Everything I Got Wrong With My reactive Dog (And the System I Use Now)

Hi everyone. You don't get a fancy studio this week because I'm currently in at the Sunshine Coast. Just delivered a seminar for 70-odd dog trainers and we're just due to fly down to Melbourne to deliver another seminar for another 50-odd dog trainers. And so yeah, we don't have the bells and whistles today, but I will tell you is I do have a video for you today that tells you all about my story and my journey as a dog trainer, what I learned, in the early days, what I did wrong, what I did right, where I sit now in terms of my methodology. And on the back end of that, I give a step-by-step solution to fix your dog's reactivity, create a well-fulfilled dog, create a happy dog, an obedient dog, just like all of my dogs and the thousands of dogs I've trained over the last 10 years or so. So hope you enjoy it, and I'll see you in the next video or the next one. I'm on my holidays, but we don't wanna stop the content, So see you soon.

I'm just gonna tell you kind of the journey I've been through as a dog trainer over the last 9 years or so. And some of you might relate to it. Gonna kind of try and frame it so I can better explain how I feel and how I go about training dogs, which has dramatically changed from when I first started. And frankly, even like 18 months ago. And so of course for all of us, things are ever-changing. We're always learning new things. 9 years ago I got a dog, a dog from the pound, a dog that's very similar to a lot of the dogs we see over here. It's like a Staffy cross Shepherd. So I got him from the pound at a very young age, so he's a rescue, not a rescue, cuz he was 10 weeks old at the time. And I was in university at the time, I was studying part-time, I was playing sport part-time, and I was also working part-time as well. Nothing to do with dogs, I knew nothing about dog training. Had dogs all my life, thought I'd be absolutely fine. And as things kind of developed, 6, 7, 8, 9 months mark, started showing a little bit of reactivity. And you might have heard this story on our channel or podcast or anything like that. I really love this dog. I've still got him to this day. I thought he was the best thing in the world, but he didn't have a really— he didn't have a great life. He didn't have a great life because his behavior didn't allow him to have a great life, right? So I'm trying to walk the dog, he's trying to like beat everyone up. Social with people, but dog problems started coming in thick and fast. And again, something that might be relatable to you guys.

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At first it was just black dogs, and then it was male dogs, and then it was any dog bigger than him. And eventually it was all dogs. And so I wasn't able to take him anywhere eventually where there was other dogs, and we started this catch-22, never-ending cycle whereby his behavior was getting worse, other dogs were becoming more novel. We were seeing dogs once in a blue moon because we were hiding away from dogs, and when a dog come along, all these like bottled up feelings were getting expressed towards other dogs, right? And then that closed his world, it closed my world down. And so on and so forth. So I did like the really sensible thing and got another dog, right? So I got a second dog, probably one of the worst dogs I could have added into the picture, and it was an overseas rescue, like Romanian street dog, like genetic mess, no backbone, shepherdy kind of mix cross. And while them two got along fine, I was like, great, I'm gonna get him a friend so he can get used to dogs. Obviously that will get rid of his his behavioral issues. But very quickly I just ended up with 2 reactive dogs that I couldn't take anywhere, right? So really poor choices early, early doors. So I get the second dog and she develops the reactivity. She's kind of like scared of everything. She's, she's also reactive and you'd probably consider her aggressive to dogs and people. Uh, she bit me a couple of times, she bit my friends kind of redirecting and things like that. And yeah, so I had 2 dogs, very small world to the point that you know, it was up at 5 AM, taking them down to the park, trying to play ball, constantly looking out if there's going to be another dog. They're on long lines, they're on flexi leads, and it's just a hell of a lot of stress there, right? I take her out one day, I go on like holiday to somewhere like dog friendly, supposed to be secluded, it's not. And trying to walk these dogs, trying to stay in this like dog-friendly hotel or motel, and it was just the worst weekend of my life. Darla, the second dog, actually come along and she passed a dog one day and she just turned around and bit my leg. And I was just like, fuck this, like, this can't go on. And I was never going to get rid of either of the dogs, so I reached out to a dog trainer. So employed a dog trainer for the first time. Granted, it was far too late. It was far too late. If I was sensible, I should have got someone in Early doors. But as we all know, the internet can lie to us and tell us everything's gonna be fine. And if we just do X, Y, and Z, our dog's gonna be sweet. And this is why I have a big fucking aversion to Zach George, 'cause he lied to me. And so employed this dog trainer. We do 3, 4 sessions and I'm working both the dogs. Darla was the main problem because she was being aggressive towards me. So I was like, I need to sort this problem. I can deal with Ranger. I can get up at 6 AM. I can walk him at 10 PM. I can avoid things. But Darla, if another dog come along, I was gonna get bit. And it was just progressively getting