Dog Training Showdown: Jack Challenges Zac George’s ‘Opt Out’ Method

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. 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 I get one like, oh my God!

What the fuck? I don't.

And Max O'Neill.

If you want to ask me how often I walk my own dog a week, it's only twice a week.

It is 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, friendly. My name is Jack Florence. Of course, as always, joined by Max O'Neill, the dog trainer from the Down Under Dog Trainer, the man in the know with everything when it comes to dogs and. Max, I've had a— I've done a bit of a boo-boo, a boo-boo, a thing that I don't usually like to do, and that is go on the internet and get in a back and forth with someone on the internet. But I have chosen someone who's—

You went after one of the big dogs.

Yeah, pun intended. So we want to discuss this because we're talking about a gentleman by the name of Zak George. Now, for those of you who are well versed on, you know, dog trainers online, You probably will have heard of Zach George. Those of you who haven't, he is an American dog trainer and he is very much from the world of positive only. So he doesn't believe in any form of adversiveness when it comes to training, not even telling your dog no. To him, Max, saying no or anything like that is—

Well, we should actually beep that word out on this podcast out of respect. It's a pretty— no is a pretty offensive word.

He's not keen on that. It's all about treats. It's all about positivity. And look, saying from the outset here, this is not an episode where we're just planning on bashing Zak George and his opinion on dog training and anything like that. We do disagree with his viewpoint and the way he trains dogs. But I just want to talk about something that popped up in my newsfeed, in my Instagram feed, a video of him training a dog that made me go, I just don't think this is great advice to be handing out to people. But of course I'm not an expert. So I wanted to bring it to you and say, look—

Absolutely.

Let's unpack it. Okay. So what we'll do is first of all, I'm going to play you the audio from the reel. We'll put a link to the actual reel in our show notes of this episode, and we'll talk you through what's going on. But essentially, he's standing in a very big open field. There's not really anything around, and he's training what looks to me like a German Shepherd.

Yeah, we'll call it a German Shepherd for the sake of the video.

And he's doing a bit of training, and at one point the dog sort of loses interest, shall we say, in what they're doing and spots something in the distance. From what I can see, it looks like there's a road. Actually, what I can see is a A bloke with another dog. So he spots a bloke with another dog, and this is kind of what happens from there.

Didn't release him there. Some people would correct this. I don't believe in doing that. I believe in letting him observe these things, and when he gives me his attention voluntarily, or I inspire him to give me his attention, then we can resume. But it's important to let dogs opt out as well. Or else you risk really creating unnecessary frustration, which will hold you back. Yes. Allowing your dog to opt out is going to help you build trust and keep your training sessions positive. Dogs who are given autonomy like this and rewarded for choosing to reengage with you on their own are going to be more focused. They're going to be more motivated and cooperative in the long run.

So, so he's doing this video with the dog. The dog opts out and he's sort of saying that, you know, you should allow your dog to opt out basically from your training. And if they want to look at something else, they look at— they can look at something else. And then eventually, if you can inspire them, the words he used, to get back involved with your training, that will build a stronger relationship. Now, from my limited knowledge, obviously I am very new to this whole thing, only a couple of years of, you know, learning about dog training. And as someone who has had with Kira, a dog that is very prey-driven, high prey drive, would chase anything that moved fast and would, in his words, opt out from me.

Yep.

I said to him, In my comments, I'm like, so a deer, cat, rabbit, etc., runs past and your dog decided to opt out and runs off after it. What then? But he actually ended up responding to me and he gave his response.

So, his response was, build up your reinforcement history in situations where you're still able to keep your dog safe, like hiking while on a long lead. Don't remove those safety nets until you have many instances of success in a variety of situations and environments. When you are confident your dog won't opt out after a rabbit because you have experienced them— weird English— successfully navigating similar situations consistently, then you're ready. But if you're still concerned your dog might choose to chase a rabbit instead of come when you call, you have some more work to do. Let's break it down. Let's break a little bit of the video down. Let's break Jack's question down. Let's break Zach's response down and sort of unpack it all. So in the video, which again is linked in the comments, we encourage you to go watch it and then you can understand what we're talking about. You can see he's working with the dog and the dog continues, like checks him out or checks out from him. And then Zach will kind of wait for the dog to check back in and mark and reward it and kind of do that sort of thing. Look, there's nothing like wrong, wrong with it. Like with his comment, you can sort of look at it from 2 perspectives. Yes, you should definitely give your time unengaged. For me, I think some people spend so much time on engagement that I'll watch some people go to a park, keep their dog engaged the entire time, and let— and then go home. And I do think, like, I get there's a purpose for that, and we'll do engagement sessions where that's all we need because we're training for a sport where we're going to show Nelson that picture. Hey, we're going to arrive at a field one day, you're going to give me total engagement for an hour, and then we're going to leave. So we very intentionally practice that sort of thing. But just before coming to the studio right now, uh, we also practice a bit of both. Hey Nelson, engage with me, do some stuff, go do your thing. And we kind of kept a nice rhythm of that. And sometimes I think when we train our dog, we focus on the behavior so much that we about the ethology of the animal or that, you know, the wellbeing and their needs and things like that. So from that perspective, I agree with Zac. You need to let your dog opt out and check out occasionally. But I think the way he does it is crap, is letting your dog choose when to do so is a really bad pattern.

