Responding to Negative Comments with Szymon, Deb, & Brandon | SOURCE

Hey guys, welcome to The Source Podcast, all things working dogs. I'm going to be your host today. My name is Simon, and I'm joined by my wonderful, uh, co-host Deborah Clark and our guest speaker Brandon Martin, who you might remember from our last podcast show. We're gonna have a little fun show today, go over some hate comments online. Not necessarily hate comments, but just some questions and just weird comments people comment on our video. So we're gonna kind of go over those and discuss them. But I want to start off by seeing how you guys are doing. I just want to check in with you guys. How's your day been, Deborah?

Been a crazy day. Yeah, it's been a crazy day.

Yeah, you holding down those kennels?

Yes, definitely, definitely. And I've been on the podcast before. To introduce myself a bit, I am the kennel master or kennel manager. For those of you who may have seen my podcast or not, I am just here to make my irrelevant comment— comments on these, again, hate comments and negative things that people have online, but my specialty is in the kennel and everything relating to dog health. I'm also a canine handler, full service. Brandon, you gotta introduce yourself.

Like Simon said, Brandon. I was actually on last week's podcast as a guest speaker, and since then I've actually now joined the CCU team and I am full-time here, and this is my first week.

That's awesome.

How badly are you being bullied?

Hazing is not a thing.

As the person who handles the social media, the main comment we get on any detection videos automatically is gonna be, they trained them to false alert.

That would most definitely be a question, false alerting, for Simon. Um, they don't specify any further what that false alert means. Alerts can have a lot of different, you know, different ways that dogs can be alerted. So Simon, well, oh my gosh, your dog is out of control.

AJ Vargas says he doesn't false alert. Um, no, we don't train the dogs to false alert. That goes into legal reasons and is absolutely negligent if we were to do that. We actually go through steps and measures to ensure that the dogs do not false alert. Or are cued whatsoever by the handlers. The only thing that would stimulate those dogs to actually alert or give a change in behavior is the odor or stimulus of illegal substances. So if you've been following along with some of our short sets or some of the podcasts, you might have heard us talk about changing behavior. Not to go into too much detail over our training process, but when our dogs actually come in contact with that odor, it elicits a response from the dog's central nervous system the dog actually can't control. So we're not only just looking for the dog to sit down in an area, there needs to be a change of behavior that occurs prior to that. For it to be considered a positive alert. So without that change of behavior, a dog simply sitting does not give the dog— give the handler reasonable cause to search people's vehicle. And any handler that is willing to risk that is risking not only their careers but is risking possibly getting sued. So no, that's pretty— that's just a dumb comment.

Okay, so in response to me telling someone we don't train with a false alert, he told me, I'm happy you believe that. I have a very different opinion about law enforcement. A sheriff's deputy killed a man and got away with it. That me off. Oh gosh, very upset.

Yeah. So you can't really change people's opinions at that point.

Yeah. I mean, the funny thing about online or being online is anyone can get a phone or a laptop and internet access and they can just spew their garbage online. Whatever. I don't know what he's possibly referring to, but I mean, he obviously is willing to disagree. He feels strongly and he's willing to discredit everything that, you know, we do. And that's fine. I mean, the proof is in the pudding. We have successful deployments with our K-9s. Our K-9s go out there, they find dope, they get dope off the streets. You can feel about it any way that you feel. But I don't understand how his comment relates to K-9s.

Yeah, he was talking about socialization too.

How wonderful. Yeah.

Nothing to do with drug detection.

I hear a lot more stories about successful deployments than I hear about, you know, this type of garbage. But I can safely assure that, you know, we've had dogs that have found murder weapons. Dogs that have gotten loads of dope off the street. I think recently we had a dog that got hundreds of pounds of meth from a vehicle. We've had dogs that have found missing children. So, you know, whatever people's opinions are on law enforcement, that's— they're entitled to that. And, you know, you have freedom of speech, but sometimes ignorance is bliss. Right now with how much scrutiny law enforcement receives and how often they're videotaped, you know, I mean, if they really want to get in your car, they can find a reason to get into your car. And I don't— I know any handler that I've put through this course, I can definitely say that they would not risk their career or their dog's reputation um, simply to try and get into someone's car. I mean, the handlers that we train, they're adamant about getting narcotics off the streets. They're not there to hassle citizens.

