I Wish Every Reactive Dog Owner Knew THIS (Extreme Case Study)

Meet Travis, a 10-month-old Belgian Malinois, and just like so many dogs of his breed of this age, is experiencing some reactivity issues. And unfortunately, hence why I'm being very careful right now, has managed to redirect and take a chunk out of his owner on multiple occasions. So what I'm going to do is give you a step-by-step process on how we treat this type of reactivity, avoid yourself getting bit, and hopefully set Travis up for a life of success and not having to be rehomed or worse, euthanized. Hello everyone and welcome to Project Travis. Now, none of these dogs are Travis. Travis is inside because he's not quite a good boy yet. However, what I wanted to do today is give you an overview of my plan with Travis, the severely reactive Belgian Malinois. He's 11 months old. He has a prey drive that is off the charts. He's not been properly exposed to dogs, and so when he sees them, he goes into this crazy over-aroused frenzy, and that has resulted in some displacement, meaning he's gone and then in that frenzy bitten or bit his owner on the leg and arm and multiple times. Okay, so we're against the clock here. He's 11 months old, he's still developing, testosterone's still coming through. And so if we don't put a quick stop to this behavior, it will develop, it will perpetuate, it will get worse, and then Travis could quickly become a very dangerous, unhandleable dog that will end up definitely getting put down or in a— no, he will get put down. There's no rescue who's going to take a dog that's in this kind of state of mind. So Travis has been dropped off yesterday or whatever. I've got 3 weeks with him, so I'm going to show you my plan of action, and in that I'm going to show you and deliver to you in Project Travis, or, or, or, um, The Chronicles of Travis, or The Diary of Travis, whatever we decide to call it. I'm going to show you the 20% of training that will give you 80% of your results. So I've cut out everything that I don't think is going to deliver the majority of results. Because of I'm against the clock, and perhaps you might be at home, I'm going to show you today the most important things when it comes to long-lasting, timely, and and ethical behavior change when it comes to dogs. So all of this might be applicable to your dog. It likely is going to be. Here's the plan, plan of action with Travis. I'm gonna give you 4 behavioral tools today that again are the most important, most effective things we should be concentrating on. First, that's our yes marker. Then we've got a bad marker. Then we've got play. And then we've got e-collar recall. Don't let that scare you. I'll divulge in a second. So I've listed out the, the behavioral tools. Not literal tools like prong and E and all the rest of it. I've just said the behavioral tools. So we've got the tool, its use, how we prepare it for use, and what we need to be considerate of. What is the end goal of this? Is to create, apparently create a calm mindset around dogs, create calm around dogs. Why? What's the mission? What's the bigger mission? To give him, and him I mean Travis, the best life possible. That's to make his dad happy, and to make his dad's life easier. The YCA was created with one mission and one mission only, and that's to give dogs the best life possible. When you give them a good life, their behaviour will fall into line. Just need 30 seconds of your time. Firstly, I want to say thank you so much for all the support you have given us. We've just moved into our brand new training centre. Look at it, it's magnificent. And, and part of that is down to the fact that you guys have been so supportive across all of our platforms. If you didn't know, we give 100% of our income from YouTube for you watching these videos to a different charity that's to do with dogs every single month. And if you could do me a favor and stop this video right now and hit that subscribe button, you will help dogs all over the world with very little effort. I can't thank you enough. Enjoy the rest of the video and we'll see you in the next one. All of this is with keeping in mind to give Travis the absolute best life he possibly can. They're not here forever, right? They're not here forever. And So we want to make sure that he has an amazing life with his dad. They have loads of happy time and memories all together. That is not going to happen while he's just trying to redirect on his leg every time he sees another, another dog. We can't possibly give him a— give Travis an amazing life because there's a dog around every single corner. So we have to change how he sees dogs, how he feels about dogs, how he perceives dogs, what they mean to him. And this is how we're going to do it. So I digress back to our important tools. We got our yes marker. My compromise with his owner, me taking him on for a couple of weeks, was you must