worse. With each bite, there was more blood drawn, and so on and so forth. And again, didn't wanna get rid of either of the dogs. So I employed a dog trainer. There was a lot of negative reinforcement. There was no food or toys allowed. Very compulsion-based. And at the time, I thought this was the magic solution because it was the opposite of what I'd been told to do. So I would just be told to like loads of food, loads of toys, keep it a distance, work the proximity, welcome in, so on and so forth. And while on occasion there is value in that, and again, I'm sure we'll come on to it, it just wasn't working. I'm sure many of you have been there before in the past. And so went over to this trainer, a lot of compulsion work, we're putting a lot of pressure on the dogs. And Ranger, the first dog could deal with the pressure. Very sturdy dog, very resilient dog, like tough boy. And you could tell him he wasn't allowed to do things, or he had to do certain things, and he would take it in his stride. And he's still very much like that to this day. Darla, however, while her behavior got better and she bit me less, it didn't do anything to improve how she perceived the world and how she truly felt. I was in this internal dichotomy where, where I was exposed to training that was effective but my dogs weren't as happy, versus dogs that were potentially happy but acutely happy, e.g., no pressure on them. They were still really bad, but they weren't robots.

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If you've got any questions, you let me know. I'll see you in there. Anyway, at the time I thought, right, this is how you train a dog. So you train a dog, you have to show them who's boss. Very compulsion-based, no food, toys allowed. Everything was done with negative reinforcement. Wasn't actually all that much punishment, which I really want to talk about as we go through the week. And the dogs were in, in behavior constantly. They were always being told what to do. They're in a sit, they're in a down. They're in a loose lead walk. We never covered recall. It was under the premise that, you know, if the dogs can't walk on a lead and they can't be reactive, they've got to earn their right to, to be taught recall and experience freedom and so on and so forth. I was really into the training at the time because of it had this amazing reinforcing effect in that I could start doing things with my dogs, right? I could start actually walking them, I could start passing other dogs. I could start taking them places, which is great, but in the back of my mind, I knew they weren't as happy as they probably should be as dogs. And I used to look at the old them and go like, huh, you were like, you did seem happier then, although your behavior was awful. And now you, your behavior is better, you don't seem the same dog as what you used to be. At the time, I, I said that to the trainer I was working with. I was like, it's working right, but "Also, I'm not sure the dogs are in the best place mentally." And he's like, "It's fine. They gotta know who's boss. This is dog training. This is real dog training. Everything you've been told has been a lie in the past. It's just fugazi fugazi. It's social media. Don't believe an ounce of it. That's just Zach George telling you things so he can sell treats online." And I'm like, "Yeah, you know what? You're totally fucking right." And I bought in 100%. Like I said, at the time I was working part-time, I was playing sport part-time. And I was studying part-time, but I really liked this journey I was going through with my dogs. And like I said, it was so reinforcing to me that I wanted to get into it. And I'm sure, like a lot of you have been there, your baptism by fire. You got a dog, they were a shithead, you had to work through it, you enjoyed the experience, you enjoyed the journey, and it kind of triggers something in your brain to ask questions like, what else can I do? What more is there? So I was ready to give up everything I was doing in life, and I actually applied for the military. I applied for the military in the veterinary corps, 'cause I was like, I just wanna work with dogs. Like, fuck this. I don't like my studies. I was studying to become a barrister at the time. Every decision and choice academically I made from 12 years old was to line me up to go and be a criminal barrister. There was a massive fulfillment element of working with the dogs that I wasn't getting from doing the other things. So I was ready to can it all. It so happens at that time that I had a session booked in with the trainer I was working with. I mentioned it to him. I said, yeah, I've loved this, it's been great, dogs are way better, I've loved it so much, I'm ready to throw away everything I've ever worked for and I want to work with dogs. And at that time he said to me, why don't you come work for me and just don't get shot at? And I was like, that's amazing, I'll do that instead. So he offered me a job, uh, minimum wage at the time, which was like £16,000 And there and then I said, "Yep, 100%, I'll do it. I'll start Monday. Like, whatever you need. This is what I want to do. This is truly what I want to do." And I remember ringing my family, my mum, my dad, my grandparents that had helped me out get there. To put me through university, my parents sold everything they had, all the way down to their jewellery. My dad literally dropped me off at university, and on the way to the accommodation, he stopped by the pawn shop and sold the jewellery off his hands and a phone and everything and give me all the cash he had. And so I was like year 4, year 5, going through university, and I had to turn around to them and