Okay, and I'm gonna keep going with detection for now. This one's pretty— I thought this one was so stupid. This is on a video of Echo. Echo is an explosive detection dog.

Okay.

And this person said, beautiful dog, dogs are extremely intelligent, but I don't believe that their lives are any more disposable than our own, especially when they live shorter lives than ours. Another comment during drug detection was, quit forcing animals to do your job, it should be on you, not them.

Oh gosh, okay.

I don't think at any point we're getting a job or getting a dog to do our job for us. We're just using a resource that we've been able to help train over the years to assist us with that. Yeah, that job. At no point is that— I mean, we have to still deploy the dog, we still have to, to assist with that search, and they're assisting each other in those searches.

Yeah. And you know, the thing is, is the dogs that we select, they need something to do. They need to be stimulated. These dogs wouldn't make great house pets. And I guess this is more of a moral question, but I mean, to say that a dog's life is no more disposable than a human's life. This was in response to an explosives dog.

Yeah.

Um, as someone that runs an explosives dog, I mean, yeah, that's something that we don't want to encounter, but I think at the end of the day, that task and that job that that dog has is, you know, I mean, we're talking about something that could save many people's lives.

Matt the Wise said that K-9 units are the second biggest scam law enforcement uses today.

The second biggest scam? I mean, it just sounds like it's someone else that's salty about cops. And sometimes—

Dad was a cop for 25 years, so he knows the K-9 handlers give the dogs cues to make them indicate.

Oh, he knows. Your dad was a bad cop, essentially. Your dad—

that's what we're hearing. You're outing your dad for being a bad cop.

Once again, yeah, yeah, you just outed your dad. And I mean, the cops here nowadays, I mean, they have body cameras on them.

They have cameras.

The heat's on them right now. No one wants to be a cop right now. A lot of departments are actually struggling to get people to be, to be cops. So, and they're under a lot of scrutiny. So once again, it just seems like someone that maybe had trouble following the law and it's the cop's fault, not theirs fault. One of those situations. And you know, that's a sad way to live your life, I guess.

Yeah. And general comments we get: narc. The dog is also a narc.

Oh my gosh. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, the dog is a narc. Yeah, it is a narc. And you got told on. Sorry, the dog told on me. Yeah. Yeah, you're doing something you aren't supposed to be doing.

That meme about dogs is like, do you think other dogs, uh, see police dogs and be like, oh, he's the cop? Like, yeah, dogs are still narcs. Definitely dogs are narcs for sure.

Yeah, they kind of talked on the point of like, if you were to— you could take a dog that is on odor and give it a green handler and the dog would still alert to odor and never— the handler doesn't have to do anything. Yeah, like it has nothing to do with it.

Yeah, it's the association with the stimulus. Yeah, I don't know, it's just— I don't know, cops get a bad rap, so does the military. I mean, you can scrutinize anyone online. I mean, it's easy when you say it to my face. I'm not a cop though, but you know, talk about these dogs, we got problems. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the dog narced on you, so like you were doing something you weren't supposed to be doing, so that's what you get.

Do better at hiding it.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh gosh, don't challenge them.

Don't do better.

But I mean, either way, like you see the dope that these dogs get off the street, and maybe these individuals haven't seen the bad things that drugs do to people. And they just don't have that perspective.

This is hilarious. You need to be— this is for a handler course.

Okay, okay.

This is hilarious. You need to be a working dog handler first. These are things that take years of experience. You need to understand what's required of a dog before you teach it. There's a difference in sporting dogs and street dogs, and you have to know the canine use of force continuum for your state.

