From Movie Tigers to Protection Sports

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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And so I, I, I literally knew nothing about Training pet dogs, and I get on the internet. You get sent to Zach George and Larry Crone. Larry Crone and Zach George. And you know, I wasn't a dog trainer, but I'm not a idiot. So I was like, well, that guy is full of shit. Like that for sure doesn't work.

It's the Dog People Podcast with your host Jack Lawrence. Secretly, I decided to start this podcast for some free dog training advice. 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. And I go, had you met one before? They go, no.

It's the Dog People Podcast, the 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. Max, uh, not here with me right now. He had a big night at Metallica, rocking it out. So he's having a bit of a sleep in, but that's okay because today we have another episode for you on our series on dog sports. We're trying to encourage more of you just to Do some cool stuff with your dogs. We've spoken about dock diving, barn search, we've done ANKC obedience, and today we are talking PSA. So PSA is protection sports, and I've got to say, this has been one of my most favorite chats we've had to date. One, because PSA is something that I am looking to get into in the next couple of years, and two, because the gentleman we sat down and spoke with is just incredibly knowledgeable, not only about PSA, but high drive dogs, working breeds. He deals with a lot of reactive dogs. It's Casey from Big Show PSA in Brisbane. He's been working with animals pretty much his entire life, but only got into the dog world during COVID which we talk about. This chat will be in 2 parts because we spoke for over an hour. As I said, Max and I just love this chat. So this episode is a bit longer than normal, but I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. There's no real formal intro or anything. We kind of just sat down and started talking. So yeah, hope you enjoy it. Yeah.

And then I think personal protection dogs, we kind of wanted to talk about.

Yeah, I'm interested in asking about that because I've been looking at, because I want to eventually have my second I want to look at, you know, doing some PSA protection stuff. But also I think from the avenue of like having a personal protection dog, is it a good idea, a bad idea? I've been watching a lot of stuff on YouTube and there's these channels that promote how they, you know, train these protection dogs and drop them off to rich people's houses. And—

I do train those. And like, we've had some of those dogs at club as well, where it's somebody that bought a dog because they were scared of the world and wanted a protection dog. I get it. Like there's scenarios I've trained a lot of like yard dogs where the job of the dog is to just anybody that comes in this fence, blast them. And so that's not, there's not a lot of control necessary.

Yeah. They just let loose. Or discrimination or anything.

It's just somebody came over the fence.

Go for it.

I nuked them.

Yeah.

Like an actual protection dog where you're out in public with this thing. It's not a, like, I feel like the dogs that, that people sell that can do it can't really do the job they were trained to do because if they could, The person handling them wouldn't have the control necessary to be in. So like, say we're in this small space, right? I've got my German Shepherd. He's sitting here. He's supposed to react if any of you threaten me. The dog that's going to be good at that is going to be wound tight enough that you getting out of that chair is enough. And if it doesn't, it means that if you really did attack me, the dog most likely is going to run. As much as we want to believe dogs are gonna protect us, or they're like— you hear that 100 times a day if you're a dog owner.

My dog's just trying to protect me. He's protective.

Dog doesn't give a shit about you. Like, he literally could not care less, you know? Like, he doesn't care about you other than you're a resource. You're an unlimited bowl of pats and cuddles. But the actual idea that the dog gives a shit about your well-being is just crazy. So if it will bite someone in that scenario, it's because it's been trained, like, And we do that. We do that in sports all the time. We teach them like, do this, this, and you'll enjoy it. But the dogs that enjoy it then have to have a lot of training to, to turn that down, to be able to control it. And I feel like most people that are buying a protection dog aren't spending anywhere near enough time with the dog training it to be able to coil that up and unleash it when they want it. Personal protection dogs, I'm dabbling in it once in a while, just to genetically fulfill a dog. But like, if somebody comes to me and they want me—

That's purely what they want.

Yeah. And I don't— I'm not in the business of vending those or selling them because it's a— like, to me, it's a mug's game. It's not a— what you can buy is a— you can spend literally hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Yeah. These folks are selling them for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

And I look at them and go, I would run that dog. I wouldn't need a bite suit. I wouldn't need anything. I could run that dog just by walking at it slowly, staring at it, and that dog is going to leave. It's not doing what they are saying it will do.

It's an interesting Because I know, like, I guess like the pinnacle of, you know, protection dogs in the industry is Protection Dogs Worldwide. Like, one of the dogs they sold was to like an Australian influencer over here, this Doberman. And when you saw this thing, you're like, that thing can go. But when you, you know, my wife follows this influencer and she'd look at her and every now and then she'd show me, look, there's that dog again. And I feel like over the months you could see this dog progressively just look more and more like a pet. Even it's the way he carried himself, his attitude is like he got there week one, he's like, all right, who the fuck is it?