He says at the start, he goes, didn't release him there, but he's chosen to opt out. It's like, so yeah, hold on a second. If we're training, that's what we're doing. When we're not, I agree with you because I do it with Kira. I call her here, we do some training, then I say free, then she can go do whatever you want. Go sniff that, go do that. Because I said, I don't need you right now.

Exactly.

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I don't like letting the dog opt out or check out, um, of their own volition. I like to let them release them to their environment. Hey, you can go now. And the reason we've got to do that, again, people might go, oh, that's a bit much. But again, our dogs have got the intelligence of a 2 or 3-year-old at best. Quite often the dog, a lot of dogs, I assume it's much lower. And they've got nothing in their instincts that tells them what a moving bus is, what broken glass is, what an electric fence is, what a cane toad is, all this stuff that can hurt them. So if we let our dog just check out and do their thing, they're either going to hurt themselves, they're going to hurt someone else, they're going to upset someone, ruin their day. So letting your dog just opt out whenever you want is really not a good pattern of behaviour to get into, because especially like in that video, If that dog's opting out and checking out in like the most low-stakes environment, big open empty field, one dog 100 meters away or whatever, if your dog's gonna get in that rhythm of doing it then, in a much more high-stakes, uh, environment with a lot more going on, more competing motivators, more distractions, just more general intensity of the environment at large, is if your dog's doing it there, they're definitely doing it there. So it's just kind of a crap pattern to get into. And his whole thing of, you know, you've got to build a better bond, like all this sort of language of inspire the dog and build a better bond through doing Letting him do this stuff, it's all just a bit wishy-washy. You build a bond through doing stuff with your dog and meeting their needs, sure, but letting him just check out for you isn't really going to do that. I mean, and case in point, I don't know how long he's known that dog or how long he's worked for that dog. Let's assume it's a first session. Let's give him that grace and go, look, maybe it's his first time meeting that dog. The dog does not look remotely interested in him. I can tell him— I can tell you from people who, like myself, who know how to really motivate a dog and get them going. The dog looks a lot more into us in that first session than that dog does there. And if that's like his 5th or 10th session with that dog and it's still barely looking a bit of the interesting, well, then we're kind of going, well, training's really not that effective. So that's, that's the video. So then Jack questioned, well, what if a deer, cat, rabbit, et cetera, runs past and your dog decides to opt out and runs after it? What then?

And, uh, from experience, I know, I know what then. And he's saying, you know, well, put them on a long line. And I know what happens when you have a dog that decides to opt out on something he wants to chase and it's on a long line. Yeah, they get to the end of that long line eventually and it ain't good.

Exactly. And that's kind of the thing there, like where he shows in that video, and we will unpack the technique a little bit. He just kind of lets a dog sit there at the end of the leash now, and he doesn't really do much. Like I said, he doesn't believe in correcting that behavior, trying to change a dog's course of action or anything like that. And that's cool in that situation. It works okay for him there because the dog wants what's at the other end of the lead. 1 out of 10 intensity. Let's just say that dog wanted that thing at 10 out of 10 intensity. One of a couple of things is going to happen. One, either that dog is going to run and hit the end of the leash so hard that— although Zacky boy doesn't want to use an aversive— a dog hitting the leash at full force on a long—

Serious aversive.

And you're holding your ground, if you don't let the leash go, is like as aversive as it gets. Like, you see dogs collapse their tracheas that way. Or if the dog gets to the end of the leash, doesn't hurt herself, and you just continue to let it go there, you're going to build up a massive frustration thing. In fact, I can tell you, and we'll put up a video on the group, that's how we built Nelson's bite.

Absolutely.

We put him on a long lead and we stand out of reach and go, haha, you can't catch me, you can't reach me. And that— and if I can tell you, in that moment when I'm standing behind Nelson and Nelson's trying to bite Casey, his decoy trainer for all the bite work stuff, is if I stood there with a treat and tried to You know, call him back to me or wait for him to come back to me, it wouldn't happen. Okay, so that's kind of the video, and that's what Jack means— what happens if that happens? And, and it's a rightful question to ask because, okay, this technique that you're pushing is quote unquote working well in a quiet environment, but as soon as something high stakes coming along is, it's really not going to do all that much. So then his response was, you know, build up your reinforcement history. Basically get the reps in and then move back up to that. But the problem being is with your training approach, you've got to be balanced. If you're just focusing on reward, reward, reward, and your dog is simply choosing the most valuable thing in that moment, is that's going to work right up until there is something more valuable than what you've got to offer.

Like chasing a deer or a rabbit or something. Yeah.

Your dog might go, hey, look, you're offering me this thing.

Get your cheese, mate. I'm going for the rabbit.

Exactly.