Okay, let me cut in real fast. First question is, how do you get years of experience as a canine handler if you've never been a K9 handler or gone to school for it? Do you just pick a dog up off the street and then just start handling them and hope for the best for your experience, or what? Because I feel like you have to go to school first and then gain your experience.

Yeah.

I mean, is that what this guy was talking about?

Yeah, that's basically what he said. You can't just go to handler school. You have to have years of experience as a handler first.

You don't have to go to boot camp. You can just join the military.

Just go to war first.

You don't need years of experience at war and then go to boot camp. Yeah, and then go to combat training. Uh, yeah, that just seems pretty counterintuitive.

How do you gain experience as a canine handler if you've never been to school to become a canine handler? Which also points to like, our courses are really basic. They're set up for people who have never handled— like, we've had people who come in and they've never had dogs before. Not these guys, but some people are like, I've never had a dog before. I don't know anything that they need. I'm like, oh gosh, how have you never had a dog growing up?

Like, we have people that come in that are scared.

We've had law enforcement officers come in to handle dogs and are afraid of dogs.

Exactly, that's true.

Exactly.

These are all, um, under gunfire neutrality training, so in the video Josh has headphones on.

Okay.

Echo does not. Everyone's shocked the dog doesn't have headphones on.

Okay. Okay.

If it hurts your ears, can you think about how badly it must hurt his considering his ears are many, many— M-I-N-I, by the way, not M-A-N-Y— many, many times more sensitive and in tune than yours. Why doesn't the dog have ear protection on? Did the dog have ear protection?

Can I cut in? I know that Josh watches these things. Josh also has a TBI, like, so any extra concussive, like, sounds could actually be more harmful for him. And we don't know, we're like, we're not doctors. We don't know about like the effects that that could have. But we do know that, well, Simon will mention on it, but we do gunfire with a lot of dogs and they don't have problems with it. So for you to take one specific video with, you know, one person who's wearing headphones, I mean, cops with their dogs on the streets, I don't think they put headphones on before they go.

Hold on, bad guy, I gotta put headphones on.

Exactly.

Yeah, so I mean, the point is to socialize in the gunfire.

So if we're trying to socialize them, why would we muffle the sound? It's, uh, kind of counterproductive.

But, but we do start farther away and then make our way closer. It's not like they're right beside it the first time and just being like, okay, deal with it. Yeah, we do start farther away.

It's not something that we just practice every day either. It's kind of just we get the dog used to it, he's good to go, and then That's it.

So, yep. Okay, now we're gonna do a little bit of bite work. So the video of Aya, you're doing things with Aya.

I saw these comments. Okay, I wanted to comment on it.

I'm tired of all the fake videos. They really think you believe that. In this caption it said training scenario, by the way. Fake. You can see the bulge of padding under his sleeve. Good example though. Stupid video.

Okay, Simon, since it was you decoying, I feel like you should get first dibs.

So the lack of attention to detail from the online community is astounding.

Um, illiteracy.

Yeah, no padding, they will still bite you.

I have to decoy a lot of dogs, so yes, I'd like some padding. And yeah, read the caption before you comment, please. Do your research, do something before you speak.

But I would also like to point out that even wearing that sleeve, you can still feel the bite.

This comment is for Simon because it's on the same video of him catching Aya. Okay, green decoys always think constantly screaming while thrashing and bashing the dog is teaching it protection.

Yeah, you green decoy.

That's fine, I'm a green decoy. Um, yeah, I actually remember that training scenario and what what was actually happening was the dog was slipping on the bite, so I was trying to encourage the dog to hang on to the bite. You see a video, but you don't understand what the intent of the training was. But yeah, you can still call me a green decoy, that's fine, I don't care.

But you're not a green decoy.

Uh, you could call me one. I'm a white decoy, I'm a red decoy, I'm a blue decoy. It, it, yeah, it doesn't really matter. You know, I implemented my training plan and it was successful, so say what you want.