say, I'm throwing it all away, sorry, but that's not what I want to do. They were pretty good about it. Obviously they had some questions. They didn't think it was a real job or anything like that. They thought, you know, people can't make a living off training dogs. And so from there, I've always had a like a, I'll fucking show them, in my head. But it was what I wanted to do. I wasn't happy doing what I was doing at the time. And so I started working as pretty much like a kennel assistant, and it was just handling dogs. It wasn't working with any clients. I'm very grateful for the experience I had. Once you're bound to like limitations with a dog, e.g. a slip lead and praise, you get pretty good at working through problems, um, with people but also dogs. And there was a lot of dogs coming up the lead There were a lot of dogs that were rightfully frustrated because they weren't being told what to do. There were a lot of dogs that weren't as robust as my first dog Ranger that were kind of struggling, and it, it made me very good at like thinking on my feet. Worked there for 3 years, worked as a kennel assistant for like maybe 6 months. He had a member of staff leave and he was like, right, you need to go and work with people and train dogs. And he like threw me in the deep end, essentially. Again, something I'm very grateful for because it was like a sink or swim. There wasn't any option. I didn't have the experience to work for myself. And I'll fully admit now, there's a lot of dogs in hindsight that I probably didn't do, didn't do right by. And that was starting to eat away at me, which again, I'll come on to. So 3 years down the line, I actually worked up to be a shareholder in that company, and I actually went on to earn quite a lot of money. I had like my own franchise of the business. At the time, I was starting to look at other trainers in the industry, which was really taboo where I was working. So I was looking at Sportdog Trainers, I was looking at Michael Ellis. I was, I was an avid listener of The Canine Paradigm. I was, you know, constantly on YouTube looking at the Leerberg stuff, and I've seen all these dogs getting trained with food and toys, and they're like super motivated, and they were super well behaved, but Their tails were up, their chests were up, their ears were up. They were, they were really keen on working with the handler, and I wasn't seeing that where I was working. I was seeing the dogs, they were well behaved, but they were flat. They were flat and they were doing everything kind of out of duress. And it started like setting off these alarm bells, but unfortunately where I worked at the time, it was a bit of like an echo chamber whereby the way we were training dogs was the only way to train dogs, and You have to remember you were lied to. Treats don't work. Food doesn't work. Remember, you've tried that shit. You know it doesn't work. And so I probably stayed there longer than I should have. And again, it was a crossroads in my life where I was like, I know I'm financially stable now. I'm a dog trainer. I'm doing what I wanted to do. But again, back of my mind, the dogs weren't getting trained, not only to the level I believe they could be trained,, but again, I had like ethical concerns. And by all means, we weren't like dog daddying the dog and like throwing them around and shit like that. But I believed in my heart of hearts that the dogs could have been a lot happier and achieved the same results in terms of the reliability in behavior and so on and so forth. I started getting like this itch to learn more outside of what we were doing. And every time I presented it to my boss, I was like, why don't we just introduce a little bit of food here with puppies or whatever? Let's start showing them what to do. No, no chance. We're not doing that. It doesn't work. He was super old school. He's like a German Shepherd breeder. I don't like to bag him out. I never mention who it is. He gave me an opportunity, which I'm very grateful for. I had the baptism by fire. I learned how to handle a leash very, very quickly, and that still helps me to this day. But I started with my own clients starting to sneak in food and clickers and toys, and one day I, um I'm training a dog and I fall over a tire and I fall over and I twist my ankle and it puts me out of action for like a week or two. And he had to bring other trainers to cover my, uh, to, to, to cover my sessions because we were just super busy. And there's people like rocking up with treat pouches and, uh, clickers and toys and things. And, uh, he calls me up one day and he's like, uh, yeah, what's all this about? I'm like, fuck's sake, I've just been disciplined for trying to, you know, make my methods or try and add some versatility into what we're doing. And so we had further discussions on that, and he said, hey, no, that's not how we do things. You're familiar with Keeler methods? Again, from knowing what I know now, it was very much kind of down that avenue. And so again, I was still kind of doing that, but I was trying to add in food and toys as well to try and like bring the dogs up. Anyway, things come to a head where, you know, I— it was just eating away at me over time. I was seeing dogs that were let down. I was seeing dogs that could have really benefited from being motivated, but I didn't have any proof of it because when I wasn't allowed to do it and I'd never seen it happen in real life. And so I was like, this, this again, this internal dichotomy whether I wanted to throw away what was a really decent career opportunity to go and like take the next steps. And I thought, well, fuck it, it worked before, I'm going to do it