Yeah.

And then it went so long without doing it that it very much settled into being a pet. And I'm like, you are so far removed from doing that now that like—

And that's the problem. That's why I see these things and I'm just like, in my head, I'm like, you're handing this dog over, but are they actually going to work the dog that needs working to keep its sort of momentum up and keep its drive up, keep that whole, keep it switched on? And no, 99.9% of people just won't because it takes a lot of effort.

Like if you're, like if you're Jay-Z and you bought a half million dollar protection dog, he's not going to be getting out and doing that each day, is he?

But—

Right.

People that can afford that, like don't have time, like, to be that wealthy. You don't have time that it takes to—

Yeah.

To control a drivey dog. Like, this isn't a, you know, you don't just pull it out and it starts doing stuff. Like, you've got to— it doesn't matter how well the dog is trained. You have to learn how to work the dog, which means to some extent you have to be a dog trainer. To me, it's a fairy tale. I'm sure it makes people feel better.

It's— Yeah, of course.

It's like a therapy dog.

Yeah, it's a deterrent.

Yeah, sure. It's a big, scary dog behind the gates that would potentially put people off.

And I do lots of that. If somebody comes to me and they're like, I want my dog to do a bark and hold at the end of the leash. So I can just be walking down the street. I say, Revere, dog hits the end of the leash like it's gonna kill somebody.

Yeah.

Barks. Sweet. Like, that is a deterrent in a, in and of itself. Like, nobody's charging into you if you're holding a German Shepherd at the end of a 6-foot leash and it's showing teeth and barking. Anything more than that, it's more risk than reward, in my opinion. And I've done it. Like, I did one right down the street here. The lady had been mugged when she was in Nashville, bought a German Shepherd from a really nice working line kennel. We started out doing that, and then I convinced her to do PSA because I, I, over the time I convinced her like, hey, this isn't gonna go the way you think it's gonna go. It was, she, I could show her. And we did home invasions where the dog nuked me trying to get into her house. Like she lived down here where everybody's car's getting stolen every 10 minutes.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So it was, and I told her that the dog, well, yeah, so the dog itself, Is the deterrent.

Yeah, that's exactly—

If you're some 15-year-old punky boy trying to steal cars and you got to get into the house to get the keys, unless it's your first day on the job, you're not picking the house with the German Shepherd. So all you have to do is have a scarier dog than your neighbor, and now you're covered. My, my thing is, because like I have very well-trained, very dangerous Malinois, like they literally need no influence other than Stellan. And they'll bite whoever I'm pointing them at. My biggest fear is somebody were to try to break into my house and they bit somebody. I can replace anything you steal from me. I can't replace these dogs if they end up euthanized at that time. So true. So like my biggest nightmare is what people are buying dogs for.

Incredible. Like it's actually a good point. I think the other thing to understand as well, and it was something that I had seen and heard and watched and all this shit, but had a really good discussion with you at some point about it, Casey, was that like in the heat of those battles as well is dogs will take the path of least resistance and they'll gang up on the person that quite often looks the weakest, like especially in this pressure situation. So if someone breaks in and they see you punching on and they go, uh, uh, I'm gonna pick a side, if it's you that's getting the shit kicked out of them by some intruder, they'll turn on you because they go, you're the easiest target, I, I don't want to get on the wrong side of that guy.

That happens. And even, even if, even if you're not the one getting the bashing, like in the dog, in your dog's— that, that's the, my dog's just protecting me. Well, I can show you that that's not the case. Like I could grab you and we could act like we're getting in a punch-up. I guarantee your dog's gonna bite you, not me, because he's had a lot of success of you not hurting or killing him.

Mm-hmm.

For all he knows, I've killed every dog I've ever met. So he's gonna look at this and go, Way safer to be on his team and fight you.

Yeah.

That the whole idea, that's, that's how you can literally prove like the dog isn't trying to protect you. It's just trying to protect itself. Oh, looks like this is the team to be on today.

Yeah. I mean, I literally had— there's a lady who came here the other day and she had a little, little dog and she, it was barking and carried on. She goes, he's just very protective of me. I'm just like, no, he's not. He's just reacting.

Every phone call I get is, well, he's just really protective of the house or they seem protective. in their yard because they're super confident. They've had nothing but success in that yard.

Barking and people walk away and they're like, oh yeah, great.