create a well-established terminal marker, a yes marker, or a clicker. Anyone can do that from home. You guys can do that, no problem. I sent him the homework. I need a solid yes marker, Suki, which is his dad's name. What is the yes marker for? Is to encourage more behavior we want to see. How do we prep? So going through the food motivation, going through the marker charging with the Newton's Cradle, and then making sure our yes marker is as strong as possible. So super important bit that is in within our 20% of training that will give us 80% of results. Then we got our bad marker. That is to discourage behaviour. What prep does that need? A little bit less prep. We've got yes marker encourages behaviour. We've got our bad marker, that's to discourage behaviour. Then we've got play. What's play's usage? Is to take arousal out of the dog. And so if Travis is really used to seeing other dogs and being hyper-aroused, I always make a point of playing with him before I expose him to dogs to take arousal out, right? So let's say he's jazzed up, he's been in his crate, or he's, he's waiting around for his first training session. What I always do, Cobes, we're not gonna dig in the garden, are we? What I always do is make sure, Stark's joining in now, he doesn't even dig, Cobes' bad influence on these boys. You know what, they didn't like sticks until Cobes come along and now they're all obsessed with sticks. Hey everyone, Jacob and Ranger here. We have just spent the last 5 hours planning and putting together a reactivity masterclass which, by the time you watch this video, will be available for free If you click the link in the description, it will give you the start, middle to finish blueprint of how to finally solve your dog's reactivity. And again, it's completely free. Don't miss it. Link in the description. Enjoy. What was that? Okay, play. So I make a point to always play with Travis before we do any exposure work. Super important bit so far. Creating a solid yes marker, creating a solid bad marker. Learning how to play with our dog. And finally, we have the controversial one, the e-collar recall, or the e-collar itself. What do we use e-collar for? For fulfillment. The number one reason for behavioral issues in dogs is through lack of fulfillment. I am certain about it. And so when our dog is fulfilled, you will naturally see the reactivity dissipate because they will find new hobbies. How do we do that? Well, giving our dogs freedom. All right, so allowing our dogs to explore their natural innate desires through being dogs, to be curious, to dig, to stalk, to sniff, to do all these things our dogs couldn't do on a long line tied to us, on a short line, whatever it is. So if e-collar is banned in your country, sorry, we can still do recall without. It's just not going to be as reliable and it's not going to take a little bit longer. For me, the sooner I get Travis off a lead the quicker I'm going to see these unwanted behaviors dissipate. These are in no particular order. I do need my yes marker really to make the most out of my e-collar, all right? So I am going to make sure this is done first, but these, these, these things here are in no particular order. These are going to be where my main focus, my main training is going to focus on. Yes, no, or bad, play, recall. Once I have recall, I can fulfill it. Once I could play, I can fulfill him even more, take the edge off it, take a bit of arousal off him. Once I have a yes, I can show him what I do like to see around dogs. And once I have a no, I can show him what I don't like to see around dogs. The reason the yes and the bad are in red is because they are in-the-moment tools. I typically use them in the presence of other dogs. These are in blue because they're out-of-the-moment tools. I use them to prepare my dog to see other dogs. Yes, we can also use them in the moment, but the main efficacy of play and recall is to make sure a dog is fulfilled, to put him in a better mindset for when he sees other dogs. Just a little caveat on all of that: whilst I'm preparing my useful tools, I want to make sure that I'm managing Travis to make sure he's not continually rehearsing the unwanted behavior. And so that means early doors he's out at different times to my dogs. That means early doors he's walked in a quiet area. I might be adjusting my routes. I'm making sure that he's not looking out the window and put— using the leash in the house to make sure he's not barking at other dogs. I want to mitigate his opportunity to rehearse that behavior that we need to see go away. Until I've prepped these things. I'm going to try and get through these as quickly as I possibly can so I'm not managing my dog forever and ever and ever and ever and ever because of like, time is finite, you know. I need to get through this sooner rather than later. So then once these are done, once I've taught the, uh, the appropriate