Yeah, I actually responded to that guy and I told him, I said, um, you know what they say, there's only one thing two trainers will agree on, that's that the other one is wrong. All right, that's true for all trainers. We're still on the same video. So you attacked a person who is lost because Simon comes down the driveway saying like, I'm just lost This is one of the people who believed it was real.

Oh gosh.

He made no threats and he ran away. You as a dog owner just went to jail. You can still be sued. What if he's hard of hearing and can't read? Because there are guard dog signs. She could have went into her house with her guard dog, called the police, then if he comes in, you can shoot or stick your dog. It's the difference between looking like a defender or a crusader. Could mean a lot in court.

Well, I'd like to start off with her in the state of Georgia. And private property means private property.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's still trespassing.

It's still trespassing. If I told you to leave, that means to leave.

Yeah.

And this particular client has had protection dogs for a long time. Um, she has it clearly marked on her property. I think they just thought it was a real video. I guess again, once again, didn't read the caption.

Deaf, illiterate, Finally got bit by a dog.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, not only are you green, you're now deaf and illiterate.

You can't read or speak, obviously.

Yeah, I mean, and the chances of Helen Keller walking on your property, you know, would be very unfortunate. But it's stand your ground law.

Stand your ground law.

Yeah.

So, all right, common ones I get for law enforcement. I actually pulled these from Facebook. I asked some of our Facebook handlers what they hear. He told us what people tell him. A few I get a lot is that we mistreat dogs because we don't let them just be dogs, referring to the working dogs.

That goes back into your comment earlier. If we didn't give these dogs a purpose, they would be hell on paws. Yeah, they would destroy people's houses and probably bite people unprovoked.

And I mean You could make them a house pet, I guess, if you wanted to. I mean, it just wouldn't be your ideal house pet. You talk about like something that's just a dog that's pretty destructive, and these dogs are very smart, so they can learn things on their own. And either way, you know, crating a dog— there's a lot of opinions on crating dogs, but as far as working dogs go, um, it's important to, especially during the early staging or early training processes, to keep your dogs crated. Um, you kind of want to have that distinction with them. And, you know, some people think it's a bit inhumane, but from my experience, you know, anyone that has said they have a working dog and that they do not crate their working dog, yeah, um, doesn't have a very good working dog.

Well, I mean, the comments I have for that is— this is kind of my area The kennel dogs live in there like 80-85% of the time unless they come out for training. I don't see how that's any different than, you know, leaving them in a crate at home. That's not that different. You're still going to come let them out at a specific time each day routinely. But leading into— we've even seen the problems, and again, not naming any names, but we've seen the problems with students here in course trying to do that when they're staying in hotels and in the rental house and things like that. And the dogs come in the next day and look like absolute dog crap. And so you're like, did this dog sleep on the bed last night? Were you just giving them a toy? Because they could care less if they get the toy right now because they get this reward at home all the time.

Yeah. And I mean, the crate's kind of just like their area to relax. Where they can actually just kind of decompress.

So also, like, if they're afraid too, it's a safe space.

Yeah, it's a safe space, and it helps with at least, you know, even on the training side, as far as management of your dog, um, being able to have a place to put them. And I mean, it's for their safety sometimes too, because if I got a dog that chews up stuff, eats up floorboards, you know, and he can't manage being in the household on his own, like unsupervised. That's something that I have to find a way to manage. Otherwise, I mean, would it be more humane to let him get an intestinal blockage and unfortunately die?

Yeah.

And we also see dogs, working dogs that people are trying to have as pets come in, and the dog is wild and rambunctious because they don't have a purpose.

Yeah, and I mean, on that note too, it's, you know, definitely during the early stages of development, you definitely want to have good crating practices and ensure that your dog associates the crate with something positive and has a positive association with it. But, you know, over time, even with working dogs, as they get older, you know, you can kind of start to give them a little bit of leeway. But that's after every— all the foundation's been put into place. So you won't have that lapse in any of that training.