again. So I ring him up one day and I'm like, mate, I'm out, I'll sell my shares back to you. I sold probably a couple of hundred thousand worth of shares for £25, which obviously stung a bit, but I knew hopefully that in 3, 4, 5 years' time it would pay its dividends, in which it did. And so I left, and then I had a period of about 6 months where I just had to learn as much as I possibly could about training dogs different ways, like learning about play, learning about toys. I read every single book, I listened to every single podcast, I bought every single course, and my money ran out. And I was like, right, I need to start my own business, I need to start, uh, making money. And so I started the Yorkshire Canine Academy. I very quickly brought on a friend who you might be familiar if you'd listen to our podcast or anything like that. His name's Kirkie, and Kirk, the big fella, who so happened to have a qualification in canine behavior, um, but no, no experience whatsoever. And so I took a couple of clients from my last business that were working with me and started the Yorkshire Canine Academy. We started renting out a field, which we currently still rent. It was like £350 a month, and we started training dogs. And, and to be honest, I went through a period there of kind of winging it a little bit. So we started kind of charging markers, using more food But ultimately still resorting back to how I was training dogs because that's where my strengths lied. I had so much rehearsal and practice of it that it was still like this really shit Teemu version of Nay Popo, if I'm honest. So we sat there for maybe a year, 18 months. I started experimenting with my dogs, my nervous rescue dog Darla. Started doing like box work, box feeding with her, saw a massive improvement with her. I was doing a lot of counter conditioning with, with the clicker, doing like successive approximation to her going and touching people, and very quickly we were starting to like turn corners. Ranger really has always been a good boy. Like I said, the more compulsion style of training suited him a little bit because he's a little bit more robust, but again, I was seeing more dogs like Darla that needed a a more like careful approach and probably needed to be motivated a little bit more and, and shown what to do before we started like trying to essentially just smash things out of the dogs, right? So we sat there for a little while, then we took a little bit of a break and we're like, right, okay, we're, we're still not doing as best as we possibly can be for the dogs, for the clients we're working with. And so we continue to educate ourselves. And then our training, after a few seminars, our training then did kind of transform to a more Napopo style, like building the motivation, a really solid marker system, uh, using pressure to bring the dogs into behaviors, the paying them out of behaviors, which, uh, still has a massive influence on how I train dogs today. And again, it sat there for a little while. Now, strangely, the first trainer I worked with and my first kind of training was very compulsion-based, as I've mentioned. But other than a slip lead, tools were not allowed either. So there was no prong collars allowed, there was no e-collars allowed. So I had very little experience with prong collars and e-collars. I think that was to protect, like, the brand's reputation. I think he was a little bit reserved in kind of pushing that forward to clients and so on and so forth. And it was something they occasionally used, but you'd have to go to the, the head trainer, the guy who owned the place, and he would, behind closed doors with the owner, slip a tool on the dog and just use it as Thor's hammer and, and try and smash certain things out of the dog where nothing else worked. And, um, that's how I thought about tools, is like a last resort. If the dog's bad enough, we're gonna then use the heavy hands, use the spiky death collars, use the zappers to try and like fry it out of the dog, right? And so I had then aversion to using tools too. But like I said, we're probably in year 5 or 6 now. Through NapoPo seminars, courses, and so on and so forth, started to better understand tools and how we can use them proactively so we don't let certain behaviors build and cultivate into dogs. So spent a lot of time not with my clients but with my own dogs and so on and so forth, learning how to condition tools, how to condition the e-collar, and, and very quickly we started using them a hell of a lot more. How I understood punishment was wrong as well. Um, and again, I'm gonna spend a whole morning or afternoon talking about how I now understand punishment and how I believe it should be used. The next thing that kicked on is I went and got a sport dog. So I was looking at all these sport trainers, looking at all these sport trainers like Michael, like Pat, and I was just amazed at how they could do these things with these dogs. How they could have this level of control. These dogs had such prowess, and I was told that these, these were crazy dogs and really difficult to handle. And, you know, to control dogs in and out aggression is like the upper, the upper echelon of dog training and so on and so forth. So I, I got myself a little dog, uh, for PSA. His name's Stark. You might know him. We currently, uh, compete in the Level 2s. But that was another learning curve for us, learning how to control and motivate these these really powerful dogs. And so that was very much kind of winged as well. Did lots of seminars. As kind of our social media grew and stuff like that, so did our network. So I've had the opportunity to learn from some amazing trainers across