24 SepEpisode 26 | Teach a foolproof DROP and COME using Classical Conditioning
There are two types of conditioning we use in dog training: Operant (aka learning by consequence, or "Skinnerian Conditioning") and Classical (aka learning by association, or "Pavlovian Conditioning"). When we teach new behaviors, we tend to focus on Operant Conditioning. In this episode, Annie talks about the differences between these two kinds of teaching/learning, and reveals how, in many cases, Classical Conditioning can produce very reliable behaviors with little effort.
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Podcast Episode 26: Teach a foolproof DROP and COME using Classical Conditioning
**music**
Annie:
Hello there, mammals. So I'd like to start this episode off with a little riddle. And uh, if you make it through this episode, you will be able to answer this riddle. So here it goes.
You're in a room. Let's say it's a pretty small room with two people. One is a baby and the other is an adult, let's say it's a man and he doesn't speak English and you don't speak his language. Now he's holding a basketball and you want to teach him the meaning of the words “drop it.” Now, so just to recap, we have three people in the room, you, a baby, a man who doesn't speak English and is holding a basketball and that's it. There's no dictionary that you can use to translate. There's no dry erase board that you can write a diagram on and you are not allowed to really do any kind of a miming in order to try and get him to drop it. You also cannot touch him. So that's the setup. What are you going to do?
Today's episode is specifically about teaching “drop it.” Of course we're going to focus on how to teach “drop it” to a dog, but teaching “drop it” to a dog is a little bit like teaching “drop it” to someone who doesn't speak your language and we're also going to talk about “come.” Now I know at a first glance it might not seem like these two behaviors have very much in common, but, again, by the end of this episode I think you will see what they do have in common and why I wanted to pair these two very important behaviors together.
Now before I get too much into the nitty gritty of teaching these two important behaviors, I want to do a little review of the two kinds of learning that I'm always talking about on this show and that are so important to dog training: operant and conditioning and classical conditioning.
So operant conditioning is what we tend to think about when we're thinking about dog training. Operant conditioning is really anything that fits into like a “if then” equation. If my dog's butt hits the ground, then I'll give him a treat. Or if my dog pulls, then we will stop walking. Of course, humans are very much affected by operant conditioning too, just think of everything in your life that you can put into this a kind of equation, right? Like, if I go to work, then I get paid. If I go to the store, then I can get groceries. There's always a behavior and it's followed by a consequence and the consequence is either something that encourages the proceeding behavior or discourages the proceeding behavior and specifically, encouraging or discouraging the likelihood that this behavior if given an opportunity to occur will occur again.
And the fancier way to talk about encouragement and discouragement is reinforcement and punishment. So if a behavior is encouraged, it's a reinforced behavior and if it's a behavior that's discouraged, it is a punished behavior. And then if you want to get even more specific, there is positive reinforcement, which is encouraging a behavior by adding something-adding something good to the equation, adding something the subject likes, so you know, if you sit you will get a treat, where it's positive because we're adding a treat in order to encourage the likelihood that your dog will sit again- that's positive reinforcement. Negative reinforcement is taking something away to encourage behaviors going to happen again, that usually means you're taking away something painful, something bad and the relief of having that thing go away is what's encouraging the likelihood that the behavior will happen again. And then on the other side we have positive punishment, which is adding something to the equation in order to discourage the behavior. And then taking something away from an equation to discourage behavior is called negative punishment.
But I'm going a little bit deeper than we need to hear because for this episode I would really like to focus on the other kind of learning, which is actually my favorite kind of learning and I'll, I'll tell you a little bit why. The other one is classical conditioning. Now, operant conditioning has of course always existed, but it was really codified in the mid 20th century by B.F. Skinner. If you have been a regular listener to this podcast, you might've heard the episode I did about a month ago with his daughter Debra Buzan and I'm a big BF Skinner fan. Operant conditioning is often called Skinnerian conditioning. And Skinner was very influenced by Pavlov.
Pavlov, of course, is the one who brought us Pavlovian conditioning, which is also called classical conditioning. Now, classical conditioning also of course existed long before Pavlov ever wrote about it. But I think thinking about his experiment, the experiment that he's most famous for is a really useful way to think about how classical conditioning works. So Pavlov was a Russian physiologist. Most people think he was a psychiatrist, but he wasn't. He was studying gastrointestinal systems in the late 1800s, early 1900s. And he was doing experiments with dogs, but he started to encounter a problem in his lab. He was trying to measure the secretion of the dog's digestive glands, but he found that the experiment was starting before he was ready to start taking measurements because the moment that he entered the room where he was conducting these experiments, the dogs started salivating.