But— and I don't hear people complaining about, you know, putting dogs in crates when they're trying to potty train and your dog's crapping all over the house from 2 months old when you get them at, you know, that 8-week mark up to the 6-month mark. And that relates to working dogs and pets.

So I got— I kind of had this with when I first got my working dog Vargas. It's a conversation I had to have with my wife and I had to explain it to her. And she didn't, you know, she— it took a while for her to understand until I was at the point where I'm like, all right, I'll just let the dog loose around the house and he's freaking jumping over everything. And, you know, like Is that what you want? But, you know, I pull him out and I could run explosives hides right now, and I know he's going to hit on them because that's all he wants to do. So he just wants to work. That's it.

Okay. This person says, I bet my dog would protect me at home, or I bet my dog can do that in reference to a video.

Yeah. Come get your dog eval and we'll prove you wrong. Yeah.

Now I always hear that, or Like German Shepherds. Every German Shepherd owner says that their dog— I'm a German Shepherd owner too, so—

German Shepherd owner, or used to be a German Shepherd owner.

But everyone with a German Shepherd is like, yeah, my dog could be a police dog.

Uh, that's true.

And yeah, I mean, I guess that's just people just make the association that it's a breed thing, which obviously we know that that doesn't happen to be the case. There's certain standards for it. And as far as dogs protecting their owners, I think there's actually a video online where they actually tested that theory out.

Yeah, I think there really was. There was some guy who was like, we'll come fake break-in or whatever and do that. And they have like a compilation of dogs like running away and barking in fear. I think there was only one, and it was like a Great Dane that actually bit for the owner. Yeah, and it was like—

no, it bit, but it bit out of fear. Yeah, because yeah, I mean, yeah, your dog may like try to do something, but as soon as that intruder or whoever's attacking you puts pressure on that dog, like, that dog's like, uh, you're, you're on your on this one.

So a funny story was like we had this dog that we had to go pick up, and the person who went to go pick them up was obviously new to the dog. They'd never met them before. So in that instance, you always want to be like really careful coming into the home setting. And they said that when they went to pick up the dog, the dog got so afraid that it peed on the floor instead of protecting the home.

This person said they want their dog to do what they say without out of correction?

Bring them to CCU, we'll help you out.

I guess that would be, you know, treat rewarding and stuff like that. I can answer this comment from having an aggressive dog myself, but it is also a working dog. It's not a pet. Like, I have a working dog, and if I start trying to correct verbally without a physical correction, he's just gonna stand off with me and growl at me, and then Although I have been bitten by him now recently, first time in what, 4 or 5 years that I've had him. He would definitely try and pick a fight at that, and then if I don't have a leash or a collar on him in order to give a physical correction if I need one, or at least grab positive control to protect myself, I'm gonna get bit for sure in that situation. But I, I mean, I think everyone here could kind of knows this, we don't deal with super, super young dogs on a regular basis. Our kennel's like 10 months and our training is like 10 months up unless it's for like a specific client where we've evaluated the situation. But with that being said, I definitely don't think you need to be over here jerking around and correcting puppies, but we try and use more like treat, treats and positive reinforcement. Reinforcement, verbal rewards, than, you know, the harsher corrections you might give an adult dog.

Okay, this one I found, same video of Aya and Simon. Why do you send him on a leash so he can get tangled in it or get wrapped around his throat?

Why do you care?

I think in that instance it just gives the handler an opportunity to gain control of that dog when the handler gets to that decoy.

Yeah, I mean, I think I was wearing a hidden sleeve on that one, so just helping with the handler having positive control. I've seen that comment a lot, especially on some of our recall videos and where the dog has the long line. And, you know, obviously we as trainers, we set up the training environment, so we try to prevent those those hazards as much as possible. Um, not to say that accidents don't happen, but I mean, so far we haven't really had any accidents like that occur.