lessons, I can essentially re-socialize Travis. And I need to do that again sooner rather than later so he doesn't develop into this uncontrolled wreck of a dog that will end up getting put down. So that's the important stuff. How am I going to format my day with him? Well, I'm going to get him up first thing in the morning and take him for as long of a walk as I possibly have time for and I can. I recommend this for all of you, all of you guys. While I'm prepping all of this stuff, I don't care how you do it. I don't care if you're running with the dog, I don't care if you're cycling with the dog and he's next to you, I don't care if he's pulling you on a harness, I don't care. The first thing you need to do is walk your dog as long as you possibly can, take as much energy out of them. If you need to set your alarm hour early, do that. Don't be a lazy bastard. I'm going to have to walk my 6 dogs and then early doors I'm going to walk Travis on his own and take him for as long of a walk and as many steps in as I can. I want at least 3,000 steps on that first walk. If you give me 5,000, 6,000, then even better. That's going to start the day off right. Then he's going to go and rest. And I'm looking at 2, maximum 3 actual behavior sessions throughout the day. And it could be working on any one of these things or a combination of these things. So walk first thing in the morning, then we're going to chill in the house or he's going to go in his crate. Session 1, I'm going to play with him, work on one of these things. Then put him back to bed so we can have a nap. Session 2, same deal. Bring him out, play with him, work on one of these things, or exercise in some way, shape, or form. Your dog doesn't play? Take him for a run. I'm going to work on one of these things, I'm going to put him to, to bed to make sure he naps. Training triggers learning, sleep solidifies it. If you're not giving your dog sleep after training, you're gonna fuck things up. So super important, get up First thing, take all the energy out of the dog. You don't need food, you don't need to care about equipment. You're gonna take your dog somewhere where there's the least likelihood of them bumping into triggers and walk them for as long as you can. Worst case scenario, in your garden, you walk 'em up and down 50 times, 100 times, I don't care. If you can get 'em out, even better, on a long line, on their collar, on their harness, I don't really care. Just take the edge off them that first part of the day. When they've had a 10-hour recharge, they're gonna have some beans and you want to take that edge off. By a decent exercise first thing. All right, then you can start working all this stuff. Play. Well, these are our sessions. Look, session, teach, sleep. Do it 3 times a day, 4 times a day. I'm going to concentrate on these things because I want things to happen as quick as possible for Travis and be as effective as possible. But this stuff I'm gonna concentrate on the most bang for buck. So I just wanted to give a quick demonstration of how far we can get working on a dog's reactivity with just a very few basic principles. I've got a dog staying with me at the moment, a Belgian Malinois named Travis. Oh my God. Up until this point, I've only had him 2 or 3 days. He's got food drive. He has a well-conditioned positive terminal marker. That is yes. Some of you guys are using a clicker. And I've also been through the punishment protocol and I've done a couple of setups for that. In and around my home. And so we've only got really these two things. He doesn't know a down yet, we've not done any recall, we've done a little bit of play. All I really need, which is what I'm about to show you or aim to show you, is making sure that we have a clear-cut yes, a clear-cut no. And I'm going to demonstrate how far we can get working on a dog's reactivity. Going to use a pinch collar, going to use a 4-foot leash, a 5-foot leash maybe. Yeah, that's 4-foot because I'm easily 6-foot. Anyway, I'm gonna fetch him out in a second. I've got the Muttnut to come and give me a hand with one of his stooge dogs, Elmo, that's training with him at the moment. And yeah, just going to give you a quick demonstration. Typically what we want to do is give the dog a decent play, a decent blowout before an exposure session like this. So he's already had to play this morning, maybe an hour ago. So now we're ready to do a little bit of food work. I've taken the edge off him and a little bit of work around dogs. All right, so without further ado, I'm gonna get him out. Darla, go on in there now. Come on now, fuck off! Go on now, go on! Oh God, I'm abused! She pretends to be abused. Hey, hey! 3 very fundamental principles when I work Travis around this dog in a second. 