the world who have, who have helped me out to no end. And that changed my training again, away from kind of more compulsion-based with a little bit of food trickled on top, to understanding what what naturally drives a dog and how, how we can utilize expression partnered with suppression to kind of direct these dogs into, uh, more fulfilling lives. And so kind of that's where we are today. Probably ironically use a little bit more punishment, and I'll explain why, than I used to. A little bit less negative reinforcement than I used to. More play, less food. And I'm sure again in 3, 4 years' time it might change again, but of course we're forever learning. And so now I'm going to talk about kind of what I see as the recipe for adequate behavior change in dogs. I wouldn't consider myself a sport dog trainer. I still consider myself very much a pet dog trainer. I get a lot more out of helping people with their problem dogs and those dogs living a better life than they used to than I do maybe training my sport dog. Of course, I do really enjoy that, but it's just a hobby to me. We have a PSA club. I don't offer any sport dog training. I don't offer any obedience training. I don't offer any bite work training. I don't do decoy work. It doesn't interest me all that much. And so again, a lot of our work to this day is pet dog stuff. So a little bit about our school: we currently have 14 members of staff. Some of them are backend staff, admin, social media content, so on and so forth. Some of them are trainers. We probably see 100 to 150 dogs a week. I I don't think there's any other school in the UK that will probably be working on the volume of dogs we work with. We're open 7 days a week. Like I said, we have a PSA club, we have multiple puppy classes going on at any one time. We have a life skills class, an e-collar class, an advanced obedience class, and then of course a lot of one-to-ones, online programs and things like that. So how do I see dog training nowadays? This is something I would present to my younger self when I was first starting out. So the first thing I want to consider when I'm working with a dog is just ensuring that they're in, they're in good health. All right, so things we're looking at is, uh, injuries and ailments. Of course, a dog is naturally going to be a hell of a lot more defensive if they have some sort of impairment, whether that's ear infection, you know, a chronic illness, maybe even chronic fatigue, which we'll talk about shortly. Maybe they're just on like a really shitty quality of food that is acting like blue Smarties for the dog. And, um, the way I feel about this, if we haven't got the dog's health in check. And of course, dogs with long-lasting issues, some of those might need to be managed, you know, your hip dysplasias and things like that. A story I often tell when I'm trying to press this point is, uh, once upon a time I was working with a French Bulldog called Max, and he had a really— he had a really great family, and they only really wanted to do right by the dog. And this is when I was working at the first place. And, um, one day he just turns around and he starts— he starts going at the kids. He starts trying to bite the kids every time, like, they go near him. He's nipping at them. He's He's telling them to fuck off, and he's 3 years old, and he never really did this before. And so we put him through a program. Again, at the time, a lot of compulsion-based, you know, showing him who's boss, telling him what he has to do, and so on and so forth. And over 5 sessions, maybe over 10 weeks, he made really, really good strides. We got to like session 3, and he'd not put teeth on the kids again. Combination of lots of negative reinforcement, a little bit of punishment, not much counterconditioning or anything like that. But anyway, we got there. There's more than one way to skin a cat. And just because if I say, hey, this is how we should train a dog, doesn't mean there's not other right answers, right? So we get to the end of the program, they're super happy, they leave like a glowing review and all the rest of it. And, and literally the day after, they call me up and they said, oh, we've just had some results back from Max, and it turns out he's had a slipped disc in his back this whole time. Unfortunately, we've, we've had to get him put to sleep. And so this is a story I tell everyone, dog trainers, my pet dog clients and so on and so forth of how important it is to make sure that we're, we're making sure we're getting our dogs checked out and they've got no like long-lasting chronic pain. Because of course that's going to have an influence on, on how Max was going to behave around the children, right? He was in pain and they're coming up and they're touching him. He's obviously more likely to be more defensive and tap into defense when he, when he feels threatened or of course injury or ailment. And so this is not something we can really do as dog trainers. We have to just really push our clients to say, hey, look, you know, this has happened before. And usually that's enough to get people to go and get the dog like properly checked out. And I don't mean like just a once-over of the dog and, you know, check his temp and all the rest of it and send him on his way. I mean like a proper health check. We're going to ask about food and things as well. And then often I ask about the dog's sleep too, making sure the dog is clocking up the hours because of As any of the YCA staff will tell you now, we're all fucking terribly jet-lagged right now, and it's quite difficult to think, it's quite difficult to speak, it's quite difficult to drive, and all these stuff that regularly you