Choosing the Right Equipment for Your Dog

Hello, dog peeps. Jack here. Just a quick one before we get into this episode. You may or may not be aware that when I'm not talking dog stuff with Max, I in fact interview people who are incarcerated in prisons across the United States on a show called One Minute Remaining Stories from the Inmates. And that show has been nominated for an award in America. And I would love your support if you've got 60 seconds to click the link in the show notes of this episode and just vote for my show. That would be amazing if you could. Thank you very much indeed. Oh, and don't forget to verify your email address. Otherwise, the vote does not count. Thank you.

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It's the Dog People Podcast with your host Jack Lawrence. Secretly, I decided to start this podcast for some free dog training advice. You know, Malinois seem to be like the dog at the moment. Like, I think people see them on Instagram doing these incredible things.

Yeah.

Go, oh my God, that's awesome. And then they get one like, oh my God, what the fuck? And Max O'Neill.

You would not believe how many people I meet And I go, what made you want to get, say, an Aussie Shepherd? They go, I don't know. I go, had you met one before? They go, no. If you want to ask me how often I walk my own dog a week, it's only twice a week.

It's the Dog People Podcast, a podcast hopefully giving you a no-nonsense approach to dog training so you never have to shout, it's okay, he's friendly. My name is Jack Lawrence, not a dog trainer, but that's why we've got Max O'Neill, the Down Under Dog Trainer. Of course, we are brought to you by the legends at Knows Pet Insurance. Max, it is a phenomenal company. In fact, the best part about it is it's Australian owned and operated. You can find out more, nose.com.au. That's K-N-O-S-E dot com dot au, issued by Pacific International Insurance. Today, Max, we're talking equipment when it comes to your pooch.

Yeah, it's, uh, we've obviously dived really deeply into one piece of equipment in particular, the e-collar, and that'll get a bit of a mention today. But we're going to do a bit of an overarching equipment chat about all the different types and pieces of equipment and sort of a bit of the role they play there. You know, and whatnot. And there's going to be two core concepts we want you guys to walk away really understanding well today because that's what's important. And then we'll also do a little mini series of each piece of equipment. We'll do a harness episode, a slip knot harness, etc.

Harnesses, harnesses are everywhere. Honestly, whoever's got the harnesses, the company with the harnesses with the Velcro names attached to the side of them are making a killing.

Yes, yes, yes.

I see around where I live, I'm literally probably the only person I've ever seen That doesn't have their dog on a harness with its name on the Velcro, which is— oh, I mean, I think they look cool. I don't have anything against them.

It's not my jam. And I also don't want everyone calling my dog when they walk past. Nelson literally has a collar that says fuck off. I'll post a photo in the group because you won't believe me, guys. But same. I don't want everyone going Nelson, Nelson. Like, far from it.

Yeah. No. And I mean, 99% of the time the dogs are also pulling like trains. So, but we'll talk about that when we get to the harness situation.

Yes, we will. So we want to have a bit of a chat today about, you know, equipment in general. And the 2 core concepts we want you guys to understand is pressure and leverage. Pressure being the amount of pressure it can put on a dog, as in, you know, how I'm really like, how uncomfortable it can make them feel so that our negative reinforcement works. If you don't know what I'm talking about by negative reinforcement, scroll down, go back and listen to that episode. We really dive deeply, but basically negative reinforcement is our dog turns off something uncomfortable as a way of rewarding themselves, like us stepping out of the bright sun and into the shade or things like that. So we want you to understand how, you know, the pressure is applied with equipment and why it sometimes works, why it doesn't, etc., and also the leverage that we may or may not gain by using certain pieces of equipment. And by leverage, I mean You know, how much control we have or how much control our dog has. Do they have the leverage or do we? So we'll kind of explore those concepts and go and go through that a bit more today. So when we look at firstly the way pressure's applied to our dogs is when either we or they or both of us pull on the equipment, pressure is applied to their body. And it's not always equal. Some of those pressures, if we look at the pieces of equipment from a harness to a collar, to a martingale collar, to a slip lead, to a prong collar, to a halti. Let's say those are our like main 6 pieces of equipment. Is how each one of them feels to our dog is very, very different, and then how they interpret and perceive it also is very different. For example, if we start with a harness, is the reason harnesses get such a bad rap is because our dogs don't give a shit about pulling into them despite how they get marketed is they just, you know, our dogs will happily pull through them and put all their force into it. And in fact, that's what they originally invented before. So it's kind of wild now that they're marketed as an anti-pull.