And this was before he was even presenting the food, but he realized that the dog seemed to be making an association between him and the food to the point where they didn't even need to see the food in order to start salivating because he was such a reliable precursor to getting fed that just seeing him was starting their digestive processes going. So he started playing around with this and he, I think, found that anybody wearing a white coat entering the room would get these dogs to salivate. So then he started ringing a buzzer before he went into the room to present food, and soon enough, the buzzer itself was causing the dogs to salivate. And that's really what classical conditioning is all about. It's about forming these deep, very difficult to break connections that are with things that you learn to react to in a specific way, in an unthinking way.
My dog, for example, was not born knowing the sound of the doorbell, but he goes nuts now when he hears the doorbell, because that sound has so often been paired with the presence all of a sudden of someone usually who he's glad to see. Now, I don't think there's a lot of “if then” thinking going on there, I don't think he thinks if I bark, then someone will come to the door. I think it's an automatic reaction now that's triggered by the sound that he's learned. Likewise, your dog was not born knowing the sound of the refrigerator door opening, but if he reliably gets food from the refrigerator, that sound has probably taken on a meaning, which is going to cause him to come running to the refrigerator.
But back to Pavlov. The important thing to remember about classical conditioning is it's not about the behavior, it's about the association and really about usually a feeling. In the case of the dogs, the feeling was hunger, which is what was causing them to salivate. And when you think about it, feelings can be a lot more powerful than behaviors because behaviors we can choose to do this or choose to behave in this way or that way, or not behave in a certain way. Feelings are more deeply seated and they tend to come upon us. And you can try to feel one way or not feel another way, but you're trying to do something probably that's countering already happening.
And to think about the fact that it doesn't really involve specific behaviors, think about what Pavlov's dogs were doing. Now they heard that bell. What happened? Were they peeing? Were they pooping? Were they barking? Where are they looking? Looking at each other? Where are they doing crossword puzzles? We don't know. Maybe they were doing all those things, but that's not part of what his experiment was about. So it's never been reported exactly what they were doing other than the fact that they started to have this automatic reaction. And that's really true of all associations. For example, I feel like swastikas are bad. I wasn't born knowing about swastikas. I've never drawn a swastika. I don't have a lot of experience with swastikas, but I just feel like a swastika is a bad symbol and that doesn't change if I do cartwheels or jump up and down on one foot. And those kinds of deeply ingrained really agreed upon associations kind of run our world. Like I associate a dollar with a hundred pennies. I didn't make up the fact that a dollar is associated with a hundred pennies. I have had nothing to do with dollars equaling a certain amount of pennies really in my life. But again, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't really matter what I do. It doesn't matter if I turn the dollar upside down or speak to it in French or do origami with it, the dollar still equals a hundred pennies. My behavior has nothing to do with that association that I have and that I agree upon with a lot of other people who also have that association.
So if you follow us on social media or you're in the habit of looking at the show notes, you'll know that I do an illustration that goes with each episode and the illustration that goes with today's episode shows a dog looking at two machines, one is a soda machine and the other is a magic claw machine. And I know these kinds of machines don't usually contain beverages. They have toys and stuff in them, but for the sake of simplicity, my drawing has sodas in both machines. And the reason that I did this picture is because it's really kind of how I think about operant conditioning and classical conditioning.
When you think about a magic claw machine, you think about how you have to get good at this very specific task, the task of manipulating the claw to get out your toy or in this case your soda, which I guess if it's carbonated, it's not going to work out that well but, but humor me, go with it. So there's no major expectation that just putting the coin into the machine is going to net you your prize. There is an “if then”, if you manipulate the claw in the right way, then you will get your drink. And like we just went over, when you're thinking about operant conditioning, there has to be some sort of behavior that is going to be followed by some sort of consequence, which is going to affect the likelihood of whether or not you engage in this behavior again. So if you're really good at manipulating the claw, you might choose to go back and do it again and again. But it's also possible that you might be discouraged if you don't win at least some of the time.