And you walk outside the fence and they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This isn't— I haven't chased very many people away out here. Let's go back in the fence. You know, it's not a— for sure it's, it's resource guarding and things like that, but it's not protecting you. Like, it— like, I've never had a dog that I thought was even remotely concerned with how happy I was that day or how much money I had in my account. All they care about is, oh, I'm gonna have a nap. And when I get up, can you get me a bowl of food?

I mean, you obviously deal with a lot of high drive dogs, you know, in what you do every single day. Do you find, I see this a lot, the rise of social media and that sort of stuff where people are seeing these dogs and seeing what they can do when trained properly. Do you, are you, are you seeing a lot more people come to you with these issues because they just can't handle these dogs?

Not as much as people think. Like, I don't, I don't see too much, like for sure there's just random John O goes, oh, I'm gonna We get a Malinois, you know, and they go buy a Malinois. And if they'd call me sooner rather than later, but they usually wait until, till the problems are really well seated.

Yeah.

About a year and a half old, then they're like, oh, we got a real problem. But not as much as you would think. Like, for the most part, what there is a rise in, I think, is young people wanting to do dog sports. And I don't care what dog sport you're doing. Malinois is gonna be the best at it. Like, literally, there's just no— it's a Ferrari, you know? And for sure, if you wanna drive a Ferrari, you gotta be able to do the maintenance on it. But any sport like agility— look, we literally, our team just went and competed at dock diving. Our PSA club as a whole, we were like, hey, let's go try this dock diving with our German Shepherds and Malinois. We won everything. Like, we literally had all the ribbons.

That's cool.

It's not like it's something we even trained for. We were just like, my dog will jump in there and grab it. My dog, my personal Actually kind of let me down a little bit. He was a little bit of a sissy about the water. But because of that, I think dog sports as a whole is kind of going up a little bit. And if you want to be really successful at a dog sport, why not start out with something that's, you know, like you can look at the podium, pretty much any sport, dog sport, there's a Malinois sitting on it.

Yeah.

Like, if not all 3. So I think there is a, an increase in that. And I think in Australia we're starting to breed better and better Malinois. You know, to where you can get one. Like, I know people that breed them specifically for herding.

You say flyball lines and everything?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like the— and, uh, well, the, the world record for the wall climb just got set the same weekend we all went dock diving and we did wall climb. The world record got beat at another dock diving competition at like— and it was a Malinois. Up until then, it had always been— it was actually Tonks's dog, it was a pig dog, Great Dane Bull Arab cross. But it doesn't matter what the sport is, if you want to be successful, get a Malinois. Because like, you can get a Malinois bloodline that's probably going to be suitable for what you're doing.

I mean, I love the idea, but it also terrifies me.

People say that. I don't think— I mean, they're still a dog.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know what I mean? Like, people act like it's some kind of big— I have a— I, I had 3 for the last 6 months. I just sold one. I feel like my cattle dogs, which are my couch potato house dogs, are tougher sometimes to live with than a Malinois. Like, a Malinois is pretty— because they're so trainable. Like, they're just trying to find their advantage. And if you figure out, like, oh, you like that? That's the dial you want me to spin? I'll spin that if you do this.

And then you've got them.

Yeah.

Like, it's over— like, all of it. Dog training, animal training as a whole is all that. Like, Literally being able to tell the dog, oh, I want more of that, and oh, I don't ever want that, you know. And if you're crystal clear— and that's the thing with the Malinois, you can be crystal clear and they're, okay, cool, you don't want me to do that ever again? Sweet, I won't do that, you know. If you're— as long as you're clear about it. And so like when people are having problems living with one, it's because they, they don't know what they want.

Yeah, no clear communication.

Which is that The same with all dogs.

Yeah.

But it's amplified if it's a Malinois, like, or any high drive dog, not even a Malinois. Like, if it's a high drive dog and you're not crystal clear, like, these are my expectations, that doesn't mean they have to be under obedience all the time. It just means, hey, when I say stop that, that's non-negotiable. You stop that right then. And if I say no or punish something, that means don't ever do that in the future. You know? And if you're, clear like that, a Malinois is no different than a poodle.

And I mean, I had that with my dog. I mean, she's not, certainly not Malinois sort of craziness, but she's certainly high. I would classify her as high drive.

And she used to— She's a spotty dog? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So she's cattle cross something. She's one of the—

GSP or something?

Yeah, something like that.

She acts like a GSP.

Yeah.

And I mean, she would, she would chase literally anything that, you know, moved at a slight rate. And that's how I got into all of this and meeting Max and doing the podcast was I was like, okay, I need to work out what's going on here. And it was communication. Like I wasn't communicating, but now she will not even, you know, a bird takes off and she just looks at it and looks at me and goes, well, I suppose I'm not doing that. As you said, it's no different with a Malinois, but—

And like, imagine if you knew all that when you first got her.