1, the lead has to stay loose. So if he goes and hits the end to take some food, I'm going to interrupt that accordingly. Typically that's going to be like a double pop on the leash. Hey buddy, hey, hey, hey, hey. If he goes into a reaction and starts to vocalize, I'm going to administer my punishment marker. And finally, I've got my terminal marker, e.g., my positive marker, which is going to be my yes, or for a lot of you, it's going to be your clicker. That is also to interrupt his behavior, but prior to a reaction. It is like a release valve to a pressure cooker. And so what I want to do is work him to a point where he starts to get a little bit frustrated, but he doesn't react or pull on the lead, give my positive marker— this will make sense in a second— in order to interrupt his current thought process, let him come back down, take food from me before we reset and restart again. Essentially, I want to take him on leash, show him his trigger. I've got a setup situation here. If he reacts, punishment protocol. If he looks but doesn't react, I'm going to interrupt that, interrupt him before he goes through any more naughty thoughts and goes into a reaction. Via my positive marker, move and reward him. All right, I'll talk you through as we go. I've not put any obedience on him yet. He doesn't have a down, he doesn't have a place, he doesn't have a recall. He has a sit like most dogs do, but I'm not even going to ask him to sit today. Okay, we'll bring the stooge in. Yes. Watch what I do if he doesn't respond to his marker. Yes. There's good buddy. Very important little detail there. Yes. I can move a little bit, that's no problem. Long leash, not a short leash. He's looking, he starts to leak. Good boy. Yes, yes, yes. If he blows off my marker, I keep moving. Yes. So if you were to go that way now, I just move, make myself a bit of a target, then present the food. Boy, if he goes to pull, we're utilizing the lead. Yes. I'm jackpotting that one because he found it hard. He thought about getting it wrong. He made the right choice. Jackpot there. Good man. Yes. I've not given him any instruction, no obedience yet. He's chose to sit. Yes. And I'm just marking and rewarding that. If he blows my marker off, I move, I move, I move, I move until he takes it. Yes. And you can kind of see he looks at the dog and then starts to build. He starts to build in frustration. That starts to build. My reward marker, if it's conditioned correctly, should be a release valve for that. Hey, hey, remember, he's not allowed to pull. Once he's interrupted enough with my reward marker, what you'll do is start self-interrupting, and then I can move on to rewarding that. For now, early doors though, I might have to manually interrupt him with the reward marker. Yes. So he's doing so well, we can make it more difficult now. And so if I was out on the, in the park working independently, I would take myself closer to the triggers working in a distance. Obviously Elmo, he's pretty chilled, pretty subdued, and so we're ready to escalate in intensity now. Remember, this is just day 2, day 3. All I've done is made sure his positive marker is important, his punishment marker is important. I've not even had to use that yet. I would like to give you an example of me using it in, um, kind of real life. Come on, yes, yes. Again, see there, he like kind of blew off my mark. That wasn't good. He can move, Tex, a little bit. Yes, a self-interruption there. You saw that, that was good. That means we're making good strides. Yes. And mistakes are going to happen in real life, and so when we have the opportunity for a setup situation, whether we've employed a friend or we can see someone with a dog that is fairly chilled and under control, we want to utilize that. Then we want to typically like try and rehearse our punishment protocol to ensure that when we are then in real life we have it in our repertoire. Yes, I don't mind if he makes a mistake now. It's better for him to make a mistake now— yes, lad— than it is in real life when I have less control over the situation, because at least here I can represent the situation. Will you make him bark, Alicia? Yes. Yes. And now what we're seeing is a lot of auto disengagement, which means he's making better choices. I've not had to give him loads of instruction here, not told him any obedience. It's implied that he's not allowed to pull, and it doesn't need to be any more complicated than that. Good boy, boy. I just want to make a point here. Until you've established something, whether that be your— any one of your markers, your good marker, your release marker, your yes marker, your break marker, your punishment marker— until you've established any of those, including your obedience, heel, close, place, and all the rest of it, you don't want to introduce them into the trigger until you've proofed them, until you've rehearsed them around some sort of distraction first, even if you have to fake that distraction. And so if I had never been through the punishment protocol— and in a second