Now the other kind of machine, the soda machine is a much more simple affair. You put your money in and you got a soda. Money equals soda and it does not matter what you do. It does not matter if you put the coins in with your right hand or your left hand. It doesn't matter if you do a little jig while you're waiting for your soda to come out. Your behavior is not really part of the equation.
Now, of course I know what you're going to say. Well, sometimes the machines break and you put your coin in and you know the thing that you're trying to get out it doesn't come out. This is true, in a minute, I'll get to how this relates to dog training, but suffice it to say that I think most of us at some point have had an experience with a vending machine that has failed on its promise to deliver what it was supposed to and most of us still use vending machines anyway. So they are reliable enough.
Now, like I said at the beginning of this episode, most things we teach to dogs, we tend to think about operant conditioning. We're tending to try and get a specific behavior. It's like the claw machine. We want them to become expert manipulators of that claw, the claw being a stand in for whatever it is we're trying to get them to do. If presented with X opportunity, I want you to demonstrate some skill and if you do well then I will give you your treat or soda or whatever.
So take something like drop it. This is normally how it's taught. If you let go of that thing in your mouth and you do it in a way that I think was skillful, then there is the possibility that I will give you something good. That's kind of what we tend to teach when we are teaching “drop it” using the traditional operating conditioning model. You have something in your mouth and if you let go of it, I will give you something else. It's a negotiation and it's also a negotiation based on a certain idea of what you want. You don't want your dog running around for five minutes before he drops it. You don't want your dog maybe dropping it over there, you want him dropping it over here. You have certain criteria you don't want to have to ask a million times, you want him to respond after the first time. And if he meets all of those criteria, he will get the prize.
But what I want you to think about is the soda machine version of “drop it.” If your goal is to get that soda in your hands or to get the ball out of your dog's mouth, let's say, if you can achieve that with the same reliability of getting a soda out of a vending machine, then you really don't need to worry about all the machinations that get you to that point. I don't really care about the skill with which the claw machine is being operated- the behavior in particular. I just want that toy to come or that soda to come out of the machine. I don't care if my dog pushes the thing out of his mouth with his tongue or throws it up in the air when he drops it or whatever. I just want to get that thing out of his mouth. And when you think about it, “drop it” is often a very urgent, important behavior where the goal really is just that-I need this to no longer be in my dog's mouth because my computer cord does not belong in his mouth or that hearing aid doesn't belong in his mouth.
So instead of focusing on the behavior, we're simply going to focus on the association and the association that I want my dog to make is that when I say the words, “drop it,” he better have a mouth that's open and empty because he needs it to be ready for the excellent thing I'm going to give him. And if he's going to have a mouth that's open and empty, he's going to have to drop whatever's in it. But he's gonna learn it really quickly because it's going to become an automatic response, just in the same way that Pavlov's dog started salivating when they heard his buzzer or in the same way that I automatically look at my phone if a buzzes, your dog is going to start to just automatically without even thinking about it, open his mouth so that it's ready to receive whenever you say the words “drop it.”
Often when we're using classical conditioning to train something, it ends up being this kind of like through the side door way of getting behaviors. But like I said earlier, classical conditioning is sort of my favorite kind of conditioning because it has to do with changing how your subject feels about something. If you can change an emotional connection, if you can change an emotion, you very often will affect the behavior without even trying.
So to teach “drop it”…and another reason I like classical conditioning so much is because it's just very easy on the teacher side, trainer side to teach things using classical conditioning ‘cause it usually requires very little effort. Most of the time you can do it literally with your eyes closed. So to teach “drop it.” I want you to have some really excellent treats on you, put somewhere where your dog's not going to see them- a treat pouch or in a bowl up on a table that your dog can't see or just, you know, get a whole bunch in your hand, but hold them in such a way that your dog doesn't know that they're there.
I suggest using turkey or cheese or bits of chicken. You know, we often at School for the Dogs use hot dogs or string cheese, which I like using both those things because you can quarter them and then chop them up into lots of little bits and then freeze them and they get frozen in little tiny kind of cube shaped things that aren't gonna get your hands too greasy. But actually for this exercise, the size of the treat isn't that important. Usually I talk about how it's important for treats to be small, but for this you are welcome just to grab a hunk of cheese. And what you're going to do is say the word “drop it” and then throw that cheese on the ground. Now obviously I want your dog close enough to you to catch on to what's going on, but I don't really care what he or she is doing as long as your dog hears you say “drop it” and then sees you suddenly throw this delicious lump of whatever on the ground.