Well, I mean, yeah, cause I mean, you look at dogs who pull sleds, they're wearing a harness because it goes right around their shoulders where they can put the most pressure into it and it not actually hurt them. It doesn't go around their neck to pull anything. Cause, but, and the funny thing is there are literally harnesses that are advertised as harnesses to stop pulling. I'm like, that doesn't, like, you cannot advertise A harness as being a piece of equipment that will stop pulling. Its whole design was for pulling.

It's what it was made for. It's the biggest oxymoron ever. We actually— little side tangent story. So we used to provide— I'm not going to name the company, but you can figure out who— we used to provide dog models for a company. They would provide, you know, models for them, like, and it was really just like clients who had well-trained dogs or sometimes their own dog, whatever. And they asked me to sort of do some, oh, like Hey, can you just like sample this script so we can see how it looks? You know, we've got this, you know, script. Can you just like, you know, you've done lots of videos. We've just wrote it. Can we just see how it looks? I'm like, yeah, sweet. Okay. Do you mind if we record it? Yeah, sweet. Okay. So there I am sort of going, you know, just giving them a run through and they paid me, you know, pretty well for it. So I was happy to do it, but thinking it was just a test, just a sample to see how this stuff worked as in like whether the script was any good. So there I am going, this no-pull harness is the best thing ever. A bungee lead is the best thing ever. And then next minute I'm going down my newsfeed and go, that's me. And they started using those ads.

Oh, they should say the ones that you recorded.

Yeah, it turned into a whole big thing. And eventually it was going around, people like, hey, Max, I just saw you on my newsfeed. You told me last week to not use this.

There I am.

And it ended up being this absolute disaster and it took a while, but they're all down now. And that was a whole thing. But anyway, but so when we think of harnesses as a type of pressure, they provide a very low An even amount of pressure to our dog. If we think of how much fabric is on our dog, like there's straps underneath their ribs, in front of their shoulders, around their arms, around their neck, on their shoulder blades. So it means when they pull, all that pressure is distributed pretty evenly across, you know, a large portion of their body, which is why they're so happy to pull into it. Think of if we loaded up a backpack worth of books, you know, you have those 2 comfortable padded straps on your shoulders, you can load it up pretty heavily. Versus, I don't know, if you hung something like a thin rope over your shoulder that was attached to a bucket or something like that full of water, that'd be a lot more digging into your shoulder versus a backpack, etc. So that's the first thing to understand is like the way pressure is applied does feel very differently to our dogs. So that's why harnesses aren't the best tool for things like pulling, because our dogs will comfortably pull into it. But they are really good for Uh, frustrating a dog. In fact, when we do Nelson's protection work, we will put him into a harness just to intentionally piss him off. And it's always really interesting to see that my goal compared to a lot— most of my clients' goals— very different. I want to make Nelson more aggressive.

Yeah.

They want to make their dog less aggressive, but we do the exact same thing. We both pop our dog on a harness and pull back on them. So with, with the way pressure is applied to our dog's body is, unless it's enough pressure and enough discomfort that they actually want to back out of the behavior and go, oh, I can't handle that, I'm out, it actually fuels them up more. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

So if we pop Nelson on a slip lead and got him to pull to the end of it and try and, you know, go for someone, he'd go, oh, actually, no, I really don't like it, and slow down. Yeah, but yeah, but the, but the pressure being there sort of does piss him off more. And so it's the same, he's, you know, that's not just for Nelson, that's for all of your dogs. So when we then start to look at, okay, well, if a harness isn't the right tool, what's, what's for me? And I like to, I know it's probably not the most popular opinion. I know a lot of trainers think of this differently and advise against it, but I kind of almost categorize or rank tools and go, okay, well, if a harness doesn't work for you, we don't instantly go to the top to a prong or a halter. We start to go, well, if a harness doesn't work, let's go upwards from that. What's up from a harness is a collar. It's a bit further up our dog's body. It's only slightly more pressure. It's a little bit less attachment point. Um, it doesn't tighten or anything like that, and it's a bit further away from their centre of gravity, we go to a collar. But if your dog's still happily maxing out the pressure and happily pulling on a collar, well, same thing. We go, that's just going to have the same effect. Your dog's going to get frustrated. You can't apply enough pressure with that tool to make your dog uncomfortable enough to stop doing anything. So from there, the next step up is what's called a martingale collar. Do you know what a martingale collar is?

I have heard of them, but remind me.

Yeah.

So those ones that kind of have like, it's mostly a collar, there's generally like about 3 or 4 inches gap where there's some chain and it partially closes. So you can pull it shut, but it'll only ever go this far. So from there, a martingale collar, that'll just apply a bit more pressure again because it'll partially close. And again, for some dogs, they're really effective. That's enough pressure where they just can't handle. But on high drive dogs like Nelson or Kira, they could give 2 shits about it. They wouldn't bother them in the slightest.