Oh, I mean, she—

I mean—

Like, then it would've never been a problem.

No, we would never have an issue.

Like, the thing with when, once you understand those things, you like, you can have any dog and you just right from the beginning.

Yeah.

Like problems are only really problems if you let it keep rehearsing itself and going. And then it like, sometimes, sometimes you get into stuff that's just not like, you're gonna have to manage that now because you've reinforced it to the point where It wouldn't be ethical to expect the dog to not do that once in a while.

Yeah.

You know, and so like most of my business is dog and human aggressive pet dogs, you know, and the success on that is a lot of times dependent on how much success the dog has had with that. You know, like the, we get 10 dogs a month that are collar biters. So when you reach to touch their collar, they bit somebody. The vet or the owner person let go. Only takes 2 or 3 reps of that and the dog's like, yeah, sweet. Anytime I want to escape, I just bite somebody's hand.

Yeah.

And so like, we can do thousands of repetitions where I reward you not doing that and I punish you when you do do that, but they can't unlearn the success that they've already had. So in the back of their mind, they're always like, yeah, but if shit got real, I could still—

I know I can still do that.

Like, it would be worth the consequences.

Yeah.

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Speaking of just rewinding a minute, we started to speak about Malinois and dog sports and everything. And that, that's a big reason why I wanted to get you on today was to chat about dog sports. We're doing a little mini series at the moment about trying to just get more people doing cool shit with their doggies. At the end of the day, we can all sit here online as trainers and bash people for getting the wrong dog, and there's a whole heap of rhetoric around that— get a dog that suits you, all this shit. Reality is like, people are going to get that fucking dog, so we may as well be like, hey, you've got it now, let's do something cool with it. And you've got a really cool track record, I know, from some of the people at the club and some stories you told me about getting people into PSA. So can we talk a little bit about like what PSA is and, and how you got into it and, uh, what your story is there?

So I got into it. I became a dog trainer during COVID So prior to that, I was a— trained exotic animals for movies and circuses and zoos. When COVID happened, it kind of shut— I was here raising tigers for film work.

Wow.

And then the company that brought me over to do that, um, said, oh, probably be a couple of years before we make another movie now because of the COVID restrictions. And so I had never trained. I, I trained hundreds of dogs to do like circus shows.

Tricks and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Never had a reactive dog. Never had a— like, didn't realize those were even things. Yeah, like, I just was unaware people even made a living as a dog trainer because like, well, this is easy. You just don't let the dog do the nonsense you don't want it to do. And so I was at Pet Barn or someplace buying food for my cattle dog during, and this is like peak COVID. So like people are not working, not making money. Well, the government's paying us at that point.

Mm-hmm.

And everybody in front of me is spending $400 to $800 on shit for their dog. And I remember I'm standing in the line and I'm like, maybe I should be training these dogs. Like, people are spending, like, this is ridiculous. That lady just spent $350 on a dog bed. What's wrong with it? I bet she'd pay a lot more if I could teach that thing not to drag her down the street. And so I, I, I literally knew nothing about training pet dogs or any of that. And I get on the internet and I go down a rabbit hole of, you know, you get sent to Zach George and Larry Krone, Larry Krone and Zach George. And, you know, I wasn't a dog trainer, but I'm not a fucking idiot. So I was like, well, that guy is full of shit. Like that for sure doesn't work. Just shut up. But I follow Larry a little bit. I'm like, this makes, like, this is, this is easy enough. Like, this guy's speaking plain English.

Mm-hmm.

And follow that further along. And I end up J Jack, Chad Mackin, which then leads me to Pat and Glenn and the Canine Paradigm. And I'm like, oh, these guys are right here in Australia. And so I start listening to that podcast. And back then there was an app, uh, I don't even know if it exists anymore, but it was called Clubhouse, which was like an audio social media app, which during COVID was huge.

Mm-hmm.

Couldn't really go out and talk to anybody, but you get in these chat rooms and it's real time. So it's not like, like part of the problem with social media is people have lots of time to craft up some bullshit that isn't actually true.

Mm-hmm.

And, or like, I can question like your theory on something and you can take 3 or 4 days to figure out why I'm wrong. If I ask you that live right now, okay, well tell me how that works. If you don't really know, you don't really know. It's not like you got time to go get in somebody's course and figure out like what some force-free trainer told you was gonna work in this scenario. Like you have to have actually done it. And so Pat and Glenn and J Jack, all these people are actually in these chat rooms and I'm like, oh, this is cool. The main thing was I got a marketing guy that was a dog training marketing guy because I figured out, well, the training the dogs part's really easy, but How do you find the people to train the dogs for? Got that all squared away. I was just gonna do it during COVID but then it, it blew up to the point where like—

That was it.