For about three days, that's all I want you to do. I'd say aim for two times a day, you are gonna say the word “drop it” and then throw something on the ground. And then maybe move to somewhere slightly different in the room and do the same thing. It actually doesn't even really matter where you are in the room. I just want your dog to be there. So do that maybe like three or four times, twice a day for three days. It is important that the food not be apparent until after you say the words “drop it.” I don't want you reaching for it. I don't want your dog to see it. I don't want it to exist in your dog's world until after you say the words.
The next step is going to be giving your dog something to chew, a bully stick a marrow bone, a toy, whatever it is that your dog is into chewing on.
I'd say you should probably give him something he gets pretty regularly. You don't want to give him something that's super extra special, super extra exciting at this point, but something that you know he likes. And you're going to do the same exercise, but now your dog is most likely going to open his mouth, drop whatever in it so that he can get to the delicious thing that you have just tossed on the floor.
Now, most likely you're going to say “drop it” then you're going to drop your wad of cheese or whatever on the floor. And only at that point is your dog going to let go whatever was in his or her mouth And that is perfectly fine because, again, we're not thinking yet about the behavior here all we're concerned about is the association that your dog is making between you saying the words “drop it: and you dropping this delicious thing on the ground.
Of course, it's important that whatever you're dropping be worth his while. So if you're dropping something on the ground and your dog is like, “Meh, I'd prefer to keep chewing on this bully stick” then you need to up the currency that you're using. That might mean getting a bigger piece of something delicious or even dropping on the ground, whatever it is your dog already has the same thing, but maybe if your dog is chewing a bully stick , you're going to drop two or three bully sticks on the ground. You really want to drop something that's going to get your dog's attention and leave an impression. And sometimes I find it can be useful to drop something that makes noise, like a whole bunch of Cheerios or like I said, a bully stick. But the idea is that you're getting your dog's attention. If your dog doesn't perceive the delicious thing you're offering, then it isn't of much use.
And that's it. That's the whole way that you're going to teach this behavior. So like I said, at first, your dog is probably going to keep chewing what he's chewing for a moment before he goes to investigate whatever it is you dropped. But that is going to change. The key is just practicing this often, I'd say a few times a day. And it doesn't always have to be when your dog has something in his or her mouth, like I was saying, you can just work on saying the words “drop it” and dropping something. It's the association between the word and “oh my God deliciousness on the floor” that you're working to create. And like I said, it's something you can literally practice with your eyes closed as long as your dog is near you.
Of course, like anything you teach, you're going to want to practice in different situations. You're going to want to have other people rehearse this with your dog. But again, it should be this easy. And in my experience, especially if you're starting off with a puppy, they tend to catch on super quickly and you will have a “drop it” that will just impress anyone who sees it.
So based on this, I hope that you've figured out the answer to our riddle. How are you going to get the person who doesn't speak your language to drop the basketball? Well, first you're going to say the words “drop it” and then you're going to throw the baby at him and then repeat. Hand him back the basketball and do it again. I have never actually done this experiment, but you can imagine that a normal person will learn very quickly “osh, when that weirdo over there says “drop it,” he then launches that child at me so my hands better be free. So that I can catch the kid”
Now I predict you have a question, which is “Annie, I'm not always going to have a wad of cheese or a roast beef on me to throw on the ground when I say “drop it” so it's not going to be useful for me to always have to do this exercise in this way.” Well that's the reason why it's really important that this be something that you practice every day, a few times a day. In order to make this association foolproof, you want to build a really rich history of it working. I had a teacher Parveen Farhoody who is an amazing trainer of trainers and she uses the term “mass” which I really like. You want this association to have a lot of mass to it. Because what'll happen is that odd time when your dog is on the street and has a chicken bone in his or her mouth and you say “drop it” and aren't backing it up with your delicious wad of cheese, your dog is still going to drop the thing, but it's going to, that one aberrant time is going to fade into his memory and won't leave a huge impression because it's just like a tiny grain of sand next to this huge massive sand pile you've created with each grain of sand being a successful repetition.
Remember how I pointed out earlier, most of us have had experiences with vending machines where we haven't gotten the candy or the soda we expected to get. I'm sure that's happened to me, but I haven't lost faith in vending machines and I don't think I could even tell you the last time that actually happened to me because the vast majority of the time vending machines have delivered.