Slip lead and Kira still will try and pull through that.

Yeah, that's it. She's a tough gal.

Yeah, she, she's Not fussed by that sort of stuff.

And that's it, is every dog will have a different line, like a tolerance line. And just know that if it's enough pressure that your dog can tolerate it, and if it's below that line where they can tolerate it, then it'll just actually activate them more in arousal. So, right, you know, we— when we're trying to make Nelson do something faster, we'll pop on like a collar and tug on that because it makes him go, okay, fine, like, I'll come back quicker, I'll sit quicker, I'll down quicker. Versus if we had equipment up from that, something that was really uncomfortable that he couldn't handle, it wouldn't make it necessarily quicker, if that makes sense.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

So upward from there, we've got a slip lead. A slip lead is, you know, as we know, most people use slip leads, is what actually fully closes. And again, we generally see like a thinner piece of equipment again that fully closes. So it applies more and more pressure. They're generally our tool of choice because they're just so versatile. You can Use it very gently. You can use it firmly. Um, yeah, I like slip leads a lot. They're easy to get on and off. Um, and again, if we kind of think of it as we're just moving further up the dog's body, we've gone from a harness on around their rib cage to a collar at the base of the neck, to a slip lead up high on the neck. And then upwards from there, if your dog's still ignoring the pressure of a slip lead, that's when you start to look at things like a prong collar, which is banned in Queensland. So I, I don't use them and I find I really don't meet many dogs who actually need them, if I'm really honest.

Yeah.

And then, you know, we up from there, we go to a halti. Haltis are, I don't know, haltis are a funny one too. Like they, when they're used right, they can be okay. I just feel like they really, really, really flatten a lot of dogs out. Like a lot of, you never see a dog looking overly pumped in a halti.

Yeah.

No, I mean, they always look particularly miserable. I see a lot of dogs with haltis on. That's the one. The other thing I see a lot, I see it's either harnesses or haltis.

Yeah.

That's it.

It's kind of both ends of the spectrum, right? That's not where we tend to operate. And yeah, I don't know, it's just I think there's a lot of nerve endings, a lot of blood vessels. It's a lot of pressure to put right there. And the reason why I'm not a huge, huge fan of them and don't use them heaps is because— and you know, if people do poor handling with a halter, that's probably the one with the least amount of forgiveness. Is, you know, if you really pull on a halter, the way that'll just crank their neck sideways and shit like that, I just— I don't, I don't, I don't really like. I'm not a, I'm not a huge halter guy, but They, for generally for most dogs, will apply enough pressure that the dog will really back out of doing, doing that thing. So—

It's amazing. You see, obviously, you know, you'll have someone who's anti-e-collar but will have their dog on a halti. And I think, yeah, my dog might be on an e-collar, but I'm not constantly like buzzing her with the e-collar. You've got that thing strapped to the dog's face, which can do very real damage, and it can be constant irritation of it on the face.

Yeah, that's it. You see them just rub their nose raw, and most people don't condition it. And the The irony is that like halties are like probably one of the most subversive tools, I'd say, if not the most subversive. But they're like a favorite with positive-only organizations. Like, yeah, you'll see people who are, you know, like, you know, training with a positive-only, they're positive-only themselves and they're wearing a Gentle Leader. That's a halting tool.

Yeah, I know the name Gentle Leader. I mean, if you Google damage done by Gentle Leader, you know, there's some really nasty things that have happened. But we say that about, you know, that's the thing. You know, a tool is only as good as the handler that's using it at the end of the day. You know, if anything can be, you know, we talk about haltis. Yes, they can be used badly. Yes, they can be used correctly. We're not sort of that keen on them because of Max giving those reasons, but it's the same with any tool. Any tool can be used incorrectly. So I'm not trying to sit here and have a go at people who use head haltis.

They certainly have a place, but for me, they're more of a last resort. And a lot of people do love them and a lot of organizations use them for every dog. And it kind of goes without saying is like, if all you carry around is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. So I just don't think that should be the first thing you reach for. I think that's almost to the point of being a bit of a last resort. I think if you find— and there's always another piece of equipment that your dog will respond to a bit better that just has less downside. So that's the first thing to understand is like how that pressure applies to our dog. You know, if it's not enough, it's just going to inflame and aggravate and annoy them and, and make things more likely to happen. But if you then, you know, have a tool that's above their line that they can tolerate, you can make things less likely to happen. But what you want to make sure is that you're suppressing certain behaviours in certain contexts, not sort of suppressing the individual. You don't want to just correct them for everything. So your dog goes, all right, screw it. I'll just, I'll just not do anything. I'll just walk around with my head down. Like, that's really shit. But it's about, you know, giving him feedback and putting enough pressure at the end of a behaviour. So they go, all right, I did that. It resulted in that. This is no longer worth it. That's essentially what you want them to, to take away from that when you're using equipment correctly. So that's, that's one side of it.