Yeah. It'd be easier to pull Jesus off a cross than to make me go back to doing that other stuff. And cuz I really enjoyed it and I enjoyed it because I'm like, I got to know Pat and he was into PSA. I'm like, oh yeah, I wanna do that too. And I had a cattle dog. I still have him, Banjo. I didn't want to get another dog, so I was like, well, I'm just going to do it with this cattle dog. And we did. Like, eventually he would pass. He just doesn't enjoy it. Like, and cattle dogs don't. They don't, they don't like staying on the bite. Like, it takes a lot of work. Like, cattle dogs love to bite, but they bite— Bang, bang, bang, bang, go. Like, getting it, getting one to stay on a grip and, and push is pretty counterintuitive to their genetics, you know, which I did a lot of it with him. And then one day I was just like, I get it, dude. You hate this.

Mm-hmm.

All right, well, we won't do it anymore. We'll do something else. But then somebody was giving away a Malinois and I said, oh, well, let me come have a look at this thing. And it had had a pretty rough start and a few owners, but the trainer that had it that I got it from had done a really good job of turning that around. But he'd, he'd bit people that he wasn't supposed to.

Mm-hmm.

And he was, uh, he wasn't a dog that he probably wouldn't have been a great starter dog for somebody getting into bite sports.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, especially I didn't know anything about decoying and I intended to do all that myself. Uh, cause I didn't even, I wouldn't listen to people telling me not to do it. I can tell you all the reasons not to later, but I get him and it's COVID. Pat's like, hey, we're not going to have any PSA for who knows how long. Like, yep, sweet. They're doing IGP. I'm going to go do that. And so I started training him for IGP. We did a BH. Then I find out about Mondioring, which is another bite sport. Uh, they're doing some trials in that. I'm like, oh cool, I'll just switch him from the arm to the leg and we'll go do that. And so I started and we did pretty well. Like it took us 8 tries, but we eventually passed a Mondioring 1. 'Cause I, I'm tenacious and he loved doing it. So I was like, I don't care how many times we fail, we'll just keep doing it. And then when we finally did have a PSA trial over here, we drove down to Sydney and we did that. And Zeus got his PDC. And after I did that, I was like, oh no, this is it for me. This is the sport. So I just met— there weren't any clubs up here, so I just made a club. We had started a club during COVID but none of us had— I think we had one German Shepherd and a bunch of Kelpies and Galgos. It was, it was, it was an embarrassment.

It was a mismatch.

But we would get together and we would train and the dogs were having a good time.

Have some fun.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But then once I, once I did it with Zeus and he got his PDC and we tried one the next day. Uh, I was like, oh no, this is it.

So what made you go, this is it, this is the one I want to do?

It— for sports, so like PSA is Protection Sports Association. It's like all of the sports— IGP, Mondioring, French Ring— they all have like an obedience component and then a protection component. In IGP, there's tracking too. Boring. But they, they're usually separate But in, in Mondio, we, we didn't have French ring here, but in Mondio, it's still separate. You do your obedience first and then your protection, but you do that all in one, one go. So you'll be on the field for 25 minutes where you do 15 minutes of obedience, and then in a one, there's 3 bite scenarios. So you do it all together. But during your obedience, the decoys aren't out on the field. Like the, the, there's It's just obedience.

Yeah.

So you're just heeling, jumping jumps. I say just, it's not easy by any stretch. But the, the thing with PSA that, that drew me to it, a few things. One, the pressure on the dogs, especially when you like, even in a PDC, there's what I feel like is more pressure than what a dog would feel in IGP as far as like the, the threat from the, the decoy, the bad guy. the helper in IGP.

Hmm.

So like, there's— they're yelling, they've got a clatter stick, straightforward frontal presentation to the dog. So there's a lot of pressure. So you need to have a dog that isn't scared and is drivey enough that if it does get a little bit scared, it's willing to fight through it. So like, you need a dog that really, really wants to bite, but then you also have to be able to control that because Once you pass a PDC, every level after that, the, the decoy, the bad guy's on the field while you're trying to do obedience. So you need a dog that wants to nuke him but won't until you tell them they can. Where all the other sports, like the obedience, there's no— the bad guys, it's all separate.

Yeah, yeah.

It's a very like different section, so is what they call it in IGP, but it's, it's very like No, we're just out here to do obedience. Where in PSA, I know you see that guy and you think we're out here to bite people, but we're actually out here to do the obedience. I need you to do these things first. And then what makes it super cool is you can kind of trick your dog into thinking, cuz like for my dogs, their highest value reward is blasting that decoy. So all you have to do is convince 'em like, hey, that's not off the table.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You just do these.