Everything you're offering is a simulation of that, that is the real deal. I'm good, I'm gonna take that. So part of having a balanced training approach that's actually effective is learning to take things off the menu, so to speak. Hey, there is a rabbit over there, but you're not chasing it. Yeah, there is a person who wants to give you pats, you're not going to them. There is a dog, but boom, is you gotta, you gotta put that off there because otherwise, again, the dog might go, yeah, I know you've got a bag of cheese, I don't care. This is a competing motivator. It's motivating me more strongly than you can, and I'm good. And that's kind of the pitfalls we see more of this force-free sort of approach fall into, is it works very well in theory, but we see people tend to have a very low glass ceiling where the dog's amazing and engaging, can do all this stuff in a quiet field. The moment there's something else in the environment, quite often it just doesn't happen.

So, I mean, like, I, I am coming from this at an angle of someone who has dealt with a dog within, as I've already said, with an insane prey drive. Like Kira, her prey drive, you know, it started with, with birds. Then we sort of tackled the bird thing. Then it went to something else. It was, I think bikes became the next thing.

Yeah.

And then eventually at one point, and we'll talk about this in another episode, it turned into a motorbike going down the highway. What frustrates me about Zak's response there is it's really not a response. It's not, it's really not saying, hey, this is what you should do in that situation. He's literally just saying, build up your reinforcement history in situations where you're still able to keep your dog safe. But you're not giving me anything there because as you've already stated, one, if he's, you know, he's saying go out on a hike and stuff like that. And okay, maybe I might come across a deer. Okay. So using your technique there where you say, allow the dog to opt out.

You'll be stood there all day waiting for an opt back in.

Yeah, exactly. It will just be trying to get away from me off the leash to try and chase that deer. So at no point is this dog learning that we don't do that. It's literally just going to keep pulling and pulling and pulling until either such time as that deer is out of sight or I pull it away.

Simple as that. It's just, yeah, exactly. You could go and do that advice for to the end of time. You will likely never get that result because it's all this, your dog will choose. You put your dog in a situation where you're the most valuable thing and there's no competing motivators. But then you're never actually addressing the elephant in the room of, hey, something that day there's going to be something more valuable. Is I could sit here all I want and go, Jack, if you look at me, I'll give you $5. I'll give you $5 every time you look at me. And we sit here in our studio.

Cool.

It's going to go brilliantly. But the moment $50 blows along, I go, hey, don't you want to look at me and get your $5? You go, well, I'm going to get my $50.

Yeah.

Like, it's, it's as simple as that. So yeah, it's, it's just one of those things that just kind of highlights again how limited that approach is. And we actually spoke about this last night in class, like the way these kind of force-free or plus R trainers or whatever you want to call them kind of train is our starting place. We go, yeah, of course we teach everything like that. Like if you saw our puppy class or if you see the way we teach things to dogs, you would go, oh, it's force-free. But the problem with that is all you create is a dog who knows how to do stuff but doesn't do it. They're like, oh cool, I'll do it if there's nothing else going on. I'll do it in the lounge room.

Yeah.

But there's no level of compliance or must-do associated. So that's what we call our teaching phase. And we've done a whole podcast on this. So we encourage you to go back and look at the 4 stages of learning video where we break that down. But yeah, you'll, and you'll really discover pretty quickly. That's why there's limitations associated with that training style.

Yeah. I mean, I was out with Kira the other day and we were training and this dog came sort of racing over and this lady's calling it back, calling it back. And she was shaking something. I'm like, what's she shaking? Anyway, so she eventually comes over and she's like, oh, I'm sorry. You know, I've got her treats, but she's not listening because Kira, to her, who was running around getting excited around me, was a far bigger motivator than this bag of treats that this woman had. I mean, but, and that's the thing, unless you use at some point some aversives to say, no, that's not what we do. Then simply shaking a bag of treats, if the thing that they want is more valuable than that shitty bag of treats, they're not going to listen.

Exactly. It's just so funny how, like, how people really model code to their dogs and get so worried about saying no. It's like, you don't see parents walking around with a bag of Nutri-Grain shaking at their kid going, hey, come back.

Like, some you do.

Some you do.

Wait till your kid's in school. There is, there is some parents who also do not believe in any aversiveness towards their children.

There is a whole world I'm yet to discover.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Looking forward to that one. All right, so, uh, there we go. So yeah, I just wanted to clear that one up because again, I am in no way a trainer, and I never like to try and pretend that I know what I'm talking about, which is why I bring these things to you. I should not have commented in Zach's comment section. I couldn't help myself. It was a weak moment. But I also think that we need to hold all trainers accountable, not just the quote unquote balanced trainers or aversive trainers, whatever you want to say. But I think these force-free trainers, the ones who say that there should be no nos and it should all be treats and hugs and cuddles, they also need to be questioned on that and say, well, look, hold on.

Provide evidence that it works, which there is very little. Very little to none.

And that being said, if you've got any questions, as always, jump in the Facebook group and we will get them answered for you. The Dog People Podcast is a Mashed Pumpkin production hosted by Jack Lawrence and Max O'Neill, edited, produced, and audio production by Jack Lawrence.

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