I'm just keeping an eye on my son who's currently outside with the dogs. I'm just making sure he's behaving. Not the dogs are behaving themselves, he's behaving himself.

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So, so jumping into the equipment chat again, we want to look at part 2. So in part 1, we looked at the way, you know, equipment works in terms of applying pressure and how dogs perceive that and sort of understanding a bit more about the way it works. The other thing I want to look at is leverage. So with equipment, we really want to pick one that, you know, we have more leverage over our dog. And leverage is just who is in a better physical position to take physical control. And ultimately, we need physical control over our dogs because we're intelligent. They're, you know, toddler-level intelligence. We have impulse control better than theirs. We know more about the world than them.

Like, I do sometimes think that Kira's a lot smarter than I am.

Yeah, every now and then it shows, clearly. And it's, you know, like it or not, we need control and leverage over our dog. So every dog is going to have a different size and different strength level. And some dogs you can control them with a, with a little harness, but some dogs that are bigger, stronger, you know, higher in drive, you really need to go up the scale in order to gain leverage over a dog. When we talk leverage, we'll get a little bit sciency for just a second, right? So Imagine this. Imagine you pull up to a farm and they've got one of those really big, long, wide gates that goes across the whole driveway, right? If you go and unlatch that thing and then you try and you push it open, and if you have the hinge all the way on your left where it opens and you push it all the way on the right, that thing should swing open nice and easily, right? Because you're as far away from the center of gravity— of its center of gravity.

Yep.

Or center of mass, and you've got maximum leverage. Now let's flip it the opposite. And if you don't get what I'm saying, go and try this on one of your doors at home. Is try and open it as close to the hinge as possible. It'll feel like it weighs a ton. Even the door here, if you try and open that all the way on the left and push it, and you're doing all the pushing right next to the hinge where it opens, as close as possible to the centre of gravity, is that thing will weigh a ton. And it's no different to our dogs. Our dog's centre of gravity is somewhere around their rib cage and their, you know, middle of their spine between the shoulder blades. That's their sort of center of mass. So when we attach to that with a harness that clips on the back, we have no leverage over our dog. They have all the leverage. If we try and pull on that to spin them around, we can't. If we try and pull on that to pull them back, we can't. They can really get down low and crawl and pull us, and we just have zero leverage over them.

Mm-hmm.

And same when we start to think of equipment again, is again, the reason I like to rank them is because I feel like it kind of makes sense, is if you can't get leverage with a harness, You move further up the body and further away from the center of gravity. So you go to a collar, which sits at the base of the neck. If at the base of the neck, which is a bit further away from the center of gravity, still can't give you leverage, you move upwards from there to say a slip lead, which sits at the top of the neck behind the ears, a bit further away from their center of gravity again. And if you still can't get leverage, that's when you start to move to something like a halter, uh, where you're as far away from your dog's center of gravity as possible. Like, you know, at the end of their nose, you can't get further from their center of gravity. That's so— that's another kind of concept we want to think of with, uh, with our leverage. And then I guess where e-collars sit on that is if still with one of those pieces of equipment that doesn't work, that's where an e-collar can, you know, really help you bypass that. Is you might only use a collar, but you kind of sync the e-collar pressure that it applies, the stim, with the With the flat collar. So that's how that kind of ties in as well. But that's just another important thing to understand. The reason why harnesses are a pretty ineffective training tool for training your dog to stop doing stuff is because you, you get no leverage, and they learn that very quickly.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, they aren't stupid.

They're not stupid at all. They're pretty dialed in. But that's our equipment chat. We'll have a bit of a chat, um, about each one and the role it plays. We'll do like a little mini series as well. But that was just kind of 2 overarching topics I want you guys to understand is The pressure and leverage of equipment. It's certainly the way I think about it. I think of equipment a little bit differently to most people. Again, if you follow other trainers online, they'll probably say don't think of equipment as like ranking them or tiering them or, or, you know, ordering them or anything like that. Think of them having their own individual thing. And I think for dog trainers, sure, that makes sense. For me and for you guys, I don't think that makes much sense. I think it's better to think of them kind of stacking them or ordering them like that. Um, But yeah, let me know what you guys think. Comment maybe in the group and let us know what equipment you're using and let us know if it's working for you and we can make some recommendations.

Yeah, absolutely. That'd be great. So make sure you check out the Dog People Podcast on Facebook, get your questions in there and we'll get them answered for you. The Dog People Podcast is a Mashed Pumpkin production hosted by Jack Lawrence and Max O'Neill.

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