If you do nice enough obedience.

Yeah.

I might send you over there. And like, I own a dog. The last time we tried a PSA 1, he blasted the decoy sitting in the chair because he was like, nope, you don't have that much control over me. I'm biting him right now.

Yeah.

And it's embarrassing. But also I'm like, well, I would much rather have that problem.

Yeah, 100 times the other way. Absolutely.

And that's like going back to before when we talk about the personal protection dog, right? So like, I agree, that is the maximum amount of control. Like, that is your dog's ultimate reward right there on the field with them. And as well trained as your dogs and the dogs on the trial field are, you could swap yourself out and put another random person your dog met 2 days ago and go, hey, try and do the same thing. And your dog's gonna look at that person going, you can't stop me from doing this.

Right.

And that's where the whole personal protection dog comes in. It's like you can have a dog who's been trained to that level, but then them trying to expect Jay-Z to have the same level of control over them, that dog figures out pretty quickly, like, this is a very different scenario. You don't— you're not as sharp, you're not as quick, you're not as authoritative. And that's kind of where it falls apart for the personal protection dog stuff. Hey.

The other thing with PSA that makes it a little bit different is you have to— it's like you have to make it through obedience, which is—

Yeah, I've heard about that.

You make it, you have to pass that before you go into protection.

Yeah.

So like we, the 75 club, at least 75% to make it into protection. And so I have a t-shirt that says the 75 club and on the back it's got a checklist and it just says, Make it to bite work, you know, because that's a— well, I'm in the 3s with my dog now. There's 50, I think, I think last weekend another dog got it. So there's 51 or 52 dogs in the world that have a level 3 title. Because you have to, like the, in the level 3s, you're out doing the, your obedience routine, which is made up on the spot by the judge. You have no way of knowing what it's gonna look like. And I, I've tried it 3 times. I've never made it into protection. I've never made it into bite work. The 3 times that we've tried a level 3, my dog has bit what he wasn't supposed to. Like the first time he did it, it was literally in the first 20 seconds. Like we made it 20 seconds. The handler meeting was about a 25-minute operation where we went around. Okay. And then, then you're gonna do this, then you're gonna do this, then you're gonna— and in my mind I was like, we're not gonna make it to this part. Like, I, you lost us back there on the first exercise and we literally, like, it was just a, there's 4 decoys standing there motionless, like statues holding, holding sticks up like swords. And okay, figure 8, 2 of the decoys, leave 'em in a down. Okay, walk towards me. I'm walking towards him and the decoys all scream at the same time and jump up in the air. And he's like, I just gotta get one. I need one of 'em.

You know?

So he, it was 15 seconds into the routine. He bit somebody. Our record is about, I think we, we got, uh, a minute and a half. This last trial that we did, we made it a minute and a half before he bit somebody he wasn't supposed to. And then you don't even know what's scored. They don't tell you until everybody, like, we were the only ones trying for a 3. We're the only dog in the 3s. If there's more than one dog, they just tell you you didn't make it or you did. They can't tell you what you messed up because you don't know what's worth points. So the last time we trialed, The first minute was put your dog in this wagon and the decoys take off with the wag— I have to stay here and they're dragging my dog around in a wagon, shooting guns, blowing leaf blowers, screaming and yelling. He's not allowed to bite 'em. He just has to sit in the wagon and ignore that.

That's insane.

And he makes it through that. I call him back into heel. About 35 seconds later, he bites somebody he's not supposed to. And the judge goes, unfortunately, that first scenario with the dragon around in the wagon—

That was pointless.

No score for that. There was no points for any of that. He could have literally jumped out and run away and it wouldn't have mattered. And I'm sitting there, don't bite him, don't bite him, don't bite him. So like, it's, it's hard. And it, it, that's why I want to do it is because it's hard. Like it, it really, uh, you have to really be able to communicate with your dog. Like, I feel like a level 1 kind of tests the dog and your training. And then when you get into the 2s, it's way more about testing you because now, like, it's a lot of it's not scripted in the level 2. There's parts of it that are the same. Now you got multiple decoys on the field doing weird shit, trying to get your dog to bite them. You have to learn how to kind of play. Like, I know that that's going to be Too tempting for him. So what can I do to mitigate that? Like, I'll eat some points and face him, or I'll leave this cone that they said was a solid cone and just take the hit on the point so that I'm closer to him so I can be like, hey, don't do that. Like, you're not supposed to bite anybody.

Yeah.

