process, and I know usually Teri is working on it pretty much as soon as one year ends, trying to plan for the next year. So how do you decide where to have camp each year? What goes into that?

Denise Fenzi: It’s actually, it’s really quite complex. Planning camp is actually a two-year cycle, so we are already picking our 2020 facility now because you have to start really far in advance.

For 2019, we have a contract signed, but I think maybe more goes into camp than people realize, and it’s a very complex thing. Just finding a facility that can host us is hard because we need large, open working spaces. Many conferences don’t have working dogs that require large open spaces. It’s just the nature of our dog sports. That alone takes a lot of space.

The second one is sound. If you’re going to run six rings at the same time, you need six distinct spaces. But you don’t want six huge spaces, because one, sound does not, it’s not as efficient to be in a huge building with a smaller number of people, and the second thing is just expense. You pay for all those large spaces.

Just logistically there are only so many places in the United States, and each one that we investigate ends up taking us several hours, once we narrow it down, and then we find something that’s just not going to work, so lack of air conditioning or no airport nearby or whatever is part of that.

Some of the criteria, we are looking for heavy student population centers because experience has taught us that people generally drive within about an eight-hour radius, although I did notice this year people are coming from further. So we’re looking for places where we already know we have a lot of students.

In addition, we are trying to rotate it around the country, sort of a north, south, east, west, but it’s not that clean because again we’re looking for population centers. So this year we’re about eight hours east of last year because we feel that we can fill that effectively at this time. We can pull people down from the northeast, it was too far for them, and we can pull people up from the southeast because it was too far for them, and hopefully we’ll also pull people in from the middle of the country, and we have an airport within about an hour. Next year we’ll probably make a more radical change the year after that and head back to the other side of the country.

It’s actually very, very difficult for us to pick locations, and we worry and we want everyone to be able to participate, but we recognize the difficulty of that. And we do generally have people come internationally, so hopefully people from Europe and, well, Europe in particular will consider coming over next year, because it’s really only about six or seven hours to get to the East Coast, so we’re trying to maximize, and Canadians tend to represent very, very well at camp, so we’re hoping they’re going to come down. They’re some lively people, those Canadians.

Melissa Breau: I’m sure they’d appreciate that. I know that you were talking about the sound thing, and a lot of the time when those threads pop up on the alumni list, people suggest places where they’ve had great nationals and things like that. I think there’s often a failure to realize what you said that not only do we need the space to have six rings essentially, but they need to be divided into their own rooms, because otherwise you get so much bleed from sounds. I know that’s been an issue in past years. And you’ve worked to remedy food issues from past years and bathroom issues from past years. There’s just so many factors. I think it’s incredible.

Denise Fenzi: We do ask. We do a survey every year and it’s incredibly valuable for us. We get feedback about what does or doesn’t work. It also comes when I read the survey that I understand that some people just don’t understand. For example, we don’t choose the caterer. Most of the time the facility tells us what our options are, so we don’t say, “We’re going to bring in pizza.” They say, “No, you’re not.” For example, that is one. They tell us where we can do it. They tell us if we can or cannot have outside alcohol. They tell us what the prices are going to be. We do not make money on those things. So we have to work within the constraints that we have, and I think people are unaware of many of our constraints. However, we always get suggestions every year that we look at and we say, “This we can do.”

So if you are really passionate about something and you don’t understand why we are ignoring you, it’s not necessarily that we think it’s not a good idea. It may be outside of our control, or there may be other expenses or other things that people are not aware of that we have to dovetail all of these things together. It’s a very complicated and rewarding experience for us.

Melissa Breau: I just have one more question on my list, but before we get to that, I wanted to give you an open choice question, for lack of a better term. Is there anything else fun or exciting going on at the academy or favorite moments from camp that you want to share?

Denise Fenzi: There’s so much. You know, you go home from camp on such a high, and I think a big part for me is this sense of wonder. I’m amazed at what FDSA is and who it is. It is the people. Where did I find a Teri and a Melissa and a Rebecca? Where did I find these amazing people? So, for me, camp is really the people. Where did I find these amazing students? The volunteers — they’re fantastic. They work so hard, they’re focused, they just do so much.

I think the thing I flew home with on my airplane as I came home was that sense of people, how amazing people can be, if you’re looking for what’s going right. Camp is a great example of what went right, and that will hold me probably for months. I’ll stay excited about that.

Melissa Breau: So I don’t know if you know this, but I’ve been trying something new at the end of each episode. The three questions at the end of every interview were definitely one of my favorite things early on, but it obviously doesn’t make sense to ask them over and over when people come back. So I’ve come up with a new question for returning guests, and I think you’re the second or third person I’ve had the chance to ask it. What is a lesson you’ve learned or been reminded of recently when it comes to dog training?

Denise Fenzi: This is one I talk about a lot for other people, but it came home to roost. I would like to talk about videotaping. Has anybody not heard me tell you, “You have to videotape your work if you really want to improve.” Of course you can do it other ways, but my goodness, if you videotape and look at it — this is the second part — look at it from an outside perspective, don’t watch yourself training your dog, watch your friend training a dog, and that extra step of removal will show you things. It will allow you to relax your brain and your defensive side that says, “I know I’m doing it right,” because we all have that, and it will allow you to say, “Oh, that’s really a quick tweak here, just let’s change that little thing.”

It did kind of come home. I’ve been doing some new stuff with Brito, and I was reminded that I need to pay more attention to my basic mechanics. Many of these things are fairly muscle memory for me, but if you don’t pay attention, you will start to slide. You’ll just get a little bit sloppy. And I realized as I’m trying to teach him some new skills, I am reminded that I need to pay more attention to my mechanical skills. Think about it. You give your cue, you give your hand help if needed, you take your food out of your pocket. That simple sequence has started to blend together over time. So I would say that has been my lesson, my recent lesson that is serving me well.

Melissa Breau: Thank you so much for coming back on the podcast, Denise! This was great.

Denise Fenzi: Oh, it’s always great to be here. Thank you, Melissa.

Melissa Breau: And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in! As a last-minute reminder, this comes out on Friday the 15th, which is also the last day to register for this session at FDSA. There are a ton of amazing classes running this term, so if you haven’t, you should go check them out. And we’ll be back next week, this time with Sue Yanoff to talk about canine sports medicine.

CREDITS:

Today’s show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called “Buddy.” Audio editing provided by Chris Lang.