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Teaching “come” is really the exact same process. Actually, the exercise I'm going to have you do is almost identical to the exercise for teaching “drop it.” If you have a dog who comes when he hears the refrigerator door open or the can opener or the doorbell or my mom's dog always comes running when she's in the yard and hears the car door open. In each of these cases, you already have a dog who has an amazing “come.” The cue is just perhaps not the cue that you were intending to use.
Again, when we're teaching “come” in this way, I don't really care how the dog gets to me. I don't care if she’s skipping or cantering, I don't care what she smells along the way or how many twigs she has to jump over. It doesn't matter. The association is the thing that I'm going for. Just like my mom's dog made the association that she needed to make herself present whenever she heard the car door open, even though it wasn't a behavior that my mom was specifically trying to train in that situation.
One way that I sometimes think about dogs learning to come in this way is to think about stores having sales. When a store announces a sale, their goal is to get you to the store. They don't care how you get there and the rewarding thing, the discounts, are there no matter what, whether or not you show up. So this is not like the claw machine, right? It's not like if you maneuver the claw in a specific way, if you come to the store by taxi and then twirl around three times and show up and say something nice to the store clerk, then perhaps you will have a chance at getting this good thing we're offering here.
Now of course we'll do, try and use that technique to get customers, you see that often on social media, right? Like if you tag five friends then you will be entered into this drawing where perhaps you will win something. But just like you see a lot more vending machines then claw game machines you tend to see a lot more people just throwing sales then you see stores requiring certain things in order to be eligible for a discount.
So when you're teaching “come,” it's kind of like you're throwing a crazy sale and it's happening no matter what and your dog is going to learn, “you know what? I better be near my person when she is saying “come” because that's when she tends to throw delicious stuff on the floor by her feet. So I need to benear her feet.”
Now I actually suggest teaching this kind of comment with something other than a word if possible. The whistle is a good tool for this. There is a great DVD that I will link to in the show notes called The Whistle Recall. But what's nice about a whistle is it's something your dog doesn't generally hear very much. It stands out from all other noises. It's a noise that can travel very far. Of course, in the beginning you're not going to be making your dog come from very far distances, you're going to be practicing this at rather close distances and actually I really like that a whistle recall DVD because it breaks down how to do it in tiny steps. But it doesn't have to be a whistle. It could be a clap. It could be just some sort of high pitched noise, but I suggested it be a noise that'll travel a distance and that's somewhat different than the words that generally leave your mouth.
When I give the sale analogy to my clients, I'm always reminded of these commercials that were on when I was a kid. There was a store called Crazy Eddie's and Crazy Eddie was this guy who would come on TV and he really seemed like he was having some sort of insane fit where he'd throw up his arms and yell and his eyes would bulge out of his head while he told you how his prices were insane and it really did kind of make you feel like, gosh, I better to that store because this guy's losing his mind and I want to be there while that's happening, to take advantage of the fact that he's basically just giving everything away. He wasn't saying, “Hey, if you come to my store, maybe I will give you a deal.” Which is how most people tend to teach “come” if I call you and you come, there is a chance I will give you something good. No, Crazy Eddie was saying, “you better get your ass over here because otherwise you're going to miss out” and that's kind of how you want your dog to feel, “Oh my gosh, I really got to get to my human now.”
So to teach “come,” again, this is something that you could be doing with your eyes closed as long as your dog is around. You are going to blow the whistle, or like I said, you can use a word if you want, but for the sake of a ease, let's say you're blowing a whistle. And then you're going to drop delicious treats at your feet. While your dog is eating those treats, I want you to move maybe three or four feet away and do the same thing.
When this gets really easy for your dog, I want you to blow the whistle, toss the treats at your feet, and then toss the treat maybe five feet away from you and go five feet in the other direction. What you're doing is resetting your dog so that he is now going to have to come a little ways towards you rather than, at first, when all he had to do was come maybe an inch or two towards you.
Blow whistle, drop treats. That's basically it. Of course, again, you're going to want to practice this in different rooms. You're going to want to have different people practice this with your dog and you're going to want to practice it a lot, especially in the beginning. The good news is this is so easy that when I say you need to practice this a lot, that really means only an investment of maybe 30 seconds to a minute per day, but I would try and do at least 10 reps a day.