And then when you get to the 3s, like, you gotta both be playing chess. Like, the dog has to be exceptional and you have to be exceptional because I don't care how well trained your dog is, they're So the food refusal at the last trial, I'm friends with the judge on Facebook and have been for a long time from America. And every trial that I do with my dog, whether he passes or fails, we stop at Macca's, we sit on the back of the ute, he gets a Quarter Pounder, I get a Quarter Pounder, and he gets chips with no salt. It always pisses him off. And I'm like, hey, I need some chips with no salt. So it takes about 20 minutes for that. And we sit on the back of the ute every single trial. And like, we've done 30-some trials together. We sit there and I post that. So the food refusal for my level 3, the judge goes, I remember reading something about Macca's on the back of the ute. And so it's literally his cheeseburgers.

Yeah.

Laying in different places on the field. And like, I need to put him on the back of the ute and the decoys are gonna come over and offer him a Quarter Pounder while I'm somewhere else.

And I'm like, yeah, that's it. We can just X that.

We can just Just give it to him right off the bat so we don't feel like we're arguing or anything. I'll eat those points. That's the level of control you have to have on the dog. It's just that I love it. I think it's the, I think it's the hardest bite sport.

So, I mean, so for someone like me who's listening to this, 'cause I mean, it's something I would like to do, as I said, when I get my second, I'll get a second dog and it's something I wanna look at. It's sounding terrifying, I'll be honest. Like, I mean, going, fuck, could I do this? Like, it might be, I mean, so for people listening who may already have a dog that could be good for PSA, maybe we should talk about What dog sort of suits it. But, you know, is it easy to get into as opposed to get started? And if you know nothing?

Yeah. So one of the dogs, the best dog arguably at our club right now is actually a German Shepherd. I hate to say that, but it's a, it's a guy that bought a German Shepherd, a working line German Shepherd as a pet, and was maybe going to do agility or something with it. And gets to be about a year old, super reactive to people and dogs, drag it like they, uh, the, his wife couldn't control it, uh, on a walk. And so she, you know, cracked the shits, need to get a dog trainer. They get ahold of me. We had our club back then at a scout ground out in Ipswich. Meet me out there before club and I'll— We'll do a lesson with him. And so he gets this German Shepherd out and I'm messing with it a little bit and I go, yeah, I go, we, I mean, we could fix the reactivity. Realistically, I think you should just do PSA with this dog. And like this, he had no intentions of doing sports with the dog at all, really. Definitely not a dog trainer, like not out to learn to be a dog trainer.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

So like, I just said, oh, you should just start bringing this dog to club. I said, we could fix this doing lessons and we could just fix the problem. I go, but this dog, it's a good dog. We should do PSA with it. Like, he wants to do that and that will help. That'll fix all your other problems. He's like, really? And his wife, when I said, no, no, we're going to teach him to bite people.

And that's the thing. People get terrified because they're like, you're going to teach that dog to bite? That's dangerous.

His wife was like, no. She's looking right at both of us like, absolutely not. And I'm like, just hang out. And watch Club. And then I'll explain to you like how like that reactivity is a non-issue once you have control of the dog. Like, you actually want that for a PSA dog. I want my dog to be reactive when I tell him it's appropriate.

Mm-hmm.

So like, that was 2 years ago probably, and Dre has his Level 1 title and is well ready to compete in the 2s. And it's a guy that isn't even really a dog trainer.

Yeah.

Like he just has a cool dog. And like since that life-changing, like the dog's riding a jet ski out in the ocean with him off leash everywhere he goes. Like this dog is, I, I guarantee he's the best behaved German Shepherd in Brisbane today.

Yeah.

You know, he's just like, he's, 'cause he's genetically fulfilled. He, he wants to bite people, but he gets to bite people.

Mm-hmm.

In a controlled way. Like that's the thing with genetic, genetic fulfillment is if you don't give them the outlet, they'll get it.

They'll make an outlet.

And probably you're probably not going to like it. So like, why don't we just say, yeah, bite the shit out of that guy, but only do that when I tell you you can.

Yeah, get it out your system. And you could also argue as well, like beforehand, if he's running around like a bit hot-blooded, a bit touchy, and everyone looks like a bit of a threat, he's like, hey, like, do you want to go? Whereas now doing PSA, he's got such a clear picture of— and he leaves people alone. And that's always a surprising thing coming to club as well, is you see people kind of sitting there at the edge of the seat going, oh fuck, this dog's off leash. It's like the dog's not remotely interested in you. It has such a clear picture of what is a threat, what isn't. And I think that's what it's great for. If you do have a dog that is a little bit zesty and you do think it's one of those dogs that can do it, really leaning into it rather than running away from it can be honestly the remedy sometimes.