I'll throw in a nice bed— I'll throw in a clip of me going through that at home with him. If I'd not been through that whole protocol a bunch of times, then I wouldn't be allowed to use it here. That makes sense. Same with my yes marker. That wouldn't work because it's not conditioned. So heel, close, and all the rest of it, they're off the cards until I teach him. But that doesn't mean we can't go out and make good strides with our dog at this stage. Once we have a conditioned marker, once we've been through a punishment protocol, we can start utilizing it out and about. Play first, give the dog momentary rest, take the dog out, expose them to something that previously triggered them, do what I just did. Once you've done that for 15-20 minutes and your dog's still motivated, take them home, put them to bed, let them have a rest, and save all of that training. So Travis can go to sleep now. That was a good session. I would have liked to have maybe got in one just to demonstrate to you guys of the punishment protocol. Typically we don't want a dog to fail, but if we have an opportunity with a controlled environment and a setup, that's where we want the failures to happen. And so don't always think like we must avoid failure at all costs. Yeah, we must avoid our training being mostly failures, but we need to rehearse things going wrong. You're my big man. Are you my big man, Trav? Come on, you're my top man, aren't you? You look like a little Starkey. Yes, baby Starkey. Yes, immediately there. Like, what did you see? Yes, and Susie will just throw in a clip right here of what he was doing a couple of days ago when we get a chance. Was it yesterday? Yes, a couple of days ago. Hey Trav, you've done 2 nights now, haven't you, buddy? Yes. I'm just waiting and giving him feedback on what he's doing. Yes. Note the lack of obedience commands at this stage. Yes. Good man. Good man, Trav. Good man. And now look. Yes. What would I punish? Anything more than what we just saw, probably. Anything beyond— yes, that hyperfixation. If he started lunging, vocalizing, blah blah blah. Yes. See how he noticed, how he checked out after the marker? Then I made it obligatory with that lead feedback. There's a dog coming around the corner here with Alicia. Got up a little surprise for him, a big corso. And at this stage, he's still a baby. I don't mind the whining. Yes, compared to what he was doing, we will take that. The whine will go away when we get better at playing with each other and he gets more fulfilled. That's all just frustration. Him not processing his arousal. That's us asking him to be low. He wants to be high, as he sees dogs as a form of high arousal. And so when we continually show him sources of high arousal via play, this bit will become easier and we'll see the whining reduce. I keep reiterating myself, but it's so important. This session would be to no avail if I hadn't had preloaded terminal marker preloaded punishment marker. They're typically my bare requirements before I take a reactive dog out for an exposure session. Exposure session. I will overlay obedience and other markers as we go. Yes, lad. Good lad. Finish up with the jackpot. The better your food drive is in your dog, the longer your sessions could be, the stronger the marker is going to be. And then that's it, guys. I'm going to put my dog away. Good boy. Tell him what a good boy he is. Yes. And then that wraps up a really good session, probably 15-20 minutes long. That's great. If I can do one of them once a day, we're going to be heading on the right tracks. Super important, correct equipment. Pulling's not allowed. Terminal marker is a positive interrupter. Punishment marker as that, hey, don't do that. Come on, young Trav. Just out, maybe day 6 or so. Flip the camera around with the other dogs, just out on our evening walk, and I've got young Travis. Excuse my terrible footwear. And we are doing just more exposure. The quicker I can get through the behaviour principles with Travis, the quicker I can normalize the presence of other dogs. However, I must change the dog for the moment, not in the moment, hence why the preparation work before We have lovely relaxing walks like this. Um, that's absolute paramount in successful behavior change. We don't try and change the dog in the moment. We give feedback, of course, but that preparation is done. Loading the marker, both positive and negative, play prior. We're preparing the dog to tolerate that moment and be successful, and that's just super important. And then once we have a prepared dog by doing the homework then we can normalize other dogs. If I don't do my preparation and I just let him see 50 dogs and he reacts over and over again, I'm going to sensitize him to other dogs, and it'd be counterintuitive. We're going to make a dog more reactive. So I'm going to start e-collar with him tomorrow, which would be day 7, I believe. We're