Again, you're trying to build a lot of “mass” because there will be times when you call your dog and you won't be ponying up, but it's kind of like you will have put so much money into the bank account of this association that withdrawing a dollar or two is not even going to be noticeable to your dog.
I hope this has been helpful. I think that when you can kind of grasp this idea of teaching things using classical conditioning, you can come up with a lot of fun, new, easy ways to train things that can be quite useful. For instance, I have a client who's hard of hearing and she wanted her dog to come get her whenever the house phone rang. So we just had her start giving the dog lamb lung every time the phone rang, and this was something she could practice herself a few times a day. She would call her own phone, it would ring, she would give the dog lamb lung. She would call her own phone, would ring, lamb lung. The dog now very reliably runs to her the second the phone rings.
Another time I was training a dog for a play and we needed the dog to run over to the actor when he fell down to the ground as if he were dying. So prior to the show, I had the actor lie down on the ground and present the dog bacon and then lie down on the ground and give the dog bacon. And it did not take very long for the dog to figure out that as soon as this guy was lying on the ground, he better run to him because bacon was going to be given. There was only one performance of the show and during the actual performance, the dog did not actually get bacon, but we'd built enough of a history that we were certain he was gonna run to the guy even if bacon wasn't present.
Fun dog fact of the day or perhaps nerdy dog fact of the day: I've been talking about operant conditioning and classical conditioning as if they are two different things. But really all of it is operating conditioning. Classical conditioning is simply operant conditioning where the criteria for behavior is zero. It's like when you're thinking about classical conditioning, the only criteria is existence. Think about Pavlov's dogs. If they existed in the presence of the bell, then they got food. In the presence of a soda machine that has a coin in it. If you stand in front of it, simply existing, then you will get your drink.
I often talk in these kinds of terms with puppy owners in our Puppy Kindergarten classes, we are so conditioned as dog owners to always want our dogs to be doing something, well I'm only going to reward her if she's sitting or lying down. And so often in puppy class, right off the bat, people are saying, you know, “Stella, sit. Stella, down” And I'm always trying to make the point that before we get to the point of focusing on the dog's behaviors, I want the dog to just feel really good about being there. I want the dog to have nothing but good associations with being at school, being around other dogs. And it's again, just sort of that different approach to getting behaviors because, again, if we can get that dog just feeling really happy and relaxed and comfortable because of all the good things that they've experienced in the classroom, you're probably going to have a dog who is going to sit or lie down on her own without you even asking.
So when someone comes in and is asking their dog to do X, Y, and Z in that first or second class, when I'm so interested in just getting them to feel good about being there, I'll often go up and say, “Stella, exist.” “Stella, be cute.” I want to start with my criteria for behaviors at zero and then I can build up from there. But if the criteria for behavior is zero, it's kind of classical conditioning because I could be doing it with my eyes closed. I know that I am going to give her a treat because she is purely existing.
And our Woof Shout Out this week goes to Frank. Frank is just this absolutely gorgeous sort of brindled mixed breed. I think he's a part German shepherd, maybe part Malinois. I don't know. I'm sure I'm getting it wrong. I'm sure he's part of a million things, but he is just a joy to look at and just so wonderful to be around. You know, I remember, as a kid, noticing that some people and some, some kids were just more liked by everyone than others. Right? I think we, we all know people like that who are just magnetic, who are able to make friends in any social situation and are just universally well-liked. Anyway, Frank is a dog like that and we actually even sometimes use him as a kind of therapy dog because he's so good at playing with such a variety of dogs even if they're puppies or they're very shy or they're sort of aggressive players, he is able to alter his play style accordingly and it's a really special thing
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If you have been getting something out of this podcast, I really would love to hear from you. You can reach me at podcast@schoolforthedogss.com or you can direct message me on Instagram, say hello. Or if you have a dog training question. I do do roughly monthly Q and A episodes and I'm always looking for good questions to answer.
Oh, and I almost forgot special thank you to Toast Garden for their great cover of Time is on my Side. Toast garden is a ukulele cover band made up of a lovely couple named Lizzie and Bill who live in Tasmania. And if you check out the show notes, you can see them playing the song and see they're very adorable doggy, Max. You can find them on YouTube at youtube.com/toastgarden and I hope to be featuring more of their music soon.
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