AJ Vargas, a protection dog trainer, explains how to build a stable foundation before adding distractions and defensive training. He emphasizes handler responsibility and shares cautionary examples from his own experience.
Chapters
You can create two very polar opposite reactions, right? One is now he bites everybody and you can't even get along with AJ, right? And especially for female He's a big dog. Then you have someone walking by him and the next thing you know they get nailed by this dog because he's only thinking I bite everybody. Or you have a dog that's not strong enough and you push him too much and then he's fear-based, right? So that's why we try to build that stable first, teach him what he needs to do, then we start adding things that are more not just complex but can also be more riskier. And so that's why I've just found in my experience that we, we need to go the other way first. Build— and it's very similar to the concept with your dog— build what you should be doing very well, which is engaging, biting properly, and all that. Well, then begin to add all this other stuff to it, because now the dog is clear how to, how to reach the goal. So no matter what's going on, if you just do this you're good, and the dog clearly understands that, then we begin to add distractors. When you think about obedience, if the dog is clear on what the expectation is or how to win the game per se, anything else we add, we can always go back to that foundation. People just— a lot of people don't realize, and maybe it's just inexperience, but they don't, they don't really understand the end result when you do certain things. You know, we've been fortunate. For one, we made a lot of mistakes too. You can't sit here and say that you haven't. But I've also seen a lot of dogs too, and that's— I always go back to that. Somebody tells me, well, you need to do this, this, and this with this dog. Okay, you're telling me this because you trained one dog in your damn career? You've done this? I've seen thousands of dogs, just ones I've trained, but I've traveled the world watching dogs, seeing dogs work, picking people's brain, and all these things. And I I culminate into why I'm making the decision to do this with your dog right now, because I've seen the bad of it too, where people have tried this stuff or done this. And I've also been guilty of that, trying stuff, and, and then it turns out bad. And whose fault is it? Well, it's my own fault, right? Because I'm stepping into realms that I don't know what I'm doing, fully understanding what I'm doing. It's one thing to go through a process of training right? He's on YouTube. Okay, how do I teach my dog to bite? Okay, here's step 1, here's step 2, and that may work for a small percentage of dogs, but it doesn't work for every dog. And yes, we have used defense to help a dog get to a certain level or get over a hump in training. So defense is not a bad thing. But it needs to be applied appropriately in order to reach a very specific goal with a dog that's also stable. It's to really look at the full picture of what we really need. And quite frankly, we even have some dogs that we don't do certain things with because we know the handler can never— once we open Pandora's box, we can't put it back in. And I know that handler cannot handle that. We're not even going that way, but I want him to do it. I know that's what you want, that's what your mouth says. That's not what your hospital bills are going to say when that dog— because I know, I can see it in that dog that you're gonna have a big issue. And we tell people that all the time, but some people don't listen. Oh, but I want that. Okay, okay, standby. Wait and see if that's really what you want, and then you you have problems, and now it's the dog shit. No, it's not. What you guys call it. This is exactly what you asked.