definitely within a week. That's because I want to get him off lead and fulfilled, running around chasing, doing what all my other dogs are doing right now. From the Malinois to the sausage dogs, you know, this is their life. This is how they live because they have that reliable recall. It would be silly of me to let Travis off right now, otherwise I'm gonna go to a rental field every single day, and that's just gonna be financially destroy anyone. So tomorrow e-collar training starts. See how many sessions we can get it done in. Not trying to rush it, no quick fixes, but what is important is young dog needs to be exposed to the world in a calm and collective state sooner rather than later. Not let these, uh, seeds become sprout into big blossoming fiery man-eating poisonous plants. So that's the check-in, nothing too exciting about this today's video, just More walking nicely on a lead, more around the other dogs. Not needed to be told off this walk yet. So doing his wheeze. Say bye, Trav. It's going to be one of those do not try this at home episodes. So day 9, 10, I've completely lost count. Got Travis all conditioned on the e-collar now. So what I'm about to do is let him out with the boys. I've got Stark, Kobe. I might put Kobe away. I might. Right, then he's just absolutely splatted my car. So the boys are in there. Let's get trapped. It's just one of those— I've got a good feeling that he's going to be all right. If he's not, however, I'll be dumping the camera and off to split up a doggy fight. Oh, and I've zoomed in. Oh, it's not gone— oh, oh God, oh God, I've had a nightmare. Oh, we've gone all the way around and— okay, we go back. The Star Club. There I am again. There's the Fridge. Okey doke. Right, bear with. First recall. Get a good recall in early. And to be honest, I have a feeling he's going to mind his own business. Trav, come. And he did. Good man. Oh God, come on boys. Trav, come. Oh, did you get that? Oh shit, come on, zoom me in again. Good man. Coby, don't be a knob. Yeah, ah voilà, crazy. Stark, Stark is trying to play. I'm sure I've dealt with it well. What a good boy. And this is awesome. I just woke up and I was like, right, I'm gonna let them out separately. Or do I let them out all together so they can have a decent wander? Someone's been planting. That's quite nice, isn't it? Trav, come! Oh, he's got good recall. Good man, good man. Trav, come! Good lad. Nope, sit. Oh, and I'm gonna be changing my t-shirt. I'm gonna be changing my t-shirt. It's my own fault. Didn't tell him off for jumping up prior to now. Put on my white t-shirt, don't take it out on the dog, and we move on. Starkey's doing a dump. Oh well, this is great. I'm well happy with this, and it's a nice day too. I'll pick that up later. Oh, Starkey, that fucking stinks. The last thing I want to do when introducing dogs to each other, which I actually prefer doing off leash. Trav, come. Good man, good lad. Okay, Kobe, don't start. That was actually Lenny being a knob. I can let Lenny be a knob, he hasn't got a bad bone in him. Kobe, however, I think would be keen for a set too. Anyway, I can't remember what I was saying now. You're a good man, Travis. Trap, come. Your man sits. You sit for me instead of jumping on me. Good man. Sorry my videography is being— okay, terrible. What a good, good boy. Lenny, you're a good boy too. You found a stick. There you go. I'll let him have a little bit of a sniff, a little bit of a hoo-ha. Piss on it, right? Okay, interesting. And, uh, yeah, I was saying I don't really like introducing dogs stationary with each other. I prefer doing it like on the move, on e-collar. There's another benefit of the e-collar. So if anything goes wrong, or if I see something is about to go wrong, should I say. I don't like typically correcting dogs in social interactions when they're in— within biting distance of each other. Right, Len, what you got? Yeah, Travis, come. Didn't like that, a little bit too much. Good man. I'm just walking around in circles here, but we want to keep moving. Don't want to be stationary, sat there, dogs just like watching each other's every move. You know, putting everyone on tenterhooks. Starco always minds his own business, especially when he's got a ball in his mouth. The whole point of this is to mix with dogs, you know, and I've fast-tracked everything really up until now. Like I keep saying, and I know I sound like a broken record, but he's a young man, he needs to get back on track sooner rather than later. He reminds me so much of Starkey. Fuck it, we'll be late for breakfast, but let's go to the river. Stack me. Drop. Travis, come. Good man. See that? That was cool. Travis, come on. All right, they fucked off, boys. Just very quickly, I want to film some for his dad too. Good man. Unbelievable, really, what you can achieve in such a short amount of time. Kobe's gonna go fuck his tree up. Here's