could do autonomously become very difficult when you're chronically fatigued. And so we want to make sure the dog is in good health, no injuries, no ailments, we're on a good diet, how often the dog is sleeping. There'll obviously some— be some behavioral impact on how often the dog is sleeping. As we're probably all familiar with, dogs that are a little bit neurotic around the house, the ADD dogs that can't keep themselves still because they've got too many options, not enough structure, and so on and so forth, like a toddler, they're going to fight sleep. So sometimes we need to put in some behavioral intervention there to make sure that they're getting the adequate amount of rest. But we don't really want to move on to the next step of the pyramid until we've done our best possible job ticking off the bottom of the pyramid there, right? So the next thing I would, I would push people to look at is kind of what motivates the dog, because the chances are the dog is doing something at the moment, whether that's reactivity or aggression, that they're motivated to do. This could be external motivation, or it could be like a genetic motivation. So those that have brought your Dutchies and your Malinois and stuff today, they have a genetic itch to want to express their defensive drive, right? They're a little bit more suspicious than most dogs, and a combination of genetics and maybe improper socialization, they're going to relieve that genetic itch by expression of reactivity. And this could be relevant to a Labrador, it could be relevant to a Malinois, or anything kind of in between, or Cavapoos, and so on and so forth. I see a lot of dogs, through lack of fulfillment, the best part of their day is going on a walk and blowing up at other dogs. And they get a fix out of it, right? It's like crazy dopamine surge. It's, uh, if you've ever watched sport dogs in action and, and they're backtied on the table and they completely light up, that's probably the best part of the dog's day. And inadvertently, we do that with pet dogs quite a lot. And so we want to make sure we have an understanding of what our dog is currently motivated by, and then what we can utilize in order to motivate our dog to pick other options, right? And of course, we use food and toys to to achieve that for a lot of the time. But as, as a lot of you will know, in everyday pets especially, we get like really satiated dogs. There's maybe food left down all the time. There's just like a waterfall of treats being thrown at them for any little thing. Uh, there's toys just scattered all over the room. And so we got dogs that aren't very motivated to do anything alternate— alternatively because of anything good we could offer them, they'd get it for free or for nothing. Of course, there'll be some anomalies to this type of dog that get everything for free, but they'll still work for food and toys outside, and that's great. But a lot of times, if we want to motivate our dog and start showing them to do what we want, we have to send them through a period of— dirty word— but deprivation, which just means like we're not going to starve them of anything, food or toys, but we're going to just make sure we've got windows of opportunities in order for the dogs to access them. Because of whether we like it or not, deprivation has a direct correlation with how motivated a dog is. And if they're satiated and they get whatever they want whenever they want, chances are when we present them a situation that's compromising outside, whether that be the, the, in the, the face of something arousing— another dog, traffic, person, they're not going to want it because they're just like, well, I've got that at home. And conversely, they don't have access to bark and lunge and growl at other people and other dogs at any one time, right? Just like me and Ranger back in the day, he had toys and food whenever he wanted, you know. All I was thinking about was trying to make this dog happy and just have what you want because I had the guilt of not being able to do all the nice things with him because he was a shithead. I tried to compensate for that by making sure like he had what he wanted when he wanted inside the house. But then that That meant the only way I could see change in his behavior was via pressure, saying like, "You're not allowed to do these things," right? And then obviously that got us stuck, 'cause he was just like, "Hey, inside the house, you are this, you know, person that just lets me do whatever the fuck I want. And then outside of the house, you just like going at my neck all day telling me I'm not allowed to do anything." And that doesn't set a nice precedent for like a good relationship with your dog. And so people have an aversion to deprive their dog of things. But in actual fact, more often than not, it's a requirement for the path of least resistance to have a better relationship with your dog a little bit further on down the line. So sometimes we have to weigh up acute versus chronic issues, right? So again, when it comes to motivation, we want to limit how much our dog gets access to the motivator that we want them to stop. We can do that via management by not allowing them to rehearse it, or we can even do that via suppression on occasion and say, you're not allowed to do that. And I've got no problem with either/or. We might need to do that until we go through a period of deprivation so the dog starts wanting what we have. Okay, then it comes to feedback. We want to give our dog a really simple communication system, and I'm always going to start with a yes and a no. A positive marker and a punishment marker. Yes, do more of that. No, do less of that.

