SHOW NOTES:  Summary: Competitive sports dog trainer and founder of FDSA Denise Fenzi talks about how she got into dog sports, her journey from traditional training to her current all positive approach, and more.  Links mentioned: Fenzi TEAM Training Site FREE Beyond the Backyard Instructors Guide Denise's other books via her website Next Episode:  To be released 1/6/2017, featuring Sarah Stremming    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 FDSA founder Denise Fenzi. Denise has competed in a wide range of dog sports, titling dogs in obedience, tracking, Schutzhund, Mondioring, herding, conformation, and agility. She is best-known for her flashy and precise obedience work, as demonstrated by two AKC OTCH dogs and perfect scores in both Schutzhund and Mondioring sport obedience. Her specialty is in developing motivation, focus, and relationship in competition dogs, and she has consistently demonstrated the ability to train and compete with dogs using motivational methods in sports where compulsion is the norm. Hi Denise, can you tell us a bit about the dogs you have known and what you’re working on with them? Denise Fenzi: Hi Melissa, how are you? Melissa: Good. Denise: Good. I’m excited to do this. Yeah, I’ll tell you. Let’s see, I have three dogs here now. I have Raika, she’s my oldest dog, she’s 12½ and she is retired and mostly spends her days hanging out with me and going for long walks. That’s what she wants to do now. My two younger dogs are Lyra, she’s also a Belgian Tervuren, and Brito, who’s a little mixed-breed, and I primarily train them to learn new things. So I do a lot of play skills with them, I do a lot of obedience with them. I just use them as, I want to say sample dogs, that’s not quite the word I want. But I like to experiment with them and try out new things. And right now I’m sort of in a coaching phase of my life more than a competitive phase of my life, so I’m not actually sure if or when I’ll compete. I have done some of the TEAM obedience levels with both of them, and I think they both have a TEAM Two title, [but] I’d have to look. And at some point if I get inspiration I’m going to keep going. So those are my dogs.   Melissa: So I know it wasn’t on the list of questions I sent over, but do you want to briefly just tell us a little bit more about TEAM? Denise: Oh, TEAM is Training Excellence Assessment Modules, and it’s the new obedience program that we started for people who want to compete via video and with more emphasis on quality of training and less about the competitive environment. So anybody who wants can look it up at fenziteamtitles.com. It’s, in my opinion, an extremely well-designed program and worth taking a look at. Denise: Yeah, my parents showed dogs, and I’m 48, so I was sort of born into it. They actually competed with Lhasa Apsos in obedience, which is _____ (3.23).  I know my parents got a CDX on a Lhasa Apso; it took 23 shows. I think their final show was a 171 1/2, but they did it. So I give them credit for that. It was kind of an ugly way of getting titles back then, it was uglier to watch, but they did it. Melissa: So is that what originally got you into dog sports? Denise: Yes, I guess I inherited it. When I was about 10 I raised a couple of guide dog puppies, and my parents said that if I did that then I could have a dog of my own. So my first dogs were Shelties, because they had to be small dogs. And I just sort of went from there. Melissa: What got you started with positive training? Denise Fenzi: Well, I had been competing in AKC obedience for a long time, and then I decided to try IPO. And when I went over and watched the IPO training at that time, which would have been, I don’