a, here's a special tree. That'll be a good distraction for Travis. Look, good boy, Travis. Good choices. Now, I would kind of typically use food here to reward Travis's good choices. However, like Coby and Lenny especially, very food motivated. So when I deliver a marker or they see me kind of reaching into my pocket and start thinking, right, food's on the menu, then they're gonna congregate around me. And then what's gonna happen is I'm gonna— close quarters interaction. So good man, top man. And this is what I wanted. I wanted him to be able to— Lenny, come on, boy! Come on, Trav, go down there. Good boy. There you go. Take a video for his dad. Good boy, good boy. Lenny, no. This is one of, if not the busiest park in Leeds for dog walkers, so no doubt we'll have plenty of opportunity. What Travis really struggles with is, like a lot of you, your dogs is going to struggle with, is that head-on interaction. So hence we're taking him here today to give him opportunity to have some of that. Trav, come. Good boy. Good lad. Come here. Good man. Good lad. Oh, you're a good boy. Sit. Good boy. Alrighty, and we're off. I've got a ball in my pocket actually. That'd be nice if we could incorporate a little bit of ball play, huh? Don't bite me today, please. Now I could muzzle Travis, but that would change the dog I am training. He will become a different animal with a muzzle on. And so my job is just to be really quick. All righty, and we're off. Couple of Whoppin' Spaniels. Hey, don't do that. Mm-hmm, treating. Oh yeah, all right. Good boy. Yes. Well, take that, Trav. Hey, eat the food. Don't be ungrateful. There's street dogs out there starving. Second dog, here we go. Dog counter number 2. No, no, he's not bothering you. You don't bother him. Hiya, hiya. Good lad. Yes, good man. That was clever, boy. Ah, we're at the stage now with Travis where, you know, we got to be saying, hey, you're not allowed to do that. Wait for the successive rep and pay after the fact. Successful rep, should I say. Little Staffie over there, look. We saw a bit of loading up on Travis for the first couple of reps. Hopefully with time things will soften up when he realizes nothing exciting is really going to happen as we've passed lots of different dogs. We're at the habituation phase, I like to call it now, where we just want to get him to habituate towards other dogs. That looks like an old Staffy Malinois cross or something, Trav. I don't think they'll bother you too much. Yes, lad. Oh boy, this is going to be the hardest job for Travis there, these close quarters kind of walks where he's on a lead. I don't recommend people do like a lot of this. There's not much the dog gets out of it. However, it's something we have to work on, so is a bit of a focal point for us. And then hopefully we get some chance to do some off lead. I actually think Travis will tolerate the presence of triggers way better off a lead. Obviously the risk factor is there though, but you know, I'm also confident that he, as scary as he might be perceived to be, I don't think he's, you know, got all that much intent in him, so. We'll have to play it by ear, I think. But we're in like extra hard mode now. I'd like to have seen more dogs so far. Seen a couple of old geezers, haven't we, Trev? Not seen any young 11-month-old Malinois that want to chin anyone though. That'd just be you. All right, Susie? Yeah. There's a dog over there, look there. The absolute like Everest of training a reactive dog is your dog on leash, heeling, while other dogs are off leash intruding their space. And so don't expect to get there really, really quick. That's going to take some time. All right, mate? You all right? Yeah, salam, mate. You good? Hey, hey, sit. No, sit. Hey, good lad. It's all good, it's all good. Don't worry. Good lad. Yes, thank you. Just wander on past you here. Thank you. Hey, hey, hey, good lad. Hey, that was tough, but you did good. Good lad. There's always that dichotomy when there's an off-leash dog, whether— and that sort of situation doesn't piss me off at all. It's a good opportunity for us to do some work with Travis. Thankful it's a nice and friendly cockapoo as opposed to a frothing at the mouth Dachshund or Doberman or whatever it needs to be. But we do have that dichotomy of adding pressure to the leash is gonna maybe add more arousal to the situation, but also I've got to keep that dog safe and me safe as well with my legs. But I think he, he handled that really well. He thought about a couple of times, right? But you did good, Trav. And these are all those little life experiences we wanted to have him and We're at our halfway point now. So there's a little sausage dog. Little man, look. Couple of little men. Good boy. In there. Good lad. Come on in. You want to go get us a drinky, Susie? Go this way, Susie. Ready? Big Staffie there, look. Go on there, be a well man. Boy. Come on in. Good