All right?

And there's a million and one ways we can do this. Again, I'm sure we'll cover it as we go. But initially, I just want the dog to understand that when we go out into situations, I want a very clear language between me and the dog. That yes means do more of what you just did, and no means do less of what you just did. We have to prepare these before we start throwing our dogs into that situation. So again, back to Ranger and I, or Darla and I, or both. I was putting them in situations. They weren't motivated to work with me. They didn't have a yes. They didn't really have a no. And I was just using aversives to try and get them to stop doing whatever they were about to do in the time. And then increasingly the intensity of those aversives, because of they were not prepared, had to go up and up and up and up, which had a consequential effect of probably how they perceived me and how they perceived getting trained and so on and so forth. And so we want to make sure that in the controlled settings within our home, around our home, our dog has a comprehensive understanding over low-stakes situations like counter surfing, or maybe going at the doorbell, or picking things up off the floor they shouldn't. Away from the trigger, yes means yes, no means no. And I'm going to do that before I instill any obedience on the dog as well. Whereas before, it was just straight to obedience, straight to compelling the dog, you have to do this. Then what I want to do once I have all of this in place— so I'm, I'm out with the dog, they understand yes, they understand no, they want what I've got on my person, they're in good health, we've got no issues that are contributing to this reactivity. I'm going to expose them to the trigger. I'm going to just slowly but surely start exposing them to the trigger. And I like to give feedback on choices initially. All right, so instead of like, you have to heel, you have to down, you have to sit, I almost say like, do what you want, but I'm going to give you feedback on how you're doing. And I do that before introducing obedience. And that might just be a couple of setup scenarios where I have the dog on a 6-foot leash I have the dog on a tool, I have my food on me, maybe I have my toy on me. I'm just gonna get my friend to walk around with a dog at a 50-yard distance or whatever. And I wanna work at a distance initially where the dog is gonna be responsive to both my yes and a no. The reason I do this and why I'm such a big advocate for it is because of, for me, obedience strengthens obedience. But when the dog is at liberty and they're able to make their own choices, in the absence of obedience. If we used obedience to fix the dog, they're going to be required to be in obedience for the rest of their days. And that's what I had with Ranger. If he was taught to heel, he'd ignore another dog. But if he was at liberty, off a lead, or not being told to do anything in particular, that was a green light that he was able to go out the dock. And so I use, uh, reinforcement and negative feedback through the means of punishment in a few instances before I start overlaying obedience on the pic— into the picture. Reason being, I want the dog to make good choices while at liberty. And of course, if I have a dog out here at liberty making all his own choices, and I have a dog over there, and I've told him through the means of feedback, you can do whatever you want, you just can't go at that dog, I'm gonna have a much happier dog because he's got loads of other options. Where if I say, no, you have to lie down, he's like All right, I can't go at the dog, I can't do anything else either. And of course there is a time and a place for obedience, and I see it as a tool to get us through some situations. But for me, a dog is someone— or trained dog is a dog that will make choices, good choices, off their own back whilst they're not particularly told what to do. The more you allow a dog to be a dog, the easier they're going to find it to be a pet. Whereas prior to how I train dogs now, I was finding that I was just having to like hammer dogs into obedience in order to get the results, which it didn't didn't feel right with me. And again, traipsing a dog around the block 10 times on a leash— there's better ways we can fulfill our dog and make them happier. Where our training center is, we have like a huge like dog walking park. It's not like a dog park that you guys have here, it's just like woodlands, a lake, a couple of cafes. It's like, it's huge. I'll often take clients there and I'll always bring Ranger along, and they always say the same thing. They're like, wow, he's so obedient. Like, he's so well behaved. And he's actually not that obedient. Like, he doesn't— like my Malinois, he doesn't spin on a dime to come back to me. He won't like drop into a down at a distance. But through feedback, he makes really good choices. We can walk through that park, there could be 50 dogs, 100 dogs, he's just going to go around them. There could be a lady with a pram, you just go around them. He'll