Oh cool, you guys teach dogs to scratch cars, giving lazy ultra-liberals in blue who wipe their ass with the Constitution permission to search people's cars for non-existent drugs. And AJ Vargas commented on the same one, probably the same person, to be honest. This is a joke, and I can't wait for the day that our society finally decides to get rid of this arc style of bullshit that people like you are allowed to impose on people in this country. Canine— there's no punctuation in this, by the way.

Okay.

Canines are the absolute worst tool that a police officer uses as leverage in a case against somebody. It's happening time and time again, and every day more and more, the legality and the questionable practices used by canines in the field of police work is unraveling, and it makes me happy.

Did he call the cops liberals?

I believe he called them lazy ultra-liberals in blue who wiped their ass on the Constitution.

Oh my gracious, I don't even know what to say to that. Um, like, that's a lot. That's a lot. Yeah, I mean, going back to everyone's gonna have their own opinions.

If you don't want to get in trouble, don't do anything wrong.

Yeah, this person wants to know why no one uses pit bulls.

Problems with pit bulls is they're overly bred. They do tend to have a pretty high prey drive.

There's a lot of bans on pit bulls too in certain counties. Um, I mean, this isn't pit bull, but like the whole bully thing overseas where they were banning them and making people put their dogs down. The ban— the breed has already got so much stigma behind it in like attacking children, mauling people.

Um, we're barely hanging on to our pointy ears.

This person said, easy way to get that dog off, choking him out.

Have you ever seen the videos of people who don't know what to do, um, in like a choking a dog off situation? And they're like, oh, let go, let go! And they're like trying to shake the dog, or they're just yelling at it to let go, thinking it's gonna let go.

And like, it's just getting worse and worse.

You're gonna have to, you know, really use some muscles to get off in certain situations.

Oh, this person says shit music. Fair enough.

I'm not interested in music.

Well, TikTok makes us, you know—

These people think they can outrun a German Shepherd.

Okay, okay, perfect. I want to respond to this comment.

Um, go ahead, Deborah, you have the floor.

Well, well, you know, we do like fun things here where we race each other. We are perfectly prepared to complete a race between a dog and our famous trainers here, um, that for an update—

I never said I could beat a German Shepherd. I don't know why I have to do it.

Well, we're just gonna prove a point. That you can't outrun a German Shepherd. Um, not saying you're gonna win, Simon, you're a sore loser, but I know a German Shepherd I can outrun.

Who's that one that looks like a sausage?

I mean, I would say unless you're using both, there's probably not a chance of you outrunning these German Shepherds.

Exactly. And how many people are Olympic level? Not many.

Uh, I mean, German Shepherd, I mean, you're not gonna outrun a Mal. German Shepherd, you could, you could, you could possibly outrun a German Shepherd.

Every bite video shows equipment, so I guess they teach the dogs to hunt equipment for bite versus the human.

Oh, well, we were trying to develop the dog.

Yeah, well, we're trying to teach the dog how to bite anything at that point.

Yeah, you get a lot of comments about the dog's emotions.

Do dogs have emotions?

Do dogs have emotions?

I think dogs definitely do have some type of emotions, but not the same types as humans where we're like, oh, that was so harsh on them. The dog's already over it. If it— if we're talking about a correction or, you know, accidentally like losing your cool and maybe using like a yell at the dog instead of a normal tone of voice, I definitely don't think dogs are like holding grudges against us for that.

I mean, like, do dogs have emotions? Yeah. I mean, they're not kind of like you said, they're not similar to ours. Can they get anxious? Yeah. Can they be fearful? Absolutely. Can they get excited? Yeah. But I mean, do dogs get sad?

I don't know.

Do we believe in these pet therapists? No, I don't. I definitely don't think we need pet therapy. I think you need to take them on a long walk by the beach, a sunset picnic. Yeah, no. Thank you for joining The Source Podcast. We are doing short sets on Tuesdays, so make sure you look for that. Um, with this, thank you for joining us and listening to what we had to say today, even though it was a little bit different. Um, but thank you for joining us again, and we hope you enjoyed it.

Go!