For sure. Like, for sure, there's dogs that bite that I would say, no, we need to crush that and say, you're never biting any human. You can bite all these other things, but never anything that looks like a human. No bite suits, no sleeves. Because the last thing you want is that dog that thinks that everything in the world is pressure. I can turn that off by biting people, you know? So like, there's two ends of that. If the dog is not a nerve bag, for sure, fulfill it and let it think that it's a, that it's a wolf and you're a rabbit. But if it thinks that everything is wolves—

Yeah. So there's a difference between the fear reactivity and a dog that's reactive because it's not getting fulfilled.

For sure.

As this guy's German Shepherd obviously wanted to bite stuff because he wanted the fulfillment. Yeah.

If you've got a big bad shepherd who's storming the streets and kind of wanting to punch on with people for the sake of it because they're a bit of a bully, it could be good. If you've got like this Aussie Shepherd who's just very incredibly anxious, then it's, it's probably not for you. But there's certainly a bunch of people out there who might be listening where it could be. And, and it's always just worth going down to a club, right? Just going, take a look, see what you think.

Yeah, yeah.

I have people bring me dogs all the time that they think it isn't for, and I go, no, this dog, this dog will be great at that. Like, it just needs the clarity of knowing when it can and can't do that. And then I have other people that think their dog is a savage killer and they bring it in. I'm like, your dog has literally just learned that it can chase people away. It doesn't actually really want to bite anybody. It just wants people to leave it the fuck alone.

Yeah.

So PSA is a global sport as well. Like I know even I've seen people like Glenn and Pat over in Vietnam and Thailand and shit like you've been over there too.

Oh yeah.

You're over there too. So there's people over there doing shit like that as well. So it's popping up around. So wherever you're listening from, whether it's Australia, New Zealand, England, US, or Fucking Thailand is there are clubs popping up, and if you think you've got a dog for it, go take them along. Worst someone can say is no, like, this isn't it. Or if you are keen to get into it, if you are like Jack who's kind of on the line, it's, it's always worth just, you know, asking, see if you can go along and watch. And you might see that environment and go, I want to do that with a dog, or no. But it's always just worth sticking your head in and having a look, right?

Yeah, we have like— so my advice on that, if you think it's something you want to do and you don't have a dog to do it, Ask about going to a club and just watching. Like, most of— some of the more successful people at my club, as far as their ability, have been people that didn't have a dog. Like, they had dogs, but they, they wanted to do PSA. They hadn't got a dog for it yet, and they contacted me and said, hey, can I just come to club and watch, you know, watch training every twice a week? You know? Yeah, for sure. I would love that. Because then Like some of those people did that for a year before they bought a dog. And so they watched, they watched us train a lot of dogs and how the handling looks. And like people say, hey, don't, don't let your dog do that. That'll cause this later. So they already, they come preloaded with the information.

Yeah, that's brilliant.

And then they also have the, the network of the club, so they don't go out and buy some shitty Gumtree Malinois that it has no chance of being successful. Like, you can still— doesn't matter who breeds your dog, you can end up with a, a dog that's gonna wash. But we can at least— somebody at a club can at least point you in the direction of a kennel that has some dogs that are likely to succeed.

Mm-hmm.

So like, that's good. And then if you do like— and if you're not gonna do that, just don't Like, they try to start out with the dog that's most likely— if you already have a, a Rottweiler, a Doberman, something like that, cool. Like, you've got the dog, let's do what we can do with it, you know? But if you're getting a dog because you want to do the sport, get a Malinois, get a German Shepherd. Don't buy a Volkswagen Bug to go run the Indy 500. Like, you could.

Yeah.

And we'll soup it up as much as we can, but you're still gonna be racing around with a bunch of, you know, performance cars. So if you're getting a dog specifically for it, try to get something that's likely to suc— like, cuz you're just gonna, you're gonna make it easier for yourself. Like I've, I've seen too many people that have, that get really frustrated cuz they're watching a bunch of dogs that are just blasting people and doing all the things. If it's the dog that you already had, cool. You know, but like, don't set yourself up for that frustration of seeing a bunch of dogs doing very well and then be like, why isn't my— why isn't my Doberman doing the same thing as a Malinois? Because he's a Doberman, you know, and we will do what we can with it, but the expectation has to be different.

There he is, Casey from Big Show PSA. You can get in touch with him at bigshowpsa@gmail.com, or you can find him on social media, Facebook and Instagram. We'll have part 2 of his chat coming up in a a few weeks' time. He's got a very fascinating past working with tigers and things like that. So we'll have that for you very soon. 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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