like literally just avoid trouble. Sniff, mind his own business, chase squirrels. He'll like do whatever he wants and they'll say he's such a good boy. And I'm like, actually, fucking hardly listens to me. But over the last few years, through the means of feedback, like he's able to have a really freed and fulfilled life because of he's been given consistent feedback on the choices that he has made. And so again, obedience has been a tool that we have used to get there in, in some instances, but I wouldn't have got there with just obedience. Obviously we have like a socialization spectrum, right? We've got like dead neutral in the middle, and there's seldom do we actually meet dogs that are truly neutral. My working dog is the closest dog I have to truly neutral, but he's probably like on a +1 of a 10 scale. Like, he's social, which I don't have a problem with. And then we've got dogs that are like in the minus numbers, they're a little bit like introverted and shy. And then we got dogs that like truly fucking hate other dogs, right? Again, even the dogs that hate other dogs, by like following this, because of their liberty and better at making choices, sometimes it can help them get over certain hurdles through training because they're like, oh, I have the ability to escape this situation. And again, why I'd argue against some, uh, training that is really obedience intense can sometimes make that dog feel a little bit more compromised. So how we push dogs through our program nowadays for full transparency. Obviously, we have a sit-down with the owner, talk about kind of lifestyle and things like that, and all the things we should be checking. How often is the dog rehearsing this behavior? How much opportunities does he have? You're trying to work on the reactivity outside, but he's, he's, he's going, um, he's going at the, the bay window in the living room every, every 30 minutes, and so on and so forth. So we do all the regular checks that we should be looking out for, right? Obviously, as we know, you know, rehearsal's like a bank account. If we continue to allow our dog to rehearse and make deposits lots in that bank account, it's going to be very difficult to empty that bank account later on down the line. Then we're going to talk about motivation, talk about how much free access does the dog have to things. Then what we do— and I know you've got some laws here that may change things— is like, we go to e-collar conditioning really, really quickly. Like, get this dog off lead making good choices. And what we found is, if you can get a dog on a 10-foot line, recall him away from another dog, and if you need to use a pressure to get there and combine it with reward to pay him out of the behavior, Once we shorten that leash, things get a lot easier. Whereas like the way I used to do it is short leash and then graduate longer. Now I go as long leash and then graduate to shorter because of, for me, for a lot of dogs, the most difficult job in the world is to walk past another dog head on with confinement. And I'm sure a lot of you have experienced that, just the crossing, right? Super difficult. I think that's our marathon, our Everest.. And so we have to think about like how we're getting there. So I never start at that point, I always come back to that point. And it makes for some difficult conversations with clients at times. They're just like, I just want to walk my dog past other dogs. I'm like, but he hasn't got the ability to disengage, he hasn't got any sort of commands, you don't have your feedback, you don't have any motivation. We're gonna get there, but that's going to be on like session 3 and 4 instead of like session 1 trying to push a square peg into a round hole and just increasingly upping our correction intensity to try and get that dog to stick to heel, right? Again, we do our motivation checks, we do our lifestyle checks, then we're going to go on to off-leash stuff, see if we can get the dog playing, disengaging from dogs at a distance. Of course, we've always got the dilemma of what happens when other dogs get to us, and, you know, certain management practices we can put in place to, to get to that point. And then, like I said, we're going to then turn to obedience, and I'm going to condition a loose lead walk and the stuff the owner really wants. With the tools, but again, they've got to prove to me they can deliver a terminal marker. They've got to prove to me they can maybe deliver a punishment marker, and so on and so forth. And it works a lot, and that's where we're sat at the moment. Is it subject to change with new lessons and new education? Of course it is. Because of my background in training, I have a real aversion to getting set in the ways, right? Because I was always told this is only one way to do it, blahdy blahdy blah, and so if I even have a sniff of a better way to do things, I'm going to heavily explore it. Heavily explore it. If you do have a reactive dog and you found this video helpful, then you're going to absolutely love this one over here.

See you there.