man. Hey, heel. You got to get used to dogs now, Trav, all right? It's no big deal, is it, mate? There you are, there's one. Have a look at him. There you are. Yes, good man. We're not too bothered by them, are we, pal? Yes, good man. Hey, easy work, hey bud, easy work, hey. Black Dog, I'm up. Good boy. Yes. I don't want to be in the habit of punishing him for having a look. I want him to process the other dog, and so My criteria is probably when his fucking eyes lock on, his ears go right forward, his mouth closes, the smile will shorten. That's when I know that's the step before a reaction, and at that point I might intervene. But anything less than that, I'm going to let fly because I want to give him opportunity to process the presence of the other dog and see and feel and go through all those feelings without interruption., and then ideally in a perfect world, maybe able to reinforce those, that good choice off the back end of that. So some nice couple of examples there. I think we've had a pretty successful couple of days. There's a squirrel. There is a squirrel. Yes. Can we disengage with the positive marker? Yes, we can. Good luck. Right, here's two dogs. It's going to be close quarters. You got a chair? Fuck it, we're doing it. Lead loose, shoulders back. Don't want to bite that guy on the shoulder, so I'm gonna have to go behind. Hey, I can even feel him driving up. She's gonna go behind you here. All right, thank you. Thanks very much. Good man, Trav. Yes, good boy. Yeah, clever. I'm pretty good out in there, Trav. You took a few reps to get settled in, but then I think you did good. We're gonna let you off leash, I think. I'll do a little baby recall. Okay, Trev, come. Yes. Yeah, fuck it, come on then. It's now or never, isn't it, bud? Okay. There's a dog over there. Yes. Come on, play ball. Chop, chop. Come on, boy, boy. Drop. Oh, out. Sorry. Good boy. Yes. Ah, clever. Spin then. Can you spin? Spin. That's a spin. Good lad. Go on. Oh, we got a Wischler. That puppy's going to be on his way over here in a second. That's all right. Ah yeah, yes, lad. Come on. Weiter, weiter, weiter. Oh, there's a couple of doggies playing ball here. Look, that'll get him going. So I'm going to wait till he clocks recall. He's gonna get it right and make sure there's no surprises. Come on, mister. Oh, he's too busy eating sticks and all that. Ah, you're a good man. Yeah, he's got a dog. Travis, come. Yes. You don't have to heel, but that's nice. Now what, Trav? Let's go this way. Good boy, heel. Might as well do it, huh? Good lad, you're clever. Come on, there's the dogs. Trav, come. Yes. I think you've done pretty good, to be honest. Pretty good. We've seen a little bit of everything. You didn't try and chin me. You maybe thought about chinning a few dogs, but you did refrain yourself. And then everything was pretty cushy after that, wasn't it, bud? Hey, you're my man. All right, I'm going to put him on just because there's a baby wallemaa. And that'll be straight over, won't it? I don't get puppies off lead. They're going to investigate everything, and I mean everything, including Travis. So I'm gonna bide my time because I don't want to ruin what is a really good walk. We want to make a cost-benefit analysis over every dog we pass, and, and so, you know, we get good real quick at getting a good read on dogs and whether they're under control or not, whether they're walking around on a flexi and and that one I think is going to steam over, so we're going to cut our losses. We're going to pass through this way and evacuate to YCA HQ just the other side of this fence to safety. Hey, that was pretty good, Traveldon. We nailed it, bud. You nailed it, handsome. We've been a bit everywhere now. We've been to the pub, been to a cafe, we've been to parkies, walk around residential areas. I would just want probably another 2, 3 walks like that, kind of different spots, or even same park, just walk in the opposite direction, just to generalize. Hey, look, a bunch of dogs! We actually did well today in terms of dogs steaming over to us and stuff like that. They're all really good. Usually it can be a bit wacky, can't it? And that's it. That's all I've done in the first 10 days with Travis to make this miraculous transformation. Dog training really is that simple. When you know which 20% of training gives you 80% of the results. And that's what I did here. I focused on the exercises and methods that give us the best bang for buck. Obedience can wait. Loose lead walking can wait. Place training can wait. Get your dog off lead. Teach them yes. Teach them no. Learn how to play and it will take you the majority of the way. And remember, everything you've just seen only works if it's built on a foundation of common sense and a proper relationship with your dog. And if you don't have one of them yet, you click this video right here, and I'll show you exactly how to build it.